Latest / Drawn of History / Joe Rogan Experience _2419 - John Lisle(M4A_128K)

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Joe Rogan Experience _2419 - John Lisle(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

0:04
Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience.
0:06
Speaker 2: Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. John,
0:13
Speaker 2: what's happening, man? Not much.
0:14
Speaker 1: It's good to be here.
0:14
Speaker 2: Very nice to meet you.
0:15
Speaker 1: You too.
0:15
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I know you're in the middle
0:18
Speaker 2: of a project. You're doing a project with David Chase, right?
0:21
Speaker 2: It's about MKUltra.
0:24
Speaker 1: Yes, he has gotten the rights to this book, this book,
0:27
Speaker 1: Project Mind Control. And he's interested in adapting it into
0:31
Speaker 1: 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
0:36
Speaker 2: series is coming, but you can 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, Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA,
0:46
Speaker 2: and the Tragedy of MKUltra, which really is a tragedy.
0:50
Speaker 2: I really got– and I knew about it, but I
0:54
Speaker 2: really didn't get completely obsessed with it until Chaos, Tom
0:58
Speaker 2: O'Neill's book. Have you read that?
0:59
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
1:00
Speaker 2: And when you realize what the MKUltra program involved and
1:04
Speaker 2: how long it ran and how insane it is, and
1:07
Speaker 2: it essentially had no oversight, and these people were just
1:10
Speaker 2: running these wild mind experiments on American citizens, and nobody
1:15
Speaker 2: 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, are 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 MKUltra, they didn't really face
1:40
Speaker 1: 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 MKUltra, and I was doing my PhD at UT.
2:16
Speaker 1: And I studied the history of science, but my dissertation
2:20
Speaker 1: was on a group of scientists within the intelligence community
2:23
Speaker 1: they had connections to the intelligence community. They were called
2:25
Speaker 1: the science attachés out of the State Department. The State
2:28
Speaker 1: Department would send these science attachés 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
2:41
Speaker 1: me into being interested in scientists within the intelligence community.
2:45
Speaker 1: And from that, I learned about, you know, Sidney Gottlieb,
2:48
Speaker 1: but also mostly my initial interest was this man named
2:52
Speaker 1: Stanley Lovell, who was essentially the Sidney Gottlieb of the OSS.
2:57
Speaker 1: So prior to the CIA, the US had the OSS,
3:00
Speaker 1: the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. And
3:03
Speaker 1: that was the US kind of intelligence agency. And Stanley
3:07
Speaker 1: Lovell was in charge of a branch within the OSS
3:10
Speaker 1: called the Research and Development Branch. And that was the
3:12
Speaker 1: branch that was composed of a group of scientists whose
3:15
Speaker 1: job was to basically invent the deadly weapons, create ingenious disguises,
3:21
Speaker 1: forge documents for secret agents that are sent abroad. So
3:23
Speaker 1: my first.
3:24
Speaker 2: Fun stuff. Oh, yeah.
3:25
Speaker 1: My first book, The Dirty Tricks Department, it's about Stanley
3:28
Speaker 1: Lovell and that group. And one of the things they
3:30
Speaker 1: do are drug experiments and truth drug experiments, trying to
3:32
Speaker 1: find out whether it's possible to give someone, you know,
3:35
Speaker 1: a captured enemy agent some kind of drug to make
3:37
Speaker 1: them tell the truth during an interrogation. And it turns out,
3:41
Speaker 1: when I was researching that book, I came across a
3:43
Speaker 1: series of depositions of which Sidney Gottlieb is one of
3:46
Speaker 1: the deponents who would later lead MKUltra, And in these depositions,
3:50
Speaker 1: he was talking about how when he was assigned to
3:53
Speaker 1: be in charge of MKUltra, he didn't really know where
3:56
Speaker 1: to begin. He didn't know anything about mind control. So
3:58
Speaker 1: one of the things that he did, he went into
3:59
Speaker 1: the old OSS files and was starting to look at
4:02
Speaker 1: the drug experiments that Stanley Lovell was doing. And so
4:04
Speaker 1: I thought, that's the connection between Stanley Lovell, my first book,
4:07
Speaker 1: and now this one. So that naturally led me into
4:09
Speaker 1: becoming interested in MKUltra. So a lot of the things
4:13
Speaker 1: that Sidney Gottlieb was up to with MKUltra, his blueprint
4:16
Speaker 1: was basically Stanley Lovell.
4:17
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 hypnotist or really was a psychologist or really understood
4:35
Speaker 2: human minds. No, they started a program going, what can
4:39
Speaker 2: we do? How can we fuck with people's minds? How
4:41
Speaker 2: can we figure out how to control people's minds? And
4:45
Speaker 2: they did it for decades.
4:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
4:48
Speaker 2: And they're probably still doing it now.
4:49
Speaker 1: Well, even before MKUltra. So there are a couple programs
4:52
Speaker 1: that precede it. I mean, you know, so during World
4:56
Speaker 1: War II, the OSS was already doing truth drug experiments,
4:59
Speaker 1: not with LSD because that wasn't really around then. But
5:01
Speaker 1: with THC acetate, they would inject it into cigarettes and
5:04
Speaker 1: have people smoke it.
5:05
Speaker 2: So they just get high?
5:06
Speaker 1: They would get high.
5:07
Speaker 2: And tell the truth? Supposedly.
5:09
Speaker 1: Supposedly. The idea was that it lowers their inhibitions. And
5:12
Speaker 1: so maybe they'll be more amenable to talking.
5:14
Speaker 2: Oh, that's hilarious. They just gave them spliffs. Yeah, exactly.
5:16
Speaker 2: They basically gave them spliffs. That's what Europeans smoke.
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 II. was Harry Anslinger, who
5:26
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 THC. So it's very ironic that that was the case.
5:36
Speaker 2: It's really stunning the kind of damage those people did
5:40
Speaker 2: to just our trust in government, what we know about
5:47
Speaker 2: these psychedelic compounds and drugs and what they did with
5:51
Speaker 2: them that Completely changed our idea of what the future
5:55
Speaker 2: of legalization and all these– there's so much negative impact
6:00
Speaker 2: to what they did. On top of what they did,
6:02
Speaker 2: they essentially created Ted Kaczynski. Well, I'm a little– Are
6:06
Speaker 2: you on the fence on that?
6:07
Speaker 1: I'm a little skeptical of whether MKUltra is connected to that.
6:10
Speaker 2: Well, it's certainly Harvard and the LSD experiments that did
6:13
Speaker 2: it at Harvard. And I don't imagine they would do
6:16
Speaker 2: that without the involvement of the government. Without them wanting
6:19
Speaker 2: to have access to research. If you have people at
6:21
Speaker 2: Harvard that are doing really critical LSD studies on people,
6:25
Speaker 2: humiliation studies.
6:27
Speaker 1: With him in particular, the study that he was involved
6:30
Speaker 1: in was Henry Murray was the guy who was running that.
6:33
Speaker 1: It's like a psychological experiment about, I think it was
6:35
Speaker 1: interpersonal relationships where he would basically interrogate them and berate
6:39
Speaker 1: them and see how they reacted to it. Now, Henry Murray,
6:42
Speaker 1: who ran that experiment with Ted Kaczynski, he did have
6:45
Speaker 1: connections to the intelligence community. I just am not convinced
6:48
Speaker 1: that he was funded by MKUltra or something. His connection,
6:51
Speaker 1: he has a couple of connections. One connection that I
6:54
Speaker 1: mentioned in my first book, the Dirty Tricks Department, he
6:56
Speaker 1: was tasked with creating psychological profiles of German leaders like Hitler.
7:02
Speaker 1: And so the idea was that he would kind of
7:04
Speaker 1: figure out what their psychology was and maybe we could
7:06
Speaker 1: find ways to exploit that psychology. So Stanley Lovell, who
7:10
Speaker 1: is the head of this R & D branch of
7:11
Speaker 1: the OSS, he read Henry Murray's psychological profile of Hitler
7:14
Speaker 1: and And he decided, maybe I can figure out a
7:16
Speaker 1: way to kind of drive Hitler crazy by using this.
7:19
Speaker 1: So Henry Murray said that Hitler had a very feminine
7:23
Speaker 1: kind of personality. He was on the border between masculine
7:26
Speaker 1: and feminine. And, you know, at least that's what Henry
7:29
Speaker 1: Murray is saying in this psychological profile. Stanley Lovell reads
7:32
Speaker 1: that and he thinks, maybe I can exploit this by
7:35
Speaker 1: getting one of the gardeners near the Eagle Nest where
7:38
Speaker 1: Hitler often had some meetings. There were some gardeners down there.
7:41
Speaker 1: We can get an agent to slip a gardener some
7:43
Speaker 1: female sex hormone. And that gardener can inject it into
7:47
Speaker 1: the beets that are destined for Hitler's plate. Hitler's going
7:50
Speaker 1: to eat it, and it's going to exacerbate this feminine tendency,
7:53
Speaker 1: and it's going to make him go crazy or something
7:54
Speaker 1: like that. That was the plan. That never actually happened.
7:57
Speaker 2: Hilarious.
7:58
Speaker 1: So Henry Murray is kind of connected to the OSS
8:00
Speaker 1: in that sense. And then later he develops some personality
8:03
Speaker 1: tests for... The OSS and CIA, I believe it was
8:07
Speaker 1: for recruits to give these to recruits to determine whether
8:09
Speaker 1: they kind of have the psychological profile that would be
8:12
Speaker 1: amenable to being in 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 something that would
8:30
Speaker 2: lead to him potentially having a micropenis. Yeah, which is
8:37
Speaker 2: the most obvious psychological profile ever. A guy wants to
8:40
Speaker 2: destroy everything in the world. He's got a tiny dick.
8:43
Speaker 1: Maybe Henry Murray was onto something.
8:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure he was. I'm sure there was some
8:49
Speaker 2: research behind it. Somebody must have said something about him.
8:51
Speaker 1: 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 Cleveland Clinic, the
9:00
Speaker 2: syndrome can disrupt the process that drives puberty. and manifest
9:03
Speaker 2: in symptoms that include undescended testicles and a micropenis. Isn't
9:08
Speaker 2: that wild?
9:08
Speaker 1: Yeah.
9:10
Speaker 2: Which totally makes sense. Like, we should kill everyone with
9:12
Speaker 2: a micropenis. They're too dangerous.
9:14
Speaker 1: It is, you know, maybe.
9:17
Speaker 1: Useful to be careful about. Correlation and causation. A lot
9:20
Speaker 1: of people probably have this, and that doesn't cause them.
9:22
Speaker 2: To become a Hitler. Oh, it's probably the sweetest people
9:23
Speaker 2: out there. I'm just kidding. Obviously, it's like the nicest
9:25
Speaker 2: people out there that just happen to have a micropenis. Yeah.
9:27
Speaker 2: And it actually makes them really sensitive.
9:28
Speaker 1: But that couldn't have helped, you know, maybe his temperament.
9:30
Speaker 2: I don't know. Well, he was also on a bunch
9:32
Speaker 2: of drugs. You know, he had like a special doctor
9:35
Speaker 2: that just worked for him.
9:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, those videos of him at sporting events or whatever,
9:39
Speaker 1: he's like rocking back and forth. It's crazy. 1936 Olympics, just.
9:43
Speaker 2: Completely out of his mind on something. Have you read
9:46
Speaker 2: Norman Ohler's book, Blitz? Blitz?
9:49
Speaker 3: Yes.
9:49
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've read the whole thing. I
9:51
Speaker 1: know I dipped into it.
9:52
Speaker 2: I can't remember. It's insane. Yeah. Yeah. It's insane.
9:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.
9:56
Speaker 2: The entire Nazi army was methed out of their minds.
9:59
Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, with these, there are a lot
10:01
Speaker 1: of LSD experiments after World War II within the CIA
10:05
Speaker 1: and MKUltra, of course, but also army LSD experiments that
10:08
Speaker 1: aren't really connected to MKUltra. So I don't go into
10:10
Speaker 1: them that much in this book. But there are, you know,
10:13
Speaker 1: the British are doing LSD experiments on their personnel.
10:15
Speaker 2: The U.S.
10:16
Speaker 1: Military does, too.
10:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.
10:18
Speaker 1: You know, some of the stories that come out of
10:21
Speaker 1: it are very silly and really just insane. But there
10:24
Speaker 1: is one document I found that talks about how they
10:27
Speaker 1: were giving these two army personnel, these two soldiers, LSD,
10:30
Speaker 1: to see how they reacted to it. And so each
10:33
Speaker 1: of them took the LSD. They were in like a
10:34
Speaker 1: padded room, isolated with each other, so nobody else was there.
10:38
Speaker 1: And they started hallucinating. And one of them pretended to
10:41
Speaker 1: like start smoking a cigarette. And he didn't actually have
10:44
Speaker 1: a cigarette. He had nothing, you know, but he just
10:46
Speaker 1: pretended to smoke a cigarette. And the other guy was
10:48
Speaker 1: off in his own world. And then the first guy,
10:50
Speaker 1: he reached into his pocket and took out an imaginary
10:53
Speaker 1: pack of cigarettes. He didn't actually have one. It was
10:55
Speaker 1: just an empty hand. But he was just hallucinating that
10:57
Speaker 1: there was one. And he reached it out to the
10:59
Speaker 1: other guy basically to offer, hey, do you want a cigarette?
11:03
Speaker 1: And the other guy looked at it and he said, no,
11:04
Speaker 1: I couldn't take your last one. It was just an
11:07
Speaker 1: empty hand.
11:07
Speaker 2: What? No, I couldn't take your last one.
11:10
Speaker 1: They were having like this shared hallucination or something.
11:12
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow. Wow. I mean, also back then, we didn't
11:18
Speaker 2: really know too much about that stuff. So they were
11:20
Speaker 2: kind of gathering information about what would happen if you
11:23
Speaker 2: gave someone LSD.
11:25
Speaker 1: That's kind of the motivation for MKUltra in the first place.
11:28
Speaker 1: There are several motivating factors. One of them is, how
11:32
Speaker 1: do we get prisoners to speak during an interrogation? Maybe
11:37
Speaker 1: there is some kind of truth drug that can get
11:38
Speaker 1: them to tell us the secrets that we want to know.
11:40
Speaker 1: Another is... Maybe we can use this to discredit individuals
11:44
Speaker 1: like Fidel Castro. Let's say we dose him with LSD
11:47
Speaker 1: before a big speech. He appears to be crazy and
11:50
Speaker 1: his people are going to lose trust in him because
11:51
Speaker 1: he's making nonsense. You know, he's just talking gibberish.
11:54
Speaker 2: Was that proposed?
11:54
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
11:55
Speaker 2: Yeah.
11:55
Speaker 1: They were proposed a plan to put LSD into cigars
11:59
Speaker 1: that would sneak into Castro's kind of place that he
12:01
Speaker 1: 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 if they couldn't get poison into
12:07
Speaker 2: his cigars, why do they think they could get acid
12:08
Speaker 2: in there?
12:10
Speaker 1: The original plan was to discredit him, and then the
12:12
Speaker 1: later plan was.
12:12
Speaker 2: To kill him.
12:13
Speaker 1: So there were a couple original plans to discredit him.
12:16
Speaker 1: One is to sneak him LSD to make him appear
12:18
Speaker 1: insane so that his people will lose faith in him.
12:21
Speaker 1: Another one was to slip what's called thallium salts into
12:24
Speaker 1: his shoes. And these are depilatories. They make your hair
12:27
Speaker 1: fall out. And so the idea was that he's got
12:30
Speaker 1: this masculine allure with his big beard. but if we
12:33
Speaker 1: can slip these depilatories into his shoes and he puts
12:36
Speaker 1: them on, his beard's going to fall out. And like Samson,
12:38
Speaker 1: he's going to lose his power or something like that.
12:41
Speaker 2: That was the idea.
12:42
Speaker 1: So Sidney Gottlieb 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: caption underneath it that said, my ration is different to
12:59
Speaker 1: indicate like, I'm getting all the benefits of, you know, this, uh,
13:03
Speaker 1: you know, the spoils of society while my people are
13:05
Speaker 1: going hungry. And so, you know, the idea was to
13:07
Speaker 1: spread this around Cuba and have people resent Castro for
13:10
Speaker 1: indulging in all these.
13:11
Speaker 2: Well, that one's actually reasonable, right?
13:13
Speaker 1: A little bit more than the other.
13:14
Speaker 2: That one's probably the closest to accurate.
13:17
Speaker 1: Yeah. So those were attempts to discredit Castro. And then
13:20
Speaker 1: there were several attempts to assassinate him that Sidney Gottlieb
13:23
Speaker 1: and others involved kind of in this story do. So
13:27
Speaker 1: some of the main assassination attempts on Castro involved his
13:30
Speaker 1: hobby of ocean diving. So he liked to dive in
13:32
Speaker 1: the ocean. And one idea was that, what if we
13:36
Speaker 1: get this really beautiful shell that he would just be
13:40
Speaker 1: unable to pass up? It would be so beautiful that
13:42
Speaker 1: if anyone swam by it, they would obviously want to
13:44
Speaker 1: pick it up. We packed the shell full of explosives
13:47
Speaker 1: and put it on... have some kind of trigger mechanism
13:49
Speaker 1: for when you pick it up that detonates the explosives.
13:51
Speaker 1: So when he's underwater, he's going to swim by this.
13:53
Speaker 1: He's going to see this beautiful shell. He's going to
13:55
Speaker 1: pick it up and it's going to explode. But it
13:56
Speaker 1: turns out they... They couldn't really figure out a shell
13:59
Speaker 1: big enough that would catch his interest, you know, so
14:01
Speaker 1: that never happened. Another concept with his scuba diving hobby
14:06
Speaker 1: is that what if we gift him a scuba diving suit?
14:08
Speaker 1: There are people kind of negotiating for the return of
14:10
Speaker 1: the Bay of Pigs prisoners, so what if we get
14:12
Speaker 1: one of those lawyers to gift Castro a suit, and
14:15
Speaker 1: in that suit we would lace it with some kind
14:18
Speaker 1: of poison or some kind of fungus that would cause
14:21
Speaker 1: him to break out and develop some kind of disease.
14:24
Speaker 1: But it turns out the guy that they wanted to
14:26
Speaker 1: give him the suit... had already given him a diving suit.
14:28
Speaker 1: And so it was like, oh, we can't use him anymore.
14:32
Speaker 2: Wow. And they were the people running it. Yeah. That
14:37
Speaker 2: was the best they could do. Yeah. But it's just
14:39
Speaker 2: the concept of not having any experience whatsoever in any
14:44
Speaker 2: studies about mind control and just given this assignment, what
14:48
Speaker 2: do you know about mind control? What can we do?
14:50
Speaker 2: How much does it work? What did the Nazis learn
14:53
Speaker 2: during World War II? Because they did a lot of experiments, right?
14:56
Speaker 1: They're doing a lot of experiments. I mentioned the OSS
15:00
Speaker 1: is doing truth drug experiments. The Nazis are doing truth
15:02
Speaker 1: drug experiments in their concentration camps as well. And the
15:05
Speaker 1: British are doing some truth drug experiments during World War
15:08
Speaker 1: II as well.
15:08
Speaker 2: You can get the British ones online. Well, at least
15:11
Speaker 2: the post-World War II ones. Was it 1950s? Have you
15:15
Speaker 2: seen the British LSD studies? Oh, you haven't seen it?
15:17
Speaker 1: No, I don't think so.
15:18
Speaker 2: Oh, it's wonderful. You should watch it. We'll watch it
15:20
Speaker 2: real quick because it's kind of hilarious. They start breaking out. Oh, yeah.
15:23
Speaker 2: You have seen it?
15:24
Speaker 1: I think so. The soldiers all in a row. Some
15:26
Speaker 1: of them just start laughing.
15:27
Speaker 2: They're in the middle of doing their task, and they
15:29
Speaker 2: just start laughing uncontrollably, and they sit down.
15:31
Speaker 1: I mentioned those THC acetate experiments during World War II.
15:37
Speaker 1: I hear these guys.
15:39
Speaker 2: Giant smiles on their face. Yeah. This guy's having a
15:43
Speaker 2: guard go of it.
15:44
Speaker 1: He might have been having an encounter or something.
15:46
Speaker 2: He had to be removed from the experiment after 35 minutes.
15:49
Speaker 2: Look at the radio operator trying to figure out how
15:51
Speaker 2: to work it. They're just so confused. And eventually they
16:00
Speaker 2: just start laying down and just laugh like these guys.
16:03
Speaker 2: These guys just can't. Yeah.
16:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, and these THC experiments during World War... For some
16:14
Speaker 1: of the people, they would give them this THC, they
16:16
Speaker 1: would smoke it through a cigarette, and... Some of the
16:19
Speaker 1: reactions it talked about was it made them just uncontrollably
16:22
Speaker 1: start laughing and it put them in a good mood.
16:24
Speaker 1: And like some of the reactions were, oh, yeah, I mean,
16:26
Speaker 1: they were just getting these people high and they were
16:28
Speaker 1: reacting to this.
16:29
Speaker 2: It didn't make them tell the truth. No, no. Of
16:31
Speaker 2: course not.
16:31
Speaker 1: It did actually make them talk more, though, because they
16:34
Speaker 1: actually recorded these interviews and they would count the number
16:37
Speaker 1: of words per minute that these people spoke. And it
16:39
Speaker 1: turns out after they smoked this, they would talk about
16:41
Speaker 1: like 40 percent more words per minute. But it's not
16:43
Speaker 1: that this guaranteed the truth.
16:45
Speaker 2: They were just talking. They're talking about cartoons. Yeah. What
16:52
Speaker 2: other drugs did they experiment with? Did they experiment with amphetamines?
16:55
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Well, I should mention that MKUltra was broken
17:00
Speaker 1: into 149 subprojects. MKUltra was the umbrella term. And within MKUltra,
17:06
Speaker 1: there were 149 subprojects that were kind of farmed out to,
17:10
Speaker 1: in many cases, independent researchers who might be working at
17:12
Speaker 1: a hospital or a prison or a university or something
17:15
Speaker 1: like that. One of the main people who is running
17:18
Speaker 1: these studies is a guy named Harris Isbell at the
17:21
Speaker 1: Lexington Narcotic Farm. This is where drug addicts could go
17:27
Speaker 1: to get treatment for their addiction. Prisoners could go there
17:29
Speaker 1: as well. And whenever Sidney Gottlieb found a drug that
17:33
Speaker 1: he was interested in, he would basically just give it
17:35
Speaker 1: to Harris Isbell, who could try it out on these
17:37
Speaker 1: prisoners to see how they reacted. And then Isabel would
17:39
Speaker 1: write reports back to Gottlieb. So he tried psilocybin when
17:42
Speaker 1: that came out, LSD, but also stuff like, I mean, heroin.
17:46
Speaker 1: The CIA was particularly interested in heroin because if you
17:49
Speaker 1: can induce an addiction in a captured agent, let's say,
17:53
Speaker 1: then you can use that as leverage in interrogation, the
17:56
Speaker 1: withdrawal symptoms. So you get them addicted to heroin and
17:58
Speaker 1: then use the withdrawal symptoms saying, well, if you tell
18:01
Speaker 1: us about this, maybe.
18:01
Speaker 2: I'll give you a little.
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.
18:17
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.
18:26
Speaker 1: It's called the narcotic farm 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 a hundred bucks
18:42
Speaker 1: or something, or they could go to the drug bank window,
18:45
Speaker 1: stick out their arm and they would get a needle
18:46
Speaker 1: full of heroin.
