This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Psychoactive and Recreational Drugs, a project which is currently considered to be defunct.Psychoactive and Recreational DrugsWikipedia:WikiProject Psychoactive and Recreational DrugsTemplate:WikiProject Psychoactive and Recreational DrugsPsychoactive and Recreational Drugs
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chicago, which aims to improve all articles or pages related to Chicago or the Chicago metropolitan area.ChicagoWikipedia:WikiProject ChicagoTemplate:WikiProject ChicagoChicago
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Illinois, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Illinois on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.IllinoisWikipedia:WikiProject IllinoisTemplate:WikiProject IllinoisWikiProject Illinois
This article is within the scope of WikiProject University of California, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles relating to University of California, its history, accomplishments and other topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.University of CaliforniaWikipedia:WikiProject University of CaliforniaTemplate:WikiProject University of CaliforniaUniversity of California
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Alternative views, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of significant alternative views in every field, from the sciences to the humanities. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion.Alternative viewsWikipedia:WikiProject Alternative viewsTemplate:WikiProject Alternative viewsAlternative views
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Neopaganism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Neopaganism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.NeopaganismWikipedia:WikiProject NeopaganismTemplate:WikiProject NeopaganismNeopaganism
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Altered States of Consciousness, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of altered states of consciousness on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Altered States of ConsciousnessWikipedia:WikiProject Altered States of ConsciousnessTemplate:WikiProject Altered States of ConsciousnessAltered States of Consciousness
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Psychology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Psychology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PsychologyWikipedia:WikiProject PsychologyTemplate:WikiProject Psychologypsychology
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
From the NYT source in question:
"Dr. Tim" was accused of sending many young people off on bad drug trips, and Richard Nixon called him "the most dangerous man in America." But it was not only the right that was cutting: "His rhetoric has a patina of phoniness," The New Republic's review of "High Priest" said. The New Yorker, reporting on a "celebration" in 1966, was merely condescending, saying that after the show, "with his disheveled hair and his white garments, he looked like a shipwrecked sailor, and very much alone."
I'm not sure why journalist Laura Mansnerus added this Nixon quote to Leary's obituary, and as much as I would like this quote to be true, I'm afraid to say this is one of those famous apocryphal quotes from Nixon that no researcher has ever been able to verify or confirm as true. Because of that, I think it should be removed from this biography. What is far more interesting is to try and figure out where the quote ("the most dangerous man in America") originated from and who first published it. I've tried to do so and was left spinning my wheels. It's quite an interesting problem. Viriditas (talk) 00:37, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Follow up
Journalist John Bryan made a similar claim in 1980, except he wrote that Orange County District Attorney Cecil Hicks called Leary "The Most Dangerous Man Alive" in 1972 when he set bail for Leary while he was on the run.
Leary confirms this particular claim in What Does Woman Want? (1976); but it should be noted that Bryan might be citing Leary here
Writer Jay Stevens says it was a federal judge not a district attorney who called Leary "the most dangerous man in the world"
Editor Daniel Weizmann repeats the claim in an introduction to Leary's posthumous work (1997), saying Nixon made the claim in 1968 when Leary was a candidate for governor of California.
Ron Chepesiuk in The War on Drugs: An International Encyclopaedia (1999), says Nixon made the claim in 1970, not 1968.
Writer Don Lattin makes the claim twice in his book The Harvard Psychedelic Club (2010), with no footnotes.
Minutaglio and Davis in their book The Most Dangerous Man in America (2018), attribute the statement Leary made in an interview: "He told one interviewer, “Richard Nixon called me the most dangerous man alive, and of course, I tried to be as dangerous to him as I could be."
Elsewhere in the book, the authors attribute the quote to Michael Horowitz in 1972.
Again, the authors attribute the impetus of the quote to others, in this case, Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, whom the authors say tried to convince the Swiss (where Leary was on the run) of Leary's criminality. "Mitchell impresses on his hosts the idea that President Richard Nixon believes Timothy Leary is the most dangerous man in America."
"Nixon’s old friend, Secretary of State William Rogers, is also a law-and-order man. He and Nixon had originally become friends hunting Communists together during the McCarthy era, chasing them out of the shadows. But now that Nixon is president, Rogers has seen a darkness fall over his old ally. Nixon has always been obsessed with the enemy within, but now he’s increasingly vengeful, intent on punishing anyone who might oppose him. The president has even been steadily easing Rogers out of his inner circle. Rogers knows there’s one way he can prove to Nixon that he is still just as unforgiving when it comes to law and order: by bringing back Timothy Leary in chains. Rogers contacts the heads of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and spells it out: "There is a dangerous escaped American criminal on the loose, residing in Villars-sur-Ollon. Can your people hunt Timothy Leary down and hold him in prison until we can ship him back to the United States?"
Author Robert Anton Wilson said that the National Review "listed Timothy as one of "the three most dangerous men alive" in The Starseed Signals
Nixon White House tapes
There's apparently a Nixon White House tape from July 23, 1971, that shows how Nixon formulated the plan to target Leary as a way to lift his poor poll numbers and help his re-election. I'm trying to find a copy online to listen to it. Viriditas (talk) 04:41, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Tape 066-002, sometimes referred to as Conversation No. 66-2. Event begins at 16:00. Leary first mentioned at 18:09. No mention of "most dangerous man in America".
Oddly, while the tapes are online, there's no extant transcript. That doesn't make sense to me. It's been 52 years, and nobody has published the entire (unclassified) transcipts from Nixon's tapes? Somebody make it make sense. Viriditas (talk) 05:05, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
One can look up reference [36] = the Dec 3, 1966 New York Times on the "TimesMachine" and see that p.25 says nothing about Leary, in fact this page is only advertising. There is no mention of Leary on p. 24 or p.26 either. This reference is inaccurate and needs to be corrected or removed.