Allen’s appearance in 1972 (at the height of the Vietnam War) on the Dick Cavett show. alongside dramatist-screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky and, most notably, an ebullient and sincere Christopher Isherwood, ranks as one of his more memorable tv appearances (tho’ to be frank, they were almost always memorable). Allen got to lay out to a national audience the hypocrisy and iniquity of C.I.A. involvement in the Indochinese opium trade (via the story of his wager with C.I.A. chief Richard Helms) – (see here – and see also Alfred McCoy‘s – The Politics of Heroin – C.I.A Complicity in the Global Drug Trade). He also got to speak eloquently about the need to de-escalate violence and pointed to the violence being perpetrated by the State (Nixon and Kissinger) in its conduct of the war – (“(W)hat we need now is everybody sit down and shut up a while and, you know, stop bombing. And that begins at the top with Nixon and Kissinger who have the largest.. proclivity, proclivity for violence and bombing (larger) than anyone..”)
His response to Cavett’s question as to whether it could be possible to be a Hindu (Isherwood and Ginsberg recognize each other as fellow spiritual seekers) and still recognize the inevitability of violence:
AG: Well, it’s such a large generalization you couldn’t even say yes or no to it. I would say we don’t need violence in Vietnam anymore, folks. We don’t need violence in the streets anymore. We certainly don’t need a bombing (of) the middle class, or the left, or the right, at this point. What we need is everybody calm down right now in America, everybody calm down and start a different path of asceticism, stop shooting up so much gas electric speed, stop being matter-junkies, stop being addicted to so much electricity and oil and petrochemicals, like, cool our mad materialistic appetites, so that we can save the planet. And violence is not going to be of any use in this particular squeeze that we’re in now. I mean, what we need now is everybody sit down and shut up a while and, you know, stop bombing. And that begins at the top with Nixon and Kissinger who have the largest, except maybe… have the largest proclivity, proclivity for violence and bombing than anyone. They’re bombing right now over, all over Indochina and, like, it.. And the public attention goes to someone like (Charles) Manson with his “family”, sending his family out for a Helter-Skelter, but what about public attention to our government? – The President, Nixon, like Manson, sending his “family” out to “Helter Skelter” in Indochina – because.. I don’t think violence is of any use at this moment.”
DC: Allen
AG: Yes
DC: Various people have been made nervous by various things you’ve said.
AG: Oh, I wanted to calm it all down actually
DC: Your remarks about Mrs Chennault her airline and all that. How well-documented are they?
AG: My information is mostly from Time magazine actually. Madame Chennault and her husband Claire Chennault founded Air America many years ago. It’s been written up at great length in Ramparts magazine and in Time magazine. It’s the main carrier for U.S.military operations in Indochina. It’s sometimes referred to as (Air-CIA) by local reporters. Madame Chennault herself (doesn’t know) presumably, (the fact that) her airline is used (for) transports, and she specializes in accusing the Chinese Communists of dealing (she wrote an article in the New York Times accusing them – “the Communists are doing it”! – the other day, altho’ her.. the airline..) I think she’s a major stockholder in the airline and has a good deal of control.
DC: I assume she’d be responsible for everything that passes
AG: No, she’s not personally responsible, though, since I know about, she might as well know about it and if she doesn’t know about it, I’m telling her now.
DC: I see. Well, I’m glad you cleared that up.
AG: The other thing is that, according to Time magazine, she was one of the major contributors to the Nixon campaign – that’s where I got my.. – or a major contributor – she gave quite bit of money to the Nixon campaign. I got that out of Time magazine in..when..I think they were doing a review on ladies in Washington and Watergate, Watergate apartments..
DC: I see. Okay.
AG: It’s just public information. Everything that I said actually, I got out of the newspapers, though I have interviewed C.I.A. agents and ex-Peace Corps people and lots of Green Beret people and..
DC: I was wondering what your sources were beyond your contacts in public. How do you get to know ex-CIA agents?
