1
00:00:04,680 --> 00:00:10,680
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. Um, I've I've introduced the podcast yet again. Um,

2
00:00:10,680 --> 00:00:13,680
Speaker 1: not one of my best introductions, not one of my worst.

3
00:00:14,280 --> 00:00:17,600
Speaker 1: Two weeks ago we had another just shouting Hitler. So

4
00:00:17,880 --> 00:00:20,360
Speaker 1: you know, if you're if you're a regular listener, this

5
00:00:20,440 --> 00:00:23,560
Speaker 1: is about as good as it gets. Um. This is,

6
00:00:23,600 --> 00:00:26,120
Speaker 1: of course Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very

7
00:00:26,280 --> 00:00:30,520
Speaker 1: worst people in all of history. Uh. And to help

8
00:00:30,560 --> 00:00:33,120
Speaker 1: me out this week and next week we have we

9
00:00:33,200 --> 00:00:35,640
Speaker 1: have a four party for you folks. First off, I

10
00:00:35,640 --> 00:00:39,440
Speaker 1: want to welcome Jason Pargeon to the show. Jason, how's

11
00:00:39,440 --> 00:00:43,240
Speaker 1: it going now that you are far far more famous

12
00:00:43,240 --> 00:00:46,040
Speaker 1: than you were in your cracked days. I honestly don't

13
00:00:46,120 --> 00:00:48,199
Speaker 1: have a sense of how many people in your audience

14
00:00:48,320 --> 00:00:50,560
Speaker 1: know who I am and they're like, oh my gosh,

15
00:00:50,600 --> 00:00:52,760
Speaker 1: that's the correct guy who used to write as David Wong,

16
00:00:52,880 --> 00:00:55,760
Speaker 1: who writes the John dyes Via novels versus how many

17
00:00:55,800 --> 00:00:58,800
Speaker 1: people just have no idea, just no idea, just could

18
00:00:58,800 --> 00:01:02,160
Speaker 1: not possibly care and less. Yeah, it's hard for me

19
00:01:02,200 --> 00:01:04,399
Speaker 1: to say. I mean whenever we do live events, and

20
00:01:04,440 --> 00:01:06,800
Speaker 1: we've done like nine or ten this year, between like

21
00:01:06,880 --> 00:01:10,000
Speaker 1: book events and stuff, I would say like it my

22
00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:12,640
Speaker 1: my back of my like very rough estimate would be

23
00:01:12,640 --> 00:01:16,880
Speaker 1: like a third of the crowd um has been following

24
00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:20,119
Speaker 1: my stuff since Cracked days, So I would guess like

25
00:01:20,280 --> 00:01:23,960
Speaker 1: somewhere in the thirty range, which is considering the size

26
00:01:23,959 --> 00:01:27,480
Speaker 1: of the audience, pretty good. Jason, you are the author

27
00:01:27,600 --> 00:01:29,800
Speaker 1: of a whole bunch of books. We were just talking

28
00:01:29,800 --> 00:01:31,880
Speaker 1: about this before the show. But I'm startled as I

29
00:01:31,920 --> 00:01:34,360
Speaker 1: try to work on my second novel, I'm startled at

30
00:01:34,360 --> 00:01:36,959
Speaker 1: the number of novels that you've written while doing all

31
00:01:36,959 --> 00:01:40,120
Speaker 1: of the other stuff that you do. Yeah, the one

32
00:01:40,160 --> 00:01:42,640
Speaker 1: that is coming out, the one that I am here promoting,

33
00:01:42,840 --> 00:01:47,840
Speaker 1: is the sixth uh called If this book exists, you're

34
00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:51,800
Speaker 1: in the wrong universe. It is part of the John

35
00:01:51,880 --> 00:01:55,120
Speaker 1: Dies at the Enfranchise. There are are now four books

36
00:01:55,120 --> 00:01:56,880
Speaker 1: in that series. For those of you who have read

37
00:01:56,920 --> 00:01:58,880
Speaker 1: some of them or have just seen the movie that's

38
00:01:58,920 --> 00:02:02,520
Speaker 1: out there on streaming. Came out a decade ago. But

39
00:02:02,800 --> 00:02:04,680
Speaker 1: you can just start with this one if you want.

40
00:02:04,880 --> 00:02:07,240
Speaker 1: It's it's not it's not a Game of Throne situation

41
00:02:07,240 --> 00:02:10,000
Speaker 1: where you have to have read all of the books there.

42
00:02:10,040 --> 00:02:13,680
Speaker 1: They're episodic. You can just now why you would want

43
00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:16,200
Speaker 1: to start with the new and most expensive one. I

44
00:02:16,280 --> 00:02:18,320
Speaker 1: don't know, considering all the other ones are you can

45
00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:21,639
Speaker 1: probably get into used bookstore for like fifty cents. But

46
00:02:21,960 --> 00:02:25,320
Speaker 1: from my point of view, yes, it's the freshest one

47
00:02:25,480 --> 00:02:29,200
Speaker 1: and therefore the best. I read it earlier this year,

48
00:02:29,320 --> 00:02:31,960
Speaker 1: and it's wonderful. I've been reading the John Dyes at

49
00:02:31,960 --> 00:02:35,519
Speaker 1: the End books for like, at this point, roughly two

50
00:02:35,560 --> 00:02:39,720
Speaker 1: thirds of my life. Um, I started reading. I mean, obviously, Jason,

51
00:02:39,760 --> 00:02:42,640
Speaker 1: you are my boss back at Cracked for years and

52
00:02:42,720 --> 00:02:44,720
Speaker 1: years and years and years. I think I worked there

53
00:02:44,760 --> 00:02:48,680
Speaker 1: for close to a decade and you worked there for longer. Um.

54
00:02:48,919 --> 00:02:53,680
Speaker 1: And then but but you started publishing what became the

55
00:02:53,720 --> 00:02:56,960
Speaker 1: first book in that series. Um, it was like an

56
00:02:56,960 --> 00:02:59,320
Speaker 1: every Halloween on your old website. This isn't the pre

57
00:02:59,440 --> 00:03:02,600
Speaker 1: Cracked as when you had your own website. Um, you

58
00:03:02,639 --> 00:03:05,320
Speaker 1: would publish I don't know what was it, probably words

59
00:03:05,360 --> 00:03:09,120
Speaker 1: something like that every year around Halloween. Yeah, it was

60
00:03:09,160 --> 00:03:11,480
Speaker 1: just part of my blog. It was like my annual

61
00:03:11,720 --> 00:03:15,359
Speaker 1: Halloween update was just continuing story I was writing. Started

62
00:03:15,400 --> 00:03:18,800
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, I think, yeah, yeah, which

63
00:03:18,880 --> 00:03:23,000
Speaker 1: I would have been like twelve or thirteen. I think

64
00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:26,480
Speaker 1: when I started reading that series and I loved it.

65
00:03:26,480 --> 00:03:30,919
Speaker 1: Then I found it like very very engaging, and kind

66
00:03:30,919 --> 00:03:33,800
Speaker 1: of stayed obsessed with it ever since. UM. And one

67
00:03:33,800 --> 00:03:35,440
Speaker 1: of the things it's always been interesting to me about it,

68
00:03:35,480 --> 00:03:38,880
Speaker 1: you're that series in particular. I think one of the

69
00:03:38,920 --> 00:03:41,640
Speaker 1: things you could call it is like psychedelic horror, because

70
00:03:41,640 --> 00:03:44,920
Speaker 1: it's it's not just like a horror series, but kind

71
00:03:44,920 --> 00:03:48,360
Speaker 1: of one of the inciting incidents is the characters take

72
00:03:48,600 --> 00:03:52,680
Speaker 1: a supernatural hallucinogen. Essentially, that is kind of the inciting

73
00:03:52,720 --> 00:03:55,840
Speaker 1: incident of the series, and it's one of the only

74
00:03:55,960 --> 00:03:58,120
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've always found interesting about

75
00:03:58,160 --> 00:04:02,240
Speaker 1: your books is that I started reading them before I

76
00:04:02,280 --> 00:04:05,480
Speaker 1: ever started messing around with psychedelics, and I've continued to

77
00:04:05,600 --> 00:04:09,400
Speaker 1: enjoy them since UM, which is pretty rare in terms

78
00:04:09,400 --> 00:04:12,640
Speaker 1: of like encountering people writing about that stuff before you

79
00:04:12,680 --> 00:04:15,040
Speaker 1: know about it personally, and then after you know about it.

80
00:04:15,240 --> 00:04:17,440
Speaker 1: And I've always been interested in that in part because

81
00:04:17,800 --> 00:04:20,520
Speaker 1: you don't do psychedelics. You haven't like actually like taken

82
00:04:20,560 --> 00:04:23,640
Speaker 1: acid or anything like that. No, And in fact, I've

83
00:04:23,680 --> 00:04:28,680
Speaker 1: never drank alcohol. I have a very addictive personality. I

84
00:04:28,680 --> 00:04:31,120
Speaker 1: get addicted to things very easily, and I have been

85
00:04:31,160 --> 00:04:34,960
Speaker 1: afraid of any kind of drugs or cigarettes anything for

86
00:04:35,440 --> 00:04:39,400
Speaker 1: ever since I was a youth. Uh but no, yeah,

87
00:04:39,480 --> 00:04:42,400
Speaker 1: but it's it is very much like I've done a

88
00:04:42,440 --> 00:04:46,120
Speaker 1: lot of research into them. But it's not to be clear,

89
00:04:46,160 --> 00:04:48,960
Speaker 1: it's not scaremongering about. It's not people no no, no, no,

90
00:04:48,960 --> 00:04:51,320
Speaker 1: no no no, found themselves turning into monsters, because there

91
00:04:51,400 --> 00:04:53,320
Speaker 1: was a lot of fiction written like that in the

92
00:04:53,400 --> 00:04:56,880
Speaker 1: day that people they took LST and then they became

93
00:04:56,920 --> 00:04:59,240
Speaker 1: possessed by a devil or whatever. It's more of a

94
00:04:59,279 --> 00:05:03,000
Speaker 1: metaphorical thing, but they take a yeah, a some kind

95
00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:06,559
Speaker 1: of a mysterious substance that lets them kind of see

96
00:05:06,640 --> 00:05:09,840
Speaker 1: beyond reality and the way that if you were playing

97
00:05:09,839 --> 00:05:12,920
Speaker 1: a video game and you suddenly glitched through the world.

98
00:05:13,320 --> 00:05:16,280
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that, only with through time and

99
00:05:16,279 --> 00:05:19,039
Speaker 1: space and um. But for those of you who don't

100
00:05:19,040 --> 00:05:22,039
Speaker 1: read the film is because there's kind of an interesting story.

101
00:05:22,080 --> 00:05:24,719
Speaker 1: I won't let drag on. But they I sold the

102
00:05:24,720 --> 00:05:27,800
Speaker 1: film rights to it back when it was nothing. It

103
00:05:27,920 --> 00:05:30,719
Speaker 1: was I wrote it on the Internet and then had

104
00:05:30,760 --> 00:05:34,039
Speaker 1: like a print on demand publisher selling physical copies of it,

105
00:05:34,120 --> 00:05:36,480
Speaker 1: and we sold just a couple of thousand of them

106
00:05:36,560 --> 00:05:42,480
Speaker 1: when Don Cosca Elliott, cold horror writer director, a legendary

107
00:05:42,560 --> 00:05:46,000
Speaker 1: direct Yeah, I made the Phantasm series um of Hotep

108
00:05:46,960 --> 00:05:48,600
Speaker 1: got hold of the rights and not only bought the

109
00:05:48,680 --> 00:05:50,480
Speaker 1: rights but made the movie, which is the rare part.

110
00:05:50,560 --> 00:05:53,200
Speaker 1: Lots of people saw film rights to actually have it

111
00:05:53,279 --> 00:05:56,000
Speaker 1: get made to and then it debuted a Sundance in

112
00:05:56,800 --> 00:05:59,440
Speaker 1: and you know, I flew out there and got to

113
00:05:59,440 --> 00:06:00,880
Speaker 1: be part of a You and a with the cast

114
00:06:00,920 --> 00:06:03,400
Speaker 1: and all that. So it's it's kind of a crazy

115
00:06:03,680 --> 00:06:05,960
Speaker 1: success story because at the time this happened, in the

116
00:06:05,960 --> 00:06:08,680
Speaker 1: early two thousands, there were there were not a lot

117
00:06:08,680 --> 00:06:11,360
Speaker 1: of people writing stuff on the Internet and then selling

118
00:06:11,360 --> 00:06:16,160
Speaker 1: it as books or selling it. Still doesn't happen terribly often.

119
00:06:17,160 --> 00:06:19,799
Speaker 1: People you're famous examples of like oh this guy's Twitter

120
00:06:19,839 --> 00:06:22,200
Speaker 1: account got turned into a TV series or whatever, like

121
00:06:22,279 --> 00:06:26,160
Speaker 1: you hear you do. But I mean, I often describe

122
00:06:26,200 --> 00:06:29,880
Speaker 1: you to people as the first fifty shades of gray. Um.

123
00:06:31,520 --> 00:06:35,039
Speaker 1: But I bring up the fact that the so much

124
00:06:35,080 --> 00:06:37,680
Speaker 1: of like the inciting incidence of your series is kind

125
00:06:37,720 --> 00:06:42,000
Speaker 1: of like based around hallucinogens and like shadow people and

126
00:06:42,040 --> 00:06:45,760
Speaker 1: all this kind of um sort of dark occult stuff,

127
00:06:45,960 --> 00:06:49,600
Speaker 1: because that ties in directly to what we're talking about today.

128
00:06:50,040 --> 00:06:52,760
Speaker 1: The subject of our episodes for the next two weeks

129
00:06:52,839 --> 00:06:56,040
Speaker 1: is the mk Ultra program that the CIA carried out

130
00:06:56,320 --> 00:07:00,440
Speaker 1: through most of the fifties in early nineteen sixties. Now,

131
00:07:01,880 --> 00:07:04,680
Speaker 1: most people I think are probably like Jason, Actually, how

132
00:07:04,680 --> 00:07:06,960
Speaker 1: would you, based on kind of your level of knowledge,

133
00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:09,520
Speaker 1: casual knowledge, how would you describe what the mk Ultra

134
00:07:09,640 --> 00:07:14,800
Speaker 1: program was. Here's the thing. It is impossible for me

135
00:07:15,360 --> 00:07:18,360
Speaker 1: to separate what I actually know as fact and what

136
00:07:18,480 --> 00:07:23,360
Speaker 1: I've merely heard in conspiracy theory circles, because the one

137
00:07:23,400 --> 00:07:26,920
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory that I do believe in is that government

138
00:07:26,960 --> 00:07:31,679
Speaker 1: agencies and the true bad actors in society love conspiracy theories,

139
00:07:32,320 --> 00:07:35,800
Speaker 1: absolutely love that this stuff gets picked up by cranks

140
00:07:35,880 --> 00:07:38,240
Speaker 1: and the same people who talk about Bigfoot, we'll talk

141
00:07:38,240 --> 00:07:40,560
Speaker 1: about mk Ultra and the same breath and it's like, well,

142
00:07:40,560 --> 00:07:42,920
Speaker 1: you know, Bigfoot was actually an mk Ultra program and

143
00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:46,400
Speaker 1: turned a man into a giant monkey. They love that,

144
00:07:46,440 --> 00:07:50,120
Speaker 1: They love that it smears all of these things as

145
00:07:50,840 --> 00:07:55,400
Speaker 1: this the stuff of cranks and crackpots, when the reality

146
00:07:55,600 --> 00:08:00,800
Speaker 1: needs no embellishment. No, it does, because what the reality

147
00:08:00,800 --> 00:08:04,240
Speaker 1: of the mk Ultra program is that the federal government

148
00:08:04,320 --> 00:08:10,760
Speaker 1: devoted countless resources and essentially like a license to kill

149
00:08:10,880 --> 00:08:13,120
Speaker 1: to a bunch of scientists so that they could attempt

150
00:08:13,200 --> 00:08:16,800
Speaker 1: to eradicate the concept of human free will using LSD

151
00:08:17,520 --> 00:08:21,200
Speaker 1: like that's that's what they tried to do. UM. And

152
00:08:21,280 --> 00:08:25,960
Speaker 1: it included uh an outrageous number of crimes. And it

153
00:08:26,080 --> 00:08:28,920
Speaker 1: is it is a conspiracy. It's just not a conspiracy

154
00:08:29,000 --> 00:08:31,600
Speaker 1: theory because it's pretty well documented. A lot of the

155
00:08:31,640 --> 00:08:33,920
Speaker 1: guys who are involved with this have talked at this point,

156
00:08:34,360 --> 00:08:37,400
Speaker 1: so we know what's happened. UM, So we're gonna be

157
00:08:37,400 --> 00:08:39,960
Speaker 1: talking about that for quite a while here. I do

158
00:08:40,040 --> 00:08:42,640
Speaker 1: want to start by talking a little bit about kind

159
00:08:42,640 --> 00:08:45,680
Speaker 1: of the human history of use of psychedelics and even

160
00:08:45,800 --> 00:08:48,240
Speaker 1: kind of the history of the use of psychedelics in

161
00:08:48,240 --> 00:08:51,599
Speaker 1: a military context by states, um, because all of this

162
00:08:51,640 --> 00:08:55,000
Speaker 1: stuff actually goes back further than you'd guess. When we're

163
00:08:55,000 --> 00:08:59,400
Speaker 1: talking about like actual hallucinogenic drugs. The oldest, like the

164
00:08:59,440 --> 00:09:02,800
Speaker 1: first thing human beings were taking to consciously make themselves

165
00:09:02,800 --> 00:09:06,120
Speaker 1: hallucinate was probably We're never gonna get an exact answer

166
00:09:06,120 --> 00:09:10,040
Speaker 1: on this, but probably either peyote UM and the active

167
00:09:10,200 --> 00:09:14,880
Speaker 1: ingredient in peyote is a psychedelic proto alkaloid called mescalin um,

168
00:09:14,920 --> 00:09:17,440
Speaker 1: which has been in use at least like fifty seven

169
00:09:17,520 --> 00:09:21,319
Speaker 1: hundred years. Uh. And then you know, we have around

170
00:09:21,520 --> 00:09:24,679
Speaker 1: the same amount of time people have been using hallucinogenic

171
00:09:24,760 --> 00:09:28,559
Speaker 1: mushrooms uh sila cyben right. That also goes back by

172
00:09:28,600 --> 00:09:32,680
Speaker 1: some accounts maybe older something like seven thousand years. Obviously,

173
00:09:33,160 --> 00:09:35,560
Speaker 1: this is based on like people will draw cave paintings

174
00:09:35,559 --> 00:09:37,920
Speaker 1: of like mushrooms and stuff that they that they took,

175
00:09:37,960 --> 00:09:39,960
Speaker 1: and you can find bits of it and like honey

176
00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:43,120
Speaker 1: and whatnot, things that people like buried with their loved ones.

177
00:09:43,320 --> 00:09:46,520
Speaker 1: It's possible people were taking It's possible that like before

178
00:09:46,559 --> 00:09:50,720
Speaker 1: we were human beings are hammedied predecessors were taking you know,

179
00:09:51,320 --> 00:09:54,240
Speaker 1: payote and psilocybin, right, because we know that there are

180
00:09:54,280 --> 00:09:58,280
Speaker 1: certain hallucinogens that non human animals and that other apes take.

181
00:09:58,400 --> 00:10:01,400
Speaker 1: So this is probably something we've been doing like longer

182
00:10:01,440 --> 00:10:04,679
Speaker 1: than we've been human beings. And also this is one

183
00:10:04,679 --> 00:10:07,240
Speaker 1: of those things where when you look at the entire

184
00:10:07,320 --> 00:10:09,960
Speaker 1: culture and our mythology and our religion, whenever you have

185
00:10:10,160 --> 00:10:13,760
Speaker 1: writings of someone who sat down in a field and

186
00:10:13,760 --> 00:10:16,880
Speaker 1: then had a vision of the heavens opening up. How

187
00:10:16,880 --> 00:10:21,000
Speaker 1: many of those were actually influenced by hallucinogens or whatever,

188
00:10:21,120 --> 00:10:26,240
Speaker 1: we won't know, but there's almost no question that they

189
00:10:26,400 --> 00:10:31,640
Speaker 1: regarded these substances as uh like a sacred means of

190
00:10:31,679 --> 00:10:35,000
Speaker 1: opening up reality to get a direct line to the

191
00:10:35,040 --> 00:10:38,480
Speaker 1: gods or whatever. It's just that in the writings they

192
00:10:38,559 --> 00:10:41,000
Speaker 1: left behind they may not mention the part where they

193
00:10:41,080 --> 00:10:43,840
Speaker 1: choot on a certain mushroom to get that effect. Yeah,

194
00:10:43,840 --> 00:10:45,920
Speaker 1: and it's I mean there's other stuff too, like air

195
00:10:45,960 --> 00:10:49,200
Speaker 1: got that people. We know the ancient Greeks were very

196
00:10:49,320 --> 00:10:52,400
Speaker 1: likely um mixing in a couple of different ways, which

197
00:10:52,440 --> 00:10:54,559
Speaker 1: is kind of one of the precursors to L s D.

