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The ‘Sad’ Issue, March 1964.
I wrote last week about how Playboy’s literary gatekeeper, A. C. Spectorsky, stuffed Hefner’s magazine full of writing from intelligence agents and assets, and how the message presented was a more militant, radical incarnation of the anti-Russian leftist message presented by the CIA’s lame-duck Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). Playboy’s pages featured a lot of writing from both CCF contributors and detractors– all working towards the same goals, of course.
What where those goals? Last week, I promised readers a comprehensive list covering James Angleton’s fight with William Colby and Adrian Chen’s firing from Gawker amongst other things– the post kept growing until I knew I had to break it into two parts.
In this post I’m going to look at Playboy’s stance on foreign relations and the civil rights movement as far as the publication’s covers between 1959-76 can tell us. In order to understand the significance of Playboy’s political stance, readers must be aware of the IRS’s 1973 investigation which showed that Hugh Hefner banked with other CIA front operations at the CIA-controlled Castle Bank and Trust of Nassau. Hugh Hefner is a CIA asset, therefore his politics reflect the CIA leaders’– “Floor Seven’s”– politics. Playboy espoused the politics which the CIA wanted America to espouse.
Let’s start with the big picture: Spectorsky liked to focus on women from specific regions as pornography ‘specials’. The details from the shoot would set a mood, presumably to influence how readers were supposed to feel about each region. Predictably, the most featured country was Russia (3/64, 12/70 and 6/76); the most touted cities were Hollywood (8/59, 10/60, 2/61) and New York (9/60, 2/61, 9/62). Runners up were Israel (4/74, 4/70), Las Vegas (3/60, 12/73), Miami (9/61, 10/65). As far as non-porn features go, Playboy tended to focus on regions where something political was happening, like Algeria in 7/71 when Timothy Leary was courting Eldridge Cleaver there, or Egypt in 4/74 right after Israel withdrew its troops from the Suez Canal. A complete list of which country was featured when is available here; it shows Spectorsky’s ‘geographic homunculus’.
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American Germany in ’64: “All better now!”
I’ve written a good deal about Hugh Hefner’s ties to organized crime and the CIA, so it shouldn’t be surprising that Playboy covered the Mafia [8 separate covers]; gambling [5 covers]; and the ‘intelligence community’ [11 covers] extensively. The topics Spectorsky was interested in included Big Brother Surveillance (1/67); Israel’s ‘secret executioners’ (8/76); Code breakers (12/75); National Defense (3/75, 10/70, 3/72) and Hit Men (4/73). That’s not counting any of the ‘James Bond’ propaganda, if Bond was added ‘intelligence community’ covers would number over 20 and be the third the most promoted Playboy topic that I’ve identified.
Naturally, the magazine was used to advertize various Playboy watering holes as they came online and product placement was a big part of Spectorsky’s job: the magazine featured regular men’s fashion segments and product reviews of high-end consumer items like yachts and sports cars, as well as more humble luxuries like home stereo equipment, home movie equipment and bikinis. Spectorsky, along with J. P. Getty, pushed stock market investing for the masses on three separate Playboy covers. (Portends of Jim Cramer?)
Hefner’s mafia connections stretched into Hollywood, so naturally Hollywood directors got a lot of ‘airtime': Woody Allen tops the charts at nine cover appearances, followed by both Stanley Kubrick [2] and Roman Polanski [2]. The most promoted Hollywood movies were James Bond 007 flicks [two covers]; Cleopatra (with Liz Taylor) [2]; followed by Funny Girl (Barbara Streisand), Macbeth and Valley of the Dolls, which each got one.
In The Outfit, author Gus Russo speculates that a number of Hollywood acting careers– like George Raft’s and Marilyn Monroe’s– were sponsored by the Mafia. These stars were Playboy’s most featured between ’59-’76: Ursula Andress [6 covers]; Kim Novak [4 covers]; Marilyn Monroe [3]; Linda Lovelace [3]; Sean Connery [3]; Liz Taylor [3]; Peter Sellers [3]; Frank Sinatra [2]; Richard Burton [2]; Mame von Doren [2]; Peter O’Toole [2]; Sophia Loren [2]; Jayne Mansfield [2]; and Marlon Brando [2]. Bill Cosby and Dick Gregory were featured three times each too, but I’ll talk about them more later. A full list of actors (excluding comedians) is available here, and includes Peter and Jane Fonda, Peter Ustinov (Klop’s boy), Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine.
