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Joe Rogan Experience _2419 - John Lisle · Luke's English Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Joe Podcast check it out. But Joe Wigan Experience Train,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: My Day, Joe.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Rogan Podcast, by Night, All Day, John, what's happening, man,
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: It's very nice to meet you you too, thanks for
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: having I know you're in the middle of a project.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: You're doing a project with David Chase, right, it's about
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: MK Ultra.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: And yes, he has gotten the rights to this to
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: this book, you know, this book, Project mind Control, and
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: he's interested in adapting it into a series.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Well, I am endlessly fascinated with the subject. So as
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: soon as I heard about it and they said the
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: series is coming, but you could talk to the guy
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: who wrote the book now, I'm like, let's go. So
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: here we go. Project mind Control, Sydney Sidney Gotlieb, the CIA,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: and the tragedy of MK Ultra, which really is a tragedy.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: You know, I really got I mean I knew about it,
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: but I really didn't get completely obsessed with it until
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Chaos Tom O'Neil's book. Have you read that? Oh yeah,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: And when you realize what the MK Ultra program involved
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: and how long it ran and how insane it is
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: and it essentially had no oversight and these people were
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: just running these wild mind experiments on American citizens and
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: nobody went to jail for it.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's part of the crazy thing. One of the
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: things I really try to focus on in the book,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: especially the second half of the book, or the consequences
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: of mkultra in society, but also just what happened to
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: these people afterwards. The victims of Mkultra, they launched several
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: lawsuits against the CIA, and basically really nothing much came
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: out of it. They got paid a little bit of money,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: but the people who perpetrated in mkultra, they didn't really
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: face any consequences. And so I'm glad you brought that up,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: because one of the things I really try to talk
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: about in the latter part of the book are what
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: are the failures of oversight that allowed this to happen?
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: How is that possible? How could people within the CIA
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: be doing these kinds of drug experiments on people unwittingly
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and yet never face any hardly consequences for their actions.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: So I delve into that pretty deeply.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: How did you get interested in the subject, Like, what
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: was your introduction to it?
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I feel like my introduction is a little bit different,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: probably from most people, because I didn't know that much
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: about mk Ultra, and I was doing my PhD at
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: UT and I studied the history of science. But my
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: dissertation was on a group of scientists within the intelligence
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: They had connections to the intelligence community. They were called
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the Science Attaches out of the State Department. The State
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Department would send these science attaches to different embassies, American
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: embassies around the world, and the CIA was very interested
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: in these people because, hey, we have these scientists going abroad.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Maybe they can interrogate foreign scientists and figure out what
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: kind of research they're doing. So that kind of led
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: me into being interested in scientists within the intelligence community.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: And from that I learned about, you know, Sydney Gottlieb.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: But also mostly my initial interest was this man named
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Stanley Lovell, who was essentially the Sydney Gottlieb of the OSS.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: So prior to the CIA, the US had the the
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Office of Strategic Services during World War Two and that
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: was the US kind of intelligence agency, and Stanley Lovell
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: was in charge of a branch within the OSS called
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: the Research and Development Branch, and that was the branch
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: that was composed of a group of scientists whose job
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: was to basically invent the deadly weapons, create ingenious disguises,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: forged documents for secret agents that are sent abroad. So
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: my first stuff, oh yeah, my first book, the Jurgery
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Tricks Department. It's about Stanley Lovel and that group, and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: one of the things they do are drug experiments and
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: truth drug experiments, trying to find out whether it's possible
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: to give someone a captured enemy agent some kind of
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: drug to make them tell the truth during an interrogation.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: And it turns out when I was researching that book,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: I came across a series of depositions of which Sidney
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Gottlieb is one of the dipoments who would later lead Mkultra.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: And in these depositions, he was talking about how when
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: he was assigned to be in charge of mk Ultra,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: he didn't really know where to begin. He didn't know
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: anything about mind control. So one of the things that
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: he did he went into the old OSS files and
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: was starting to look at the drug experiments that Stanley
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Lovel was doing. And so I thought, that's the connection
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: between Stanley Lovel, my first book, and now this one.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: So that naturally led me into becoming interested in MK Ultra.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: So a lot of the things that Sidney Gottlieb was
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: up to with mk ultra, his blueprint was basically Stanley level.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Just imagine being a government agency, the CIA, the OSS,
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: whatever it is, and then someone says, hey, figure out
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: if we can control people's minds, and that's where you
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: start from, right. It's not like Sidney Gottlieb was some
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: expert noetist or really it was a psychologist or really
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: understood human minds. No. They they started a program going
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: what can we do? How can we fuck with people's minds?
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: How can we figure out how to control people's minds?
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: And they did it for decades? Yeah, yeah, so you
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: probably still doing it now.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Well, even before MK ultra. So there are a couple
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: of programs that precede it. I mean, you know, so
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: during World War Two, the OSS was already doing truth
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: drug experiments, not with LSD because that wasn't really around then,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: but with thhc ascetate. They would inject it into cigarettes
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: and have people smoke it.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: And they just get high.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: They would get high and.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: The truth well supposedly.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Supposedly the idea is that it lowers their inhibitions and
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: so maybe they'll be more meanaful to talking.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: They gave them splits. Yeah, they basically gave them split's
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: a European smoke. No.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: And so one of the guys who was actually on
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the Truth Drug Committee that was kind of overseeing these
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: drug experiments during World War Two was Harry Anslinger, who
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: of course is launching this crusade against marijuana and at
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: the same time he's overseeing these experiments about dosing people
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: with THHC. So it's very ironic that that was the case.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: It's it's really stunning the kind of damage those people
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: did to just our trust in government. What we you know,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: what we know about these psychedelic compounds and drugs, and
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: like what they did with them that completely changed our
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: idea of what the future of legalization and all these
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: There's there's so much negative impact to what they did.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: On top of what they did, they essentially created. Ted Kazinski, well,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: I'm a little are you on the fence on that.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: I'm a little skeptical of whether mk ultra is connected
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: to that.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Well, it's certainly Harvard and the LSD experiment. Yes, they
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: did at Harvard, and I don't imagine they would do
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: that without the involvement of the government. Yeah, well without
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: them wanting to have access to research. If you have
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: people at Harvard that doing like really critical LSD studies
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: on people humiliation studies.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well with him in particular, the study that he
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: was involved in was Henry Murray was the guy who
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: was running that is like a psychological experiment about I
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: think it was interpersonal relationships where he would basically interrogate
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: them and berate them and see how they reacted to it. Now,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Henry Murray, who ran that experiment with Ted Kazinsky, he
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: did have connections to the intelligence community. I just am
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: not convinced that he was funded by mk Ultra or something.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: His connection he has a couple of connections. One connection
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: that I mentioned in my first book, the Dirty Tricks Department.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: He was tasked with creating psychological profile of German leaders
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: like Hitler, and so the idea was that he would
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: kind of figure out what their psychology was and maybe
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: we could find ways to exploit that psychology. So Stanley Lovell,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: who is the head of this R and D branch
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: of the OSS, he read Henry murray psychological profile of
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Hitler and he decided, maybe I can figure out a
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: way to kind of drive Hitler crazy by using this.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: So Henry Murray, Henry Murray said that Hitler had a
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: very feminine kind of personality. He was on the border
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: between masculine and feminine. And you know, at least that's
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: what Henry Murray is saying in this psychological profile. Stanley
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Level reads that and he thinks, maybe I can exploit
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: this by getting one of the gardeners near the eagleness
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: where Hitler often had some meetings. There were some gardeners
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: down there. We can get an agent to slip a
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: gardener some female sex hormone, and that gardener, that gardener
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: can inject it into the beats that are destined for
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Hitler's plate. Hitler's going to eat it and it's going
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: to like exacerbate this feminine tendency and it's going to
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: make him go crazy or something like that. That was
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: the plan that never went actually happened. But so Henry
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Murray is kind of connected to the OSA in that sense.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: And then later he developed some personality tests for the
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: OSS and CIA. I believe it was for recruits to
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: give these two recruits to determine whether they kind of
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: have the psychological profile file that would be amenable to
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: being an intelligence organization.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Did you see that? They recently did a scan of
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: some blood that was found in Hitler's bunker, and they
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: determined that he has a very unusual gene expression. Can
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: you find out what that is? It's it's something that
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: would lead to him potentially having a micro penis. Yeah,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: which is, you know, like the most obvious psychological profile ever.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: A guy wants to destroy everything in the world. He's
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: got a tiny deck Like.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Maybe Henry Murray was onto something.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Look, yeah, I'm sure he was Hitler's. I'm sure there's
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: something some research behind it, Like somebody must have said
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: something about him.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I hadn't heard of that. I didn't know that.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Hitler's DNA reveals Nazi leader likely had syndrome that can
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: affect genitals. Researchers say. According to the Cleve Clinic, the
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: syndrome can disrupt the process that drives puberty and manifesting
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: symptoms that include undescended testicles and a micro penis. In
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: that wild it is totally makes sense, like we should
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: kill everyone with a micro penis. They're too dangerous.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: It is you know, maybe uh useful to be careful
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: about correlation and causation. A lot of people probably have this, and.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Some people out there, I'm just kidding. Obviously, it's like
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: the nicest people out there. They just have to have
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: a micro penis. Yeah.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Actually, maybe his temperament.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Well, he was also on a bunch
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: of trots. You know, he had like a special doctor
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: and just worked for him.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: And those videos of him at sporting events or whatever,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: he's like back and forth, just completely.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Out of his mind on something. Have you read Norman
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Owler's book Blitz Blitz?
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Yes, I don't know if I've read the whole thing.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I know I dipped into it. I can't remember. If
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: it's insane, yeah, yeah, it is.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: The tired Nazi army was met out of their minds.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know what these there are a lot
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: of LSD experiments after World War Two within the CIA
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: and MK ultra of course, but also army LSD experiments
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: that aren't really connected to MK Ultra. So I don't
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: go into them that much in this book, but there
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: are you know, the British are doing LSD experiments on
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: their personnel. The US military does too, and you know
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: it's just some of the stories that come out of
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: it are very silly and really in just insane. But
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: there there is one document I found that talks about
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: how they were giving these two army personnel, these two
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: soldiers LSD to see how they reacted to it, and
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: so each each of them took the LSD. They were
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: in like a padded room, isolated with each other, so
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: nobody else was there, and they started hallucinating, and one
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: of them pretended to like start smoking a cigarette, and
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: he didn't actually have a cigarette, he had nothing, you know,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: but he just pretended to smoke a cigarette, and the
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: other guy was off in his own world. And then
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the first guy he reached into his pocket and took
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: out an imaginary pack of cigarettes. He didn't actually have one,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: it was just an empty hand, but he was just
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: hallucinating that there was one, and he reached it out
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: to the other guy basically to offer, hey, do you
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: want a cigarette? And the other guy looked at it
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: and he said, no, I couldn't take your last one.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: It's just an empty hand.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: There was nothing.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: No, I couldn't like this shared hallucination or something.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Wow. Wow. I mean also back then we didn't really
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: know too much about that stuff. So they were kind
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: of gathering information about what would happen if you gave
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: someone LSD.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Yep, that's kind of the motivation for mk ultra in
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: the first place. There are several motivating factors. One of
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: them is, how do we get prisoners to speak during
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: an interrogation. Maybe there's some maybe there is some kind
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: of truth drug that can get them to tell us
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: the secrets that we want to know. Another is maybe
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: we can use this to discredit individuals like Fidel castro
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Let's say we dose him with LSD before a big speech.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: He appears to be crazy and his people are going
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: to lose trust in him because he's making nonsense. You know,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: he's just talking gibberish.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Was that proposed?
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, there was proposed a plan to put
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: LSD into cigars that would sneak into cats kind of
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: place that he would smoke before he gave a speech.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: What I don't understand about that is they were trying
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: to kill him. So yeah, if they couldn't get poison
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: into his cigars, why do they think they get asked? Well,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: they have.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: The original plan was to discredit him, and then the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: later plan was to kill him. So there were a
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: couple original plans to discredit him. One is to sneak
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: him LSD to make him appear insane so that his
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: people will lose faith in him. Another one was to
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: slip what's called thallium salts into his shoes, and these
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: are depilatories. They make your hair fall out. And so
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: the idea is that, you know, he's got this masculine,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: masculine allure with his big beard. But if we can
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: slip these depilatories into his shoes and he puts them on,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: his beard's gonna fall out and like Samson, he's going
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: to lose his power or something like that.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: That was the idea.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: So Sidney Gottli was kind of involved in some of
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: these that I talk about in the book. Another one,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: so you have the LSD, you have the depilatory. Another
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: one was to photoshop images basically of Castro with a
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: bunch of beautiful women around him and like a buffet
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: of food in front of him, and to have a
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: captain underneath it. That said, my ration is different to
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: end Kate, like I'm getting all the benefits of you
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: know this, you know it's the spoils of society while
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: my people are going hungry. And so you know, the
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: idea was to spread this around Cuba and have people
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: resent Castro for indulging in all.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: These Well, that one's actually reasonable.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah right, a little bit more than the other.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: That one's probably the closest to accurate. Yeah.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: So those were attempts to discredit Castro, and then there
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: were several attempts to assassinate him that Sidney Gottlieb and
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: others involved kind of in this story do so. Some
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: of the main assassination attempts on Castro involved his hobby
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: of ocean diving. So he liked to dive in the ocean.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: And one idea is that what if we get this
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: really beautiful shell that he would just be unable to
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: pass up. It would be so beautiful that if anyone
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: swam by it, they would obviously want to pick it up.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: We packed the shell full of explosives and put it
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: on have some kind of trigger mechanism for when you
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: pick it up that detonates the explosives. So when he's underwater,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: he's going to swim by this, He's going to see
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: this beautiful shell, He's going to pick it up and
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: it's going to explode. But it turns out they they
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: couldn't really figure out a shell big enough that would
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: catch his interest, you know, so that never happened. Another
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: concept with his scuba diving hobby is that what if
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: we gift him a scuba diving suit. There are people
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: kind of negotiating for the return of the Beyapigs prisoners,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: So what if we get one of those lawyers to
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: gift Castro a suit and in that suit we would
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: lace it with some kind of poison or some kind
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: of fungus that would cause him to break out and
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: what it developed some kind of disease. But it turns
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: out the guy that they wanted to give him the
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: suit had already given him a diving suit, and so
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: it was like, oh, we can't use him anywhere.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Wow. And they were the people running it. Yeah that
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: was the best they could do.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: But it's just the concept of not having any experience
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: whatsoever in any studies about mind control, and just given
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: this assignment, what do you know about mind control? What
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: can we do? How much does it work? What did
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: the Nazis learn during World War Two? Because they did
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: a lot of experiments, right.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: They're doing a lot of experiments, and it is you
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: know I mentioned the osa US is doing truth rug experiments,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: the Nazis are doing truth drug experiments in their concentration
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: camps as well, and the British are doing some truth
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: drug experiments during World War two as well.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: You can get the British ones online, at least the
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: post World War two ones. Was it nineteen fifties? You
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: can if you're seen the British Elst studies. Oh you
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: haven't seen it, No, I don't. Oh, it's wonderful. You
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: should watch it. We'll watch it real quick because it's
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: kind of hilarious. They start breaking out. They can't.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Oh they can't.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: You have seen it, I think, and some of them
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: start laughing in the middle of doing their task. Could
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: they just start laughing uncontrolla when they sit down? Yeah?
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Well, you know during I mentioned those like thhc ascetate
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: experiments during World War Two.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: These guys the giant smiles on their face. Yeah. The
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: guy's having the guard go of it.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he might have been having a down or something.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: He had to be removed from the experiment after thirty
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: five minutes. We'll get the radio operator trying to figure
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: out how to work it just they're just so confused
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: and eventually they just start laying down and just laugh
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: like these guys, these guys just yeah.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and these these THC experiments during World guys, for
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: some of the people, they would give them this TC.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: They would smoke it through a cigarette and you know,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: some of the reactions that talked about was it made
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: them just uncontrollably start laughing, and it put them in
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: a good mood, and like some of the reactions were,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, I mean they were just getting these people
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: high and they.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Were reacting to it didn't make them tell the truth, no, no,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: of course not.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: It did actually make them talk more though, because they
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: they actually recorded these interviews and they would count the
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: number of words per minute that these people spoke, and
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: it turns out after they smoked this, they would they
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: would talk about like forty percent more words per minute.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: But it's not that this guaranteed the truth. They would
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: just they were just talking.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: They're talking about cartoons. Yeah, it's it's just what other
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: drugs did they experiment with. Did the experiment with amphetamines?
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, so one well, I should mention that
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: mk Ultra was broke and then too one hundred and
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: forty nine subprojects. So MKULTRA was the umbrella term, and
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: within mk ULTR there are one hundred and forty nine
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: subprojects that were kind of farmed out to in many
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: cases independent researchers who might be working at a hospital
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: or a prison or a university or something like that.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: One of the main people who is running these studies
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: is a guy named Harris Isbel. At the Lexington Narcotic Farm.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: This is where drug addicts could go to get treatment
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: for their addiction. Prisoners could go there as well, and
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: whenever Sidney Gottlieb found a drug that he was interested in,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: he would basically just give it to Harris Isbel, who
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: could try it out on these prisoners to see how
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: they reacted, and then Isabel would write reports back to Godlieb.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: So he tried psilocybin when that came out LSD, but
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: also stuff like, I mean, heroin. The CIA was particularly
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: interested in heroin because if you can induce an addiction
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: in a captured agent, let's say, then you can use
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: that as leverage and interrogation the withdrawal symptoms, so you
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: get them addicted to heroin and then use the Withdrawson
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: was saying, well, if you tell us about this, maybe I'll.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: You know, give you.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: So that was at least the concept. But there were
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: I mean dozens and dozens of different kinds of drugs
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: they were testing just to see how people reacted to
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: them and if any of them could be used as
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: a potential truth drug.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: The heroin one actually makes sense. I never thought of that. Yeah.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Well, one of the ironies as well about this experiment
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: that I mentioned, you know, Harris's Bell and giving these
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: prisoners all these drugs. The prisoners are in this place
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: it's called the narcotic form because they're supposed to be
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: getting off drugs, you know, they're supposed to be you know,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: curing them of their addiction. At the same time, they're
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: giving them all these drugs to test them out. And
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: then as a reward for participating in these trials, they
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: had two options. Either they could get like a positive
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: letter in the parole board and like one hundred bucks
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: or something, or they could go to the drug bank
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: windows stick out their arm and they would get a
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: needle full of heroin as a reward. So they were
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: supposed to be getting off drugs and yet you're incentivizing
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: them to participate in these drug trials by giving them drugs.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Wow. This episode's brought to you by Visible. When your
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• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's one of one hundred and forty nine subfrotcheckts.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Do are you aware that Heroin was created as a
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: It was a substitute for people that were addicted to morphine?
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: No?
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: No, yeah, I think Google that that's correct, right, Search that.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it's correct. Yeah, they came up with
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: heroin to treat people that were addicted to morphine. Hmm,
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: it's what, Well, that's like oxy giving them oxy cotton
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: if they're addicted to heroin, it's the same thing.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: But getting someone addicted to that and then pulling it
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: away from them seems like it would be very effective
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: in terms of like getting getting them to give up information.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the idea, and so.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Here it is we put it into our sponsor perplexity.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Heroin created as a morphine treatment, originally developed late nineteenth
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: century as a medical drug that was indeed marketed as
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: an improved, non addictive alternative to morphine and as a
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: crop suppressent.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Hey what do you know?
