7!!))))) 3 ==Ox ies to the Agency? The long history of CIA involvement in nffickiwho served as head of Italian military in relligence during the early 1970s and wa later implicated in a series of coup attempt in Italy. According to the Pike Committee U.S. ambassador Graham Maatin gav $800.000 to Miceli for a propaganda cam paign during the 1972 election. despit protests from the CIA station chief that thi pameular recipient was too closely allie with'anti-demonatic righoving elements. Itwas quite ajuggling act. tobe sure. br a judge in Bologna eventually sentence Stark to 14 years in prison and fined hin %60.000 fo( dug trafficking. At his ap peals trial in 1978 Stark dhanged identitie once again. this time passing himself off a "Khouri Ali." a radical Palestinian. II nuent Arabic he spelled out the details a his autobiogaphy, explaining that he be longed to an intemational terrorist organ ization headquanered in Lebanon calla 'Yjroup 14." Stak's appeal failed. and h was sentback tojail. But Italianpolice tool a renewed interest in his case after the: captured Enrique Paghera, another terroris leader who knew Stark. At the time of hi arrest Paghera was holding a hand-drawl map of a PU) camp in Lebanon. Ihe map Pagheraconfessed, had come from Ronal St, who also provided a coded letter o inoduaion. The objective. according o Paghera, was to forge a link with a terrori organization that was planning to attac foreign embassies. In June 1978 Graziano Gori, a magis trate in Bologna. was assigned to in vestiffdte Sta's peculiar ties to the U.S. the Arabs. Italian terists, and other mys teries. A few weeks laterGori was killed il a car accident. The Italian govemment sub sequently charged Stark with "armed ban ditry" for his role in aiding and abettin; terrorist activities. But he never stood ia on these charges. TNe to form, Stark drop ped out of sight shortly after he was re leased from prison in April 1979 on order from ludge Giorgio Floridia in Bologna The judge's decision was remarkable: h released Stark because of "an impressivl series of sctupulously enumerated proofs' that Sti was actually aCIA agent. "Manl circumstances suggest that from 1960 on wards Stark belonged to the American sec ret senices," Floridia concluded. The fact about Ronald Stark raise moI questions than they answer. Was he a CV operative throughout his drug dealinl days? Or was the espionage link merely thl work of a brilliant confidence hickster whl played both ends off the middle to his ow advantage? In November 1984 an Raliiil pldiamentary commission issued a length: repon on domestic terrorism that includw a section on 'The Case of Ronald Stark. The commission asseted that Stark was ru adventurer who was used by the CIA. but proof of when his espionage exploits began is hard to pin down. If Stark was connected to the CIA during the 1960s. as ludge noridia suggests. then the entire Brother-hood smuggling operation must be reinter-preted. "It could have been mat he was employed by an American intelligence agency that wanted to see more psychede-lic drugs on the saeet," a former Brother-hood member stated.'Then again, he might have hicked me CIA. just like he fooled everyone else." The use of LSD among young people in the U.S. reached a peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s. not long afterthe CIA and other intelligence services initiated a series of coven operations designed to disrupt. discredit and neuhlize the New Left, which overlapped in significant ways with the countercultu. Was this merely a his-torical coincidence or did the CIA actually take steps to promote the illicit acid trade through Ronald Stark, he world's biggest supplier? When did the CIA leam of Stark's role as a drug dealer, and was his aaivity tolerated while he passed informa-tion on the youth culnue and the radical left in various counies to the Agency? The long history of CIA involvement in nfficking heroin from Southeast Asia lends credence to the possibility that U.S. intelligence operatives may have dabbled in black market LSD as well. he CIA had been experimenting with acid as a mind control weapon since the early 1950s. But LSD is not habit-forming like hemin, and ih efficacy as an instnrent of social con-ol seems lather tenuous inlight of the wide range of reactions induced by the hallucinogen. Although there is no proof that the CIA got involved in promoting saeet acid as a maaer of policy, it's not at all cetain that stopping rhe flow of illicit LSD was a par-ticular priority either. Pertaps the best ex-planation is that CIA officials were willing to wfidone Stark's exploits in the dlug bade as long as he functioned as an in-formant. Stark's name slufaced once again in 1982 when he was arrested in Holland for hafficking hashish. cocaine and heroin. ?he following year he was deported with-outfanfaretotheU.S., wherecharges were still pending for his role in the Brothemood of Etemal Love conspiracy. e entire matter was handled so discreetly that me U.S. press never leamed of his retum. Stark spent a few months preparing his own legal defense in a San Francisco jail until charges were dropped by the lustice Department. which claimed too many years had passed u,prosecute the case. In December 1984 Stark died of a heart attack, leaving others to ponder the ambiguous legacy of the man who pumped millions of hit of acid into the willing arteries of the counterculhue. Ronald Stark thrived in a clandestine nethenvorld where'*facts are wiped out by amfaas," as Norman Mailer wrote of the espionage metaphysic. and "evely buth is obliged to live in its denial." Above all. he remains an extraordinary intemational enigma. "A genius, but a toItured soul" is how one Italian magisate described him. Even if Stark was never more than a bril-liant private operator. his remarkable career illustrates the tangled web of es-pionage, nime. and extremist politics that are so much a put of the secret hisory of LSD. o no=G0RGHp0+JnJDmxnnrp0+JSn=@BG`:0.HRHЇHH"҇AC HH Ї逝t0RGnmp0+J2.HHĒR7@`^Jnm.no(0+D=@BG`HH Ї逝t0RGnm`*Jnl"BG`H 逝t0RGHp0+Jn`JDLN^NuaF0NVHBG<-FJFnp`AC(p Q0`$A\p0pJc0.RnA\pp0RG GmJnfp`HnH S"&HA&HABAЁANHpN% @POf;|:B-\p`zpmHf4JmJg.p-\J @ag p-\J @egp-\J @sg_ * U M a}H!ÿ_ * U M a}H! !" "f&xr&'t@BB pLNu/xdt@f@g\DTep(Jg 9@)@\DNu$(/8NuHJg8(Bt&Bg.v40 :=/