18:47
Speaker 2: As a reward.
18:48
Speaker 1: So they were supposed to be getting off drugs and
18:50
Speaker 1: yet you're incentivizing them to participate in these drug trials
18:53
Speaker 1: by giving them drugs.
18:58
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Speaker 2: See visible.com for planned features and network management details. Wow.
19:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's one of 149 subprojects.
19:56
Speaker 2: Are you aware that heroin was created as a substitute
20:01
Speaker 2: for people that were addicted to morphine? No, no. Yeah.
20:08
Speaker 2: That's correct, right? Search that. I'm pretty sure that's correct.
20:12
Speaker 1: Yeah.
20:12
Speaker 2: They, they came up with heroin to treat people that
20:15
Speaker 2: were addicted to morphine.
20:16
Speaker 1: Hmm.
20:19
Speaker 2: What? Well, that's like Oxycontin, giving them Oxycontin if they're
20:24
Speaker 2: addicted to heroin. It's the same thing. Yeah. But getting
20:28
Speaker 2: someone addicted to that and then pulling it away from
20:32
Speaker 2: them seems like it would be very effective in terms
20:35
Speaker 2: of like getting, getting them to give up information.
20:37
Speaker 3: Yeah.
20:37
Speaker 1: That was the idea.
20:38
Speaker 2: And, So here it is. We put it into our sponsor, Perplexity.
20:42
Speaker 2: Heroin created as a morphine treatment. Originally developed in the
20:45
Speaker 2: late 19th century as a medical drug that was indeed
20:47
Speaker 2: marketed as an improved non-addictive alternative to morphine and as
20:51
Speaker 2: a cough suppressant.
20:52
Speaker 1: Hey, what do you know?
20:54
Speaker 2: Yeah. How nuts. What company came up with it? Bear.
20:59
Speaker 2: There you go. Fucking Bear. I think at the same
21:05
Speaker 2: time they were doing this, they just... Find out if
21:08
Speaker 2: it's true that acetaminophen is what's toxic in Tylenol, correct?
21:15
Speaker 2: Find out if it's true that at the same time
21:17
Speaker 2: they decided that acetaminophen was too dangerous. I think that
21:20
Speaker 2: is Tylenol. What do you mean? Yeah. I mean the substance.
21:24
Speaker 2: You know, Tylenol is the name brand.
21:27
Speaker 1: What's the question then?
21:29
Speaker 2: Did they– poor Jamie, if you hear his voice, ladies
21:31
Speaker 2: and gentlemen, inform the people at home. Poor Jamie got
21:35
Speaker 2: a tooth pulled last night. It's rough. Not even, yeah,
21:40
Speaker 2: excuse me. Last night you were in pain. Today you
21:42
Speaker 2: got a tooth pulled. And he's got what looks like
21:45
Speaker 2: a softball stuffed in his cheek. Oh, man. Did Bear
21:50
Speaker 2: decide not to release acetaminophen during the same time period?
21:58
Speaker 2: During the pandemic, I got fascinated with acetaminophen because I
22:02
Speaker 2: read this horrible story about this poor lady who got
22:04
Speaker 2: COVID and she was in real pain. So she took
22:07
Speaker 2: a bunch of acetaminophen. She took a bunch of Tylenol
22:09
Speaker 2: and kept taking it and apparently didn't realize how dangerous
22:12
Speaker 2: it is to overdose on Tylenol. And she died of
22:14
Speaker 2: liver poisoning. Yeah. And I was like, oh, my God,
22:17
Speaker 2: how many people die of liver poisoning? It's like 500
22:20
Speaker 2: a year in this country. It's like acetaminophen. It's scary stuff.
22:24
Speaker 2: Was not being actively held back by Bayer at the
22:27
Speaker 2: same period that it promoted heroin and aspirin. It was
22:29
Speaker 2: simply not yet recognized or marketed the way those drugs were.
22:32
Speaker 2: and its development and adoption followed a different path. Existing
22:35
Speaker 2: historical accounts focus more on scientific uncertainty and competing drugs
22:40
Speaker 2: than on deliberate suppression campaigned by Bayer. I don't think
22:44
Speaker 2: they were saying in this article that I read that
22:49
Speaker 2: they were suppressing it, that they decided not to focus
22:52
Speaker 2: on it because it was dangerous. Why acetaminophen less? Early
22:57
Speaker 2: clinicians favored phenacetatine and acetaminophen. How does that work?
23:04
Speaker 1: Acetanylide?
23:05
Speaker 2: Acetanylide. Despite their later recognized toxicity and acetaminophen's advantages, better
23:11
Speaker 2: safety profile at therapeutic doses was not clearly distinguished at first. Okay. Anyway,
23:18
Speaker 2: we're getting off track.
23:19
Speaker 1: I was just going to say, one of the ironic things, too,
23:22
Speaker 1: with some of these MKUltra subprojects, they're interested in finding
23:26
Speaker 1: these supposed truth drugs that could get someone to tell
23:28
Speaker 1: the truth during an interrogation. But it turns out, The
23:31
Speaker 1: even just the threat of giving someone a truth drug
23:33
Speaker 1: turned out to be a lot more effective than any
23:35
Speaker 1: drug that they actually tried out. So, for instance, in
23:37
Speaker 1: an interrogation, if you tell someone that this is a
23:41
Speaker 1: truth drug and I'm going to give it to you and,
23:42
Speaker 1: you know, it's going to make you tell the truth
23:44
Speaker 1: that can lower their defenses and a bit in a
23:47
Speaker 1: in the in the sense that the person who takes this.
23:50
Speaker 1: That might give them kind of the permission to be
23:52
Speaker 1: able to talk because it makes them think, well, I
23:55
Speaker 1: couldn't have stopped myself. Well, you know, I mean, they
23:56
Speaker 1: gave me this truth drug. Of course, I'm going to
23:58
Speaker 1: have to say this. So I can't be blamed. No
24:00
Speaker 1: one's going to blame me. So it takes kind of
24:01
Speaker 1: the burden off their shoulders if they think they've been
24:03
Speaker 1: given a truth drug, even if they haven't. Just give
24:05
Speaker 1: them a sugar pill. So that actually turned out to
24:07
Speaker 1: be a lot more effective than any of the drugs
24:08
Speaker 1: that they actually tried.
24:09
Speaker 2: 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: 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 Oren, 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 someone,
24:40
Speaker 1: 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: 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, no, they're not. But
24:54
Speaker 1: under the table, you secretly implanted a heater and their
24:57
Speaker 1: hands actually are getting warmer because where they're sitting, there's
24:59
Speaker 1: this heater under that that they don't know exists and
25:01
Speaker 1: it's making their hands warmer. So after a certain period
25:03
Speaker 1: of time, they start thinking to themselves, maybe I am
25:06
Speaker 1: being hypnotized. Like the things that he's saying are actually happening.
25:09
Speaker 1: And so if you can make them think that they've
25:10
Speaker 1: been hypnotized, again, that lowers their resistance because, I mean,
25:14
Speaker 1: who could blame me for talking now? I've been hypnotized.
25:16
Speaker 1: I couldn't help myself but talk. At least that's the idea.
25:20
Speaker 2: It's just so fascinating to me how much time and
25:22
Speaker 2: effort was spent just studying how to control people's minds
25:27
Speaker 2: and trying to come up with ways to do it. Yeah.
25:30
Speaker 2: It must have been really exciting to be them. I
25:33
Speaker 2: think what they did is horrible. I don't, you know,
25:35
Speaker 2: I'm not in any way forgiving MKUltra for what they did. However, boy,
25:41
Speaker 2: it must have been fun. Just to have no oversight.
25:44
Speaker 2: No one even knows you exist.
25:46
Speaker 1: You kind of get this impression by looking at some
25:48
Speaker 1: of these MKUltra documents, especially at the beginning before the
25:51
Speaker 1: Frank Olson incident. Frank Olson 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 on.
25:58
Speaker 1: Before that, though, I do get the sense that it's
26:02
Speaker 1: almost like they're a bunch of guys just trying to.
26:05
Speaker 1: you know, play around with each other in a way,
26:07
Speaker 1: even though what they're doing is completely unethical, but they
26:09
Speaker 1: would just be dosing like the CIA coffee pot and
26:11
Speaker 1: see what happens to people who are taking drinks of it.
26:13
Speaker 1: Just to, I mean, the rationale is that, well, if
26:17
Speaker 1: the Soviets possess some kind of hallucinogenic drug and they
26:20
Speaker 1: were going to release it into the water supply of
26:22
Speaker 1: a city, we need to know how people would react
26:24
Speaker 1: to that because we need to know how to defend
26:26
Speaker 1: against that. Therefore, we should be doing that to people
26:29
Speaker 1: just to see how they react to it so that
26:31
Speaker 1: we know what kind of signs to look for in
26:33
Speaker 1: 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,
26:40
Speaker 1: I think it actually was like an ergot poisoning that
26:42
Speaker 1: came from the bread. I think so.
26:44
Speaker 2: But there was some speculation that it was purposeful.
26:48
Speaker 1: The town's called Pointe Saint-Esprit, I believe. But yeah, there
26:52
Speaker 1: were multiple dozens of people who came down with hallucinogenic symptoms.
26:56
Speaker 1: One guy stripped naked and started running around the street.
26:59
Speaker 1: Multiple people died after this. But that was one of
27:02
Speaker 1: the things that led the CIA to become really interested
27:04
Speaker 1: in hallucinogens because if a poisoning from a bakery could
27:08
Speaker 1: cause that much havoc within this one French town, how
27:11
Speaker 1: much more damaging would it be if the Soviets did
27:13
Speaker 1: that to a city's water supply? And so that kind
27:16
Speaker 1: of leads the CIA. That's the justification. So they start
27:19
Speaker 1: dosing the coffee pots.
27:20
Speaker 2: And they're running brothels. Oh, yeah. That's the crazy one.
27:24
Speaker 2: Operation Midnight Climax. Look it up, folks, because it's really crazy.
27:28
Speaker 2: They 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. They'd give them a drink. Would you like
27:36
Speaker 2: a drink? Have a seat. And they go, sure, I'll
27:38
Speaker 2: have a drink. And this poor guy, getting off 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 thing you know,
27:44
Speaker 2: he's just tripping out of his mind while he's being
27:46
Speaker 2: recorded by Jolly West. Yeah.
27:49
Speaker 1: You know, the guy who actually ran that is a
27:52
Speaker 1: guy named George White, and he was involved in the OSS.
27:56
Speaker 1: So he was... You know, I mentioned Stanley Lovell and
27:58
Speaker 1: the THC acetate. George White was the guy who was
28:00
Speaker 1: hired to do that in the OSS. Then Sidney Gottlieb,
28:03
Speaker 1: when he's thinking, I need to do these drug experiments
28:05
Speaker 1: for myself, who am I going to get to do
28:08
Speaker 1: it for me? I need someone who has connections to
28:09
Speaker 1: the underworld, who has criminal connections. George White was a
28:12
Speaker 1: Bureau of Narcotics officer. And so Gottlieb was going through
28:15
Speaker 1: the OSS files, and it turns out, oh, this guy's
28:17
Speaker 1: already done these experiments. I'm going to hire him. So
28:19
Speaker 1: that's how George White eventually gets involved in the CIA 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
28:42
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,
28:53
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 that this is happening. Because I
29:00
Speaker 2: talk to people about this subject, you know, like normies
29:03
Speaker 2: per se, and they look at you sideways. Like, what
29:07
Speaker 2: do they do? They do what? They're responsible for Manson. What?
29:11
Speaker 1: 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 MKUltra just in general.
29:20
Speaker 1: I mean, initially reading about this, My first impression is that, obviously,
29:25
Speaker 1: that's like a conspiracy theory or it can't be right,
29:28
Speaker 1: but some conspiracies are true. And the MKUltra stuff, they
29:31
Speaker 1: actually did this. They were dosing people, using prostitutes behind
29:34
Speaker 1: a one-way mirror, George White sitting on a toilet watching
29:36
Speaker 1: this happen. I mean, even besides drugs, MKUltra is involved
29:42
Speaker 1: in a lot of psychological experiments. So not just LSD.
29:44
Speaker 1: Most people associate MKUltra with LSD. But one of the
29:49
Speaker 1: most expansive of the subprojects is Subproject 68. It was
29:54
Speaker 1: by this guy named Ewan Cameron. Have you heard that
29:56
Speaker 1: name before?
29:56
Speaker 2: Okay, Ewan Cameron.
29:57
Speaker 1: Ewan Cameron. He is a psychiatrist up in Montreal in Canada,
30:01
Speaker 1: working at what's called the Allen Memorial Institute. And Gottlieb
30:05
Speaker 1: wanted to expand MKUltra besides drugs because he already had
30:08
Speaker 1: a lot of people doing drug experiments. So he wanted
30:10
Speaker 1: to see if there were psychological techniques that could be
30:13
Speaker 1: used to manipulate a person. So not just in an interrogation,
30:16
Speaker 1: but can we actually like control a person's personality? Can
30:18
Speaker 1: we make them behave in certain ways, make them do something?
30:21
Speaker 1: So the idea that you and Cameron had come up
30:23
Speaker 1: with before the CIA is involved, I should mention Ewan
30:27
Speaker 1: Cameron is a behaviorist. So he thinks that all behavior
30:32
Speaker 1: is a result of nurture, not nature. So it's the
30:34
Speaker 1: environmental input that causes a person to behave a certain way.
30:38
Speaker 1: And he thought that if you could bring a person
30:40
Speaker 1: back down to a blank slate, remove all the environmental
30:43
Speaker 1: inputs that have been put into them, and then you
30:45
Speaker 1: can build them back up in your image into whatever
30:47
Speaker 1: you want them to be. So his idea to bring
30:50
Speaker 1: someone down to the blank slate was to induce enough
30:52
Speaker 1: stress that they forgot who they formerly were. And so
30:55
Speaker 1: you reduce them to the blank slate. And then the
30:57
Speaker 1: CIA is really interested in if you could do that,
31:00
Speaker 1: then you could form them into whatever. So Ewan Cameron,
31:03
Speaker 1: his main goal is to try to figure out what
31:05
Speaker 1: can induce enough stress in a person to bring them
31:07
Speaker 1: down to that blank slate. And so he performs a
31:09
Speaker 1: lot of experiments. His most famous one is called psychic driving,
31:14
Speaker 1: where he was doing a therapy session, quote unquote therapy,
31:19
Speaker 1: with one of his patients. And he was recording the session.
31:22
Speaker 1: And she said something about how you know, my mother,
31:24
Speaker 1: when I was young, used to tell me blah, blah, blah.
31:27
Speaker 1: You know, she said something negative to her. And so
31:29
Speaker 1: you and Cameron rewinded that on the tape that he
31:31
Speaker 1: was recording and made her listen back to it and said, hey,
31:33
Speaker 1: I want you to listen back to what you say
31:35
Speaker 1: your mother used to say to you. When he rewinded
31:37
Speaker 1: the tape and played it forward, as soon as the
31:40
Speaker 1: woman was kind of quoting her mother and she listened
31:42
Speaker 1: to 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: Not really. It was just based on he had this
32:31
Speaker 1: one encounter with this woman and she had a negative reaction.
32:33
Speaker 1: And he's just trying to induce stress. This obviously seemed
32:36
Speaker 1: to induce stress in her. Therefore, we're going to start
32:37
Speaker 1: playing 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 of the moment.
32:46
Speaker 1: In fact, there was one.
32:48
Speaker 1: Kid, basically, who had been at this Allen Memorial Institute
32:51
Speaker 1: where Ewan Cameron was. He eventually had gotten out, but
32:55
Speaker 1: he had tried to commit suicide. And so he was
32:57
Speaker 1: sent back to the Allen Memorial Institute. But the way
32:59
Speaker 1: that he had tried to commit suicide was to close
33:01
Speaker 1: the garage and have the CO2 build up with a
33:03
Speaker 1: running car. And then he would, you know, breathe it
33:05
Speaker 1: in and 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 when he was here before.
33:16
Speaker 1: Maybe CO2 can like influence someone and so he sent
33:20
Speaker 1: out some of his some of his assistants to go
33:23
Speaker 1: buy like CO2 canisters and we're gonna start like giving
33:25
Speaker 1: this to people but it turns out the assistants knew
33:26
Speaker 1: that this was like completely unethical there's no medical basis
33:29
Speaker 1: for anything and so they lied to him and said
33:31
Speaker 1: oh the canisters were way more expensive than we could
33:33
Speaker 1: actually afford so we can't do that but so he
33:35
Speaker 1: was he was just he was trying to find any
33:37
Speaker 1: way that he could have a breakthrough to cure mental
33:39
Speaker 1: illness and he was using his patients as guinea pigs
33:43
Speaker 1: complete guinea pigs complete guinea pigs.
33:44
Speaker 2: What was the result with the woman The woman where
33:47
Speaker 2: they played the negative recordings?
33:50
Speaker 1: Well, there are dozens and dozens of people who that
33:53
Speaker 1: happened to. I don't know about her in particular because
33:54
Speaker 1: I don't know if she's actually named in the documents.
33:58
Speaker 2: Did any of these experiments have a positive effect? Did
34:02
Speaker 2: it work?
34:02
Speaker 1: Oh, hardly, hardly, hardly.
34:05
Speaker 2: I shouldn't even say positive. I should say were they effective? No, no.
34:08
Speaker 1: For the most part, the people who he did his
34:11
Speaker 1: practice on came out way worse than when they went in.
34:14
Speaker 1: So psychic driving, that's initially what got the CIA interested
34:18
Speaker 1: in Cameron. So it's important to keep in mind, it's
34:19
Speaker 1: not that the CIA told Cameron to do this. He's
34:22
Speaker 1: doing this on his own because he thinks he's going
34:23
Speaker 1: to cure mental illness by having this radical breakthrough where
34:26
Speaker 1: we break them down and build them back up and
34:28
Speaker 1: we can build them back up and make them forget
34:30
Speaker 1: their schizophrenia or depression or whatever they have. The CIA
34:33
Speaker 1: reads his article about psychic driving and they think this
34:36
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing we're interested in. So from
34:38
Speaker 1: that point on, they start funding him not only to
34:41
Speaker 1: do psychic driving experiments, but also he does like puts
34:46
Speaker 1: people in chemical comas for months on end. And while
34:49
Speaker 1: they're in these chemical comas, he would put an audio
34:52
Speaker 1: 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 their eyes, earmuffs
35:00
Speaker 1: on their ears. They would have cardboard tubes over their
35:03
Speaker 1: arms so that they couldn't feel anything. And they would
35:05
Speaker 1: just be in a room for weeks on end. The idea, again,
35:07
Speaker 1: being to induce enough stress so that it breaks them
35:09
Speaker 1: down so that you can eventually build them up. But
35:13
Speaker 1: one of the saddest stories in the book, really, is
35:17
Speaker 1: of this woman named Mary Morrow, who was one of
35:19
Speaker 1: the patients of Ewan Cameron in Montreal.
35:23
Speaker 3: The.
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: He 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 of
35:46
Speaker 1: their bladder. They can't eat. They can't talk. They can't
35:49
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom on their own. They can't put
35:50
Speaker 1: on their own clothes or anything like that. So she
35:53
Speaker 1: 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 anorexic,
36:07
Speaker 1: and she failed her neurology exams, and so she went
36:09
Speaker 1: into a really deep depression. She attempted to commit suicide.
36:12
Speaker 1: That didn't work. She was admitted to another hospital. Ewan
36:16
Speaker 1: Cameron came to visit her, and he said, I think
36:19
Speaker 1: you should come back to the Allen Memorial and not
36:21
Speaker 1: as a doctor, but as a patient and let me
36:23
Speaker 1: treat you. So she ends up going back to the
36:25
Speaker 1: Allen Memorial as a patient. And she thought to herself
36:29
Speaker 1: that it's going to be okay. They're not going to
36:31
Speaker 1: do the electric shock to me because you had to
36:33
Speaker 1: sign a consent form. And, you know, for that to
36:35
Speaker 1: happen to you, you know, the people who are signing
36:37
Speaker 1: the consent forms, they don't know how bad it's actually
36:39
Speaker 1: going to be. They're just signing their name, but she
36:41
Speaker 1: knows I haven't signed a consent form, so they can't
36:43
Speaker 1: do that to me. But it turns out in the time,
36:45
Speaker 1: since she went to the hospital and came back, they
36:47
Speaker 1: had stopped doing the consent forms and he would just
36:49
Speaker 1: do this on whoever. And so they ended up doing
36:52
Speaker 1: this electric shock treatment on her. And, you know, afterwards,
36:56
Speaker 1: she would be babbling, incontinent, couldn't put on her makeup
36:59
Speaker 1: or clothes or anything. Eventually, she would call her mother
37:03
Speaker 1: after some of these treatments. And her mother knew something
37:05
Speaker 1: was going on because she just became more and more
37:07
Speaker 1: incoherent as time went on. So the mother sent Mary's sister, Margaret,
37:11
Speaker 1: in order to go to the Allen Memorial to basically
37:13
Speaker 1: bust her out of there. So the sister walked in
37:16
Speaker 1: the front door and said, I'm not leaving until I
37:18
Speaker 1: see Mary. You know, I'm going to call the police
37:19
Speaker 1: if you don't let me through. So eventually she goes
37:21
Speaker 1: to her sister's room, opens the door, and Mary is
37:24
Speaker 1: sitting there just with wide bug eyes, you know, doesn't
37:27
Speaker 1: even recognize her sister. It takes several days for her
37:29
Speaker 1: to figure out where she actually is, and then she
37:31
Speaker 1: gets busted out of there. Was it reversible in any way?
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 Ewan Cameron's
37:49
Speaker 1: experiments In the 1980s, they ended up suing the CIA
37:52
Speaker 1: for supporting Ewan Cameron. And during those lawsuits, the attorneys
37:57
Speaker 1: who are representing them, they took the depositions of several
38:00
Speaker 1: of the people who were involved in MKUltra to try
38:02
Speaker 1: to use this during their trial. So they took the
38:04
Speaker 1: depositions of Sidney Gottlieb, Robert Lashbrook, Richard Helms, the head
38:07
Speaker 1: of the CIA, and many of the victims who were
38:09
Speaker 1: victims of all this. And that's basically the basis for
38:12
Speaker 1: my book. I found thousands of pages of these depositions.
38:15
Speaker 1: That's just verbatim transcript of these people talking about either
38:18
Speaker 1: what they did or what was done to them. And
38:20
Speaker 1: so I'm using that throughout the book to explain here's
38:23
Speaker 1: what they're doing in their own words or here's what
38:25
Speaker 1: was done to them in their own words.
38:26
Speaker 2: Wow. 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 $ 750, 000 to be split among them. But,
38:39
Speaker 1: you know, after attorney's fees and everything, it doesn't really
38:41
Speaker 1: amount to much anyway. And so, you know, they settled
38:44
Speaker 1: out of court. They got a little bit of money,
38:46
Speaker 1: but it never went to trial. And so these depositions, though,
38:49
Speaker 1: Since it never went to trial, these were just in
38:51
Speaker 1: the papers of Joseph Rao, who's the main lawyer who
38:53
Speaker 1: was involved in this case. And when he passed away,
38:56
Speaker 1: his papers were donated to the Library of Congress that
38:59
Speaker 1: had all these thousands of pages of depositions in there,
39:02
Speaker 1: 823 pages of which are Sidney Gottlieb testifying about what
39:06
Speaker 1: he did in MKUltra. And so I was rooting around
39:08
Speaker 1: the Library of Congress and happened to find them. So
39:10
Speaker 1: that's how I found basically the basis for what this
39:13
Speaker 1: book is.