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah? How nuts? Who what company came up with it?
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: German Bear? There you go, fucking Bear. I think at
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: the same time they were doing this, they just find
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: out if it's true that a cid of metaphine is
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: what's toxic and tyl and all correct, find out it's
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: true that at the same time they decided that a
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: ceed of metaphine was too dangerous. Yeah, I mean that
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: the substance you know, that's tyln as the name brand,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: that's the question, did they poor Jamie. If you're hear
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: his voice, he's and gentlemen informed the people at home.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Poor Jamie got a tooth pulled last night. It was
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: it's rough and he not even Yeah, excuse me, last
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: night you were in pain. Today you got a tooth pulled,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: and he's got what looks like a softball stuffed in
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: his cheek. Did they did Bear decide not to release
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: a seed of metaphine during the same time period during
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: the pandemic. I got fascinated with the ceda menaphin because
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: I read this horrible story. But this poor lady who
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: got COVID and she was in real pain, so she
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: took a bunch of a Seda metaphor, she took a
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: bunch of tilanol and kept taking it and apparently didn't
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: realize how dangerous it is to overdose on tilanol. And
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: she died of liver poison. Yeah, And I was like,
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: oh my god, how many people die of liverporis? And
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: it was like five hundred a year in this country.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: It's like a cedemenaphin scary stuff was not being actively
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: held back by Bear at the same period that it
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: promoted heroin and aspen. It was simply not yet recognized
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: or marketed the way those drugs were, and its development
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: adoption followed a different path. Existing historical accounts focused more
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: on scientific uncertainty and competing drugs than on deliberate suppression
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: campaign by bear. I don't think I was. I don't
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: think they were saying in this article that I read
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: that it was that they were suppressing it, that they
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: decided not to focus on it because it was dangerous.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Why ceda menaphine? Last? Early clinicians favored fnacetatine and aceta
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: not How does that work? Is that an a set
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: an eyelid despite their later recognized toxicity, and instead acedamtapines
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: advantages better safety profile at therapeutic doses was not clearly
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: distinguished at first. Okay, anyway, well we're getting off track.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: I was just gonna say one of the ironic things too.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: With some of these MK ultra subprojects, they're interested in
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: finding these supposed truth drugs. I could get someone to
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: tell the truth during an interrogation, But it turns out
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: the even just the threat of giving someone a truth
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: drug turned out to be a lot more effective than
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: any drug that they actually tried out. So, for instance,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: in an interrogation, if you tell someone that this is
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: a truth drug and I'm going to give it to you,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: and you know it's gonna make you tell the truth,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: that can lower their defenses in a bit, in the
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: sense that the person who takes this that might give
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: them kind of the permission to be able to talk
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: because it makes them think, well, I couldn't have stopped myself. Well,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, they gave me this truth drug.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Of course I'm gonna have to say this, so I
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: can't be blamed. No one's gonna blame me. So it
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: takes kind of the burden off their shoulders if they
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: think they've been given a truth drug, even if they haven't.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Just give them a sugar pill. So that actually turned
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: out to be a lot more effective than any of
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: the drugs that they actually tried.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, that totally makes sense.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: They did the same thing with hypnotism too. The hypnotism
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: turned out to be not that effective in at least
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: in an interrogation, but if you could convince someone that they
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: had been hypnotized even if they hadn't, then that could
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: be effective. So, for instance, this is what a guy
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: called Martin orn He was one of the psychologists who
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: was in charge of one of these subprojects, but he
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: put forward what's called the hypnotic situation. Not hypnotism, but
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the hypnotic situation. So, for instance, you pretend to hypnotize
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: someone the person you're interrogating, and they know they're not hypnotized.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: They obviously can tell that you know you're not controlling me,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: this nothing's happening. However, you start saying things like, you know,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: I'm hypnotizing you, and your hands are getting warmer, and
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: they're going to think to themselves and know they're not.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: But under the table you secretly implanted a heater and
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: that their hands actually are getting warmer because where they're
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: sitting there's this heat under that that they don't know exists,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: and it's making their hands warmer. So after a certain
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: period of time, they start thinking to themselves, maybe I
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: am being hypnotized, like the things that he's saying are
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: actually happening. And so if you can make them think
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: that they've been hypnotized again, that lowers their resistance, because
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, who could blame me for talking? Now I've
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: been hypnotized. I couldn't help myself but talk at least
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: that's the idea.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Well, it's just so fascinating to me how much time
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: and effort was spent just studying how to control people's
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: minds and trying to come up with ways to do it. Yeah,
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: so it must have been really exciting to be them,
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: and I think what they did is horrible. I don't
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: you know. I'm not in any way for giving mk
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Ultra for what they did. However, boy, it must have
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: been fun just to have no oversight. No one even
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: knows you exist.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: You kind of get this impression by looking at some
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: of these mk Ultra documents, especially at the beginning before
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the frankals and incident. Frankleson eventually dies after one of
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: these experiments, and so that kind of that definitely puts
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: a damper on a lot of things that are going
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: on before that.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Though.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: I do get the sense that it's almost like they're
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: a bunch of guys just trying to, you know, play
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: around with each other in a way, even though what
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: they're doing is completely unethical. But they would just be
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: dosing like the CIA coffee pot and see what happens
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: to people who are taking drinks of it, just to
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, the rationale is that, well, if the Soviets
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: possess some kind of hallucin inggenic drug and they were
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: going to going to release it into the water supply
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: of a city, we need to know how people would
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: react to that because we need to know how to
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: defend against that. Therefore, we should be doing that to
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: people just to see how they react to it, so
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: that we know what kind of signs to look for
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: in case the Soviets do that.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Didn't they dose up a town in France.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: I don't think the CIA was connected to that. I mean,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: I think it actually was like an ergot poisoning that
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: came from the bread from the I think so. But yeah,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: there is, but there.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Was some speculation that it was purpose.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the town's called Pont Saint Aesprie, I believe. But yeah,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: there were multiple dozens of people who came down with
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: hallucinogenic symptoms. They were one guy stripped naked and started
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: running around the street. Multiple people died after this. But
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: that was one of the things that led the CIA
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: to become really interested in hallucinogens, because if a poisoning
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: from a bakery could cause that much havoc within this
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: one French Town. How much more damaging would it be
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: if the Soviets did that to a city's water supply?
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: And so that that kind of just cia. That's the justification.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: So they start exhosting the coffee pots and they're running brothels.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that's the crazy one Operation Midnight Climax.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Look it up, folks, because it's really crazy. They they
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: had their own brothels and they would use two way
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: mirrors with cameras behind them and they would dose the
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: johns up that'd give them. Would you like a drink?
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: Have a seat? And he goes sure, I'll I have
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: a drink. And this poor guy get off of work,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: has a drink, thinks he's going to be with a
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: prostitute and have some nice sex. Next you know, he's
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: just tripping out of his mind while he's being recorded
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: by Jolly West.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know the guy who actually ran that is
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: a guy named George White, and he was involved in
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: the OSS, so he was you know, I mentioned Stanley
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Lovell and the thhc ascetate. George White was the guy
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: who was hired to do that in the OSS. Then
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Sidney Gottlieve when he's thinking I need to do these
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: drug experiments for myself. Who am I going to get it?
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: To do it for me? I need someone who has
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: connections to the underworld, who has criminal connections. George White
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: was a Bureau of Narcotics officer, and so Gottlieb was
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: going through the OSS files and it turns out this
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: guy's already done these experiments. I'm gonna hire him. So
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: that's how George White eventually gets involved in the CI stuff.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Wow, I can't wait for this show. Because David Chase
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: gets a hold of a subject like this, there's so
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: much room like it's so endlessly fascinating.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I'm really excited, obviously for me. I mean, it's just
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: so lucky that he happened to be interested in this
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: kind of topic. I mean, there are a lot of
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: books out there on any number of topics that anyone
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: could be interested in. But the fact that you know,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, I do consider myself extremely lucky. I happened
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: to write this book at the right time, and someone
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: happened to be interested at the right time. So yeah,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: I can't wait for that to come out.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very happy that you did write this book,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: and I'm very happy to this happen because I talk
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: to people about the subject, you know, like normis per se,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: and they they look at you sideways, like what did
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: they do? They do? What they're responsible for manson what huh?
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: And it's like, oh, my god, the rabbit hole is
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: so deep. I don't have enough battery in my flashlight
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: to take you down this rabbit hole.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: That's one of the things with mk ulture just in general,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, initially reading about this, my first impression is
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: that obviously that that's like a you know, conspiracy theory
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: or it can't be right, but some conspiracies are true.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: And the mkultr stuff, they actually did this. They were
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: dosing people using prostitutes behind a one way mirror. George
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: White sitting on a toilet watching this happen there, you know.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, even besides drugs, mk Ultra is involved in
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of psychological experiments, so not just LSD. Most
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: people associate mk ulture with LSD, but one of the
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: one of the most expansive of the subprojects is Subproject
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: sixty eight. It was by this guy named you and Cameron.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Have you heard heard that name before?
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Camera?
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, you and Cameron. He is a psychiatrist up in
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Montreal in Canada, working at what's called the Allen Memorial Institute,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: and Gottlieb wanted to expand MK ultra besides drugs because
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: he already had a lot of people doing drug experiments.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: So he wanted to see if there were psychological techniques
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: that could be used to manipulate a person. So not
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: just in an interrogation, but can we actually like control
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: a person's personality. Can we make them behave in certain ways,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: make them do something? So the idea that you and
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Cameron had come up with before the CIA is involved,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: I should mention you. And Cameron is a behaviorist, so
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: he thinks that all behavior is a result of nurture,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: not nature. So it's the environmental input that causes a
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: person to behave a certain way. And he thought that
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: if you could bring a person back down to a
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: blank slate, remove all the environmental inputs that have put
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: into them, and then you can build them back up
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: in your image into whatever you want them to be.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: So his idea to bring someone down to the blank
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: slate was to induce enough stress that they forgot who
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: they formerly were, and so you reduce them to the
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: blank slate, and then the CIA is really interested in
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: if you could do that, then you could form them
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: into whatever. So you and Cameron his main goal is
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: to try to figure out what can induce enough stress
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: in a person to bring them down to that blank slate,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: and so he performs a lot of experiments. His most
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: famous one is called psychic driving, where he was doing
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: a therapy session quote unquote therapy with one of his
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: patients and he was recording the session and she said
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: something about, how, you know, my mother when I was young,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: used to tell me blah blah blah. You know, she
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: said something negative to her, and so you and Cameron
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: rewinded that on the tape that he was recording and
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: made her listen back to it and said, hey, I
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: want you to listen back to what you say your
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: mother used to say to you. When he rewinded the
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: tape and played it forward. As soon as the woman
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: was kind of quoting her mother and she listened to
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: that herself on the tape, she recoiled and Cameron thought, oh,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: you have a negative reaction to that. So he rewinded
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: again and again and again, and he kept rewinding it
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: and she just got more and more emotional, had this
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: more and more kind of visceral reaction to what she
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: was saying her mother used to tell her. So this
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: led Cameron to develop the concept of psychic driving, which
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: is you record some kind of negative message and then
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: you make someone listen to it for thousands and thousands
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and thousands of times for weeks on end, for hours
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: every day, all their waking day. They basically are strapped
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: into a headphone that is playing this negative message and
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: it will break them down over time. That's how you
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: induce enough stress to break them down to the blank slate,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: and then you can record a positive psychic driving message
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: to build them up into whatever image you want them
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: to be. So that was his initial idea.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Was it based on anything.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: It was just based on he had this one encounter
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: with this woman as she had a negative reaction and
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: he's just trying to induce stress. This obviously seemed to
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: induce stress in her. Therefore, we're going to start playing
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: these negative tapes to them.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: So it was just his idea.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: It's just his idea. He was known for doing this
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: kind of thing, like kind of spur the moment. In fact,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: there was one there was one kid basically who had
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: been at this Allen Memorial Institute where Ewan Cameron was.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: He had eventually had gotten out, but he had tried
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: to commit suicide, and so he was sent back to
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: the Allen Memorial Institute. But the way that he had
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: tried to commit suicide was to close the garage and
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: have the CO two build up with a running car
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: and then he would you know, breathe it in and
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: pass out and die. That ended up not working. However,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: when he went back to the Allen Memorial Institute, Ewan
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Cameron thought, you know, his personality seems like a little
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: bit better than it was that when he was here before.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Maybe CO two can like influence someone, and so he
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: sent out some of his some of his assistants to
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: go by like CO two canisters and we're going to
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: start like giving this to people. But it turns out
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: the assistance knew that this was like completely unethical. There's
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: no medical basis for anything, and so they lied to
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: him and said, oh, the canisters were way more expensive
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: than we could actually afford. That we can't do that.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: But so he was he was just he was trying
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: to find any way that he could have a breakthrough
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: to cure mental illness, and he was using his patients
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: as guinea pigs, complete guinea pigs, complete guinea poos.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: What was the result with the woman, the woman where
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: they played the negative.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: I don't well, there there are dozens and dozens of
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: people who that happened to. I don't know about her,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: in particular because I don't know if she's actually named
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: in the documents, So I don't I don't know.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Any of these experiments have a positive effect.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, we're hardly, hardly hardly. So that was why I.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Should he say positive? I should say were they effective? No?
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: No, For the most part, the people who he did
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: his practice on came out way worse than when they
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: went in, so psychic driving. That's initially what got the
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: CIA interested in Cameron. So it's important to keep in
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: mind it's not that the CIA told Cameron to do this.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: He's doing this on his own because he thinks he's
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: going to cure mental illness by having this radical breakthrough
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: where we break them down and build them back up,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: and we can build them back up and make them
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: forget their schizophrenia or depression or whatever they have. The
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: CIA reads his article about psychic driving, and they think
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing we're interested in. So
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: from that point on they start funding him not only
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: to do psychic driving experiments, but also he does like
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: puts people in chemical comas for months on end, and
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: while they're in these chemical comas, he would put an
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: audio device next to their pillow playing these psychic driving messages,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: and he would put them in sensory deprivation chambers for weeks.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: You know, they would have goggles over the their eyes,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: ear musts on their ears, they would have cardboard tubes
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: over their arms so that they couldn't feel anything, and
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: they would just be in a room for weeks on end.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: The idea again being to induce enough stress so that
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: it breaks them down so that you can eventually build
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: them up. But one of the saddest stories in the
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: book really is of this woman named Mary Morrow, who
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: is one of the patients of You and Cameron in Montreal.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: The sad thing about her especially is she had been
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: a resident in training at the Allen Memorial Institute under
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Ewan Cameron, so she had been training to be a
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: doctor under him, and she had administered some of these techniques,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: including electric shock, so that's one of the things too.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: We would put these electrodes on the heads of people
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: and just he would continually shock them until again, the
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: idea was to reduce them to like in one case,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: he says, an infantile like state, where they lose control
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: of their bladder. They can't eat, they can't talk, they
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: can't go to the bathroom on their own, they can't
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: put on their own clothes or anything like that. So
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: she was in charge of administering some of these I mean,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: you know, therapy sessions or whatever they would call it,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: but just basically torture to these people. She ended up
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: having almost kind of a psychotic break herself. She became
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: anorexic and she failed her neurology exams, and so she
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: went into a really deep depression. She attempted to commit suicide.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: That didn't work. She was admitted to the hospital, to
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: another hospital. You and Cameron came to visit her and
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: he said, I think you should come back to the
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Allan Memorial, not as a doctor, but as a patient
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: and let me treat you. So she ends up going
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: back to the Allan Memorial as a patient, and she
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: thought to herself that it's going to be Okay, they're
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: not going to do the electric shock to me because
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: you had to sign a consent form, and you know
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: for that to happen to you, you know, the people
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: who are signing the consent forms, they don't know how
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: bad it's actually going to be. They're just signing their name.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: But she knows I haven't signed a consent form, so
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: they can't do that to me. But it turns out,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: in the time since she went to the hospital and
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: came back, they had stopped doing the consent forms and
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: he would just do this on whoever. And so they
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: ended up doing this electric shock treatment treatment on her,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and you know, afterwards, she would be babbling and continent,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: couldn't put on her makeup or clothes or anything. Eventually
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: her she would call her mother after some of these treatments,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: and her mother knew something was going on because she
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: just became more and more incoherent as time went on.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: So the mother sent Mary's sister, Margaret, in order to
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: go to the Allen Memorial to basically bust her out
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: of there. So the sister walked in the front door
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and said, I'm not leaving until I see Mary. You know,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: I'm going to call the police if you don't let
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: me through. So eventually she goes to her sister's room,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: opens the door and Mary is sitting there just with
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: wide bug eyes, you know, doesn't even recognize her sister.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: It takes several days for her to figure out where
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: she actually is, and then she gets busted out of there.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: So it's a very reversible in any way, was it
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: in her case. I'm not exactly sure. She went on
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: to have a little bit of a career, but she
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: eventually attempted to commit suicide later again that was unsuccessful.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Then her and several of the victims of you and
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Cameron's experiments in the nineteen eighties, they ended up suing
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: the CIA for supporting Ewan Cameron. And during those lawsuits,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: the attorneys who are representing them, they took the depositions
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: of several of the people who were involved in MK
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: ultra to try to use this during their trial. So
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: they took to depicentions of Sidney Gottlie, Robert Lashbrook, Richard
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Helms ahead of the CIA and many of the victims
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: who were victims of all this, And that's basically the
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: basis for my book. I found thousands of pages of
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: these depositions. That's just verbatim transcript of these people talking
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: about either what they did or what was done to them.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: And so I'm using that throughout the book to explain,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: here's what they're doing in their own words, or here's
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: what was done to them in their own words.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: Wow. Well, so what was the result of the trial?
