Written by allen ginsbergperformed by rage against the machine



It had to be flashin' like the daily double

It had to be playin' on tv

It had to be loud mouthed on the comedy hour

It had to be announced over loud speakers



The cia and mafia are in cahoots



It had to be said in old ladies' language

It had to be said in american headlines



Kennedy stretched and smiled and got double crossed by lowlife goons and agents



Rich bankers with criminal connections



Dope pushers in cia working with dope pushers from cuba working with a big time

Syndicate from tampaflorida



And it had to be said with a big mouth



It had to be moaned over factory foghorns

It had to be chattered on car radio news broadcasts

It had to be screamed in the kitchen

It had to be yelled in the basement where uncles were fighting



It had to be howled on the streets by newsboys to bus conductors

It had to be foghorned into new york harbor

It had to echo onto hard hats

It had to turn up the volume in university ballrooms



It had to be written in library booksfootnoted

It had to be in the headlines of the times and the mind

It had to be barked on tv

It had to be heard in alleys through ballroom doors



It had to be played on wire services

It had to be bells ringing

Comedians stopped dead in the middle of a joke in las vegas



It had to be fbi chief j. edgar hoover and frank costello syndicate

Mouthpiece meeting in central parknew york weekends

Reported time magazine



It had to be the mafia and the cia together starting war on cuba

Bay of pigs and poison assassination headlines



It had to be dope cops in the mafia

Who sold all their heroin in america



It had to be the fbi and organized crime working together

In cahoots against the commies



It had to be ringing on multinational cash registers

World-wide laundry for organized criminal money



It had to be the cia and the mafia and the fbi together

They were bigger than nixon

And they were bigger that war



It had to be a large room full of murder

It had to be a mounted ass- a solid mass of rage

A red hot pen

A scream in the back of the throat



It had to be a kid that can breathe

It had to be in rockefellers' mouth

It had to be central intelligencethe familyallofthisthe agency mafia

It had to be organized crime



One big set of gangs working together in cahoots



Hitmen

Murderers everywhere



The secret

The drunk

The brutal

The dirty rich



On top of a slag heap of prisons

Industrial cancer

Plutonium smog

Garbage cities



Grandmas' bed soft from fathers' resentment



It had to be the rulers

They wanted law and order

And they got rich on wanting protection for the status quo



They wanted junkies

They wanted attica

They wanted kent state

They wanted war in indochina



It had to be the cia and the mafia and the fbi



Multinational capitalists

Strong armed squads

Private detective agencies for the rich

And their armies and navies and their air force bombing planes



It had to be capitalism

The vortex of this rage

This competition

Man to man



The horses head in a capitalists' bed

The cuban turf

It rumbles in hitmen

And gang wars across oceans



Bombing cambodia settled the score when soviet pilots

Manned egyptian fighter planes



Chiles' red democracy

Bumped off with white house pots and pans



A warning to mediterranean governments



The secret police have been embraced for decades



The nkpd and cia keep each other's secrets

The ogbu and dia never hit their own

The kgb and the fbi are one mind



Brute force and full of money

Brute forceworld-wideand full of money

Brute forceworld-wideand full of money

Brute forceworld-wideand full of money

Brute forceworld-wideand full of money



It had to be rich and it had to be powerful

They had to murder in indonesia 500000

They had to murder in indochina 2000000

They had to murder in czechoslovakia

They had to murder in chile

They had to murder in russia



And they had to murder in america