39:13
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow. Wow. I wonder how much of that woman's
39:17
Speaker 2: psychological breakdown had to do with the guilt of performing
39:21
Speaker 2: those experiments on people and realizing that it wasn't doing
39:25
Speaker 2: anything that you and Cameron thought it was going to do.
39:27
Speaker 2: In fact, it was destroying 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.
39:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.
39:33
Speaker 1: That had to have weighed on the consciences. You know, there's,
39:36
Speaker 1: in what was called the sleep room, you and Cameron's
39:38
Speaker 1: sleep room, this is where they would do the chemical comas.
39:41
Speaker 1: One of the nurses, I have kind of her diary
39:45
Speaker 1: entries basically describing what she was seeing. And she does
39:49
Speaker 1: seem to be pretty reluctant to have done what she
39:51
Speaker 1: was actually doing. And Ewan Cameron, she said, would often
39:54
Speaker 1: come over to her and pat her on the back
39:56
Speaker 1: and say, you know, you're helping these people. You're helping
39:58
Speaker 1: these people. Just trying to coax her along to go
40:00
Speaker 1: along with what he was telling her to do.
40:02
Speaker 2: Ewan Cameron seems like a complete madman. Like he was
40:06
Speaker 2: almost like too good to be true. Not too good,
40:10
Speaker 2: but too like mad scientist to be true. Was he
40:14
Speaker 2: 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
40:24
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, schizophrenia 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: Like– and then you're experimenting on people and, you know,
40:59
Speaker 2: especially with things like amphetamines, which do tend to make
41:02
Speaker 2: people a little less empathetic and 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 subprojects or approving them, like Sidney Gottlieb, Gottlieb took
41:20
Speaker 1: a lot of LSD. You know, he was, when the
41:23
Speaker 1: 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 The physician who was
41:39
Speaker 1: the attending physician the first time he took LSD, because
41:41
Speaker 1: they did it in kind of a controlled setting with
41:43
Speaker 1: several other people there, a guy named Harold Abramson. And
41:48
Speaker 1: for anyone listening who knows much about the Frank Olson incident,
41:51
Speaker 1: Frank Olson is a guy that would later be dosed
41:53
Speaker 1: with LSD. He would go out the hotel window in
41:55
Speaker 1: New York. And Harold Abramson is the guy who Sidney
41:59
Speaker 1: Gottlieb and Robert Lashbrook, they took to New York to
42:01
Speaker 1: get treatment from Harold Abramson afterwards. So he had this
42:04
Speaker 1: CIA connection.
42:06
Speaker 2: Wow. The reason why I brought up amphetamines is because
42:09
Speaker 2: I feel like it might be one of the unheralded
42:15
Speaker 2: or undiscussed drivers in a lot of like psychopathic behavior
42:19
Speaker 2: that we see in our culture today. I think there's
42:24
Speaker 2: a lot of people on prescribed amphetamines that operate in
42:28
Speaker 2: a way that is very much like a functional meth head.
42:33
Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Yeah. I would wonder, like,
42:36
Speaker 2: if you were in charge of doing something this evil,
42:40
Speaker 2: just running experiments where you're destroying people's minds and you're
42:43
Speaker 2: getting no positive results, none of it's working, yet you
42:46
Speaker 2: continue to do it. And you even do it to
42:47
Speaker 2: people that used to be involved in the program with
42:49
Speaker 2: that poor woman. Like, what's the psychological profile of that guy?
42:54
Speaker 2: Because he's obviously mentally ill, which is fascinating, right? It's
42:57
Speaker 2: fascinating that a mentally ill person is working on a
42:59
Speaker 2: mind experiment program because there's no way he's not mentally ill.
43:03
Speaker 2: Like to have no empathy to these people that you've
43:06
Speaker 2: tried all this stuff on. And not only has it
43:08
Speaker 2: not been effective and not rid them of mental illness,
43:10
Speaker 2: it's made them far worse.
43:12
Speaker 1: Yeah. For you and Cameron, I feel like he definitely
43:16
Speaker 1: lacked empathy, whether that's some kind of medical thing or whatever.
43:20
Speaker 1: There are a couple of people in the book, I think,
43:22
Speaker 1: who are like that. One of them is you and Cameron.
43:24
Speaker 1: Another is George White, who is in charge of Operation
43:26
Speaker 1: Midnight Climax. He was in it just for the fun
43:29
Speaker 1: of it. He would dose his own friends with LSD
43:31
Speaker 1: just to see what would happen. You know, there's one
43:33
Speaker 1: story in the book. There was a woman who had
43:36
Speaker 1: gone over to a dinner party, basically. She had actually
43:38
Speaker 1: gone over with her husband a few weeks before, but
43:41
Speaker 1: 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 dosed them with LSD.
43:53
Speaker 1: The woman had her one-year-old son there with her, but
43:56
Speaker 1: he still dosed them with LSD. She ends up basically
43:59
Speaker 1: going crazy. I mean, she... She goes home. She ends
44:03
Speaker 1: up calling George White, asking, what's happened to me? What's
44:06
Speaker 1: going on? One of these women, she ended up being
44:09
Speaker 1: committed to a mental institution for basically the rest of
44:12
Speaker 1: her life after this happened to her. So she had
44:14
Speaker 1: some kind of psychotic break after this unwitting, surreptitious dose
44:17
Speaker 1: of LSD. Of course, she didn't know what was going on,
44:19
Speaker 1: so she thought her whole world was collapsing. Yeah, she
44:22
Speaker 1: lost her husband. It was said that she would cower
44:25
Speaker 1: in the corner of her parents' house before she went
44:28
Speaker 1: to this mental institution, convinced that an unidentified they was
44:32
Speaker 1: like looking after her or trying to get her, you know,
44:35
Speaker 1: calling on the phone. None of this was happening, but
44:37
Speaker 1: she was just having these delusions that someone was out
44:39
Speaker 1: to get her. That's kind of a recurring theme that
44:42
Speaker 1: you see in these people who are unwittingly dosed. One
44:44
Speaker 1: of them, one of the saddest stories in the book
44:46
Speaker 1: is a guy named Wayne Ritchie and George White did
44:49
Speaker 1: the same thing to him. But Wayne Ritchie was this,
44:53
Speaker 1: he was a guard at Alcatraz for a while. This
44:55
Speaker 1: is in San Francisco. And he had gone to a
44:58
Speaker 1: Christmas party at the post office there in San Francisco
45:01
Speaker 1: just for, you know, he was a U.S. Marshal too,
45:03
Speaker 1: so just the U.S. Marshals, whatever. And that night, he
45:07
Speaker 1: was drinking, you know, some of the punch at this party,
45:10
Speaker 1: and he started feeling very strange. He started seeing colors.
45:12
Speaker 1: The room started spinning around him. He ended up going
45:15
Speaker 1: upstairs to where his locker was and, you know, getting
45:18
Speaker 1: his things, and he wound up going home because he didn't,
45:21
Speaker 1: you know, know what was going on. When he got home,
45:23
Speaker 1: his girlfriend was upset at him. She said that, You know,
45:26
Speaker 1: I'm not happy here. I want to move to New York.
45:28
Speaker 1: And so when he's in this fog, he decides, I
45:31
Speaker 1: know how to set my life on track. I'm going
45:33
Speaker 1: to grab a couple of my service revolver revolvers. I'm
45:37
Speaker 1: going to go to a bar downtown. I'm going to
45:39
Speaker 1: rob it and I'm going to give the money to
45:40
Speaker 1: my girlfriend so she can go to New York and
45:42
Speaker 1: she'll be happy. And so she won't break up with me.
45:45
Speaker 1: So when he's in this fog, he ends up doing
45:47
Speaker 1: all this. He gets his revolvers. He goes to a
45:49
Speaker 1: bar downtown. He basically has a stick up. Give me
45:52
Speaker 1: all 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 cops come later, they arrest him, he's in jail.
46:02
Speaker 1: After a day or two, he kind of sobers up
46:04
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 30,
46:14
Speaker 1: 40 years, he doesn't know what happened until in 1999,
46:18
Speaker 1: he was reading the Washington Post, and he saw an
46:20
Speaker 1: article describing MKUltra. And two things in particular stuck out
46:24
Speaker 1: to him. One was George White, whom he knew back
46:26
Speaker 1: in the days when he was a U.S. Marshal, and
46:29
Speaker 1: the other one was a description of LSD. And so
46:32
Speaker 1: Wayne Ritchie starts putting all this together and thinking, I
46:34
Speaker 1: think George White gave me LSD that night at the
46:37
Speaker 1: holiday party and spiked the punch bowl, and that's what happened.
46:41
Speaker 1: And it turns out, you can see in this book,
46:44
Speaker 1: in the photo section, the last photo in the photo
46:46
Speaker 1: section of my book, it's an image of George White's
46:49
Speaker 1: diary from the day that Wayne Ritchie went insane. And
46:53
Speaker 1: it says, federal building Christmas party. So he was there
46:56
Speaker 1: at the Christmas party.
46:58
Speaker 2: Wow. Imagine being that guy reading that article 30 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 rule in his favor. And
47:14
Speaker 1: so that was it.
47:15
Speaker 2: Oh, Jesus.
47:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there are, I mean, there are dozens of
47:20
Speaker 1: stories like that.
47:21
Speaker 2: What a fucking psycho.
47:22
Speaker 3: Yeah.
47:22
Speaker 2: What a fucking psycho. Just dosing up the punch bowl,
47:26
Speaker 2: 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: caused them to lose a lot, you know. So he
47:38
Speaker 1: knew what he was doing at that point. God.
47:41
Speaker 2: This is just what happens with people when they have
47:44
Speaker 2: that kind of unchecked power and no oversight. And they're
47:48
Speaker 2: the kind of psychopaths that would be involved in this
47:50
Speaker 2: 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 MKUltra is actually
48:12
Speaker 1: 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 MKUltra was structured with
48:31
Speaker 1: these subprojects, Sidney Gottlieb wasn't running these experiments himself. What
48:35
Speaker 1: he would do is he would fund other people to
48:37
Speaker 1: do experiments. And most of the time, these people were
48:40
Speaker 1: experts in their own field. So they were like reputable people.
48:43
Speaker 1: You and Cameron are was the head of the American
48:45
Speaker 1: Psychiatric Association, the Canadian Psychiatric Association, and the World Psychiatric Association.
48:51
Speaker 1: He was like the most famous psychiatrist in the world,
48:54
Speaker 1: and he was being funded by this. So Sidney Gottlieb thought, well,
48:57
Speaker 1: if I can fund reputable psychiatrists or drug researchers to
49:00
Speaker 1: do these experiments, then it's up to them to provide
49:04
Speaker 1: the safety and the procedures, you know, to keep these
49:07
Speaker 1: patients safe. It's not my job. They're the ones who
49:09
Speaker 1: are conducting the experiments. That's how he justified it to himself.
49:12
Speaker 1: But that's how the structure of MKUltra typically worked.
49:15
Speaker 2: Such a diffusion of responsibility. 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 cut out
49:22
Speaker 1: organizations so he's giving the money to of course the
49:26
Speaker 1: One of them is called the Getjiker Fund. One of
49:28
Speaker 1: them is called the National Institutes of Mental Health. And
49:30
Speaker 1: then the CIA sets up its own cutout organization called
49:34
Speaker 1: the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, which is
49:38
Speaker 1: just a made-up organization. So the CIA would transfer the
49:43
Speaker 1: funds to the society, who would then transfer it to
49:45
Speaker 1: the researcher. In many cases, the researchers didn't even know
49:49
Speaker 1: they were being funded by the CIA. They just thought, oh,
49:51
Speaker 1: I got a grant from this organization.
49:52
Speaker 2: That's great.
49:53
Speaker 1: So they don't even know that their true patron is
49:54
Speaker 1: Sidney Gottlieb and MKUltra. They just know, oh, they want
49:57
Speaker 1: me to do these experiments. And in many cases, they're
50:00
Speaker 1: allowed to still publish their work. You know, so, you know,
50:02
Speaker 1: they're publishing this. Nothing's changed that much from what they
50:04
Speaker 1: were doing before. But it turns out their patron is
50:07
Speaker 1: actually the CIA who wants to make sure they continue
50:10
Speaker 1: doing these experiments just in case they find something that could.
50:12
Speaker 2: Be of use. Oh, my God. What was your journey
50:16
Speaker 2: personally like, both researching these subjects and then writing books
50:22
Speaker 2: about it? Because... What was your opinion on all these
50:27
Speaker 2: things before this and how much of it has shaped
50:31
Speaker 2: 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: 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,
50:55
Speaker 1: I am pretty skeptical. But of course, that. the existence
50:58
Speaker 1: of MKUltra. And even in my first book, The Dirty
51:01
Speaker 1: Tricks Department, there are some projects that are even more
51:05
Speaker 1: outlandish than some of the stuff I've been talking about
51:07
Speaker 1: with MKUltra. And so that kind of lowered my barriers
51:10
Speaker 1: to thinking that, oh, people are crazy. Like, oh, the
51:13
Speaker 1: government does actually perform these crazy projects. 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
51:26
Speaker 1: that were happening in World War II and just within
51:29
Speaker 1: the intelligence community. Operation Fantasia was the brainchild of this
51:33
Speaker 1: guy named Ed Salinger. And he had been a businessman
51:36
Speaker 1: who had done imports and exports in Tokyo. So he
51:39
Speaker 1: knew Japanese culture. He knew the language. He knew the
51:42
Speaker 1: religious beliefs. The OSS wanted to exploit that by trying
51:46
Speaker 1: to find a way we can we can demoralize the Japanese.
51:50
Speaker 1: You know a lot about the Japanese psyche, the idea was,
51:53
Speaker 1: Ed Salinger. So figure out a way we can demoralize
51:55
Speaker 1: the Japanese and make them basically give up this war because,
51:58
Speaker 1: you know, they're dug in, they're not giving up. We
52:00
Speaker 1: need to find a way that we can basically use
52:02
Speaker 1: psychological warfare on them. So his idea is that in
52:06
Speaker 1: the Shinto religion, there are these kind of mystical figures
52:10
Speaker 1: called kitsune. And in many cases, they take the form
52:13
Speaker 1: of like a fox, a glowing fox. And oftentimes they
52:17
Speaker 1: represent portents of doom. So, you know, if you see
52:20
Speaker 1: one of these kitsune, it's an indication that something bad
52:22
Speaker 1: is about to happen. And so Salinger knew, what if
52:24
Speaker 1: we can artificially create kitsune, spread them around Japan, then
52:28
Speaker 1: all these Japanese soldiers are going to see them and think, oh,
52:30
Speaker 1: that's a portent of doom. Surely it means we're going
52:32
Speaker 1: to lose the war. Therefore, we might as well lay
52:35
Speaker 1: down our arms right now. And so Salinger, initially his
52:38
Speaker 1: idea is we're going to create whistles that can make
52:40
Speaker 1: fox sounds and we're going to distribute them across Japan
52:43
Speaker 1: to our agents there and they can blow these whistles
52:45
Speaker 1: like anyone would recognize a fox sound. He had the
52:48
Speaker 1: idea that we're going to create artificial fox odors and
52:51
Speaker 1: spread it around places, and people are going to think
52:53
Speaker 1: that it's the kitsune foxes that are walking around. None
52:56
Speaker 1: of those ever materialized. But then he thought, what if
52:59
Speaker 1: we actually do it? What if we capture foxes from
53:01
Speaker 1: China and Australia, we paint them with glowing radioactive paint,
53:07
Speaker 1: and then we drop them in Japan? Surely that's going
53:10
Speaker 1: to scare the Japanese. So there are actually several experiments
53:14
Speaker 1: that they did this. So they captured foxes. The United
53:18
Speaker 1: States Radium Corporation produced a paint with radium, radioactive.
53:21
Speaker 2: So loom from like dials of watches. Exactly.
53:25
Speaker 1: It's the same kind of thing. So they decided we're
53:27
Speaker 1: going to paint foxes with this. But they first needed
53:29
Speaker 1: to test whether it's possible to paint fur with this
53:32
Speaker 1: and it stay on. So they went to the Central
53:34
Speaker 1: Park Zoo and they got a raccoon and they painted
53:36
Speaker 1: it and kept it under lock and key. And it
53:38
Speaker 1: turns out after a few days of ordinary raccoon shenanigans,
53:41
Speaker 1: the paint stayed on. So they thought, OK, this might
53:42
Speaker 1: have something going for it. So then Salinger decided. We're
53:46
Speaker 1: going to paint these foxes, row them out into the
53:49
Speaker 1: middle of the Chesapeake Bay and throw them overboard to
53:51
Speaker 1: see if they can actually swim to shore. Because if
53:53
Speaker 1: we're going to get these foxes to Japan, we're going
53:55
Speaker 1: to have to throw them off the coast and they're
53:56
Speaker 1: going to have to swim and then scare people. But
53:58
Speaker 1: can foxes even swim? He didn't know. So he gets
54:01
Speaker 1: these foxes. He paints them with this paint. He throws
54:04
Speaker 1: them in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay.
54:05
Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
54:05
Speaker 1: And it turns out they actually swam to shore. So
54:07
Speaker 1: that worked. However, by the time they had gotten to shore,
54:10
Speaker 1: the paint had all washed off.
54:12
Speaker 2: So they poisoned the water. Well, yeah. So it's like,
54:15
Speaker 2: if we.
54:15
Speaker 1: Were to do this in Japan, you see a fox.
54:18
Speaker 1: It's not a kitsune. It has to be a glowing fox.
54:20
Speaker 1: And so he decided, well, that's not going to work.
54:22
Speaker 1: So his next plan, this is one of the craziest
54:25
Speaker 1: things I found from my first book. The next plan was,
54:27
Speaker 1: We are going to stuff a fox, a dead fox,
54:30
Speaker 1: just taxidermy it, have this fox body, we're gonna paint
54:33
Speaker 1: it with this glowing paint, we can drape a cloth
54:36
Speaker 1: over it and paint glowing bones on it to make
54:37
Speaker 1: it look like a skeleton, and we're gonna put a
54:39
Speaker 1: human skull over this fox head to make it look
54:42
Speaker 1: as if it's a human skull, because apparently this was
54:44
Speaker 1: like an even more potent version of the kitsune myth
54:47
Speaker 1: that was going around in Japan. So we're going to
54:49
Speaker 1: put this human skull on this taxidermy glowing fox. We're
54:53
Speaker 1: going to have the jaw open and close as if
54:55
Speaker 1: it's talking. And we're going to blast propaganda out of
54:57
Speaker 1: the skull. And we're going to attach balloons to 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 do.
55:14
Speaker 2: Did they launch that? Did they attempt it?
55:17
Speaker 1: That never actually made it. About the time that he
55:19
Speaker 1: was writing all this up and doing these experiments, the
55:22
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project had performed the Trinity test. And so it's like, well,
55:24
Speaker 1: we already have the weapon that's going to win the war.
55:26
Speaker 1: So we don't need the glowing foxes. Thank you very much.
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56:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, so when you research stuff like that, all of
57:00
Speaker 1: a sudden it's like, well, anything is kind 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. And I just find it fun.
57:22
Speaker 2: Like the Bigfoot thing is– I watched a Bigfoot documentary
57:25
Speaker 2: the other night against my own better judgment. And now
57:28
Speaker 2: my YouTube algorithm is filled with Bigfoot stories. It's just
57:32
Speaker 2: the dumbest thing ever. Yeah. When I started doing the podcast,
57:36
Speaker 2: it slowly shifted my perspective of not only are there
57:42
Speaker 2: real conspiracies, but they're way more prevalent than you would
57:44
Speaker 2: ever think. And you almost have to get lucky to
57:49
Speaker 2: find out about them. You know, like one of the
57:51
Speaker 2: things from the book Chaos was Tom O'Neill describing some
57:57
Speaker 2: of the documents that were discovered in, I believe it
58:00
Speaker 2: was a storage unit. That where they had.
58:05
Speaker 1: Some— Oh, like the MKUltra document?
58:07
Speaker 2: Yes.
58:08
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, yeah. Do you remember that story? Yeah, that's
58:10
Speaker 1: a big part of my book. So in 1975 or so,
58:14
Speaker 1: really in 1974, there was something called the Rockefeller Commission,
58:17
Speaker 1: and that was an executive commission set up to investigate
58:20
Speaker 1: past abuses of the intelligence community. And that kind of
58:23
Speaker 1: led to the Church Committee in 1975 and also the
58:27
Speaker 1: Pike Committee in the House. But after they published their
58:29
Speaker 1: final reports, those reports included things about MKUltra, that the U.S.
58:33
Speaker 1: government had performed these secret drug experiments in the past,
58:36
Speaker 1: and that led a former State Department employee named John
58:39
Speaker 1: Marks to file a Freedom of Information Act request basically
58:43
Speaker 1: for any and all documents related to these former drug experiments.
58:46
Speaker 1: And so, you know, not too long afterwards, a CIA.
58:54
Speaker 1: This guy named Frank Laubinger, he was working in 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 2: Right.
59:10
Speaker 1: Out those boxes escaped the destruction because they had been
59:13
Speaker 1: sent to the CIA Records Center several years before Gottlieb
59:16
Speaker 1: and Helms retired. Therefore, they weren't incinerated in this purge
59:20
Speaker 1: and so they survived. So Marx filed that information request,
59:23
Speaker 1: these boxes were found, and then they were released and
59:27
Speaker 1: This was right around the time that there were a
59:29
Speaker 1: couple of subcommittee hearings on MKUltra. And that's right when
59:33
Speaker 1: all these documents came out, too. So it became kind
59:35
Speaker 1: of a big deal. But so that's how thousands and
59:38
Speaker 1: thousands of documents related to MKUltra survived, even though Gottlieb
59:41
Speaker 1: and Helms incinerated most of the files that they actually had.
59:44
Speaker 2: Which leads you to consider what would we know? If
59:50
Speaker 2: those documents hadn't been discovered, we would be decades behind
59:54
Speaker 2: 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. So we would have known still because
1:00:13
Speaker 1: it came out before those documents about the Frank Olson incident.
1:00:15
Speaker 1: This guy was dosed with LSD at this place called
1:00:17
Speaker 1: Deep Creek. And he ended up going out the window
1:00:19
Speaker 1: of the Statler Hotel in New York. He died. We
1:00:22
Speaker 1: would have known about Operation Midnight Climax, even though I
1:00:25
Speaker 1: don't know if that name was specifically used within these
1:00:27
Speaker 1: committee publications. So we would have known.
1:00:30
Speaker 2: Such a great name.
1:00:31
Speaker 1: Well, that's George White's doing.
1:00:32
Speaker 2: Is it?
1:00:33
Speaker 1: Sidney Gottlieb said he had a flare with a pen.
1:00:35
Speaker 1: Like he was a journalist before he.
1:00:36
Speaker 2: Fucking psycho.
1:00:37
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:00:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was.
1:00:38
Speaker 1: In fact, while we're on that topic, at the end
1:00:40
Speaker 1: of Operation Midnight Climax, he wrote a letter to Sidney Gottlieb,
1:00:44
Speaker 1: basically thanking him for supporting me for all these years.
1:00:47
Speaker 1: Out of all the MKUltra subprojects, you know, a lot
1:00:49
Speaker 1: of them started in 1953. Many of them were done
1:00:52
Speaker 1: by 1963, but several continued into the late 60s. But he,
1:00:57
Speaker 1: after this was done, he wrote a letter to Sidney Gottlieb.