198
00:10:55,280 --> 00:10:59,760
Speaker 1: There are theories that the human capacity for religious belief

199
00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:02,959
Speaker 1: aim because are and this is you know, would be

200
00:11:03,040 --> 00:11:06,480
Speaker 1: twenty thirty thousand years ago ancestors took a shipload of

201
00:11:06,520 --> 00:11:09,600
Speaker 1: sila cybin um. There have been studies like the Good

202
00:11:09,640 --> 00:11:12,760
Speaker 1: Friday study that at least provide pretty good evidence that

203
00:11:13,200 --> 00:11:16,559
Speaker 1: the kind of religious experiences people have on these drugs

204
00:11:16,960 --> 00:11:20,600
Speaker 1: aren't any different from other kinds of religious experiences, right Like,

205
00:11:20,720 --> 00:11:23,320
Speaker 1: they're not They're not any less real because they're induced

206
00:11:23,360 --> 00:11:26,920
Speaker 1: by a chemical um they continue to influence people, you know,

207
00:11:27,080 --> 00:11:30,600
Speaker 1: in in for decades. UM. So yeah, it's there. There's

208
00:11:30,600 --> 00:11:33,840
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting history there. The first documented military

209
00:11:33,960 --> 00:11:36,080
Speaker 1: use of what you call an in the agen and

210
00:11:36,120 --> 00:11:38,960
Speaker 1: when we're talking about sila cybin, we're talking about all

211
00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:41,959
Speaker 1: of these chemicals. They're all what you'd call in theogen's right,

212
00:11:42,000 --> 00:11:44,319
Speaker 1: that's kind of the name of the type of thing

213
00:11:44,440 --> 00:11:48,520
Speaker 1: that we call hallucinogens um. The first documented military use

214
00:11:48,520 --> 00:11:50,960
Speaker 1: of one of these substances was by Hannibal Barca, you

215
00:11:51,000 --> 00:11:53,679
Speaker 1: know the guy, the elephant guy right with the alps

216
00:11:54,160 --> 00:11:57,080
Speaker 1: uh in around one eight four BC. There are some

217
00:11:57,720 --> 00:12:01,080
Speaker 1: possibly apocryphal reports that he had had his men drug

218
00:12:01,280 --> 00:12:04,440
Speaker 1: enemy stores with belladonna before a battle, so that his

219
00:12:04,559 --> 00:12:07,120
Speaker 1: enemies would basically be hallucinating when he went in to

220
00:12:07,240 --> 00:12:10,400
Speaker 1: fight them, which would provide a benefit. Right. It's it's

221
00:12:10,440 --> 00:12:12,680
Speaker 1: not hard to see how that could potentially work out

222
00:12:12,720 --> 00:12:16,160
Speaker 1: for you, um. And this is probably copied by the

223
00:12:16,160 --> 00:12:19,720
Speaker 1: Bishop of Munster in sixteen seventy two, who actually filled

224
00:12:19,760 --> 00:12:22,839
Speaker 1: grenades with belladonna in order to attempt to disperse its

225
00:12:22,840 --> 00:12:25,560
Speaker 1: poison on the battlefield, which is a pretty modern for

226
00:12:25,600 --> 00:12:28,160
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy two. Pretty modern way of like using a

227
00:12:28,240 --> 00:12:35,880
Speaker 1: chemical weapon. Yeah, that's I had never heard that before. Yeah,

228
00:12:35,960 --> 00:12:40,480
Speaker 1: that is pretty cool. Fantastic image. Yeah, the Bishop of

229
00:12:40,559 --> 00:12:43,920
Speaker 1: Munster filling grenades with because the active chemical in Belladonna

230
00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:47,040
Speaker 1: is scopolamine, which is what US police tried to use

231
00:12:47,080 --> 00:12:50,240
Speaker 1: for decades as a truth serum. Um. But it it

232
00:12:50,360 --> 00:12:53,560
Speaker 1: just kind of is a moderately powerful hallucinogen that he

233
00:12:53,600 --> 00:12:56,560
Speaker 1: was trying to disperse via grenade. Now I don't actually

234
00:12:56,559 --> 00:12:58,600
Speaker 1: know how well that worked out. It doesn't seem like

235
00:12:58,640 --> 00:13:02,000
Speaker 1: there's good documentation whether or not at it actually had

236
00:13:02,120 --> 00:13:05,880
Speaker 1: much of a military effect. Um. But the dream that

237
00:13:05,960 --> 00:13:08,600
Speaker 1: the Bishop of Munster had and that Hannibal Barket had

238
00:13:08,800 --> 00:13:11,040
Speaker 1: has lingered on in the hearts of military planners for

239
00:13:11,080 --> 00:13:15,560
Speaker 1: a long time, right, Because obviously fighting people is hard, um,

240
00:13:15,600 --> 00:13:18,360
Speaker 1: And if you can make them chemically, if you can

241
00:13:18,400 --> 00:13:20,920
Speaker 1: disperse some sort of substance on the battlefield that makes

242
00:13:20,960 --> 00:13:23,400
Speaker 1: them not want to or not able to fight, that

243
00:13:23,440 --> 00:13:26,480
Speaker 1: would be pretty cool. So World War One is obviously

244
00:13:26,520 --> 00:13:28,760
Speaker 1: when chemical weapons get used for the first time on

245
00:13:28,800 --> 00:13:31,240
Speaker 1: a mass scale, and and we all are aware of

246
00:13:31,280 --> 00:13:34,240
Speaker 1: more or less what happens here. Adolf Hitler himself a

247
00:13:34,320 --> 00:13:36,800
Speaker 1: victim of mustard gas refused in World War Two to

248
00:13:36,880 --> 00:13:39,960
Speaker 1: give approval to the German military to use chemical weapons

249
00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:43,439
Speaker 1: again as an offensive military tool. Right, Obviously, Hitler loves

250
00:13:43,520 --> 00:13:45,880
Speaker 1: using poison gas, but they're not they're not shooting it

251
00:13:45,880 --> 00:13:47,800
Speaker 1: off at the battlefield because he knows that it's going

252
00:13:47,840 --> 00:13:52,079
Speaker 1: to lead to reprisals and he's seen chemical weapons, you know. Uh,

253
00:13:52,080 --> 00:13:55,120
Speaker 1: he doesn't have a moral principle obviously, and he's in

254
00:13:55,440 --> 00:14:00,800
Speaker 1: you know, um, he's not entirely against the idea though,

255
00:14:00,840 --> 00:14:03,920
Speaker 1: of researching more weapons like this. And so during World

256
00:14:03,960 --> 00:14:07,400
Speaker 1: War Two, while the Germans don't use their mustard gas stockpiles,

257
00:14:07,640 --> 00:14:10,560
Speaker 1: they do invent a new poison something called saren nerve

258
00:14:10,679 --> 00:14:13,600
Speaker 1: gas um. And right around the same time the Nazis

259
00:14:13,640 --> 00:14:16,880
Speaker 1: are inventing saren, the Empire of Japan is weaponizing and

260
00:14:17,120 --> 00:14:20,040
Speaker 1: tracks during the war. Now, they actually did use an

261
00:14:20,120 --> 00:14:23,440
Speaker 1: tracks on China. During World War Two. They killed thousands

262
00:14:23,440 --> 00:14:26,560
Speaker 1: of civilians by like dropping anthrax bombs. They would infect

263
00:14:26,600 --> 00:14:30,240
Speaker 1: water supplies with cholera, and their top scientists working at

264
00:14:30,320 --> 00:14:32,800
Speaker 1: Unit seven thirty one, which we'll be talking about at

265
00:14:32,840 --> 00:14:35,800
Speaker 1: some point in the future, were in direct contact with

266
00:14:35,920 --> 00:14:39,440
Speaker 1: the Nazi chemical weapons head a guy named Kurt Blom,

267
00:14:39,480 --> 00:14:43,240
Speaker 1: who himself tested an TRACKS on thousands of death camp inmates,

268
00:14:43,520 --> 00:14:45,520
Speaker 1: mainly to see what would happen. Right, This is kind

269
00:14:45,520 --> 00:14:47,560
Speaker 1: of when we're trying to figure out how to actually

270
00:14:47,720 --> 00:14:50,880
Speaker 1: weaponize and tracks. A lot of the early studies there

271
00:14:50,920 --> 00:14:54,800
Speaker 1: come from different concentration camps. Blom had also experimented with

272
00:14:54,840 --> 00:14:57,560
Speaker 1: the use of mescal in on concentration camp inmates as

273
00:14:57,560 --> 00:15:00,720
Speaker 1: a truth drug. He'd forcibly dosed inmates a lot of

274
00:15:00,720 --> 00:15:03,480
Speaker 1: them in huge enough quantities that some of them died,

275
00:15:04,040 --> 00:15:06,240
Speaker 1: which is is not easy to do. Mescalen is not

276
00:15:06,320 --> 00:15:08,840
Speaker 1: a super toxic substance, so if you're killing people on it,

277
00:15:08,840 --> 00:15:12,240
Speaker 1: you're effectively giving them sometimes thousands of doses. Um. Because

278
00:15:12,240 --> 00:15:14,040
Speaker 1: the Nazis don't really care what happens to these people,

279
00:15:14,040 --> 00:15:17,560
Speaker 1: they're able to kind of do that. UM. So the

280
00:15:17,640 --> 00:15:20,520
Speaker 1: Allies are not super aware that most of this is

281
00:15:20,560 --> 00:15:22,800
Speaker 1: going on at the time. There's a pretty big fog

282
00:15:22,800 --> 00:15:25,000
Speaker 1: of war. These are very top secret. Obviously, they know

283
00:15:25,040 --> 00:15:28,960
Speaker 1: that Japan is using chemical weapons against China, but they're

284
00:15:29,000 --> 00:15:31,800
Speaker 1: not super aware of like what the Germans are researching

285
00:15:31,880 --> 00:15:34,320
Speaker 1: at this point. But what was known was enough that

286
00:15:34,360 --> 00:15:37,440
Speaker 1: it's scared Winston Churchill, and he made a public announcement

287
00:15:37,440 --> 00:15:39,960
Speaker 1: of his fears that the Nazis were planning a biological

288
00:15:39,960 --> 00:15:43,720
Speaker 1: weapon attack on the United Kingdom. So he asks the

289
00:15:43,800 --> 00:15:46,440
Speaker 1: United States for help and building up a defensive stockpile

290
00:15:46,520 --> 00:15:49,880
Speaker 1: of weaponized viruses and toxins. Right, Churchill doesn't want to

291
00:15:49,960 --> 00:15:51,920
Speaker 1: use all these either, because he's thinking the same thing

292
00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:54,320
Speaker 1: Hitler is, if if we use these on the Nazis,

293
00:15:54,520 --> 00:15:57,000
Speaker 1: then they'll start using stuff on our soldiers. But he

294
00:15:57,040 --> 00:15:59,000
Speaker 1: wants to have a bunch of scary ship that he

295
00:15:59,040 --> 00:16:02,120
Speaker 1: can unleash on continent of Europe if the Nazis start

296
00:16:02,200 --> 00:16:04,600
Speaker 1: dropping stuff on the UK. You can see, like the

297
00:16:04,640 --> 00:16:06,960
Speaker 1: logic that's going to be a big part of the

298
00:16:07,200 --> 00:16:11,160
Speaker 1: nuclear arms race already kind of at play here. Um

299
00:16:11,320 --> 00:16:16,240
Speaker 1: In general, all of history is a series of people saying, well,

300
00:16:16,440 --> 00:16:22,120
Speaker 1: we need to pursue this truly grotesque mission because if

301
00:16:22,200 --> 00:16:26,360
Speaker 1: we don't, the enemy will, or we suspect they already are.

302
00:16:26,600 --> 00:16:30,200
Speaker 1: But the only reason the enemy is doing it is

303
00:16:30,240 --> 00:16:33,360
Speaker 1: because they think you're doing it. And I'm sure there's

304
00:16:33,400 --> 00:16:36,560
Speaker 1: a name for that paradox. But for example, in the

305
00:16:36,640 --> 00:16:39,040
Speaker 1: last time I was on this show, we briefly talked

306
00:16:39,040 --> 00:16:41,640
Speaker 1: about World War One, which is a war based almost

307
00:16:41,800 --> 00:16:45,800
Speaker 1: entirely around a series of nations saying, look, we better

308
00:16:45,880 --> 00:16:48,840
Speaker 1: go ahead and just arm up because we know France

309
00:16:48,960 --> 00:16:51,680
Speaker 1: is doing it. It's like, if you know when we wis,

310
00:16:51,960 --> 00:16:54,280
Speaker 1: go ahead and go to war now, because it's gonna happen,

311
00:16:54,320 --> 00:16:57,600
Speaker 1: like like in every country thought this about everyone else.

312
00:16:58,400 --> 00:17:01,760
Speaker 1: So here it's you can see this weird gain theory

313
00:17:01,840 --> 00:17:08,520
Speaker 1: thing where unchecked paranoia about your enemy is a blank

314
00:17:08,760 --> 00:17:13,240
Speaker 1: check to your people to just pursue madness because after all,

315
00:17:13,960 --> 00:17:17,760
Speaker 1: what what thing could be too horrifying to use against

316
00:17:18,520 --> 00:17:23,040
Speaker 1: insert enemy here? Nazis, the communist, the terrorists on the

317
00:17:23,119 --> 00:17:25,960
Speaker 1: Muslim terrorists. It's it's like, well, of course we need

318
00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:29,679
Speaker 1: these advanced interrogation techniques otherwise, you know, how are we

319
00:17:29,720 --> 00:17:32,479
Speaker 1: going to stop our kinda in fifty years from now?

320
00:17:32,520 --> 00:17:36,119
Speaker 1: You can insert whatever enemy. But that's always been the logic,

321
00:17:36,240 --> 00:17:39,520
Speaker 1: probably going back thousands of years. It's like, hey, normally

322
00:17:39,600 --> 00:17:44,040
Speaker 1: we would do this, but and what's one of the

323
00:17:44,080 --> 00:17:46,919
Speaker 1: things that's most kind of morally complex about this is

324
00:17:46,960 --> 00:17:51,359
Speaker 1: that it doesn't always go badly right. World War one

325
00:17:51,600 --> 00:17:55,320
Speaker 1: horrible nightmare because that logic leads to tens of millions

326
00:17:55,320 --> 00:17:58,560
Speaker 1: of deaths. It also doesn't lead to tens of millions

327
00:17:58,560 --> 00:18:00,879
Speaker 1: of deaths in in the nucle your arms race, like

328
00:18:00,960 --> 00:18:04,040
Speaker 1: because everybody's got all these weapons and has the ability

329
00:18:04,119 --> 00:18:06,880
Speaker 1: to end all life, we don't have this big war

330
00:18:06,960 --> 00:18:08,639
Speaker 1: between the Soviet Union of the Unite. We have a

331
00:18:08,720 --> 00:18:11,159
Speaker 1: bunch of little horrible wars, but we don't have this

332
00:18:11,200 --> 00:18:13,920
Speaker 1: big war. And you kind of it's the same thing

333
00:18:14,040 --> 00:18:17,960
Speaker 1: with biological weapons on the battlefield in World War two

334
00:18:18,359 --> 00:18:21,320
Speaker 1: because they don't get used in Europe. The Nazis in

335
00:18:21,400 --> 00:18:23,879
Speaker 1: Vince Sarin and they weaponize and tractions we're about to

336
00:18:23,880 --> 00:18:26,439
Speaker 1: talk about, the US develops themuch a horrible ship, but

337
00:18:26,480 --> 00:18:28,760
Speaker 1: none of it it gets used because everybody's like just

338
00:18:28,880 --> 00:18:32,520
Speaker 1: kind of too scared to start that. Um, so I

339
00:18:32,520 --> 00:18:34,879
Speaker 1: don't know, I know what the moral is here? Well know,

340
00:18:35,280 --> 00:18:39,120
Speaker 1: very very quick note, um, we do record these in advance.

341
00:18:39,680 --> 00:18:43,439
Speaker 1: If there has been a nuclear war between now and

342
00:18:43,480 --> 00:18:46,600
Speaker 1: when this goes up, understand that that's what he just

343
00:18:46,640 --> 00:18:49,880
Speaker 1: said was based. This was pre the bombs being launched.

344
00:18:49,920 --> 00:18:52,040
Speaker 1: We were not aware of it when we recorded this.

345
00:18:52,160 --> 00:18:55,880
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're saying, well, how how how

346
00:18:55,880 --> 00:18:58,840
Speaker 1: stupid are these guys? They don't know that the situation

347
00:18:58,960 --> 00:19:03,160
Speaker 1: Ukraine resulted in nuclear apocalypse. It's because we It wasn't

348
00:19:03,160 --> 00:19:05,920
Speaker 1: It hadn't happened when we recorded it. If you're listening

349
00:19:05,960 --> 00:19:08,760
Speaker 1: to this huddled around the ruins of the Chrysler building

350
00:19:09,160 --> 00:19:12,760
Speaker 1: defending off wolves with like crudely made spears that you

351
00:19:12,760 --> 00:19:15,840
Speaker 1: you you you created out of like scrap metal from

352
00:19:15,920 --> 00:19:19,000
Speaker 1: light poles, Um, there was a time where the world

353
00:19:19,119 --> 00:19:23,480
Speaker 1: wasn't like that. Uh, then please just give us we

354
00:19:23,480 --> 00:19:26,159
Speaker 1: we're doing our best here. Yeah. If you if you

355
00:19:26,200 --> 00:19:29,280
Speaker 1: live in a society that has lost all aspects of

356
00:19:29,320 --> 00:19:33,399
Speaker 1: modernity except for the ability to like yell at podcast hosts. Um,

357
00:19:33,560 --> 00:19:35,840
Speaker 1: please please hold up for a second. Sophie deals with

358
00:19:35,960 --> 00:19:40,880
Speaker 1: enough as it's um. So, yeah, you've got these, uh,

359
00:19:41,000 --> 00:19:45,400
Speaker 1: you've got these you know. Um this kind of biological

360
00:19:45,520 --> 00:19:48,399
Speaker 1: arms race that's sort of in the background of World

361
00:19:48,440 --> 00:19:50,199
Speaker 1: War Two. Obviously it doesn't get a whole lot of

362
00:19:50,200 --> 00:19:53,520
Speaker 1: attention because most of this stuff doesn't wind up getting used,

363
00:19:53,880 --> 00:19:55,800
Speaker 1: and it's it's like fucked up when you're talking about

364
00:19:55,800 --> 00:19:58,840
Speaker 1: saren nerve gas and like the cholera and trying to

365
00:19:58,880 --> 00:20:04,360
Speaker 1: weaponize virus that's like horrifying for some reason, but it's

366
00:20:04,359 --> 00:20:06,760
Speaker 1: actually not when you think about what's going on, it's

367
00:20:06,800 --> 00:20:09,119
Speaker 1: not any different from any other kind of arms race. Right.

368
00:20:09,160 --> 00:20:10,959
Speaker 1: You can say that the weaponry is a little more

369
00:20:11,080 --> 00:20:15,479
Speaker 1: dangerous maybe, but like it's it's it's stockpiling killing agents. Right,

370
00:20:15,520 --> 00:20:18,560
Speaker 1: there's not a massive difference fundamentally, And like stockpiling a

371
00:20:18,600 --> 00:20:22,160
Speaker 1: bomb or stockpiling a bomb that is killed by way

372
00:20:22,200 --> 00:20:25,080
Speaker 1: of viruses. You know, people are more disgusted by this stuff,

373
00:20:25,119 --> 00:20:27,840
Speaker 1: but it is kind of the same basic concept. But

374
00:20:27,960 --> 00:20:31,720
Speaker 1: on February third, nineteen forty nine, and kind of the

375
00:20:31,840 --> 00:20:35,880
Speaker 1: early stages of the Cold War, something that was completely

376
00:20:36,000 --> 00:20:38,640
Speaker 1: new entered the minds of the men plotting their way

377
00:20:38,640 --> 00:20:41,280
Speaker 1: through this, like opening stages of the Cold War, Right,

378
00:20:41,280 --> 00:20:45,160
Speaker 1: this is kind of the first new development, totally new

379
00:20:45,160 --> 00:20:48,879
Speaker 1: development and like conceptions of warfare in in quite a

380
00:20:48,920 --> 00:20:52,280
Speaker 1: long while. Um. And it it starts because a guy

381
00:20:52,359 --> 00:20:57,800
Speaker 1: named Cardinal Joseph men zinz Jeez, I'm he's he's he's Hungarian.

