Layers of Networks - 1960s California #jaysebring #jollywest #charlesmanson #romanpolanski
I've seen his name as I've wandered down these rabbit holes, Jolly West, but I didn't give it much thought and mainly because like everyone else who first steps into the abyss, you think it "fake news," propaganda, , another insane conspiracy theory. But, while looking into just how my mom would have met Jay Sebring, and because I am finding other odd circumstances around my 2 short years of childhood spent in 1960s California...well, now I am finding that on this path, anything is possible.
There is a lot out there on the programs ran by our CIA during that time period, and it's been declassified. While researching Jay's story and Charles Manson, it wasn't a wonder those programs were popping up along with research on LSD. Bells started ringing in my head and memories flashing of Dad speaking about his time working as a driver for Snyder Ambulance in the 60s - his stories always ran the gamut but he always came back around to speaking about one kid's body he picked up who had commited suicide and the letter he left to his dad apologizing for not having better grades, and then talking about how they always called him to respond to active drug situations, especially LSD and mainly because Dad was a walking brick wall -6'4" and 250lbs, solid. He was the type who never lifted weight because there was no need, it was all natural. Those stories stuck out to him, they were repeated the most, especially after he had too many drinks. They bothered him, haunted him- and now, down this rabbit hole, me.
And so now, because of all of that, I've learned about Jolly West and the Haight-Ashbury Clinic more than I ever wanted and, it's fascinating...
(Arthur's note: It's been almost 24 hours since I left off writing- a slew of new information and a lot of sleep spawned by the allergist prescribing a new antihistamine while we delve into dx'ing MCAS or not. So, if I trail off please understand the reasoning.)
First thing first- In the news this past weekend has been about speculated code words showing up in the Jeffrey Epstein files, one of which is Dentist or Dental. Well I touched on that last post and how they show up in a recent interview on Dr. Mayim Bialik's podcast and that movie on Jay Sebring and out of Roman Polanski's mouth in an interview with law enforcement- Well, last night I discovered that the Haight-Ashbury Clinic where Jolly West operated out of, it was the former home of a dental clinic.
The Clinic and Happening House are located in an old upstairs flat at 558 Clayton St. It once housed a suite of dentists’ offices, and its big old-fashioned bay windows look out on the action at the corner of Clayton and Haight.
So, there is that- those once dental office doors became known as an epicenter of the hippie scene in late 60s San Francisco. It would come to surface in files held by the CIA and a project once rumored on brain washing and LSD, MK Ultra. I thought this post would begin there, but why not stay relevant? Toothache? Dr. Jolly is in ...
If incorrect pls contact this blog
Jolly West was born Louis Jolyon West on October 6, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York, to immigrant parents who came from a Russian Jewish background. His father was Albert Jerome West, reportedly born Albert Jerome Wechselman before the family Americanized the name, something many Eastern European Jewish families did to blend in better, avoid anti-Semitism, or simplify paperwork. His father had fled pogroms in Ukraine in the Kiev area and made it to the United States as a young man. His mother was Anna Rosenberg, born in Brooklyn, a piano teacher who helped support the family by giving lessons.The family later moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where Jolly grew up as the eldest of three children and the only boy, often wearing hand-me-downs and growing up with modest means.
Haight Ashbury Clinic and MkUltra?
West showed up in Haight-Ashbury in late 1966 and stayed through most of 1967 and into 1968, right when the whole place was exploding with the Summer of Love. He’d just finished a fellowship at Stanford and was on leave from running the psychiatry department at the University of Oklahoma. On paper he was there to study the hippies. How they used LSD, how they lived in communes, how they had sex, how the whole counterculture thing worked up close. That was the story he told everyone.
He brought in six graduate students, dressed them like hippies, and told them to open the doors to anyone who wandered in. Let them crash, do drugs, whatever they wanted, and quietly take notes on everything they saw. The place was meant to look like a free drop in spot for street kids. No rules. No judgment. But in reality it was a research observation site. The students watched behavior, recorded what they saw, and sometimes recruited people for West’s studies. Some of those students later said it felt more like a zoo than a community. Few real bonds formed with the crashers, and many of the street kids sensed something strange about the setup and kept their distance.
West also had an office inside the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic at 558 Clayton Street, an upstairs flat that had once been a cluster of dentists’ offices. The clinic itself was legitimate. Dr. David Smith founded it in June 1967 to provide free medical care for runaways and young people flooding into San Francisco during the Summer of Love. They treated everything from gonorrhea and pregnancy to bad LSD trips and speed crashes. Smith allowed West to use space there to recruit volunteers for research on drug use and behavior.
By that time, West had already spent years studying how drugs, hypnosis, and extreme psychological pressure affected the human mind. During the 1950s and early 1960s , he received funding connected to CIA behavioral research programs, including projects associated with MKUltra. Those studies explored how substances such as LSD could alter perception, break down resistance, and reshape behavior. Much of that work remains controversial today, particularly because government agencies were trying to understand whether drugs and psychological techniques could be used in interrogation or psychological control.
The timing in Haight-Ashbury created an overlap that researchers still debate. Charles Manson and several of his early followers were moving through the Haight beginning in the spring of 1967. Members of the Manson group visited the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic for treatment of sexually transmitted infections, pregnancies, and other health problems common among runaways living on the street. West was also present in the neighborhood conducting research on LSD use and youth culture. There is no documented proof that West and Manson ever interacted directly, but the overlap has fueled speculation among researchers for decades. Complicating matters further, many of West’s research files from that period later disappeared from the record, much like gaps that exist in other MKUltra era documentation.
By late 1968 West left San Francisco and moved to Los Angeles to become chair of psychiatry at UCLA, a position he held until 1989. Publicly he portrayed his Haight-Ashbury work as an effort to understand the social and psychological impact of psychedelic drugs on young people. Critics have argued that the work resembled earlier intelligence funded behavioral studies he had been involved with. Either way, the Haight became one of the most famous field laboratories of the psychedelic era, and West was one of the researchers quietly studying it from the inside.
Several other episodes in West’s career deepened the controversy surrounding him.
In 1964 he was asked to evaluate Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who shot Lee Harvey Oswald two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Ruby had been coherent during earlier questioning, but after West examined him in jail Ruby suddenly claimed a conspiracy was operating inside the jail and that Jews across America were in danger. West diagnosed Ruby as suffering from a severe psychotic break. Some critics later questioned how Ruby’s condition appeared to deteriorate so dramatically after that examination.
West also conducted unusual laboratory research involving LSD and animals.
Across four decades West moved repeatedly through the same strange territory where psychology, intelligence research, crime investigations, and social upheaval intersected. Haight-Ashbury was only one chapter in that story, but it remains one of the most mysterious.
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You have an outline on Jolly West, known to have been at the Haight-Ashbury Clinic while Charles Manson and family members were utilizing their services and prior to the senseless murders.
Remember that as we continue on the next posts delving into 1960's California -
If anything is incorrect in the above, please contact me. If the following video is incorrect, please contact it's maker on Youtube.
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