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Walter Howard Bowart (May 14,1939 - December 18, 2007) was an American leader in the counterculture movement of the 1960s, founder and editor of the first underground newspaper in New York City, the East Village Other, and author of the book Operation Mind Control.

Bowart was born May 14, 1939 in Omaha, Nebraska and was adopted as a newborn by Walter and Fenna Bowart. He was raised in Enid, Oklahoma, and won a McMahon Scholarship in journalism to the University of Oklahoma. In the early 1960s Bowart moved to New York City to pursue his interest in painting where he met his first wife Linda Dugmore, daughter of Abstract Expressionist Edward Dugmore, and had his first son Wolfe.

In 1965, Bowart along with John Wilcock, Sherry Needham, and Allan Katzman, founded the East Village Other (EVO). EVO offered a newsprint medium for the rants, artwork, poetry and comics of such 1960s icons as Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman Robert Crumb, Marshall McCluhan, Spain Rodriguez, and The Fugs. In 1966, Bowart testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency against banning LSD. He drew national attention when he recommended that committee members try the drug.

Through his connection with Timothy Leary and the psychedelic underground, Walter met his second wife, Peggy Hitchcock, an heiress to the Mellon Bank fortune. They moved to Tucson, Arizona in 1968 where Bowart founded Omen Press a publishing house for metaphysical books. Bowart and Hitchcock were members of the New Age spiritual movement and he was influenced by “Sufi Sam”, for whom he wrote the forward to, This Is The New Age In Person. Bowart and Peggy Hitchcock had two daughters, Sophia and Nuria.

In 1973, Bowart located and reconnected with his biological parents, Thomas J. Kirby and Patricia J. Dooley, and discovered he had three younger sisters, Janet, Nancy and Kathy. His adoption had a profound impact on Bowart and he later published various articles under the names of his biological parents.

During this period Bowart wrote the book that was to become his seminal work, Operation Mind Control. Published by Dell in 1978 with a foreword by The Manchurian Candidate author Richard Condon, Operation Mind Control was a 686-page investigative report into government mind control through the use of drugs such as LSD, behavior modification, hypnosis, and other “psycho-weapons.”

Following a European promotional tour, Bowart moved to Aspen, Colorado, where he continued his research, became a contributor to the Aspen Daily News, and met Margo Jordan, his third wife.

In the early 1980s, Bowart created and published the Port Townsend Daily News in Port Townsend, Washington, where he met and married Rebecca Fullerton and had his fourth child, Wythe. In the late 1980s, Walter moved to Palm Springs, California to become the editor of Palm Springs Life Magazine] where he published articles under the name Thomas, Tom, and Tom J.j. Kirby as well as W.H. Bowart.

In Bowart’s later years, he researched and wrote prolifically. He created The Freedom of Thought Foundation; a non-profit dedicated to the education of the public about mind control and was a frequently invited guest speaker at forums and conferences around the country.

Bowart died of cancer at his sister's home in Inchelium, Washington on December 18, 2007. At the time of his death, Bowart was working on several screenplays and novels, one entitled, The Other Crusades, about New York City in the early 1960s.