The life and times of High Times’ enigmatic founder Thomas King
Forçade, an underground newspaper editor and marijuana kingpin
who—between police raids, smuggling runs, and outrageous
stunts—battled both the US government and fellow radicals.
Cover
illustration by legendary comics artist Bill Sienkiewicz.
At
the end of the 1960s, the mysterious Tom Forçade suddenly appeared,
insinuating himself into the top echelons of countercultural politics
and assuming control of the Underground Press Syndicate, a coalition
of newspapers across the country. Weathering government surveillance
and harassment, he embarked on a landmark court battle to obtain
White House press credentials. But his audacious exploits—pieing
Congressional panelists, stealing presidential portraits, and picking
fights with other activists—led to accusations that he was an agent
provocateur.
As
the era of protest faded and the dark shadows of Watergate spread,
Forçade hoped that marijuana could be the path to cultural and
economic revolution. Bankrolled by drug-dealing profits, High Times
would be the Playboy of pot, dragging a once-taboo subject into the
mainstream. The magazine was a travelogue of globe-trotting
adventure, a wellspring of news about “the business,” and an
overnight success. But High Times soon threatened to become nothing
more than the “hip capitalism” Forçade had railed against for so
long, and he felt his enemies closing in.
Assembled
from exclusive interviews, archived correspondences, and declassified
documents, Agents of Chaos
is a tale of attacks on journalism, disinformation campaigns,
governmental secrecy, corporatism, and political factionalism. Its
triumphs and tragedies mirror the cultural transformations of 1970s
America, wrought by forces that continue to clash in the spaces
between activism and power.