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Oh well, so it was actually settled out of court
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: before it went to trial. So the plaintiffs, the CIA
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: gave the plaintiffs seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: be split among them. But you know, after attorneys fees
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: and everything, it doesn't really amount to much anyway, and so,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: you know, they settle out of court. They got a
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: little bit of money, but it never went to trial.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: And so these depositions though, you know, since it never
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: went to trial, these were just in the papers of
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Joseph Row, who's the main lawyer who was involved in
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: this case. And when he passed away, his papers were
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: donated to the Library of Congress that had all these
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: thousands of pages of depositions in there, eight hundred and
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: twenty three pages of which are Sidney Gottlieb testifying about
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: what he did in mk Ultra, and so I was
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: rooting around the Library of Congress and happen to find them.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: So that's how I found basically the basis for what
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: this book is.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: Wow. Wow. I wonder how much of that woman's psychological
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: breakdown had to do with the guilt of performing those
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: experiments on people and realizing that it wasn't doing anything
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah you thought you and Cameron thought I was going
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: to do. In fact, was destrawing people's minds.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe some. I mean it's just speculation because I'm
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: not sure of course that had to have waided on
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: the consciences. You know, there's in what was called the sleeproom,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: you and Cameron's sleep room. This is where they would
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: do the chemical comas one of the nurses. I have
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: kind of her diary entries basically describing what she was seeing,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: and she does seem to be pretty reluctant to have
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: done what she was actually doing. And You and Cameron,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: she said, would often come over to her and pat
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: her on the biack and say, you know, you're helping
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: these people, You're helping these people, just trying to coax
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: her to go along with what he was telling her
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: to do.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: You and camerons size like a complete mad man. Like
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: he was almost like too good to be true, not
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: too good, but too like mad scientists to be true.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Was he on any sort of drugs.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've never seen anything to indicate that he
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: was on drugs, but he definitely had a almost like
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: a Messiah complex. He thought, I'm going to be the
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: one to win the Nobel Prize in medicine because I'm
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: going to cure all mental illness through this psychic driving
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: or whatever it was. He was going to be the
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: next Sigmund Freud. He really had delusions of grandeur, just
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: like I think Jolly West did as well, and so
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: I think that drove a lot of what he was doing.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: His patients were just a means to his own end.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: They're the guinea pigs that I can use to prove
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: that these medical techniques actually work, and therefore everyone's going
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: to praise me because I've cured you know, schizophrena or
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: whatever it is.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: I'm just always suspicious of something that has that someone
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: has that kind of access to all sorts of compounds
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: mm hmm. Like and then you're experimenting on people, and
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: you know, especially with things like amphetamines which do tend
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: to make people a little less empathetic, a little more driven.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: You know, I would be very curious to see if
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: he was interested in anything like that.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't remember specifically for him in that case.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: I mean many of the people who are either running
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: the sub projects or approving them, like Sidney Gottlieb. Gottlieb
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: took a lot of LSD. You know, he was when
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: the CIA got LSD. Before it gave it to other people,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: the first thing they did was try it for themselves
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: to see what actually happened. So Sidney Gottlieb took it
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: multiple times before he ever even gave it to people
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: to understand what it was like.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: And you know one of the physician who was the
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: attending physician the first time he took LSD. They did
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: it in kind of a controlled setting with several other
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: people there, a guy named Harold Abramson. And for anyone
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: listening who knows much about the Frank Olsen incident, Frank
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Olsen is a guy that would later be dosed with LSD.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: He would go out the hotel window in New York.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: And Harold Abramson is the guy who Sidney Gottlieb and
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Robert Lashbrook. They took to New York to get treatment
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: from Harold Abramson afterwards, so he had the CIA connection.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Wow. The reason why I brought up in fetamines is
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: because I feel like it might be the one of
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: the unheralded or undiscussed drivers in a lot of psychopathic
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: behavior that we see in our culture today. I think
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of people on prescribed amphetamines that operate
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: in a way that is very, very much like a
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: functional meth head, you know what I mean. And I
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: would wonder like if you were in charge of doing
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: something this evil, just running experiments where you're destroying people's
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: minds and you're getting no positive results, none of it's work,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: and yet you continue to do it, and you even
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: do it to people that used to be involved in
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: the program with that poor woman, Like, what's the psychological
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: profile of that guy? Because he's obviously mentally ill, which
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: is fascinating, right, It's fascinating that a mentally ill person
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: is working on a mind experiment program, because there's no
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: ways not mentally ill like to have no empathy to
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: these people that you've tried all this stuff on and
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: not only has it not been effective and not rid
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: them of mental illness, it's made them far worse.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. For Yeah, for you and Cameron, he I feel
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: like he's definitely lacked empathy, whether that's some kind of
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: medically medical thing or whatever. There are a couple of
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: people in the book I think who are like that.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: One of them is you and Cameron. Another is George White,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: who is in charge of Operation Midnight Climax. He was
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: in it just for the fun of it. He would
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: dose his own friends with LSD just to see what
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: would happen.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: There's one story in the book. There was a woman
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: who had gone over to a dinner party. Basically she
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: had actually gone over with her husband a few weeks before,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: but George White didn't dose them because the husband was there.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: The husband went away on a business trip, so the
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: woman and her friend they ended up going to see
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: George White to hang out and White dose them with LSD.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: The woman had her one year old son there with her,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: but he still dosed them with LSD. She ends up
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: basically going crazy. I mean she you know, she goes home,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: she ends up calling, you know, George White, asking what's happened?
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: To me, what's going on. One of these women, she
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: ended up being committed to a mental institution for basically
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: the rest of her life after this happened to her.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: So she had some kind of like psychotic break after
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: this unwitting surreptitious dose of LSD. Of course, she didn't
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: know what was going on, so she thought her whole
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: world was collapsing. Yeah, she lost her husband. It was
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: said that she would cower in the corner of her parents',
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: you know, house before she went to this mental institution,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: convinced that an unidentified they was like looking after her
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: or trying to get her, you know, calling on the phone.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: None of this was happening, but she was just having
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: these delusions that someone was out to get her. That's
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: kind of a recurring theme that you see in these
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: people who are unwittingly dosed. One of them. One of
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: the saddest stories in the book is a guy named
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Wayne Ritchie, and George White did the same thing to him.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: But Wayne Ritchie was this He was a guard at
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Alcatraz for a while. This is in San Francisco, and
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: he had gone to a Christmas party at the post
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: office there in San Francisco, just for you know, he
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: was a US marshal too, so just the US marshals whatever.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: And that night he was drinking you know, some of
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: the punch at this party, and he started feeling very strange.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: He started seeing colors, the room started spinning around him.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: He ended up going upstairs to where his locker was
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: and you know, getting his things, and he wound up
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: going home because he didn't you know, know what was
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: going on. When he got home, his girlfriend was upset
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: at him. She said that, you know, I'm not happy here.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: I want to move to New York. And so when
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: he's in this fog, he decides, I know how to
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: set my life on track. I'm going to grab a
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: couple of my service revolver revolvers. I'm going to go
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: to a bar downtown. I'm gonna rob it, and I'm
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: going to give the money to my girlfriend so she
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: can go to New York and she'll be happy, and
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: so she won't break up with me. So, when he's
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: in this fog, he ends up doing all this. He
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: gets his revolvers, he goes to a bar downtown. He
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: you know, basically has a stick up, give me all
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: the money in the till a quick thinking patron who's
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: sitting next to him basically gets the mug of beer
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: and smashes it over his head, so he falls down.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: The ops come later, they arrest him. He's in jail.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: After a day or two, he kind of sobers up
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: and kind of awakens from this fog, and he doesn't
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: know what happened to him. At that point, he ends
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: up losing his job, losing his friends. For the next
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: thirty forty years, he doesn't know what happened until in
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine he was reading the Washington Post and
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: he saw an article describing mk Ultra, and two things
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: in particular stuck out to him. One was George White,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: whom he knew back in the days when he was
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: a USh Marshall Marshall, and the other one was a
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: description of LSD. And so Wayne Ritchie starts putting all
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: this together and thinking, I think George White gave me
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: LSD that night at the holiday party and spiked the
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: punch bowl, and that's what happened. And it turns out
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: you can see in this book in the photo section,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: the last photo in the photo section of my book,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: it's an image of George White's diary from the day
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: that Wayne Ritchie went insane, and it says Federal Building
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Christmas party. So he was there at the Christmas party.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Wow, imagine being that guy reading that article thirty years later,
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: realizing this guy ruined my life for fun. Yeah.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: So he ended up suing the CIA, but the judge
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: said that he couldn't prove that he had been dosed
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: with drugs, so they couldn't ruin his favor, and so
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: that was it.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: Oh jeesus.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but there are I mean, there are dozens of stories.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: Like fucking psycho. Yeah, what a fucking psycho. That's just
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: he's doasting up the punch bowl, ruining lives.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: And he knows how messed up it is because by
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: that point he had done this to multiple people and
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: called them and caused them to lose a lot, you know,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: so he knew what he was doing at that point.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: God that this is just what happens with people when
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: they have that kind of unchecked power and no oversight. Yeah,
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: and they're the kind of psychopaths that would be involved
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: in this sort of experimentation in the first place.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, No, So I think he's probably the most
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: heinous of the individuals in this book, all of them
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: are to a degree, Sidney Gottlieb I think he I
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: don't think he's as heinous in the sense that he's
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: like intentionally trying to harm people. He thinks he's doing
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: this for a patriotic reason. He thinks mk Ultra is
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: actually going to help us defend ourselves against the Soviet Union.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: There is some like moral justification at least he has
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: for himself, so it's not all just, you know, whatever
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: George White is doing. But at the same time, Sidney
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Gottlieb doesn't really take any responsibility for what happens to
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: these people. Basically, the way that mk Ultra was structured
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: with these subprojects, Sidney Gottlieb wasn't running these experiments himself.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: What he would do is he would fund other people
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: to do experiments. And most of the time these people
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: were experts in their own fields, so they were like
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: reputable people. You and Cameron was the head of the
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: American Psychiatric Association, the Canadian Psychiatric Association, and the World
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: Psychiatric Association. He was like the most famous psychiatrist in
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: the world, and he was being funded by this. So
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Sidney Gottlieb thought, well, if I can fund reputable psychiatrists
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: or drug recce sear to do these experiments, then it's
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: up to them to provide the safety and the procedures,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: you know, to keep these patients safe. It's not my job.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: They're the ones who are conducting the experiments. That's how
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: he justified it to himself. But that's how the structure
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: of mk ultra typically worked such a diffusitive responsible Exactly,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Gottlieb is funding people and he's not even funding them directly.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: In most cases. What's happening is he's using cutout organizations,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: so he's giving them money to core. One of them
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: is called the getchik Are Fund. One of them caused
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: that the National Institutes of Mental Health, and then the
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: CIA sets sets up its own cutout organization called the
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, which it is
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: a it's just a made up organization. But so the
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: CIA would transfer the funds to the society, who would
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: then transfer to the researcher. In many cases, the researchers
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: didn't even know they were being funded by the CIA.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: They just thought, oh, I got a grant from this organization.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: That's great, So they don't even know that their true
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: patron is Sidney Gottlieb and mk Ultra. They just know, oh,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: they want me to do these experiments, and in many
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: cases there are allowed to still publish their work, you know,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: so you know they're publishing this. Nothing's changed that much
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: from what they were doing before. But it turns out
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: their patron is actually the CIA, who wants to make
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: sure they continue doing these experiments just in case they
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: find something that could be of use.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, what was your journey personally like both
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: researching these subjects and then writing books about it? Because
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: what what? How? What was your opinion on all these
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: things before this and how much of it's how much
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: of it has shaped your worldview?
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: So with the probably the first book is more formative
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: to the shaping of my worldview, just because you know,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: I that was the first one I did.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: So what was your perspective before getting involved in any
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: of this material?
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm pretty much I would consider myself a skeptic generally,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: you know, so when stuff gets a little too outlandish,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: I am pretty skeptical. But of course that the existence
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: of mk Ultra and even in my first book, The
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Journey Tricks Department. There are some there are some projects
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: that are even more outlandish than some of the stuff
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: I've been talking about with MK Ultra, And so that
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: kind of lowered my barriers to thinking that, oh, people
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: are crazy here, like, oh, the government does actually perform
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: these crazy, you know projects of the One of the
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: ones that really lowered my barriers to that for the
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: first book was called Operation Fantasia. And again it's just
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: a testament to the absurdity of some of the ideas
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: that were happening in World War two and with just
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: within the intelligence community. Operation Fantasia was the brainchild of
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: this guy named Ed Salinger, and he had been a
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: businessman who had done imports and exports with Tokyo. In Tokyo,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: so he knew Japanese culture, he knew the language, he
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: knew the religious beliefs. The OSS wanted to exploit that
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: by trying to find a way we can we can
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: demoralize the Japanese. You know a lot about the Japanese psyche.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: The idea was Ed Salinger, So figure out a way
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: we can do moralize the Japanese and make them basically
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: give up this war because you know they're dug in
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: they're not giving up. We need to find a way
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: that we can basically use psychological warfare on them. So
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: his idea is that in the Shinto religion there are
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: these kind of mystical figures called kitsunni, and in many
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: cases they tape the form of like a fox, a
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: glowing fox, and oftentimes they represent portents of doom. So
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: you know, if you see one of these kitsuni, it's
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: an indication that something bad is about to happen. And
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: so Salinger knew, what if we can artificially create kitsuni
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: spread them around Japan, then all these Japanese soldiers are
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: going to see them and think, oh, that's a portent
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: of doom. Surely it means we're going to lose the war. Therefore,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: we might as well lay down our arms right now.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: And so Salinger initially his idea is we're going to
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: create whistles that can make fox sounds, and we're going
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: to distribute them across Japan to our agents there, and
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: they can blow these whistles like anyone would recognize a
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: fox sound. He had the idea that we're going to
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: create artificial fox odors and spread it around places and
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: people are going to think that it's kitsunny foxes that
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: are walking around. None of those ever materialized. But then
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: he thought, what if we actually do it. What if
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: we capture foxes from China and Australia, we paint them
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: with glowing radioactive paint and then wed and then we
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: drop them in Japan. Surely that's going to scare the Japanese.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: So there are actually several experiments. Oh my god, they
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: did this, So they captured foxes. The United States Radium
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Corporation produced a paint with radium radioactive, but it's.
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: So loom from like exact.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Exactly, it's the same kind of thing.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: It glowed on them.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: So they decided, we're gonna paint foxes with this. But
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: they first needed to test whether it's possible to paint
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: fur with us and it stay on. So they went
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: to the Central Park Zoo and they got a raccoon
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: and they painted it and kept it under lock and key,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: and it turns out, after a few days of ordinary
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: raccoon shenanigans, the paint stayed on. So they thought, okay,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: this might have something going for it. So then Salinger decided,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: we're going to paint these foxes, row them out into
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: the middle of the Chesapeake Bay and throw them overboard
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: to see if they can actually swim to shore. Because
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: if we're gonna get these foxes to Japan, we're gonna
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: have to throw them off the coast and they're gonna
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: have to swim and then scare people. But can foxes
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: even swim? He didn't know. So he gets these foxes,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: he paints them with this paint. He throws them in
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, and it turns out
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: they actually swammed ashore, so that worked. However, by the
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: time they had gotten to shore, the paint had all
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: washed off, and so well, yeah, it's like if we
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: were to do this in Japan, the paints it just
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: you see a fox, it's not a Katsuni has to
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: be a glowing fox. And so he decided, well, that's
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: not gonna work. So his next plan, this is this
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: is one of the craziest things I found from my
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: first book. The next plan was, We're going to stuff
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: a fox, a dead fox, just taxidermy it. Have this
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: fox body, We're gonna paint it with his glowing paint.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: We can drape a cloth over it and paint glowing
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: bones on it to make it look like a skeleton.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: And we're gonna put a human skull over this foxhead
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: to make it look as if it's a human skull,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: because apparently this was like an even more potent version
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: of the Katsunni myth that was going around in Japan.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: So we're gonna put this human skull on this taxon
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: army glowing fox. We're gonna have the jaw open and
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: close as if it's talking, and we're gonna blast propaganda
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: out of this skull, and we're gonna attach balloons it
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: so that it can fly over Japan. The Japanese are
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: going to look up and see this flying, glowing, radioactive
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: fox spreading this propaganda, and they're apparently going to lay
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: down their arms. I guess that was the plan, And
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: so that was his ultimate idea of what we can
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: do to.
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: Did they touch that they attempt.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: It that never actually made it. About the time that
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: he was writing all this up and doing these experiments,
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project had performed the Trinity test, and so
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: it's like, well, we already have the weapon that's going
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: to win the war, so we don't end the glowing
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: foxes thank you very much.
• 55:28
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• 56:57
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So when you when you research stuff like that,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's like, well, anything is kind
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: of possible.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: The problem is most people haven't researched it. So when
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: you're having conversations with people like I've always been conspiratorially minded,
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: but more in the fun side, like Bigfoot UFOs dumb
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: stuff as a distraction, Like I know what it is.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: I'm interested because it's silly, you know, and I just
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: find it fun. Like the Bigfoot thing is, I watched
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: a Bigfoot documentary the other night, against my own better judgment,
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: and now my YouTube algorithm is filled with Bigfoot stories.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: It's just the dumbest thing. Ever, but when I started
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: doing the podcast, it slowly shifted my perspective of not
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: only are there real conspiracies, but they're way more prevalent
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: than you would ever think, and you you almost have
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: to get lucky to find out about them, you know.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: Like one of the things from the book Chaos was
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: Tom O'Neil describing some of the documents that were discovered
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: in got. I believe it was a storage unit that
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: where they had.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: Like the ultra. Oh yeah, yeah, you remember. That's the
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: jenisicic part of my book. So in nineteen seventy five
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: or so, really in nineteen seventy four, there's something called
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: the Rockefeller Commission, and that was an executive commission set
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: up to investigate past abuses of the intelligence community, and
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: that kind of led to the Church Committee in nineteen
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: seventy five and also the Pike Committee in the House.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: But after they published their final reports, those reports included
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: things about MK Ultra, that the US government had performed
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: these secret drug experiments in the past, and that led
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: a former State Department employee named John Marx to file
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: a Freedom of Information Act request basically for any and
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: all documents related to these former drug experiments, and so,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: you know, not too long afterwards, this a CIA, this
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: guy named Frank Loubringer. He was working in like the
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: CIA archives, but he discovered these six or seven boxes
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: of material that Sidney Gottlieb hadn't destroyed when he retired
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: from the CIA. Because Gottlieb incinerated most of his files,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: and so did Richard Helms. They were in on this together.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: But it turns out those boxes escaped the destruction because
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: they had been sent to the CIA Record Center several
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: years before Gottliebin Helms retired. Therefore they weren't incinerated in
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: this purge, and so they survived. So Marx filed that
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: information request, these boxes were found and then they were released,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: And this was right around the time that there were
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: a couple of subcommittee hearings on mk ultra, and that's
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: right when all these documents came out too, so it
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: became kind of a big deal. But so that's how
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of documents related to mkultra survived, even
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: though Gottlieb and Helm's incinerated most of the files that
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: they actually.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: Had, which leads you to consider what would we know
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: if those documents hadn't been discovered. Yeah, we would be
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: decades behind on this.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they do reveal a lot of information that said,
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: we can actually kind of run this scenario because we
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: do know what we kind of knew before those documents
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: were released. So before those documents were released, you still
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: had the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee and a
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: few other things. But so we would have known still
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: because it came out before those documents about the Frank
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: Olsen incident. This guy was dosed with LSD at this
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: place called Deep Creek and he ended up going out
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: the window of the Stateler Hotel in New York he died.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: We would have known about Operation Midnight Climax, even though
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that name was specifically used within
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: these committee publications. So we would have known a great name. Well,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: that's George White's doing. Sidney Gottlieb said he had a
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: flare with a pin like he was a journalist before
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: he go Yeah, yeah, he was. In fact, while we're
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: on that topic, at the end of Operation Midnight Climax,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: he wrote a letter to Sidney Gottlieb basically thanking him
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: for supporting me for all these years. Out of all
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: the MP Elder subprojects. You know a lot of them
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: started in nineteen fifty three. Many of them were done
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: by nineteen sixty three, but several continued into the late sixties.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: But he after this was done, he wrote a letter
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: to Sidney Gottlieb and the depositions that I found. The
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: attorneys confront Gottlieb about this, and they ask him what
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: was in that letter? And Gottlieb says, oh, you know,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: he had a flare for riting. You can't trust anything,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: he said, But no, what wasn't It turns out what
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: was in it? George White wrote, I toiled in the
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: vineyards wholeheartedly because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: could a red blooded American boy lie cheat steel, rape
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: and pillage with a sanction and blessing of the all highest?