382
00:20:58,119 --> 00:21:01,080
Speaker 1: Cardinal Joseph men Zinn He was the leader of the

383
00:21:01,160 --> 00:21:04,000
Speaker 1: Catholic Church in Hungary starting in nineteen forty five, and

384
00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:06,440
Speaker 1: in World War Two he'd been imprisoned by the fascist

385
00:21:06,520 --> 00:21:09,399
Speaker 1: Arrow Cross Party for his opposition to fascism. But he

386
00:21:09,480 --> 00:21:13,040
Speaker 1: was also really opposed to communism. Right, So when the

387
00:21:13,160 --> 00:21:16,040
Speaker 1: Nazis lose and the Iron Curtain goes down or whatever

388
00:21:16,080 --> 00:21:18,359
Speaker 1: you want to say, when the USSR winds up kind

389
00:21:18,359 --> 00:21:21,760
Speaker 1: of influence in Hungary, um, Mencenti is not happy with

390
00:21:21,800 --> 00:21:24,840
Speaker 1: that either. He's actually a monarchist. He never really got

391
00:21:24,880 --> 00:21:27,240
Speaker 1: over the collapse of the Austro Hungarian Empire, so when

392
00:21:27,240 --> 00:21:30,639
Speaker 1: the Communists come to power, he resists them too. In

393
00:21:30,760 --> 00:21:34,400
Speaker 1: ninety eight, religious orders get banned by the government of Hungary.

394
00:21:34,920 --> 00:21:37,600
Speaker 1: The Catholic Church is called a reactionary force, which it

395
00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:40,320
Speaker 1: had often been a lot of Catholics had supported the

396
00:21:40,359 --> 00:21:44,280
Speaker 1: fascist dictatorship that had existed in World War Two. Um,

397
00:21:44,320 --> 00:21:47,679
Speaker 1: but Mencenti hadn't. Um. But since he was such a prime,

398
00:21:47,880 --> 00:21:51,800
Speaker 1: like prominent opponent of the communist regime, he gets arrested

399
00:21:51,800 --> 00:21:54,199
Speaker 1: by the communists and they do the thing that like

400
00:21:54,280 --> 00:21:56,720
Speaker 1: you do when you capture a political enemy. They like

401
00:21:56,760 --> 00:21:58,960
Speaker 1: beat him with truncheons until he agrees to go on

402
00:21:59,080 --> 00:22:01,800
Speaker 1: camera and confess to a bunch of crimes. Um. And

403
00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:05,400
Speaker 1: this is not weird, right, like having government thugs beat

404
00:22:05,400 --> 00:22:08,320
Speaker 1: a man until he confesses to like trying to overthrow

405
00:22:08,359 --> 00:22:11,719
Speaker 1: the government and reinstitute a monarchy. Pretty normal stuff for

406
00:22:11,800 --> 00:22:15,400
Speaker 1: like a totalitarian regime can do to do. It shouldn't

407
00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:19,320
Speaker 1: have been that weird to anybody, But the CI a

408
00:22:19,720 --> 00:22:22,520
Speaker 1: like kind of freaks out over this. So this is

409
00:22:22,560 --> 00:22:24,879
Speaker 1: a new organization at the time. They've just been formed

410
00:22:24,920 --> 00:22:28,199
Speaker 1: from the OSS about a year before this um and

411
00:22:28,280 --> 00:22:31,199
Speaker 1: they panic when they hear Manzenti come on and be like,

412
00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:33,400
Speaker 1: I was trying to overthrow the government and the YadA

413
00:22:33,440 --> 00:22:36,560
Speaker 1: YadA yadah. And in his excellent book Poisoner in Chief,

414
00:22:36,600 --> 00:22:39,919
Speaker 1: Stephen Kinzer writes quote, they focused on the way man

415
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:43,639
Speaker 1: Zenti had behaved during his trial. He appeared disoriented, spoken

416
00:22:43,680 --> 00:22:46,040
Speaker 1: a flat monotone, and confessed to crimes that he had

417
00:22:46,080 --> 00:22:49,399
Speaker 1: evidently not committed. Clearly he had been coerced. But how

418
00:22:49,640 --> 00:22:53,480
Speaker 1: at the CIA the answer seemed terrifyingly obvious. The Soviets

419
00:22:53,480 --> 00:22:56,560
Speaker 1: had developed drugs or mind control techniques that can make

420
00:22:56,560 --> 00:22:59,679
Speaker 1: people say things they did not believe. No evidence of this, ever,

421
00:22:59,880 --> 00:23:03,400
Speaker 1: m urged. Manzinti was coerced with traditional techniques like ill treatment,

422
00:23:03,440 --> 00:23:07,400
Speaker 1: extended isolation, beatings and repetitive interrogation. The fear that communists

423
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:10,840
Speaker 1: had discovered some potent psychoactive tool, however, sent a shockwave

424
00:23:10,920 --> 00:23:13,720
Speaker 1: through the c I A. So this is what I

425
00:23:13,840 --> 00:23:17,919
Speaker 1: love about conspiracies about mind control, because the reality is,

426
00:23:18,080 --> 00:23:21,439
Speaker 1: there are so many ways to manipulate the behavior of

427
00:23:21,480 --> 00:23:24,760
Speaker 1: a person who is weaker than you, through pain, through

428
00:23:24,800 --> 00:23:28,320
Speaker 1: threats to their family, through financials with bribes, you know,

429
00:23:28,480 --> 00:23:31,119
Speaker 1: and there's some of the most successful interrogators were not violent.

430
00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:34,760
Speaker 1: They just offered people the cookies or a car or something,

431
00:23:35,600 --> 00:23:37,960
Speaker 1: uh that to say, well, my gosh, they developed a

432
00:23:38,040 --> 00:23:41,280
Speaker 1: magical chemical that you injected a person, They'll just do

433
00:23:41,320 --> 00:23:44,679
Speaker 1: whatever you want. They were so enamored with this idea

434
00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:50,359
Speaker 1: when that's like the oldest means of humans interacting with

435
00:23:50,400 --> 00:23:55,000
Speaker 1: one another, like that predates humanity, humans making other humans

436
00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:58,320
Speaker 1: do what they want. It says something about these guys

437
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:00,639
Speaker 1: that like, instead of being like, yeah, they probably just

438
00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:02,879
Speaker 1: hit him until he did what they wanted him do,

439
00:24:03,200 --> 00:24:05,359
Speaker 1: like the thing we do when we want someone to

440
00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:07,959
Speaker 1: do something, they're like, they must have invented some new

441
00:24:08,040 --> 00:24:11,280
Speaker 1: drug that's taken over his mind and changed his personality.

442
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:15,199
Speaker 1: Um it is it is really like this is the

443
00:24:15,240 --> 00:24:18,320
Speaker 1: fact that this is the inciting incident of the CIA's

444
00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 1: mind control program. Um is in a way very funny.

445
00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:25,359
Speaker 1: And it's also just like this is the whole Cold

446
00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:27,440
Speaker 1: War in a nutshell, right, This this is what gets

447
00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:29,720
Speaker 1: us into so many different conflicts and gets like a

448
00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:32,720
Speaker 1: few million people killed. Is all of those these things

449
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:35,119
Speaker 1: that start with like some guys in a room in

450
00:24:35,240 --> 00:24:40,640
Speaker 1: d C, like misinterpreting something and then freaking each other

451
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:43,240
Speaker 1: out right doing that very human thing where everybody's just

452
00:24:43,320 --> 00:24:46,280
Speaker 1: kind of like yes, ending each other into the apocalypse,

453
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:49,960
Speaker 1: especially when you have funding that will come to your budget.

454
00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:52,920
Speaker 1: If you can make the case up the ladder yep,

455
00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 1: that the enemy has blank that there's a there's a

456
00:24:56,359 --> 00:25:00,640
Speaker 1: motivation beyond just simple misunderstanding, Like a lot of money

457
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:03,320
Speaker 1: was spent here, a lot of jobs were created. Like

458
00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:05,359
Speaker 1: you don't think in terms of somebody trying to create

459
00:25:05,400 --> 00:25:08,719
Speaker 1: a bureaucrat try and create work for themselves, but they

460
00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:12,160
Speaker 1: they this was motivated reasoning if the if the Russians

461
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:14,080
Speaker 1: have this, then we now have a blank check to

462
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 1: try to pursue this. And some of it was just

463
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:21,359
Speaker 1: people career climbing, yes, indeed, and you know who else

464
00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:25,399
Speaker 1: is climbing the ranks of the corporate hierarchy, the people

465
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:31,040
Speaker 1: who sponsor our podcasts. How do you? How do you?

466
00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:34,520
Speaker 1: How do you? How do you feel about buying gold

467
00:25:34,800 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: online from shady websites that advertise through random podcast ads?

468
00:25:39,760 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 1: Is that how you invest your your money? Well, you know,

469
00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:47,600
Speaker 1: one society collapses, gold will be the only valuable currency.

470
00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:51,119
Speaker 1: It just it just makes sense. Not cans of beans

471
00:25:51,119 --> 00:25:53,200
Speaker 1: and toilet paper. That's not what people will be trading.

472
00:25:53,200 --> 00:25:56,639
Speaker 1: They'll be trading gold. Yeah, No, not freeze dried food,

473
00:25:56,760 --> 00:26:01,439
Speaker 1: or ammunition or or water purification to bublits. Gold the

474
00:26:01,520 --> 00:26:07,680
Speaker 1: thing that's useful when you're starving, perfect store of value. Anyway,

475
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:17,920
Speaker 1: here's probably adds for buying gold off the internet. We're

476
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:20,720
Speaker 1: back and we're talking about what a good store of

477
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:24,840
Speaker 1: value gold is. And Jason, if you're looking to diversify

478
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:27,960
Speaker 1: your your cash stockpile for the apocalypse, I happen to

479
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:31,720
Speaker 1: have a lot of Iraqi dinars and from what I hear,

480
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:35,200
Speaker 1: they're about to blow up. They're gonna get revalued by

481
00:26:35,200 --> 00:26:38,199
Speaker 1: by President Trump and um a lot of a lot

482
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:43,320
Speaker 1: of money in the denar these days. Yeah, one society collapses, basically,

483
00:26:43,320 --> 00:26:47,840
Speaker 1: you're gonna want gold and you're gonna want bitcoin. Oh yeah, yeah,

484
00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:50,440
Speaker 1: I I agree with you, Jason. If people really want

485
00:26:50,480 --> 00:26:53,200
Speaker 1: to survive the end of days, throw out your water,

486
00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:58,240
Speaker 1: light year, dried food on fire stockpiled denars, and gold.

487
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 1: That's that's gonna key you alive when the floodwaters wipe

488
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:05,879
Speaker 1: out two thirds of Florida. That's what you want to

489
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:10,600
Speaker 1: be carrying with you away as as as the coastline disappears.

490
00:27:10,720 --> 00:27:12,880
Speaker 1: Is as much gold as you can fit in your pockets.

491
00:27:13,400 --> 00:27:16,200
Speaker 1: Speaking of things that you can fit in your pockets,

492
00:27:17,320 --> 00:27:22,040
Speaker 1: let's talk about knowledge. Cia, Um, I don't know. I

493
00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:26,639
Speaker 1: did my I did my best there. So this moment,

494
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:30,040
Speaker 1: this cardinal getting like just beaten up until he lies

495
00:27:30,080 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 1: about having tried to overthrow the government brings absolute certain

496
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:36,439
Speaker 1: teeth to the CIA top bress that the Russians have

497
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:39,080
Speaker 1: developed a mind control drug. Now we're gonna get into

498
00:27:39,119 --> 00:27:40,800
Speaker 1: a lot of hourly ship here, but it's important that

499
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:43,400
Speaker 1: it under that the people who are like freaking out

500
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:46,399
Speaker 1: over this, and the people who are the people whose

501
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:49,560
Speaker 1: freakouts lead to everything that follows are a bunch of

502
00:27:49,640 --> 00:27:52,119
Speaker 1: Yale and Harvard kids, right, most of them grew up

503
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 1: extremely rich. The Dulles brothers who are going to be

504
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: big parts of this, like are literally hanging out with

505
00:27:57,320 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 1: heads of state when when their kids. And that's like

506
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:03,000
Speaker 1: most of the early o s s CIA guys. Now,

507
00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:05,480
Speaker 1: some of these dudes had done real gnarly ship in

508
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: World War Two had been like like international man of Mystery,

509
00:28:09,760 --> 00:28:11,960
Speaker 1: badass stuff. You know, you do have some of those

510
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:15,560
Speaker 1: like cowboys here, but that's not who's actually calling the shots.

511
00:28:15,840 --> 00:28:17,639
Speaker 1: For the most part, most of the people calling the

512
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:20,719
Speaker 1: shots had been like sitting in Switzerland and kind of

513
00:28:20,760 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 1: like making the decisions that determined whether or not spies

514
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:27,800
Speaker 1: on the ground lived and died. And now they're sitting

515
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:31,159
Speaker 1: in d c Um and they've convinced themselves that an

516
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: old priest commence confessing to crimes he didn't convince under

517
00:28:34,080 --> 00:28:36,960
Speaker 1: torture meant that the Soviets had developed some sort of

518
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 1: mind control drug um. And there's this all of this

519
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:43,160
Speaker 1: discourse around the c I A, a lot of which

520
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 1: is formed by the things they're doing in this period

521
00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:48,240
Speaker 1: of time, portrays them as I think these guys probably

522
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:51,120
Speaker 1: would have wanted to be portrayed as these insidious, dangerous

523
00:28:51,160 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: competent manipulators of public opinion, and orchestrators of conspiracies. Now,

524
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:58,280
Speaker 1: these are all things that the agency and individuals within

525
00:28:58,360 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 1: it have been over the years. But a life in

526
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:04,360
Speaker 1: the shadows plotting crimes against your fellow man doesn't mean

527
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:07,000
Speaker 1: that you're like healthy or rational, And it doesn't mean

528
00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: that like the things that you're kind of conniving your

529
00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:13,240
Speaker 1: way into doing make a whole lot of sense. Uh,

530
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:15,160
Speaker 1: And that's kind of important to keep in mind as

531
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:18,200
Speaker 1: this story builds. Now, there's another inciting incident for what

532
00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:20,360
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about this week. This one's a

533
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 1: little bit happier. It starts in nineteen thirty six when

534
00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: chemists from Sandas Laboratory synthesize lesurgic acid diethylamide for the

535
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:32,200
Speaker 1: very first time UM. And one of the guys who's

536
00:29:32,240 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 1: on this project is a dude named Albert Hoffman. He's

537
00:29:35,120 --> 00:29:37,960
Speaker 1: a research scientist for Sandaz, which is, by the way,

538
00:29:37,680 --> 00:29:41,360
Speaker 1: the company who gave us like sacharin um or saccharin

539
00:29:41,480 --> 00:29:45,080
Speaker 1: like that's that's Sandas. They're a very very large chemical company.

540
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 1: And Hoffman had been tasked with finding substances in medicinal

541
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:52,200
Speaker 1: plants that could be purified into different pharmaceutical drugs. They

542
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:55,239
Speaker 1: didn't care what the pharmaceutical drugs did. They were just saying, like,

543
00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:58,480
Speaker 1: find us new chemicals, see what stuff does what, and

544
00:29:58,520 --> 00:29:59,920
Speaker 1: then we'll try to find a way to sell it.

545
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 1: So in the night late nineteen thirties, Hoffman is studying

546
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:05,680
Speaker 1: air got which is this rye fungus that had been

547
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:09,640
Speaker 1: associated with hallucinatory spells. Sometimes people that make like bread

548
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:11,600
Speaker 1: that had this fungus in it, and then like towns

549
00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:14,080
Speaker 1: would wind up hallucinating for days. There's a lot of

550
00:30:14,080 --> 00:30:16,920
Speaker 1: fun stuff that happens in the Middle Ages, probably because

551
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 1: of of air got um. There's a lot of theories that,

552
00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 1: like the a lot of witch hunts of stuff, yeah,

553
00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:26,040
Speaker 1: even trace back to It's it's it's hard to tell

554
00:30:26,080 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 1: what's true and what's just uh yeah, theorizing. But it's

555
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:32,480
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that makes sense because you could

556
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 1: have it, people get it in there whatever and their

557
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:39,080
Speaker 1: food supply and not know that they were under the

558
00:30:39,080 --> 00:30:42,640
Speaker 1: influence of something. So that again reporting that they had

559
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:46,200
Speaker 1: seen supernatural things happening from there, that's enough of a

560
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:49,520
Speaker 1: witness for them to set a witch on fire. Because

561
00:30:49,520 --> 00:30:51,880
Speaker 1: it did not take much back then, Yeah it does not.

562
00:30:51,960 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 1: And one of the things the kind of I haven't

563
00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 1: taken air got fungus, but I have taken LSD somewhere

564
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:03,080
Speaker 1: around a hundred times, and different doses do different things.

565
00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:04,800
Speaker 1: And one thing that can happen if you just take

566
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:08,080
Speaker 1: a little bit, it's not even that you like hear voices,

567
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:12,560
Speaker 1: but it's it's that, like you, your your impulses feel

568
00:31:12,600 --> 00:31:15,520
Speaker 1: as if maybe they're coming from somewhere else, and you

569
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 1: can kind of convince yourself that someone is talking to

570
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:21,400
Speaker 1: you right. Um, And some people, especially if you're like

571
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:24,080
Speaker 1: a medieval peasant, maybe you get convinced it's God right,

572
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 1: and maybe you don't like this lady in town and

573
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:28,600
Speaker 1: you've never trusted her, and you convince yourself in this

574
00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:30,680
Speaker 1: state that God is telling you that she's a witch

575
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:32,400
Speaker 1: or something like that. There's all sorts of ship that

576
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:35,320
Speaker 1: could potentially have been happening here. The one thing you're

577
00:31:35,320 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: not going to get on the show is a lot

578
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 1: of scaremongering about who sin agens, because you're going to

579
00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:42,760
Speaker 1: get a lot of terrifying experiments as we get into this.

580
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:45,719
Speaker 1: But you have to understand it is very, very different.

581
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 1: One if you're not paying attention to the dose, but

582
00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:51,560
Speaker 1: to dosing people who don't know they've been dozed. So

583
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:55,160
Speaker 1: when things like set and setting matters so much and

584
00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: how you experience these things, if you're already paranoid, or

585
00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:03,040
Speaker 1: you're already a place where you're feeling under siege, or

586
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:05,280
Speaker 1: you think you've got enemies around every corner, and you've

587
00:32:05,360 --> 00:32:08,880
Speaker 1: been dosed with this in your food or whatever, and

588
00:32:08,960 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: you don't know what's happening to you, you know, and

589
00:32:11,880 --> 00:32:14,760
Speaker 1: then so you rewind to an another era when people

590
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 1: didn't know the wh whosin degens were even a thing. Yeah,

591
00:32:19,320 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 1: what would you assume. You would, of course assumed you

592
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 1: were possessed or that you had been assaulted by the

593
00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 1: devil or whatever, and so the same thing here, Like,

594
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 1: there's a big difference between what these people are doing

595
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:33,520
Speaker 1: and the people who use this recreation recreationally. We're not

596
00:32:33,560 --> 00:32:36,480
Speaker 1: trying to scare you off of it. It's just that

597
00:32:36,520 --> 00:32:40,880
Speaker 1: you're going to see the worst possible. There's actually there's

598
00:32:40,920 --> 00:32:42,760
Speaker 1: a degree we'll talk about this more. There's a degree

599
00:32:42,760 --> 00:32:44,680
Speaker 1: to which this also kind of makes the case of

600
00:32:44,720 --> 00:32:47,760
Speaker 1: how safe these are, because a lot of the worst

601
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 1: reactions to this are there giving people the equivalent of

602
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:54,440
Speaker 1: thousands of doses at a time, like an amount no

603
00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:57,680
Speaker 1: one would choose to take. And like, yeah, people die

604
00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:00,680
Speaker 1: when you give them seven thousand times like a normal

605
00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 1: dose of a of a drug. Almost any drug will

606
00:33:03,120 --> 00:33:05,400
Speaker 1: work that way, right, Like if you give someone seven

607
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:08,320
Speaker 1: thousand times as much aspirin as they should take, they

608
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:10,800
Speaker 1: probably will not make it, right, that will kill them.

609
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:13,560
Speaker 1: Or if you give them five thousand servings of mashed

610
00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:17,520
Speaker 1: potatoes all at once, now will also die. That's that

611
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:22,120
Speaker 1: depends on the mashed potatoes. I I I put about

612
00:33:22,200 --> 00:33:24,440
Speaker 1: a stick of butter pur potato, so it will take

613
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:27,960
Speaker 1: much less of my potatoes to kill you. Um. Really,

614
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:31,440
Speaker 1: just a bowl can do it in some cases. Uh.