1:00:59
Speaker 1: And in the depositions that I found, the attorneys confront
1:01:02
Speaker 1: Gottlieb about this. And they ask him, what was in
1:01:04
Speaker 1: that letter? And Gottlieb says, oh, you know, he had
1:01:06
Speaker 1: a flair for writing. You can't trust anything he said.
1:01:08
Speaker 1: But no, what was in it? Turns out what was
1:01:10
Speaker 1: in it, George White wrote, I toiled in the vineyards
1:01:13
Speaker 1: wholeheartedly because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could
1:01:16
Speaker 1: a red-blooded American boy lie, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage
1:01:20
Speaker 1: with a sanction and blessing of the all-highest?
1:01:23
Speaker 2: And he wrote that down. Yeah. God. Yeah.
1:01:30
Speaker 1: So we would have known about the Frank Olson incident.
1:01:32
Speaker 1: We would have known about Operation Midnight Climax, though maybe
1:01:35
Speaker 1: not that name. We would have known the broad outlines
1:01:37
Speaker 1: of MKUltra because that was already released before those files.
1:01:41
Speaker 1: But the files give us a really detailed view of
1:01:44
Speaker 1: 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.
1:01:50
Speaker 1: That's correct.
1:01:50
Speaker 2: And imagine that. Yeah.
1:01:52
Speaker 1: We kind of do know a little bit about what
1:01:54
Speaker 1: was in them because there was an investigation that was
1:01:56
Speaker 1: done afterwards because it was illegal for them to destroy
1:01:59
Speaker 1: these files. Not that anything ever happened to them. They
1:02:01
Speaker 1: didn't face any consequences for it. However, Gottlieb's secretary, this
1:02:06
Speaker 1: woman who had only been working for him for a
1:02:08
Speaker 1: few weeks before he retired... He told her to basically
1:02:11
Speaker 1: 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
1:02:24
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
1:02:33
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, brothels, basically.
1:02:48
Speaker 1: And so I'm assuming that a lot of those files
1:02:51
Speaker 1: consisted of George White's personal reports on what 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 1970s when this was coming out, it really led
1:03:15
Speaker 1: people to cast a skeptical eye toward the government in
1:03:17
Speaker 1: thinking it's just assumed that the government is supposed to
1:03:22
Speaker 1: be the protector of civil liberties. But after Watergate, after MKUltra,
1:03:27
Speaker 1: after the Vietnam War, it starts to seem as if
1:03:30
Speaker 1: the government is infringing on those civil liberties, you know,
1:03:33
Speaker 1: instead of being the protector of it. In many cases,
1:03:35
Speaker 1: it's infringing on them. Not that it doesn't protect civil liberties,
1:03:39
Speaker 1: but One of the main things that I came away
1:03:41
Speaker 1: after writing this book is the problem of oversight. You know,
1:03:45
Speaker 1: I think the constitutional system of government that we have
1:03:48
Speaker 1: is ingenious. The fact that we have checks and balances
1:03:50
Speaker 1: and the separation of powers. However, you have to enable
1:03:54
Speaker 1: the separate branches of government to be able to check
1:03:59
Speaker 1: the other branches. For most of the Cold War, that
1:04:02
Speaker 1: external check on the executive branch, the Congress checking the executive,
1:04:07
Speaker 1: the president or the CIA didn't really exist. So any
1:04:11
Speaker 1: time that the CIA was doing an operation, I have
1:04:14
Speaker 1: a chapter about this, but sometimes CIA personnel would try
1:04:17
Speaker 1: to inform members of Congress of what they were doing.
1:04:20
Speaker 1: I have one specific quote where a CIA guy walks
1:04:23
Speaker 1: up to a sitting senator and says, hey, let me
1:04:26
Speaker 1: tell you about what we're doing in Chile or whatever
1:04:27
Speaker 1: it is. And then he says, no, I don't want
1:04:29
Speaker 1: to hear it. Don't tell me. Just do what you're
1:04:30
Speaker 1: going to do. He doesn't even want to know. So
1:04:32
Speaker 1: it's like, how can you expect Congress to give oversight
1:04:34
Speaker 1: of the executive if they are completely unwilling to even
1:04:37
Speaker 1: know what the executive is doing? So fortunately, in the
1:04:41
Speaker 1: aftermath of these revelations, there have been some programs or
1:04:48
Speaker 1: committees that are set up within Congress to provide that
1:04:50
Speaker 1: external check. However, it's not even clear how effective those are.
1:04:57
Speaker 1: One check on the executive after this is that the
1:05:00
Speaker 1: president now has to sign off basically on covert operations
1:05:05
Speaker 1: so that eliminates the president's plausible deniability. One of the
1:05:08
Speaker 1: main themes throughout this book is what I call 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 MKUltra. If nobody's going to find out what I'm doing, therefore,
1:05:35
Speaker 1: I'm incentivized to do some crazy stuff because I'm not
1:05:37
Speaker 1: going to be held accountable for it. So secrecy to
1:05:39
Speaker 1: plausible deniability, plausible deniability to reckless behavior. Reckless behavior in
1:05:44
Speaker 1: many instances leads to embarrassment. It's almost inevitable for many
1:05:48
Speaker 1: of these projects that they get found out. Someone leaks
1:05:51
Speaker 1: something to the press. This is how the family jewels
1:05:54
Speaker 1: that the CIA had that was like a compilation of
1:05:56
Speaker 1: all the illegal stuff that it had done over the
1:05:58
Speaker 1: past couple of decades. It eventually got leaked to Seymour
1:06:01
Speaker 1: Hersh who published it on the front page of the
1:06:02
Speaker 1: New York Times. Reckless behavior leads to embarrassment, but embarrassment
1:06:07
Speaker 1: leads to secrecy. Because now that we've been found out,
1:06:09
Speaker 1: we've got to make sure that never happens again. We
1:06:11
Speaker 1: need more secrecy. And the vicious cycle continues. So if
1:06:14
Speaker 1: you can break that vicious cycle by having some kind
1:06:17
Speaker 1: of external check, that's what you actually need. Like an
1:06:19
Speaker 1: empowered Congress that is willing to 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 don't have the desire to be a congressperson.
1:06:46
Speaker 2: So you're not getting the cream of the crop. You're
1:06:48
Speaker 2: not even getting anything remotely similar to the cream of
1:06:51
Speaker 2: the crop. You're occasionally getting great people that really want
1:06:54
Speaker 2: to serve the country. But that is rare. That is like,
1:06:58
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say rare, but if 20% of the food
1:07:01
Speaker 2: you ate at a place was poison, would you go
1:07:03
Speaker 2: eat at that place? No. You would not, right? You
1:07:05
Speaker 2: would say, I'm assuming there's fucking poison in that place.
1:07:08
Speaker 2: That's Congress.
1:07:09
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:07:09
Speaker 2: That's elected officials.
1:07:11
Speaker 1: Yeah. And Andrew Yang has made this point before. I
1:07:13
Speaker 1: know I've heard him say it, that the- the reelection
1:07:17
Speaker 1: rate of Congress is super high. It's like 80, 90%,
1:07:19
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 and the approval rating?
1:07:27
Speaker 1: It has to do with the kind of electoral system.
1:07:32
Speaker 1: The people who are incentivized to actually run for Congress,
1:07:34
Speaker 1: in many cases, they're the most ideological on either side
1:07:37
Speaker 1: because the only race that matters is actually the primary.
1:07:40
Speaker 1: Because if you're in a you know, a district that
1:07:43
Speaker 1: is 90% Trump voters, the Republican is going to win
1:07:46
Speaker 1: the general election. It doesn't matter who it is. So,
1:07:49
Speaker 1: you know, the primary is the main election that happens
1:07:52
Speaker 1: in those districts. And if that's the case, well, the
1:07:55
Speaker 1: person who can win the primary is going to win
1:07:57
Speaker 1: the general. And who's going to win the primary? Well,
1:07:59
Speaker 1: it's going to be the person who can get 90%
1:08:02
Speaker 1: of Trump voters to be more interested in them than
1:08:05
Speaker 1: whoever the other Republican you know, is in many cases
1:08:08
Speaker 1: that drives ideological extremism because, you know, you're, you're already
1:08:13
Speaker 1: selecting a sample size of voters within the primary who
1:08:16
Speaker 1: are the most ideological extreme. And so they're going to
1:08:19
Speaker 1: elect basically whoever it is because the general elections have
1:08:23
Speaker 1: foregone conclusion. So if you can realign the electoral system
1:08:27
Speaker 1: in a way to where, yeah, I mean, I don't
1:08:29
Speaker 1: know the answer to this, but it would be some
1:08:31
Speaker 1: kind of open primaries or ranked voting or proportional representation
1:08:36
Speaker 1: of ending gerrymandering, something like that, then you better incentivize
1:08:40
Speaker 1: Congress people to actually want the job or incentivize people
1:08:44
Speaker 1: who would be good at the job to engage in
1:08:45
Speaker 1: the job or to become Congress people because they actually
1:08:49
Speaker 1: have a clear path to doing it because they're not
1:08:50
Speaker 1: going to be blocked in the primary. So some kind
1:08:53
Speaker 1: of reform like that, I think, is how you better
1:08:58
Speaker 1: facilitate this 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 think most people would
1:09:07
Speaker 2: rather be on the outside, like most wealthy people that
1:09:10
Speaker 2: are successful, they'd rather fund a candidate that you know,
1:09:14
Speaker 2: suits their needs.
1:09:15
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, 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 biggest help. And then
1:09:23
Speaker 2: also getting out insider trading out of Congress and make
1:09:26
Speaker 2: it less like when you're finding out that people. are
1:09:30
Speaker 2: getting $ 170, 000 a year and they're worth hundreds of millions
1:09:33
Speaker 2: of dollars and there's no investigation whatsoever. What did you do?
1:09:38
Speaker 2: What did you do? And why are you still working?
1:09:40
Speaker 2: If you're so good at trading, why are you working
1:09:43
Speaker 2: for $ 170, 000 a year, which is a great salary, don't
1:09:46
Speaker 2: get me wrong.
1:09:46
Speaker 1: I'd take it.
1:09:47
Speaker 2: Nothing wrong with $ 170, 000 a year, but when you have
1:09:49
Speaker 2: 400 million, You couldn't get me to do a job
1:09:53
Speaker 2: for $ 170, 000 a year. I don't have the time.
1:09:56
Speaker 1: You could get me to do it.
1:09:58
Speaker 2: Right. But you know what I'm saying? You can 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.
1:10:10
Speaker 2: It's all canned and fake and insincere and there's no–
1:10:14
Speaker 2: You don't have any real connection with their words. So
1:10:16
Speaker 2: what are they? They're these weird people that have accepted
1:10:19
Speaker 2: this job that no one wants. It's critically important to
1:10:22
Speaker 2: the function of our government. And you're getting really dull
1:10:26
Speaker 2: people that are taking this job. It's fascinating. One of
1:10:29
Speaker 2: the things that also was like so disheartening, I had
1:10:33
Speaker 2: Rep Luna on the podcast, who is great. And she's
1:10:37
Speaker 2: very interesting. And we mostly were talking about UFOs because
1:10:40
Speaker 2: that's the thing that she's involved in. But one of
1:10:43
Speaker 2: the things she said about certain issues is they don't
1:10:46
Speaker 2: want to solve these issues. Oh, yeah. Because this is
1:10:49
Speaker 2: how they run.
1:10:50
Speaker 1: They can fundraise off of it.
1:10:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And I was like, oh, no. Like, just
1:10:54
Speaker 2: that trap, I was like, oh, no. I didn't want
1:10:58
Speaker 2: to think that that is the case. And she's like, oh,
1:11:00
Speaker 2: that's it. That's 100% it. Yeah. They don't want to
1:11:03
Speaker 2: fix it.
1:11:03
Speaker 1: I mean, that makes me even more convinced, though, that
1:11:06
Speaker 1: a restructuring of the electoral system in a way that,
1:11:09
Speaker 1: you know, eliminates, I don't know. that incentivizes basically better behavior,
1:11:14
Speaker 1: whether that's through open primaries, rank choice voting, whatever. That
1:11:19
Speaker 1: has to help in some way, I would think.
1:11:21
Speaker 2: This should also be some sort of a competency test
1:11:23
Speaker 2: if someone wants to take that position. If you want
1:11:26
Speaker 2: to be a lawyer, you have to look at poor
1:11:28
Speaker 2: Kim Kardashian. She can't pass the bar. She's trying so hard.
1:11:31
Speaker 2: She keeps, oh, I can't pass the bar. It's hard.
1:11:34
Speaker 2: It's hard to be a lawyer.
1:11:35
Speaker 1: I'm kind of skeptical of a competency test in a sense, though,
1:11:39
Speaker 1: because- Someone has to write the test.
1:11:41
Speaker 2: Well, not only that, but are you watching them? Do
1:11:44
Speaker 2: they use chat GPT? And we're living in a weird
1:11:46
Speaker 2: world right now. It's a very weird world of technology.
1:11:52
Speaker 2: But it would be nice if you knew that this
1:11:54
Speaker 2: person was capable of doing the job. I mean, I
1:11:57
Speaker 2: bring it back to the passing the bar thing because
1:12:00
Speaker 2: law is very complicated. One of the things that I
1:12:02
Speaker 2: found out really recently that is super disturbing was that
1:12:06
Speaker 2: you don't have to be a lawyer to be a judge.
1:12:08
Speaker 1: To be a judge. Interesting. Oh, if you... You don't
1:12:11
Speaker 1: have to know anything. I guess you can just get
1:12:12
Speaker 1: elected if.
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 because
1:12:20
Speaker 1: I know some judge positions... Yeah, man.
1:12:22
Speaker 2: I don't give a fuck if it's a judge at
1:12:24
Speaker 2: Dairy Queen. Like you should... What are you talking about?
1:12:29
Speaker 2: You don't have to be a lawyer to be a judge.
1:12:33
Speaker 2: That's insane. That's so insane. That's like you don't know
1:12:36
Speaker 2: how to count to be a mathematician. Like what are
1:12:38
Speaker 2: you talking about? You're a judge. You don't have to
1:12:42
Speaker 2: be a lawyer to be a judge to me. It
1:12:44
Speaker 2: was like, Oh my God. State and federal courts, most
1:12:48
Speaker 2: state and federal court, uh, and all federal judges must
1:12:52
Speaker 2: have a law degree. Practice requirements. Many states require judges
1:12:57
Speaker 2: to have a certain number of years of experience as
1:12:59
Speaker 2: a practicing lawyer before they're eligible for a judgeship. Makes sense.
1:13:02
Speaker 2: When a law degree may not be required, limited court jurisdiction.
1:13:05
Speaker 2: Some states allow non-lawyers to become judges in specific lower
1:13:09
Speaker 2: level courts or such as those that handle small claims,
1:13:12
Speaker 2: traffic violations, or minor criminal matters, state and local variations.
1:13:17
Speaker 2: The specific requirements may vary wildly by state, even by
1:13:20
Speaker 2: the type of court within a state. In training, judges
1:13:24
Speaker 2: appointed from the non-lawyer pool typically must complete specific training programs.
1:13:29
Speaker 2: What is a program?
1:13:30
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's a relic of– like rural communities
1:13:34
Speaker 1: where maybe there isn't a lawyer, but you need someone
1:13:37
Speaker 1: to act in that position, you know, like, like, uh.
1:13:39
Speaker 2: Like you got to be the sheriff in this town.
1:13:41
Speaker 1: Instead of being a, like an MD doctor. Some people
1:13:44
Speaker 1: can practice medicine, you know, in rural communities they do
1:13:48
Speaker 1: without being a MD doctor. I forget the term of it, but, uh, okay. Whatever,
1:13:53
Speaker 1: whatever that term is. So maybe, maybe they don't have
1:13:55
Speaker 1: a doctor. Well, yeah, they don't have a doctor, but
1:13:57
Speaker 1: you can, you can, you still have a degree, not
1:13:59
Speaker 1: an MD, but some kind of medical degree that, Right.
1:14:02
Speaker 1: Maybe it doesn't require as much time.
1:14:04
Speaker 2: Or you didn't complete your residency or something.
1:14:05
Speaker 1: So maybe it's a relic of that.
1:14:07
Speaker 2: I don't know. Right. That makes sense. But point being that,
1:14:12
Speaker 2: you know, if Congress has oversight over these things, well,
1:14:16
Speaker 2: who are we talking about? This is the thing. Like,
1:14:19
Speaker 2: if you are the CIA and you are running some
1:14:21
Speaker 2: program that you think is crucial to national security and
1:14:25
Speaker 2: you have some fucking ding-a-ling from– pick a state, Virginia,
1:14:29
Speaker 2: North Dakota, whatever, some– ding dong that just happened to
1:14:33
Speaker 2: be able to get the right amount of votes because
1:14:35
Speaker 2: they have the the right color on their flag you
1:14:39
Speaker 2: know and then all of a sudden they're in and
1:14:41
Speaker 2: you have to talk to this fucking moron like get
1:14:44
Speaker 2: out of here like i'm not telling you shit you're
1:14:46
Speaker 2: gonna hold back information you're gonna come up with reasons
1:14:50
Speaker 2: why you have to redact files and Fuck off. You'll
1:14:53
Speaker 2: be gone in two years.
1:14:55
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is the inherent tension within any intelligence community,
1:14:58
Speaker 1: whether it's the CIA or the FBI. There are legitimate
1:15:01
Speaker 1: reasons to keep things secret. You have to keep secrets.
1:15:04
Speaker 2: 100%.
1:15:04
Speaker 1: But at the same time, the fact that you're afforded
1:15:06
Speaker 1: that secrecy allows you to avoid accountability.
1:15:08
Speaker 2: 100%.
1:15:10
Speaker 1: It's a trap. It's a catch-22. You have to keep secrets.
1:15:12
Speaker 1: There's just no way around it. But at the same
1:15:13
Speaker 1: time— How can I know that the secrets they're keeping
1:15:17
Speaker 1: is because it's in my interest or it's because it's
1:15:19
Speaker 1: in their interest?
1:15:20
Speaker 2: Oh, 100 percent. And then you find out the really
1:15:22
Speaker 2: crazy stuff that's happened in the past, like the Demina
1:15:27
Speaker 2: Arkansas cocaine situation.
1:15:28
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of that.
1:15:29
Speaker 2: You don't know about the Barry Seals story? No. They
1:15:33
Speaker 2: made a movie about it with Tom Cruise. In fact,
1:15:37
Speaker 2: in the movie, Tom Cruise actually gets arrested for smuggling
1:15:39
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 going to get a phone call
1:15:56
Speaker 2: and I'm going to walk right out of here. And
1:15:58
Speaker 2: it turned out to be exactly how it happened. Barry
1:16:02
Speaker 2: Seale was flying drugs from South America and dropping them
1:16:06
Speaker 2: off in Mena, Arkansas. And then they would go and
1:16:09
Speaker 2: pick 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 showed that they'd 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 is a long history of this guy,
1:16:39
Speaker 2: Barry Seals, who's a CIA operative, who is flying in cocaine,
1:16:43
Speaker 2: dropping it off in Mena, Arkansas, all known about by
1:16:48
Speaker 2: the Clintons. Everybody was aware of it. And he had
1:16:52
Speaker 2: been funneling this money and they were using it probably
1:16:55
Speaker 2: for black ops, similar to what they did with the
1:16:57
Speaker 2: Contras in Sandinista, the Contras versus the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
1:17:03
Speaker 2: He winds up going to testify, gets murdered on his
1:17:09
Speaker 2: way to the trial with George Bush's phone number in
1:17:11
Speaker 2: his pocket. The whole story is like completely crazy. Wow. Yeah.
1:17:15
Speaker 1: When did that happen? I hadn't heard of that.
1:17:17
Speaker 2: So it was when Bill Clinton was a governor. So
1:17:20
Speaker 2: I believe it was the 80s.
1:17:21
Speaker 1: 86.
1:17:22
Speaker 2: Yeah. You weren't alive then. That's hilarious. Fucking crazy story.
1:17:29
Speaker 2: But this is the CIA, right? This is the same
1:17:32
Speaker 2: thing that they did. I'm friends with Freeway Ricky Ross.
1:17:35
Speaker 2: Do you know who he is? Okay, great story. So
1:17:40
Speaker 2: Rick Ross, the rapper, okay, you know who that is?
1:17:43
Speaker 2: He got his name from a very famous street hustler
1:17:48
Speaker 2: named Freeway Ricky, Rick Ross. His real name is Rick Ross.
1:17:52
Speaker 2: He's the real Rick Ross. Rick Ross was a guy
1:17:55
Speaker 2: who was a tennis player, a young tennis player who
1:17:59
Speaker 2: started selling cocaine. It was like super disciplined because he
1:18:02
Speaker 2: was a tennis player. So it was funneling millions of
1:18:06
Speaker 2: dollars of cocaine. He had no idea he was getting
1:18:09
Speaker 2: his cocaine from the CIA. So he was getting cocaine,
1:18:13
Speaker 2: selling it in the hood. They were getting the money
1:18:16
Speaker 2: and they were using it, this Oliver North thing, the
1:18:19
Speaker 2: Contras versus the Sandinistas. All of this comes out in
1:18:22
Speaker 2: court and he winds up going to jail. He winds
1:18:26
Speaker 2: up going to jail for selling the cocaine. Doesn't know
1:18:28
Speaker 2: how to read. He's illiterate. learns how to read in jail,
1:18:31
Speaker 2: becomes a lawyer in jail, goes over his trial and
1:18:36
Speaker 2: realizes that they had tried him on the three strikes law,
1:18:40
Speaker 2: which is supposed to be three different felonies at three
1:18:44
Speaker 2: different times, but they jammed them all together. And so
1:18:46
Speaker 2: he gets off. So he's free now and he sells
1:18:49
Speaker 2: legal marijuana in California. He's been on the podcast multiple times.
1:18:54
Speaker 2: But this was the CIA that was involved in all
1:18:57
Speaker 2: of this. This is how they were making money. They
1:19:01
Speaker 2: were selling cocaine.
1:19:03
Speaker 1: And one thing crazy just about not only that, but
1:19:05
Speaker 1: MKUltra in general, it's against the CIA's charter to operate
1:19:09
Speaker 1: within the United States. That should just be a deal-ender
1:19:12
Speaker 1: right there for whatever they're doing within the United States.
1:19:15
Speaker 1: It's against the charter.
1:19:16
Speaker 2: Yep.
1:19:17
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no more discussion.
1:19:19
Speaker 2: That's illegal. Well, I just think without oversight, there's cowboys.
1:19:23
Speaker 2: And there's also when you realize how much money is
1:19:25
Speaker 2: there to be made and that you could funnel this
1:19:27
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, and there's a bunch
1:19:52
Speaker 2: of stuff going on where money's being funneled into these NGOs.
1:19:55
Speaker 2: And there's, there's just, so much opportunity for corruption and
1:20:00
Speaker 2: so 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. Look, it must be so fun. Like,
1:20:19
Speaker 2: what's his name was talking about? The evil guy.
1:20:21
Speaker 1: George White.
1:20:22
Speaker 2: George White. Like, he was talking about, like, how much
1:20:24
Speaker 2: fun he had, which is so sick.
