I knew of John Sinclair from John Lennon’s song about him on Some Time in New York City and had a vague idea that he was known for being busted for pot. In fact, I still associate my earliest awareness of the term political prisoner with John Sinclair. I didn’t really know what it meant back then, but I knew it wasn’t supposed to happen here.
Then I saw this book at a local head shop. It was the 70s in a college town, teenagers hanging out in head shops was normal. The book was revelatory for me. It not only contained Sinclair’s writings, which I admit I didn’t read thoroughly at first, but it is also full of radical illustrations, pictures of MC5 concerts and posters, protests, etc.
I pulled it off the shelf today and leafed through it for the first time in decades. The first page (text pictured) pretty much encapsulates perfectly the scene that I would aspire to, for better or worse, for much of my young life, propelling me across thousands of miles to hundreds of concerts and protests and smoke-ins and gatherings and friendships. Definitely for the better.
If you were a Left-leaning college student in the 1960s there is a good chance that you had a copy of Ramparts magazine on the coffee table. From 1964-1969, under the leadership of executive editor Warren Hinckle, Ramparts was arguably the most important anti-war, counter-culture, general circulation magazine in the United States. Closely associated with the New Left political movement the magazine reached an ultimate circulation of 250,000 in 1968. That was a large number in those days, especially for an ostensibly underground publication frequently denigrated by its competitors in the mainstream media. Ramparts was so good at its craft that it became the ire of the CIA, which tried to censor the magazine and then shut it down, failing on both counts, not to mention breaking the law and its own charter prohibiting it from domestic spying.
Why was the CIA so rattled?
In the April 1966 edition Ramparts exposed a program the CIA was running clandestinely out of Michigan State University as part of the Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group (MSUG). Though there were some positive outcomes from MSUG the article revealed that the Agency had infiltrated it early on and was using it as a front for covert operations, including training and arming police interrogators in South Vietnam to spy on and harass dissidents in Saigon. Though not explicit in the record there were almost certainly some classes on torture methods in the curriculum. What we do know is that Diem’s forces had gained considerable expertise in using such brutal practices during the time period in question. Ramparts asked: “what the hell is a university doing buying guns, anyway?” It was one of the early sparks in what would erupt into open confrontations between students and their universities over support for the Vietnam War, most famously at Berkeley, Michigan, Columbia, Wisconsin, Ohio State and Kent State, among many others. Ramparts won the 1966 George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting for the article. The cover is a 60s classic (see below).
Then in March 1967 Ramparts created a national sensation by publishing an embarrassing expose of CIA secret funding of the National Student Association (NSA) which was the largest college student organization in America. A year earlier the New York Times ran a series of articles which began to uncover secret CIA funding of various fronts going back to the late 1940s, including arts organizations, political and cultural journals, radio stations, cultural foundations etc. That operation, known as the Congress For Cultural Freedom, aka the Mighty Wurlitzer within the CIA, was a primary weapon against Soviet influence in what is today known as the Cultural Cold War. But the Ramparts story went one step further by including the first acknowledgement of the program’s existence by a former CIA officer involved in the covert operations, Michael Wood, who had records, not just about the NSA, but other related fronts that the CIA had established. The upstart magazine had once again scooped the big players in the main stream media on one of the biggest stories of the time, pouring more gasoline on the fire on campuses nationwide.
A side note about the March 1967 issue: Hinckle wrote the cover story, “A Social History of the Hippies.” Editorial differences over that story led contributing editor Ralph J. Gleason to resign in protest. Gleason and former Ramparts staffer Jann Wenner, then founded a new magazine, Rolling Stone, later that year.
Below are photos of these two landmark issues of Ramparts, they are two of the more influential magazine editions of any kind from the time period, helping to lay the foundation for the student radicalism that was to follow.
This issue is notable for several reasons. First, there is an article covering the ceasefire agreement ending formal fighting in the Korean War. Entitled “No Whistles, No Cheers, No Dancing” it is less than enthusiastic, not surprising considering Henry Luce’s antipathy toward the Chinese Communists. The French were also less than enthusiastic about the agreement, since it freed up the Chinese to focus on supporting Ho Chi Minh’s forces in the ongoing Indochina War.
Second, we are introduced for the first time in the Vietnam context to the great combat photographer David Douglas Duncan, from whom we will see more during the American phase of the war. The photos captioned “Corruption and Vice Sap Nation’s Energy” convey the effects of the opium trade in Saigon. We get a rare glimpse of the Grand Monde Casino and the French underworld boss Mathieu Franchini, the Corsican, who controlled most of Saigon’s opium exports to Marseille. (see Bodard, Lucien, The Quicksand War: Prelude to Vietnam. Faber and Faber Limited, London, 1967. And, McCoy, Alfred. The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. Harper and Row, New York, 1972.)
