þ7/Õ6í.Õ666666)6)6)6)6)69 6C6C6Ux6Í6Í 6í6í6í6íwhile he was being held in Don Bosco prison in Pisa. Stark behiendeTwo decades have passed since tb grear summer dropout of 1967 when legiens of stoned youd flocked to San F¥ancisco for ; chance to tread barefoot through the citl streets, grow their hair long and ¥Bltake o a lifestyld revolution that baffled much o the American public. They came in dmves a ragtag army of tattered pilg¥ms who'( gone AWOL from suburbia. Ropelled b) a messianic faith in the saving grace a LSD. they rode the ct¥st of Kerouac's bun¥ romance. hoping to recapture the reso nance oflife that society had mnspired tc deny. Pemaps it was inevitable that those whc ¥ipped out during the heady days of fown¥ power would often wonhip acid and reif¥ its catalytic properties. ¥he most arden( enthusiasts looked to LSD as somethin¥ that could move mountains and melt me icecaps - as if it constituted nothing less than the pharmacological key to world peace. If only President Johnson tumed on to the right stufl. many an acidhead effused. surely the war in Viehlam would be over in a matter of days! Of course, the rme believers had no idea the CIA had used LSD as a surreptitiou¥ mind-bending agent in cold war cloak-and-dagger operations. Nor could they have I¥nown that the ]argest single source of black marketacid during me late 1960s and early 1970s was linked to the CIA. ¥s name was Ronald Stark. and his story is as mind-boggling as the chemical he peddled. From drug labs in Europe, Stark chumed out tens of millions of acid trips. An Italian magistrate who investigated his role as an intemational tenwist and drug hafficker concludwl that St;uk was "an agent of me American secret senices." Stark first got his hooks into the acid underground in August 1969. when he vis ited a three hundred ac¥ h;ppie commune near Idyllwild. Califomia. which served as headquaners of a group of LSD-enthralled motorcycle toughs who called themselves the Brotherhood of Etemal Love. The Brothers and their wives occupied a Nn-down farmhouse encircled by seven tepees at the arid base of the San lafinto moun-tains. From this secluded enclave. they di-rected a global d¥ug smuggling network that diseibuted bricks of hashish hom Aghanistan. bales of Mexican marijuana, and a brand ofall-American acid known as "orange sunshine" that was especially pop ular among counterculture youth. But the Brothers hit a snag when law enforcement ran an underground chemist out of business, puning their entire LSD operation - at that time, the world's ]ar¥ est - in jeopardy. With the stash of sun shine quickly dwindling. they were despel ate for a new source of acid. It was at thi point that Ronald Stark showed up at th ranch inIdyllwild with an offer th Brothers could not refuse. At first impression. Stark did not inspm much confidence. Five foot eight inche tall. with a bulging waistline. high fore head. and a thick brooding moustache, hl could easily come off as a schlepp. But hi motley demeanor belied a luthless and cun ning intelligence. Althwgh only in his ear ly thirties. Stark spoke ten languagel fluently. including French. German. Ita lian, Arabic and Chinese. He was. in shoIt a genius con artist who could talk cimle! amund just about anybody. After some verbal sparring. Star¥ poved his sincerity by producing a kilo o: pure LSD. ¥his was more acid than any ol the Brothers had ever seen in one place Stark informed them that he had discovere( a quick and easy method of making high quality acid. He played their psyches lik( piano keys. rapping big raps about Nminl on the world - not just the West. but th¥ Soviet Union and the Communist counhie¥ as well. Stark claimed he had busines( contacts with the Japanese Mafia wh could smuggle dlugs into mainland China He also saidhe knew a high-placed Tibetar close tothe Dalai Lama. Why notoffer hirr enough ISD to dose all the Chinese troop! occupying Tibet? "We were defnitely ver) gullible in believing the stuff he told us.' one of the Brothers later acknowledged. For a group of stanyeyed acid evangel-ist¥. Stark's appearance in Idyllwild musl have seemed like a godsend. He had already manufactured large quantities ol LSD at his laboratryy in FTance. and plenty more would follow. The Brotherhood agreed to distribute the drug, which was dyed orange so as to cobinue the sunshine legacy. Had the Brothers come down from their LSD reve¥ies long enough to ponder this mysterious newcomer. they might have suspected something was up. Stark's offi-cial record leaves ample room for specula-tion. Bom in New York in September 1938 as Ronald Shitsky. at age 24 he was con-victed of filing a fa]se application for gov-emment service. The FBI tagged him Number 812020E. After violating proba-biw, he landed in federal prison in Lewis-burg. Pennsylvania. There Shitsky started calling himself Ronald Hadley Clark. By the time he got a job as a researcher at Bellevue mental hospital. Clark had be-come Stark. His net recorded wolrh was ¥XXK) in 1967. but a year later he was a millionaire. Stark claimed a relationship to tt¥e Whimeys, one of America's richest clans. and amibuted his sudden wealth to the deft handling of a family rmst Fund. t various times Stark passe himself off as a medical doctol cook. a ri¥conteur was enbanced by a insatiabl¥ appetite for inbigue and deception. He wa( adept at dropping names. dates and placer that changed depending upon the si¥uat¥on Eve¥y story Stark told was slightly differenl as he dashed to and fro. anending to var ious business scams in at ]east a dozer counhies. He maneuvered on four con-tinents. leaving a bail of ambi¥uities al every bun. A master of innuendo and dir-information, Stark preferred to keep his range of contacts ignorant of ¥ach other's activities. Oftentimes he concealed the fac( that he was an American. His European associates were not pnvy to his affa¥rs in Africa. and those in Asia knew little