*Ø* Blogmanac September 12, 1970 | Timmy Leary's big day out


Psychonaut Timothy Leary escaped from prison with the help of the Weathermen, a radical offshoot of the Students For Democratic Society (SDS). Targeted by the Nixon administration as a dangerous subversive, the former Harvard professor had been imprisoned in February of that year for possessing a single marijuana joint. Curiously, when he entered prison he had been required to submit to the Leary psychological evaluation test which he himself had designed while working in academia.

Leary made his way to Algeria where he met up with exiled American Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and was given asylum in the Black Panther ‘embassy’. The pro-violence Maoist Panthers thought he was nuts, so the welcome wore out fairly quickly. He sought asylum in Switzerland, but was recaptured by US DEA agents in Afghanistan in 1973, extradited back to America, and sent back to prison.