Tom Forçade wore a lot of hats in his lifetime—and not just the broad, flat-brimmed one he was usually sporting or photographed in.

While he is best known as the founder of the pro-marijuana/counterculture magazine High Times, he was also, beginning in the late ‘60s, variously an editor, journalist, radical political activist, protest leader, provocateur and instigator/jokester who might just land a pie in the face of an official to make a point.

And he was the head honcho of the groundbreaking Underground Press Syndicate (later the Alternative Press Syndicate). That’s where far-flung underground newspapers all over the U.S. like the East Village Other, Berkeley Barb and Fifth Estate could share resources, articles and advertising.

Like a countercultural Zelig, he could slip in and out of the scene, pow wow with activists like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and John Sinclair, or be just offstage during a Jimi Hendrix or MC5 show.

He also connected the web of organizations from the most benign to the more violent including the SDS, SNCC, Black Panthers, WERM, WITCH (the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), and both the Yippies and the breakaway faction called…the Zippies.

The tale of this now often-forgotten underground figure is told by author Sean Howe in bold and lustrous detail—fit for any film—in Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s (432 pp., $30, Hachette Books).

Its subject also knew how to cut a figure, often dressed in all-black or all-white, while sporting a dangling moustache. Even his name was meant to be different, preferring “Forçade” with the cedilla mark so people would pronounce it like the word “façade.” Though contemporary
news accounts, the book, and this review will use simply “Forcade.”

Then again, there were always the rumors, half whisper and half substantiated: Forcade was a fake. He was working for the government or some government entity. And that wasn’t even his name.

And indeed, as Howe uncovers Forcade’s (actual name: Gary Goodson) family history in the middle of the book, it is rife with shady dealings, false identities and suicides. His own early life reads more like a spy or espionage novel than biography. This was a man who could reinvent himself over and over.

The book also doubles as a history of the countercultural political groups and figures of the era. That’s a positive in that it fleshes out the story and the times, but it also serves to take the compelling Forcade himself out of the narrative for stretches, only to return in some shape or form.

Some of the era’s stunts are out there. In Michigan, May 1, 1970, was declared “J-Day” in which pot dealers and heads were encouraged to rip a page out of the phone book and mail a single joint to as many people as possible. Organizers made sure that the state’s governor and most of its legislators got a special care package.

In 1972, the Zippies announced that their candidate for President would be…a rock. Because the inanimate object was “the most stoned.” They then took the inanimate object on tour, though the office seeker understandably did not give press interviews.

Then there’s the time that female Zippies infiltrated a luncheon for the Women’s National Republican Club and caused chaos by screaming that there were rats all over the ballroom. There were also pie throwing incidents. And building of 30-foot-long paper mâché joints for protests.

Still, the various organizations often found themselves at odds even without their own tight knit circles. Soon an “I Am More Radical Than Thou and Thus More Legit” idea would permeate the community.

Forcade’s case of being denied—and then granted—White House press credentials was cited recently when CNN got reporter Jim Acosta reinstated after being ejected by the Trump administration.

But Forcade’s greatest success came with his 1974 founding of High Times magazine. Known as “The Playboy of Pot,” it was a stratospheric success right out of the gate, selling large amounts of copies and attracting eager advertisers.

Each issue would feature a “centerfold” of a beautifully-photographed plant bud, described in sexy terms. Following form, Forcade would battle with even pro-pot entities like NORML over various issues.

All that flush cash, though, only serviced to plunge Forcade into deeper into drug use and paranoia. The fact that he also became a significant drug dealer added to the story, with government entities watching his every move as he became more erratic. And on the left, he was attached for pursuing a form of “hip capitalism” that he had fairly recently railed against.

The wild life and times of Thomas King Forcade/Gary Goodson would come to a tragic end in 1978. And in Agents of Chaos, Sean Howe unravels his riveting and far-reaching tale. Readers can only imagine what a Founding Father of marijuana activism would be made of the sea change in laws and legalities surrounding it today.