Tim Leary wrote this from exile in Folsom Prison where he was incarcerated by J.Edgar Hoover and the Nixon Administration for the crime of Psychedelic exploration. One of the people most intensively attempting to destroy him was one G. Gordon Liddy who became dubiously famous as a participant in the Watergate break-ins. With the recent release of massive embassy communications by WikiLeaks, and the subsequent massive screams of foul by the US government, a government that has hidden behind secrecy for over 60 years and which is constantly pushing to have more access to the private information of everyone including US citizens, the words of that Bob Dylan song comes to mind: "Sometimes even the President of the United States sometimes has to stand naked".This chapter from Neuropolitics has a prescient quality to it.
- "The last, the very last people to hide their actions should be the police and government."
(speaking of Watergate) When you think about it, secrecy is the cause of the whole flap. Ellsberg and Russo published some secrets. Leaks in the White House. The plumbers steal Ellsberg's psychiatric secrets. And bug the Democrat's phone calls. The entire White House is involved in cover-up. The hearings center on cover-up of the cover-up.
Secrecy is the enemy of sanity and loving trust. If you keep secrets, you are an insane paranoiac. Concealment is the seed source of every human conflict. Secrecy is always caused by guilt or fear. Liddy's parents were guilty about sex. And Nixon's parents. It drives them crazy when he secretly suspects that she's keeping secrets so he hires a private detective and vice versus.
Let's break out of the huddle. Before J. Edgar Hoover there were no secret police in this country. Before World War II there was no C.I.A. and America was amazingly unconcerned with secrecy. The hidden sickness has become lethally epidemic in the last forty years.
Now comes the electronic revolution. Reveal-ation. Bugging equipment effective at long distances is inexpensive and easily available. Good. Liberals want stiff laws against bugging. It's the wrong move. Legalize everything. Legalize bugging. Let's forget artificial secrets and concentrate on the mysteries.
