Phil Ochs
Music

c.1970

Phil Ochs, folk singer/songwriter and political activist, was found hanged in his sister’s home in Far Rockaway, New York on April 9, 1976. Throughout his life, Ochs was one of the most overtly political of the 1960s rock and folk music stars. A regular attendee at anti-war, civil rights, and labor rallies, Ochs appeared to be, at all times, an unwavering political leftist (he named his first band The Singing Socialists). That all changed, however, and rather dramatically, in the months before his death. Born in El Paso, Texas on December 19, 1940, Phil and his family moved frequently during the first few years of his life. His father, Dr. Jacob Ochs, had been drafted by the US Army and assigned to various military hospitals in New York, New Mexico and Texas. In 1943, Dr. Ochs was shipped overseas, returning two years later with a medical discharge. Upon his return, he was immediately institutionalized and didn’t return to his family for another two years. During that time, he was subjected to every ‘treatment’ imaginable, including electroshock ‘therapy.’
    When he finally returned to his family, in 1947, he was but a shell of his former self, described by Phil’s sister as “almost like a phantom.” Beginning in the fall of 1956, Phil Ochs began attending Staunton Military Academy, the very same institution that future ‘serial killer’/cult leader Gary Heidnik would attend just one year after Ochs graduated. During Phil’s two years there, a friend and fellow band member was found swinging from the end of a rope (I probably don’t need to add here that the death was ruled a suicide). Following graduation, Phil enrolled at Ohio State University, but not before, oddly enough, having a little plastic surgery done to alter his appearance (doing such things, needless to say, was rather uncommon in 1958). In early 1962, just months before his scheduled graduation, Ochs dropped out of college to pursue a career in music. By 1966, he had released three albums. In 1967, under the management of his brother, Michael Ochs, Phil moved out to Los Angeles. Michael had begun working the previous year as an assistant to Barry James, who maintained a party house at 8504 Ridpath in Laurel Canyon. In the early 1970s, with his career beginning to fade, Phil Ochs began to travel internationally, usually accompanied by vast quantities of booze and pills. Those travels included a visit to Chile, not long before the US-sponsored coup that toppled Salvador Allende. In early summer of 1975, Phil Ochs’ public persona abruptly changed. Using the name John Butler Train, Ochs proclaimed himself to be a CIA operative and presented himself as a belligerent, right-wing thug. He told an interviewer that, “on the first day of summer 1975, Phil Ochs was murdered in the Chelsea Hotel by John Train … For the good of societies, public and secret, he needed to be gotten rid of.”
    That symbolic assassination, on the summer solstice, took place at the same hotel that Devon Wilson had flown out of a few years earlier. One of Ochs’ biographers would later write that Phil/John “actually believed he was a member of the CIA.” Also in those final months of his life, Ochs began compiling curious lists, with entries that clearly were references to US biological warfare research: “shellfish toxin, Fort Dietrich, cobra venom, Chantilly Race Track, hollow silver dollars, New York Cornell Hospital …” Many years before Ochs’ metamorphosis, in an interesting bit of foreshadowing, psychological warfare operative George Estabrooks explained how US intelligence agencies could create the perfect spy: “We start with an excellent subject … we need a man or woman who is highly intelligent and physically tough. Then we start to develop a case of multiple personality through hypnotism. In his normal waking state, which we will call Personality A, or PA, this individual will become a rabid communist. He will join the party, follow the party line and make himself as objectionable as possible to the authorities. Note that he will be acting in good faith. He is a communist, or rather his PA is a communist and will behave as such. Then we develop Personality B (PB), the secondary personality, the unconscious personality, if you wish, although this is somewhat of a contradiction in terms. This personality is rabidly American and anti-communist. It has all the information possessed by PA, the normal personality, whereas PA does not have this advantage … My super spy plays his role as a communist in his waking state, aggressively, consistently, fearlessly. But his PB is a loyal American, and PB has all the memories of PA. As a loyal American, he will not hesitate to divulge those memories.” Estabrooks never explained what would happen if the programming were to go haywire and Personality B were to become the conscious personality, but my guess is that such a person would be considered a severe liability and would be treated accordingly. They might even be find themselves swinging from the end of a rope. Phil Ochs was thirty-five at the time of his death. [2008] Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation by Dave McGowan

