Review

Reviewed Work(s): Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion by Martin A. Lee
and Bruce Shlain
Review by: Richard H. Immerman
Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Mar., 1987), pp. 1078-1079
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1904153
Accessed: 21-11-2017 14:34 UTC

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 1078 The Journal of American History

dler or images of John Wayne, for his book combat. I longed for more S. L. A. Marshall
often sounds like the after-action reports that and less Joe Friday. The other shortcoming is
furnish its documentary basis. Green Berets, more serious: Stanton does little with the 5th
in fact, often reads like a unit command chro- SF Group's stormy relations with MACV, the
nology, supplemented by all the obligatory Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the
maps, charts, and lists of significant events. AsCivil Operations and Rural Development Sup-
a unit lineage book and "order of battle" refer- port (CORDS) office. Although Stanton sug-
ence work, Green Berets is a distinct success. gests that Special Forces drew more support
As an analysis of the Special Forces' roles from CORDS than from the CIA, he does not
and missions in Southeast Asia, Green Berets investigate the question of interagency cooper-
is also useful, although Stanton is more in- ation, an area in which he could have made a
terested in operations than in intra-army and major contribution to our knowledge of the
interagency conflict over the role of the Fifth American war effort.
Special Forces Group and its associated units The author of the competent, highly
like the Military Assistance Command Vietnam praised Rise and Fall of an American Army:
(MACV). Stanton, however, does several US. Ground Forces, Vietnam, 1965-1973
things very well. He covers Special Forces ac- (1985), Stanton has added Green Berets at War
tivities all over Southeast Asia, and he to the growing number of excellent books
describes all the types of missions in which about Vietnam war operations. It does not en-
Special Forces soldiers participated. His focus, tirely supplant Col. FrancisJ. Kelly's Vietnam
however, is on the 5th SF Group's principal Studies: US. Army Special Forces, 1961-1971
task: the establishment of the Civilian Ir- (1973), but Stanton is more candid than Kelly
regular Defense Group (CIDG) program and about Special Forces' failures. Where the
the use of the CIDG to block and harass North "Green Berets" failed, however, as Stanton
Vietnam Army/Viet Cong infiltration routes repeatedly notes, the fault was not in the
and base camp areas along South Vietnam's quality of the men, but in the intractable
borders with Cambodia and Laos. From 1963 problems they faced in Vietnam.
until 1971 the 5th SF Group struggled to train Allan R. Millett
the montagnards, the ethnic Malay mountain Ohio State University
people, into skilled and dependable light in-
fantry. Stanton is especially good at describing
the program's problems and the full scope of Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties
the NVA's campaign to eliminate the CIDG Rebellion. By Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain.
camps. The program worked only as long as (New York: Grove, 1985. xxiii + 343 pp.
the Special Forces equipped, paid, led, and Cloth, $27.50; paper, $12.95.)
protected the "yards" from the rest of the
United States Army and the South Viet- Wrapped in a jacket of vivid purples, yellows,
namese armed forces. The venal and cowardly and blues, a book with this title is seductive.
South Vietnamese Special Forces could not The cast of characters is exhaustive, ranging
and did not fill the gap created by "Vietnami-from Timothy Leary, the Diggers, and the
zation." On the other hand, Special Forces Beatles to Richard Helms, Henry Luce, and
showed distinct skill, courage, and success out-Bebe Rebozo. The saga travels from Millbrook
side the CIDG program, particularly as long- estate on the East Coast to Haight-Ashbury on
range reconnaissance forces and raiders, wherethe West, from the Sandoz Laboratories in
their success was directly proportional to theirSwitzerland, to Kabul, Afghanistan. Ac-
distance from MACV control and their partici-cording to the authors' view, LSD pervaded
pation with the South Vietnamese. the politics of the 1960s, and its popularity ex-
Green Berets at War, however, does have plains the rise and fall of the New Left.
some gaps in its wire. For a writer inclined to Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, both
praise the Special Forces, Stanton is remark- prize-winning journalists, inject an additional
ably restrained in writing about actual dimension into their rather conventional nar-