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: He wrote that down, Yeah, God, yeah, So we.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: Would have known about the Frank Olinson incident. We would
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: have known about Operation Midnight Climax, though maybe not that name.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: We would have known the broad outlines of MK Ultra
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: because that was already released before those files. But the
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: files give us a really detailed view of what happened.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: But we don't know what was in the files that
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: were incinerated. That's correct, you imagine that.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we we kind of do know a little bit
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: about what was in them, because there was an investigation
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: that was done afterwards, because it was illegal for them
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: to destroy these files, not that anything ever happened to them.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: They didn't face any consequences for it. However, Gottlieb's secretary,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: this woman who had only been working for him for
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: a few weeks before he retired, he told her to
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: basically incinerate these files, you know, to help him do this.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: So she didn't know it was against protocol or whatever.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: She was new to the job. But she was interviewed
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: later as part of a CIA investigation into the destruction
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: of the files, and she does say a little bit
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: about what she thinks were in the files. She says
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: it was some of his personal papers and there was
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: secret and secret sensitive files in there. We don't really
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: have a great idea about what it could be, although
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: I do think a lot of the files were in
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: the depositions that I found George White or Sidney Gottlieb
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: says that George White would write to him personal updates
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: about the experiments that he was doing in these you know,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Brothels basically, and so I'm assuming that a lot of
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: those files consisted of George White's personal reports on what
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: was going on.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: Now, when you get deeper and deeper into this stuff,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: how much has it shaped your worldview?
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: A decent amount in the sense that, just as it
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: did for kind of the American public in general in
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies when this was coming out, it really
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: led people to cast a skeptical eye towards the government
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: in thinking it's just assumed that the government is supposed
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: to be the protector of civil liberties. But after Watergate,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: after MK Ultra, after the Vietnam War, it starts to
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: seem as if the government is infringing on those civil liberties,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: you know, instead of being the protector of it. And
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: in many cases it's infringing on them. Not that it
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: doesn't protect civil liberties. But one of the main things
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: that I came away after writing this book is the
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: problem of oversight. You know, I think the constitutional system
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: of government that we have is in genius, the fact
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: that we have checks and balances in the separation of powers. However,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: you have to enable the separate branches of government to
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: be able to check the other branches. For most of
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: the Cold War, that external check on the executive branch,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: Congress checking the executive, the president or the CIA didn't
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: really exist. So anytime that the CIA was doing an operation,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: I have a chapter about this, but you know, sometimes
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: the CIA personnel would try to inform members of Congress
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: of what they were doing. I have one specific quote
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: where a CIA guy walks up to a sitting senator
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: and says, hey, let me tell you about what we're
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: doing in Chile or whatever it is, and he says, no,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: I don't want to hear it. Don't tell me, just
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: do what you're gonna do. He doesn't even want to know.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: So it's like, how can you expect Congress to give
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: oversight of the executive if they are completely unwilling to
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: even know what the executive is doing. So fortunately, in
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: the aftermath of these revelations, there have been some some
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: programs or committees that are set up within Congress to
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: provide that external check. However, it's you know, it's not
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: even clear how effective those are. For one check on
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: the executive after this is that the president now has
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: to sign off basically on covert operations, so that eliminates
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: the president's plausible deniability. One of the main themes throughout
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: this book is just is what I call this the
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: vicious cycle of secrecy. So an organization like the CIA
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: that has secrecy that kind of leads to what I
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: see as this vicious cycle. Secrecy leads to plausible deniability
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: because if it's secret, nobody can know that I'm doing this. Therefore,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to be blamed for it. So secrecy
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: leads to plausible deniability. Plausible deniability leads to reckless behavior,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: like mk ultra. If nobody's going to find out what
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: I'm doing, Therefore, I'm incentivized to do some crazy stuff
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: because I'm not going to be held accountable for it.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: So secrecy to plausible deniability, plausible deniability to reckless behavior.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: Reckless behavior in many instances leads to embarrassment. It's almost
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: inevitable for many of these projects that they get found
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: out someone leaks something to the press. This is how
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: the Family Jewels that the CIA had that was like
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: a compilation of all the illegal stuff that it had
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: done over the past couple of decades. It eventually got
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: leaked to Seymour Hirsch, who published it on the front
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: page of the New York Times. So reckless behavior leads
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: to embarrassment, But embarrassment leads to secrecy because now that
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: we've been found out, we got to make sure that
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: never happens again. We need more secrecy, and the vicious
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: cycle continues. So if you can break that vicious cycle
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: by having some kind of external check, that's what you
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: actually need, Like an empowered Congress that is willing to
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: check the executives.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: And then you realize, well, who's running against them? Who
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: wants that job? Not a lot of impressive people. A
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: lot of really driven, successful, intelligent people are involved in
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: other activities that consume their time. They have families, they
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: have careers, they have a lot. They don't have the
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: desire to be a congress person. So you're not getting
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: the cream of the crop. You're not even getting anything
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: remotely similar to the cream of the crop. You're occasionally
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: getting great people that really want to serve the country,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: but that is rare. That is like I wouldn't say rare,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: but if twenty percent of the food you ate at
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: a place was poison, would you go eat at that place?
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: I No, you would not, right, you would say I'm
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: assuming there's fucking poison in that place. That's Congress. Yeah,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: and you know that's elected officials. Yeah.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: And Andrew Yang has made this point before, I know
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: I've heard him say it that the the reelection rate
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: of Congress is super high, it's like eighty ninety percent
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: whatever it is. The approval rating for Congress is like
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: in the teens. So how is it we have such
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: a divergence between the reelection rate in the approval rating.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: It has to do with the the the kind of
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: electoral system. You know, the people who are incentivized to
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: actually run for Congress in many cases, they're the most
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: ideological on either side because the only race that matters
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: is actually the primary. Because if you're in a you know,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: a district that is ninety percent Trump voters, the Republican
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: is going to win the general election. It doesn't matter
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: who it is. So you know, the primary is the
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: main election that happens in those districts. And if that's
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: the case, well, the person who can win the primary
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: is going to win the general. And who's going to
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: win the primary, well it's going to win. It's going
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: to be the person who can get ninety percent of
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: Trump voters to be more interested in them than whoever
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: the other Republican you know, is in many cases that
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: drives ideological extremism because you know, you're already selecting a
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: sample size of voters within the primary who are the
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: most ideological extreme, and so they're going to elect basically
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: whoever it is because the general elections of foregone conclusion.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: So if you can realign the electoral system in a
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: way to where you know, I mean, I don't know
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: the answer to this, but it would be some kind
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: of open primaries or ranked voting or proportional representation, ending
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: jerrymandering something like that, then you better incentivize congress people
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: to actually want the job, or incentivize people who would
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: be good at the job to engage in the job,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: or to become congress people because they actually have a
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: clear path to doing it because they're not going to
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: be blocked in the primary. So some kind of reform
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: like that, I think, is how you better facilitate this
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: check between the different branches.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: But even then, I don't know if it motivates the
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: cream of the crop, because I just I think most
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: people would rather be on the outside, like most wealthy
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: people that are successful, they'd rather fund a candidate that
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: you know, suits their needs.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, won't getting maybe big money out of politics.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: That would be wonderful. That would be one. I mean,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: that would be the single probably the biggest help. And
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: then also getting out insider trading out of Congress and
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: make it less like when you're finding out that people
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: are getting one hundred and seventy thousand dollars a year
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: and they're worth hundreds of millions of dollars and there's
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: no investigation whatsoever, Like what did you do? What did
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: you do? And why are you still working? If you're
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: so good at trading? Why are you working for one
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: hundred and seventy thousand dollars a year, which is a
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: great salary. Don't get me wrong, I'd take it. Nothing
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: wrong with one hundred and sevent thousand dollars a year,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: But when you have four hundred million, Yeah, Like you
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: couldn't get me to do a job for one hundred
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: and seventy thousand dollars a year, Like I don't have
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: the time. You couldn't get need to do right, But
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying, Like you can't and get
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: Congress people to still show up and do that job.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: Is it because they care that much about the American people? Well,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: that doesn't really jive. It doesn't make sense because they
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: seem completely full of shit when they give their speeches
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: and they it's all canned and fake and insincere, and
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: there's no you don't have any real connection with their words.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: So what are they They're these weird people that have
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: accepted this job that no one wants. It's critically important
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: to the function of our government, and you're getting really
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: dull people that are taking this job. It's fascinating. One
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: of the things that also was like so disheartening. I
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: had Rep. Luna on the podcast, who is great and
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: she's very, very interesting, and mostly we're talking about UFOs
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: because that's the thing that she's involved in. But one
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: of the things she said about certain issues is they
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: don't want to solve these issues. Oh, because this is
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: how they run. They can fundraise off this, Yeah, exactly.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: And I was like, oh no, like just that trap.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh no, I didn't want to think
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: that that is the case. And she's like, Oh, that's it.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: That's one. Yeah, they don't want to fix it.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: That I mean, that makes me even more convinced though,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: that a restructuring of the electoral system in a way
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: that you know, eliminates I don't know that incentivized is
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: basically better behavior, whether that's through open primaries, rank choice voting, whatever. Yeah,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: that has to help in some way, I would think.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: So this should also be some sort of a competency
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: test if someone wants to take that position. Like if
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: you want to be a lawyer, you have to look
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: at poor Kim Kardashian. She can't pass the bar and
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: she's trying so hard to keep it's hard hard to
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: be a lawyer.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: I am kind of skeptical of a competency competency test
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: in a sense though, because someone has to write the test.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: Well, not not only that, but are you watching them?
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: Do they use chat GPT? And we're living in a
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: weird world right now, you know, it's it's a very
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: weird world of technology, and you know, but it would
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: be nice if you knew that this person was capable
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: of doing the job. I mean, I bring it back
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: to the passing the bar thing, because you know, law
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: is very complicated. One of the things that I found
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: out really recently that is super disturbing was that you
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: don't have to be a lawyer to be a judge,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: to be a judge.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: Interesting, Oh, if you don't have to know anything.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: You could just become a judge. You could be a
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: regular person and just now you're a judge.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder what kind of judge that is it,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: because I know some judge positions.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I don't give a fuck if it's a
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: judge a dairy queen, like you should What are you
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: talking about? You don't. You don't have to be a
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: lawyer to be a judge. That's insane. That's so insane.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: That's like you don't know how to count, to be
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: a mathematician, Like, what are you talking about? You're a judge.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: You don't have to be a lawyer to be a judge.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: To me, it was like, oh my god. State and
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: federal courts, most state and federal court and all federal
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: judges must have a law degree. On some state practice requirements,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: many states required judges to have a certain number of
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: years of experience as a practicing lawyer before they're eligible
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: for a judge ship. Makes sense when a law degree
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: may not be required limited court jurisdiction. Some states allow
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: non lawyers to become judges in specific lower level courts,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: such as those that handle small claims, traffic violations, or
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: minor minor criminal matters. State and local variations, the specific
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: requirements may vary wildly by state, even by the type
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: of court within a state, and training judges appointed from
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: the non lawyer pool typically must compete complete specific training programs. Right,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: but what is the program?
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: I wonder if that's a relic of uh, like rural
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: communities where maybe there isn't a lawyer, but you need
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: someone to act in that position, you know, like doctors
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: have town instead of being like an m D doctor,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: some people can practice medicine, you know, in rural communities
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: they do without being an MDED doctor. I forget the
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: term of it, but a okay, whatever whatever that term is.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: So maybe maybe they don't have a doctor. Well, yeah,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: they don't have a doctor, but you can.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: You can.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: You still have a degree, not MD, but some kind
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: of meddlehole degree that right, maybe doesn't require as.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: Much time or you didn't complete your residence.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: Maybe maybe it's a relic of that.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: Right that makes sense, But point being that, you know,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: if Congress has oversight over these things, well, who are
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: we talking about. This is the thing, Like, if you
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: are the CIA and you are running some program that
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: you think is crucial to national security, and you have
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: some fucking dingling from pick a state, Virginia, North Dakota, whatever,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: some ding dong that just happened to be able to
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: get the right amount of votes because they have the
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: right color on their flag, you know, and then all
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: of a sudden they're in and you have to talk
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: to this fucking moron like get out of here, Like
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: I'm not telling you shit. You're gonna hold back information,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: You're gonna come up with reasons why you have to
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: redact files, and fuck off. You'll be gone in two years.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is This is the inherent tension within
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: any intelligence community, whether it's the CIA or the FBI.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: There are legitimate reasons to keep things secret. You have
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: to keep secret, but at the same time, the fact
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: that you're afforded that secrecy allows you to avoid accountability.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: So it's a catch twenty two. You have to keep secrets,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: there's just no way around it. But at the same time,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: how can I know that the secrets they're keeping is
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: because it's in my interest or it's because it's in
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: their interest.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: And then you find out the really crazy stuff that's
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: happened in the past, like like like the Demean Arkansas
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: cocaine situation.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: I haven't heard of that one.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: You didn't. You don't know about the Barry Seals story. No,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: they made a movie about it with Tom Cruise. In fact,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: in the movie, Tom Cruise actually gets arrested for smuggling
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: cocaine and Bill Clinton gets him off. They call Bill Clinton.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: He gets arrested in Arkansas. They call Bill Clinton and
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: they have him dead to rights, and you know, he's
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: joking around with the cops saying, I'd like to buy
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: you guys all Cadillacs and stuff like that, and they're like,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: you're going to jail for the rest of your life.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: He goes, no, she's gonna get a phone call and
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: I'm going to walk right out of here. And it
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: turned out to be exactly how it happened. Barry Seal
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: was flying drugs from South America and dropping them off
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: in Mina, Arkansas, and then they would go and pick
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: them up in the woods. They had a drop point
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: two kids were hanging out in the woods and they
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: witnessed it accidentally they were murdered, and then the official
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: story was they had done drugs and they laid down,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: fell asleep on train tracks. The parents funded an autopsy,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: and the autopsy show that they've been stabbed multiple times.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: So then there's an investigation comes through, and then it
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: turns out that there's a long history of this guy,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: Barry Seals, who was a CIA operative who was flying
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: in cocaine dropping it off in Mina, Arkansas, all known
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: about by the Clintons. Everybody was aware of it, and
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: he had been funneling this money and they were using
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: it probably for black ops, similar to what they did
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: with the Contras in Sandinista, you know, versus the Centhinistas
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: in Nicaragua. He winds up going to testify, gets murdered
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: on his way to the trial, with George Bush's phone
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: number in his pocket. The whole story is like completely crazy.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: When did that happen?
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: I hadn't heard that, so it was when Bill Clinton
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: was a governor, so I believe it was the eighties
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: eighty six. Yeah, fuck, you weren't alive. Then that's hilarious,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: fucking crazy story. But this is the CIA, right when
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: this is the same thing that they did. I'm friends
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: with Freeway Ricky Ross. Do you know who he is? Okay,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: great story. So Rick Ross the rapper, Okay, you know
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: who that is. He got his name from a very
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: famous street hustler named Freeway Ricky Rick Ross. His name,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: real name is Rick Ross. He's the real Rick Ross.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: Rick Ross was a guy who is a tennis player,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: a young tennis player who starts cocaine. It was like
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: super disciplined because he was a tennis player, so it
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: was funneling millions of dollars of cocaine. Had no idea.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: He was getting his cocaine from the CIA, So he
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: was getting cocaine, selling it in the hood. They were
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: getting the money and they were using it. This Oliver
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: North thing with the conscious versus the Sandinistas, all of
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: this comes out in court and he wants up going
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: to jail. He winds up going to jail for selling
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: the cocaine. Doesn't know how to read, he's illiterate, Learns
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: how to read in jail, becomes a lawyer in jail,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: goes over his trial and realizes that they had tried
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: him on the three strikes law, which is supposed to
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: be three different felonies at three different times, but they
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: jammed him all together and so he gets off. So
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: he's free now and he sells legal marijuana in California.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: He's been on the podcast multiple times. But this was
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: the CIA that was involved in all of this. This
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: is how how like they were making money, they were
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: selling cocaine.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: And one thing crazy just about not only that, but
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: MK Ultra in general. It's against the CIA's charter to
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: operate within the United States. You know, that should just
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: be a deal into right there for whatever they're doing
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: within the United State. It's just it's within it's against
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: the charter, yep. I mean, there's no more discussion that's illegal.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: Well, I just think without oversight, there's cowboys. And there's
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: also when you realize how much money is there to
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: be made, and that you could fundel this, funnel this
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: money into oversee accounts that are anonymous, and then you
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: could eventually retire someday and get out of the game
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: and be worth millions of dollars and live in Monaco
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: or whatever the fuck you want to do like And
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: I think that's the dream for a lot of these guys.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: I think they get involved, they realize it's a completely
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: corrupt system, and it's corrupt from the top down, and
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: there's ways to make money, and there's a bunch of
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: stuff going on where money's being funneled into these NGOs,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: and there's just so much opportunity for corruption and so
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: little oversight and so much power and so much secrecy.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: And as you were talking about the importance and the
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: necessity of secrecy for national security, which is a real thing,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: but also leads to corruption, and it leads to people
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: just doing wild things because there's no one watching and
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: they're in control there. Look, it's so it must be
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: so fun. Like what's his name was talking about the
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: evil guy, George White, Like he was talking about like
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: how much fun he had, which is so sick. But
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: that's the kind of people that want that kind of
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: a job. And if you make that kind of a
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: job available with no oversight, we need like a council
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: of elders, like a wise counsel, you know, like of
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: like completely objective, brilliant people that oversee all these things
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: that aren't ideologically captured. You know, they're financially independent, they
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: don't need anything from you.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: I've mentioned external oversight, like Congress checking the executive. But
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: at the same time, one of the big problems with
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: mk ultra are one of the problems that led to
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: mk ultra without people even within the CIA questioning it.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: There are people in the CIA who know about it,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: actually not that many because it's very heavily compartmentalized, but
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: some people still do know about it. So one of
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: the questions I was asking myself throughout this book, why
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: aren't the people who were in the CIA and know
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: about mk ULTRA, Why aren't they speaking up? Why don't
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: they say, pulled Sidney Gottlieb aside and just have a
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: conversation with them. Do you think what you're doing here
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: is all right?
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: I think they're terrified about their career.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: That's exactly the thing. There's a specific person within the
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: CIA during this time. That's his job, the Inspector General.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: So the Inspector General within the CIA, his job is
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: to make sure there's nothing that goes against the CIA's
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: charter or internal regulations or the US law. But I
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: found an interview that he did later. There's this guy
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: named Lyman Kirkpatrick. He was the Inspector General during the
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifties when this was going on, and he did
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: an investigation into MK Ultra in nineteen fifty seven as
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: it was going on, and it continued on after that,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: and so one of the things he talks about is
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: why isn't the case that you tried. Why didn't you
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: try to shut this down? Like you obviously knew this
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: was illegal. In fact, in nineteen sixty three, a different
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: CIA Inspector General named John Eyerman, he did a separate
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: investigation into MK Ultra. In his resport his report that
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: I quote in this book specifically says what I think
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: they're doing is quote illegal and unethical. Those are his terms,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: and he's the inspector general. Yet in this later interview,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: Lyman Kirkpatrick talks about why didn't you tell them to stop?
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: Why didn't you put an end to this? Why didn't
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: you raise this too higher ups? Why didn't you do something?