615
00:33:31,480 --> 00:33:34,880
Speaker 1: So he's trying to Hoffman is trying to synthesize a

616
00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: compound out of rye fungus that's gonna work as a

617
00:33:37,720 --> 00:33:41,680
Speaker 1: speaking of heart disease, a circulatory in respiratory stimulant, right

618
00:33:41,720 --> 00:33:43,520
Speaker 1: because this drug one of the things that can do

619
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:45,880
Speaker 1: is it has an impact on your your heart rate

620
00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 1: and your respirations. And he thinks that maybe this will

621
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:51,240
Speaker 1: maybe he can get something out of ergot that will

622
00:33:51,280 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 1: do that. Um, and the LSD that we have today

623
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: is his twenty attempt at like pulling a chemical out

624
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:00,520
Speaker 1: of ergot that has a medicinal use, which is why

625
00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:04,480
Speaker 1: we call it LSD. UM. Now, initially the substance that

626
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:06,920
Speaker 1: Offman has found seems to be a very little value.

627
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 1: Research on it gets canceled, and Hoffman moves on for

628
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:12,799
Speaker 1: five years. But there's something about the drug that kind

629
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:14,880
Speaker 1: of calls out to him. He just can't kind of

630
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:16,319
Speaker 1: get it out of his head, even though he has

631
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:20,000
Speaker 1: not taken it for himself at this point. And so

632
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:23,919
Speaker 1: on April nineteenth, nineteen three, he decides to try something,

633
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 1: and he takes two and fifty micrograms of acid um.

634
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:34,719
Speaker 1: And this is like probably a moderate dose. Like you know,

635
00:34:35,560 --> 00:34:38,160
Speaker 1: if you actually have ever taken acid, you you buy

636
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:41,400
Speaker 1: like a hit or something. And what a hit is

637
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 1: is is not um like standardized. Like you probably have

638
00:34:46,200 --> 00:34:49,840
Speaker 1: no idea how much LSD you've taken if you've taken LSD,

639
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 1: because you you bought like a drop of liquid that

640
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:55,200
Speaker 1: was put on a piece of paper by a dude

641
00:34:55,360 --> 00:34:57,719
Speaker 1: who like gave it to you at a club, Right,

642
00:34:57,719 --> 00:35:02,000
Speaker 1: you have no idea what what what you're getting? Um,

643
00:35:02,040 --> 00:35:05,920
Speaker 1: But this is probably something like four to five hits

644
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:08,719
Speaker 1: of acid um in like modern terms. So this is

645
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:11,920
Speaker 1: like a substantial dose, right, This is not like a

646
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: light hit of the drug. UM. So he doses himself

647
00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:20,680
Speaker 1: at four pm, and at five pm he writes quote

648
00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 1: beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortion, symptoms of paralysis,

649
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 1: desire to laugh. Um. And that's the last thing he

650
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:30,799
Speaker 1: writes in his journal because after that point he is

651
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:34,239
Speaker 1: tripping too hard to write anything. Um. Did you say

652
00:35:34,280 --> 00:35:41,840
Speaker 1: he dosed himself at Yeah, he sure did. That is

653
00:35:41,920 --> 00:35:46,640
Speaker 1: kind of interesting, isn't it, Jason. Um. So sometimes sometimes

654
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:50,960
Speaker 1: we get these little beautiful synchronicities. So Hoffman has a

655
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:53,839
Speaker 1: pretty good trip, it has to be said. Um, it's

656
00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:56,439
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, so like you can't take your car

657
00:35:56,520 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 1: on the road because there's these wartime restrictions. So he's

658
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:03,360
Speaker 1: bicycling home. Um, and his his he has an assistant

659
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 1: who kind of like escorts him. Who's his sober sitter. Um.

660
00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:12,280
Speaker 1: And yeah, he recants later in great detail in his book, quote,

661
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:17,600
Speaker 1: kaleidoscopic fantastic images surged in me, alternating variegated opening and

662
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:20,880
Speaker 1: then closing themselves in circles and spirals exploding, and colored

663
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 1: fountains rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux. It was

664
00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 1: particularly remarkable how every acoustic perception, such as the sound

665
00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:31,359
Speaker 1: of a door handle or a passing automobile, became transformed

666
00:36:31,400 --> 00:36:35,760
Speaker 1: into optical perceptions. Every sound generated a vivid, changing image

667
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:38,960
Speaker 1: with a jone consistent form and color. So he's tripping

668
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 1: balls here. This is a pretty like this. This is

669
00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:44,120
Speaker 1: a pretty substantial dose of the drug um and it,

670
00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:46,320
Speaker 1: as he said, he has a great time. Like Hoffman

671
00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:48,440
Speaker 1: will spend the rest of his life as an advocate

672
00:36:48,480 --> 00:36:51,279
Speaker 1: for this stuff because he finds it like a wonderfully

673
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:55,319
Speaker 1: pleasant and powerful experience. And he he becomes convinced that

674
00:36:55,520 --> 00:36:58,920
Speaker 1: LSD has an incredible potential as a therapeutic drug. And

675
00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:01,960
Speaker 1: he's absolutely correct. In this um asset has been shown

676
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:05,560
Speaker 1: to have fantastic potential in a number of clinical trials

677
00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:08,520
Speaker 1: for treating alcoholism. It can be extreme and again when

678
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:11,760
Speaker 1: we say it can treat alcoholism, it can be an antidepressant,

679
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 1: It can treat post traumatic stress disorder. We're not saying

680
00:37:15,160 --> 00:37:17,240
Speaker 1: you can just take some and it makes it better.

681
00:37:17,440 --> 00:37:19,840
Speaker 1: Although some people have had that experience in the past,

682
00:37:20,120 --> 00:37:22,080
Speaker 1: these are all when we're talking about the clinical trials,

683
00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:27,720
Speaker 1: these are all giving someone LSD alongside therapy for like alcoholism,

684
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:31,040
Speaker 1: or therapy for depression, or therapy for post traumatic stress

685
00:37:31,080 --> 00:37:34,680
Speaker 1: disorder UM. And in terms of like why it's useful

686
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:37,040
Speaker 1: for this, I'm gonna quote from a researcher talking to

687
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:39,919
Speaker 1: the Guardian. In depression, people get locked into a way

688
00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:43,320
Speaker 1: of thinking that is repetitive and ruminative. It's like tramline thinking.

689
00:37:43,400 --> 00:37:46,600
Speaker 1: Psychedelics disrupt those kind of processes so people can escape

690
00:37:46,600 --> 00:37:49,279
Speaker 1: from it. And that's why this stuff is useful. And

691
00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:51,920
Speaker 1: there's there are now studies that show similar promise with

692
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 1: substances like m d m A, which seems to be

693
00:37:54,239 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: particularly effective at treating PTSD, or silas cybin. And and

694
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: to get back to the subjuct of like mushrooms and religion,

695
00:38:01,960 --> 00:38:04,120
Speaker 1: one of the things that sila cybin has been shown

696
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:07,480
Speaker 1: clinically to be most effective at is in hospice patients

697
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 1: and people who are like dying of terminal diseases, helping

698
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: people deal with their fear of death. It's very effective

699
00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:17,239
Speaker 1: when used properly UM for that. And and so it

700
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:19,759
Speaker 1: is fair to say that Hoffman was right, this kind

701
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 1: of immediate thing he thinks when he takes acid, like,

702
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:24,720
Speaker 1: oh my god, this stuff could be really useful for people.

703
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:29,160
Speaker 1: He's absolutely correct, But in the nineteen forties there's a

704
00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 1: lot less known about this, and so the kind of

705
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:36,760
Speaker 1: initial group of people who start taking acid, like Hoffman

706
00:38:37,120 --> 00:38:39,080
Speaker 1: is always going to be an advocate for this stuff,

707
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:41,960
Speaker 1: and gradually he's going to get other people interested in it.

708
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:44,960
Speaker 1: But the first group of people who really gets hard

709
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:49,759
Speaker 1: into acid are not scientists, and they're not hippies. There

710
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 1: CIA agents and scientists affiliated with the cia UM, and yeah,

711
00:38:56,640 --> 00:38:59,319
Speaker 1: that's that's what's going to happen. In late nineteen forty nine,

712
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 1: an officer of the Army Chemical Corps reported to L.

713
00:39:02,640 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 1: Wilson Green, a director at the Edgewood Arsenal, which is

714
00:39:05,560 --> 00:39:08,520
Speaker 1: where the the US keeps all of its like horrible

715
00:39:08,600 --> 00:39:11,000
Speaker 1: chemical weapons that had been building up during World War Two.

716
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 1: He reports to Green that Sandoz chemists had created a

717
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:18,840
Speaker 1: new hallucinogen. Next, Kinser writes, Green was riveted. He collected

718
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:20,879
Speaker 1: all the information he could find on the subject, then

719
00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:25,040
Speaker 1: produced a long report entitled Psychochemical Warfare, a New Concept

720
00:39:25,040 --> 00:39:27,920
Speaker 1: of War. It concluded with a strong recommendation that the

721
00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:32,240
Speaker 1: government begins systematically testing LSD, mescalen and sixty other mind

722
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:36,360
Speaker 1: altering compounds that might be weaponized for use against enemy populations.

723
00:39:36,800 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 1: Their will to resist would be weakened greatly, if not entirely, destroyed,

724
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:42,759
Speaker 1: by the mass hysteria and panic which would ensue. Green

725
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:45,200
Speaker 1: wrote the symptoms which are considered to be a value

726
00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:53,400
Speaker 1: in strategic and tactical operations include the following fitz Er seizures, dizziness, fear, panic, hysteria, hallucinations, migraine, delirium,

727
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:56,759
Speaker 1: extreme depression, notions of hopelessness, lack of initiative to do

728
00:39:56,880 --> 00:40:01,520
Speaker 1: even simple things, suicidal mania, and one of them just

729
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:03,520
Speaker 1: why I wanted to jump in a few minutes ago.

730
00:40:03,880 --> 00:40:08,240
Speaker 1: That we're not scaremongering about these substances. Because, to be clear,

731
00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:11,200
Speaker 1: when they saw the results, they did not come out

732
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:15,840
Speaker 1: and say, hey, if you introduce this to the enemy army,

733
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:18,680
Speaker 1: they may put down their weapons because they have seen

734
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 1: that war is wrong and the life has value, because

735
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:26,640
Speaker 1: you know they've had a pleasant trip. No, they were

736
00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 1: thinking purely in terms, oh this will this will drive

737
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 1: them insane. There they'll tell you tear each other to

738
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:34,680
Speaker 1: pieces and then run off into the wilderness screaming before

739
00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:37,520
Speaker 1: they fold dead of heart attacks and seizures, like they

740
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 1: were imagining something. They would just savage the enemy worse

741
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:45,920
Speaker 1: than bullets. Not Hey, we can actually prevent conflict by

742
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:49,120
Speaker 1: dosing the enemy and having them just be too too

743
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 1: chill to want to fight a war. And a lot

744
00:40:51,520 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 1: of this is a reaction to there had been this

745
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:58,080
Speaker 1: assumption prior to World War Two that when cities started

746
00:40:58,120 --> 00:41:01,439
Speaker 1: getting saturation bombed Byans, which are pretty new at the time,

747
00:41:02,120 --> 00:41:04,239
Speaker 1: the entire population of the city is going to lose

748
00:41:04,239 --> 00:41:06,560
Speaker 1: their mind and right like, they'll be murdering each other

749
00:41:06,600 --> 00:41:09,120
Speaker 1: in the streets and just like people's people's brains will

750
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:11,680
Speaker 1: shatter if they're forced to endure bombing, and none of

751
00:41:11,719 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 1: that happens. In fact, it turns out that like when

752
00:41:13,640 --> 00:41:16,879
Speaker 1: you bomb cities, people get really tough and they get

753
00:41:16,920 --> 00:41:20,120
Speaker 1: angry at you, and they don't collapse morally. It doesn't happen.

754
00:41:20,160 --> 00:41:22,880
Speaker 1: The British don't collapse under bombing, the Germans don't collapse

755
00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:26,120
Speaker 1: under bombing. For the Japanese to collapse under bombing, it

756
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:30,839
Speaker 1: takes the detonation of two atomic bombs. Um. So this

757
00:41:30,920 --> 00:41:32,879
Speaker 1: is kind of part of what they're looking at is like, well,

758
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:36,239
Speaker 1: strategic bombing actually doesn't work for ship. What if we

759
00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:40,640
Speaker 1: did it with acid, Like, maybe that'll work better. That

760
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:44,120
Speaker 1: is about trying to make their society breakdown. Yeah, yeah,

761
00:41:44,160 --> 00:41:48,439
Speaker 1: that is exactly the goal. Um. And again you could also,

762
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 1: I mean, you could argue that, like this is more

763
00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:54,319
Speaker 1: humane than carpet bombing people. It's it's not gonna last forever, right,

764
00:41:54,440 --> 00:41:56,839
Speaker 1: like it is. You can see how people can make

765
00:41:56,840 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 1: the case that actually, this is this wouldn't be as

766
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:01,080
Speaker 1: bad as what we would just did to the Germans.

767
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:04,839
Speaker 1: This is a kinder way to wage war without killing. Um.

768
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:09,160
Speaker 1: The the argument has made well enough that President Truman agrees, like, yeah,

769
00:42:09,200 --> 00:42:11,840
Speaker 1: this is a pretty good idea, and over the following

770
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:14,960
Speaker 1: months he allows a joint program between the CIA and

771
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:17,439
Speaker 1: the U. S Military to get developed and it's called

772
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:21,120
Speaker 1: m k Naomi. Now, the reason why it's named this

773
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:23,960
Speaker 1: is and the reason why mk Ulter is named k

774
00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:27,120
Speaker 1: Ulter is this is the way the CIA does their cryptonyms. Right.

775
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:30,120
Speaker 1: A cryptonym is like a name for a project or

776
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:33,719
Speaker 1: a department or an organization that's supposed to be impossible

777
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:36,600
Speaker 1: for you to like tell what the organization does based

778
00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:40,360
Speaker 1: on the name, right, So m K identifies a project

779
00:42:40,440 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 1: as being run by the Technical services staff. These are

780
00:42:43,160 --> 00:42:45,640
Speaker 1: the guys who developed the CIA is like wacky James

781
00:42:45,640 --> 00:42:49,040
Speaker 1: Bond devices. Naomi is a nonsense word, and they're all

782
00:42:49,080 --> 00:42:51,719
Speaker 1: supposed to be nonsense words, right. The second word MK,

783
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:54,680
Speaker 1: ultra mk whatever. The second word is just like a

784
00:42:54,760 --> 00:42:57,000
Speaker 1: random word they pick so people can have some sort

785
00:42:57,040 --> 00:42:59,360
Speaker 1: of names. So that's why the initial version of this

786
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:02,640
Speaker 1: program is called m K Naomi. So for the most part,

787
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:06,120
Speaker 1: m K Naomi focused on not just like LSD, but

788
00:43:06,200 --> 00:43:09,959
Speaker 1: making suicide drugs and assassination poisons. But they were also

789
00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 1: researching defensive bio weapons and trying to figure out, like

790
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:16,200
Speaker 1: what it would look like if the Russians carried out

791
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:19,799
Speaker 1: a biological attack on the United States. In nineteen forty nine,

792
00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:22,920
Speaker 1: they carry out a fake biological weapons attack on the

793
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:26,840
Speaker 1: Pentagon using mock bacteria. They concluded as a result of

794
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:28,800
Speaker 1: the attack that half of the people in the building

795
00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:31,200
Speaker 1: could have been infected if it had been a real attack.

796
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:35,080
Speaker 1: This is kind of seen as stirring enough that the

797
00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 1: military brass are like, well, we need to see what

798
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:41,479
Speaker 1: would happen if the Soviets attack an American city. So

799
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:44,560
Speaker 1: the CIA and the U. S Military decide to carry

800
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:48,839
Speaker 1: out an actual biological weapons attack on a US city.

801
00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 1: Now they know that in order to like disperse biological

802
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:56,040
Speaker 1: weapons through an insire tire cities population, they're going to

803
00:43:56,080 --> 00:43:59,080
Speaker 1: need like fog because there's kind of a color to

804
00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:02,280
Speaker 1: this gas they're going to be distributing throughout the city.

805
00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 1: So they decide San Francisco is the right place to

806
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 1: carry out a biological weapons attack because they can use

807
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:10,080
Speaker 1: the fog to hide what they're actually doing. It's called

808
00:44:10,120 --> 00:44:15,359
Speaker 1: Operation Sea Spray, is they're shooting clouds of aerosolized bacteria. Now,

809
00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:18,480
Speaker 1: the bacteria is supposed to be harmless. The the idea

810
00:44:18,600 --> 00:44:22,840
Speaker 1: is that you spray this harmless bacteria throughout the city

811
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:26,120
Speaker 1: and it's just enough, like it's just enough of a

812
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 1: thing that you can test people randomly throughout the city

813
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:31,120
Speaker 1: and you can see how far it's penetrated, how many

814
00:44:31,160 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: people have been exposed to it, But it's not something

815
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:37,040
Speaker 1: that's actually going to hurt them, right, That's that's the

816
00:44:37,160 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 1: idea um And the bacteria performs extremely well, and in fact,

817
00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:44,560
Speaker 1: the Pentagon concludes that all eight hundred thousand people in

818
00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:48,000
Speaker 1: San Francisco have been infected, as well as a significant

819
00:44:48,040 --> 00:44:51,440
Speaker 1: number of people in five surrounding cities. Basically the entire

820
00:44:51,520 --> 00:44:54,440
Speaker 1: Bay Area gets infected with this. The problem is that

821
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:59,000
Speaker 1: bacteria is kind of like not a predictable thing to

822
00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:02,920
Speaker 1: dose roughly a million human beings with. You get some

823
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:06,759
Speaker 1: like unanticipated consequences when you do that. And it turns

824
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:10,840
Speaker 1: out several people in the Bay Area were particularly vulnerable

825
00:45:10,920 --> 00:45:14,360
Speaker 1: to whatever bacteria they used. Eleven of them catch urinary

826
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:18,400
Speaker 1: tract infections from the poison, and one of these people dies. Um.

827
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:20,919
Speaker 1: This would be the first time, but not the last time,

828
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:24,279
Speaker 1: that the United States used biological weapons on its own

829
00:45:24,320 --> 00:45:28,479
Speaker 1: people to see what would happen, which is pretty cool. Yeah,

830
00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:32,080
Speaker 1: frankly an outcome no one could have foreseen. Yeah, it's

831
00:45:32,120 --> 00:45:35,600
Speaker 1: just we're gonna give million people a bacteria. It'll be fine,

832
00:45:35,640 --> 00:45:39,319
Speaker 1: it'll be fine. Like those million people that a certain

833
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:43,480
Speaker 1: number of them are medically fragile or compromised or whatever,

834
00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 1: and that it wouldn't be harmful to them. How could

835
00:45:46,680 --> 00:45:48,920
Speaker 1: they have How could they have known? But you possibly

836
00:45:48,960 --> 00:45:51,440
Speaker 1: have known. You can see that logic you were talking

837
00:45:51,440 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 1: about earlier, though, if like, well we know the enemy

838
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:56,760
Speaker 1: is working on biological weapons, and the enemy, the Soviets,

839
00:45:56,760 --> 00:46:00,200
Speaker 1: are these like godless monsters. They could do anything. It

840
00:46:00,200 --> 00:46:03,319
Speaker 1: would be irresponsible of us not to try. Some people

841
00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:05,080
Speaker 1: are going to get hurt, but we have to know

842
00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:07,560
Speaker 1: how vulnerable our cities are to these weapons. It's the

843
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:10,040
Speaker 1: only responsible thing to do. That way we can figure

844
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:12,279
Speaker 1: out how to defend them. Right, you can see how

845
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 1: these guys make the argument to themselves. Yeah, that's my argument.