1:20:26
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:20:27
Speaker 2: But that's the kind of people that want that kind
1:20:28
Speaker 2: of a job. And if you make that kind of
1:20:30
Speaker 2: a job available with no oversight, we need, like, a
1:20:34
Speaker 2: council of elders. Like, a wise council, you know, like, of, like,
1:20:39
Speaker 2: completely objective, brilliant people that oversee all these things that
1:20:42
Speaker 2: aren't ideologically captured. You know, they're financially independent. They don't
1:20:47
Speaker 2: 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 MKUltra,
1:20:54
Speaker 1: or one of the problems that led to MKUltra, without people,
1:20:57
Speaker 1: even within the CIA questioning it, there are people in
1:21:00
Speaker 1: the CIA who know about it. Actually, not that many
1:21:02
Speaker 1: because it's very heavily compartmentalized, but some people still do
1:21:05
Speaker 1: know about it. So one of the questions I was
1:21:07
Speaker 1: asking myself throughout this book, Why aren't the people who
1:21:11
Speaker 1: are in the CIA and know about MKUltra, why aren't
1:21:14
Speaker 1: they speaking up? Why don't they, say, pull Sidney Gottlieb
1:21:17
Speaker 1: aside and just have a conversation with him? Do you
1:21:19
Speaker 1: think what you're doing here 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 U.S.
1:21:38
Speaker 2: Law.
1:21:40
Speaker 1: But I found an interview that he did later. There's
1:21:43
Speaker 1: this guy named Lyman Kirkpatrick. He was the inspector general
1:21:46
Speaker 1: during the 1950s when this was going on. And he
1:21:49
Speaker 1: did an investigation into MKUltra in 1957 as it was
1:21:53
Speaker 1: going on, and it continued on after that. And so
1:21:56
Speaker 1: one of the things he talks about is, why didn't
1:21:59
Speaker 1: you try to shut this down? You obviously knew this
1:22:01
Speaker 1: was illegal. In fact, in 1963, a different CIA inspector
1:22:06
Speaker 1: general named John Ehrman— He did a separate investigation into MKUltra,
1:22:10
Speaker 1: and his report that I quote in this book specifically says,
1:22:14
Speaker 1: what I think they're doing is, quote, illegal and unethical.
1:22:17
Speaker 1: Those are his terms, and he's the inspector general. Yet
1:22:20
Speaker 1: in this later interview, Lyman Kirkpatrick talks about, why didn't
1:22:23
Speaker 1: you tell them to stop? Why didn't you put an
1:22:24
Speaker 1: end to this? Why didn't you raise this to higher ups?
1:22:26
Speaker 1: Why didn't you do something? And he said, I was
1:22:28
Speaker 1: worried about bringing up anything that could cause me to
1:22:31
Speaker 1: lose my job. He knew that if he brought this up,
1:22:34
Speaker 1: he'd basically be retaliated against, and so that was it.
1:22:37
Speaker 3: So.
1:22:38
Speaker 1: you know, there's problems with external oversight, but also internal oversight.
1:22:43
Speaker 1: The internal oversight has to be able to bring that
1:22:45
Speaker 1: kind of stuff up. And another lack of internal oversight
1:22:48
Speaker 1: is the fact that Sidney Gottlieb and Richard Helms, they
1:22:50
Speaker 1: could destroy all these files with no repercussions. It's just
1:22:54
Speaker 1: completely illegal. It's against the CIA's own internal regulations. In fact,
1:22:59
Speaker 1: in these depositions that I found, some of the most
1:23:02
Speaker 1: colorful parts of the depositions happen.
1:23:03
Speaker 2: With the lawyers.
1:23:04
Speaker 1: The lawyers just get into heated arguments back and forth.
1:23:07
Speaker 1: That makes the book really colorful. At certain times, Joseph
1:23:11
Speaker 1: Rao is this old civil rights... He used to be
1:23:13
Speaker 1: the civil rights lawyer. He took on this case basically
1:23:17
Speaker 1: to fight against the CIA. At certain points, he basically
1:23:21
Speaker 1: says to the other lawyers representing the CIA, I'm going
1:23:23
Speaker 1: to punch you in the nose. And he says, I'm
1:23:24
Speaker 1: never giving this up. I'm going to mortgage my house
1:23:26
Speaker 1: 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: 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, it's
1:24:01
Speaker 1: part of our job to protect sources and methods. And
1:24:04
Speaker 1: so we wanted to make sure that nobody would be
1:24:06
Speaker 1: able to know what our sources and methods were as
1:24:08
Speaker 1: part of this project. So we had to destroy the files.
1:24:10
Speaker 1: And Rao 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, how could destroying them protect
1:24:17
Speaker 1: sources and methods any more than just not releasing them
1:24:20
Speaker 1: to the public? That's just a non-excuse. So eventually Rao
1:24:24
Speaker 1: presses Gottlieb Moore 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: ruined the lives of all these people, spent $ 10 million
1:24:37
Speaker 1: at all these different institutions.
1:24:39
Speaker 2: For what?
1:24:40
Speaker 1: To ruin these lives and we didn't even learn that
1:24:42
Speaker 1: much out of it? And so he destroyed the files.
1:24:44
Speaker 2: Wow.
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 deter others from doing the same
1:24:56
Speaker 1: thing by holding them accountable.
1:24:58
Speaker 2: It's really fascinating that what we're experiencing is essentially 250
1:25:04
Speaker 2: years after the founding fathers had already recognized these patterns
1:25:08
Speaker 2: of human behavior that required oversight. They required checks and
1:25:12
Speaker 2: balances in order to have a government that doesn't sink
1:25:14
Speaker 2: into tyranny. You have to have all these things in
1:25:16
Speaker 2: place to make sure that no one person has the
1:25:19
Speaker 2: power to do anything that really fucks up the apple cart.
1:25:22
Speaker 2: And they knew that this was a– and they really
1:25:26
Speaker 2: painstakingly structured– this system of government that they thought would
1:25:31
Speaker 2: protect against it. They didn't factor into account special interest
1:25:35
Speaker 2: groups and the stock market and money. They just didn't
1:25:39
Speaker 2: factor into it. It expanded exponentially into so many different
1:25:44
Speaker 2: factions and so many different influencing bodies that it's almost
1:25:47
Speaker 2: completely out of control. But essentially, they knew what could
1:25:52
Speaker 2: happen that has proven to be accurate, which is really
1:25:56
Speaker 2: Kind of fascinating. It is. It is.
1:25:57
Speaker 1: You know, it's a brilliant system. And I quote James Madison, actually,
1:26:02
Speaker 1: when I talk about oversight, because his specific verbiage is,
1:26:04
Speaker 1: you know, auxiliary precautions. You know, humans, he says, men
1:26:12
Speaker 1: aren't angels. Therefore, auxiliary precautions are necessary to keep their
1:26:15
Speaker 1: ambitions in check, which means external oversight, which is like,
1:26:18
Speaker 1: he's exactly right. That's exactly what you need.
1:26:19
Speaker 2: He's exactly right. You know.
1:26:23
Speaker 2: I wonder where this goes because it's going in the
1:26:27
Speaker 2: wrong direction. From the founding fathers to today, it's going
1:26:30
Speaker 2: in the wrong direction. I think most people agree that
1:26:35
Speaker 2: a lack of oversight and secrecy is a gigantic problem
1:26:37
Speaker 2: with not just the stuff that we've already discussed with
1:26:42
Speaker 2: MKUltra 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
1:26:53
Speaker 2: so many different influences that aren't based on the greater
1:26:58
Speaker 2: 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 campaign fund against them, which is
1:27:13
Speaker 2: what we were talking about before. So this is this
1:27:15
Speaker 2: constant psychological game. There's a game of us versus them.
1:27:19
Speaker 2: There's a game of certain key points, whether it is
1:27:23
Speaker 2: abortion or gun rights or immigration or whatever it is,
1:27:26
Speaker 2: like nothing ever gets solved. These are the beach balls
1:27:30
Speaker 2: that they throw up in the air at the concert
1:27:32
Speaker 2: and they keep getting bounced around. And we're just little
1:27:35
Speaker 2: dumb monkeys that are giving up our tax dollars so
1:27:38
Speaker 2: they can keep running this giant Ponzi scheme. Yeah.
1:27:41
Speaker 1: Um, I will say a counterintuitive point that I think
1:27:44
Speaker 1: is important to also make though is, um, Daniel Shore
1:27:48
Speaker 1: was a CBS News correspondent, and he's the guy who
1:27:50
Speaker 1: initially broke the story on CIA assassination attempts on foreign leaders.
1:27:55
Speaker 1: And he has this quote about how the U.S. 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. You can
1:28:08
Speaker 1: be infinitely secure, but that means that the government would
1:28:11
Speaker 1: be inside your house and know everything about you and
1:28:12
Speaker 1: 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, if the pendulum swings too far
1:28:23
Speaker 1: the opposite way, complete liberty, well, you have no security
1:28:26
Speaker 1: because anyone could do anything. So there's this constant tension
1:28:29
Speaker 1: between security and liberty that swings throughout American history. And
1:28:32
Speaker 1: an important thing to keep in mind is that I
1:28:35
Speaker 1: don't think you want that pendulum to stop. You actually
1:28:38
Speaker 1: 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 exposing these abuses, you
1:29:01
Speaker 1: might think that there are no abuses happening, but they're
1:29:03
Speaker 1: going to be happening. I think it's actually good, the
1:29:07
Speaker 1: fact that this pendulum is swinging a little bit, the
1:29:09
Speaker 1: fact that there is a little bit of tension, and
1:29:11
Speaker 1: the fact that there are abuses being exposed. I wish
1:29:13
Speaker 1: the abuses didn't happen, but at the same time, the
1:29:15
Speaker 1: abuses are going to happen no matter what, therefore the
1:29:18
Speaker 1: exposure of the abuses is a good sign. It's a
1:29:21
Speaker 1: sign that the system is actually working as intended because
1:29:24
Speaker 1: the abuses are being exposed. One of the points I
1:29:27
Speaker 1: make in this book is, dread the day when the
1:29:30
Speaker 1: press sings nothing but the praises of those in power,
1:29:32
Speaker 1: And Congress says that there are no abuses to investigate.
1:29:35
Speaker 1: It might seem like that's utopia, but that's the day
1:29:37
Speaker 1: 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 a lot of these
1:29:54
Speaker 2: issues that get raised are coming from independent journalists first.
1:29:58
Speaker 2: And then they 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 Taibis 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: they couldn't breach or certain things that they were told
1:30:24
Speaker 2: that they couldn't publish. And they were like, I'm out.
1:30:27
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 10 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 it and the story of it. And
1:31:19
Speaker 2: then a month later, it's in the Washington Post. And
1:31:21
Speaker 2: it's interesting. It's interesting because it's almost like 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 platform,
1:31:39
Speaker 2: and that's social media. And social media distributes all this stuff,
1:31:42
Speaker 2: and then you have to sort through what's real, what's
1:31:45
Speaker 2: foreign governments making up fake stories.
1:31:47
Speaker 1: That's the other side of it because the algorithm can
1:31:50
Speaker 1: push something, but it doesn't necessarily push truth. It might
1:31:53
Speaker 1: just push engagement. And if that's the case, then how
1:31:55
Speaker 1: do you know?
1:31:56
Speaker 2: Community notes. Yeah, yeah.
1:31:57
Speaker 1: Something like that.
1:31:58
Speaker 2: Well, that's the beautiful thing about Twitter. And when Elon
1:32:01
Speaker 2: solved that issue with community, I don't necessarily say solved.
1:32:05
Speaker 2: It's not solved, but it certainly made it a lot
1:32:09
Speaker 2: easier to understand what's going on. Because there's oftentimes there's
1:32:11
Speaker 2: some outrageous video clip, like, oh my God, can you
1:32:14
Speaker 2: believe the Democrats are doing this? And then it turns out, no,
1:32:17
Speaker 2: that's actually from a movie, you know, or that's actually
1:32:19
Speaker 2: AI or that's actually from 2016 and it's in Poland or,
1:32:24
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? There's a lot of that
1:32:25
Speaker 2: stuff happens where people get outraged and someone posts something.
1:32:29
Speaker 2: And then I always go to the original account that
1:32:31
Speaker 2: posts it. And how many times I've gone there? I'm like, oh,
1:32:35
Speaker 2: you're not a real person. Like, most of the time,
1:32:38
Speaker 2: I 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. Yeah.
1:32:45
Speaker 1: You might like being a historian because it sounds like
1:32:48
Speaker 1: that's very similar to what I do in the historical record,
1:32:52
Speaker 1: not on social media. But, you know, a lot of
1:32:55
Speaker 1: what I'm doing is following this source that cites this
1:32:58
Speaker 1: source that cites that source. It's like, where's the origin
1:33:01
Speaker 1: of this thing? And you can see the– it's a
1:33:03
Speaker 1: game of telephone. You can see the transformation along the way.
1:33:05
Speaker 1: One of my favorite examples– It comes from my first book.
1:33:08
Speaker 1: I was writing about William Donovan, who was the head
1:33:10
Speaker 1: of the OSS. And he was this really, you know,
1:33:14
Speaker 1: larger than life individual, a World War I war hero.
1:33:17
Speaker 1: He had a Medal of Honor and all kinds of stuff.
1:33:20
Speaker 1: And there was this really great quote in a book.
1:33:22
Speaker 1: And it was describing Donovan basically as that. He was
1:33:25
Speaker 1: the kind of guy that would dance on the roof
1:33:27
Speaker 1: of the hotel and he would, you know, he would
1:33:31
Speaker 1: destroy these planes and whatever. And I thought, man, that's
1:33:33
Speaker 1: such an exciting quote to encapsulate who he is. So
1:33:35
Speaker 1: I was reading this book, and I kind of, okay,
1:33:37
Speaker 1: I'm going to mark that quote. I'm going to come
1:33:38
Speaker 1: back and see where does he, what source is this
1:33:41
Speaker 1: from so I can use that in my book. So
1:33:43
Speaker 1: I go to the source. It turns out it cites
1:33:45
Speaker 1: another book. And it's like, okay, I've got to get
1:33:46
Speaker 1: that book. So I go to the library. I was
1:33:48
Speaker 1: teaching at Louisiana Tech at the time. Go to the
1:33:51
Speaker 1: Louisiana Tech library. Get that book. open it to the
1:33:54
Speaker 1: page that it says, find the quote, go, okay, here's
1:33:57
Speaker 1: where it is. Now go to the back of the book,
1:33:59
Speaker 1: see the note. The note cites another book. It turns
1:34:01
Speaker 1: out I had that book.
1:34:01
Speaker 2: I owned that book.
1:34:02
Speaker 1: So I went back home, go to that book, do
1:34:04
Speaker 1: the same thing, look for the source of this quote.
1:34:06
Speaker 1: It turns out it was a book I didn't have
1:34:08
Speaker 1: and the library didn't have. So I had to put
1:34:10
Speaker 1: an interlibrary loan, you know, in use. So I had
1:34:13
Speaker 1: to basically request that my library get the book from
1:34:16
Speaker 1: a different library. That was going to take several weeks. So, okay,
1:34:19
Speaker 1: now I got to wait. In the meantime, I go
1:34:20
Speaker 1: into Google Books. I start searching this quote for other books.
1:34:23
Speaker 1: It turns out they basically cite the books that I
1:34:25
Speaker 1: had already consulted. So that's a dead end there. I
1:34:28
Speaker 1: have to wait for this other book to come in.
1:34:29
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, I'm thinking to myself, that quote
1:34:32
Speaker 1: sounds awfully familiar. What do I know that from? It
1:34:35
Speaker 1: turns out I had already used that quote in my book,
1:34:37
Speaker 1: but it was from a different... It was in a
1:34:40
Speaker 1: different context. It wasn't talking about William Donovan. It was
1:34:42
Speaker 1: talking about just people in the OSS in general. And
1:34:45
Speaker 1: the quote was different. It wasn't like the same quote,
1:34:47
Speaker 1: but it had many of the key words. And you
1:34:49
Speaker 1: could tell that it was the same thing, but somebody
1:34:51
Speaker 1: had changed it. So now I'm thinking, did I use
1:34:53
Speaker 1: like a fake quote, you know, in this book? So
1:34:55
Speaker 1: I got to figure out in my manuscript where I
1:34:57
Speaker 1: got this. It turns out I got it from this
1:34:59
Speaker 1: book called Wanderer by this guy named Sterling Hayden, the actor,
1:35:03
Speaker 1: later an actor. He was in the OSS. And he
1:35:06
Speaker 1: had used the quote because he was quoting, he was
1:35:09
Speaker 1: talking about when he was in Europe at the end
1:35:11
Speaker 1: of the war. He told someone he was in the
1:35:13
Speaker 1: OSS and they said, oh, the OSS guys are the
1:35:15
Speaker 1: kind of guys who blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And
1:35:17
Speaker 1: I thought, OK, well, he's recalling this from memory. So
1:35:19
Speaker 1: this must be the origin of the quote. Then what
1:35:21
Speaker 1: are all these other books quoting? So finally, that interlibrary
1:35:24
Speaker 1: loan comes in and I get it. and it basically
1:35:27
Speaker 1: says the quote, but 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 Sterling 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 he 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. And that's for one quote in my book.
1:35:57
Speaker 1: 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 chased
1:36:04
Speaker 2: 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 Persico, blah, blah, blah,
1:36:14
Speaker 1: the original book. So that's the book that I originally
1:36:17
Speaker 1: found the quote in. So if they want to go
1:36:18
Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole, they can follow his book to
1:36:19
Speaker 1: that book to that book to that book.
1:36:20
Speaker 2: Wow.
1:36:22
Speaker 1: Well, it's a lot of rabbit holes going 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. Oh, oh, yeah.
1:36:32
Speaker 1: You know, like 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 a lot of this stuff, the secrecy, MKUltra, all
1:36:45
Speaker 2: the stuff we're talking about, about oversight, it all relays
1:36:49
Speaker 2: to the way the human mind works. Mm-hmm. 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 it a little bit. It's like 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, ambition, power, control.
1:37:19
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: named 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: in 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: Seeker's Cult. And they had said basically on December 21st, 1953,
1:37:48
Speaker 1: I think it was, It's going to be the end
1:37:51
Speaker 1: of the world. There's going to be a massive flood.
1:37:53
Speaker 1: Join us. And so we can get whisked away on
1:37:55
Speaker 1: the spaceship before the end of the world happens. Festinger
1:37:58
Speaker 1: sees this and he thinks this is a great psychological
1:38:01
Speaker 1: experiment because they are making a specific prediction. On this day,
1:38:04
Speaker 1: this is going to happen. What happens when it doesn't happen?
1:38:07
Speaker 1: So he decides to embed himself in this cult. Basically,
1:38:10
Speaker 1: they knew he was a psychologist, but they said, yeah, sure,
1:38:12
Speaker 1: come on by. So him and some of his researchers,
1:38:14
Speaker 1: they just sit with the cult on the day that
1:38:16
Speaker 1: the world is supposed to end because they want to
1:38:18
Speaker 1: know How are they going to deal with the fact
1:38:20
Speaker 1: that the world doesn't actually end? So obviously, there wasn't
1:38:25
Speaker 1: even a light rain. There was like no flood. And
1:38:27
Speaker 1: so the world doesn't end. Some people actually... do end
1:38:30
Speaker 1: up leaving the cult afterwards, but many people stay, especially
1:38:33
Speaker 1: the people who had sunk many costs into the cult.
1:38:37
Speaker 1: They had abandoned their families to join this. They had
1:38:39
Speaker 1: donated lots of money. They had quit their jobs basically
1:38:42
Speaker 1: to be in this cult because they thought the world
1:38:44
Speaker 1: was going to end. What do we need money for?
1:38:46
Speaker 1: And so those people stayed and now Festinger coined the
1:38:49
Speaker 1: term cognitive dissonance. So the idea that you're holding two
1:38:52
Speaker 1: irreconcilable views in your mind at the same time. So
1:38:55
Speaker 1: one of their views is we predicted because we have
1:38:58
Speaker 1: received revelations from God, basically, that the world was going
1:39:01
Speaker 1: to end on this day. That's one position they're holding.
1:39:04
Speaker 1: The other position is the world didn't end on that day.
1:39:07
Speaker 1: So this is cognitive dissonance. How do we reconcile the
1:39:09
Speaker 1: fact that these two things contradict each other, but we
1:39:12
Speaker 1: have to believe both of them? So Festinger was interested
1:39:15
Speaker 1: in how they would do this.
1:39:16
Speaker 2: There were a.
1:39:18
Speaker 1: One was, well, maybe God meant it 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, something.
1:39:27
Speaker 1: Not like a literal flood that was going to kill everyone.
1:39:29
Speaker 1: But then they said, no, no, we actually thought it
1:39:31
Speaker 1: was going to be a literal flood. So he's in
1:39:33
Speaker 1: the middle of their discussions when they're rationalizing this. And
1:39:35
Speaker 1: they eventually come upon the conclusion that 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.
1:39:59
Speaker 1: We know we are right because the world wasn't destroyed because,
1:40:02
Speaker 1: you know, that proves that God was taking mercy on us.
1:40:05
Speaker 3: Wow.
1:40:06
Speaker 1: So this is how they rationalize it. So this is,
1:40:08
Speaker 1: you know, non-falsifiable, something that there's no way you could
1:40:11
Speaker 1: prove it wrong. This is an indication of a bad
1:40:14
Speaker 1: theory of it's non-falsifiable. It's like not tethered to reality.
1:40:17
Speaker 2: It's gold medal mental gymnastics. Exactly.
1:40:19
Speaker 1: If something's non-falsifiable, you know, for the classic example for
1:40:23
Speaker 1: me of non-falsifiability is the concept of last Thursday-ism. So
1:40:28
Speaker 1: it's the idea that God created the universe last Thursday. Now,
1:40:32
Speaker 1: how could I prove that wrong? You know, I ask
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
1:40:44
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.
1:40:54
Speaker 2: So.
1:40:55
Speaker 1: the capacity for humans to rationalize things. If you start
1:40:58
Speaker 1: from a false premise, we can rationalize a world to
1:41:01
Speaker 1: make sure that we believe in that false premise.
1:41:03
Speaker 2: Yes, yes. We do that with everything. We do that
1:41:05
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. If you
1:41:26
Speaker 1: don't mind, if I can briefly describe the philosophy of
1:41:28
Speaker 1: Thomas Kuhn. He's this famous philosopher of science. He wrote
1:41:31
Speaker 1: the most influential book in the philosophy of science called
1:41:34
Speaker 1: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, basically explaining how does science
1:41:38
Speaker 1: change or progress over time. His concept was that scientists
1:41:41
Speaker 1: operate within a paradigm, a worldview. So we believe in
1:41:45
Speaker 1: Newtonian gravity or we have the worldview of the germ
1:41:50
Speaker 1: theory of disease or whatever it is. So this is
1:41:53
Speaker 1: our paradigm, whatever it is. group of scientists we are.
1:41:56
Speaker 1: Within that paradigm, we do normal science. He says puzzle solving.
1:42:00
Speaker 1: We do experiments to try to prove our paradigm right.