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Peter Ustinov, British intel agent Klop Ustinov’s son, gets his own “harem pictorial” in Playboy while sharing a cover with Martin Luther King Jr! Harem and MLK– was that Spectorsky’s sick joke?!
This is where things get really ugly readers, because during the period 1959-76 Playboy had at least one cover on almost every topic covered by the MK ULTRA releases from the CIA, which were given to John Marks starting in 1974 and concluded after a ‘legal battle’ in ’76. (The public didn’t know much about what ‘MK ULTRA’ was before 1979.)
Playboy’s prescience about the CIA’s MK ULTRA releases were both comprehensive and sustained: over 30 different covers featured scientific and social engineering topics which were part of the dozens of research subprojects that made up what we know of MK ULTRA. Reading through my Playboy notes is like reading through the CIA’s index of those thousands documents they gave to Marks. For example, Playboy covers featured: Surveillance (1/67); Physiology and Psychology of Sleep (11/59); Hypnosis (2/61); Alpha Waves (low-level yet wakeful brain activity associated with hypnosis) (12/72); ESP (4/71); Psychoanalysis (10/69); Personality Control (11/68); LSD (10/66); drug addiction (11/60); Hallucinogens (11/63); Campus politics (9/71, 9/70, 4/70); voter manipulation (11/72, 11/68).
Having spent a lot of time with the MK ULTRA documentation and with Playboy covers, I’m shocked at how prescient Spectorsky was about CIA abuses. Incredible, truly incredible. :)
In all seriousness, this ‘issue overlap’ says two things: 1) Spectorsky was plugged into the crowd of people who were carrying out this research for the CIA and 2) Colby and his successors were very careful to release MK ULTRA information that had already been compromised in some way. I speculate that ‘Team Colby’ thought along these lines: “Marks’ book on MK ULTRA abuses will only come as a surprise to the little people who haven’t been paying attention and who don’t matter anyway.” As I wrote in The Banality of Mind Control, we know very little about what the MK ULTRA program studied.
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November 1963 featured Aldous Huxley on hallucinogenic drugs.
There’s one big MK ULTRA topic that I’ve left out of that list: Subproject 102, the ‘gang rioting’ subproject. I’ve left it out because it’s wrapped up in the most interesting Playboy ‘political causes’ of all: Black Nationalism and Racial Integration.
In 1958, and continuing for a few years, the CIA funded the work of sociologist Muzafer Sherif, who documented the political hot-buttons of “inner city youths”, youths who his henchman found roaming urban streets. Sherif, a native of Turkey, wanted to know what these boys’ aspirations were; what they considered being ‘rich'; how they related to the “dominant features of American life”; and what they’d do to gang members who “squealed”. Sherif was known for his work on how to ‘tailor messages to’ (read ‘manipulate’) different groups of people. Of course, it was inner city youth rioting which destroyed swaths of urban America in the 1960s; undermined Black communities economically; and made ‘White Flight’ a matter of personal safety. This rioting was the ugly side of the Civil Rights Movement.
In 1960s America, when you talk about ‘inner city youth’ and gangs, you’re talking about Black youth and gangs for the most part. The CIA wanted to know how to manipulate young Black people. This is where Hugh Hefner comes in with his naked (mostly White) ladies; his stance on ‘racial integration'; and his militant Black Nationalist political pundits.
Clik here to view.
April 1963: the “Girls of Africa” tribute. Notice Anything? Playboy only featured one Black cover girl during the ’59-’76 period (Oct. 1971).
Hefner’s, and more importantly, Spectorsky’s use of ‘civil rights’/black nationalist authors is cynical, but very considered. The ‘happy face’ story of integration and the Playboy Empire goes something like this, as told by Gloria Hendry, who left the NAACP to become a ‘chocolate bunny’ at the NYC Playboy Club:
The environment in the club was incredible. I had never seen such a cross-section of race and cultures; it was just awesome.