846
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:20,000
Speaker 1: That is a rationalization that every bad person in the

847
00:46:20,120 --> 00:46:23,680
Speaker 1: history of the species has made, because every every serial

848
00:46:23,760 --> 00:46:26,400
Speaker 1: killer thought they were like cleaning up the streets of

849
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:28,600
Speaker 1: because you know, they target sex workers and it's like, well,

850
00:46:28,640 --> 00:46:30,960
Speaker 1: I'm cleaning up the streets of what these women are

851
00:46:31,520 --> 00:46:35,200
Speaker 1: befouling our men or whatever. Like they've all got this rationalization,

852
00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:37,879
Speaker 1: I guess not Jeffrey Dahmer, he was trying to create

853
00:46:37,880 --> 00:46:40,000
Speaker 1: a sex zombie. But a lot of them, in their

854
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:42,200
Speaker 1: minds they have this thing it's like, well, I'm just

855
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:43,920
Speaker 1: I'm doing to them what they would do to me

856
00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:47,239
Speaker 1: if they had the chance. Yeah, you do get with

857
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 1: the CIA and with serial killers, some of these guys

858
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:52,880
Speaker 1: are just at like monsters, Right, you do get sometimes

859
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:55,759
Speaker 1: people who just like to cause harm or have this

860
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:58,400
Speaker 1: whatever going on in their head. But like most people,

861
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:00,520
Speaker 1: and most of the people who were involved in a

862
00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:03,960
Speaker 1: horrible acts of evil like infecting an entire city with

863
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:06,920
Speaker 1: bacteria to see what happens, in order to do that

864
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:09,839
Speaker 1: have to convince themselves there's a good reason, right like

865
00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:12,759
Speaker 1: that nobody nobody wants to feel like a monster. There's

866
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:15,360
Speaker 1: a monster around the corner that's bigger than the monster

867
00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:18,000
Speaker 1: I'm being So the only thing that can fight that

868
00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:21,760
Speaker 1: monster is a monster. Uh. And again, the monster you're fighting,

869
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:24,600
Speaker 1: there's a real good chance that that monster acts like

870
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:28,560
Speaker 1: that because it is terrified of you. Because the amount

871
00:47:28,600 --> 00:47:30,960
Speaker 1: of paranoia and the Soviet Union about what the United

872
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:35,120
Speaker 1: States was doing was justice. We will we will be

873
00:47:35,200 --> 00:47:37,319
Speaker 1: chatting about the Soviet Union in a little bit and

874
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:40,359
Speaker 1: what they are actually doing because that's a fun story too.

875
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: But so operations see spray. Obviously, you and I can say, oh,

876
00:47:44,719 --> 00:47:47,080
Speaker 1: it's pretty fucked up that they did that. The CIA

877
00:47:47,160 --> 00:47:49,600
Speaker 1: and the U. S. Army consider this a massive win, right,

878
00:47:49,640 --> 00:47:52,480
Speaker 1: this works out perfectly as far as they're concerned. They

879
00:47:52,520 --> 00:47:56,719
Speaker 1: have determined how vulnerable cities are. Um, they understand a

880
00:47:56,800 --> 00:47:59,360
Speaker 1: lot more about how they could potentially, you know, defend

881
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:03,760
Speaker 1: against a bio logical attack. From their perspective, this works great. Now,

882
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:06,399
Speaker 1: the CIA is kind of doing a back seat role

883
00:48:06,440 --> 00:48:08,879
Speaker 1: in c spray. They help with the implementation, but most

884
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 1: of this is the U. S. Army UM, because the

885
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:15,719
Speaker 1: CIA is a it's a clandestined agency, right, so it's

886
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:17,920
Speaker 1: interested in this stuff, but it's never going to be

887
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:21,640
Speaker 1: deploying full scale military tax using chemical weapons. That's the

888
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:24,680
Speaker 1: kind of thing the army will do. UM. The CIA

889
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:27,840
Speaker 1: is much more interested and kind of more precise stuff

890
00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:31,160
Speaker 1: than that. And in nineteen fifty, the director of the CIA,

891
00:48:31,239 --> 00:48:33,760
Speaker 1: who at that point is a guy named Roscoe hillen Kettter,

892
00:48:34,120 --> 00:48:37,760
Speaker 1: decides that the agency needs its own dedicated team working

893
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:42,479
Speaker 1: on mind control technology. The agency launches Project Bluebird, which

894
00:48:42,480 --> 00:48:45,920
Speaker 1: the intercept describes as a quote mind control program that

895
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:50,120
Speaker 1: tested drugs on American citizens, most in federal penitentiaries or

896
00:48:50,160 --> 00:48:53,120
Speaker 1: on military basis. And it is interesting that in the

897
00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:56,360
Speaker 1: in the eyes of all of the people like doing

898
00:48:56,440 --> 00:49:00,880
Speaker 1: all of this, ship, US soldiers and UH convicted felons

899
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:04,600
Speaker 1: in federal prison are the same, right, Yeah, Like you

900
00:49:04,640 --> 00:49:06,239
Speaker 1: don't have to care about any of them. You can

901
00:49:06,280 --> 00:49:10,319
Speaker 1: do whatever to those people. Um, So that's cool. That's

902
00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:14,120
Speaker 1: that's there's nothing deeper and dark there. Now, near the

903
00:49:14,200 --> 00:49:17,040
Speaker 1: end of nineteen fifty, the CIA gets a new director

904
00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:19,479
Speaker 1: kind of right after this program starts, a guy named

905
00:49:19,520 --> 00:49:22,600
Speaker 1: General Walter Smith, and Walter Smith is the guy who

906
00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:26,000
Speaker 1: brings our old buddy Alan Dullis onto the team. Now

907
00:49:26,000 --> 00:49:28,200
Speaker 1: we've done a couple of episodes about Alan and his

908
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:31,800
Speaker 1: brother John Foster, but in brief Allen is a big

909
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:34,440
Speaker 1: fan of Carl Young, um, and so he's a big

910
00:49:34,480 --> 00:49:38,280
Speaker 1: fan of like this kind of esoteric psychology and psychiatry

911
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:41,239
Speaker 1: theory that's sort of floating around at the time. And

912
00:49:41,400 --> 00:49:44,440
Speaker 1: a lot of this is getting mixed in with early

913
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:46,960
Speaker 1: research and psychedelics because this is the period in which

914
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:51,040
Speaker 1: scientists are first kind of starting to study psychedelics. And

915
00:49:51,600 --> 00:49:54,920
Speaker 1: Alan kind of becomes convinced that there are untapped scientific

916
00:49:54,920 --> 00:49:59,560
Speaker 1: potential for manipulating minds in different hallucinogenic drugs. And the

917
00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:02,719
Speaker 1: early and eighteen fifties, the United States espionage effort in

918
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:06,319
Speaker 1: this uss are suffered a number of well publicized setbacks,

919
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:09,640
Speaker 1: and the CIA the reveal of several prominent double agents

920
00:50:09,640 --> 00:50:12,480
Speaker 1: revives these fears that had started when that cardinal kind

921
00:50:12,520 --> 00:50:16,800
Speaker 1: of UH came out of Soviet mind control. UH. Those

922
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:19,440
Speaker 1: fears turned into panic in nineteen fifty two, and an

923
00:50:19,480 --> 00:50:23,840
Speaker 1: incident described by the intercept quote in Korea, captured American

924
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:26,880
Speaker 1: pilots admitted on national radio that they'd sprayed the Korean

925
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:30,759
Speaker 1: countryside with illegal biological weapons. It was a confession so

926
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:34,480
Speaker 1: beyond the pale that the CIA blamed communists. The POWs

927
00:50:34,560 --> 00:50:38,000
Speaker 1: must have been brainwashed. The word a literal translation of

928
00:50:38,000 --> 00:50:41,720
Speaker 1: the Chinese zin now, didn't appear in English before nineteen fifty.

929
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:44,600
Speaker 1: It articulated a set of fears that had coalesced in

930
00:50:44,600 --> 00:50:47,840
Speaker 1: postwar America that a new class of chemicals could rewire

931
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:53,120
Speaker 1: and automate the human mind. So a couple of things here.

932
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:55,560
Speaker 1: Number one, we don't know if the US used chemical

933
00:50:56,560 --> 00:51:00,000
Speaker 1: or used biological weapons in the Korean War. The United States,

934
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:03,520
Speaker 1: it says that we did not. Um, these guys. The

935
00:51:03,560 --> 00:51:07,200
Speaker 1: specific confessions these pilots are making sound kind of silly.

936
00:51:07,239 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 1: They're talking about like bombs that have like compartments with

937
00:51:10,200 --> 00:51:14,440
Speaker 1: with like snakes and stuff in them. Um that it

938
00:51:14,520 --> 00:51:16,160
Speaker 1: just kind of sounds like the stuff that you might

939
00:51:16,200 --> 00:51:18,680
Speaker 1: say if you've been tortured. But the United States uses

940
00:51:18,680 --> 00:51:21,480
Speaker 1: a shipload of illegal chemical weapons in Vietnam, so it's

941
00:51:21,520 --> 00:51:24,879
Speaker 1: not impossible that we were in fact using something. Um,

942
00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 1: we'll never really know because it's you know, war crimes

943
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:32,399
Speaker 1: and such as much a spectacular leap and logic that's

944
00:51:32,440 --> 00:51:34,960
Speaker 1: being made here is the thing. Yeah, that that that

945
00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:38,120
Speaker 1: that whatever they're saying, they're saying because they've been brainwashed

946
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:41,439
Speaker 1: and not just hit a bunch brainwashed in some way

947
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:46,040
Speaker 1: that is um unheard of, Like it's it's new around land.

948
00:51:46,120 --> 00:51:50,160
Speaker 1: They were coerced or they were tricked, or they thought

949
00:51:50,200 --> 00:51:52,759
Speaker 1: they did drop. You know, that's the same thing when

950
00:51:52,800 --> 00:51:55,400
Speaker 1: recently what they were dropping last year and it came out,

951
00:51:55,400 --> 00:51:58,080
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you know, they've got actual Air Force pilots,

952
00:51:58,320 --> 00:52:01,880
Speaker 1: fighter pilots saying they saw UFOs. It's like yeah, and

953
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:04,680
Speaker 1: they're also they're full of crap. They they probably did

954
00:52:04,719 --> 00:52:08,160
Speaker 1: think they saw that, but they were wrong, or like

955
00:52:08,480 --> 00:52:12,359
Speaker 1: they're not they're not experts at the highest levels. It's like, well,

956
00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:15,000
Speaker 1: this thing moved in a way that no craft can move.

957
00:52:15,160 --> 00:52:18,759
Speaker 1: It's like, well, like, I know, you have some expertise

958
00:52:18,800 --> 00:52:21,680
Speaker 1: as a pilot, but you're also just a guy. Uh

959
00:52:21,760 --> 00:52:24,200
Speaker 1: So these guys may have thought they were dropping chemicals,

960
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:26,520
Speaker 1: So they may have been dropping some sort of defoliant

961
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 1: or something that they thought was I don't know, or

962
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:30,719
Speaker 1: could they could have been a rumor that they heard

963
00:52:30,800 --> 00:52:33,760
Speaker 1: somebody else was dropping it. It's always this stuff about

964
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:37,440
Speaker 1: like people's minds just aren't This is the thing nobody

965
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:40,399
Speaker 1: actually likes to think about, Like our brains aren't very

966
00:52:40,440 --> 00:52:43,600
Speaker 1: good at knowing what's happening in the world. Um, Like,

967
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:46,560
Speaker 1: it is very easy to trick us. It is very

968
00:52:46,640 --> 00:52:50,040
Speaker 1: easy for people to like convince themselves of things. It's

969
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:52,279
Speaker 1: very easy all sorts of things, like if you're a

970
00:52:52,280 --> 00:52:56,400
Speaker 1: fucking pilot, right, you're taking in more oxygen than normal

971
00:52:56,480 --> 00:52:58,960
Speaker 1: because of like the way in which you have to

972
00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:01,360
Speaker 1: like have oh to flooded into you so that you

973
00:53:01,400 --> 00:53:04,320
Speaker 1: can survive at that kind of altitude. Um all sorts

974
00:53:04,320 --> 00:53:07,960
Speaker 1: of stuff about flying is mind altering, including g forces

975
00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:10,760
Speaker 1: like yeah, who knows what's going on in their fucking heads.

976
00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:16,640
Speaker 1: And these guys, yes, soldiers also full of shit. They

977
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:20,560
Speaker 1: they embellish their war stories. And this is not like

978
00:53:20,680 --> 00:53:22,879
Speaker 1: I would probably do it too. It's a thing that's

979
00:53:22,920 --> 00:53:26,439
Speaker 1: a part of the culture yeah, but yeah. So much

980
00:53:26,480 --> 00:53:30,080
Speaker 1: of this mania is stoked by an American journalist named

981
00:53:30,200 --> 00:53:33,680
Speaker 1: Edward Hunter. And Hunter is not just a guy writing.

982
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:35,759
Speaker 1: He's the guy who, like he writes an article for

983
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:38,000
Speaker 1: the Miami News that is the first time the word

984
00:53:38,040 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 1: brainwashing is used in English, Like, Edward Hunter brings that

985
00:53:41,920 --> 00:53:45,320
Speaker 1: term when he's talking about these pilots to the United States.

986
00:53:45,680 --> 00:53:51,279
Speaker 1: So he's like a working journalist. He's also a contractor

987
00:53:51,320 --> 00:53:54,200
Speaker 1: for the CIA Office of Policy Coordination and a rabbit

988
00:53:54,280 --> 00:53:57,840
Speaker 1: anti communist. So when he introduces this stuff to the

989
00:53:57,920 --> 00:53:59,959
Speaker 1: United States, he's not doing it just because he believe

990
00:54:00,160 --> 00:54:02,239
Speaker 1: it to be true. He is a guy working for

991
00:54:02,280 --> 00:54:04,600
Speaker 1: the CIA who sees this in like the best interest

992
00:54:04,680 --> 00:54:09,160
Speaker 1: of the agency. Um and Kinser writes like a longer

993
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:12,560
Speaker 1: article for a newspaper called The New Leader, which is

994
00:54:12,600 --> 00:54:15,719
Speaker 1: also funded by the CIA. The CIA is funding a

995
00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:18,279
Speaker 1: shipload of newspapers at this time, including a lot of

996
00:54:18,360 --> 00:54:21,000
Speaker 1: left wing ones. Um and then he winds up writing

997
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:23,759
Speaker 1: a book because the panic he ignites such a big

998
00:54:23,760 --> 00:54:27,080
Speaker 1: deal called brainwashing in Red China. And in this book

999
00:54:27,080 --> 00:54:30,320
Speaker 1: he tells Americans they need to prepare for quote, psychological

1000
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:34,200
Speaker 1: warfare on a scale incalculably more immense than any militarist

1001
00:54:34,280 --> 00:54:38,400
Speaker 1: of the past has ever imagined. He becomes like, because

1002
00:54:38,440 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 1: you know, once you once you're the first guy to

1003
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:43,600
Speaker 1: write about a thing that like freaks Americans out, then

1004
00:54:43,640 --> 00:54:45,359
Speaker 1: you get to be the expert on it, and all

1005
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:48,319
Speaker 1: of like the big time entertainment media people will start

1006
00:54:48,360 --> 00:54:50,719
Speaker 1: having you on their shows over and over again, which

1007
00:54:50,760 --> 00:54:53,400
Speaker 1: helps you sell your books and brings in more money.

1008
00:54:53,560 --> 00:54:57,160
Speaker 1: And that's what Hunter winds up being for brainwashing right. Um,

1009
00:54:57,760 --> 00:55:00,319
Speaker 1: eveny thing you cannot do at this point is go

1010
00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:04,040
Speaker 1: back on it. That is your brand. Like, the only

1011
00:55:04,120 --> 00:55:08,120
Speaker 1: thing you can do is double down forever. Yeah, that's

1012
00:55:08,120 --> 00:55:11,480
Speaker 1: your fucking meal ticket. Um. So this works well enough

1013
00:55:11,520 --> 00:55:15,399
Speaker 1: that the House Committee on American Activities brings him up. Um.

1014
00:55:15,440 --> 00:55:19,319
Speaker 1: He tells them that the Reds have specialists available on

1015
00:55:19,360 --> 00:55:22,640
Speaker 1: their brainwashing panels. He tells them they are preparing psychic

1016
00:55:22,640 --> 00:55:25,440
Speaker 1: attacks to subjugate quote, the people and the soil and

1017
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 1: the resources of the United States, and will use the

1018
00:55:28,719 --> 00:55:32,279
Speaker 1: psychic power to quote turn Americans into subjects of a

1019
00:55:32,320 --> 00:55:34,480
Speaker 1: new world order for the benefit of a mad little

1020
00:55:34,520 --> 00:55:41,080
Speaker 1: knot of despots in the Kremlin. Now pull pull that all, right, completely, well,

1021
00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:43,799
Speaker 1: most of that completely out of his ass asked, we're

1022
00:55:43,800 --> 00:55:48,359
Speaker 1: gonna talk about the Soviets are trying some weird psychic shit. Um,

1023
00:55:48,400 --> 00:55:50,560
Speaker 1: obviously it doesn't work, but yeah, we'll get to that

1024
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:54,440
Speaker 1: in a little bit. So Project Bluebird and Edwin Hunters

1025
00:55:54,520 --> 00:55:57,920
Speaker 1: or Mr Hunters like bullshit leads to the creation basically

1026
00:55:58,200 --> 00:56:01,080
Speaker 1: the kind of panic over this brings more money into

1027
00:56:01,120 --> 00:56:04,680
Speaker 1: the CIA and more money behind Project Bluebird. And one

1028
00:56:04,719 --> 00:56:06,839
Speaker 1: of the major things that the CIA uses with this

1029
00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:09,840
Speaker 1: new funding is they start creating the very first of

1030
00:56:09,880 --> 00:56:12,160
Speaker 1: what are what come to be called black sites. Right,

1031
00:56:12,480 --> 00:56:16,040
Speaker 1: These are secret illegal prisons where prisoners can be tortured.

1032
00:56:16,080 --> 00:56:19,920
Speaker 1: And these prisoners are generally people either spies, Russian spies

1033
00:56:19,960 --> 00:56:22,960
Speaker 1: who are arrested, or just people the CIA says are

1034
00:56:23,040 --> 00:56:26,480
Speaker 1: probably Russian spies. There's no due process here, right, So

1035
00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:29,000
Speaker 1: a lot of times they're just like taking people and

1036
00:56:29,160 --> 00:56:31,479
Speaker 1: they've got these people, they can't ever let them out.

1037
00:56:31,560 --> 00:56:34,440
Speaker 1: They're going to kill all of them. And so what

1038
00:56:34,520 --> 00:56:37,080
Speaker 1: they see is what we have X thousand number of

1039
00:56:37,080 --> 00:56:39,360
Speaker 1: people all around the world. We can do whatever we

1040
00:56:39,400 --> 00:56:41,840
Speaker 1: want to them. You guys need to test drugs on people,

1041
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:46,200
Speaker 1: Here's where you do it. Now, Jason, that's a pretty

1042
00:56:46,200 --> 00:56:49,160
Speaker 1: fucked up thing to do, UM, and you're not going

1043
00:56:49,200 --> 00:56:51,480
Speaker 1: to find a whole lot of people who are capable

1044
00:56:51,520 --> 00:56:54,640
Speaker 1: of running a black site prison that tortures people to

1045
00:56:54,680 --> 00:56:58,640
Speaker 1: death with hallucinogens. But thankfully the CIA had an old

1046
00:56:58,680 --> 00:57:01,040
Speaker 1: bench of guys who were ready to help them, and

1047
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:07,680
Speaker 1: those guys were Nazis. So they hire General Walter Schreiber.

1048
00:57:07,760 --> 00:57:10,680
Speaker 1: And Schreiber is not a again, he's a general. He

1049
00:57:10,719 --> 00:57:13,319
Speaker 1: had been the surgeon general of the Third Reich, where

1050
00:57:13,320 --> 00:57:17,040
Speaker 1: he had masterminded experiments and multiple concentration in death camps,

1051
00:57:17,240 --> 00:57:20,320
Speaker 1: including one where death camp inmates were infected with gang

1052
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:22,920
Speaker 1: green and cut open so the progress of the disease

1053
00:57:22,920 --> 00:57:26,160
Speaker 1: on their bones could be watched. Now, Schreiber had been

1054
00:57:26,240 --> 00:57:28,960
Speaker 1: arrested by the Soviets for obvious reasons, and he had

1055
00:57:29,000 --> 00:57:32,960
Speaker 1: been briefly imprisoned, but they had eventually agreed, probably in

1056
00:57:33,000 --> 00:57:35,600
Speaker 1: their own kind of project paper clip thing, to let

1057
00:57:35,680 --> 00:57:39,480
Speaker 1: him become a professor in East Berlin UM. But he escapes,

1058
00:57:39,520 --> 00:57:41,920
Speaker 1: he gets away to the other the American side of

1059
00:57:41,920 --> 00:57:44,760
Speaker 1: Berlin UH and winds up in the Army's hands. And

1060
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:46,760
Speaker 1: when the U. S. Army confirms, oh, we've got the

1061
00:57:47,160 --> 00:57:50,840
Speaker 1: third Reich's former surgeon general. Rather than be like, this

1062
00:57:50,880 --> 00:57:54,280
Speaker 1: guy should probably go to prison, right, you know, maybe

1063
00:57:54,360 --> 00:57:56,880
Speaker 1: we should, maybe we should deal with this man, they

1064
00:57:56,920 --> 00:57:59,760
Speaker 1: sent him to one of the CIA's Project Bluebird black

1065
00:57:59,800 --> 00:58:02,120
Speaker 1: Side's because they're like, well, this guy is great at

1066
00:58:02,120 --> 00:58:05,080
Speaker 1: the job that we're already starting to do. Um. I

1067
00:58:05,160 --> 00:58:08,480
Speaker 1: think that's a great example of where the Americans said, Look,

1068
00:58:09,200 --> 00:58:13,680
Speaker 1: the Soviets tried to cancel this guy because of his views,

1069
00:58:14,320 --> 00:58:19,000
Speaker 1: and we don't believe in that. It's like, can you

1070
00:58:19,040 --> 00:58:23,320
Speaker 1: should have a chance to redeem yourself by doing the

1071
00:58:23,360 --> 00:58:26,680
Speaker 1: exact same thing for us. It's like Louis c k

1072
00:58:26,920 --> 00:58:29,720
Speaker 1: getting to tour again. Right. That's where Walter Schreiber is.