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: And he said, I was worried about bringing up anything
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: that could cause me to lose my job. He knew
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: that if he brought this up, he'd basically be retaliated against,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: and so that was it. So even you know, there's
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: problems with external oversight, but also internal oversight. The internal
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: oversight has to be able to bring that kind of
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: stuff up. And another lack of internal oversight is the
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: fact that Sidney Gottlieb and Richard Helms they could destroy
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: all these files with no repercussions. It's just completely illegal.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: It's against the CIA's own internal regulations. In fact, in
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: these depositions, I found some of the most colorful parts
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: of the depositions happen with the lawyers. The lawyers just
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: get into heated arguments back and forth. That makes the
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: book really colorful at certain times. There. You know, Joseph
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: Arraw is this old civil rights you know, he used
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: to be the civil rights lawyer. He took on this
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: case basically to fight against the CIA. At certain points,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: he basically says to the other lawyers representing the CIA,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: I'm going to punch you in the nose. And he says,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: I'm never giving this up. I'm going to mortgage my
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: house if it means I have to keep on fighting you.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: But there's a certain point where he basically lays into Gottlieb,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: asking him why did you destroy the files? Why did
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: you destroy the files? Sidney Gottlieb comes up with several excuses.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: One of those excuses at first is He says, the
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: CIA was drowning in paper. We had so much paper
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: we couldn't move. So there was just an internal kind
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: of drive to get rid of this paper so that
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: we could walk around and figure out where stuff was.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: But he's just completely making this up. Rao presses him again,
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: why did you destroy this stuff, Sidney Gottlieb, you know,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: And he does this to Richard Helms too. They both
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: eventually say again, well, we wanted, you know, it's part
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: of our job to protect sources and methods, and so
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: we wanted to make sure that nobody would be able
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: to know what our sources and methods were a part
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: of this project. So we had to destroy the files.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: And Row was like, these files are secret. It's not
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: like they're going to be released to the public. They're
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: the CIA's files. How could destroying them protect sources and
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: methods anymore than just not releasing them to the public.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: That it's just a non excuse. So eventually Rao presses
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: got lead more and he kind of breaks down during
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: this interrogation and he says, I was embarrassed by it.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: I was embarrassed by what I had done basically, you know,
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: ruin the lives of all these people, spent ten million
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: dollars at all these different institutions for what to ruin
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: these lives, and we didn't even learn that much out
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: of it. And so he destroyed the files. Wow, so
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: and didn't face any repercussions. So, in addition to external oversight,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: there's got to be some internal oversight that can provide
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: a check and prevent that from happening, or if it
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: does happen, at least at least deter others from doing
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: the same thing by holding them accountable.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: It's really fascinating. What we're experiencing is essentially two hundred
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: and fifty years after the founding Fathers had already recognized
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: these patterns of human behavior that required oversight. They required
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: checks and balances. In order to have a government that
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: doesn't sink into tyranny, you have to have all these
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: things in place to make sure that no one person
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: has the power to do anything that really fucks up
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: the apple cart. And they knew that this was a
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: and they really painstakingly structured this system of government that
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: they thought would protect against it. They didn't factor into
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: account special interest groups and the stock market and money,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: and they just didn't factor into it. It expanded exponentially
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: into so many different factions, so many different influencing bodies,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: that it's almost completely out of control. But essentially they
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: knew what could happen. That has proven to be accurate,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: which is really kind of fascinating.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: It is it is, you know, it's a brilliant system.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: And I quote James Madison actually when I talk about oversight,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: because his specific verbiage is, you know, auxiliary cautions are
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: auxiliary precautions. You know humans, he says, men, men aren't angels.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: Therefore auxiliary precautions are necessary to keep their ambitions in check,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: which means external oversight, which is He's exactly right, That's
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: exactly what you need.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: He's exactly right. You know. I wonder like where this goes,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: because it's going in the wrong direction. From the founding
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: fathers to today, it's going in the wrong direction. It's like,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: I think most people agree that the lack of oversight
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: and secrecy is a gigantic problem with not just not
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: just the stuff that we've already discussed with them k
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: Ultra and the CIA and the cocaine and all these
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: different things, but with virtually everything that gets decided upon
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: in our government that affects daily lives of people. There's
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: there's so many different influences that aren't based on the
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: greater good of the American people. It's based on financial interests,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: and that's sort of overwhelmed all of our policies, overwhelmed
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: all of our systems of government. And then you have
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: all of these social issues that they never really want
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: to fix because they can't paign fun against them, which
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: is what we were talking about before. Yeah, so this
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: is this constant psychological game. There's a game of us
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: versus them. There's a game of certain key points, whether
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 2: it is abortion or gun rights or immigration or whatever.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: It is, like nothing ever gets solved. These are the
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: beach balls that they throw up in the air at
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: the concert and they keep getting bounced around, and we're
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: just little dumb monkeys that are giving up our tax
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: dollars so they can keep running this giant Ponzi scheme.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: I will say a counterintuitive point that I think is
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: important to also make though, is Daniel Shore was a
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: CBS News correspondent and he's the guy who initially broke
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: the story on CIA assassination tempts on foreign leaders and
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: he has this quote about how the US has a
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a pendulum that swings between security and liberty.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: You know, the more security you have, the less the
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: more liberty. Basically, you have to take away if you
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: can be infinitely secure, but that means that the government
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: would be inside your house and know everything about you
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: and prevent you from doing anything. But nothing bad would happen.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: At least you wouldn't be able to do anything bad
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: because there would be a policeman in every bedroom. Basically
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: on the opposite side, you know, at the pendulum swings
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: too far the opposite way, complete liberty, well, you have
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: no security because anyone could do anything. So there's this
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: constant tension between security and liberty that swings throughout American history.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: And an important thing to keep in mind is that
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: I don't think you want that pendulum to stop. You
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: actually want a little bit of tension between that. You want,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: in other words, you want the press and Congress to
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: be exposing abuses. You know, because human nature is not
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: going to change. People are going to try to abuse
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: the system and whatever it is, that's not going to stop. However,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: if the press and Congress aren't ex exposing these abuses.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: You might think that there are no abuses happening, but
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: they're going to be happening. So I think it's actually
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: good the fact that this pendulum is swinging a little bit,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: the fact that there is a little bit of tension
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: in the fact that there are being abuses being exposed.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: I wish the abuses didn't happen, but at the same time,
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: the abuses are going to happen no matter what. Therefore,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: the exposure of the abuses is a good sign. It's
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: a sign that the system is actually working as intended
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: because the abuses are being exposed. You know, one of
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: the points I make in this book is dread the
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: day when the press sings nothing but the praises of
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: those in power, and Congress says that there are no
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: abuses to investigate. It might seem like that's utopia, but
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: that's the day that you have lost all of your liberties.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: That's a very good point. That's a very good point
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: and well said. I think this is what we're seeing
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: now with independent journalism, and that these a lot of
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: these issues that get raised are coming from independent journalists first,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: and then they're ultimately have to be recognized when they
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: reach the zeitgeist. They ultimately have to be recognized by
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: the New York Times or by mainstream media publications. But
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: they're not the ones who break a lot of these stories.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: A lot of these stories are broken by the Glenn
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: Greenwalds and the Matt Tayeb's and the genuine independent journalists
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: who initially worked for an organization and then found there's
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: some sort of an ideological blockade or some certain subjects
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: that they couldn't breach, or certain things that they were
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: told that they couldn't publish, and they were like, I'm out,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: and then they started doing it on their own. And
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: then also social media, this is the new function that
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: social media has where you have these accounts that break
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: news stories all the time, and interestingly enough, some of
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: them are very reliable, and those ones wind up becoming
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: the ones that people share and they get a tremendous
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: amount of followers, and then they are more trustworthy oftentimes
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: than corporate media, which is really kind of scary but
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: also fascinating, like there's a need for it. There's a recognition,
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: there's a distribution of information that lets you to see
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: all of this corruption and all this chaos, and like,
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: what's at the root of it? And why isn't this
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: being discussed in the New York Times. And then all
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, someone puts up this ten Twitter post
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: of all these different links and shows you this is
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: the history of the story. And then a month later
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: it's in the Washington Post. And it's interesting. It's interesting.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: It's because it's like it's almost like these this need exists,
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: it's not being fulfilled by mainstream media because mainstream media
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: is captured by corporate interests. So in order to have
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: this information comes out, the world gives us this new
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: platform and that social media, and social media distributes all
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: this stuff, and then you have to sort through what's real,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: what's foreign governments making.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: Up fakes stories the other side of it. But the
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: algorithm can push something, but it doesn't necessarily push truth, right,
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: It might just push engagement And then how do you
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: know community notes? Yeah, yeah, something like that.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, well, that's the beautiful thing about Twitter. And
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: when they when Elon solved that issue with community I
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: don't necessarily say solved. It's not solved, but it certainly
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: made it a lot easier to understand what's going on.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: Because there's oftentimes there's some outrageous video clip like oh
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: my god, can you believe the Democrats are doing this?
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: And then it turns out, no, that's actually from a movie,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: you know, Or that's actually Ai or that's actually from
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 2: twenty sixteen and it's in Poland, or you know what
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: I mean. There's a lot of that stuff happens where
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: people get outraged and someone posts something and then I
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: always go to the original account that posts it, and
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: how many times have gone there. I'm going, oh, you're
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: not a real person. Like most of the time I
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: go and look at all the posts that they have.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: I'm like, well, this is either a bot or this
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: is a foreign government running one of these like puppet accounts.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you might like being a historian because it sounds
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: like that's very similar to what I do in the
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: historical record, not on social media. But you know, most
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of what I'm doing is following this source
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: that cites this source, that cites that source. It's like,
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: where's the origin of this thing? And you can see
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: the it's a game of telephone. You can see the
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: transformation along the way. One of my favorite examples comes
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: from my first book, I was writing about William Donovan,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: who is the head of the OSS and he was
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: this really you know, larger life than life individual, a
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: World War One war hero. He had a Medal of
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: Honor and all kinds of stuff. And there was this
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: really great quote in a book and it was describing
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: Donovan basically as that he was the kind of guy
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: that would dance on the roof of the hotel and
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: he would you know, you know, he would destroy these
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: planes and whatever. And I thought, man, that's such a
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: like exciting quote to encapsulate who he is. So I
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: was reading this book and I kind of Okay, I'm
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: going to mark that quote. I'm going to come back
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: and see where does he What source is this from
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: so I can use that in my book. So I
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: go to the source. It turns out it cites another book,
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: and it's like, okay, I've got to get that book.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: So I go to the library. I was teaching at
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: Louisiana Tech at the time. Go to the Louisiana Tech Library.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: Get that book, open it to the page that it says,
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: find the quote. Go okay, here's where it is. Now,
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: go to the back of the book. See the note
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: the note cites another book. It turns out I had
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: that book. I owned that book, So I went back home,
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: go to that book, Oh, do the same thing, look
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: for the source of this quote. It turns out it
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: was a book I didn't have in the library. Didn't
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: have so I had to put an inner library loan,
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: you know, in use. So I had to basically request
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: that my library get the book from a different library.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: That was going to take several weeks. So okay, now
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: I gotta wait. In the meantime, I go onto Google Books.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: I start searching this quote for other books. It turns
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: out they basically cite the books that I had already consulted.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: So that's a dead end there. I have to wait
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: for this other book to come in. And in the meantime,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking to myself, that quote sounds awfully familiar. What
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: do I know that from. It turns out I had
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: already used that quote in my book, but it was
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: from a different It was in a different context. It
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: wasn't talking about William Donovan. It was talking about just
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: people in the oss in general, and the quote was different.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like the same quote, but it had many
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: of the key words and you could tell that it
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: was the same thing, but somebody had changed it. So
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: now I'm thinking, did I use like a fake quote,
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: you know, in this book? So I got to figure
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: out in my manuscript where I got this. It turns
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: out I got it from this book by this guy
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: named Sterling Hayden, the actor later an actor. He was
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: in the OSS and he had used the quote because
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: he was quoting. He was talking about when he was
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: in Europe after at the end of the war. He
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: told someone he was in the OSS and they said, oh,
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: the OSS guys are the kind of guys who blah
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. And I thought, okay, well, he's
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: recalling this from memory, so this must be the origin
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: of the quote. Then what are all these other books quoting.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: So finally that Inner Library loan comes in and I
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: get it and it basically says the quote and it
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: but it's, you know, it's a little bit different, and
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: it's referring to Donovan again and not just OSS guys
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: in general, and it doesn't cite a source. So I thought, Okay,
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: what happened is the guy who wrote that book he
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: had read Sterley Hayden's book. He had taken the quote
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: and he liked it, but he wanted to apply it
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: to Donovan, so we switched the subject and he changed
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: the quote a little bit. And everyone after that dozens
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: of different books have cited that as their original source,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: and it was about the wrong person and not even
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: the right quote. Wow, and that's for one quote in
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: my book. That's the amount of work you have to do.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: Well, kudos to you for doing that work, right. That's
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: why people like you are so important that you chase
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: that that whole story down to the end.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: If anyone is interested in that. Though in my book,
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: I cite the original book obviously because that's what but
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: next to what I said, also see Joseph persiccoh blah
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: blah blah, the original book. So that's the book that
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: I originally found the quote in. So if they want
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: to go down the rabbit oh, they can follow his
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: book to that book, to that book to that book.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: Well, it's a lot of rabbit holes go down, even
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: just to find the origins of things.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: Well, and then apply that to religion, you know, like stories.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: Oh oh yeah, you know, like a game of telephone.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, you know what was the original story. Yeah,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: it's it's a lot of this stuff. The secrecy, MK ultra,
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: all the stuff we're talking about about oversight, It all
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: relays to the way the human mind works. Like that
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: the human mind in this instance would take a quote
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: and for its own convenience, apply it to a different
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: person and change a little bit. It's like where we're
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: constantly dealing with all of these factors that are in
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: motion with human intelligence, with ego, with reputation, embarrassment, the ambition, power, control.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: And one thing I especially noticed in doing this too
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: is the ability for humans to rationalize anything, to agree
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: with what they already think is true, is almost limitless.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: I give an example in this book of a psychologist
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: nam Leon Festinger. He wrote this book called When Prophecy Fails,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: and it's a really fascinating story where he was looking
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: at a newspaper and he saw an announcement for the
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: end of the world. There was this cult called the
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: Seekers Cult, and they had said, basically on December twenty first,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, I think it was it's going to
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: be the end of the world. There's going to be
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: a massive flood. Join us, and so we can get
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: whisked away on the spaceship before the end of the
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: world happens. Festinger sees this and he thinks this is
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: a great psychological experiment because they are making a specific
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: prediction on this day this is going to happen. What
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: happens when it doesn't happen. So he decides to embed
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: himself in this cult. Basically, they knew he was a psychologist,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: but they said, yeah, sure, come on by. So him
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: and some of his researchers they just sit with a
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: cult on the day that the world is supposed to end,
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: because they want to know how are they going to
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: deal with the fact that the world doesn't actually end.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: So obviously there wasn't even a light rain, there was
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: like no flood, and so the world doesn't end. Some
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: people actually do end up leaving the cult afterwards, but
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: many people stay, especially the people who had sunk many
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: costs into the cult. They had abandoned their families to
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: join this, They had donated lots of money, They had
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: quit their jobs basically to be in this cult because
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: they thought the world was going to end. What do
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: we need money for? And so those people stayed, and
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: now festering your coined the term cognitive dissonance, So the
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: idea that you're holding two irreconcilable views in your mind
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: at the same time. So one of their views is
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: we predicted because we had received we have received revelations
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: from God. Basically, the world was going to end on
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: this day. That's one position they're holding. The other position
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: is the world didn't end on that day. So this
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: is cognitive dissonance. How do we reconcile the fact that
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: these two things contradict each other, but we have to
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: believe both of them. So Festinger was interested in how
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: they would do this. There were a couple rationalizations. Originally,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: one was, well, maybe God minute in a figurative sense,
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: not a literal sense. Maybe it was a figurative flood
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: that was going to cleanse our minds of you know
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: something instead, not like a literal flood that was going
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: to kill everyone. But then they said, no, we actually
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: thought it was going to be a literal flood. So
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: he's in the middle of their discussions when they're rationalizing this,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: and they eventually come upon the conclusion God was going
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: to destroy the world. We were right to believe that
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: he was going to do that. But because he saw
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: how fervently we believed in him, and how fervently we
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: believed that the world was going to be destroyed. He
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: decided to have mercy on us and didn't destroy the world.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: So the fact that we believed that the world was
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: going to be destroyed is the reason why the world
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: wasn't destroyed. So the evidence against them becomes evidence for them.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: We know we are right because the world wasn't destroyed,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: because you know, that proves that God was taking mercy
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: on us. So this is how they rationalize it. So
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: this is, you know, non falsifiable something that there's no
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: way you could prove it wrong. This is an indication
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: of a bad theory of it's non falsifiable. It's like
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: not tethered to reality.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: It's a gold medal mental to now exactly.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: If something's non falsifiable. For the classic example for me
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: of non falsifiability is the concept of last thursdayism. So
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: it's the idea that God created the universe last Thursday. Now,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: how could I prove that wrong? You know, I asked
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: my students this, and many of them say, well, I
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: remember last Wednesday, I remember time before last Thursday. But
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: of course you remember that. But God created you and
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: your memories last Thursday, So of course you would think
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: that there was time before last Thursday, because God implanted
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: those memories in you last Thursday. In other words, this
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: is just a non falsifiable belief. You can't prove it wrong,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean it's right. So the capacity for
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: humans to rationalize things. If you start from a false premise,
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: we can rationalize a world to make sure that we
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: believe in that false premise.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, we do that with everything. We do that
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: with religion, we do that with ideologies, We do that
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: with everything.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: And it's not it's you know, people typically associate rationalization
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: with religion or this kind of cult behavior, like this
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: group I explained, But actually I'm a historian of science,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: and it actually plays an important role in science itself,
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: like the method of science, how science works that if
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: you don't mind, if I can briefly describe the philosophy
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: of Thomas Kuhne. He's this famous philosopher of science. He
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: wrote this the most influential book in the philosophy of science,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, basically explaining how does
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: science change or progress over time? His concept was that
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: scientists operate within a paradigm, you know, a worldview. So
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: we believe in Newtonian you know, gravity, or we have
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: the worldview of you know, the germ theory of disease
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: or you know, whatever it is. So this is our paradigm.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: Whatever group of scientists we are within that paradigm, we
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: do normal science, he says, puzzle solving. We we do
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: experiments to try to prove our paradigm right. So if
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: my paradigm is you know, if I'm a follower of
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: Ptolemy and I believe in the geocentric universe, I'm going
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: to be observing the way that the you know, the
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: planets and the stars are moving across the sky to
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: try to prove Ptolemy right. I'm going to try to
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: prove that his predictions actually come true. So this is
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: just called puzzle solving. What scientists actually do, Thomas Kuhn says,
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: many of them, they just puzzle solve. They just try
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: to prove the paradigm right. In the process of doing that,
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: they uncover occasionally and anomaly. An anomaly is something that
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: seems to contradict the paradigm, Like okay, Ptolemy makes this
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: prediction about where the planet should be, but it turns
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: out the planet's actually not there. It's a little bit off.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: That's an anomaly. And Kuhn says, what do scientists do
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: with anomalies? Do they throw out their theory? No, he says,
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: they either ignore it or they find a way to
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: rationalize it. Well, Ptolemy made that prediction, but it's close
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: enough to where it's you know, his theory still works
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: for most of the observations we're making. So scientists usually
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: ignore or rationalize the anomaly. But over time, as they
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: do more and more puzzle solving normal science, more and
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: more anomalies crop up to the point where we just
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: can't ignore them anymore. They're just too many agnomalies. At
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: a certain point, we realize that our worldview, our paradigm,
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: must be wrong. And Kuhn says this allows for a
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: crisis within the scientific community. The group of scientists within
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: this paradigm, they enter a crisis period, and it's during
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: that crisis period when someone can put forward an alternative
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: paradigm that accounts for all those anomalies, and then we
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: accept that as our new paradigm. So what accounts for
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: all the things that the previous paradigm could do, in
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: addition to all the anomalies that the previous paradigm couldnt
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: account for. Now we're in a new paradigm, and what.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: Do we do.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: We do puzzle solving. We try to prove our paradigm right,
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: and in the process we uncover anomalies. Oh and we
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: I rationalize them away. But the reason I raise this
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: point is because one of the integral parts to the
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: progression of science, says Thomas Kuhn, is the fact that
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: scientists are stubborn. The fact that, contrary to popular belief,
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: we typically think of scientist as people who are really
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: open to changing their minds. They're confronted by evidence and
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: so okay, they're willing to accept this evidence. Thomas Kuhn says,
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: if you actually look at the history of science closely,
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: that does happen. But what it also happens in a
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: lot of instances is scientists are stubborn. They don't want
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: to change their minds. They're stuck on their paradigm, and
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: so they rationalize away the anomalies. So the same kind
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: of rationalizing that you have within the seeker's cult about
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: their belief system is very similar to the kind of
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: rationalizing that scientists are doing when they refuse to throw
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: out their paradigm because they've uncovered these anomalies. But surely
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: there's a way we can make those anomalies fit with
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: our paradigm instead, and they don't. So this isn't to
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: say that scientists are members of a cult or anything
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: like that. In fact, there's you know, there are good
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: reasons to maybe elevate the predictions of scientists over those
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: of these cult members because there are structures in place
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: within the scientific community to prevent some of the more
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: egregious biases that they have. However, really what I consider
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: kuon as it's a commentary on human psychology, Kuhn basically
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: figured out cognitive dissonance before Leon Festinger, you know, but
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: Kuhn didn't have that terminology. Festeringer is describing cognitive dissonances
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: these cult members. Kun is describing it in scientists. He
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: just doesn't have that terminology. But that's just what it is.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: And Kuhn says that's why science progresses. It's necessary for
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: those people to ignore that evidence because it enables them
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: to keep uncovering more anomalies that eventually leads to the revolution.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: So it's like it's an ironic thing that our ability
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: to rationalize is what allows us to progress in the future.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, this is the perfect point to take a
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: break because I just take a leak. So this is awesome.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Okay, sorry about that, but I'm
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: glad we took a break right after that epic rant.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: That was so good. I mean, would you just nailed it?