1:42:03
Speaker 1: So if my paradigm is, you know, if I'm a
1:42:06
Speaker 1: follower of Ptolemy and I believe in the geocentric universe,
1:42:08
Speaker 1: I'm going to be observing the way that the, you know,
1:42:11
Speaker 1: the planets and the stars are moving across the sky
1:42:13
Speaker 1: to try to prove Ptolemy right. I'm going to try
1:42:15
Speaker 1: to prove that his predictions actually come true. So this
1:42:18
Speaker 1: is just called puzzle solving. What scientists actually do, Thomas
1:42:20
Speaker 1: Kuhn says, many of them, they just puzzle solve. They
1:42:22
Speaker 1: just try to prove the paradigm right. In the process
1:42:25
Speaker 1: of doing that, they uncover occasionally an anomaly. An anomaly
1:42:29
Speaker 1: is something that seems to contradict the paradigm. Like, okay,
1:42:33
Speaker 1: Ptolemy makes this prediction about where the planet should be,
1:42:36
Speaker 1: but it turns out the planet's actually not there. It's
1:42:38
Speaker 1: a little bit off. That's an anomaly. And Kuhn says,
1:42:41
Speaker 1: what do scientists do with anomalies? Do they throw out
1:42:43
Speaker 1: their theory? No. He says they either ignore it or
1:42:46
Speaker 1: they find a way to rationalize it. Well, Ptolemy made
1:42:49
Speaker 1: that prediction, but it's close enough to where his theory
1:42:53
Speaker 1: still works for most of the observations we're making. So
1:42:56
Speaker 1: scientists usually ignore or rationalize the anomaly. But over time,
1:43:00
Speaker 1: as they do more and more puzzle solving, normal science,
1:43:03
Speaker 1: more and more anomalies crop up to the point where
1:43:06
Speaker 1: We just can't ignore them anymore. There are just too
1:43:08
Speaker 1: many anomalies. At a certain point, we realize that our worldview,
1:43:12
Speaker 1: our paradigm, must be wrong. And Kuhn says this allows
1:43:16
Speaker 1: for a crisis within the scientific community. The group of
1:43:19
Speaker 1: scientists within this paradigm, they enter a crisis period, and
1:43:22
Speaker 1: it's during that crisis period when someone can put forward
1:43:25
Speaker 1: an alternative paradigm that accounts for all those anomalies, and
1:43:29
Speaker 1: then we accept that as our new paradigm. So it
1:43:31
Speaker 1: accounts for all the things that the previous paradigm could do,
1:43:34
Speaker 1: in addition to all the anomalies that the previous paradigm
1:43:37
Speaker 1: couldn't account for. Now we're in a new paradigm, and
1:43:39
Speaker 1: what do we do? We do puzzle solving. We try
1:43:41
Speaker 1: to prove our paradigm right, and in the process, we
1:43:43
Speaker 1: uncover anomalies. Oh, and we rationalize them away. But the
1:43:48
Speaker 1: reason I raise this point is because one of the
1:43:50
Speaker 1: integral parts to the progression of science, says Thomas Kuhn,
1:43:54
Speaker 1: is the fact that scientists are stubborn. The fact that
1:43:57
Speaker 1: contrary to popular belief, we typically think of scientists as
1:44:00
Speaker 1: people who are really open to changing their minds. They're
1:44:02
Speaker 1: confronted by evidence. And so, OK, they're willing to accept
1:44:04
Speaker 1: this evidence. Thomas Kuhn says if you actually look at
1:44:07
Speaker 1: the history of science closely, that does happen. But what
1:44:09
Speaker 1: also happens in a lot of instances is scientists are
1:44:12
Speaker 1: stubborn and they don't want to change their minds. They're
1:44:14
Speaker 1: stuck on their paradigm. And so they rationalize away the anomalies.
1:44:17
Speaker 1: So the same kind of rationalizing that you have within
1:44:20
Speaker 1: the seeker's cult about their belief system is very similar
1:44:23
Speaker 1: to the kind of rationalizing that scientists are doing when
1:44:26
Speaker 1: they refuse to throw out their paradigm because they've uncovered
1:44:29
Speaker 1: these anomalies, but surely there's a way we can make
1:44:31
Speaker 1: those anomalies fit with our paradigm instead and they don't.
1:44:34
Speaker 1: So this isn't to say that scientists are members of
1:44:37
Speaker 1: a cult or anything like that. In fact, there are
1:44:40
Speaker 1: good reasons to maybe elevate the predictions of scientists over
1:44:45
Speaker 1: those of these cult members. because there are structures in
1:44:48
Speaker 1: place within the scientific community to prevent some of the
1:44:51
Speaker 1: more egregious biases that they have. However, really what I
1:44:55
Speaker 1: consider Kuhn as, it's a commentary on human psychology. Kuhn
1:44:59
Speaker 1: basically figured out cognitive dissonance before Leon Festinger, you know,
1:45:03
Speaker 1: but Kuhn didn't have that terminology. Festinger is describing cognitive
1:45:06
Speaker 1: dissonance as these cult members. Kuhn is describing it in scientists.
1:45:09
Speaker 1: He just doesn't have that terminology, but that's just what
1:45:11
Speaker 1: it is. And Kuhn says that's why science progresses. It's
1:45:14
Speaker 1: necessary for those people to ignore that evidence because it
1:45:17
Speaker 1: enables them to keep uncovering more anomalies that eventually leads
1:45:20
Speaker 1: to the revolution. So it's an ironic thing that our
1:45:23
Speaker 1: ability to rationalize is what allows us to progress in
1:45:25
Speaker 1: the future.
1:45:27
Speaker 2: Wow. This is the perfect point to take a break
1:45:30
Speaker 2: because I have to take a leak. So this is awesome.
1:45:31
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Sorry about that. But I'm glad
1:45:36
Speaker 2: we took a break right after that epic rant. That
1:45:39
Speaker 2: was so good. I mean, you just nailed it. It's
1:45:42
Speaker 2: so perfect that there's this bizarre psychological dance when it
1:45:46
Speaker 2: 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 mind. 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.
1:46:32
Speaker 2: They're realizing we're like these very bizarre, complicated thinking apes
1:46:36
Speaker 2: and we have tendencies and we have these things that
1:46:40
Speaker 2: we do that protect ourselves and we have these desires
1:46:43
Speaker 2: and we have these motivations and how do we exploit that?
1:46:45
Speaker 2: How do we do that for... air quotes, national security interests.
1:46:48
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 an 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 the typical ways that
1:47:10
Speaker 1: we associate with like cult behavior is There's a guy
1:47:13
Speaker 1: named Stephen Hassan.
1:47:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've had him on. Oh, have you?
1:47:16
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah. His BITE model, behavior, information, thought, emotion, I
1:47:20
Speaker 1: think that's a very good model for understanding how actual
1:47:23
Speaker 1: mind control actually takes place. 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
1:47:37
Speaker 1: to distrust that information even if they do access it.
1:47:40
Speaker 2: Well, he was actually in a cult. Oh, yeah.
1:47:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was in the Moonies. Yeah, yeah. Thought control
1:47:45
Speaker 1: is like reinforcing previous patterns of thought. So saying mantras,
1:47:50
Speaker 1: reciting prayers, creating an us versus them mentality. And then
1:47:54
Speaker 1: emotion control is like instilling in someone certain emotions to
1:47:58
Speaker 1: make them beholden to the cult or 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 thought. I think the real mind control,
1:48:11
Speaker 1: how people actually manipulate people, how especially cults are able
1:48:15
Speaker 1: to manipulate their members to do all kinds of really
1:48:18
Speaker 1: insane things like cut off their genitals. or commit murders
1:48:21
Speaker 1: or anything like that. I think it's much more influenced
1:48:24
Speaker 1: by those four factors than it is some kind of LSD,
1:48:27
Speaker 1: you know, mind control, Sidney Gottlieb, MKUltra type thing.
1:48:30
Speaker 2: Are you aware of the cult that existed in Austin?
1:48:35
Speaker 2: There's a documentary called Holy Hell.
1:48:37
Speaker 1: I don't think so, no. When was that?
1:48:40
Speaker 2: Really interesting. I believe it took place here in the 90s.
1:48:46
Speaker 2: The cult, it's called the Bodhi Tree, I believe. Okay,
1:48:49
Speaker 2: now I haven't heard of it. 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 was a gay porn star and a hypnotist.
1:48:58
Speaker 2: He was also a yoga instructor. So he starts this cult.
1:49:02
Speaker 1: He would have liked this book, I bet.
1:49:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. I believe his name was Jaime Gomez. And he
1:49:07
Speaker 2: changed his name a couple of times. One of them
1:49:10
Speaker 2: was Michelle and I think the other one was Andreas.
1:49:13
Speaker 2: And so when the Cult Awareness Network started looking in
1:49:17
Speaker 2: the cults right after Waco.
1:49:19
Speaker 1: And Jolly West started that, right?
1:49:20
Speaker 2: The Cult Awareness Network. Yes. So this guy leaves West
1:49:25
Speaker 2: Hollywood and moves to Austin. and has his followers build
1:49:30
Speaker 2: him a theater that he can dance for them in
1:49:32
Speaker 2: front of them.
1:49:33
Speaker 1: That was the point? So that he can show off
1:49:35
Speaker 1: to them?
1:49:35
Speaker 2: Yes. It's a beautiful theater. I almost bought it. Oh, really? Yeah.
1:49:38
Speaker 2: The original Comedy Mothership was going to be at this cult.
1:49:40
Speaker 1: Is it downtown?
1:49:41
Speaker 2: No, no. It's West Austin. It's on Bee Caves Road.
1:49:45
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah.
1:49:46
Speaker 2: And it's still there. It's a beautiful theater. And the
1:49:48
Speaker 2: reason why I was going to buy it, it was
1:49:50
Speaker 2: for sale, first of all. It was a beautiful theater,
1:49:52
Speaker 2: 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. He's like, some
1:50:00
Speaker 2: cult owned it or something. So I was like, all right, cool.
1:50:02
Speaker 2: And I went to check it out. I'm like, this
1:50:03
Speaker 2: is great. And then I get a phone call from
1:50:05
Speaker 2: my friend Adam. He goes, hey, man, have you seen
1:50:08
Speaker 2: the documentary on this cult? And I'm like, oh, fuck.
1:50:11
Speaker 2: There's a documentary? And the documentary is terrible. It's horrible. However,
1:50:17
Speaker 2: there's one fascinating aspect of it. Okay, so this guy...
1:50:21
Speaker 2: He had sex with all these people. He made them
1:50:24
Speaker 2: pay money so that he could have sex with them. Like,
1:50:27
Speaker 2: they would do therapy, and he was having sex with
1:50:29
Speaker 2: all these guys, and they were straight, and it was
1:50:31
Speaker 2: like they felt terrible about it. And after it was over, like,
1:50:34
Speaker 2: one guy had sent a mass email, like, hey, this
1:50:37
Speaker 2: guy's been hypnotizing me and fucking me for the past
1:50:39
Speaker 2: 10 years, and everybody's like, I thought it was just me.
1:50:41
Speaker 2: And then the entire cult falls apart.
1:50:43
Speaker 1: Oh, man.
1:50:43
Speaker 2: But here's the point. This guy had this thing that
1:50:48
Speaker 2: he would do to them called the knowing. and they
1:50:50
Speaker 2: would have to qualify for the knowing. They'd have to
1:50:53
Speaker 2: be ready for it, and only he could decide if
1:50:56
Speaker 2: they were ready. When they were ready, they would have
1:50:58
Speaker 2: this ceremony, this huge thing, and then he would put
1:51:01
Speaker 2: his hands on them. They would kneel there in acceptance
1:51:05
Speaker 2: of the knowing, and he would put his hands on them,
1:51:07
Speaker 2: and they would have this profound psychedelic experience. So through
1:51:11
Speaker 2: the power of suggestion, through the placebo effect, whatever it is,
1:51:15
Speaker 2: they genuinely have this profound experience psychedelic experience, this connection
1:51:20
Speaker 2: to God, this feeling of all oneness to a person.
1:51:26
Speaker 2: Everyone who left the cult, who talked about what a
1:51:28
Speaker 2: terrible guy he was, talked about how he sexually exploited
1:51:32
Speaker 2: them and abused them and took their money and they
1:51:34
Speaker 2: wasted 20 years of their life with this guy. But
1:51:37
Speaker 2: that day when they got the knowing was the most
1:51:39
Speaker 2: profound day of their lives. Really?
1:51:41
Speaker 1: Even after they're out of the cult?
1:51:43
Speaker 2: Yes. Even after they were out of the cult. People
1:51:45
Speaker 2: weeping about what he did to them. still talked about
1:51:49
Speaker 2: that experience as being the most profound moment of their life.
1:51:54
Speaker 2: Which is like, this guy, because he was a hypnotist
1:51:58
Speaker 2: and because he was also a megalomaniacal, narcissistic, 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 his fucking face
1:52:16
Speaker 2: kept pulling back. And everybody was like, what are you doing? Like,
1:52:18
Speaker 2: what are you doing? And he would deny doing anything.
1:52:21
Speaker 2: But it was like so obvious. And he had facelifts.
1:52:23
Speaker 2: And he just went crazy. But the point is, it's
1:52:26
Speaker 2: like he figured out how to not just manipulate these
1:52:31
Speaker 2: people like all cult leaders do. But have this one
1:52:35
Speaker 2: experience that. apparently was a real experience for these people
1:52:40
Speaker 2: in some way.
1:52:41
Speaker 1: Able to incept like some kind of 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
1:52:52
Speaker 1: to go through the whole experience because it builds up
1:52:55
Speaker 1: some tension or resentment or something.
1:52:57
Speaker 2: Of course.
1:52:57
Speaker 1: Human psychology has to have gone through that in order
1:53:00
Speaker 1: to maybe reach that.
1:53:01
Speaker 2: Well, it's just spectacular that he was able to understand
1:53:04
Speaker 2: that you had to hold it back from them for
1:53:06
Speaker 2: so long. And like some of them in the film
1:53:08
Speaker 2: would be they were complaining that I'm ready for it.
1:53:12
Speaker 2: He won't give it to me. I want it. I
1:53:14
Speaker 2: want it so badly. Michelle got it. Now she's enlightened.
1:53:18
Speaker 2: And I'm just sitting here on Earth eating carrots. This
1:53:20
Speaker 2: is bullshit. And, you know, it's really weird. Because one
1:53:27
Speaker 2: of the things about these cult documentaries is every time
1:53:29
Speaker 2: you watch one, like for me at least, in the beginning,
1:53:31
Speaker 2: I'm like, that looks like fun. In the beginning, it
1:53:34
Speaker 2: looks great. They're all having dinners together. They're all laughing.
1:53:37
Speaker 2: It's a community. It's a community.
1:53:38
Speaker 1: Everyone loves community. Everyone needs to feel accepted.
1:53:40
Speaker 2: They're all helping out. They're all like working in the
1:53:41
Speaker 2: garden together. Like, this looks great. It looks great. And
1:53:45
Speaker 2: then it always descends into one guy fucks everybody. One
1:53:50
Speaker 2: guy takes all the money. Yeah. One guy wants to
1:53:55
Speaker 2: be known as the living God. It's just, these patterns
1:54:01
Speaker 2: are so weird. They're so weird because they're so similar. Yeah.
1:54:06
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's the same basic human psychology operating under different
1:54:09
Speaker 1: circumstances that leads to, you know, I mean, there's a
1:54:12
Speaker 1: classic phrase, you know, history repeats itself or history doesn't repeat,
1:54:16
Speaker 1: but it does rhyme. But it's because humans share a psychology.
1:54:19
Speaker 1: So of course there are going to be similar actions.
1:54:22
Speaker 1: That reminds me kind of this concept of like incepting
1:54:25
Speaker 1: something into someone or making them feel this. Were you,
1:54:28
Speaker 1: you know, this is a little bit before my time,
1:54:29
Speaker 1: but did you experience the satanic panic in the sense
1:54:32
Speaker 1: that were you keeping up with it when that was
1:54:34
Speaker 1: happening in the 1980s?
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 MKUltra kind
1:54:57
Speaker 1: of conspiracies. There are a lot of true things about
1:55:00
Speaker 1: MKUltra that are just crazy. But there are also some
1:55:02
Speaker 1: 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 MKUltra was, it was like getting young women to
1:55:15
Speaker 1: run around these military compounds where they would be hunted
1:55:17
Speaker 1: for sport. And it was saying like, There was a
1:55:22
Speaker 1: vice president who activated a hologram around his body to
1:55:25
Speaker 1: make this woman think that she had turned into a lizard,
1:55:27
Speaker 1: to make her think that lizard people actually exist. She
1:55:31
Speaker 1: was saying that the CIA personnel would impregnate her and
1:55:35
Speaker 1: abort the fetuses and eat the fetuses and sell some
1:55:37
Speaker 1: of the body parts in their interstate occult body part
1:55:40
Speaker 1: business and all this stuff, which I don't think any
1:55:42
Speaker 1: of that happened. However, there's a connection between the people
1:55:46
Speaker 1: who are making these assertions and the satanic panic. A
1:55:49
Speaker 1: lot of the people who make these assertions say that
1:55:51
Speaker 1: they recovered their memories through hypnotism. And that is a
1:55:55
Speaker 1: lot of what was going on during the satanic panic.
1:55:57
Speaker 1: You had people recovering memories through hypnotism about being involved
1:56:01
Speaker 1: in this ritualistic satanic abuse. And in fact, there was,
1:56:06
Speaker 1: there's a group called the International Society for the Study
1:56:09
Speaker 1: of Dissociation. And a lot of the members were kind
1:56:12
Speaker 1: of responsible for propagating many of these satanic panic conspiracy theories.
1:56:15
Speaker 1: The president of that organization, a guy named Bennett Braun,
1:56:19
Speaker 1: He was sued by a former patient for falsely convincing
1:56:24
Speaker 1: her that she had engaged in cannibalism and infanticide and
1:56:28
Speaker 1: all this stuff that she didn't do. And he lost
1:56:31
Speaker 1: his medical license and she was awarded $ 10 million in
1:56:33
Speaker 1: this lawsuit. But it turns out that many of the people,
1:56:37
Speaker 1: one in particular, of the kind of prominent MKUltra conspiracy theorists,
1:56:41
Speaker 1: her husband, who did this hypnotism on her to recover
1:56:44
Speaker 1: her memories, he said he learned how to recover memories
1:56:47
Speaker 1: from Bennett Braun himself. And he was a part of
1:56:49
Speaker 1: this international society for the study of dissociation. So it's
1:56:52
Speaker 1: like the same techniques that were being used during the
1:56:54
Speaker 1: satanic panic to so-called recover these memories. It's the same
1:56:58
Speaker 1: thing in many of these MKUltra, what I would say
1:57:00
Speaker 1: are conspiracy theorists, who are propagating this misinformation about MKUltra
1:57:05
Speaker 1: because they supposedly recovered these memories about how these jelly
1:57:08
Speaker 1: beans were used to control their behavior or something. But
1:57:12
Speaker 1: it's the same kind of techniques that are being used
1:57:13
Speaker 1: in both instances.
1:57:14
Speaker 2: Hypnotic regression in particular is very odd because a lot
1:57:18
Speaker 2: of it is dependent upon the questions that are asked
1:57:20
Speaker 2: while the person's under. Like that you can lead someone
1:57:24
Speaker 2: to believe something happened that didn't happen.
1:57:26
Speaker 1: This is what Jolly West was– some of the stuff
1:57:28
Speaker 1: that he was doing.
1:57:28
Speaker 2: This is what's really– do you know who John Mack is?
1:57:32
Speaker 1: John Mack.
1:57:32
Speaker 2: John Mack was– I believe he was a psychiatrist at Harvard.
1:57:38
Speaker 2: He got really obsessed with alien abduction stories. Mm-hmm. And
1:57:42
Speaker 2: he wrote a book called Abduction. And it was all
1:57:44
Speaker 2: hypnotic regressions of people that had been abducted by aliens, allegedly.
1:57:49
Speaker 2: And they all had very similar stories. But the real
1:57:52
Speaker 2: controversy from skeptics has always been, like, what were these
1:57:56
Speaker 2: sessions like?
1:57:57
Speaker 1: Like leading questions?
1:57:59
Speaker 2: Yes, yes. Did you lead them to believe? And also
1:58:01
Speaker 2: there was a precedent. So do you know the Betty
1:58:06
Speaker 2: and Barney Hill story? Okay, Betty and Barney Hill were
1:58:09
Speaker 2: an interracial. couple in New Hampshire, I believe, in the
1:58:12
Speaker 2: 1950s with a very first UFO abduction story. And they
1:58:17
Speaker 2: had an experience on a highway. They saw a thing.
1:58:21
Speaker 2: They lost time. And then they couldn't sleep. They had
1:58:23
Speaker 2: all these real problems. And they both wound up going
1:58:26
Speaker 2: to a hypnotist. and separately had the same story. Separately
1:58:31
Speaker 2: had the same story about being taken aboard a craft
1:58:33
Speaker 2: and being manipulated. The problem is then that story gets
1:58:37
Speaker 2: out into the zeitgeist. And then you have hypnotic regression
1:58:41
Speaker 2: where people tell very similar versions of that story. And
1:58:45
Speaker 2: it becomes a thing where even if the original Betty
1:58:48
Speaker 2: and Barney Hill story was real, now that becomes a
1:58:52
Speaker 2: possibility in your mind that could have happened to you.
1:58:56
Speaker 2: And then you get hypnotized and someone says, do you
1:58:59
Speaker 2: see any beings in the room with you? Yes, I do.
1:59:03
Speaker 2: Are they short with large heads and large black eyes?
1:59:06
Speaker 2: They are. What are the questions? How did you lead
1:59:10
Speaker 2: them into this? hypnotic regression of 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 17th century.
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 is a huge uptick in
1:59:27
Speaker 1: witch accusations and supposed demonic possessions. Is it a coincidence
1:59:31
Speaker 1: that right after they're, as soon as it's brought to
1:59:33
Speaker 1: your consciousness, oh, I think you might be a witch
1:59:36
Speaker 1: or all these accusations starts farting around. Obviously, it's like
1:59:39
Speaker 1: a suggested thing that they picked up from attending these
1:59:41
Speaker 1: 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.
1:59:49
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:59:50
Speaker 1: Like Heinrich Kramer and the 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 know,
2:00:00
Speaker 2: it's going to be able to print the Bible and mathematics. No, no, no, no, no, no.
2:00:04
Speaker 1: If it bleeds, you know, if it bleeds, it leads.
2:00:06
Speaker 2: It's like.
2:00:06
Speaker 1: People are attracted to sensational stories. It's the same thing
2:00:10
Speaker 1: about human psychology. They're just the same psychology as us today.
2:00:13
Speaker 1: And if we're interested in learning these sensational stories, of
2:00:15
Speaker 1: 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, just nonsense. Yeah.
2:00:22
Speaker 1: A funny anecdote kind of related to that. I teach
2:00:25
Speaker 1: a course on Isaac Newton and he writes this big book,
2:00:27
Speaker 1: The Principia. It's like the most famous book in the
2:00:29
Speaker 1: history of science. And it goes off to the publisher
2:00:32
Speaker 1: and the publisher, you know, he's publishing this book. And
2:00:35
Speaker 1: right after the Principia is 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 Principia, 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 so hard
2:00:57
Speaker 2: because we're so weird to find the truth. Yeah.
2:00:59
Speaker 1: And especially when you're talking about, like, suggested... memories or
2:01:03
Speaker 1: something like that. There are a few studies. I don't
2:01:06
Speaker 1: remember them, you know, like perfectly, but there's one study
2:01:09
Speaker 1: that I talk about in this book where this is
2:01:12
Speaker 1: right after the Challenger explosion. So the space shuttle has
2:01:15
Speaker 1: exploded and there were two psychologists, I think they're at
2:01:17
Speaker 1: Emory University, and they decide we are going to have
2:01:20
Speaker 1: all of our students, like 200 students, write down exactly
2:01:23
Speaker 1: where they were when they heard about this, because obviously
2:01:25
Speaker 1: they're all going to remember this is like the next day.