AG: I went down to Washington to the Institute for Policy Studies with a free telephone and I got on the telephone for a full month in March,1971. I just called around, all over Washington, beginning with Walter…among other people Walter Pincus, the ex- Chief Counsel of the Foreign Policy, Senate Foreign Policy Committee, Foreign Relations Committee, and various ex-bureaucrats of Senator Gruening‘s Committee on Government Expenditures and Operations who had already investigated Marshal Ky. So I got leads from them and then I went to Jack Anderson‘s office and looked through his files and talked with his assistant, Les Whitten. And then I talked to various people that were on the scene. Then I talked to Stanley Karnow who is the Washington Post reporter in Indochina -among other people.
DC: When do you sleep?
AG: Oh, between two and nine in the morning
DC: Thank you
&
responding to the suggestion that Isherwood’s father may have been embarrassed by his son’s homosexuality:
AG: Well nobody tried to embarass him, actually
Allen ponders (1972) the alliance between Gay Liberation and the Women’s movement:
AG: What happens when Gay Lib meets Women’s Lib? – that problem still hasn’t been resolved
Isherwood wryly responds: Well that we shall see at some great Conference of the future..
Isherwood has plenty to say (as does Chayefsky) – a remarkable and illuminating time-capsule.
Here’s a transcription of the Allen section:
DC: My next guest is a poet, an essayist and an original member of the Beat Generation, and a political activist at times, and guru of a generation of flower children and others, and students of Hinduism and Buddhism, and generally well-informed on most things, it’s amazing, most recently a recording artist, one of America’s most decorated poets, would you welcome please, Mr Allen Ginsberg.
Allen appears
DC: You’re traveling light today, I see. You only have a couple of things.
AG: Yes but, in case of emergency, in case I say anything I have to document or in case I should sing. I have a harmonium.
DC: Is that a harmonium?
AG: Yes, it makes sounds. We’ll begin with a little mantra
DC: Of course,
AG: Does that make sense?
DC: Sure. Is that an antique?
AG: No, 1961. A little kid’s harmonium. Eighteen dollars! – or Sixteen dollars in Benares!
DC: Wow!
AG (begins playing) – To Shiva, God of Change, Change in America, Revolution say, Evolution, whatever way you want it (for Mr. Isherwood, Hindu) – “To the Name of Shiva” – OM – to the name of Shiva – NAMAH – SHIVAYA (Om Namah Shivaya)
DC: I was going to ask you what the words meant
AG’ Yeah – or “Amen to Christ’s Name” – take it as you wish – “to Shiva’s Name”, “to Change’s Name” –
DC: What does it do to you when you’re doing that? How do you feel?
AG: Well, it’s very similar to the sigh that one gives after orgasm
DC: Ah
AG: AH! – a familiar, a familiar breath to most of the world’s population – even America, I’m sure! – so, AHH! that relaxation and..
DC That answers my question
AG: Bliss, bliss
DC: Yeah
AG Opening, Fearlessness…
DC: What was in your head when you calmed the convention that time. I remember, it was what, I was watching on television when you rose up in Chicago and did… do you call it a.. that wasn’t a mantra was it?
AG: Well, no that was a small exorcism mantra…
DC: Was it?
AG: …because there was a Christian police. police (sic), a Christian police, a Christian priest blessing the Democratic Convention which I, having been inside, saw was a fake and a rig in 1968. So when the priest did his blessing I did an exorcism ceremony which was a short gesture averting demons (including myself) and a short Sanskrit mantra – OM-RAKSHA-RAKSHA-OM-OM-OM-OM..SVHA. – and also a little Hare-Krishna just to make it a little more cheerful.
DC: Did it work? I’ve forgotten?
AG: Um…did it work, audience? Is America saved or isn’t it?
Paddy Chayefsky : Not (at) that Convention!
DC: Say, I must ask you something because you move in so many circles that it’s amazing. Someone should follow you around and do a documentary on you, if they haven’t, but I read that you’d been talking with Richard Helms, who, as we all know, is head of the C.I.A. Now that seems like… first of all, he’s supposed to be completely inaccessible and not subject to interviews (for probably the obvious reasons, as head of the C.I.A). How did you manage this?