Last, with the title “Indochina All But Lost” featured on the cover, the first time that the war is mentioned on a cover, a turn toward pessimism about the ultimate outcome is apparent. The editorial on page 28 titled Indochina, France and the U.S. (shown below) posits that “Americans who know Indochina” are disheartened with France’s conduct of the war, calling Paris “the world headquarters of sophisticated defeatism,” and that it is time for new decisions on Indochina.*
This was an abrupt departure from the hopeful tone of previous Life reporting on the Indochina War. Just two years earlier the novelist Graham Greene had visited Vietnam, sent by Luce as a correspondent for Life. In the July 30, 1951 issue Greene reported on the war in Malaya, known as the Malayan Emergency. He crossed into the Tonkin region of Indochina on that trip. He ends his article with a comparison between the two insurgencies, both featuring colonial armies fighting local Communists. Greene applauds the performance of the Vietnamese Catholic infused forces that were helping the French while he denigrates the Malayan armed police fighting alongside the British, a hasty judgement that may have been clouded by his overt Catholicism. Yet, with more time spent in Vietnam, after gaining a better understanding of the situation, history and players, his confidence appears to have waned. A subsequent report, while not overly critical of the French forces, was not enthusiastic about their chances of prevailing either. Luce censored the article, and no other American publishers would run it. The piece ended up in the French magazine, Paris Match, for which Greene had become a correspondent. What he saw on that assignment, and future trips for Paris Match, provided the foundation for his masterpiece “The Quiet American,” considered to be one the greatest novels of the Cold War period. (see Greene, Graham, Indochina: France’s Crown of Thorns, Paris Match, July 12, 1952. And, Greene, Graham, Reflections, ed. Adamson, Judith, Reinhardt, New York, 1990.)
* The editors mention the arrival of General Henri Navarre and his proposed plan for a victorious offensive as a hopeful development. They urge Paris to accept the plan, stating that with “Vietnamese and American assistance victory is entirely feasible.” This so-called victorious offensive turned out to be Operation Castor, which ended with the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
When I’m in the Journalism Building at Ohio State University I am often reminded that I am roaming the same hallways that Phil Ochs did back in the year that I was born (although the building was renovated in 1973, so they aren’t exactly the same hallways). Phil Ochs will always be my Ohio State hero.
Ochs studied journalism in college and formed a keen interest in politics, signing on with the student newspaper, the Lantern, as a student reporter (1959-1962). While there he contributed some interesting editorials on the Cold War events of the day. But when the student paper refused to publish some of his more radical articles, and then passed him over for the editor-in-chief job, he dropped out in his last quarter and moved to New York City in 1962.
While at OSU he developed a liking for the folk music of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, the Weavers and the mythical IWW union leader Joe Hill, among others. Inspired by this music, he learned the guitar and formed a duo called the Sundowners. His first gig was at the legendary campus bar named Larry’s, right next door to where I tended bar for a few years in my college days. I spent many nights that I don’t remember at Larry’s, as I am sure Phil probably did too.
In Greenwich Village he emerged as one of the most influential folk singers of the sixties. He had a good friendship, and also an artistic rivalry, with Bob Dylan. Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s girlfriend at the time (seen on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan), attended his wedding. He performed at the 1963 and 1964 Newport Folk Festivals to thunderous applause and great reviews. He appeared at Carnegie Hall and became a mainstay at many of the most famous civil rights rallies and anti-war demonstrations of the time. He was involved in the creation of the Youth International Party, known as the Yippies, along with Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman.
But, like many of his contemporaries, the moment of change came with Dylan’s famous electric performance at Newport in 1965, one of the most important dates in 20th century American music. Ochs was unable, or unwilling, to make the leap to the new sound and his star began to slowly fade. These days he is hardly remembered. Sadly, even OSU remains ambivalent/silent about his legacy.
Here he is in 1965, young, vibrant and rebellious, on Let’s Sing Out, just a few months after the first ground troops landed in Vietnam. Note: if you watch to the end you’ll see a filler clip of him playing on the Oval at OSU in front of Orton Hall, the oldest building on campus and one that I help manage.
Michael Ochs, Phil’s younger brother, is an American photographic archivist best known for his extensive collection of pictures related to rock music dating back to the 1950s and 1960s. The Michael Ochs Archives contained 3 million vintage prints, proof sheets and negatives. The Los Angeles Times called Ochs “America’s preeminent rock ‘n’ roll photo archivist” and described his archive as “the dominant force in the rock image marketplace”; The New York Timescalled it “the premier source of musician photography in the world”. (Wikipedia)
Michael Ochs earned a B.A. in radio and television writing from Ohio State University in 1966. He then managed for his folk singer brother, worked as a photographer for Columbia Records, and later headed the public relations departments at Columbia Records, Shelter Records and ABC Records. He began collecting photographs as a hobby and spent years building the collection, ultimately establishing The Michael Ochs Archives in 1977. In the eighties he hosted his Archives Alive radio show on KCRW.
From his collection, he has produced six books: Rock Archives; Elvis In Hollywood; Marilyn: March, 1955; Shock, Rattle & Roll; Marilyn Monroe: From Beginning To End; and 1,000 Record Covers. He was one of three producers of the 2010 documentary film Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune.
Parallel Narratives 