2:01:27
Speaker 2: Where were you?
2:01:29
Speaker 1: What were you doing? Who told you about the explosion?
2:01:31
Speaker 1: And so they got copies of these questionnaires basically from
2:01:34
Speaker 1: a hundred and however many students. Four years later, I
2:01:38
Speaker 1: think it was, They tracked down, I don't know, 40
2:01:40
Speaker 1: or 80 of these students and had them do the
2:01:42
Speaker 1: same questionnaire. When the Challenger exploded, where were you? Who
2:01:45
Speaker 1: were you with? What did you learn? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
2:01:49
Speaker 1: They took the exact same questionnaire, and the majority of
2:01:53
Speaker 1: the students got a majority of the questions wrong in
2:01:56
Speaker 1: the sense that they put down something completely different than
2:01:58
Speaker 1: they did the first time. So it's like nobody was
2:02:00
Speaker 1: even manipulating them. That was just their own memory. The
2:02:03
Speaker 1: majority got the majority of these important details wrong. There's another...
2:02:09
Speaker 1: intriguing kind of humorous psychological study. I don't know how
2:02:12
Speaker 1: big the sample size was on this, but it was
2:02:14
Speaker 1: to determine how powerful our memory is in the sense
2:02:18
Speaker 1: that if you just suggest that someone did something, is
2:02:22
Speaker 1: it possible that they actually think they actually did? So
2:02:24
Speaker 1: the suggestion was they took a bunch of students to
2:02:27
Speaker 1: some vending machines and they either had them propose to
2:02:29
Speaker 1: the vending machine, something that surely you would remember, or
2:02:32
Speaker 1: they would suggest to them that they had proposed to
2:02:35
Speaker 1: the vending machine. So some students would actually propose and
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
2:03:05
Speaker 2: information that I know is true. Mm-hmm. 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 what I'm recalling is
2:03:18
Speaker 2: the memory of my recounting of my memory. It's not
2:03:22
Speaker 2: really my memory.
2:03:23
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is the story that you've 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 1990s.
2:03:31
Speaker 2: I didn't remember it at all. I didn't remember the plot.
2:03:35
Speaker 2: I didn't remember the lines that I had. If it
2:03:39
Speaker 2: was fake, if someone created it during AI, I would
2:03:41
Speaker 2: have no idea whether it was an AI version of
2:03:44
Speaker 2: news radio. Unless 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. So it was probably a big moment
2:03:57
Speaker 2: for me at the time. Gone. Gone. It doesn't exist.
2:04:00
Speaker 1: I feel like I, it's ironic, I'm a historian, but
2:04:02
Speaker 1: I 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: Well, there's certain people, like, you know that woman that
2:04:08
Speaker 2: was on Taxi? Really pretty redhead lady, that sitcom Taxi
2:04:13
Speaker 2: from the 1970s. God, I forget her name. Famous actress,
2:04:18
Speaker 2: Mary Lou... Tenor. Tenor, Mary Lou Tenor. Photographic memory. Henner. Henner,
2:04:25
Speaker 2: Mary Lou Henner. Sorry, sorry Mary Lou. I used to
2:04:28
Speaker 2: be in love with her when I was a kid.
2:04:30
Speaker 2: She has a photographic memory. Like she can remember that
2:04:35
Speaker 2: it was a Tuesday in 1983. Like this lady. It's
2:04:39
Speaker 2: an incredible memory. Highly superior autobiographical memory. A rare condition
2:04:44
Speaker 2: which people can remember nearly every day of their lives
2:04:47
Speaker 2: 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.
2:04:52
Speaker 1: Okay.
2:04:53
Speaker 2: Show a picture of her when she was young.
2:04:55
Speaker 1: I can imagine having a negative experience or a bad
2:04:58
Speaker 1: memory and then dwelling on that and knowing every single
2:05:01
Speaker 1: detail of that and having to relive that, like, in
2:05:03
Speaker 1: photographic detail every time you think of it. I'm sure
2:05:06
Speaker 1: that couldn't be a pleasant experience.
2:05:07
Speaker 2: That one right above. Go to the one right above there.
2:05:10
Speaker 2: Right there. No, right there. Bam. That was her. Woo!
2:05:15
Speaker 2: Smoke show.
2:05:15
Speaker 1: That was your younger crush.
2:05:16
Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, she was so pretty. And also
2:05:20
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, I would
2:05:27
Speaker 2: imagine it's not, I would take that over not taking that.
2:05:31
Speaker 2: Like if someone gave me the option, would you rather
2:05:32
Speaker 2: have an absolute photographic memory or be like not really sure,
2:05:36
Speaker 2: like I don't fucking know what happened, you know? Yeah.
2:05:39
Speaker 2: I would take the photographic memory, I think. The burden,
2:05:41
Speaker 2: I think, would be worth it. I think I'd handle it.
2:05:44
Speaker 1: Even me for questions, like, you know, if you ask me,
2:05:46
Speaker 1: how did you come to write this book? Like you
2:05:48
Speaker 1: asked me, how did you become interested in this topic?
2:05:51
Speaker 1: When I was thinking about the answer to that question,
2:05:53
Speaker 1: I mean, what I said is factual in the sense
2:05:54
Speaker 1: that I was doing a dissertation on scientists in the
2:05:57
Speaker 1: intelligence community and this. But is that really like how
2:06:00
Speaker 1: I came to this topic? I might have read some
2:06:01
Speaker 1: other book that I read the name Sidney Gottlieb and
2:06:03
Speaker 1: that got me interested. And, you know, even when I'm
2:06:06
Speaker 1: talking to you about my own autobiographical experience, to me,
2:06:10
Speaker 1: it's like, I mean, what I'm saying is true. But
2:06:13
Speaker 1: is it like literally true in the sense that I
2:06:15
Speaker 1: know with precision that how I came to this topic
2:06:18
Speaker 1: because I was doing my dissertation on this? It might
2:06:20
Speaker 1: have been. You know, I kind of remember reading Tim
2:06:23
Speaker 1: Weiner's book, Legacy of Ashes, and it briefly mentioned Sidney
2:06:26
Speaker 1: Gottlieb in there. Maybe I read that and like, oh,
2:06:28
Speaker 1: who's this guy?
2:06:29
Speaker 2: You know, right.
2:06:30
Speaker 1: So there's a classic joke about how there's a guy
2:06:34
Speaker 1: looking for his keys on the parking lot. And there's
2:06:37
Speaker 1: a it's night and there's a lamppost right above him.
2:06:40
Speaker 1: And a police officer walks by and the police officer 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
2:06:46
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 autobiographical experience, am I remembering it how it's convenient
2:07:01
Speaker 1: to remember it? Yeah. Remember it or, you know, or what?
2:07:05
Speaker 2: Oftentimes. Oftentimes. I mean, that's the human tendency, right? I
2:07:09
Speaker 2: know for a fact when I really got into conspiracies
2:07:13
Speaker 2: because I have a moment connected to it that was–
2:07:16
Speaker 2: A bad experience. So when I was in my early 20s,
2:07:21
Speaker 2: this guy that was a friend of mine that was
2:07:22
Speaker 2: in a band had read this book called Best Evidence
2:07:25
Speaker 2: by David Lifton. David Lifton was an accountant and I
2:07:29
Speaker 2: forget what his assignment was, but it had something to
2:07:31
Speaker 2: do with the Warren Commission. So he goes over the
2:07:33
Speaker 2: Warren Commission report and he actually read the whole thing.
2:07:36
Speaker 2: So it's a huge volume. And he reads all this
2:07:40
Speaker 2: and he finds so many contradictions and so many things
2:07:42
Speaker 2: that are wrong with it that he starts investigating the
2:07:45
Speaker 2: Kennedy assassination. And he writes this book called Best Evidence.
2:07:48
Speaker 2: And the book is basically saying that there's no way
2:07:51
Speaker 2: the official story is true. And I read this while
2:07:54
Speaker 2: I was a comedian on the road. So I was
2:07:56
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia and I was doing standup and I had
2:07:59
Speaker 2: a show on Friday and and I spent the whole
2:08:01
Speaker 2: day in my hotel room reading this book, freaking out
2:08:05
Speaker 2: going oh my.
2:08:05
Speaker 1: God they killed him so then I go.
2:08:07
Speaker 2: On stage first show and fucking bomb and I had
2:08:12
Speaker 2: done really good the night before and they.
2:08:14
Speaker 1: Were like what happened did you talk about the JFK
2:08:16
Speaker 1: or did you already have your set routine.
2:08:17
Speaker 2: No I had my set but I was like completely
2:08:19
Speaker 2: freaked out by the fact they killed the president and
2:08:22
Speaker 2: then I apologized to the manager I said I'm so
2:08:24
Speaker 2: sorry I read this book on JFK and I'm super
2:08:26
Speaker 2: bummed out I'll be over it by the second show
2:08:28
Speaker 2: I promise you and then they were like you better
2:08:30
Speaker 2: be and I was like I promise I'm good at
2:08:32
Speaker 2: this I know what I'm doing And the second show
2:08:34
Speaker 2: was great. And they're like, don't do that again. I'm like,
2:08:36
Speaker 2: I won't. I won't do it again. But I genuinely
2:08:39
Speaker 2: freaked out. So I remember very specifically because it was
2:08:42
Speaker 2: a big moment for me. I was on the road
2:08:44
Speaker 2: and I ate shit at a comedy club. So that
2:08:46
Speaker 2: thing is in my head forever. But that book was,
2:08:50
Speaker 2: that was my first step because I was like, if
2:08:52
Speaker 2: this is a true story, I mean, if this book
2:08:55
Speaker 2: is accurate, like someone killed the president and they got
2:08:58
Speaker 2: away with it. And it wasn't just Lee Harvey Oswald.
2:09:01
Speaker 2: Even if he was involved, it was, And there was
2:09:03
Speaker 2: a conspiracy to distort the evidence of the assassination in
2:09:08
Speaker 2: terms of like the difference in the discrepancies between the
2:09:11
Speaker 2: report at Dallas when they first received his body to Bethesda, Maryland.
2:09:16
Speaker 2: There's a bullet hole wound that they describe in the
2:09:19
Speaker 2: Dallas where they call it a tracheotomy hole in Bethesda, Maryland.
2:09:22
Speaker 2: They're manipulating the narrative to incorporate the single gunman theory.
2:09:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. Have you ever had Gerald Posner on?
2:09:29
Speaker 2: I have not.
2:09:30
Speaker 1: OK. Because I know he– I haven't gone really down
2:09:32
Speaker 1: the JFK rabbit hole, so I don't know that much
2:09:34
Speaker 1: about it. 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.
2:09:40
Speaker 1: I bring him up just because I follow him on Twitter.
2:09:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:09:45
Speaker 1: And he was posting recently about the I think he
2:09:48
Speaker 1: posted about the tracheotomy thing. And so but I don't really.
2:09:52
Speaker 2: Just the magic bullet theory alone is complete, utter nonsense
2:09:56
Speaker 2: to anybody who's ever shot anything with a bullet. When
2:09:59
Speaker 2: bullets hit bone and shatter bone, first of all, there's
2:10:02
Speaker 2: the fact that there was more bullet fragments in Connolly's
2:10:05
Speaker 2: wrist than were missing from this magic bullet. This magic
2:10:08
Speaker 2: bullet was only used as a tool because they had
2:10:13
Speaker 2: to account for a bullet that hit the underpass. So
2:10:16
Speaker 2: there was a guy standing under the underpass. He got
2:10:17
Speaker 2: hit with a ricochet. So they're like, well, definitely that
2:10:20
Speaker 2: bullet hit here. So we have to attribute all these
2:10:22
Speaker 2: wounds to one bullet. So it had to go through Kennedy,
2:10:26
Speaker 2: bounce around, come out of him, hit Connolly, go through him,
2:10:31
Speaker 2: go through his wrist. And then they magically find this
2:10:35
Speaker 2: bullet in the gurney when they're bringing in the body
2:10:39
Speaker 2: or when they're bringing in Connolly to get medical assistance.
2:10:44
Speaker 2: They supposedly magically find this bullet. This bullet has clearly
2:10:47
Speaker 2: been shot into water. This bullet is either water or pillows.
2:10:50
Speaker 2: This bullet has no deformations. It's pristine. It's not missing
2:10:54
Speaker 2: any fragments. So it doesn't account for the fragments in
2:10:56
Speaker 2: the wrist. It's a total horseshit idea. And then there's
2:10:59
Speaker 2: the back to the left when you see there's a
2:11:01
Speaker 2: Pruder film where his head explodes. It's... all the people
2:11:05
Speaker 2: that were talking about the shots coming from the grassy knoll.
2:11:08
Speaker 2: It's the fact that so many of the witnesses died
2:11:12
Speaker 2: in mysterious circumstances. They died from car accidents. They died
2:11:16
Speaker 2: from suicide. They died from crime. They died from random
2:11:20
Speaker 2: acts of violence. Like they did a calculation of what
2:11:23
Speaker 2: are the odds that all these witnesses would wind up
2:11:25
Speaker 2: dying the way they did. And it's like some spectacular number.
2:11:28
Speaker 2: They fucking killed a bunch of people that were there.
2:11:30
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know this, but Vincent Bugliosi wrote like,
2:11:32
Speaker 1: I think what might be the longest nonfiction single-volume book
2:11:35
Speaker 1: ever written on the Kennedy assassination, remembering history or something
2:11:40
Speaker 1: like that, it's like 1,500 pages.
2:11:43
Speaker 2: This is Bugliosi that was involved in the Manson assassination.
2:11:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, he wrote like a book about the JFK assassination.
2:11:49
Speaker 2: And if you read Tom O'Neill's book, it calls him
2:11:51
Speaker 2: a complete charlatan. Like 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 1,500 pages of like
2:11:59
Speaker 1: the densest, tiniest little print. And it was so long
2:12:03
Speaker 1: that it came with a CD of the notes that
2:12:05
Speaker 1: were like a thousand additional pages that couldn't fit in
2:12:06
Speaker 1: the volume. Like a physical CD you had to put
2:12:09
Speaker 1: in your computer to see the notes.
2:12:11
Speaker 2: Oh, my God. That's so crazy.
2:12:13
Speaker 1: I think that could be like the longest single volume
2:12:15
Speaker 1: nonfiction book that I've ever seen.
2:12:19
Speaker 2: I would love to get Gerald 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 Oswald,
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
2:12:48
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 some shit. That's not
2:13:01
Speaker 2: how a normal person reacts when you get accused of
2:13:03
Speaker 2: killing the president. If you're innocent, you go, I'm innocent.
2:13:06
Speaker 2: I didn't have anything to do with this. I don't
2:13:08
Speaker 2: know why they have me. You'd be freaking the fuck out.
2:13:10
Speaker 2: And he's like, I'm just a patsy. Oh, are you really? Like,
2:13:15
Speaker 2: I think you're probably an intelligence agent. There's probably something
2:13:18
Speaker 2: creepy about you.
2:13:19
Speaker 1: Well, if anyone could get them to talk, I'm sure
2:13:22
Speaker 1: 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 involved.
2:13:28
Speaker 2: And I think it was very coordinated. And it probably
2:13:32
Speaker 2: involved our government. It might have involved the mafia. It
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 Kennedy did not want
2:13:42
Speaker 2: to give Israel nuclear weapons. There's a ton of stuff
2:13:46
Speaker 2: that's attached to that assassination. But this idea of case closed,
2:13:50
Speaker 2: fuck you. There's no case closed in this. This is
2:13:53
Speaker 2: one of the craziest conspiracies ever. of all time because
2:13:57
Speaker 2: it seems to be that they killed the president and
2:14:00
Speaker 2: got away with it. That's what it seems to be.
2:14:02
Speaker 2: And then the Jolly West connection to Jack Ruby. So
2:14:05
Speaker 2: Jack Ruby goes in and kills Lee Harvey Oswald. Then
2:14:08
Speaker 2: in jail, Jolly West visits him and he goes completely
2:14:11
Speaker 2: fucking insane. Completely insane. Loses his mind. Thinks he's in hell.
2:14:15
Speaker 2: There's fire. The Jews are all burning. Like he's like
2:14:18
Speaker 2: going nuts. Right after the guy was in charge of
2:14:21
Speaker 2: all these LSD studies visits him. How insane. convenient.
2:14:24
Speaker 1: One thing, do you, it's been, I don't know, five
2:14:27
Speaker 1: years or whenever I read Tom Inouye's book when it
2:14:29
Speaker 1: came out the first time. So I don't remember that well,
2:14:31
Speaker 1: but one thing, cause I have a chapter on Jolly
2:14:33
Speaker 1: West and one thing that stuck out to me, especially
2:14:37
Speaker 1: is one of the main crusades he had in his
2:14:39
Speaker 1: life was against the death penalty. You know, he, he,
2:14:42
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, um, especially there's
2:14:48
Speaker 1: an earlier case called this Jimmy Shaver case about this
2:14:51
Speaker 1: guy who abused and killed this little girl. that Jolly
2:14:54
Speaker 1: West was involved into. It seems to me the possibility
2:14:59
Speaker 1: is also open that Jolly West might also have had
2:15:03
Speaker 1: an incentive to dose these people with LSD, if he did,
2:15:06
Speaker 1: to prevent them from getting the death sentence. Because if
2:15:08
Speaker 1: they could appear insane, maybe they would not get the
2:15:11
Speaker 1: death penalty instead.
2:15:12
Speaker 2: Why was he so obsessed about the death sentence? I
2:15:16
Speaker 2: don't know.
2:15:16
Speaker 1: I think he just considered it immoral.
2:15:18
Speaker 2: And what a fascinating thing that a guy would ruin
2:15:20
Speaker 2: people's lives Would consider just ending them to be immoral. Yeah.
2:15:25
Speaker 2: Where a lot of those people wind up killing themselves
2:15:27
Speaker 2: because of his actions. Yeah.
2:15:28
Speaker 1: And he ended up killing himself, too. Well, I mean,
2:15:31
Speaker 1: it was an assisted suicide with his son. His son
2:15:33
Speaker 1: 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 mother,
2:16:00
Speaker 1: later when, I don't know exactly if she had a
2:16:02
Speaker 1: medical issue or something, but he helped her commit assisted suicide.
2:16:04
Speaker 1: The son wrote a book about it, and then he
2:16:06
Speaker 1: later committed suicide as well.
2:16:08
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 in 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, cause we've talked about it,
2:16:33
Speaker 2: the Tom O'Neill 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 20 years.
2:16:44
Speaker 1: And one of the, One of the parts of the
2:16:46
Speaker 1: book that I really enjoyed is the writing style is
2:16:49
Speaker 1: kind of like a gonzo journey. Like he's part of
2:16:51
Speaker 1: the story, you know, you're following on him on the
2:16:53
Speaker 1: journey to discover this stuff. For me, that was the
2:16:56
Speaker 1: exciting part of the ride. It's like, oh, it's, it's
2:16:58
Speaker 1: not just telling you the story. It's like, we're figuring
2:17:00
Speaker 1: out how a historian or a journalist actually works. He's
2:17:02
Speaker 1: telling you now I've got this interview and I'm going
2:17:04
Speaker 1: to go do this and I'm going to go find
2:17:05
Speaker 1: these documents. I didn't write this book in that style
2:17:08
Speaker 1: because I just wanted to stick to a description of MKUltra,
2:17:11
Speaker 1: but there is something tempting about One of the exciting
2:17:14
Speaker 1: things about history is doing the history, and no one
2:17:17
Speaker 1: really sees that process. You know how I was describing
2:17:20
Speaker 1: going down the rabbit hole to find the origin of
2:17:21
Speaker 1: that quote? There are a million stories like that about
2:17:24
Speaker 1: how it's so crazy. For example, there was this guy
2:17:30
Speaker 1: named Vannevar Bush. He was President Roosevelt's unofficial science advisor
2:17:35
Speaker 1: during World War II. Some people say Vannevar Bush, but
2:17:39
Speaker 1: it's actually.
2:17:39
Speaker 2: Is he connected to the Bushes?
2:17:41
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no.
2:17:42
Speaker 2: Different Bushes.
2:17:42
Speaker 1: But it's Vannevar Bush. Bush himself says that it rhymes
2:17:45
Speaker 1: with beaver, his name. So it's Vannevar. But he was
2:17:49
Speaker 1: writing his autobiography. He was in charge of coordinating scientific
2:17:52
Speaker 1: research during World War II. And when he was writing
2:17:55
Speaker 1: his autobiography, he did this series of interviews that were
2:17:58
Speaker 1: like a thousand pages long so that he could kind
2:18:00
Speaker 1: of talk about his life and he would use chunks
2:18:02
Speaker 1: of that as part of his autobiography. Well, I wanted
2:18:05
Speaker 1: to get that because for my first book, Vannevar Bush
2:18:08
Speaker 1: plays an important role Because he's the guy who gets
2:18:12
Speaker 1: Stanley Lovell a job in the OSS and Stanley Lovell's
2:18:14
Speaker 1: my main character. So it's like, oh, Vannevar Bush is
2:18:16
Speaker 1: like one of the main guys who is, you know,
2:18:18
Speaker 1: playing a role in this story. So I go, there
2:18:22
Speaker 1: are a couple of different archives that have this thousand
2:18:25
Speaker 1: page interview that Vannevar Bush did. And every single page
2:18:29
Speaker 1: is there in one of the versions except this. two
2:18:32
Speaker 1: pages that talk about Stanley Lovell and the OSS. And
2:18:34
Speaker 1: I thought, that's the exact thing I need. Like, how
2:18:37
Speaker 1: is it out of a thousand pages, the one thing
2:18:39
Speaker 1: that's missing is the two pages? And so I finally
2:18:42
Speaker 1: eventually find out that there's another copy of this interview
2:18:46
Speaker 1: at a different repository, like at Georgetown University or MIT,
2:18:49
Speaker 1: I forget which one it was, So I get them
2:18:52
Speaker 1: to send me a photocopy of every single page. And
2:18:54
Speaker 1: it turns out that had the two missing pages. So
2:18:57
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, my gosh, now I can actually use
2:18:58
Speaker 1: that information because but they didn't have the two pages
2:19:01
Speaker 1: out of a thousand that I actually needed. They were missing.
2:19:03
Speaker 1: So there are like a thousand stories about these crazy
2:19:05
Speaker 1: coincidences that happen. One of them, again, from my first
2:19:08
Speaker 1: book was about Stanley Lovell. You know, he's this chemist
2:19:13
Speaker 1: in the OSS creating all these ingenious like gadgets and
2:19:16
Speaker 1: whatever he does. talks in his memoir about his wartime
2:19:20
Speaker 1: experience about being on this biological warfare committee where they
2:19:24
Speaker 1: were discussing the possibility of using anthrax and tularemia and
2:19:28
Speaker 1: tuberculosis and distributing this across towns and just discussing what
2:19:33
Speaker 1: would happen, what would we need to be able to
2:19:36
Speaker 1: do this, what would have to happen for us to
2:19:37
Speaker 1: engage in biological warfare. But he talks about this in
2:19:40
Speaker 1: his memoir. But I had never seen, you know, a
2:19:43
Speaker 1: copy of that meeting, minutes of that meeting or anything.