The management protected the girls, but I did experience racism on a couple of occasions, sadly, once when my father was in the club…
I reported the incident and the room director went straight over and cancelled the man’s membership. But I was sorry my father had to witness that.
Working at the club gave me so much confidence. I came from a background obsessed with inferiority and race but there my colour was glorified. I was able to lose my complex and gain confidence. Without that I would never have gone on to do so well in my acting career. I owe that place a lot.
On top of this type of PR, Hefner has made a big song and dance about ‘buying back’ the franchise of at least one Playboy Club where discrimination took place. I’ll point out that it would be difficult to collect sexual information on men like Bill Cosby if they weren’t given full access to the key clubs and bunnies. Hefner’s stance on ‘racial equality’ is very self-serving.
But Playboy’s interest in racial integration was more complicated– and more sinister– than providing half-naked Black girls to serve drinks. Racial integration and Black Nationalism are the two most publicized issues in Playboy that I’ve identified: over 30 covers were devoted to these issues or to activists who promoted these issues either directly or as a corollary to their sports, music, political or comedy careers.
Although very few Black fiction writers were featured on Playboy covers overall, Spectorsky did promote prominent Black authors/celebrities in the ‘civil rights’ movement– particularly those involved in the ‘Selma’ protests which have recently been reinterpreted by Oprah Winfrey. Beginning in 1962, one year after the anti-segregation ‘Freedom Rides‘ began, Spectorsky showed a marked interest in forming public attitudes towards civil rights events: specifically, Spectorsky chose to promote racial integration as the answer to the USA’s race problems while simultaneously showcasing militant Black Nationalism. Another Orwellian Playboy combination!
Clik here to view.
Spectorsky’s first foray into race politics– read about Nat Hentoff in A.C. Spectorsky and the CCF 2.0.
Spectorsky chose to promote these civil rights activists: James Baldwin [3], James Farmer [2], Martin Luther King Jr [1], Jessie Jackson [1]; and these Black Nationalists: Dick Gregory [3], Jim Brown[1], Bill Cosby [3], Cassius Clay/Mohammad Ali [5]; as well as the twisted, violent Eldridge Cleaver [3] and Leroi Jones [1]. (O.J. Simpson [1] was featured in ’76– did the great and good know his psych profile?) Readers will note that Malcolm X’s name did not appear on Playboy covers between Jan. 1959- Dec. ’76.
Playboy was promoting two agendas at the same time: that of forced integration and militant Black Nationalism– neither of which have served Black nor White communities well. Why would the CIA-backed Playboy magazine promote this dual agenda? The answer becomes clear when you consider the spokespersons’ backgrounds:
Playboy’s November 1969 cover trumpets Jesse Jackson as the “GREAT BLACK HOPE FOR RACIAL JUSTICE”– no other Black activist was so lauded by Spectorsky. (Mick Jagger is featured on the same cover, incidentally. :) ) Jesse Jackson is an intriguing character in the civil rights movement: he caused a lot of friction in Martin Luther King’s ‘Southern Christian Leadership Conference’ organization because of his– dare I say it– narcissistic behavior. Jackson was eventually expelled from the SCLC and started his own movement, which promoted rights for homosexuals and further divided Black civil rights activists. A cynical person might see Jackson as an agent provocateur— certainly my generation knows him as someone who gets rich by inflaming racial tensions. Jesse Jackson is the person credited with bringing Martin Luther King Jr. to one of Hefner’s ‘parties’ in his Chicago mansion; parties which gave celebrities plenty of opportunity for indiscretion– right, Cosby?
Clik here to view.
Playboy’s political stance became increasingly aggressive in 1969; the cover pornography also began to be more explicit.
James Baldwin was a Black, homosexual, socialist who was involved with MLK’s work, however MLK chose to distance himself from supporting LGBT struggles, even though his movement contained a large number of homosexual people. Besides being an LGBT activist and Playboy contributor, James Baldwin covered MLK’s work at the insistence of the CIA’s Partisan Review and his efforts won him a cover on the CIA’s TIME magazine.