1073
00:58:29,800 --> 00:58:32,280
Speaker 1: You know, he has his little he gets canceled by

1074
00:58:32,320 --> 00:58:35,280
Speaker 1: the woke mob for running some death camps. But now

1075
00:58:35,320 --> 00:58:38,800
Speaker 1: he's back at Madison Square garden Um, which is a

1076
00:58:38,920 --> 00:58:42,360
Speaker 1: CIA black site on the outskirts of West Berlin. So

1077
00:58:42,840 --> 00:58:45,000
Speaker 1: he helps them set up a bunch of secret black

1078
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:48,760
Speaker 1: sites all across western Europe where CIA agents can torture

1079
00:58:48,760 --> 00:58:51,320
Speaker 1: without being observed. And I'm gonna quote from Poisoner in

1080
00:58:51,400 --> 00:58:54,800
Speaker 1: Chief here. This set a precedent that marked a breakthrough

1081
00:58:54,800 --> 00:58:57,920
Speaker 1: for the CIA. By opening prisons, the agency established its

1082
00:58:58,040 --> 00:59:01,040
Speaker 1: right not only to detain an imprisoned people in other countries,

1083
00:59:01,280 --> 00:59:03,800
Speaker 1: but to interrogate them harshly while they were in custody

1084
00:59:03,800 --> 00:59:07,120
Speaker 1: without regard for US law. So successful was this network

1085
00:59:07,160 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 1: of prisons in West Germany that the CIA duplicated it

1086
00:59:10,120 --> 00:59:14,480
Speaker 1: in Japan. Their Bluebird interrogation teams injected captured North Korean

1087
00:59:14,520 --> 00:59:18,240
Speaker 1: soldiers with drugs including sodium amiltal, a depressant that can

1088
00:59:18,280 --> 00:59:22,160
Speaker 1: have hypnotic effects, and with three potent stimulants bids adrine,

1089
00:59:22,160 --> 00:59:25,240
Speaker 1: which affects the central nervous system, coramine, which acts on

1090
00:59:25,280 --> 00:59:28,360
Speaker 1: the lungs, and picro toxin, a convulsant that can cause

1091
00:59:28,360 --> 00:59:31,800
Speaker 1: seizures and respiratory paralysis. While they were in the weakened

1092
00:59:31,800 --> 00:59:34,760
Speaker 1: state of transition between the effects of depressants and stimulants,

1093
00:59:35,000 --> 00:59:39,800
Speaker 1: CIA experimenters subjected them to hypnosis, electroshock, and debilitating heat.

1094
00:59:40,120 --> 00:59:43,120
Speaker 1: Their goal, according to one report, was to quote induce

1095
00:59:43,280 --> 00:59:47,560
Speaker 1: violent cathartic reactions, alternatively putting subjects to sleep then waking

1096
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:50,240
Speaker 1: them up until they were sufficiently confused to be coerced

1097
00:59:50,360 --> 00:59:55,440
Speaker 1: into a living an experience from their past now I

1098
00:59:55,760 --> 00:59:59,920
Speaker 1: don't think that's very ethical behavior. Um, but you know

1099
01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:05,040
Speaker 1: what is ethical, Jason? Is this a transition to an

1100
01:00:05,040 --> 01:00:07,880
Speaker 1: add this this is a transition to an ad break, Jason,

1101
01:00:08,200 --> 01:00:11,800
Speaker 1: because the sponsors of this podcast, will they give you

1102
01:00:11,920 --> 01:00:15,000
Speaker 1: Ben's a Drene? Yes, but you're gonna know that you're

1103
01:00:15,000 --> 01:00:17,560
Speaker 1: getting pure speed if you buy Ben's a Dren from them.

1104
01:00:17,640 --> 01:00:19,520
Speaker 1: You know they're not gonna dose you like you're some

1105
01:00:19,640 --> 01:00:35,680
Speaker 1: North Korean war captive. UM, so enjoy bens Adrine. We're back. Ah,

1106
01:00:36,040 --> 01:00:39,120
Speaker 1: what a good time. We're talking about Project Bluebird. Now.

1107
01:00:39,720 --> 01:00:44,240
Speaker 1: Very briefly the interject, we both realized that Robert is

1108
01:00:44,480 --> 01:00:48,400
Speaker 1: skipping across incidents that each one could be its own book.

1109
01:00:49,600 --> 01:00:55,320
Speaker 1: Each one's likes a prison they ran for a long

1110
01:00:55,360 --> 01:00:57,120
Speaker 1: period of time and the things that went there, and

1111
01:00:57,120 --> 01:00:59,320
Speaker 1: he has to briefly summarize it because that's all just

1112
01:01:00,200 --> 01:01:03,240
Speaker 1: the part of it's just one block in the tower

1113
01:01:03,360 --> 01:01:08,280
Speaker 1: of of of mk Ultra. They're just getting started here. Yeah,

1114
01:01:08,800 --> 01:01:12,480
Speaker 1: this is this was a lot. We are doing our

1115
01:01:12,520 --> 01:01:15,240
Speaker 1: best to do it justice. But this is a sprawling

1116
01:01:15,480 --> 01:01:18,080
Speaker 1: thing that went on for how long? Um, this is

1117
01:01:18,120 --> 01:01:21,800
Speaker 1: like close to twenty years. Yeah, we're talking about um,

1118
01:01:21,920 --> 01:01:25,240
Speaker 1: it's we're simultaneously going very long and also hopping from

1119
01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:29,000
Speaker 1: horror to horror almost too quickly to fully absorb it. Yeah,

1120
01:01:29,040 --> 01:01:32,520
Speaker 1: to really let this stuff hit um. And it's it's

1121
01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:36,919
Speaker 1: like they don't find anything like Project Bluebird. They don't

1122
01:01:36,960 --> 01:01:39,200
Speaker 1: find a truth serum. They have what they think are

1123
01:01:39,240 --> 01:01:42,560
Speaker 1: like intriguing results, but they don't find ways to like

1124
01:01:42,960 --> 01:01:46,120
Speaker 1: actually force people to give up useful information. None of

1125
01:01:46,160 --> 01:01:49,440
Speaker 1: this works well, but they all remain convinced that like

1126
01:01:49,560 --> 01:01:53,440
Speaker 1: it's building to something, and the Project Bluebird experiments eventually

1127
01:01:54,120 --> 01:01:57,080
Speaker 1: split off into Project Artichoke, which is like an even

1128
01:01:57,160 --> 01:02:01,480
Speaker 1: more well funded and elaborate like program to attempt to

1129
01:02:01,520 --> 01:02:04,400
Speaker 1: find a perfect truth serum. One of the guys in

1130
01:02:04,480 --> 01:02:08,360
Speaker 1: charge of Project Artichoke is Morse Alan. He's a CIA

1131
01:02:08,320 --> 01:02:11,520
Speaker 1: agent who is obsessed with mind control, and he's pretty

1132
01:02:11,520 --> 01:02:14,800
Speaker 1: good friends with Alan Dulles. In the Night. In nineteen fifty,

1133
01:02:14,840 --> 01:02:17,520
Speaker 1: he had advocated for the creation of a quote electro

1134
01:02:17,680 --> 01:02:21,640
Speaker 1: sleep machine that could force people into a trance um.

1135
01:02:21,680 --> 01:02:25,040
Speaker 1: It was basically like shocking people into like a half

1136
01:02:25,120 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 1: sleep trance so that you could wipe out their memories.

1137
01:02:27,920 --> 01:02:29,960
Speaker 1: No one knew if this would be possible, but this

1138
01:02:30,040 --> 01:02:32,680
Speaker 1: was like the only thing Morse Allen wanted to see

1139
01:02:32,680 --> 01:02:35,240
Speaker 1: in the world. In nineteen fifty two, he was part

1140
01:02:35,240 --> 01:02:37,640
Speaker 1: of a three man team that traveled to Villas Schuster

1141
01:02:37,760 --> 01:02:41,600
Speaker 1: and West Germany to test quote dangerous combinations of drugs

1142
01:02:41,600 --> 01:02:45,919
Speaker 1: such as benzadrine and penthetol natrium on Russian captives under

1143
01:02:45,960 --> 01:02:49,600
Speaker 1: a research protocol that specified disposal of the body is

1144
01:02:49,640 --> 01:02:52,720
Speaker 1: not a problem. Um because again that we don't know

1145
01:02:52,760 --> 01:02:54,520
Speaker 1: how many people they're testing this on, we don't know

1146
01:02:54,520 --> 01:02:56,960
Speaker 1: how many people they're killing. But one thing the CIA,

1147
01:02:57,200 --> 01:02:59,360
Speaker 1: one of the things that they're saying about these black

1148
01:02:59,360 --> 01:03:02,160
Speaker 1: sites is don't worry. All of these people were testing

1149
01:03:02,160 --> 01:03:04,600
Speaker 1: on are going to die, and it's it's not a problem.

1150
01:03:04,640 --> 01:03:07,919
Speaker 1: We'll figure out how to get rid of them for you. Now. Incidentally,

1151
01:03:07,960 --> 01:03:13,280
Speaker 1: if you watch movies, thrillers, even cartoons from the fifties, sixties, seventies,

1152
01:03:13,760 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff like hypnosis, hypnosis machines. These

1153
01:03:18,160 --> 01:03:21,920
Speaker 1: are tropes in those movies from that era that I

1154
01:03:21,960 --> 01:03:25,720
Speaker 1: don't think people realized that was based on this. It

1155
01:03:25,800 --> 01:03:28,320
Speaker 1: was based on what came out in the government's actual

1156
01:03:28,320 --> 01:03:31,400
Speaker 1: attempts to make these things. Yeah, there was and these

1157
01:03:31,480 --> 01:03:33,320
Speaker 1: again one of the things you have to keep in

1158
01:03:33,320 --> 01:03:35,240
Speaker 1: your head while you're reading about all this. There were

1159
01:03:35,240 --> 01:03:39,240
Speaker 1: a shipload of highly trained people with like doctorates and

1160
01:03:39,640 --> 01:03:42,480
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in funding behind them, who truly believed

1161
01:03:42,520 --> 01:03:46,200
Speaker 1: mind control poisons were a real thing. Um that that

1162
01:03:46,200 --> 01:03:47,760
Speaker 1: that this was a thing that they were going to

1163
01:03:47,800 --> 01:03:49,919
Speaker 1: figure out how to do. They would not have put

1164
01:03:50,000 --> 01:03:52,120
Speaker 1: all of this work into it if they didn't think

1165
01:03:52,160 --> 01:03:55,760
Speaker 1: they could really do it. Um. Now, obviously, all of

1166
01:03:55,760 --> 01:03:58,080
Speaker 1: the experiments they're doing this is a direct violation of

1167
01:03:58,120 --> 01:04:01,880
Speaker 1: what's called the Nuremberg Code, which acquired that voluntary, well

1168
01:04:01,960 --> 01:04:06,000
Speaker 1: informed consent in a legal capacity is a necessary prerequisite

1169
01:04:06,000 --> 01:04:09,200
Speaker 1: for experimental patients. Right, you cannot as a result of

1170
01:04:09,240 --> 01:04:12,040
Speaker 1: how bad, like all of the horrible experiments the Nazis

1171
01:04:12,080 --> 01:04:15,880
Speaker 1: do in concentration camps, we make we like the international

1172
01:04:15,880 --> 01:04:18,520
Speaker 1: community writes out a thing being like this is something

1173
01:04:18,560 --> 01:04:22,960
Speaker 1: you cannot do, and we after we write the Nuremberg Code,

1174
01:04:22,960 --> 01:04:26,560
Speaker 1: we use it to convict and execute seven Nazi scientists.

1175
01:04:26,600 --> 01:04:29,640
Speaker 1: But we never incorporated into US law. Right, it's never

1176
01:04:29,720 --> 01:04:33,160
Speaker 1: actually illegal for the United States to violate the Nuremberg Code.

1177
01:04:33,360 --> 01:04:36,800
Speaker 1: We prosecute and kill people under it, but We're also like, well,

1178
01:04:36,800 --> 01:04:39,520
Speaker 1: why would we We're not going to handicap ourselves by

1179
01:04:39,560 --> 01:04:43,320
Speaker 1: signing onto that ship. That's not a good idea, um,

1180
01:04:43,680 --> 01:04:47,640
Speaker 1: because the Russians are probably breaking up, So sure of course. Yeah,

1181
01:04:48,520 --> 01:04:52,919
Speaker 1: so we've got it too, um, Which Yeah, anyway, it's

1182
01:04:53,000 --> 01:04:55,680
Speaker 1: it's cool how all of that works, and may have

1183
01:04:55,920 --> 01:04:58,560
Speaker 1: part of their willingness to break the Nuremberg Law and

1184
01:04:58,600 --> 01:05:00,480
Speaker 1: may have been all of the Nazis that they hired.

1185
01:05:00,520 --> 01:05:02,640
Speaker 1: You do have to keep that in mind too, which

1186
01:05:02,640 --> 01:05:06,040
Speaker 1: is also a thing that's being done on both sides. Um.

1187
01:05:06,080 --> 01:05:09,120
Speaker 1: But yeah, Internally, the need to replicate Nazi war crimes

1188
01:05:09,200 --> 01:05:13,080
Speaker 1: using Nazi scientists was always justified by the incredible danger

1189
01:05:13,120 --> 01:05:16,680
Speaker 1: of Russian mind control and brainwashing technology, which the CIA

1190
01:05:16,760 --> 01:05:19,800
Speaker 1: believed was advancing at a rapid rate. In a speech

1191
01:05:19,840 --> 01:05:23,760
Speaker 1: at Princeton University in early nineteen fifty three, Alan Dules

1192
01:05:23,800 --> 01:05:27,040
Speaker 1: warned that Communist spies were everywhere and so well trained

1193
01:05:27,040 --> 01:05:29,680
Speaker 1: and equipped that they could turn an American mind into

1194
01:05:29,760 --> 01:05:32,960
Speaker 1: quote a phonograph playing a disc put on its spindle

1195
01:05:33,040 --> 01:05:39,280
Speaker 1: by an outside genius. Um. That's that's that's that's Alan.

1196
01:05:40,120 --> 01:05:44,360
Speaker 1: There's a bit of projection there, because they themselves would love,

1197
01:05:45,120 --> 01:05:48,200
Speaker 1: of course, or a chemical or a practice or a

1198
01:05:48,240 --> 01:05:50,479
Speaker 1: protocol that would allow them to do that with other

1199
01:05:50,560 --> 01:05:52,959
Speaker 1: uman beings, to just wind them up and make them

1200
01:05:53,000 --> 01:05:56,640
Speaker 1: say the words come out of this guy's mouth, this politician,

1201
01:05:56,680 --> 01:05:59,880
Speaker 1: this Central American politician. Whatever we dose the with the

1202
01:06:00,120 --> 01:06:03,160
Speaker 1: this injection, and he says whatever we tell him to say,

1203
01:06:03,240 --> 01:06:06,080
Speaker 1: and we just control him like a puppet. So the

1204
01:06:06,640 --> 01:06:09,800
Speaker 1: fear of the bad guys having that technology is a

1205
01:06:09,800 --> 01:06:14,760
Speaker 1: little bit of them revealing their own wishes there. Yeah,

1206
01:06:14,840 --> 01:06:18,000
Speaker 1: and it's um, it's it's kind of an open question

1207
01:06:18,040 --> 01:06:22,160
Speaker 1: as to how much of Alan Dullis believes everything that

1208
01:06:22,200 --> 01:06:24,480
Speaker 1: he's saying, that the Soviets are actually at advance, and

1209
01:06:24,520 --> 01:06:26,000
Speaker 1: how much of it is that, well, this is just

1210
01:06:26,080 --> 01:06:27,840
Speaker 1: something I want and the way to get it is

1211
01:06:27,880 --> 01:06:30,480
Speaker 1: to claim that the Soviets are making it. And for

1212
01:06:30,640 --> 01:06:33,080
Speaker 1: those of you are new to the show, relatively new.

1213
01:06:33,120 --> 01:06:35,840
Speaker 1: But I was on the episode on The Dullest Brothers.

1214
01:06:35,960 --> 01:06:38,320
Speaker 1: We did two parts, part two parter three parts. I

1215
01:06:38,320 --> 01:06:40,360
Speaker 1: think it's a three partner. There was a lot to

1216
01:06:40,400 --> 01:06:43,400
Speaker 1: say about those cool dudes, but there's two Those two men.

1217
01:06:43,480 --> 01:06:45,200
Speaker 1: The point of that episode and why I wanted to

1218
01:06:45,200 --> 01:06:47,560
Speaker 1: be on are two of the most influential people in

1219
01:06:47,600 --> 01:06:50,560
Speaker 1: the history of the modern world, and most people don't.

1220
01:06:50,880 --> 01:06:53,640
Speaker 1: If you know their names, you only know it in passing,

1221
01:06:53,680 --> 01:06:56,640
Speaker 1: like you briefly heard it in history class or whatever.

1222
01:06:57,200 --> 01:07:00,640
Speaker 1: The Dullest Brothers were a couple of the Gitexts of

1223
01:07:00,680 --> 01:07:03,520
Speaker 1: the world as it exists today. Like and it's just

1224
01:07:03,640 --> 01:07:06,440
Speaker 1: one piece of it. Yeah, and and everything Alan is

1225
01:07:06,480 --> 01:07:09,240
Speaker 1: doing here because Alan is not on on the ground

1226
01:07:09,280 --> 01:07:11,840
Speaker 1: guy for m k Ultra. He's not like signing off

1227
01:07:11,880 --> 01:07:15,280
Speaker 1: on specific programs. He's not really even signing off on

1228
01:07:15,360 --> 01:07:19,200
Speaker 1: specific torture prisons. He's just kind of generally saying, keep

1229
01:07:19,200 --> 01:07:21,400
Speaker 1: working on this. I'll make sure you keep getting money,

1230
01:07:21,480 --> 01:07:23,160
Speaker 1: keep working on this. And then every now and then

1231
01:07:23,160 --> 01:07:26,240
Speaker 1: he'll read like a paper um, because again he's like,

1232
01:07:26,360 --> 01:07:30,000
Speaker 1: he's like the he's he's the he's not the he's

1233
01:07:30,040 --> 01:07:32,840
Speaker 1: not the execution man, right, he's the idea guy. You know,

1234
01:07:32,920 --> 01:07:36,160
Speaker 1: he's the he's the big picture sort of fellow. UM.

1235
01:07:36,240 --> 01:07:37,800
Speaker 1: And so when we talk about the question of like

1236
01:07:37,880 --> 01:07:40,560
Speaker 1: does he believe the Soviets are on the verge of

1237
01:07:40,560 --> 01:07:42,960
Speaker 1: all this? Um, I think one thing that's useful to

1238
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:45,840
Speaker 1: ask is, like, what were the Soviets doing at the

1239
01:07:45,880 --> 01:07:49,840
Speaker 1: same time, like, what actual mind control research does the

1240
01:07:49,880 --> 01:07:53,240
Speaker 1: Soviet Union involve and is there any way in which

1241
01:07:53,240 --> 01:07:55,360
Speaker 1: it could justify all of the horror of the CIA

1242
01:07:55,520 --> 01:07:58,800
Speaker 1: does Now, it's true that the Soviet Union had experimented

1243
01:07:58,840 --> 01:08:01,800
Speaker 1: with mind control. Um, it's possible they put more than

1244
01:08:01,840 --> 01:08:05,000
Speaker 1: a billion dollars into the research, although that is hard

1245
01:08:05,080 --> 01:08:08,560
Speaker 1: to say accurately. Um. But you know, the CIA, as

1246
01:08:08,600 --> 01:08:10,600
Speaker 1: we've started talking about and we'll be talking about, is

1247
01:08:10,600 --> 01:08:14,400
Speaker 1: obsessively focused on chemicals. Right. The CIA believes there is

1248
01:08:14,440 --> 01:08:17,720
Speaker 1: a specific physical drug that if we figure out how

1249
01:08:17,720 --> 01:08:19,479
Speaker 1: to dose it right, or we figure out how to

1250
01:08:19,520 --> 01:08:22,680
Speaker 1: administer it right, it will allow us to brainwash and

1251
01:08:22,720 --> 01:08:27,400
Speaker 1: reprogram human beings. The Soviets don't really spend much time

1252
01:08:27,439 --> 01:08:30,040
Speaker 1: on this kind of thing. Instead, they focus on what

1253
01:08:30,080 --> 01:08:34,920
Speaker 1: we might be comparatively called cheerful nonsense. Um. A common

1254
01:08:34,960 --> 01:08:37,320
Speaker 1: belief early in the Soviet Union is that and this

1255
01:08:37,360 --> 01:08:40,800
Speaker 1: is stuff that starts out in like nineteen nineteen Soviet scientists.

