CIA, KGB, LSD... and OMG, this is one chaotic, weird tale

If you have a taste for weird tales, this book is for you. A few abbreviations should give you the flavour: CIA, KGB, LSD, UFOs. Looming even larger, however, is ADC. The American Deserters Committee was founded in February 1968 by American GIs who had fled to Sweden, the only non-communist country in Europe offering asylum to US troops who refused to fight.

The Stockholm apartment of its leader, Michael Vale, became the hub of ADC life. In one room an ex-soldier might be giving a TV interview; in another you’d find a pair of copulating Swedish Maoists.

It soon became more of a cult than a committee. Vale asserted Rasputinlike dominance by ‘ego-stripping’ his followers, putting them through epic sessions of self-criticism and humiliation.

Vale himself wasn’t a deserter, merely an American who happened to be in Sweden. Some wondered if he was a CIA spy. Others assumed he was KGB. They were right to be suspicious. Declassified documents show that the ADC was targeted by Operation Chaos, a secret CIA operation to infiltrate anti-war groups. ‘Everyone displays the usual paranoia on the subject of the CIA,’ one report on the deserters noted – with sublime irony, given that it was written by an undercover CIA agent.

Where are they now? Matthew Sweet’s search for the cult’s survivors is at the heart of this darkly comic story. They are, he finds, still

crazy after all these years.

In Oregon he meets the gloriously named Chuck Onan, who now runs a small business cultivating medical marijuana – and is the founding pastor of a church that worships the ‘sacramental spliff’.

Thomas Taylor, a former army private, produces oil paintings that he modestly describes as ‘the greatest body of art created during the first ten years of the 21st century’.

Sweet adds: ‘He is also a prodigious drug user and, I suspect, the only person to list all his narcotic experiences on LinkedIn.’

Another survivor, Craig Anderson, writes books that mix biblical scholarship with speculation about the relationship between the American state and extraterrestrial intelligence.

Strangest of all is Lyndon LaRouche. After the ADC collapsed, many of its leaders joined his radical Marxist sect. He subjected them to ‘pure psychological terror’ on a scale that made Vale’s ego-stripping seem benign.

Some walked out. Those who remained became a ‘zombie army’, following a messiah whose gospel became ever more deranged.

LaRouche believes that Queen Elizabeth II controls the global narcotics trade, using drugs to enfeeble America until it begs to become a British colony again. He also blames Her Majesty for the 9/11 attacks.

Like LaRouche, many interviewees now support Trump. Who can blame them? Fifty years on, the ADC’s paranoid style is the official voice of the White House.

‘He believes that the Queen controls the global narcotics trade, using them to enfeeble America’