Martin Luther King Jr. is so well established in the hagiography of American politics that he hardly needs an introduction, however his career follows the same path as many of the CIA’s non-communist left pundits and that worries me. For example, he attended Highlander Folk School in 1949, a political ‘school’ which Eleanor Roosevelt supported. Eleanor Roosevelt’s politics were guided by Louis Howe, whose communism ran as deep as any pinko millionaire’s. (See My Exploited Father in Law, by Curtis Dall.) By 1953 however, King was touting the CIA’s ‘Congress for Cultural Freedom’ line, and saying non-communist-lefty things like “cold atheism wrapped in the garments of materialism, communism provides no place for God or Christ’’. King’s political shift, and the timing of his shift, lands him squarely in an ugly crowd.
My second concern with Dr. King is that no sincere practitioner of non-violence would be violent towards women, as MLK Jr. was by admission of his friend Ralph David Abernathy (see Abernathy’s autobiography, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, p. 436). I don’t see why a sincere proponent of Christianity and human dignity would frequent an establishment which exploits women like the Playboy mansion, nor allow himself to be promoted by such a publication. Could it be that MLK’s motivations were different to what we were taught in school? Could his non-communist left preaching have something to do with his CIA-backed promotion in Playboy?
James Farmer was supported by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who founded the CIA’s forerunner, the OSS, along with his British spy friends. Farmer was tapped to lead the Congress on Racial Equality, which spearheaded integration initiatives, such as the Freedom Rides. Farmer also worked closely with the NAACP during the NAACP’s partnership with the Zionist paramilitary group Irgun to end segregation in the USA (the partnership was in place by 1946). Back in Palestine, Irgun was blowing up municipal buildings and wiping out Palestinian villages for the state of Israel. According to CORE-online.org:
In the late 1940’s, before giving CORE his full attention, he [James Farmer] was also a program director for the N.A.A.C.P. and wrote radio and television scripts as well as magazine articles on race relations for Crisis, Fellowship, World Frontier and the Hadassah News.
Hadassah is a Zionist women’s organization, so Farmer knew with whom he and the NAACP were working. In 1998 Clinton gave James Farmer the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
If you care to read about Bill Cosby [3] and his wife Camille’s hypocrisy, please see my post The Unfortunate Mr. Cosby. Dick Gregory [3] is another Black comedian whose trademark jokes make fun of White Southerners in a manner very flattering to men like A. C. Spectorsky. Gregory presents politics which are militant yet simple-minded: he purports to see the world literally in ‘black vs. white’. These days he spends a lot of time at venues like the Alex Jones Show and NPR criticizing the CIA, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Hugh Hefner, who launched Gregory’s career, is a CIA asset. Interestingly, Gregory’s ‘conspiracy theorist’ musings with Alex Jones haven’t landed him in hot water like Cosby.
Jim Brown and Cassius Clay/Mohammad Ali are/were sports personalities who were used by Playboy to promote militant Black Nationalism and racial integration. In my personal opinion, these two at least are/were genuinely concerned about their people. Recently, Jim Brown has been courageous enough to admit focusing on integration was counterproductive; I hope that one day he’ll also admit how he was used by men like Spectorsky and recognize the damage forced integration did to both Black and White communities.
Finally, Eldridge Cleaver [3] and Leroi Jones [1] were two seriously twisted, and seriously conflicted extremists. In the mid 1950s, Cleaver claims to have raped a number of White woman as payback for White “domination”. By the late 1950s Cleaver was in jail for assault and began contributing to Warren Hinckle’s Ramparts magazine, a leftist ‘anti-CCF’ rag which Hinckle hints had Hugh Hefner’s funding in his autobiography. Whether Hefner funded Ramparts or not, Cleaver made his first appearance on the front of Playboy in 1960. After being released from jail in 1966 Cleaver joined the Black Panther hate group as a propaganda minister, but his violence eventually necessitated fleeing to Algeria where he ran a sort of Black Panther ‘government in exile’. Playboy covered Tim Leary’s 1971 scamper to Cleaver’s Algerian base in an attempt to escape a Stateside drug sentence. (Leary claims that the Black Panthers held him hostage for a while before he could flee to Switzerland and live with an arms dealer who had a taste for “young girls”.) Cleaver was later kicked out of Algeria; he eventually returned to the USA where he became a Mormon Republican. Unstable?