"U.S. agents were able to destroy any persons reputation by inducing hysteria or excessive emotional responses, temporary or permanent insanity, suggest or encourage suicide , erase memory , invent double or triple personalities, inside ones mind."
---quote by the late Mae Brussells Operation Chaos investigator etc.
    Ochs was a close chum of Bob Dylan , and thought Bob was the greatest poet ever. Ochs ,Bob, and Farina set out on the Folk minstrels path in the village in the early 1960's. Together with others they dragged folk music away from the migration camps and union halls into direct confrontation with the Eisenhower's looming military-industrial complex. Ochs denounced the American politics in the "Cops of the world". song
    " and when we've butchered your sons boys, have a stick of gum boys, we own half the world...."OH CAN YOU SEE"? AND THE NAME OF OUR PROFITS IS DEMOCRACY.
    He was the ultimate dissident song quote:
" the comic and the beauty queen are dancing on the stage .The raw recruits are lining up like coffins in a cage."
"Oh we are fighting in a war we lost before the war began"
    Not long before he died, one night after too many drinks, he drew down the CIA Director Wm. Colby, director of the murderous Phoenix Project in Vietnam. He claimed he put a contract out on his life for 100,000 dollars. "I told Colby he's got a half of year to live or get out of Vietnam or he is dead. They can kill me but he is dead" he said.( He as well was certain that Gloria Steinem, editor of Ms. magazine and famous feminist is a CIA agent) Ochs was founder of the Yippee party, sang with protesters, and appeared as a witness for the trail of the Chicago Seven. His lyrics were considered so inflammatory that he was banned from the air-waves. The FBI did not refrain form amassing a huge file on him, and the feeling that he was never alone unnerved him. He wrote " take everything I own, take the tap from my phone, and leave my life alone, My life alone! He was tarred as a communist and a threat to national security. His friends said Ochs was convinced he would be assassinated. He was driven to drink by the radio black-listing his music and the ongoing surveillance and harassments and his nerve gave out. He lived in a perpetual state of paranoia His vocal cords were crushed by thugs.
    He developed a right wing pseudo personality called John Train who he wrote about ( Beth's note: Who created John Train? Was he like his good friend Joan Baez, a mind-controlled MPD(DID), from abuse and experimentation? On the first day of summer ,1975," Phil Ochs "was murdered in the Chelsea Hotel by John Train, Ochs said in a taped interview. "for the good of societies public and "secret," he needed to be gotten rid of." He also made reference to his Pseudo personality in song fragments in an album never recorded re: "Phil Ochs checked into the Chelse a Hotel, there was blood on his clothes, Train Train Train, the outlaw and his brain. (my note: I have read accounts of cloning since the 50's. Lots of hi-tech knowledge kept secret, including in Jim Keith's book "Secret and Suppressed").
    Ochs actually now believed he was working for the CIA., writes biographer Marc Elliot.( Ochs also referred to N.Y. Cornell Hospital in mysterious lists) "Train hinted that if Ochs had been a commercial success "they"(CIA) would have killed his host personality.. " Colby and Co. would have been more than happy to put a slug thru his head at that point, "said Train, the alternate personality. Ochs committed suicide on April 9, 1976, by hanging. This was the same year of the book " the Control of Candy Jones" by Donald Bain., ( a study of CIA mind control experimentation, Candy was also an MPD, created personalities, who carried out covert assignments , a marionette with an inner Nazi personality. She worked without her knowledge as a CIA op. for 12 years. Her final post-hypnotic command was suicide, which was intervened by her husband, talk show host John Nebel. ( the book is out of print, I have a copy) It is very probable that "John Train" was programmed to kill Philip Ochs the host personality.
    Another musician with repressed memory of child-hood trauma was Peter Townsend ("Who" guitarist). In 1999 it occurred to him that certain phrases from rock opera "TOMMY" were not fiction but his life. He filled in the blanks from his childhood amnesia. The Covert War Against Rock by Alex Constantine