2:19:47
Speaker 1: He said that this group, this Biological Warfare Committee, it
2:19:50
Speaker 1: was part of the National Academy of Sciences. And I thought, OK, well,
2:19:53
Speaker 1: that's interesting. But, you know, I can't hardly put it
2:19:55
Speaker 1: in the book if I don't actually have the minutes
2:19:57
Speaker 1: in the meeting where they're talking about this, because Stanley
2:19:59
Speaker 1: Lovell was known to exaggerate, to say the least, some
2:20:02
Speaker 1: of the stuff that he was up to during the war.
2:20:04
Speaker 1: But then I thought to myself, I kind of remember
2:20:06
Speaker 1: several years earlier when I was writing my dissertation before
2:20:09
Speaker 1: this book, I had gone to the National Academy of
2:20:11
Speaker 1: Sciences because I was working on, you know, some scientists
2:20:14
Speaker 1: in government. And I ended up taking just a bunch
2:20:16
Speaker 1: of pictures of a lot of the materials they had
2:20:18
Speaker 1: in their archives. And I went back through the material
2:20:20
Speaker 1: that I already had. And it turns out I had
2:20:23
Speaker 1: taken pictures of the minutes of the very meeting Stanley
2:20:26
Speaker 1: Lovell was talking about in his memoir. It was already
2:20:28
Speaker 1: in my possession. I didn't have to go there. I
2:20:30
Speaker 1: already had it. It's just a crazy coincidence that I
2:20:33
Speaker 1: already had the exact thing I needed.
2:20:35
Speaker 2: Wow.
2:20:35
Speaker 1: So they're... The process of making history is sometimes even
2:20:39
Speaker 1: more 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 to chase down that process. All the things
2:20:47
Speaker 2: you're saying about finding those two pages, the quote, there's
2:20:51
Speaker 2: 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 and chased down those things because a lot
2:21:01
Speaker 2: of lazy people wouldn't have gone that far, right? Yeah. Yeah.
2:21:04
Speaker 2: Especially if no one's watching. You have books you can cite. Like, oh,
2:21:07
Speaker 2: it says, here's the quote.
2:21:09
Speaker 1: But for me, that's the enjoyment of it. I enjoy
2:21:12
Speaker 1: doing it. I like going to the archives. I like
2:21:14
Speaker 1: finding things. I feel like a detective. I'm in the
2:21:16
Speaker 1: archive and I'm looking at these documents and, oh, I
2:21:18
Speaker 1: find this guy's name is mentioned here. I know.
2:21:20
Speaker 2: Okay.
2:21:21
Speaker 1: So to me, it's exciting. It's like a treasure hunt.
2:21:23
Speaker 1: So that's the fun part of it.
2:21:26
Speaker 2: Do you have a hard time communicating with people that
2:21:29
Speaker 2: aren't familiar with all this stuff in terms of like
2:21:31
Speaker 2: this subject gets discussed? discussed and someone brings it up
2:21:35
Speaker 2: and they start asking questions, do you have a hard
2:21:37
Speaker 2: time of not looking crazy? Do you know what I mean?
2:21:41
Speaker 2: Because there's a lot of people that are very intelligent,
2:21:44
Speaker 2: very educated people that have not just no information about
2:21:50
Speaker 2: this or no knowledge of this, but an aversion.
2:21:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Because it's naturally a thing that you would
2:21:56
Speaker 1: assume 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: to even rationally discussing it. Like, I am not the
2:22:04
Speaker 2: type of person that's going to sit here and do
2:22:06
Speaker 2: conspiracies with you. I've had a few conversations like that
2:22:09
Speaker 2: with people that do not believe in conspiracies. And they
2:22:13
Speaker 2: always fall apart under scrutiny. That narrative falls apart. Well,
2:22:18
Speaker 2: you don't think they exist? Which ones don't you think exist?
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, of course.
2:22:27
Speaker 2: 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.
2:22:39
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. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
2:22:47
Speaker 1: You know, in fact— That actually ties in at the
2:22:49
Speaker 1: end of this book. I talk about a little bit
2:22:52
Speaker 1: about kind of the what's kind of called censorship through noise,
2:22:56
Speaker 1: the idea that we can put so much noise out
2:22:58
Speaker 1: there that no one's really going to know what to trust.
2:23:00
Speaker 1: And so I give an example of the idea that
2:23:04
Speaker 1: AIDS was created in a government laboratory like Fort Dedrick.
2:23:07
Speaker 1: And then in the really 1980s, there was a Soviet
2:23:12
Speaker 1: kind of propaganda mouthpiece newspaper in India called The Patriot.
2:23:16
Speaker 1: And this would just publish like KGB propaganda.
2:23:18
Speaker 2: Wow. In India.
2:23:20
Speaker 1: In India, yeah. And one of the stories in that
2:23:22
Speaker 1: newspaper was basically saying AIDS was created in a 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 determine the distribution of the
2:23:42
Speaker 1: air currents to see if we were attacked in biological
2:23:44
Speaker 1: warfare situation? how the air currents would spread these germs.
2:23:47
Speaker 1: They were just spraying yeast and stuff over, but it's bacteria.
2:23:50
Speaker 1: So did you know that they've performed experiments on these
2:23:54
Speaker 1: drug addicts and this and that and this? And also,
2:23:56
Speaker 1: did you know that in Fort Dedrick, they created a
2:23:59
Speaker 1: biological weapon called AIDS? So the lie is made more
2:24:04
Speaker 1: potent because it's sandwiched in between all these truths. And
2:24:07
Speaker 1: so this newspaper, The Patriot, published this article basically saying
2:24:11
Speaker 1: all these true things and then one thing at the
2:24:13
Speaker 1: end that they were actually pushing. But if you knew
2:24:16
Speaker 1: that all these other things were true, you might assume
2:24:17
Speaker 1: that that final thing is true as well. And other
2:24:20
Speaker 1: countries around the world where they had these front newspapers
2:24:22
Speaker 1: They would also publish the same kind of story. Did
2:24:25
Speaker 1: you know? And then AIDS was created in this government laboratory.
2:24:28
Speaker 1: And then those newspapers would cite the Indian newspaper, The Patriot,
2:24:31
Speaker 1: as evidence that other independent newspapers had also come to
2:24:34
Speaker 1: this conclusion. And if many independent sources are coming to this,
2:24:36
Speaker 1: surely it means that it's got some credibility to it.
2:24:39
Speaker 1: Not knowing that the actual connection, the KGB is just
2:24:41
Speaker 1: sponsoring all this. So it's censorship through noise. The idea
2:24:45
Speaker 1: that there are certain things... We don't want people to know,
2:24:48
Speaker 1: or maybe we do not want people to know, but
2:24:50
Speaker 1: not understand or something. And so we're going to flood
2:24:52
Speaker 1: the zone with all this, you know, crap, basically. So
2:24:56
Speaker 1: maybe nobody's going to know what to believe. Maybe it
2:24:58
Speaker 1: is the case that the CIA created AIDS in Fort
2:25:01
Speaker 1: Dedrick or whatever it is. So that's one tactic that
2:25:03
Speaker 1: I talk about at.
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 attach it to something that's completely kooky. And
2:25:12
Speaker 2: if you do that enough times, you can muddy the
2:25:14
Speaker 2: waters on basically every subject that there is.
2:25:17
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it can go both ways in the sense
2:25:19
Speaker 1: that fake stories can delegitimize true stories, but true stories
2:25:23
Speaker 1: legitimize fake stories.
2:25:24
Speaker 2: Right. Both ways. And then you have the social media
2:25:27
Speaker 2: impact of bots, which is just... really unstudied. We don't
2:25:31
Speaker 2: really know the numbers. We've talked about this before, but
2:25:34
Speaker 2: there was a former FBI analyst before the purchase of
2:25:37
Speaker 2: Twitter that he was looking at and he thinks it's
2:25:40
Speaker 2: 80% bots. It's 80% of the discourse. 80% of the
2:25:44
Speaker 2: traffic is not human or people that are being paid
2:25:47
Speaker 2: to do it.
2:25:48
Speaker 1: Is it like some government entity wanting to do this
2:25:50
Speaker 1: to sow confusion?
2:25:51
Speaker 2: 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. You can go online.
2:26:02
Speaker 2: There's companies that will fund a social campaign for you.
2:26:07
Speaker 2: So imagine if you wanted to go online and attack
2:26:13
Speaker 2: people over a certain issue. Say if you're trying to
2:26:16
Speaker 2: get a bill passed and you want to attack people
2:26:17
Speaker 2: over a certain issue. You can fund a campaign using
2:26:22
Speaker 2: bots to promote your position. And it could give the
2:26:26
Speaker 2: illusion that... of some sort of 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. Yeah, I know.
2:26:51
Speaker 1: The Russian government had, I think it was called like
2:26:52
Speaker 1: the Internet Research Agency or something like that.
2:26:55
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:26:56
Speaker 1: And there's a book called Active Measures by Thomas Ridd.
2:26:59
Speaker 1: And he kind of chronicles what they were doing. Basically,
2:27:03
Speaker 1: young people would be hired to pose as whoever anyone
2:27:07
Speaker 1: wanted to be posed as. I guess the Russian government
2:27:09
Speaker 1: to spread certain amounts of disinformation to certain communities. So
2:27:12
Speaker 1: they would just create fake profiles. And your whole job
2:27:15
Speaker 1: at work would be to cycle through these different profiles
2:27:17
Speaker 1: and comment on people's posts and post your own. And
2:27:20
Speaker 1: then Boost the post of your fellow disinformation actors in
2:27:23
Speaker 1: this IRA so that their posts would be seen by
2:27:25
Speaker 1: more people. There's a whole organization or a whole, you know,
2:27:34
Speaker 1: 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 DiResta. Renee DiResta. That's right. Yeah, she
2:27:40
Speaker 2: was saying how, like, she had to study all these
2:27:43
Speaker 2: memes and so many of them were really funny. And, like,
2:27:45
Speaker 2: these people that were in charge of, what they wanted
2:27:50
Speaker 2: to do was make sure the people online in America
2:27:52
Speaker 2: were arguing about everything. And the more you could get
2:27:56
Speaker 2: people at each other's throats, the more you could destroy
2:28:00
Speaker 2: their democracy. This is part of the idea of it.
2:28:03
Speaker 2: Just to have another element that people have to deal with.
2:28:07
Speaker 2: And that they were organizing Texas separatist meetings directly across
2:28:12
Speaker 2: the street from these Muslim meetings. They were doing it
2:28:15
Speaker 2: on purpose. They were trying to get people to argue
2:28:17
Speaker 2: with each other, trying to get people to be in
2:28:19
Speaker 2: 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 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 were
2:28:44
Speaker 1: probably more focused on your community because it's not like
2:28:46
Speaker 1: you're got constant access to what's going on in Myanmar
2:28:49
Speaker 1: at the second or whatever it is. So the fact
2:28:51
Speaker 1: that you're constantly able to see the worst thing happening
2:28:54
Speaker 1: in the world, um, 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
2:29:17
Speaker 2: it has to account for some of the anxiety that
2:29:20
Speaker 2: kids face today because you see heightened levels of anxiety
2:29:24
Speaker 2: and Heightened levels of fear about climate or anything that
2:29:27
Speaker 2: they tell you that's a thing that you really need
2:29:29
Speaker 2: to freak out about. It's like you're being inundated and
2:29:33
Speaker 2: you don't have a chance to just enjoy the moment
2:29:36
Speaker 2: that you're in because everything is like this total existential
2:29:39
Speaker 2: crisis that's going to destroy humanity. If you don't act now, oh, God.
2:29:43
Speaker 2: There's a genocide going on. It's like no matter what
2:29:45
Speaker 2: it is, it's like you're being bombarded by everything. The
2:29:49
Speaker 2: economy is a crash. No kings. Ah, ICE is coming. Jesus.
2:29:54
Speaker 2: Gun control. Ah.
2:29:56
Speaker 1: Do you have a lot of nostalgia for the pre-internet days?
2:29:58
Speaker 1: Because I don't remember it that well.
2:30:00
Speaker 2: Nah, fuck those times. That was stupid. I think with
2:30:06
Speaker 2: the internet with all its flaws is way better. It's
2:30:08
Speaker 2: way better. It's way better than the government being in
2:30:12
Speaker 2: control of the narrative. And now we know intelligence agencies
2:30:16
Speaker 2: absolutely in control of what's distributed in mainstream news. Like
2:30:20
Speaker 2: the idea that the mainstream news back then was independent
2:30:22
Speaker 2: 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
2:30:42
Speaker 2: present and and to just enjoy your life, it's harder.
2:30:46
Speaker 2: It's much harder because you are constantly being informed and
2:30:50
Speaker 2: there's the addiction aspect of it. The addiction to being informed,
2:30:54
Speaker 2: the addiction to seeing what people are saying and seeing the, oh,
2:30:59
Speaker 2: what did this guy do? He stole all this money.
2:31:01
Speaker 2: We were in the green room last night, we were
2:31:03
Speaker 2: reading a story about this congressperson who stole money and
2:31:08
Speaker 2: how they did it and then they bought a giant
2:31:10
Speaker 2: diamond ring. So they wear this giant three carat diamond
2:31:14
Speaker 2: ring on a hundred thousand dollar a year salary. Like,
2:31:16
Speaker 2: what are you doing? You fucking crazy person. But it's
2:31:20
Speaker 2: like that, that's what you're, that's where you're taking in
2:31:25
Speaker 2: all day instead of your friends, instead of your, your
2:31:28
Speaker 2: life and just having an experience in your neighborhood. No,
2:31:32
Speaker 2: you're just, you're constantly looking at all the problems that
2:31:36
Speaker 2: are happening all over the world all the time.
2:31:39
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:31:39
Speaker 2: And you don't get a break. But it's better than
2:31:42
Speaker 2: being ignorant. It's just that you have to find a
2:31:46
Speaker 2: way to weather whatever that psychological storm is and seek shelter.
2:31:51
Speaker 2: And don't always just stay out there in it and
2:31:53
Speaker 2: just get bombarded by psychological hail. That's kind of what
2:31:58
Speaker 2: it is. You got to have a strong roof and
2:32:00
Speaker 2: stay inside sometimes.
2:32:01
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is a weird transition, but you said psychological hail.
2:32:07
Speaker 1: It made me think of this project. During World War II,
2:32:11
Speaker 1: the OSS did called a bat bomb. Are you familiar
2:32:14
Speaker 1: with that?
2:32:15
Speaker 2: No.
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 II, 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 going to fall where they fall.
2:32:33
Speaker 1: And if the winds go in the wrong way, they're
2:32:35
Speaker 1: not even going to hit the target that we want
2:32:36
Speaker 1: them to. So this A guy named Little Adams, he
2:32:39
Speaker 1: was working with the OSS. He had the idea. He
2:32:42
Speaker 1: had just gone to Carlsbad Caverns. What if we get
2:32:45
Speaker 1: bats and we attach napalm to them and then we
2:32:48
Speaker 1: release these over Japanese cities? The bats are going to
2:32:51
Speaker 1: roost into the buildings in these cities and then we
2:32:54
Speaker 1: can have the napalm time delayed so that it'll explode
2:32:57
Speaker 1: after a certain amount of time that we release them
2:32:59
Speaker 1: and it'll set fires to all these buildings. So we
2:33:02
Speaker 1: have like targeted incendiaries instead of just random bombs falling.
2:33:05
Speaker 1: So it sounds like kind of a crazy idea. But
2:33:07
Speaker 1: he happened to be friends with Eleanor Roosevelt because he
2:33:10
Speaker 1: had flown planes before and he had given her a
2:33:12
Speaker 1: ride in his plane and they kind of knew each other.
2:33:14
Speaker 1: So he sent this kind of report on the bat
2:33:17
Speaker 1: bomb to Eleanor Roosevelt. She gave it to her husband,
2:33:20
Speaker 1: President Roosevelt, who gave it to William Donovan, the head
2:33:22
Speaker 1: of the OSS. And with a note attached to the
2:33:25
Speaker 1: thing that he gave to Donovan, it said, this man
2:33:28
Speaker 1: is not a nut. You know, take this seriously. So Donovan,
2:33:31
Speaker 1: of course, he gives this to the research and development branch,
2:33:34
Speaker 1: Stanley Lovell, that I write about in my first book.
2:33:37
Speaker 1: And it becomes this bat bomb project that now Lovell
2:33:39
Speaker 1: feels obligated to do because the president's saying we need
2:33:42
Speaker 1: to research this. So they end up going to Carlsbad
2:33:44
Speaker 1: Caverns and to some caverns here in Texas. And they
2:33:47
Speaker 1: scoop up a bunch of bats and they do a
2:33:50
Speaker 1: few tests with them. They actually get a guy named
2:33:52
Speaker 1: Louis Pfizer who invented napalm to create tiny little incendiaries
2:33:56
Speaker 1: that you could strap to bats. This is a little
2:34:00
Speaker 1: bit of a digression, but Pfizer had been at Harvard.
2:34:02
Speaker 1: He was a chemist there. And when he was inventing napalm,
2:34:06
Speaker 1: It was like a jellied gasoline. He would do the
2:34:08
Speaker 1: tests on the soccer field at Harvard, just like in
2:34:11
Speaker 1: 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 mad, not because he was detonating these bombs,
2:34:21
Speaker 1: but because he was hogging the soccer fields, and the
2:34:23
Speaker 1: drill sergeant needed it for practice. And so there was
2:34:25
Speaker 1: like these disputes back and forth.
2:34:27
Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
2:34:28
Speaker 1: So he was hired by the OSS to create these
2:34:30
Speaker 1: tiny little incendiaries to strap to these bats. So the
2:34:33
Speaker 1: OSS did a few.
2:34:36
Speaker 1: Experiments with this before the incendiaries were strapped they they
2:34:39
Speaker 1: put like fake incendiaries on them They the idea was
2:34:42
Speaker 1: to cool down these bats We're gonna fly them in
2:34:44
Speaker 1: a plane over the desert like out in Utah or
2:34:46
Speaker 1: somewhere and we're gonna drop these bats and see if
2:34:48
Speaker 1: they actually kind of disperse It turns out that they
2:34:52
Speaker 1: were using Mexican free-tailed bats, which I don't think actually hibernate,
2:34:56
Speaker 1: but they they travel south for the winter and so
2:35:00
Speaker 1: They cooled down these bats in this like artificial refrigerator,
2:35:03
Speaker 1: but apparently they had cooled them down too much. So
2:35:05
Speaker 1: when they dropped them from the plane, they just like
2:35:07
Speaker 1: fell straight down to the ground and never woke up.
2:35:09
Speaker 1: And so they just flattered across the desert. So that
2:35:12
Speaker 1: was one of the tests. Another of the tests, they
2:35:15
Speaker 1: wanted to do a live experiment where they had an
2:35:17
Speaker 1: actual bat and with an actual napalm bomb attached to
2:35:20
Speaker 1: it to see if it could like fly off or
2:35:22
Speaker 1: to see if it would actually like carry this weight.
2:35:24
Speaker 1: But they had it in like somewhat of a controlled environment.
2:35:28
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 II. And, you know, they're already, the Manhattan Project
2:35:53
Speaker 1: was kind of successful at that point. So there was
2:35:54
Speaker 1: no need for the bat bomb. But if people are
2:35:56
Speaker 1: interested in that kind of story and how crazy that
2:35:58
Speaker 1: can get, that's in these books too.
2:36:00
Speaker 2: Cool. Do you know about the proposal for the gay bomb?
2:36:04
Speaker 1: That sounds familiar, about releasing some kind of chemical that
2:36:08
Speaker 1: distracts people. They'll be so infatuated with each other, these soldiers,
2:36:12
Speaker 1: that we can go, yeah.
2:36:13
Speaker 2: Not just that, but then somehow or another it would
2:36:15
Speaker 2: demoralize them and make them easier to conquer.
2:36:18
Speaker 1: Huh.
2:36:19
Speaker 2: Which didn't make any sense, especially historically when you consider
2:36:22
Speaker 2: the Spartans. You know, they were all gay. They were
2:36:24
Speaker 2: the craziest force ever. Like, 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 MKUltra. Not the gay bomb, but the idea that
2:36:31
Speaker 1: we could use chemicals to defeat an enemy army. So
2:36:36
Speaker 1: Sidney Gottlieb, before he was really running MKUltra experiments, he
2:36:41
Speaker 1: had attended a few conferences where some people would talk,
2:36:43
Speaker 1: this guy named Luther Green, who was part of the army.
2:36:46
Speaker 1: And Luther Green was in charge of, like, developing and
2:36:48
Speaker 1: experimenting with nerve agents that could incapacitate. These are like
2:36:52
Speaker 1: some of the most potent agents that have ever been created.
2:36:54
Speaker 1: A fraction of an ounce applied to your skin can
2:36:56
Speaker 1: be lethal. So he wanted to find a substance, Green did,
2:37:00
Speaker 1: that could mimic the effects of a nerve agent, like
2:37:03
Speaker 1: incapacitate someone without actually killing them. His idea was that
2:37:07
Speaker 1: if we could get this substance and we can drop
2:37:09
Speaker 1: it over enemy territory, it could incapacitate these soldiers just
2:37:12
Speaker 1: through chemical warfare, but we wouldn't actually have to kill them.
2:37:15
Speaker 1: They would be incapacitated for a certain amount of time
2:37:18
Speaker 1: And then we could send the Marines in and they
2:37:19
Speaker 1: could gather up all these people and we can conquer
2:37:22
Speaker 1: this territory. We can defeat this enemy army without actually
2:37:25
Speaker 1: having to kill anyone or for any of our people
2:37:28
Speaker 1: to be killed. So Stanley Lovell was really... interested in
2:37:30
Speaker 1: this concept. War without death was what they were talking about.
2:37:34
Speaker 1: War without death, we should use chemical weapons that just
2:37:36
Speaker 1: incapacitate people. So one of the things that got, I
2:37:40
Speaker 1: should say, Sidney Gottlieb interested in investigating LSD was the
2:37:44
Speaker 1: fact that maybe this could be an incapacitant that we
2:37:47
Speaker 1: could use to basically eliminate an enemy army for the
2:37:50
Speaker 1: time being, and then we could go and conquer them
2:37:52
Speaker 1: without actually having to kill them ourselves. It was trying
2:37:55
Speaker 1: to use it almost as a more ethical form of
2:37:58
Speaker 1: warfare where instead of killing someone, you just incapacitate them.
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 when it happens, let's do
2:38:20
Speaker 2: this again. I'd love to. I feel like we could
2:38:21
Speaker 2: talk about this stuff for hours and hours and hours.
2:38:23
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff to go into, too.
2:38:25
Speaker 2: Is there an audio book of this?
2:38:27
Speaker 1: There is an audio book, yes.
2:38:28
Speaker 2: Did you read it?
2:38:29
Speaker 1: I didn't read it. Damn it. They got a professional
2:38:31
Speaker 1: for that.
2:38:32
Speaker 2: Oh, man, you would kill it. You have a great voice.
2:38:34
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, but the nice thing is
2:38:37
Speaker 1: it's the same narrator who did both my first and
2:38:39
Speaker 1: second book, so there's some kind of continuity between that.
2:38:41
Speaker 2: Oh, okay. So you're happy with it. Yeah, yeah.
2:38:43
Speaker 1: It turned out really– he did a really good job.
2:38:45
Speaker 2: And the other book is The Dirty Tricks Department, Stanley Lovell,
2:38:51
Speaker 2: the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare.
2:38:55
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Thank you.
2:38:58
Speaker 1: It was awesome.
2:38:58
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it. It was really fun. Bye, everybody. Bye.