about his work in the States. The Brothers. for example. had no idea that Stark was nm-ning a cocaine ring in the Bay Area. Sta¥ campartmentalized the different spheres of¥s life. managing eve¥hing on a "need to know" basis. In this respect his modus operandi was not unlike that of an intelligence operative. He often claimed he knew lots of spies. and to some of his friends he even boasted of working for the CIA. It was a tip from ¥he Agency. Stark explained. that prompted him to shut down his lab in Paris in 1971 A few months later Stark opened uF another sophisticated produchon center in Brussels. which masqueraded for a ye;ir and a half as a reputable biomedical re-search firm. During this period he com-municated on a regular basis with Amer-ican embassy officials in London. He even elicited their assistance while senin¥ up his Belgian d¥ug lab. When ir was all over. Srark had made twenry kilos of LSD -enough for 50 million doses! It was by far the larEest amount of acid to emanate from a single underground source, and most ofit was sold in the United States. In November 1972 a team of ag¥nts from the IRS and the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Dnrgs visited his drug lab in Belgium. but Stark was nowhere to be found. Within a year a Senate Sub-committee on Intemal Security would hold public hearings on the Brolhemood of Eter-nal Love, charging that the coterie of hip-pie bandits was behind a great LSD con-spiracy. By this dme federal agents had broken up the Brothert¥ood ring. arresting over a hundred peop]e. The kingpins of th¥ acid trade. including Stark. were indicted on d¥ug charges. Ihe fact that Stark was wanted in the U.S. hardly put a damper on his inter-national escapades. He spent much of his fime in Italy during the mid-1970s. cavort mg with Sicilian Mafiosi, secret servia 'fficials. and political extremists of the fi right and far leR. Occasionally he travelec h the Baalbek region of Lebanon. where he negotiated with a Shiite Muslim sect for ship]oads of hashish. Stark professed to be a business representative ofImam Moussa Sadr, a powerful Shiite warlord who con-'Iled vast hashish plantations and a pri-vate army of a thousand men. The area under his dominion was said to include training camps used by extremist factions of the PU). Back in Italy. Stark renred a small apart-ment in Florence. But he rarely stayed mere. preferring Ule posh hotels of Rome. Milan. Bologna and othercides. By day he carried on as a smooth and successful busi-nessman. dining at the best restauranrs in expensive Uuee-piece suits. At night he donned a ¥au of faded blue jeansand a 'ork shin and mingled with snu¥ent rad-icals. Moving in ]eftwing circles was nothing 'for Stark. He had a knack forpoppil up wherever trouble was brewing. P American expaoiate remembers bumpir into him on the sh.eets of Paris dming t¥ peak of the Sorbonne uprising in 1961 when students and workers nearly topple the Gaullist govemment. In London Star frequented the clubs and bars that wa¥ hangouts for dissident elementr. and h fust tumed up in Milan during the "hc "tumn" of 1969. when massive snulen demons¥ations and labor shikes paralyze( Italy. Stark was also supplying LSD to th( Brotherhood when its ]eaders gavt $25.000 to the Weather Underground t( spring acid guru Timothy Leary from pris-" in September 1970.' Whatever game Stark was playing took 'ab¥upt tum in February 1975 when Ita-lian police received an aonymous phone call about a man selling dlugs in a hotel in Bologna. A few days later at the Grand Hotel Baglioni they anested a suspect in possession of 4,600 kilos of marijuana. molphine and cocaine. The suspect canied 'British passpon bearing the name Ter-'nceW. Abhn. Italian investigators xwm diacovered that Abbott was actually Ronald Stark. Among his belongings was 'he key to a safe deposit box in Rome that 'tained documents on the manufac¥ure 'f LSD and a synthetic version of cocaine. ¥here was also a vial of a liquid halluci-nogen that scientists could not pretisely identify. Other items seized by Italian police in-'luded leaers fmm a certain Ch¥ules C. Adams wrinen on rhe lette¥head of the AmeriMn embassy in London. The mes-'ages from Adams, U.S. foreign service 'fficer. began with "Dear Ron" and were addressed to Stark's drug labonuolyy in Brussels. which ceased operating shottly after a team of American agen$ paid a "unesy call in the fall of 1972. If Stark's contacts with the U.S. embassy were difficult to fathom, then his association with some of Ita- Iy's most notorious terrorists was 'qually curious. In the spring of 1976. while he was being held in Don Bosco prison in Pisa. Stark behiended Renato Curcio, a top ]eader of the Red Brigades that had stallted Italy since the early 1970s. Curcio and his coholts apparently had no idea Stark was an American when they took him into their confidence. Asswn¥ he succeeded in penetrating the Red Bri-gades- the only American who can claim ¥h a feat - Srark asked prison officials ''ITange a meeting with the chief pros-ecutorof Pisa. He said that Curcio had told him of a p]ot to assassinate Judge Frances-" Coco of Genoa. who was scheduled to plirside over a nial of fifty Red Brigades membns. ?here was also talk of aMucting a prominent Italian politician in Rome. st;uk informed the;nagistrare. InJune 1976Iudge Coco was murdered. Just as Stark predicted. Aldo Moro. five times Ita]y's premier. may have been the other victim. Stark's name would later sur-face in connection with the Moro kidnap-ping and execution. Tmnsfened to a jail in Bologna. Sta¥ continued to expand his terrorist contats. During this period he ¥feived a steady flow of visitors fmm the British and Amer-ican consulates. (Curiously. the U.S. gov-emment never pressed for his exhadition. even though he was wanted on drug charges related to the Brotherhood of Eter-nal Love conspiracy.) 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