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Timothy Leary’s scurry to Algeria makes the July 1971 Playboy cover.
Leroi Jones’ career can be summed up in this quote from Fifty Modern and Contemporary Dramatists by Maggie Gale:
Initially under the influence of the poets of the Beat generation such as Allen Ginsburg, a trip to Cuba in 1960 was decisive in turning Jones into a politically committed, race-conscious artist. But it was his play Dutchman, which opened Off-Broadway in 1964 and won him an Obie for the best American play of the year, that made him famous and a major American literary figure in his own right. Leaving Greenwich Village and his white wife, Jones moved to Harlem and then to his hometown of Newark, New Jersey and embarked on the black cultural nationalist phase of his career, for which he is still chiefly known. In the course of the 1960s, Amiri Baraka, as he renamed himself in 1967, and directed a string of short, shocking plays– including The Slave (1964), Experimental Death Unit #1 (1965), A Black Mass (1965), Great Goodness of Life (1967) and Madheart (1967)– that attacked ‘whiteness’ in all its aspects and advocated the violent destruction of the white race in America. In the course of the 1970s Baraka’s political militancy took a new turn, from cultural nationalism to a version of Marxism-Leninism. He continued to write, teach, organize and make plays, although none of them with the power of his drama of the earlier period.
Most of the Black Playboy contributors in the list above took part in the protests at Selma, or other civil rights demonstrations for which Martin Luther King Jr. has become the public face. Playboy featured many not-Black proponents of these happenings too: Joan Baez [1 cover] who provided eye-candy at protests while singing songs written by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones; as well as regular Playboy contributors Calvin Trillin [3] who got his start working for the CIA’s TIME magazine and David Halberstam [3] whose journalistic career began ‘on the ground’ in Vietnam covering what William Colby was doing for The New York Times (See The Secret Team by L. Fletcher Prouty).
Other supporters of racial integration who Playboy featured between ’62-’72 were mega-contributor Ben Hecht [9], that Irgun guy; Allen Dulles’ friend Norman Thomas [1] who when he wasn’t heading up the American Socialist Party, was heading up the CIA’s American Committee for Cultural Freedom and assisting CIA operations in South America (see Frances Stonor Saunders’ The Cultural Cold War); Attorney General Ramsey Clark [2] who pushed the integration agenda heavily; Rep. George McGovern [2] who nurtured Jesse Jackson’s career at the 1972 Democratic National Convention; Joe Namath [1] the pro-integration football personality; and William Kunstler [1] the hypocritical ACLU lawyer who only represents left-wing terrorists like the Black Panthers and The Weatherman.
I’d like to point out here that Playboy ran a cover on Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley in March 1971 titled “A Revealing Portrait of Mayor Daley”. In November 1969, Playboy had picked out Jesse Jackson as the “GREAT BLACK HOPE FOR RACIAL JUSTICE”; Playboy featured George McGovern in January 1970 and August of 1971.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Daley had checkered dealings with civil rights leaders, particularly Jesse Jackson, because he managed to prevent large-scale rioting in Chicago by using police-heavy tactics. Not long after Daley’s “revealing” Playboy appearance, George McGovern pulled off a coup at the Illinois primary for the 1972 Democratic National Convention by dodging Daley’s political machine in Chicago and instituting Jesse Jackson as part of an alternative delegation. Playboy’s prescience on shadowy Illinois political maneuverings with regard to their ‘golden boy’ Jesse Jackson are remarkable. Of course, Jackson has shown himself to be among the most corrupt politicians Chicago has to offer, which is no mean feat.
I believe that the CIA had an agenda with regard to the Civil Rights Movement and I find it odd that so many civil rights leaders were willing to hitch their wagon to an outfit like Playboy. Hefner’s business practices stand in conflict to the stated goals of the the Civil Rights Movement, which I’ve been told was about mutual respect.