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: It's so perfect that this is a bizarre psychological dance
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: when it comes to human beings, even scientists.
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's you know, the main point to make
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: is that it's not. The main point is just that
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: human psychology is human psychology. Just because you're a scientist
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: or a cult member or whatever. It's not as if
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: you're immune to any of these tendencies. Anyone is subject
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: to them. It's just human psychology. So I tend to
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: think of Thomas Kuhn in terms of psychology instead of philosophy.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, it's brilliant, and it's just it also, all
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 2: of that, all that understanding of human psychology is really
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: what leads us to even begin to wonder what is
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: going on with the human bind how do you exploit it?
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 2: What can you do? And then you get people like
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: Sidney Gottlieb who make a fucking career out of it.
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: They just they're realizing, like, we're like these very bizarre,
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: complicated thinking apes, and we have tendencies, and we have
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: these things that we do that protect ourselves, and we
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: have these desires and we have these motivations, and how
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 2: do we exploit that? How do we do that for
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: air quotes, national security interests?
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And one of the ironic things is I don't
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: think Sidney Gottlieb is particularly successful in creating like a
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: Manchurian candidate and controlling someone like a marionette and getting
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: them to commit in assassination or something like that. However,
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: there are ways to manipulate people and to influence them
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: to behave in certain ways. And there are the typical
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: ways that we associate with like cult behavior. There's a
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: guy named Stephen Hassen and he he oh have you okay?
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah?
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: His bite model behavior, information, thought, emotion. I think that's
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: a very good model for understanding how actual mind control
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: actually takes place. You know, behavior being like controlling where
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: someone can go, what they can do, what they can eat,
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: when they can sleep information being restricting someone from accessing
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: outside sources of information, but if they do, teaching them
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: to distrust that information even if they do access it.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: Well, he was actually in a cult.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, he was in the Moonies.
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah.
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: Thought control is like reinforcing previous patterns of thoughts, so
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: saying mantras, reciting prayers, creating a US versus them mentality.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: And then emotion and control is like instanting in someone
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: certain emotions to make them beholden to the cult or
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: to whatever it is. Guilt, fear, shame, anger, loyalty, dependence,
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And so a combination of these
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: four factors is I think the real mind control how
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: people actually manipulate people, How especially cults are able to
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: manipulate their members to do all kinds of really insane
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: things like cut off their genitals or commit murders or
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: anything like that. I think it's much more influenced by
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: those four factors than it is some kind of LSD,
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: you know, mind control Sydney gottlieb MK ultra type thing.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 2: Are you aware of the cult that existed in Austin
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 2: that there's a documentary called Holy Hell.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: I don't think so.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: No, when was that really interesting? I believe it took
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 2: place here in the nineties. The cult it's called the
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 2: Bodi Tree, I believe having and originally they started in
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: West Hollywood. And this is a great story. It was
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: a guy who is a gay porn star and a hypnotist.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 2: It was also a yogist. So he starts this cult.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: You would have liked this. Yeah.
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: I believe his name was Heimi Gomez and he changed
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: his name a couple of times. One of them was
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: Michelle and I think the other one was Andreas. And
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: so when the Cult Awareness Network started looking in the cults,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: right after Waco.
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: And Jolly West started that, right, the Cult Awareness.
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, so this guy leaves West Hollywood and moves to
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 2: Austin and has his followers build him a theater that
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: he can dance for them in front of them.
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: That was the point, so that he can show off.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's a beautiful theater. I almost bought it. Oh really, yeah,
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: we were the original Comedy Mothership was going to be
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 2: at this cult. No, No, it's West Austin. It's on
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: b Caves Road and it's still there. It's a beautiful theater. Uh.
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 2: And the reason why I was going to buy it
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: was for sale. First of all, it was a beautiful
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: theater and we wanted a place to put a comedy club.
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: And Ron White, my dear friend, had performed there and
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: he told me how great it was. It's like cult
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: owned it or something. So I was like, all right, cool.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: When I went to check it, I'm like, this is great.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: And then I get a phone call from my friend Adam.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 2: He goes, hey, man, have you seen the documentary on
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 2: this cult? And I'm like, oh fuck, there's a documentary
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: and the documentary is terrible. It's horrible. However, there's one
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 2: fascinating aspect of it. Okay, So this guy he had
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 2: sex with all these people. He made them pay money
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: so that he can have sex with them like they
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: would do therapy, and he was having sex with all
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 2: these guys and they were straight, and it was like
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: they felt terrible about it. And after it was over,
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 2: like the one guy had sent a mass email like, hey,
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 2: this guy's been hypnotizing me and fucking me for the
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 2: past ten years and everybody's like I thought it was
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 2: just me, and the entire call falls apart. But here's
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: the point. This guy had this thing that he would
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: do to them called the Knowing, and they would have
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: to qualify for the knowing. They'd have to be ready
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 2: for it, and only he could decide if they were ready.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: When they were ready, they would have this ceremony, huge thing,
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: and then he would put his hands on them. They
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 2: would like, they would kneel there in acceptance of the knowing,
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 2: and he would put his hands on them, and they
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: would have this profound psychedelic experience. So, through the power
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: of suggestion, through the placebo effect, whatever it is, they
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 2: genuinely have this profound psychedelic experience, this connection to God,
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: this feeling of all oneness to a person. Everyone who
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: left the cult who talked about what a terrible guy
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: he was, talked about how he sexually exploited them and
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: abused them and took their money, and they wasted twenty
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: years of their life with this guy. But that day
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: when they got the Knowing was the most profound day
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: of their lives.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: Really, even after theirs, even.
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: After they were out of the cults, people weeping about
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: what he did to them still talked about that experience
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: as being the most profound moment of their life. Which
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: is like this guy because he was a hypnotist and
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 2: because he was also a mega maniacal oh beautiful man
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: like gorgeous man like six pack ripped body. And it
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: got weird at the end because later in his life
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 2: he started getting plastic surgery because he was getting older,
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 2: and so his looks were going so's and everybody was
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: like what are you doing? Like what are you doing?
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 2: And he would deny doing anything, but it was like,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 2: so obviously he had face lifts and he just went crazy.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 2: But the point is, it's like he figured out how
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: to not just manipulate these people like all cult leaders do,
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: but have this one experience that apparently was a real
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: experience for these people in some way.
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: Able to int like this yes idea into them or yeah.
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: If they could just get out then like I got it,
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 2: thank you, I'm gonna go get a regular job now.
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: But in order to have that, I'm sure you have
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: to go through the whole experience because it builds up
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: some tension or resentment or something. Human psychology has to
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: have gone through that in order to maybe reach that well.
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 2: Just spectacular that he was able to understand that you
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: had to hold it back from them for so long
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 2: and like some of them in the film would be.
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 2: They were complaining that I'm ready for it, he won't
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: give it to me. I want it, I want it
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: so badly. Michelle got it now she's enlightened. I'm just
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: sitting here on earth eating carrots. This is bullshit, And
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: you know it's it's really weird because one of the
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: things about these cult documentaries is every time you watch one,
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: like for me, at least in the beginning, I'm like,
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: that looks like fun. In the beginning, it was great.
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: They're all having dinners together, they're.
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: All a community, and everyone loves community.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: They're all like working in the garden together, like this
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: looks great, it looks great, and then it always descends
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 2: into one guy focks everybody, one guy takes all the money,
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: one guy wants to be known as the living god.
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: It's just these patterns are so weird. They're so weird
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 2: because they're so similar.
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's the same basic human psychology operating
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: under different different circumstances that leads to you know, I
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: mean there's a classic phrase, you know, history repeats itself,
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: or history doesn't repeat, but it doesn't rhyme rhyme, but
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: it's because human share psychology, so of course there are
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: going to be similar actions. That reminds me kind of
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: this concept of like incepting something into someone or making
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: them feel this were you you know, this is a
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: little bit before my time, But did you experience the
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: Satanic panic in the sense that were you keeping up
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: with it when that was happening in the nineteen eighties.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 2: I wasn't, you know, I was very busy during that time,
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 2: but I peripherally remember it, and then later on we
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: examined it and looked into it, and you know, we've
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: done a few episodes where we went over it. But
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: it was, you know, legitimately kind of crazy.
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, because there's a connection between that and
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: some of the what I would say are mk ultra
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: kind of conspiracies. There are a lot of true things
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: about Mkultra that are just crazy, but there are also
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: some things that people propose that I don't think actually happened.
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: You know, there are some people who say, for instance,
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: that mk ultra was it was like getting young women
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: to run around these military compounds where they would be
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: hunted for sport, and it was saying like you know,
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: there was a vice president who activated a hologram around
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: his body to make this woman think that she had
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: turned into a lizard, to make her think that lizard
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: people actually exist. Like you know, she was saying that
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: the CIA personnel would impregnate her and abort the fetuses
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: and eat the fetuses and sell some of the body
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: parts in their inner state occult body part business and
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: all this stuff, which I don't think any of that happened. However,
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: there's a connection between, you know, the people who are
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: making these assertions and the Satanic Panic. A lot of
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: the people who make these assertions say that they recovered
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: their memories through hypnotism, and that is a lot of
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: what was going on during the Satanic Panic. You had
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: people recovering memories through hypnotism about being involved in this
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: ritualistic Satanic abuse. And in fact, there's a group called
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: the International Society for the Study of Dissociation, and a
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: lot of the members were kind of responsible for propagating
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: many of the Satanic Panic conspiracy theories. The president of
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: that organization a guy named Bennett Braun. He was sued
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: by a former patient for falsely convincing her that she
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: had engaged in cannibalism and infanticide and all this stuff
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: that she didn't do, and he lost his medical license
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: and she was awarded ten million dollars in this lawsuit.
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: But it turns out that many of the people, as
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: one in particular of the kind of prominent MKA ultric
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists, her husband who did this hypnotism on her
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: to recover her memories. He said he learned how to
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: recover memories from Bennett Braun himself, and he was a
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: part of this International Society for the Study of Dissociation.
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: So it's like the same techniques that were being used
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: during the Satanic Panic to so called recover these memories.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: It's the same thing in many of these mk ultra.
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: What I would say, are conspiracy theorists who are propagating
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: these this you know, misinformation about mk ultra because they
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: supposedly recovered these memories about how these jellybeans were used
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: to control their behavior or something. But it's the same
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: kind of techniques that are being used in both instances.
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: Hypnotic regression in particular is very odd because a lot
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 2: of is dependent upon the questions that are asked while
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 2: the person's under like that you can lead someone to
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: believe something happened that didn't happen.
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: This is what Jelly was to was some of the
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: stuff that he was in.
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 2: This is so it's really do you know what John
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: Mack is? John Mac John Mack was I believe he
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: was a psychiatrist at Harvard. He got really obsessed with
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: alien abduction stories and he wrote a book called Abduction,
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 2: and it was all hypnotic regressions of people that have
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: been abducted by aliens allegedly, and they all had very
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 2: similar stories. But the real controversy from skeptics has always
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 2: been like what were these sessions?
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: Like did you leading questions?
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 2: Yes? Yes? Did you lead them to believe what? And
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: also there was a precedent, So do you know the
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 2: Betty and Barney Hill story? Okay, Betty and Barney Hill
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 2: were an interracial couple in New Hampshire, I believe in
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties, where the very first UFO abduction story.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 2: And they had an experience on a highway, they saw
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 2: a thing, they lost time, and then they couldn't sleep.
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 2: They had all these real problems and they both wound
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: up going to a hypnotist and separately had the same
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 2: story separately had the same story about being taking aboard
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 2: a craft and being manipulated. The problem is then that
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: story gets out into the zeitgeist, right, and then you
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: have hypnotic regression where people tell very similar versions of
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 2: that story and it becomes a thing where like even
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 2: if the original Betty and Barney Hill story was real,
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 2: now that becomes a possibility in your mind that could
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 2: have happened to you. And then you get hypnotized and
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 2: someone says, do you see any beings in the room
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 2: with you? Yes? I do? Do? They are? They short
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 2: with large heads and large black eyes. They are like?
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: What are the questions?
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 3: Like?
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 2: How did you lead them into this hypnotic regression of
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 2: alien abduction?
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: And I think a very similar thing took place during
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: the European kind of witch craze in the seventeenth century. Yeah,
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: these preachers would go around to different communities talking about
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: witches and demons, and so as soon as they left,
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: in the weeks following, there's a huge uptick and witch
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: accusations and suppose possessions. Is it a coincidence that right
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: after there, as soon as it's brought to your consciousness, Oh,
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: I think you might be a witch or all these
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: accusations starts starting around obviously, it's like a suggested thing
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: that they picked up from attending these religious rallies.
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 2: Of course, did you know that when the printing press
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: was first created, some of the first and most popular
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 2: books were all about how to spot witches?
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, like Heinrich Kramer, I know, the
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: Hammer of Witches.
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 2: You would think, no, no, no, But now we have
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 2: a printing press. It's just all about philosophy, and you
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 2: know we're gonna it's gonna give me able to print
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: the Bible and mathematics. No no, no, no, no no.
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: If it bleeds, you know, if it leads, it leads.
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: It's like people are attracted to sensational stories. Yes, no,
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: it's the same thing about human psychology. They're just the
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: same psychology as us today. And if we're interested in
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: learning these sensational stories, of course they want to too.
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: It was their version of what I'm obsessed with Bigfoot,
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 2: the same thing. He's just nonsense.
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. A funny anecdote kind of related to that. I
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: teach a course on Isaac Newton and he writes this
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: big book, the Principia. It's like the most famous book
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: in the history of science, and it goes off to
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: the publisher, and the publisher, you know, he's publishing this book,
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: and right after the Prinkippea's published, the publisher gets arrested
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: for publishing pornography. So it's like, there's this image of
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: this publishing house where the Prinkipia, the most important book
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: in the history of science, is there, and right next
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: to it is all this smut that he's secretly doing.
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: Wow. God, human psychology is such a trip. We're so weird.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: We're such weird animals, and it makes it's so hard
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: because we're so weird to find the truth.
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, especially when when you're talking about like suggested memories
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: or something like that. There are a few studies I
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: don't remember them, you know, like perfectly. But there's one
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: study that I talk about in this book where it
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: was just right after the Challenger explosion. So the space
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: shuttle has exploded, and there were two psychologists I think
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: they're at Emerie University, and they decide we are going
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: to have all of our students, like two hundred students
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: right down exactly where they were when they heard about this,
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: because obviously they're all going to remember this is like
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: the next day, where were you, what were you doing?
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: Who told you about the explosion? And so they got copies,
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: you know, of these questionnaires basically from one hundred and
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: houn for many students. Four years later. I think it
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: was they tracked down I don't know what, forty or
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: eighty of these students and had them do the same
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: questionnaire when the challenger exploded. Where were you, who were
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: you with? What did you know? What did you learn?
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah blah. They took the exact same questionnaire,
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: and the majority of the students got a majority of
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: the questions wrong in the sense that they put down
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: something completely different than they did the first time. Yeah,
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: so it's like nobody was even manipulating them. That was
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: just their own memory that you know, the majority got
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: the majority of these important details wrong. There's another intriguing
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: kind of humorous psychological study. I don't know how big
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: the sample size was on this, but it was to
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: determine how powerful our memory is, in the sense that
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: if you just suggest that someone did something, is it
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: possible that they actually think they actually did. So the
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: suggestion was they took a bunch of students to some
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: vending machines, and they either had them proposed to the
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: vending machine something that surely you would remember, or they
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: would suggest to them that they had proposed to the
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: vending machine, so that you know, some students would actually propose,
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: and other students they would just tell them, oh, you know,
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: imagine yourself proposing to this vending machine. And afterwards, I
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: don't remember what the percentage was, but a decent amount
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: of percentage of the students who were only told to
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: envision proposing actually thought they had proposed. And so the
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: power of suggestion is very strong.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 2: So strong, and the memory is so fallible. Like I
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 2: have a pretty good memory for like hard facts, like
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 2: the information that I know is true, but my memory
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 2: of my own life is basically like weird, blurry snapshots
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 2: that I can recall, and oftentimes when I'm recalling is
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 2: the memory of my recounting of my memory.
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: It's not really my memory of the story that you've
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: told yourself.
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 2: I watched an episode of news radio the other day.
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 2: It was a sitcom that I was on in the
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 2: nineteen nineties. I didn't remember it at all. I didn't
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 2: remember the plot. I didn't remember the lines that I had.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: I didn't remember, like if it was fake, if someone
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 2: created during AI, I would have no idea whether it
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 2: was an AI version of news Radio or whether unless
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 2: it was an episode that I really remember, like, oh,
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 2: that was a really funny one. I didn't remember this
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 2: at all, and it was me. I lived it. I
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 2: was on TV right, so it was like probably a
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 2: big moment for me at the time. Gone, it doesn't exist.
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's ironic. I'm a historian, but I
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: feel like my memory is not that good either.
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 2: I don't think anybody's is.
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: No, it can't be.
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's certain people like you know that woman
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 2: that was on taxi, really pretty redhead lady, that sitcom
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 2: taxi from the nineteen seventies. God, I forget her name.
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 2: Is famous actress Mary Lou Tenor Mary Lou Tennor photographic
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 2: memory Henner, Mary Lou Henner, Sorry sorry, Mary Lou. I
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 2: used to be in love with her when I was
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 2: a kid. She has a photographic memory, like she can
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 2: remember that it was a Tuesday in nineteen eighty three,
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 2: like this lady. It's an incredible memory. Highly superior autobiographical memory,
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 2: a rare condition. Which people can remember nearly every day
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 2: of their lives with precise detail.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: I wonder if that would be good to have or
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: bad to have.
