Embedded Files
"Doctor Redgrave." (Photograph). From "Doc Redgrave's Going to Make Everything All-Right." Rob Haeseler. San Francisco Chronicle. (13 Nov. 1971).
"Yeah, one thing about this wild, wild country
It takes a strong, strong
It breaks a strong, strong mind
And anything less, anything less
Makes me feel like I'm wasting my time."
– Bill Callahan, "Drover"
Stanley Marshall Redgrave goes by Marshall. He was born on July 3, 1932. He is a Cancer, Virgo rising.
The eldest of three siblings, Marshall was raised in a bucolic East Bay suburb. His parents – Raymond and Clara (née Duval) Redgrave – were not wealthy, but they were well off. Raymond taught Classic Literature at Berkeley and Clara worked for the government in a vague administrative capacity at the Presidio.
Marshall’s upbringing was progressive and cosmopolitan. His parents were a lively, liberal couple. Marshall recalls a childhood spent attending the ballet and the symphony, poetry readings by prominent female writers, black-tie dinner performances by famous Black musicians, even a gallery opening in the city hosted by a homosexual couple.
In 1954, Marshall enrolled at Stanford Medicine, where he focused his studies on pharmacology and psychiatry. He was a star student, possessing a deeply intuitive, almost prodigy-like, understanding of human psychology. Naturally, his aptitude brought him to the attention of a particular dean, a former Navy man who tapped him for the fledgling CIA.
At CIA, Marshall learned the truth about his family: his dad, a longtime headhunter for the War Department, his mother, a human calculator and code breaker for the SIS. They were deeply proud of their son, now following in their footsteps. But this revelation made Marshall wary and instilled in him a quiet, constant distrust.
Marshall spent practically all of the ‘60s in Vietnam working in various ill-defined roles. Those were wild, dark times – the money was inexhaustible, and there was practically no oversight. Marshall studied the vacant-eyed men retrieved out of the jungle, sent assets on suicide missions, and broke down POWs.
The work took a toll on him, but the drugs helped with that. The drugs also fueled his descent into fringe studies: brainwashing, hypnotism, human programming, radical empathy, attack therapy, Gestalt, militant Buddhism, transcendental meditation. Project SANDMAN came calling in ’65 after he submitted a requisition request for personnel to travel deep into Cambodia. After he completed his training and programming, the Project sent him on that long-desired mission into the dark heart of the jungle, there to find an ancient Khmer city said to house a forgotten order of Mahayana monks. The mission was a success, and also a nightmare.
SANDMAN pulled Marshall out of Vietnam at the end of 1969. At the time his handlers said it was just part of Nixon’s overall draw-down of personnel. In truth, they needed to get him out of there. After nearly a decade in the shit, Marshall had grown more than a little unhinged. They brought him back to California and cleaned him up as best they could.
Not too much, though: they needed him for a new operation, codename URIEL, where his eccentricities would be an asset.
Stanley Marshall Redgrave. (Surveillance Photograph). From the personal files of Det. John Atwood. (28 Sept. 1972).
"The Mission." (Photograph). From the Mission - Welcome Center Lobby. Baron Wolman. (3 Aug. 1972).
Marshall is now a therapist and "guru" for the wealthy and the famous. He maintains a retreat in Sonoma called "The Mission" where, for the low price of several thousand dollars a week, patients can find inner peace and tap into their true potential. Private sessions with “Doc Red” cost more, but are said to be well worth it. Indeed, Jane Fonda recently attributed her ’72 Oscar win (Best Actress, KLUTE) to her time spent with Marshall.
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