1256
01:08:41,360 --> 01:08:44,000
Speaker 1: A number of them think that there's there's this idea

1257
01:08:44,080 --> 01:08:47,599
Speaker 1: that thoughts are like a physical thing, right, Like thoughts

1258
01:08:47,600 --> 01:08:51,400
Speaker 1: are a kind of like there's a there's like electrical

1259
01:08:51,439 --> 01:08:53,479
Speaker 1: waves and stuff, and this is true in your brain.

1260
01:08:54,000 --> 01:08:56,920
Speaker 1: And so kind of from that, there's this idea that

1261
01:08:57,040 --> 01:09:00,160
Speaker 1: since thoughts are something physical that can be detect did

1262
01:09:00,200 --> 01:09:03,600
Speaker 1: and monitored, they can probably be altered to right, and

1263
01:09:03,640 --> 01:09:06,519
Speaker 1: maybe you can change the way people think by changing

1264
01:09:06,560 --> 01:09:11,040
Speaker 1: the waves in their brain. Um. And they kind of

1265
01:09:11,080 --> 01:09:14,360
Speaker 1: take from this that like, well, there's there's probably like

1266
01:09:14,479 --> 01:09:18,160
Speaker 1: people who can tap into those waves and alter thoughts.

1267
01:09:18,400 --> 01:09:20,240
Speaker 1: And this kind of leads the Soviet Union to put

1268
01:09:20,280 --> 01:09:24,920
Speaker 1: a shipload of money into psychic research. Now, the earliest

1269
01:09:25,479 --> 01:09:29,280
Speaker 1: like examples of this are animal research, which we're like,

1270
01:09:29,520 --> 01:09:33,599
Speaker 1: so there's an animal research program conducted in the earliest

1271
01:09:33,680 --> 01:09:35,599
Speaker 1: years of the U s SR by a guy named

1272
01:09:35,680 --> 01:09:39,439
Speaker 1: Vladimir Durov, and Durov claims that he's figured out how

1273
01:09:39,479 --> 01:09:42,200
Speaker 1: to carry out He's carry out successful tests of telepathy

1274
01:09:42,240 --> 01:09:44,680
Speaker 1: on animals. Right, Durov claims, I figured out how to

1275
01:09:44,720 --> 01:09:47,320
Speaker 1: manipulate the minds of animals. Now, Jason, you want to

1276
01:09:47,360 --> 01:09:51,040
Speaker 1: guess what Durov's job prior to being a Soviet psychic

1277
01:09:51,120 --> 01:09:59,760
Speaker 1: scientist was. Circus? Yeah, he's a circus clown. Um. Yeah,

1278
01:09:59,800 --> 01:10:05,320
Speaker 1: so circus clown Vladimir Durov becomes the kind of the

1279
01:10:05,400 --> 01:10:09,640
Speaker 1: center of the early Soviet mind control experiments. Did he

1280
01:10:09,680 --> 01:10:11,519
Speaker 1: really work in a circustance, yes, he says he No,

1281
01:10:11,640 --> 01:10:14,800
Speaker 1: he's a circus clown. Jason, Oh, I thought you actually knew.

1282
01:10:14,800 --> 01:10:18,200
Speaker 1: Were you just guessing? I was guessing because yeah, he's

1283
01:10:17,760 --> 01:10:20,960
Speaker 1: a Soviet circus and a guy. I thought he was

1284
01:10:21,040 --> 01:10:24,000
Speaker 1: like an animal, like an elephant trainer guy. And he thought, Hey,

1285
01:10:24,040 --> 01:10:27,720
Speaker 1: I've mastered I'm I'm the tiger whisperer. Look he has

1286
01:10:27,760 --> 01:10:30,080
Speaker 1: a circuit. Now. I think he's the kind of circus

1287
01:10:30,120 --> 01:10:32,360
Speaker 1: clown who is working with animals, right, because like that,

1288
01:10:32,479 --> 01:10:34,559
Speaker 1: like rodeo clowns, a big part of their job is

1289
01:10:34,600 --> 01:10:39,000
Speaker 1: distracting animals. Um, but he's he's a clown, like that's

1290
01:10:39,040 --> 01:10:43,439
Speaker 1: his literal, his actual cvous circus clown. And the reason

1291
01:10:43,520 --> 01:10:46,920
Speaker 1: I came to mind is because, like the Tiger King guy,

1292
01:10:47,040 --> 01:10:49,439
Speaker 1: like anybody who thinks they can talk to animals. A

1293
01:10:49,520 --> 01:10:53,280
Speaker 1: few people seeing the Tiger King documentary, tiger people are

1294
01:10:53,320 --> 01:10:56,719
Speaker 1: are all nuts. Yeah, they're crazy, They're lunatics, dangerous people.

1295
01:10:56,920 --> 01:10:59,799
Speaker 1: There's a specific type of crazy that comes with working

1296
01:10:59,840 --> 01:11:02,519
Speaker 1: with big, dangerous animals. And anybody who goes out and

1297
01:11:02,600 --> 01:11:05,759
Speaker 1: like they start to market themselves as I can control

1298
01:11:05,840 --> 01:11:07,920
Speaker 1: animals like I can talk to them, or that guy

1299
01:11:07,960 --> 01:11:09,519
Speaker 1: that got eaten by the bears because he thought he

1300
01:11:09,560 --> 01:11:14,840
Speaker 1: could community bears like a specific personality type that I

1301
01:11:14,880 --> 01:11:17,519
Speaker 1: don't fully understand it, but there's something that drives people

1302
01:11:17,840 --> 01:11:19,679
Speaker 1: a little bit nuts. And so I can just imagine

1303
01:11:19,720 --> 01:11:24,920
Speaker 1: this guy marching into an office, and I've mastered. I've

1304
01:11:25,000 --> 01:11:27,599
Speaker 1: mastered the ability to with my mind, with the power

1305
01:11:27,640 --> 01:11:30,919
Speaker 1: of my mind, to control the scrolls all manner of animals,

1306
01:11:31,520 --> 01:11:34,120
Speaker 1: and that is that is pretty much what happens. I'm

1307
01:11:34,120 --> 01:11:35,840
Speaker 1: going to quote from the l A Review of Books

1308
01:11:35,840 --> 01:11:39,439
Speaker 1: here in During a conference hosted by the Institute on

1309
01:11:39,560 --> 01:11:42,600
Speaker 1: Brain Research of Brain Research on mental influence on the

1310
01:11:42,600 --> 01:11:48,120
Speaker 1: behavior of animals, the neurologists and psychiatrist Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekterev

1311
01:11:48,240 --> 01:11:52,400
Speaker 1: presented Durov's dubious research to his colleagues and subsequently conducted

1312
01:11:52,439 --> 01:11:56,600
Speaker 1: similar experiments on human beings. Their results, which were never replicated,

1313
01:11:56,920 --> 01:11:59,400
Speaker 1: led beck Toev to think that the mental effect of

1314
01:11:59,439 --> 01:12:02,120
Speaker 1: one individ rule on another is possible at a distance

1315
01:12:02,120 --> 01:12:05,519
Speaker 1: through some kind of living matter, most likely through hurts waves.

1316
01:12:06,160 --> 01:12:09,360
Speaker 1: Bektorev's wave theory was further corroborated by a third man

1317
01:12:09,400 --> 01:12:13,639
Speaker 1: of science, an electrical engineer named Bernard Kazynski. Kazynski claimed

1318
01:12:13,680 --> 01:12:16,280
Speaker 1: that the transmission of mental information at a distance is

1319
01:12:16,320 --> 01:12:20,559
Speaker 1: the same electromagnetic as an ordinary radio communication, just thus

1320
01:12:20,560 --> 01:12:24,760
Speaker 1: giving telepathy is supposedly dependable scientific foundation. And you can

1321
01:12:24,800 --> 01:12:27,000
Speaker 1: get why people could fall for elements of this. Radio

1322
01:12:27,080 --> 01:12:30,280
Speaker 1: is pretty new at the time. Um. It's if you're

1323
01:12:30,280 --> 01:12:33,799
Speaker 1: able to like send waves that include people's voices around

1324
01:12:33,800 --> 01:12:35,880
Speaker 1: the world. And that's the thing that when you were

1325
01:12:35,920 --> 01:12:40,599
Speaker 1: born people couldn't do. Um. Why it's not that crazy

1326
01:12:40,640 --> 01:12:43,120
Speaker 1: to think, like, well, there's probably some way to do

1327
01:12:43,160 --> 01:12:46,480
Speaker 1: that with thoughts, right, Like, that's not an inherently unreasonable

1328
01:12:46,520 --> 01:12:50,720
Speaker 1: thing to try, you know. Um, So it is important. Like,

1329
01:12:50,760 --> 01:12:52,479
Speaker 1: as silly as this is and as funny as it

1330
01:12:52,520 --> 01:12:54,840
Speaker 1: is that the starts with a circus clown, it's not

1331
01:12:54,920 --> 01:12:57,800
Speaker 1: unreasonable that you would want to, like, see, well, do

1332
01:12:57,960 --> 01:13:00,080
Speaker 1: thoughts work like radio waves? Is there's some way to

1333
01:13:00,160 --> 01:13:02,840
Speaker 1: like intercept and change thoughts as they fly through the areas?

1334
01:13:02,880 --> 01:13:05,240
Speaker 1: That a thing that people can do. Um. And of

1335
01:13:05,280 --> 01:13:07,920
Speaker 1: course it's not um. If you if you are interested

1336
01:13:07,920 --> 01:13:11,000
Speaker 1: in the history of Soviet pseudo scientific mind control, I

1337
01:13:11,040 --> 01:13:15,120
Speaker 1: can recommend the book Homo Sovieticus by Vladimir will Well Minski.

1338
01:13:15,960 --> 01:13:18,400
Speaker 1: But the short of it is nothing they do works like.

1339
01:13:18,439 --> 01:13:20,760
Speaker 1: It does not work at all. What we know though

1340
01:13:20,840 --> 01:13:23,760
Speaker 1: makes it all sound decidedly it's not the same as

1341
01:13:23,760 --> 01:13:25,680
Speaker 1: what the CIA is doing, because, as far as I

1342
01:13:25,720 --> 01:13:27,800
Speaker 1: can tell, for all of the different messed up things

1343
01:13:27,840 --> 01:13:30,799
Speaker 1: the Soviet unions do, does they don't have a program

1344
01:13:30,800 --> 01:13:34,800
Speaker 1: where they are like injecting poison into random people, uh

1345
01:13:34,840 --> 01:13:36,679
Speaker 1: in order to see if it will let them control

1346
01:13:36,720 --> 01:13:39,679
Speaker 1: their minds. And I think part of what makes this evident,

1347
01:13:39,760 --> 01:13:43,879
Speaker 1: like the relative banality of their of their mind control

1348
01:13:43,960 --> 01:13:48,839
Speaker 1: research is the primary real world application of Soviet telepathy research.

1349
01:13:49,640 --> 01:13:52,760
Speaker 1: On October eight, nine, nine, after the Soviet pull out

1350
01:13:52,760 --> 01:13:54,960
Speaker 1: from Afghanistan and just a month before the fall of

1351
01:13:54,960 --> 01:13:58,000
Speaker 1: the Berlin Wall, Soviet Channel one played video of a

1352
01:13:58,040 --> 01:14:01,080
Speaker 1: licensed physician who would previously been a hypnotist for the

1353
01:14:01,080 --> 01:14:05,200
Speaker 1: Olympic weightlifting team. He led viewers of Soviet TV through

1354
01:14:05,280 --> 01:14:08,640
Speaker 1: what was effectively a series of meditations, telling them to

1355
01:14:08,720 --> 01:14:10,880
Speaker 1: drink water and trying to get them to feel better

1356
01:14:10,920 --> 01:14:14,240
Speaker 1: about the government. His stated goal was to quote Calma Land,

1357
01:14:14,280 --> 01:14:18,760
Speaker 1: beset by turbulence and heal the body politic. Um. You

1358
01:14:18,800 --> 01:14:21,680
Speaker 1: may recognize from your Soviet history that this does not

1359
01:14:21,760 --> 01:14:25,320
Speaker 1: work out. Um. So however, and we don't, you know,

1360
01:14:26,160 --> 01:14:28,680
Speaker 1: we have less access on some of the details of

1361
01:14:28,680 --> 01:14:31,160
Speaker 1: this program than we do about the CIA's MK Ultra,

1362
01:14:31,240 --> 01:14:34,879
Speaker 1: although not a tremendous amount less. But it is probably

1363
01:14:34,880 --> 01:14:38,200
Speaker 1: worth saying that the c that the the KGBS mind

1364
01:14:38,240 --> 01:14:42,280
Speaker 1: control program is not as extensive, um or as nightmarish

1365
01:14:42,400 --> 01:14:44,840
Speaker 1: as the CIA's in part because it's just kind of

1366
01:14:44,880 --> 01:14:48,960
Speaker 1: based on a fundamentally sillier thing, right, Like they're trying

1367
01:14:49,000 --> 01:14:51,960
Speaker 1: to do psychic stuff, and that's just a little bit

1368
01:14:52,040 --> 01:14:55,280
Speaker 1: less scary than trying to drug people. But I think

1369
01:14:55,400 --> 01:14:58,479
Speaker 1: there's a thing where whatever the spies or were who

1370
01:14:58,479 --> 01:15:01,400
Speaker 1: whatever they were bringing back to them, we have this

1371
01:15:01,479 --> 01:15:04,280
Speaker 1: thing in the USA, and maybe just just the way

1372
01:15:04,320 --> 01:15:06,280
Speaker 1: it has to be in like intelligent circles where you

1373
01:15:06,320 --> 01:15:10,880
Speaker 1: almost portray the enemy is like bond villains, like you

1374
01:15:10,960 --> 01:15:13,960
Speaker 1: assume that they're so far ahead of the curve in

1375
01:15:14,080 --> 01:15:16,320
Speaker 1: terms of what they can do or what they're capable of,

1376
01:15:17,000 --> 01:15:20,040
Speaker 1: you know, or you'll get headlines about China's latest direct

1377
01:15:20,160 --> 01:15:23,840
Speaker 1: energy weapon or whatever, and the truth is none of

1378
01:15:23,840 --> 01:15:26,519
Speaker 1: these countries can spend even a fraction of what we

1379
01:15:26,640 --> 01:15:30,519
Speaker 1: can on stuff like this. And we saw so much

1380
01:15:30,520 --> 01:15:32,519
Speaker 1: of this during the War on Terror, Like the fear

1381
01:15:32,560 --> 01:15:34,320
Speaker 1: of a dirty bomb like that was all you heard

1382
01:15:34,320 --> 01:15:36,640
Speaker 1: about for a while and until finally somebody came out

1383
01:15:36,680 --> 01:15:39,280
Speaker 1: and said, look, if they're a dirty bomb, the damage

1384
01:15:39,280 --> 01:15:41,719
Speaker 1: would be done by the initial explosion, and that's pretty

1385
01:15:41,800 --> 01:15:44,280
Speaker 1: much it. Like like packing a bunch of low grade

1386
01:15:44,360 --> 01:15:47,479
Speaker 1: radioactive material into a box and put in some sea formside,

1387
01:15:47,520 --> 01:15:50,040
Speaker 1: Like that's just not much of anything that it doesn't

1388
01:15:50,080 --> 01:15:54,120
Speaker 1: matter because it's like we just assume that terrorists can

1389
01:15:54,160 --> 01:15:56,920
Speaker 1: easily get hold of nuclear material, We just assume they

1390
01:15:56,920 --> 01:15:58,840
Speaker 1: can easily get hold of nervy gas. And it's like,

1391
01:15:59,280 --> 01:16:04,040
Speaker 1: actually no, it's what we always attribute way more abilities

1392
01:16:04,080 --> 01:16:06,720
Speaker 1: to them than what they actually have. And during the

1393
01:16:06,760 --> 01:16:08,439
Speaker 1: Cold War and at the height of the Cold War,

1394
01:16:09,240 --> 01:16:13,160
Speaker 1: this was at truly crazy levels with the Soviet Union,

1395
01:16:13,560 --> 01:16:16,560
Speaker 1: like the way we talked up the capability of everything

1396
01:16:16,760 --> 01:16:19,880
Speaker 1: from their tanks to whatever secret stuff they were they

1397
01:16:19,880 --> 01:16:23,479
Speaker 1: were working on, um, you know, space based weapons whatever,

1398
01:16:24,800 --> 01:16:28,200
Speaker 1: Like it was always any rumor like, well we've you

1399
01:16:28,240 --> 01:16:29,840
Speaker 1: know that that you would if it came from your

1400
01:16:29,840 --> 01:16:31,680
Speaker 1: own government. You would laugh it off, like, well, we've

1401
01:16:31,720 --> 01:16:34,200
Speaker 1: got a team of psychics who can mind control you

1402
01:16:34,240 --> 01:16:36,080
Speaker 1: from the other side of the planet. We're like okay,

1403
01:16:36,479 --> 01:16:38,640
Speaker 1: but no, when it's a Russians doing it, it's like,

1404
01:16:38,680 --> 01:16:42,559
Speaker 1: oh my gosh. And in our team of psychics. Example

1405
01:16:42,640 --> 01:16:46,439
Speaker 1: of like how deeply some of that belief managed to last.

1406
01:16:46,520 --> 01:16:49,280
Speaker 1: In two thousand seven, the Department of Home and Science

1407
01:16:49,280 --> 01:16:53,560
Speaker 1: Security signs a contract and pays for Soviet psycho alcology

1408
01:16:53,640 --> 01:16:58,680
Speaker 1: research to create a psychic criminal detection system to fight terrorism. Um,

1409
01:16:58,760 --> 01:17:02,439
Speaker 1: so we actually get tricked by this stuff, like thirty

1410
01:17:02,520 --> 01:17:06,759
Speaker 1: years after twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Um,

1411
01:17:06,800 --> 01:17:09,639
Speaker 1: it's pretty funny. And we've dismissed the idea of these

1412
01:17:09,720 --> 01:17:12,000
Speaker 1: energy weapons. But of course the weapon that caused to

1413
01:17:12,080 --> 01:17:17,080
Speaker 1: Vannah syndrome very real, the absolutely real weapon that because

1414
01:17:18,080 --> 01:17:20,759
Speaker 1: that's why, like the Russians are winning so easily in Ukraine,

1415
01:17:20,760 --> 01:17:24,360
Speaker 1: because they have this this mind beam that can debilitate

1416
01:17:24,400 --> 01:17:28,639
Speaker 1: you from with this invisible energy. Yes, that that's that.

1417
01:17:28,680 --> 01:17:31,000
Speaker 1: I mean, we're I think everyone listening is aware of

1418
01:17:31,040 --> 01:17:34,759
Speaker 1: sweeping Russian successes in Ukraine due to their their laser

1419
01:17:34,880 --> 01:17:39,160
Speaker 1: energy technology. Um. But yeah, so you know, that's what

1420
01:17:39,280 --> 01:17:41,840
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union is actually working on. They do not

1421
01:17:41,920 --> 01:17:44,880
Speaker 1: have a mind control serum. They're not really working on

1422
01:17:44,880 --> 01:17:47,519
Speaker 1: a mind control serum. They are paying people to sit

1423
01:17:47,560 --> 01:17:50,559
Speaker 1: in rooms and like try to talk to dogs with

1424
01:17:50,640 --> 01:17:54,200
Speaker 1: their brains. Um. Meanwhile, the CIA is being kind of

1425
01:17:54,240 --> 01:17:57,480
Speaker 1: steadily driven into mania by a steady drip of disinformation

1426
01:17:57,520 --> 01:18:01,160
Speaker 1: about Communist brainwashing um. And they decide they've got to

1427
01:18:01,200 --> 01:18:04,960
Speaker 1: bring in a scientist to help really take like clean

1428
01:18:05,040 --> 01:18:07,320
Speaker 1: up some of these programs they're working on and allow

1429
01:18:07,400 --> 01:18:09,960
Speaker 1: them to actually close the mind control gap with the

1430
01:18:10,000 --> 01:18:13,040
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. And they settle on a young man named

1431
01:18:13,080 --> 01:18:19,599
Speaker 1: Sydney Gottlieb. He is he is all over this motherfucker so.