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 2: She seems very happy, okay, because I show a picture
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 2: of her when she was young. She was.
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: I can imagine having a negative experience or a bad memory,
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: and then dwelling on that and knowing every single detail
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: of that and having to relive that, like in photographic
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: detail every time you think of it. I'm sure that
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: couldn't be a pleasant experience.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 2: But that one right above, Go to the one, the
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 2: right above there, right there, No, right there, bam, that
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 2: was her? Who smoke?
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: Show that was your younger?
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. Yeah, she was so pretty. And also, uh,
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: photographic memory, so you can't lie to her like what
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 2: an amazing person. But that's got to be a I
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 2: would imagine, it's not I would I would take that
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 2: over not taking that, Like, if someone gave me the option,
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 2: would you rather have an absolute photographic memory or be
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 2: like not really sure, I don't fucking know what happened,
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 2: you know, Yeah, I would take I would take the
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 2: photographic memory. I think the burden I think would be
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 2: worth it, even I think i'd handle.
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: It even me for questions like, you know, if you
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: asked me, how did you come to write this book?
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: Like you asked me, how did you become interested in
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: this topic? When I was thinking about the answer to
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: that question, I mean, what I said is factual in
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: the sense that I was doing a dissertation on scientists
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: in the intelligence community and this, But is that really
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: like how I came to this topic. I might have
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: read some other book that I read the name Sidney
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: Gottlieb and that got me interested. And you know, even
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: when I'm talking to you about my own autobiographical experience,
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: to me, it's like, I mean, what I'm saying is true,
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: but is it like literally true in the sense that
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: I know with precision that how I came to this
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: topic because I was doing my dissertation on this It
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: might have been you know, I kind of remember reading
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: Tim Wiener's book Legacy of Ashes and it briefly mentioned
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: Sidney Gottlieben there. Maybe I read that and like, oh,
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: who's this guy?
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: Right, So there's a classic joke about how there's a
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: guy looking for his keys on the parking lot and
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: it's night and there's a lampost right above him, and
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: a police officer walks by, and the police officers says, sir,
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: what are you doing? And he says, oh, I'm looking
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: for my keys on the ground. They must be somewhere
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: around here. And the officer says, oh, well, did you
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: drop him right here? And the guy says, no, I
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: dropped him in the bush over there, but this is
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: where the light is, so this is where I'm looking.
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: So to me, it's like, well, when I remember my
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: own autobiographic experience, am I remembering? How it's convenient to
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: memory it?
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Remember it or you know or often times oftentimes.
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 2: I mean that's the human tendency, right. I know for
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 2: a fact when I really got into conspiracies, because I
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 2: have a moment connected to it, that was a bad experience.
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 2: So when I was in my early twenties, this guy
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 2: that was a friend of mine that was in a band,
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 2: had read this book called Best Evidence by David Lifton.
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 2: David Lifton was an accountant and I forget what his
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 2: assignment was, but had something to do with the Warren Commission.
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 2: So he goes over the Warren Commission report and he
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 2: actually read the whole thing. So it's a huge volume,
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 2: and he reads all this and he finds so many
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 2: contradictions and so many things that are wrong with it
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 2: that he starts investigating the Kennedy assassination and he writes
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 2: this book called Best Evidence, and the book is basically
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 2: saying that there's no way the official story is true.
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 2: And I read this while I was a comedian on
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 2: the road. So I was in Philadelphia and I was
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 2: doing stand up and I had a show on Friday,
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 2: and I spent the whole day in my hotel room
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 2: reading this book, freaking out, going, oh my god, they
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 2: killed this. So then I go on stage first show
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 2: and fucking bomb. And I had done really good the
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 2: night before.
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: Happened JFK or did you already have no?
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 2: I had my set, but I was like completely freaked
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: out by the fact they killed the president. And then
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 2: I apologize to the manager. I said, I'm so sorry.
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 2: I read this book on JFKN. I'm super bummed out.
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 2: I'll be over it by the second show, I promise you.
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 2: And then that they were like you better me, and
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 2: I was like, I promise, I'm good at this, I
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 2: know what I'm doing. And then the second show was great,
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 2: and they like don't do that again. I'm like, I won't,
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 2: I won't do it again. But I genuinely freaked out.
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 2: So I remember very specifically because it was a you know,
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 2: it was a big moment for me. I was on
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 2: the road and I ate shit at comedy club, so
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: like that thing is in my head forever. But that
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 2: book was that was my first step because I was like,
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 2: if this is a true story, I mean, if this
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 2: is this book is accurate, like someone killed the president
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 2: and they got away with it, and it wasn't Lee
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 2: Harvey Oswald, even if he was involved. It was and
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 2: there was a conspiracy to distort the evidence of the
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 2: assassination in terms of like the difference in the discrepancies
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 2: between the report at Dallas when they first received his
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 2: body to Bethesda, Maryland. There's a bullet hole wound that
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 2: they describe in the Dallas where they call it a
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 2: tracheotomy hole. In Bethesda, Maryland. They're manipulating the narrative to
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 2: incorporate the single gunman theory. Yeah.
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: Have have you ever had Gerald Posner on I have not, Okay,
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: because I know I haven't gotten really down the JFK
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: rabbit hole, so I don't know that much about it,
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: but I know he wrote the book Case Closed.
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that book sucks. You need to get him together
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: with Oliver Stone and he'll take that book apart.
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: I bring him up just because I follow him on
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: Twitter x. Yeah, and he was posting recently about the
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: I think he'd posted about the tracheotomy thing and so,
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: but I don't really Just the.
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 2: Magic bullet theory alone is complete, utter nonsense to anybody
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 2: who's ever shot anything with a bullet when bullets hit
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 2: bone and shatter bone. First of all, there's the fact
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 2: that there was more bullet fragments in Connolly's wrist than
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 2: we're missing from this magic bullet. This magic bullet was
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 2: only used as a tool because they had to account
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 2: for a bullet that hit the underpass. So there was
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 2: a guy standing under the underpass. He got hit with
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 2: a ricochet. So they're like, well, definitely that bullet hit here.
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 2: So we have to tribute all these wounds to one bullet.
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 2: So it had to go through Kennedy, bounce around, come
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 2: out of him, hit Connolly, go through him, go through
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 2: his wrist, and then they magically find this bullet in
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 2: the gurney when they're bringing in the body, or when
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 2: they're bringing in Connolly to get medical assistance, they supposedly
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 2: magically find this bullet. This bullet's clearly been shot into water.
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 2: This bullet is either water or pillows. This bullet has
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 2: no deformations, it's pristine. It's not missing any fragments, so
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 2: it doesn't account for the fragments in the wrist. It's
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 2: a total horseshit idea. And then there's back to the left.
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 2: When you see this appruder film where his head explodes,
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 2: it's all the people that were talking about the shots
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 2: coming from the grassy knoll. It's the fact that so
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 2: many of the witnesses died in mysterious circumstances. They died
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 2: from car accidents, they died from suicide, they died from crime,
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 2: they died from random acts of violence. Like they did
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 2: a calculation of what are the odds that all these
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 2: witnesses would wind up dying the way they did, and
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 2: it's like some spectacular number. They fucking killed a bunch
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 2: of people that were there.
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you know this, but Vincent Buliosi wrote, like
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: I think what might be the longest non fiction single
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: volume book ever written on the Kennedy assassination, Remembering History
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: or something like that. It's like fifteen hundred.
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 2: This is Buliosi that was involved in the Manson.
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: He wrote like a book about the jfk assassination.
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 2: And if you read Tom O'Neil's book, it calls him
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 2: a complete Charlotte yesh, he's a crazy person.
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, if anyone has seen that book
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: in person, it really is like fifteen hundred pages of
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: like the densest, tiniest little print and it was so
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: long that it came with a CD of the notes
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: that were like a thousand additional pages. They couldn't fit
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: in the volume, and like a physical CD you had
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: to put in your computer to see the notes.
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 2: Thing. Oh my god, that's so crazy.
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: But I think that could be like the longest single
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: volume nonfiction book that I've ever seen.
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 2: I would love to get Jerald Posner in a room
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 2: with Oliver Stone, because Oliver Stone, even at his advanced age,
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 2: he's so smart and his recall is incredible for dates
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 2: and times and people that were involved. I don't think
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 2: Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent. I think Lee Harvey Oswald
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 2: was definitely an intelligence agent. I think Lee Harvey Oswell,
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 2: the fact that he lived in Russia, the fact that
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 2: he came back to America married a Russian woman. He
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 2: seems to have like just very bizarre access to I
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 2: think he was an intelligence agent. I think he probably
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 2: was involved in the whole thing. But the calmness in
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 2: which he describes the fact that he's a patsy after
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 2: he's been arrested for killing the president, like, to me,
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 2: just that that guy's involved in shit. That's not how
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 2: a normal person reacts when you get accused of killing
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 2: the president. If you're innocent, you go, I'm innocent anything
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 2: to do with this. I don't know why they have me,
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 2: or you'd be freaking the fuck out. And he's like,
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 2: I'm just a patsy. Oh are you really? Like? I
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 2: think you're probably an intelligence agent. There's probably something creepy
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 2: about you.
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: But well, if anyone could get them to talk, I'm
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: sure it's you.
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 2: I think there was a lot of people involved in
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 2: the Kennedy assassination. I think there was multiple shooters, and
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 2: I think it was very coordinated, and it was probably
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 2: it probably involved our government, It might have involved the mafia,
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 2: might have involved other governments. Some people think it had
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 2: something to do with Israel because Israel Kennedy did not
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 2: want to give Israel nuclear weapons. There's a there's a
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 2: ton of stuff that's attached to that assassination. But this
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 2: idea of case closed, Fuck you, there's no case closed
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 2: in this. This This is one of the craziest conspiracies
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 2: of all time because it seems to be that they
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 2: killed the press it and got away with it. That's
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 2: what it seems to be. And then the Jolly West
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 2: connection to Jack Ruby. So Jack Ruby goes in and
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 2: kills Lee Harvey Oswald. Then in jail, Jolly West visits
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 2: him and he goes completely fucking insane, completely insane, loses
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 2: his mind, thinks he's in hell, this fire, the Jews
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 2: are all burning like He's like going nuts. Right after
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 2: the guy was in charge of all these LSD studies
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 2: visits him.
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: How one thing do you it's been I don't know
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: five years or whenever I read tum new this book
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: when it came out the first time, so I don't
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: remember that well. But one thing, because I have a
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: chapter on Jolly West, and one thing that stuck out
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: to me especially is one of the main crusades he
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: had in his life was against the death penalty. You know,
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 1: he writes a lot about how it's completely immoral, this
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: thing he doesn't like. So to me, especially, there's an
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: earlier case called this Jimmy Shaver case about this guy
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: who abused and killed this little girl that Jolly West
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: was involved into. It seems to me the possibility is
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: all it's so open that Jolly West might also have
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: had an incentive to dose these people with elst if
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: he did to prevent them from getting the death sentence,
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: because if they could, you know, appear insane, maybe they
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: would not get the death penalty instead.
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 2: Why was he so obsessed about the death sentence.
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think he just considered it a
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: moral And what.
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 2: A fascinating thing that a guy would ruin people's lives,
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 2: would consider just ending them to be a moral. Yeah.
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 2: Where a lot of those people wind up killing themselves
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 2: because of his actions.
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he ended up killing himself too well. I
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: mean it was an assisted suicide with his son. His
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: son later wrote a book about this, but his son basically,
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: Jolly West had gotten cancer that had metastasized throughout his
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 1: entire body and he was about to die and he
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: didn't really want to go through the remaining months or
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: whatever he had left in agony, and so he got
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: his son to stockpile a bunch of pills and feed
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: them to him when he basically became unable to move
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: for himself. And so that happened to Jolly West. Then
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: the son did that to Jolly West's wife, his own
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: mother later when I don't know exactly if she had
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: a medical issue or something, but he helped her commit
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: assistant suicide or the son wrote a book about it,
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: and then he later committed suicide as well.
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 2: Oh boy, oh man. It's just so strange, how so much,
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 2: so many bad things can have come from just a
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 2: few people, just a few people, and these terrible ideas
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 2: and this complete lack of oversight. It's so much evil,
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 2: including the Manson family. Like because we've talked about it
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 2: the Toime O'Neil book. Please, folks, if you're listening to this,
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 2: read that book. It's one of the craziest books of
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 2: all time by a man completely obsessed with the story
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 2: that literally chased down nothing but that story for twenty years.
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: And the one of the parts of the book that
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: I really enjoyed is the writing style is kind of
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: like a gonzo journey, Like he's part of the story.
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: You know, you're following on him on the journey to
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: discover this stuff. For me, that was the exciting part
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: of the ride. It's like, oh, it's not just telling
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: you the story. It's like we're figuring out how a
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: historian or a journalist actually works. He's telling you, now,
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: I've got this interview, and I'm going to go do this,
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to go find these documents. I didn't
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: write this book in that style because I just wanted
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: to stick to a description of mk Ultra. But there
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: is something tempting about one of the exciting things about
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: history is doing the history, and no one really sees
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: that process. You know how I was describing going down
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: the rabbit hole to find the origin of that quote.
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: There are a million stories like that about how it's
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: so crazy. For example, there was there was this guy
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: named Veneva Bush. He was President Roosevelt's unofficial official really
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: science advisor during World War Two. And some people say
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 1: Vanavar Bush.
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 2: But it's actually connected to the bushes. No no, no, no, no, no,
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 2: no different bushes.
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: But it's Vineva. Bush himself says that it rhymes with
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 1: beaver his name, so it's benev. But he was writing
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 1: his autobiography. He was in charge of coordinating scientific research
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: during World War Two, and when he was writing his autobiography,
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: he did this series of interviews that were like a
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: thousand pages long so that he could kind of talk
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: about his life and he would use chunks of that
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: and as part of his autobiography. Well, I wanted to
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: get that because for my first book, Veneva Bush plays
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 1: an important role because he's the guy who gets Stanley
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: Lovel the job in the OSS, and Stanley Lovel's my
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: main character. So it's like, oh, Veneva Bush is like
• 2:18:17
  Speaker 1: one of the main guys, who is you know, playing
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: a role in this story. So I go, there are
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 1: a couple of different archives that have this one thousand
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: page interview that Veneva Bush did, and every single page
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 1: is there in one of the versions except two pages
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: that talk about Stanley Level and the OSS. And I
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: thought that's the exact thing I need, Like, how is
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: it out of a thousand pages, the one thing that's
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: missing is the two pages? And so I finally eventually
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: find out that there's another copy of this interview at
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 1: a different repository, like at Georgetown University or MIT. I
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 1: forget which one it was. So I get them to
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: send me a photocopy of every single page, and it
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: turns out that had the two missing pages. So it's like,
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: oh my gosh, now I can actually use that information
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: because they didn't have the two pages out of a
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: thousand that I actually needed they were missing. You know,
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: they're like a thousand stories about these crazy coincidences that happened.
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: One of them, again from my first book, was about
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: Stanley Level. You know, he's this chemist in the oss
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: creating all these ingenious like gadgets and whatever. He talks
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 1: in his memoir about his wartime experience about being on
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: this biological warfare committee where they were discussing the possibility
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: of using anthrax and tularimia and tuberculosis and you know,
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: distributing this to across towns and just just discussing what
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: would happen, what would what would we need to be
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 1: able to do this, what would have to happen for
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: us to engage in biological warfare. But he talks about
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: this in his memoir, But I had never seen you know,
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: a copy of that meeting, minutes of that meeting or anything.
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: He said that this this group, this Biological Warfare Committee.
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: It was part of the National Academy of Sciences. And
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: I thought, okay, well that's interesting. But you know, I
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: can't hardly put it in the book if I don't
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: actually have the minutes in the meeting where they're talking
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 1: about this, because Stanley level was known to to exaggerate,
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 1: to say the least, some of the stuff that he
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: was up to during the war. But then I thought
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: to myself, I kind of remember several years earlier, when
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: I was writing my dissertation before this book, I had
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: gone to the National Academy of Sciences because I was
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: working on you know, some scientists and government, and I
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: ended up taking it just a bunch of pictures of
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of the materials they had in their archives.
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: And I went back through the material that I already had,
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: and it turns out I had taken pictures of the
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: minutes of the very meeting Stanley lovel was talking about
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: in his memoir. It was already in my possession. I
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 1: didn't have to go there, I already had it. It's
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: just a crazy coincidence that I already had the thing,
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: exact thing I needed.
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 1: So the process of making history is sometimes even more
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: exciting than the story itself.
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 2: Well, the process, it seems like it takes a very
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 2: dedicated person and chase down that process, like all the
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 2: things you're saying about finding those two pages the quote, like,
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 2: there's so many versions of you wanting to absolutely be sure,
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 2: which is so critical, And I'm so glad that you
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 2: did that. I can chase down those things because a
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 2: lot of lazy people wouldn't have gone that far, right, Yeah,
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 2: especially as no one's watching. Yeah, for books you can
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 2: cite like, oh it says here's the quote. Yeah.
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: But for me, that's the enjoyment of it. You know,
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: I enjoy doing I like going to the archives. I
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: like finding things. I feel like a detective, you know.
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 1: I'm in the archive and I'm looking at these documents
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 1: and oh, I find this guy's name is mentioned here.
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, So to me, it's exciting. It's like a treasure hunt.
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: So that's that's the fun part of it.
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 2: You know. Do you have a hard time communicating with
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 2: people that aren't familiar with all this stuff in terms
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 2: in terms of like this subject gets discussed and someone
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 2: brings it up, and they start asking questions, do you
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 2: have do you have a hard time of not looking crazy?
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 2: Do you know what I mean? Because they're like, there's
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 2: a lot of people that are like very intelligent, very
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 2: educated people that have not just no information about this
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 2: or no knowledge of this, but an aversion. Yeah.
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's finaturally a thing that you would assume
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: could not have taken place.
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 2: But it's not just that, it's like there's an aversion
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 2: into even rationally discussing it. Like I don't I am
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 2: not the type of person it's gonna sit here and
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 2: do conspiracies with you. I've had a few conversations like
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 2: that with people that do not believe in conspiracies, and
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 2: they always fall apart under scrutiny that narrative false part,
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 2: Well you don't think they exist? Which ones don't you
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 2: think exists?
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 1: Well, a conspiracy, I mean to me, a conspiracy is
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: just a secret plot to do something. There are a
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 1: lot of secret plots.
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 2: Of course, yeah, all throughout history.
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 1: Now, I mean there are conspiracy theories in the sense
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: that there are stuff that people make up and isn't
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: actually true. But to say conspiracies themselves are necessarily false, Well,
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: any secret plot is a conspiracy.
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 2: Not just that. I think we live in a day
• 2:22:42
  Speaker 2: and age where there's a lot of fake conspiracies that
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 2: are thrown in to muddy the water.
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, you know, in fact that actually ties in.
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: At the end of this book, I talk about a
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: little bit about kind of the what's kind of called
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: censorship through noise, the idea that we can put so
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: much noise out there that no one's really gonna know
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: what to trust. And so I give an example of
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: the idea that AIDS was created in a government laboratory
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: like Fort Diedrich in the In the really nineteen eighties,
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: there was a Soviet kind of propaganda mouthpiece newspaper in
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 1: India called The Patriot, and this would just publish like
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: KGB propaganda.
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 2: Wow and India in India.