On that note, I’d like to draw readers’ attention back to the “chocolate” Playboy bunny Gloria Hendry, who feels that she “owes” Playboy Enterprises for letting her dress up as a rabbit and serve drinks to so many different types of men. Could Gloria’s exploitation ever have served racial harmony? I put it to readers that encouraging different races to intermingle whilst exploiting each others’ women is not the best way to foster mutual respect. Gloria Hendry’s father must have brimmed with joy to see his daughter ogled by drunk White guys. The reverse is also true: no normal White guy would be enthused to see somebody like Bill Cosby drool over an attractive White woman. This isn’t just an American Black/White issue– this is true for any group of people anywhere in the world, and the CIA knows that. Readers will remember that Bill Cosby’s attitudes towards White men and women are not progressive, despite the comedian’s long, close relationship with Hefner and his ‘integrated’ key club.
Bunny work is poisonous from the female perspective too: prostitutes don’t often come away with genuinely warm feelings towards their punters. Imagine if your most regular interaction with another race was one where the men stared at your breasts and threw out tips if you flirted convincingly? Nothing about the Playboy Empire is designed to foster interracial respect in the real world.
Bearing these truths in mind, Spectorsky’s strange political pairing seems a little less strange: Provide political aggravation, then promote (in this case, one-sided!) extremist politics that mesh nicely with the CIA’s ‘gang profiling’ work. After all, two groups of people quarreling with each other are much more easy to control.
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*UPDATE* I’m pasting a comment that I received to Part II of this series below, because it shows how Playboy continues its ‘race baiting’ strategy to this day; the goal is the same, the provocation is more blatant.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.anolen ⋅
Oh, ho ho. Probably what a lot of these black musicians are thinking, just smart enough not to say.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.anolen ⋅
I though about this ‘Azealia Banks’ thing a little more, and there’s probably more going on here. Notice how in the first article Azealia describes how her mother encouraged her in her racism:
“Banks proudly describes her second grade white bitch devil diaries where she cursed out all the white teachers and how proud her mom was when she found them.”
This reminds me of the NAACP “chocolate bunny” from Part I, Gloria Hendry, who told The Telegraph this about her time at Playboy’s NYC club:
“Working at the club gave me so much confidence. I came from a background obsessed with inferiority and race but there my colour was glorified. I was able to lose my complex and gain confidence. Without that I would never have gone on to do so well in my acting career. I owe that place a lot.”
The connection I see between these two girls is that they were both ‘bred’ for hate. What type of mother encourages her daughter to hate teachers of a different race? One who is displacing her own self-esteem problems. Azealia and Gloria drank up their attitudes at home, and as soon as they were ‘legal’ their promoters– the NAACP, XL Recordings, and then Playboy– put them in a corset and gave them a microphone. Azealia is only 23 years old *now*.
How do you find a kid that screwed up so young? You’d have to be running some kind of ‘puppy farm’ for them: picking the most reliable, naturally gifted ones and programming them from an early age. (Perhaps people like Azealia represent the grain of truth behind ‘Monarch Babies’?)
Azealia grew up in Harlem– I’ve lived there– she has very little experience of White people, much less White people from the Midwest. Why would she hate farmers? Why would she hate fat people– Harlem has more than its fair share of those and guess what *a lot of them are nice people*. There is no WalMart in Harlem, and if there was, it wouldn’t be White women working there. Azealia’s rants are directed against things that are totally outside her 23-years of experience. She’s repeating prejudices she’s been taught elsewhere; prejudices I heard repeated more on the Upper West Side than in Harlem.
Gloria Hendry was bred for her role; nearly 50 years later and the ‘puppy mill’ is still running. The sad thing is that Azealia can’t hope for much; at best, when she’s old and has nothing left to sell, she’ll realize that she’s been used and will end up like Bill Cosby. (What self-respecting Black man is going to want a woman who’s run the circuit at Playboy?!) If Azealia does ever wake up, it’ll be much too late for the generation of rudderless Black kids who look up to her.
I think that the most responsible thing to do is to not buy her products, nor Playboy, nor any product from XL Productions.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Speaking of Playboy encouraging racial discord, I thought you’d like to see this:
http://www.wwtdd.com/2015/03/azealia-banks-not-fond-of-whitey/
http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/azealia-banks-hates-fat-white-americans-slams-lorde-kanye-2015163
Ooh, and an interview with Dick Cheney too. I’ll be glad to see that guy’s lease with lucifer up…