AGENTS OF CHAOS

A cautionary tale from the countercultural past, full of revolutionary glory and ugly criminality.

In 1963, Gary Goodson (1945-1978) left his home in Phoenix, Arizona, to study business at the University of Utah. Discharged from the Air Force for perceived psychological problems, Goodson transformed himself into Thomas King Forçade—the latter tellingly pronounced to rhyme with facade—and found his fortune in two parallel careers. The first, writes former Entertainment Weekly editor Howe, was taking over the operations of a faltering alternative-press venture called the Underground Press Syndicate, whose purpose was “to pool the resources of dozens of budget-crunched publications, to share the content and revenue from national advertising deals.” Forçade’s new career soon drew the attention of the Phoenix police and their own underground, a network of outwardly groovy informants, and then, in time, the Secret Service and the FBI. One of Forçade’s most glorious moments as a muckraking journalist was demanding White House and other governmental access for underground newspapers, prevailing in a court case that, Howe notes, was cited as precedent when the Trump White House tried to expel journalist Jim Acosta nearly half a century later. A revolutionary rabble-rouser with ties to the Yippie offshoot called the Zippies, and on the enemy’s list of older activists such as Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg, Forçade proved a brilliant firebrand. He was also a good capitalist, playing both sides of the legal fence. He smuggled and sold drugs of all kinds and, in 1974, launched the magazine High Times, born, according to one account, when “we were sitting around getting stoned on nitrous oxide and laughing gas one day when someone said ‘Hey, why not write about getting high?’ ” The magazine was instantly successful, which oddly seemed to accelerate Forçade’s downward psychological spiral and its tragic conclusion. It adds up to an impossibly tangled drama, but Howe chronicles it expertly.

A fascinating resurrection from the dark side of the 1960s and ’70s.