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And one of the stories in that newspaper was
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: basically saying AIDS was created in the government, government laboratory.
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't just say that. In order to get there,
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: it first said, did you know that the CIA was
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 1: involved in dosing people with drugs? Which is completely true?
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: Did you know that the military was involved in spraying
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: certain germs over cities to you know, determine the distribution
• 2:23:42
  Speaker 1: of the air currents, to see if we were attacked
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: by in biological warfare situation, how the air currents would
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: spread these germs. They were just spraying like yeast and
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: stuff over But you know it's bacteria. So did you
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 1: know that this? Did you know that they've performed experiments
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: on these drug addicts and this and that and this?
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: And also did you know that in Fort Diedricht they
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: created a biology weapon called AIDS. So it's you know,
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 1: it's the lie is made more potent because it's sandwiched
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 1: in between all these truths. And so this newspaper, the Patriot,
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 1: published this article basically saying all these true things and
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 1: then one thing at the end that they were actually pushing.
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: But if you knew that all these other things were true,
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: you might assume that that final thing is true as well.
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 1: And other countries around the world where they had these
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 1: front newspapers, they would also publish the same kind of story.
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 2: Did you know that?
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: And then AIDS was creating this government laboratory, And then
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 1: those newspapers would cite the Indian newspaper the Patriot as
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 1: evidence that other independent newspapers had also come to this conclusion.
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: And if many independent sources are coming to this, surely
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: it means that it's got some credibility to it, not
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: knowing that the actual connection the KGV is just sponsoring
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 1: all this, you know. So it's a yeah, censorship through noise,
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 1: the idea that there's certain things we don't want people
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 1: to know, or maybe we do not want people to
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 1: know but not understand or something, and so we're going
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 1: to flood the zone with all this you know crap
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: basically to maybe nobody's going to know what to believe.
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: Maybe it is the case that the CIA cre you
• 2:25:00
  Speaker 1: today is in Fort d Drick or whatever it is.
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 1: So that's one tactic that I talked about at the
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 1: very end.
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 2: It's also a great way to minimize the impact of
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 2: all the things that actually are true on that list,
• 2:25:09
  Speaker 2: because you're attached to something that's completely kooky, and if
• 2:25:12
  Speaker 2: you do that enough times, you can muddy the waters
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 2: on basically every subject that there is.
• 2:25:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So it can go with both ways, in the
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: sense that fake stories can delegitimize true stories, but true
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 1: stories legitimize fake.
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 2: Story right, both ways. And then you have the social
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 2: media impact of bots, which is just really unstudied. We
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 2: don't really know the numbers. We've talked about this before,
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 2: but there was a former FBI analyst before the purchase
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 2: of Twitter that he was looking at and he thinks
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 2: it's eighty percent bots. He's eighty percent of the discourse,
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 2: eighty percent of the traffic. Is it not human or
• 2:25:46
  Speaker 2: people that are being paid to do it?
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 1: It's like some government entity you wanted to do this
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 1: to sow confusion.
• 2:25:51
  Speaker 2: Or there's a lot of different factors. There's US, there's them,
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 2: there's everybody. There's NGOs, there's different packs, and they all
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 2: have like you can go online, there's companies that will
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 2: fund a social campaign for you. Like so imagine if
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 2: you wanted to go online and attack people over a
• 2:26:14
  Speaker 2: certain issue, Like say, if you're trying to get a
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 2: bill passed and you want to attack people over a
• 2:26:18
  Speaker 2: very certain issue, you can fund a campaign using bots
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 2: to promote your position, and it could give the illusion
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 2: of some sort of some agreement online or disagreement online,
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 2: or maybe you could take a thing that's a very
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 2: reasonable position and make it seem completely ridiculous and then
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 2: also seem like there's a bunch of support that it's
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 2: completely ridiculous, Like a lot of people believe and they
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 2: start citing things that aren't true and quotes that aren't true,
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 2: and you could just completely screw up the idea of
• 2:26:48
  Speaker 2: what the truth is.
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. The Russian government had I think it
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 1: was called like the Internet Research Agency or something like it.
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's there's a book called Active Measure Measures
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 1: by Thomas ridd and he kind of chronics what they
• 2:27:01
  Speaker 1: were doing. Basically, young people would be hired to pose
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: as whoever anyone wanted to be posed as I guess
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 1: the Russian government to spread certain amounts of disinformation to
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: certain communities. Say, they would just create fake profiles, and
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: your whole job at work would be to cycle through
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 1: these different profiles and comment on people's posts and post
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: your own, and then boost the post of your fellow
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: disinformation actors in this IRA so that their post would
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 1: be seen by more people. There's a whole there's a
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 1: whole organization or a whole you know, whatever it is.
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 2: What was the woman's name that came on to talk
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 2: about that, Renee Dresta. That's right, Yeah, she was saying
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 2: how like she had to study all these memes and
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 2: so many of them were really funny, and like these
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 2: people that were in charge of what they wanted to
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 2: do was make sure the people online in America were
• 2:27:53
  Speaker 2: arguing about everything. And the more you could get people
• 2:27:57
  Speaker 2: at each other's throats, the more you could destroy their democracy.
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 2: This is part of the idea of it, just to
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 2: have another element that people have to deal with. And
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 2: that they were organizing Texas Separatist meetings directly across the
• 2:28:13
  Speaker 2: street from these Muslim meetings, like they were doing it
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 2: a purpose. So they were trying to get people to
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 2: argue with each other, trying to get people to be
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 2: in conflict with each other.
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean one of the things now with
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 1: social media, but just in a globalized world, any amount
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: of conflict is kind of available for anyone to see. So,
• 2:28:31
  Speaker 1: you know, the worst thing in the world that happens today,
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 1: you're probably going to learn about it. You're going to
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 1: know about it, which that can't be good for your
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: mental health to constantly be bombarded by this negative stuff.
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 1: It's not that in the past all this negative stuff
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 1: didn't happen. It's just that in the past. You're probably
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 1: more focused on your community because it's not like you're
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 1: got constant access to what's going on in me and
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: mar at the second or whatever it is. So the
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: fact that you're constantly able to see the worst thing
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: happening in the world, that cannot be good just for
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 1: your mentality.
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 2: It's definitely not good. But it's also a social experiment
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 2: because we didn't know what would happen when you get
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 2: all this bad news from all over the world. It's
• 2:29:06
  Speaker 2: never happened before, so there's never been a device that
• 2:29:09
  Speaker 2: you carry in your pocket that gives you the worst
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 2: news of the day all day long. It's totally new.
• 2:29:14
  Speaker 2: So anybody growing up today is bombarded, which is why
• 2:29:18
  Speaker 2: it has to account for some of the anxiety that
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 2: kids face. Because you see heightened levels of anxiety, heightened
• 2:29:25
  Speaker 2: levels of fear about climate or anything that they tell
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 2: you that it's the thing that you really need to
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 2: freak out about. It's like you're being inundated and you
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 2: don't have a chance to just enjoy the moment that
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 2: you're in because everything is like this total existential crisis
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 2: that's going to destroy humanity if you don't act now.
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 2: Oh God, there's a jenisi go on. It's like, no
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 2: matter what it is, it's like you're being bombarded by everything.
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 2: The economy is a crash, no kings, Ah, ice is coming. Jesus,
• 2:29:54
  Speaker 2: do you have gun control?
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 1: Ah? Do you have a lot of nostalgia for the
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 1: pre internet days because I don't remember it?
• 2:29:59
  Speaker 2: No, Now, fuck those times. That was stupid. I think
• 2:30:06
  Speaker 2: with the Internet, with all his flaws, is way better.
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 2: It's way better. It's way better than the government being
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 2: in control of the narrative. And you know, now we
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 2: know intelligence agencies absolutely in control what's distributed in mainstream news.
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 2: Like the idea that the mainstream news back then was
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 2: independent and free and they were the press Like, no, no,
• 2:30:25
  Speaker 2: the government agencies and intelligence agencies have been involved in
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 2: propaganda from the jump. And it's way better now you
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 2: have more access to information. It's way more complicated. It's
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 2: way more complicated to live your life. It's way more
• 2:30:38
  Speaker 2: psychologically complicated. To be in the moment and to be
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 2: present and to just enjoy your life. It's harder. It's
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 2: much harder because you are constantly being informed. And there's
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 2: the addiction aspect of it, you know, the addiction to
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 2: being informed, the addiction to seeing what people are saying
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 2: and seeing the oh, what did this guy he stole
• 2:31:00
  Speaker 2: all this money? Like we were in the green room
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 2: last night with that. We're reading the story about this
• 2:31:05
  Speaker 2: congress person who stole money and how they did it,
• 2:31:08
  Speaker 2: and then they bought a giant diamond ring to wear
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 2: this giant three carrot diamond ring on a hundred thousand
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 2: dollars a year salary, Like, what are you doing, you
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 2: fucking crazy person. But it's like that, that's what you're
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 2: that's where you're taking in all day instead of your friends,
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 2: instead of your your life and just having an experience
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 2: in your neighborhood. No, you're just you're constantly looking at
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 2: all the problems that are happening all over the world
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 2: all the time. Yeah, and you don't get a break.
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 2: But it's better than being ignorant. It's just like you
• 2:31:44
  Speaker 2: have to you have to find a way to whether
• 2:31:47
  Speaker 2: whatever that psychological storm is and seek shelter and don't
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 2: always just stay out there in it and just get
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 2: bombarded by psychological hail. That's kind of what it is.
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 2: You gotta have a strong roof and stay inside sometimes.
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the uh, this is a weird transition, but you
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 1: said psychological a hal It made me think of this
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: project during World War two the OSS did called the
• 2:32:12
  Speaker 1: bat bomb. Have you are you familiar with it now?
• 2:32:16
  Speaker 1: It just made me think of these things kind of
• 2:32:17
  Speaker 1: raining down. But I read about this in the dirty
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: Tricks department. But during World War two there was this
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: concept of how can we better target cities or buildings
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: with our incendiary explosives. We can drop bombs, but I mean,
• 2:32:31
  Speaker 1: those aren't targeted. They're just gonna fall where they fall,
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: and if the wind's going the wrong way, they're not
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: even going to hit the target that we want them to.
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: So this guy named Little Adams, he was working with
• 2:32:40
  Speaker 1: the OSS. He had the idea, he had just gone
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: to Carlsbad caverns. What if we get bats and we
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 1: attach napalm to them and then we release these over
• 2:32:49
  Speaker 1: Japanese cities. The bats are going to roost into the
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: buildings in the cities, and then we can have the
• 2:32:55
  Speaker 1: napalm time delayed so that it'll explode after a certain
• 2:32:58
  Speaker 1: amount of time that we release them, and it'll fires
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: to all these buildings. So we have like targeted incendiaries
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 1: instead of just random bombs falling, So it sounds like
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 1: kind of a crazy idea. But he happened to be
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 1: friends with Eleanor Roosevelt because he had phone planes before
• 2:33:11
  Speaker 1: and he had given her a ride in his plane,
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: and they kind of knew each other. So he sent
• 2:33:16
  Speaker 1: this kind of report on the bat bomb to Eleanor Roosevelt.
• 2:33:19
  Speaker 1: She gave it to her husband, President Roosevelt, who gave
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 1: it to William Donovan, the head of the OSS, and
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 1: with a note attached to the thing that he gave
• 2:33:26
  Speaker 1: to Donovan, it said, this man is not a nut.
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: You know, take this seriously. So Donovan, of course, he
• 2:33:32
  Speaker 1: gives this to the research and development branch Stanley Lovell
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 1: that I write about in my first book, and it
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: becomes this bat bomb project that now he level feels
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 1: obligated to do because the President's saying, we need to
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 1: research this. So they end up going to Carlsbad caverns
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 1: and to some caverns here in Texas, and they scoop
• 2:33:47
  Speaker 1: up a bunch of bats and they do a few
• 2:33:50
  Speaker 1: tests with them. They actually get a guy named Lewis
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: Pfizer who invented napalm to create tiny little incendiaries that
• 2:33:56
  Speaker 1: you could strap to bats. This is a little bit
• 2:34:00
  Speaker 1: of a digression, but Pfiser had been at Harvard. He
• 2:34:02
  Speaker 1: was a chemist there, and when he was inventing napalm,
• 2:34:06
  Speaker 1: he it was like a jellied gasoline. He would do
• 2:34:08
  Speaker 1: the tests on the soccer field at Harvard, just like
• 2:34:11
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the campus. That's where napalm was invented.
• 2:34:13
  Speaker 1: Just like in the middle of Harvard's campus. These bombs
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: would be exploding and people would get mad at him.
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: People would get been mad, not because he was detonating
• 2:34:20
  Speaker 1: these bombs, but because he was hogging the soccer fields
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 1: and the drill sergeant needed it for practice, and so
• 2:34:25
  Speaker 1: there's like these diffuse But so he was hired by
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 1: the OSS to create these tiny little incendiaries to strap
• 2:34:31
  Speaker 1: to these bats. So the OS did s did a
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: few experiments with this. Before the incendiaries were strapped, they
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 1: put like fake and cinderies on them. They the ideal
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 1: was to cool down these bats. We're gonna fly him
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 1: in a plane over the desert, like out in Utah somewhere,
• 2:34:47
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna drop these bats and see if they
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 1: actually kind of disperse. It turns out that they were
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 1: using Mexican retailed bats, which I don't think actually hibernate,
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: but they travel south for the winter, and so they
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 1: cooled down these bats in this like artificial refrigerator. But
• 2:35:03
  Speaker 1: apparently they had cooled them down too much, so when
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 1: they dropped them from the plane, they just like fell
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 1: straight down to the ground and never woke up, and
• 2:35:09
  Speaker 1: so they just flattered across the desert. So that was
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 1: one of the tests. Another of the tests, they wanted
• 2:35:15
  Speaker 1: to do a live experiment where they had an actual
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 1: bat and with an actual napalm bomb attached to it
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 1: to see if it could like fly off or to
• 2:35:22
  Speaker 1: see if it would actually like carry this weight. But
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 1: they had it in like somewhat of a controlled environment.
• 2:35:27
  Speaker 1: They cooled this bat down, put it in artificial hibernation,
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 1: and then they were taking pictures of it, you know,
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 1: to see how everything operated. But then the bat started
• 2:35:36
  Speaker 1: kind of waking up and it flew off before they
• 2:35:38
  Speaker 1: could grab it, and it actually flew into a control
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 1: tower and it burst into flame, and the whole thing
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: caught on fire and burned down. So it turned out
• 2:35:45
  Speaker 1: this thing actually worked, but again it was never deployed
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: against Japan. This is right at the end of World
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 1: War Two, and you know they were already the Manhattan
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: Project was kind of successful at that point, so there
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 1: was no need for the bat bomb. But if people
• 2:35:56
  Speaker 1: are interested in that kind of story and how crazy
• 2:35:58
  Speaker 1: that can get, that's the these books too.
• 2:36:01
  Speaker 2: Do you know about the proposal for the gay bomb?
• 2:36:04
  Speaker 1: That sounds familiar about like releasing some kind of chemical
• 2:36:07
  Speaker 1: that that distracts people, like they'll they'll be so infatuated
• 2:36:11
  Speaker 1: with each other, these soldiers that.
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 2: We can go, yeah, not just that, but then that
• 2:36:14
  Speaker 2: somehow or another, it would demoralize them and make them
• 2:36:17
  Speaker 2: easy to conquer. Huh interesting, which didn't make any sense,
• 2:36:20
  Speaker 2: especially historically when you considered the Spartans, you know, they
• 2:36:23
  Speaker 2: were all gay. They were his craziest force ever, Like,
• 2:36:25
  Speaker 2: that's not going to stop people.
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, that's actually one of the big inspirations
• 2:36:29
  Speaker 1: for m k Ultra, and not the gay bomb, but
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 1: the idea that we could use chemicals to defeat an
• 2:36:33
  Speaker 1: enemy army. So Sidney got me before he was really
• 2:36:38
  Speaker 1: running mk Ultra experiments. He was he had attended a
• 2:36:41
  Speaker 1: few conferences where some people would talk this guy named
• 2:36:44
  Speaker 1: Luther Green, who was part of the army and Luther
• 2:36:46
  Speaker 1: Green was in charge of like developing and experimenting with
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 1: nerve agents, you know, that could incapacitate. These are like
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 1: some of the most pro potent agents that have ever
• 2:36:53
  Speaker 1: been created. A fraction of an ounce applied to your
• 2:36:56
  Speaker 1: skin can be lethal. So he wanted to find a
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: substance Green did that could mimic the effects of a
• 2:37:02
  Speaker 1: nerve agent, like incapacitate someone without actually killing them. His
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 1: idea was that if we could get this substance and
• 2:37:08
  Speaker 1: we can drop it over in enemy territory, it could
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 1: incapacitate these soldiers just through chemical warfare, but we wouldn't
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 1: actually have to kill them. They would be incapacitated for
• 2:37:16
  Speaker 1: a certain amount of time, and then we could send
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 1: the Marines in and they could gather up all these
• 2:37:20
  Speaker 1: people and we can conquer this territory. We can defeat
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 1: this enemy army without actually having to kill anyone or
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 1: for any of our people to be killed. So Stanley
• 2:37:29
  Speaker 1: Lovell was really interested in this concept, you know, war
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: without death was what they were talking about. War without death.
• 2:37:35
  Speaker 1: We should use chemical weapons that just incapacitate people. So
• 2:37:38
  Speaker 1: one of the things that got I should say, Sydney
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: Gottlieb interested in investigating LSD was the fact that maybe
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 1: this could be an incapacitant that we could use to
• 2:37:47
  Speaker 1: basically eliminate an enemy army for the time being, and
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 1: then we could go and conquer them without actually having
• 2:37:53
  Speaker 1: to kill them ourselves. It was he was trying to
• 2:37:56
  Speaker 1: use it almost as a more ethical form of warfare,
• 2:37:58
  Speaker 1: where you know, instead of killing someone, you just incapacitate that.
• 2:38:02
  Speaker 2: Wow, I think we covered it all. Your book's amazing.
• 2:38:11
  Speaker 2: I'm really excited that you put in the time to
• 2:38:14
  Speaker 2: write it, and I can't wait to see what David
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 2: Chase does with it, and uh it when it happens,
• 2:38:19
  Speaker 2: Let's do this again. I'd love to. I feel like
• 2:38:21
  Speaker 2: we could talk about this stuff for hours and.
• 2:38:22
  Speaker 1: Hours and there's a lot of stuff to go into too.
• 2:38:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there is there an audiobook of this.
• 2:38:27
  Speaker 1: There is an audiobook.
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 2: Yes, did you read it?
• 2:38:29
  Speaker 1: I didn't read it. They got a they got a
• 2:38:31
  Speaker 1: professional for that.
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 2: Oh man, you would kill it. You have a great voice,
• 2:38:34
  Speaker 2: thank you, thank you. Yeah.
• 2:38:36
  Speaker 1: But the nice thing is it's the same narrator who
• 2:38:38
  Speaker 1: did both my first and second books. So is there
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 1: some kind of continuity between that?
• 2:38:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, So you're happy with it.
• 2:38:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it turned out really he did a really
• 2:38:44
  Speaker 1: good job.
• 2:38:45
  Speaker 2: So and the other book is The Dirty Tricks Department
• 2:38:50
  Speaker 2: Stanley Lovell, The OSS and the Masterminds of World War
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 2: two Secret warfare.
• 2:38:57
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
• 2:38:57
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 1: It was awesome.
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate it. Was really fun. Five