1432
01:18:19,800 --> 01:18:22,800
Speaker 1: Sydney was born on August third, nineteen eighteen, in New York,

1433
01:18:22,840 --> 01:18:25,680
Speaker 1: New York, to Hungary and Jewish immigrants. He came into

1434
01:18:25,720 --> 01:18:27,600
Speaker 1: the world with a club foot so severe that he

1435
01:18:27,640 --> 01:18:30,280
Speaker 1: couldn't walk for the first years of his life. His

1436
01:18:30,400 --> 01:18:32,439
Speaker 1: mom had to carry him everywhere for most of his

1437
01:18:32,560 --> 01:18:35,000
Speaker 1: childhood until he was able to finish a series of

1438
01:18:35,040 --> 01:18:38,960
Speaker 1: three brutal operations. Sidney took his first steps without leg

1439
01:18:39,000 --> 01:18:41,640
Speaker 1: braces at age twelve. He would go on to be

1440
01:18:41,680 --> 01:18:44,639
Speaker 1: a gifted folk dancer and to live in extremely active life.

1441
01:18:44,720 --> 01:18:48,000
Speaker 1: And his story would be more satisfying if not for

1442
01:18:48,040 --> 01:18:51,000
Speaker 1: how his parents afforded the operation that gave him his legs.

1443
01:18:51,439 --> 01:18:54,880
Speaker 1: The Gottlieb family owned sweatshops in the garment industry, which

1444
01:18:54,920 --> 01:18:58,320
Speaker 1: are some of the worst of the sweatshop family. Um,

1445
01:18:58,479 --> 01:19:00,280
Speaker 1: we don't have a lot of to tail of about

1446
01:19:00,320 --> 01:19:02,840
Speaker 1: his family sweatshop, but it is not a nice place.

1447
01:19:02,920 --> 01:19:05,719
Speaker 1: And as a young man, Gottlieb joins a campus chapter

1448
01:19:06,080 --> 01:19:09,000
Speaker 1: of the Young People Socialist League because he's so disgusted

1449
01:19:09,040 --> 01:19:12,880
Speaker 1: by his dad's sweatshop. Um. So like, this part is

1450
01:19:12,880 --> 01:19:15,960
Speaker 1: not really his fault, but that's always fun when when

1451
01:19:16,000 --> 01:19:19,720
Speaker 1: sweatshop moneies what pays for your child surgery. Now, for

1452
01:19:19,760 --> 01:19:22,360
Speaker 1: his own part, Gottlieb struggled with a stutter, which he

1453
01:19:22,400 --> 01:19:25,639
Speaker 1: only corrected later in life. He rose above these challenges though,

1454
01:19:25,640 --> 01:19:28,000
Speaker 1: and he was a really good student. He graduates, he

1455
01:19:28,640 --> 01:19:31,160
Speaker 1: enrolls in New York City College. He does well there,

1456
01:19:31,600 --> 01:19:33,800
Speaker 1: but Sidney decides that he wants to pursue a career

1457
01:19:33,840 --> 01:19:37,080
Speaker 1: in agricultural biology, which eventually leads him out of the

1458
01:19:37,080 --> 01:19:40,720
Speaker 1: city for the first time. At Arkansas Tech, despite his

1459
01:19:40,760 --> 01:19:43,280
Speaker 1: strictly urban roots. He fits in well there, and he's

1460
01:19:43,320 --> 01:19:46,439
Speaker 1: described by his classmates as quote a Yankee who pleases

1461
01:19:46,479 --> 01:19:50,200
Speaker 1: the Southerners in general. Across the decades of his life

1462
01:19:50,200 --> 01:19:52,680
Speaker 1: and career, Basically everyone who meets this guy agrees that

1463
01:19:52,720 --> 01:19:55,439
Speaker 1: he's a very pleasant man. Sydney is kind of a

1464
01:19:55,479 --> 01:19:58,160
Speaker 1: hippie rightly. He is a back to the land dude.

1465
01:19:58,200 --> 01:20:00,799
Speaker 1: He likes farming, he likes taking air of his goats,

1466
01:20:01,120 --> 01:20:05,200
Speaker 1: he likes folk dancing. Like he's a in everything but

1467
01:20:05,400 --> 01:20:08,080
Speaker 1: his job for the CIA. Like a sweet kind of

1468
01:20:08,160 --> 01:20:11,760
Speaker 1: hippie dude. So he eventually gets his doctorate in biochemistry

1469
01:20:11,800 --> 01:20:14,960
Speaker 1: at the California Institute of Technology. He marries the daughter

1470
01:20:15,000 --> 01:20:17,880
Speaker 1: of a preacher named Margaret Moore. She'd been raised in

1471
01:20:17,880 --> 01:20:21,000
Speaker 1: India as a missionary, but had discarded dogmatic faith in

1472
01:20:21,040 --> 01:20:25,040
Speaker 1: her religion for kind of a more agnostic, pan spiritual

1473
01:20:25,120 --> 01:20:27,559
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and Sydney is in a similar position.

1474
01:20:27,600 --> 01:20:29,800
Speaker 1: He's proud of his Jewish heritage, but he's not really

1475
01:20:29,840 --> 01:20:34,760
Speaker 1: a practicing Jew. And both of them are seekers, right like,

1476
01:20:34,800 --> 01:20:38,000
Speaker 1: they're kind of interested in Eastern religion. They're interested, they

1477
01:20:38,000 --> 01:20:41,120
Speaker 1: don't like give up entirely the religions they're raised with.

1478
01:20:41,200 --> 01:20:43,120
Speaker 1: But there they have and this is you know, pretty

1479
01:20:43,120 --> 01:20:44,960
Speaker 1: common at the time, and now like they have this

1480
01:20:45,040 --> 01:20:48,439
Speaker 1: kind of syncretic attitude towards towards all of this stuff,

1481
01:20:48,479 --> 01:20:50,919
Speaker 1: and Sydney is going to always be a very curious,

1482
01:20:51,000 --> 01:20:53,400
Speaker 1: open minded guy when it comes to this sort of thing.

1483
01:20:54,040 --> 01:20:56,559
Speaker 1: At first, Sydney seeking leads him to work for the

1484
01:20:56,640 --> 01:20:59,200
Speaker 1: f d A, where he tests drugs in a boring,

1485
01:20:59,240 --> 01:21:01,920
Speaker 1: safe and legal way. Next, he does some plant research

1486
01:21:01,960 --> 01:21:04,600
Speaker 1: for the National Research Council, and along the way he

1487
01:21:04,640 --> 01:21:08,800
Speaker 1: and Margaret like by an unpowered cabin near Vienna, Virginia,

1488
01:21:08,880 --> 01:21:10,640
Speaker 1: and they start a goat farm, which is where they

1489
01:21:10,720 --> 01:21:12,559
Speaker 1: raise their children and are going to live most of

1490
01:21:12,600 --> 01:21:14,880
Speaker 1: their lives in this kind of like off grid goat

1491
01:21:14,880 --> 01:21:18,519
Speaker 1: farming community. In addition to his interests in religion and dance,

1492
01:21:18,560 --> 01:21:21,439
Speaker 1: and Gottlieb starts to become fascinated with early reports of

1493
01:21:21,479 --> 01:21:25,080
Speaker 1: psychedelic research. In the summer of nineteen fifty one, Alan

1494
01:21:25,160 --> 01:21:27,600
Speaker 1: Dullis makes the decision to hire Gottlieb to help with

1495
01:21:27,680 --> 01:21:30,880
Speaker 1: Project Art to Choke. Now. During World War Two, Sydney

1496
01:21:30,920 --> 01:21:33,360
Speaker 1: had been unable to serve because his foot's all you know,

1497
01:21:33,439 --> 01:21:36,720
Speaker 1: hurt uh, and this he kind of had this at

1498
01:21:36,760 --> 01:21:39,200
Speaker 1: least his biographer makes the argument that, like this is

1499
01:21:39,240 --> 01:21:41,880
Speaker 1: part of why he decides to join the CIA, is

1500
01:21:41,880 --> 01:21:44,040
Speaker 1: that he had this desire to serve his country that

1501
01:21:44,080 --> 01:21:48,120
Speaker 1: he hadn't been able to actually do during the war. Um,

1502
01:21:48,160 --> 01:21:51,320
Speaker 1: and Alan kind of Alan is a pretty good at manipulating.

1503
01:21:51,360 --> 01:21:54,040
Speaker 1: Alan sees this in Sydney, and part of the pitch

1504
01:21:54,080 --> 01:21:56,320
Speaker 1: he makes to Gotlieb is like, hey, you know, you

1505
01:21:56,320 --> 01:21:59,360
Speaker 1: you missed out on fighting for your country back during

1506
01:21:59,360 --> 01:22:02,280
Speaker 1: that war. We're in another crisis point here right, this

1507
01:22:02,400 --> 01:22:04,840
Speaker 1: secret war we're fighting with the Soviets is just as

1508
01:22:04,880 --> 01:22:07,360
Speaker 1: important as anything that happened in World War Two. And

1509
01:22:07,439 --> 01:22:09,599
Speaker 1: now we do have a place for you. So this

1510
01:22:09,680 --> 01:22:13,000
Speaker 1: is your chance to serve your country, Dullis. And part

1511
01:22:13,000 --> 01:22:14,920
Speaker 1: of why he may have been so good at kind

1512
01:22:14,960 --> 01:22:17,320
Speaker 1: of manipulating Sydney is Dullis had been born with the

1513
01:22:17,320 --> 01:22:20,400
Speaker 1: club foot too. Um. They both kind of had that

1514
01:22:20,439 --> 01:22:22,639
Speaker 1: thing in common, weirdly enough, which is not a super

1515
01:22:22,680 --> 01:22:24,840
Speaker 1: common thing. And maybe that's a little bit of how

1516
01:22:24,960 --> 01:22:27,080
Speaker 1: Dullas kind of is able to get inside Sydney's head.

1517
01:22:27,080 --> 01:22:30,160
Speaker 1: But he seems to be pretty good at at understanding

1518
01:22:30,280 --> 01:22:32,880
Speaker 1: Gottlieb um. It also may have helped the two men

1519
01:22:32,960 --> 01:22:36,759
Speaker 1: understand each other. Uh Sydney is almost immediately made chief

1520
01:22:36,800 --> 01:22:39,040
Speaker 1: of the new CIA Chemical Division, and he's given a

1521
01:22:39,080 --> 01:22:41,360
Speaker 1: free hand and budget to explore the concept of a

1522
01:22:41,400 --> 01:22:44,959
Speaker 1: truth serum. One of the first tests conducted under Gotlieb's

1523
01:22:45,000 --> 01:22:47,599
Speaker 1: command is a series of chemical tortures at a black

1524
01:22:47,640 --> 01:22:51,000
Speaker 1: site in the Panama Canal Zone on a Bulgarian politician

1525
01:22:51,080 --> 01:22:54,800
Speaker 1: named Dmitri Dimitrov. He'd given info to the CIA in

1526
01:22:54,840 --> 01:22:57,519
Speaker 1: the past, but then his handlers had become convinced that

1527
01:22:57,560 --> 01:22:59,760
Speaker 1: he was about to start working with the French, so

1528
01:22:59,800 --> 01:23:02,479
Speaker 1: they had kidnapped him, let the Greeks torture him for

1529
01:23:02,520 --> 01:23:04,599
Speaker 1: sent six months, and then sent him to his secret

1530
01:23:04,640 --> 01:23:08,080
Speaker 1: prison in Panama. So this was their guy. They don't

1531
01:23:08,080 --> 01:23:10,080
Speaker 1: even think that he's going over to the Soviets. They

1532
01:23:10,080 --> 01:23:12,720
Speaker 1: think he's working with their allies, but they still send

1533
01:23:12,760 --> 01:23:14,439
Speaker 1: him over to get tortured in Greece, and then he

1534
01:23:14,439 --> 01:23:18,439
Speaker 1: winds up in Panama where Sidney Gottlieb is asked like, hey,

1535
01:23:18,640 --> 01:23:21,120
Speaker 1: help us figure out how to like chemically torture this

1536
01:23:21,160 --> 01:23:23,320
Speaker 1: guy so he'll give up information on who had hired

1537
01:23:23,400 --> 01:23:27,439
Speaker 1: him um. In early nineteen fifty two, a CI agent

1538
01:23:27,479 --> 01:23:30,920
Speaker 1: in Panama wrote that because of his confinement, uh Dimitrov

1539
01:23:31,000 --> 01:23:33,680
Speaker 1: quote has become very hostile to the United States and

1540
01:23:33,680 --> 01:23:37,400
Speaker 1: our intelligence operations. In particular. This was seen as a

1541
01:23:37,400 --> 01:23:40,160
Speaker 1: perfect chance to try the new artichoke techniques. The CIA

1542
01:23:40,320 --> 01:23:44,280
Speaker 1: under Gottlieb works on Kelly for three years and whatever

1543
01:23:44,280 --> 01:23:47,280
Speaker 1: they did to him, we've destroyed the record. Um. But

1544
01:23:47,720 --> 01:23:51,120
Speaker 1: this guy Dimitrov Kelly is kind of the nickname they

1545
01:23:51,120 --> 01:23:53,640
Speaker 1: have for him in the in the files, he survives,

1546
01:23:53,640 --> 01:23:55,559
Speaker 1: and he does try to go to the media and

1547
01:23:55,600 --> 01:23:57,400
Speaker 1: talk about the fact that he's been in a CIA

1548
01:23:57,520 --> 01:24:01,000
Speaker 1: secret prison being tortured, and so like, the news media

1549
01:24:01,080 --> 01:24:04,120
Speaker 1: sees this bulgarian politician saying that he's been in a

1550
01:24:04,200 --> 01:24:07,920
Speaker 1: CIA black site for years, and they're like, they called

1551
01:24:07,960 --> 01:24:10,400
Speaker 1: the CIA and are like, as this guy legit, and

1552
01:24:10,400 --> 01:24:13,080
Speaker 1: the CIA says, oh, no, of course not. And so

1553
01:24:13,680 --> 01:24:17,760
Speaker 1: nobody covers this guy's life story and as evidence, all

1554
01:24:17,840 --> 01:24:20,840
Speaker 1: of the records are gone. Wouldn't we have records if

1555
01:24:20,880 --> 01:24:23,680
Speaker 1: we had done that? Instead, all we have is this

1556
01:24:24,000 --> 01:24:28,040
Speaker 1: barrel full of ashes. Um. It's also worth noting that

1557
01:24:28,080 --> 01:24:30,240
Speaker 1: it is later proven he had never been planning to

1558
01:24:30,280 --> 01:24:32,800
Speaker 1: go to the French. Um, they were entirely they just

1559
01:24:32,840 --> 01:24:35,400
Speaker 1: like they just destroyed this man's life who had been

1560
01:24:35,439 --> 01:24:38,800
Speaker 1: working for them for absolutely no reason. And that's going

1561
01:24:38,880 --> 01:24:42,000
Speaker 1: to become a really common story for the CIA under Gottlieb.

1562
01:24:42,439 --> 01:24:48,280
Speaker 1: But Jason, that's all we got time for today. Yes, yes,

1563
01:24:48,400 --> 01:24:52,000
Speaker 1: we barely got started. We have arrived at the beginning

1564
01:24:52,040 --> 01:24:55,519
Speaker 1: of MK Ultra. Yeah. Yeah, we're almost at the beginning

1565
01:24:55,560 --> 01:24:58,240
Speaker 1: of MK and this and this could have been much

1566
01:24:58,320 --> 01:25:02,000
Speaker 1: much more just getting to this point. There's it's a lot.

1567
01:25:02,160 --> 01:25:06,280
Speaker 1: It was a whole thing because it starts when everybody

1568
01:25:06,280 --> 01:25:09,360
Speaker 1: thinks of them Koltra, they're not thinking of three, they're

1569
01:25:09,400 --> 01:25:12,960
Speaker 1: thinking of the stuff that happened going forward. Um, we

1570
01:25:13,080 --> 01:25:15,040
Speaker 1: probably could have done a two part or just on

1571
01:25:15,160 --> 01:25:19,799
Speaker 1: like the Army's chemical weapons experiments and style biological weapons

1572
01:25:19,800 --> 01:25:22,599
Speaker 1: experiments in World War two and ship like it is.

1573
01:25:22,760 --> 01:25:25,160
Speaker 1: There's so much going on here. But I think this

1574
01:25:25,280 --> 01:25:29,519
Speaker 1: gives people good context as to what's happening. Jason, you

1575
01:25:29,560 --> 01:25:32,599
Speaker 1: want even context as to how they can buy your

1576
01:25:32,640 --> 01:25:37,000
Speaker 1: book anywhere anywhere the sells books aside from like grocery

1577
01:25:37,000 --> 01:25:40,200
Speaker 1: stores and stuff. Again, the title is if this book exists,

1578
01:25:40,439 --> 01:25:43,200
Speaker 1: you're in the wrong universe. Um, if you want to

1579
01:25:43,240 --> 01:25:45,680
Speaker 1: keep up with me, my name is Jason Pargent P

1580
01:25:45,720 --> 01:25:48,320
Speaker 1: A R G I N. Type that into almost any

1581
01:25:48,360 --> 01:25:50,639
Speaker 1: social media platform and you will find I'm on there,

1582
01:25:50,680 --> 01:25:54,360
Speaker 1: including TikTok. I have become TikTok famous in the last

1583
01:25:54,400 --> 01:25:57,520
Speaker 1: six weeks. So I I have been watching your TikTok's.

1584
01:25:58,200 --> 01:26:01,960
Speaker 1: Um very erotic, I have to say so. Yeah. And

1585
01:26:02,000 --> 01:26:03,880
Speaker 1: by the way, as we sit here and talk about

1586
01:26:03,920 --> 01:26:06,320
Speaker 1: how foolish it is that you can mind control someone,

1587
01:26:06,360 --> 01:26:08,519
Speaker 1: the fact that I set for four straight hours scrolling

1588
01:26:08,520 --> 01:26:14,320
Speaker 1: through TikTok's, that's how I use my total freedom of mind.

1589
01:26:14,439 --> 01:26:16,920
Speaker 1: The idea that you could be brainwashed by some sort

1590
01:26:16,960 --> 01:26:21,360
Speaker 1: of advanced technology is ludicrous. It is. It is funny

1591
01:26:21,400 --> 01:26:24,920
Speaker 1: that so much of what these the CIA was trying

1592
01:26:24,960 --> 01:26:27,559
Speaker 1: to do, a number of people have figured out and

1593
01:26:27,720 --> 01:26:30,439
Speaker 1: states have figured out how to basically do by just

1594
01:26:30,479 --> 01:26:34,719
Speaker 1: like fucking with people on social media. Um, that's that's good.

1595
01:26:34,800 --> 01:26:37,920
Speaker 1: That's a good side. Yeah, And all they talk about

1596
01:26:37,920 --> 01:26:40,320
Speaker 1: the well, someday they'll have advanced techniques to make like

1597
01:26:40,439 --> 01:26:43,160
Speaker 1: deep fakes and they can have like a fake Barack

1598
01:26:43,200 --> 01:26:46,320
Speaker 1: Obama confess to somebody. It's like you realize, just putting

1599
01:26:46,360 --> 01:26:50,880
Speaker 1: that on an extremely blorried jpeg with like comic sands

1600
01:26:50,920 --> 01:26:53,200
Speaker 1: like that will that will spread around Facebook and twenty

1601
01:26:53,240 --> 01:26:57,240
Speaker 1: minutes with no no source or deep fakery or anything.

1602
01:26:57,479 --> 01:27:01,040
Speaker 1: Just yeah that. I I have long been of the

1603
01:27:01,080 --> 01:27:03,080
Speaker 1: opinion that like, no deep fakes aren't going to be

1604
01:27:03,120 --> 01:27:06,880
Speaker 1: what destroys us, Like we're we're already well passed. That

1605
01:27:06,960 --> 01:27:10,040
Speaker 1: being the thing I'm worried about is not required. It

1606
01:27:10,080 --> 01:27:13,800
Speaker 1: does not have to be that sophisticated anyway. But your

1607
01:27:13,840 --> 01:27:17,839
Speaker 1: book is very sophisticated. People should check it out. Um,

1608
01:27:17,920 --> 01:27:20,679
Speaker 1: and uh, I have a book too, It's called After

1609
01:27:20,720 --> 01:27:23,639
Speaker 1: the Revolution. You can also find it wherever books are sold.

1610
01:27:24,120 --> 01:27:26,280
Speaker 1: This has been Behind the Bastards, part one of the

1611
01:27:26,360 --> 01:27:29,120
Speaker 1: mk Ultra series. We've got three more coming for you.

1612
01:27:29,240 --> 01:27:34,120
Speaker 1: So strap in and take a shipload acid. Take enough

1613
01:27:34,160 --> 01:27:38,760
Speaker 1: acid that you just high for the next fourteen days. Um,

1614
01:27:38,800 --> 01:27:42,479
Speaker 1: that's probably a good idea. Behind the Bastards is a

1615
01:27:42,520 --> 01:27:45,799
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,

1616
01:27:46,080 --> 01:27:49,519
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check

1617
01:27:49,600 --> 01:27:52,080
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

1618
01:27:52,160 --> 01:27:53,680
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.