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 Book Reviews 1079

rative; namely, the

America's intelligence community may have
played more than a peripheral role in
spawning the drug culture. Drawing on a
treasure of declassified documents, they
chronicle the Central Intelligence Agency's
(CIA) obsession with unlocking the secrets of
LSD. Officials hoped the drug could be used
as a mind-controlling agent, a truth serum, or
even a weapon of war. Their investigations con-
tinued even after such hopes had faded, for
there was always the chance the Soviets might
discover a benefit. The resultant tragicomedy
of experimentation is familiar, but what is not
is the authors' argument that the CIA's convic-
tion that LSD potentially endangered national
security led to Washington's decision to
outlaw it. Paradoxically, Lee and Shlain also
suggest that both the CIA and the Federal Bu-
reau of Investigation may have encouraged the
spread of psychedelics in order to tranquilize
radicals while making them more vulnerable
to arrest.
Had the authors probed deeper into this
connection, they might have contributed sub-
stantially to the history of a troublesome
period. They did not. Instead, as if unable to
decide what book to write, Lee and Shlain
present the material on the CIA as almost a
sidebar to their account of America's drug
scene. In doing so, they fall victim to the very enjoyed tremendous growth and considerable
media hype that they criticize. Acid Dreams
degenerates into a tale of happenings,
swindles, and swindlers. By overplaying the
influence of LSD on the political culture of the oped to a point where they would soon blunt
sixties, the book trivializes the substantive
issues and exaggerates the importance of the
"druggies." Such reductionism sheds little
light on the Movement's demise and obscures
the elusive involvement of the CIA.
Acid Dreams does, nevertheless, raise se-
rious questions. At issue is the fundamental
relationship between consciousness and
strategy. The Yippies, to cite the most conspic- Price-Anderson Act.
uous example, believed that by the 1960s the
contradictions in American society had pro-
duced a revolutionary consciousness that
could be unleashed through drugs, the media, power plant on the shores of nearby Lake
and participation. Other activists held that
the evolution of this consciousness required
education, organization, and confrontation.
Thesetantalizing possibil
diametrically opposed hypotheses
created much of the tension that afflicted the
New Left. Lee and Shlain acknowledge this
tension but fail to analyze or evaluate it. Per-
haps, however, they have provided grist for
some else's mill.
Richard H. Immerman
University of Hawaii
Insuring against Disaster: The Nuclear In-
dustry on Trial. ByJohn W. Johnson. (Macon:
Mercer University Press, 1986. xii + 284 pp.
$28.95.)
In 1954 Congress opened the field of nuclear
power generation to private enterprise. Even
so, utilities proved very reluctant to move for-
ward with nuclear power development without
adequate liability coverage for potential acci-
dents. Congress responded to this concern in
1957 by approving the Price-Anderson Act,
which placed a $560 million liability cap on
damages that might result from a nuclear ac-
cident.
Encouraged and reassured by Price-
Anderson, the nuclear industry in the United
States experienced its golden age between
1966 and 1974. During that period, American
utilities ordered 223 reactors, and the industry
prestige. Yet, even in the midst of this boom,
a range of technical, financial, political, en-
vironmental, and legal problems had devel-
the industry's expansion and tarnish its image.
It is against this backdrop that John W.
Johnson chronicles the history of Duke Power
Company and the Nuclear Regulatory Com-
mission v. Carolina Environmental Study
Group etal., a landmark case in which the Su-
preme Court upheld the constitutionality of
the limitation-of-liability provision of the
In the late 1960s, Duke Power Company,
headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina,
announced its intention to construct a nuclear
Norman. Duke's decision stimulated the for-
mation in 1970 of the Carolina Environmental
Study Group (CESG), an antinuclear citizens'

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