Origins
As evasive as George Peters tended to be about his life prior to becoming a guru, much of what he did reveal to journalists, prospective biographer Lionel Rolfe and Church of Naturalism collaborator Susan Shore turns out to be verifiable. Census records confirm George Peters’ real name was George P. Fitzpatrick and that he was the son of Cyril G. and Ada Florence (Farwell) Fitzpatrick. He was born in 1938 or 1939 and spent the first decade plus of his life being raised in New York. Corroborating information revealed to Lionel Rolfe, newspaper reports indicate his father was a New York City detective, but Cyril’s alleged wartime stints in Army Intelligence and White House Secret Service could not be confirmed. In fact, the exploits of Cyril G. Fitzpatrick, New York City robbery detective, appear in newspaper accounts both before and after World War 2, making it clear that whatever intelligence work he may or may not have been involved with during the war ceased when he returned to his robbery division gig after the war ended. Following Cyril’s death in 1953, Peters’ mother married Ward McCarron in 1954, and the couple along with George resided in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
As Peters revealed to Rolfe, it was around this time, when Peters was 16, that “he married a young woman who claimed to be French.” Indeed, newspaper reports from October 1955, describe an episode where George Fitzpatrick, son of Mr. and Mrs. Ward McCarron, eloped with Jo Ann LaNette, 15, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jacques LaNette, Fort Lauderdale. The pair had planned to go to New York, but only had enough money to buy bus tickets to Baltimore. Eventually, the teenage couple returned home to Fort Lauderdale, and in 1956 George P. Fitzpatrick joined the Navy. An announcement in the Fort Lauderdale News dated March 18, 1956 confirms he graduated from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center north of Chicago. While not an official Navy confirmation of service, it seems unlikely Peters and his parents would falsely fabricate such an announcement, and it backs up Peters’ account and other previously unverified newspaper reports.
With much of Peters’ origin story seeming to conform to reality, the questions become even more relevant: did the Navy and/or CIA perform mind control LSD experiments on the future cult guru George Peters? Could the American military or intelligence community bear some responsibility for creating the LSD promotor and new age occultist?
Whether or not George Peters was one of its subjects, it is absolutely the case that the Navy performed LSD experiments on human subjects. A Department of Defense memo dated September 20, 1977 revealed that the Navy participated in five programs where drugs were administered to human subjects for the purpose of mind control or behavior modification. The programs ran from 1947 to 1973, and probably the most well known was called Project Chatter. Led by Navy Lieutenant Charles W. Savage, Project Chatter research was conducted at the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, Maryland and ran from 1947 to 1953. Peters claimed his experience occurred in 1957, placing it outside the timeframe of Dr. Savage’s involvement. However, it’s possible the program continued under someone else’s direction, or Peters could have participated in a myriad of other LSD programs underway at the time.
It is widely reported that at one time the CIA purchased a significant portion of the world’s LSD supply and seemingly made it available to just about any researcher or institution willing to study its effects on humans. Famously, author Ken Kesey participated in LSD experiments at the Menlo Park VA hospital around the time he began One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1960. Also, in the 1950s, LSD pioneer Dr. Sydney Cohen conducted experiments at Wadsworth VA Hospital in Los Angeles, California. Where George Peters was introduced to LSD cannot currently be determined, but California would be as likely a place as any.
By 1960, it appears Peters had abandoned his family, which included a wife and three children. In a newspaper feature from the 1980s, the then remarried but former Mrs. George Fitzpatrick describes being broke in San Diego in 1960 with a five-month-old baby she could no longer care for. So she put the child up for adoption, as she would do with Peters’ two other children. As a member of the U.S. Navy, it seems probable that he and his family spent some time living in San Diego. While in California, did he become a subject of the LSD experimentation going on at the time, and did that experience cause him to become disillusioned and wander from his family? Whatever life-altering, consciousness scrambling experience befell him, the trip was only going to get much longer and much stranger.
Sources:
The Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Herald Examiner
The San Francisco Examiner
The Chicago Tribune
The Fort Lauderdale News
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground by Lionel Rolfe
Mind Styles, Life Styles by Nathaniel Lande
General Counsel of the Department of Defense memo, September 20, 1977
If there is something 