AG: Last Spring I had a poetry reading which I gave with my father in Washington at the Corcoran Gallery, which is a social occasion, high society sort of people.
DC: I can’t help noticing that you’ve lit something, I’m not that…
AG: (It’s) the incense for this conversation which will reveal to America a bet on the source of opium supply in America which I made with Richard Helms the head of the Central Intelligence Agency..
DC: Hey, hey, wait a minute, say that again.
AG: I made a bet with Richard Helms, who’s head of the American Central Intelligence Agency as to the source of opium that is circulated out of Indochina and about the C.I.A. role in subsidizing the main traffickers of opium in Indochina and what I pointed out to him was that the U.S. base at Long Cheng (it’s spelt L-O-N-G C-H-E-N-G, or now spelt L-O-N-G T-I-E-N-G in the New York Times as of the late weeks of this month, January 1972), where there’s a large battle between the Pathet Lao and our side for control of this large air base in..near the Plain of Jars in Laos.. You know Long Cheng? – the audience may have read about it in the paper). Long Cheng is also a major opium collecting point for Xiangkhoang province in Central Laos, and our chief military General, Vang Pao, is one of the main opium dealers in the area, And he is a man who is subsidized by the C.I.A. The C.I.A has maintained an armée clandestine, a secret army, supposedly, so-called secret, since1962 or (196)3. General Vang Pao is the head of that army, subsidized by us, to fight the so-called Communists, to fight the Pathet Lao and much of the military activity during the late 60’s around Long Cheng, which was the Air-Base secret, high-secret base, even Congressman (Pete) McClusky couldn’t get in to observe it, only recently, after it was attacked and is falling, have American newsmen gotten in to Long Cheng. Well, the bet with Helms was that Long Cheng was a major opium market for Xiangkhoang province in central Laos. that opium was taken from there to Vientiane and flown in Air America planes or Royal Laotian Airforce planes, formerly under the command of General Bouathong, who we’re also subsidizing (him being the head of the Laotian armed forces under our aegis with American aid. His planes carried (Because he also had opium cookers or refineries too, by the way). In any case, we’re getting back to Long Cheng, the bet was this vajra, or scepter of authority, the diamond vajra, used in Tibetan Buddhism and Japanese Buddhism, that if I were wrong, that Long Cheng was not for real an opium collection center, that Mr Helms of the C.I.A. could have my vajra. And in return…
DC: What was his response to this?
AG: Well he felt that ..”You’ll never..” – “You couldn’t win, it’s not true!” And I said, “Well. then bet”. And so he said, “Well, ok”. Now my side of the bet was that I asked first for all C.I.A. records for opium traffic in Indochina (because as you nay or may not know most of the world’s illegal opium does not come from Turkey but 83 percent of the world’s illegal opium supply comes from Indochina (that’s accord to World Health Organization statistics from the years 1960 on, and also according to Dr. Joel Fort who did a special sixteen-nation study in 1963 on world opium traffic) so bear in mind that most of the world’s opium actually comes from Indochina and that most of the major traffickers are the people who we have relied on to fight the Communists who we have subsidized and I have narrowed this down to one single person in one single place – General Vang Pao, the head of our subsidized armee clandestine in the C.I.A.-subsidized air-base at Long Cheng, which is now being fought over. Now I asked Helms in return if I was wrong he gets my Buddhist wisdom scepter, if I’m wrong, if I’m right, I wanted all the C.I.A. records on opium traffic in Indochina. (This was all being at a party before a poetry reading in Washington at the Corcoran Gallery, a cocktail party). He said, “No, that’s impossible. You can’t get all those records, that’s ridiculous!” So. “Alright then, if I am right and you are wrong, you have to meditate one hour a day for the rest of your life!”. And he said,. “You can’t win” (well, no, he probably said it more politely – “You can’t win”). And I said, “Well, I bet”. So the bet is made.
DC: Well we have a message. We’ll be right back.