I discovered Martin Klein while browsing a conspiracy forum in 2012. He caught my attention when he linked to a Youtube video he made called “CIA Punx: How the Central Intelligence Agency infiltrated the punk rock movement”. Out of habit, I began archiving everything he posted in case the content was deleted. I’m glad I did because there is no trace of him on the web anymore. Much of his posts were on par for someone who frequents conspiracy forums, but a few things really stood out to me. These included a paper that Klein wrote for a high school English class on socialism and punk, an album from Klein’s band, and a cryptic letter that Klein received from a company called True Picture America. This letter was the content of the last forum post that Klein made. Although he never used the name Martin Klein specifically when posting, I employed advanced sharpening techniques to unblur the portion of the True Picture America letter with his name and address. Dated March 30, 2015, the letter seems to be a confirmation of an order that Klein placed with the company for something called “Circulation Services”. Based on this information, it can be assumed True Picture America takes advantage of the Search Engine Optimization of Google’s image search. In his post, Klein wrote, “Does this look legit? Kinda sounds like a scam, but I think I’m going to submit these photos and really mess with their heads, haha!” In addition to the letter, Klein attached three images: a photograph of thirteen children posing with a young Michael J Fox, a picture of Klein’s band taken at a concert, and an impressively forged photograph of Allen Ginsberg, Lee Krasner, and Tupac Shakur. The current images search results for Martin Klein show none of these pictures. I want to know why his order never processed? Perhaps Klein could have been the target of the establishment for being involved in both punk rock and politics in his youth. He was the singer in an anarchist band called “The Camaraderies” and displayed socialist values in his declaration that I’ve titled “A Punk’s Guide to Sharing the Wealth.” But did he only disappear from the internet, or was he disappeared from the real world as well? Using whitepages.com, I searched for all the addresses in the Chicago area with someone named Martin Klein living there to see if I could track him down. In one instance I was met with hostility from the homeowner, another; no-one home, and the last one said they had never heard of anyone named Martin Klein. This could be a cover up, but I think that maybe it was a wild goose chase, as I began to dig further, I realized that Martin Klein was probably just a moniker and not his name after all. The first thing I immediately noticed on the True Picture America letter was the logo at the top. After reviewing Klein’s posts, I recalled that I remembered it from “The Camaraderies” album. Allied Record’s logo and the TPA logo are very similar and both have five perfect black rectangles. In Principia Discordia, Greg Hill writes: “All things happen in fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of five, or are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to 5.” Klein’s connection to both the letter and album made me highly suspect. One night, I went to investigate the address where True Picture America was located and the building had the TPA symbol emblazoned into the brick (update: as of October, 2017, it has since been removed). I used Google Street view and learned that the symbol has existed as far back as two thousand and seven. It may well stretch even further but we will never know. I also analyzed the images included with the TPA letter to try and determine what Klein looked like. I noticed the young boy looking directly at the camera in the Michael J Fox photo. Although difficult to make out, his name tag looks to say Martin. This could be him. Or the photograph of his band; he is listed as the singer on the album, but also is holding a guitar. Another student in the Michael J Fox photograph suspiciously stares into the camera. He looks like he could be a young Allen Ginsberg or perhaps the same individual in the concert photo. And the real question is, if this isn’t Klein, then who is it? And what about the most blatantly doctored photograph of Allen Ginsberg, Lee Krasner, and Tupac Shakur. We know it is not authentic due to the birth and death dates as well as photographic documentation of each subject at various points in their life. So why did Klein include it? It has been well documented that the CIA and FBI have appropriated, infiltrated, disrupted, or in some cases fabricated, counterculture movements for political purposes. Examples include Project MK Ultra and its connection to LSD in the 60s, Abstract Expressionism as an ideological weapon during the Cold War, and the assassination of Malcolm X. The individuals in the photograph are emblematic of three different counterculture movements in the United States; the Beat Generation, Modern Art, and contemporary hip hop. Given Klein’s research into the CIA’s connection to the punk rock movement, these figures certainly fit into his interests. Perhaps the CIA became aware of Klein’s research. If he became a CIA target, this could be his coded warning letter. When searching the web for Allen Ginsberg, Lee Krasner, and Tupac Shakur together, one name consistency shows up: Vladislav Surkov. Surkov is the former Deputy Chief of the Russian Presidential Administration, author of the term Sovereign Democracy and current personal advisor to Vladimir Putin. Most recently, he was banned from the United States after the Russian annexation of Crimea, said to be masterminded by Surkov. When asked about the sanctions, he stated “The only things that interest me in the US are Tupac Shakur, Allen Ginsberg and Jackson Pollock. I don’t need a visa to access their work. I lose nothing.” In Klein’s photograph, he replaced Pollock with Krasner, in what can only be assumed as an homage to a much better painter. And aside from being in the most powerful circle in contemporary Russian politics, Surkov is a theatre school dropout, lover of modern art, and occasionally writes lyrics for rock bands. In 2009, he wrote a novel called “Close to Zero” under the pen name of Nathan Dubovitsky about a publisher who works in a shady and corrupt political system. The Kremlin denies that Surkov wrote the novel, but his wife’s name is Natalia Dubovitskaya; the easiest clue to decode, just like the Tupac photograph. Also, in Alesandr Dugin’s Foundation of Geopolitics, he states that in the US, it is especially important for Russia “to introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity… actively supporting all dissident movements.” Based on Surkov’s history and Russia’s continuing effort to sow dissent into American social and political life, it seems obvious that Surkov was Klein all along. His expertise in the arts makes him the perfect candidate to infiltrate counterculture movements in the United States. But was any of the things that Klein posted real? Was Surkov actually in a band in his youth? Did the CIA really infiltrate the punk movement in the 80s? Or was it all just a covert operation to stoke the fire of anarchy and socialism in the United States?

Please email me at insearchofmartinklein@gmail.com if you have any more information.