Drugs As Weapons Against Us – Interview with John Potash

Full Interview with John Potash About His New Film

1. What was your motivation for writing your 2015 book Drugs as Weapons Against – and for making a film based on the book?

I had a number of motivations for writing the book, Drugs as Weapons Against Us: The CIA’s Murderous Targeting of SDS, Panthers, Hendrix, Lennon, Cobain, Tupac and Other Activists. For one, I wanted to break the media censorship regarding the hidden history of some great activists, along with some great musicians who aspired to do more activist work. That is one of the reasons for the long subtitles. It helps get the word out on these issues.

Personally, I grew up with socialist grandparents and somewhat activist parents as my father organized fellow doctors against the Vietnam War and mother ran NOW lectures.  got into anti-war and anti-racism activism, and found out about U.S. intelligence operations, such as the CIA’s Project MK-Ultra that used LSD to undermine anti-racist and anti-war activists. I further read about the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program, which targeted leftist activists in general, but was particularly murderous against black activists such as The Black Panthers.

I eventually found much evidence of how the CIA and MK-Ultra worked with the FBI in such targeting, and used many drugs, particularly LSD, heroin, and cocaine against anti-war and anti-racism activists. Later evidence supported the use of other drugs in this way, particularly MDMA/Ecstasy. My book got the information to a certain percentage of people with a certain amount of trust. My film will hopefully get it to more people, and depicts the actual sources of the information, such as CIA whistleblowers, saying some of the things I quote in the book.

I eventually found much evidence of how the CIA and MK-Ultra worked with the FBI in such targeting, and used many drugs, particularly LSD, heroin, and cocaine against anti-war and anti-racism activists. Later evidence supported the use of other drugs in this way, particularly MDMA/Ecstasy. My book got the information to a certain percentage of people with a certain amount of trust. My film will hopefully get it to more people, and depicts the actual sources of the information, such as CIA whistleblowers, saying some of the things I quote in the book.

2. For me the most eye opening aspect of both the book and the film was learning the CIA had deliberately disseminated massive amounts of LSD to anti-war protestors and activist pop stars in a deliberate effort to undermine their political and creative effectiveness. How did you come across this information?

After college, I got back into activism and saw Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) co-founder Martin Lee speak. I later got his book, Acid Dreams, loosely subtitled, The CIA, LSD and the Sixties. It documented the CIA dissemination of acid.

That book got some decent publicity and attention, even from some mainstream newspapers such as The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The Village Voice. It included the details of an Italian judge ruling over a case of a U.S. intelligence agent, Ronald Stark, heading the trafficking of tens-to-hundreds of millions of hits of acid worldwide. 

Amongst other sources, I found a book by high level British police detective Dick Lee, who was the lead investigator of Operation Julie, and the author of a book by the same name. Lee detailed how his team’s investigation uncovered Stark’s operation and its network of intelligence connections, before higher authorities tried to cover it all up again.

I also confirmed aspects of U.S. intelligence’s continuance of their operations. For example, about four years ago I surprised an acid dealer I counseled by asking him if he was getting his acid from The Brotherhood of Eternal Love. He fearfully confirmed that The Brotherhood, a Stark-aided and U.S. intelligence-linked operation, was his supplier in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I further found whistleblowers confirming the continuance of intelligence operations under different names.

3. How did you finance your film?

I never left my day job and still do counseling for a living, with a particular expertise in addictions and trauma work. My first book continues to sell well. I poured the profits from that book, my first film, and my second book, into this film. Still, none of my projects could ever come close to paying my bills with the mainstream media censorship in the U.S. I see these more as activist projects.

4. How do you plan to distribute it and what’s the best way for people to see it?

My first film was lower budget and more low-key. I mostly sell that on my website and through Amazon. For my second film, I thought I’d try to get a distributor. I didn’t know how it all worked and so I took one of my first offers for distribution, Gravitas Ventures. I signed a North American distribution deal with them and they are officially releasing it on 1/29/19. I’m still looking for a distributor of the film for the UK, Europe, Australia and your New Zealand area.

In America and Canada, the best ways to see the film are renting it on Itunes, Vimeo, Vudu, Google Play/Youtube, and Microsoft Xbox. It’s also available for purchase on Amazon, and at Barnes and Noble, Best Buy, Walmart, etc.

I highly recommend people buy the film because the purchased film will have an extra 16 minutes of deleted scenes. These scenes include eyewitness evidence of Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones’s murder, just after he was gaining agreements from his friends Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon to form a super-group in 1969. It further includes the apparent CIA hypnotist in charge of aiding RFK’s assassination talking about everything he could get people to do through drugs and hypnosis. It finally includes more on Occupy Wall Street and Bob Marley.

https://www.drugsasweaponsmovie.com/

Demise of the American Empire: Pinpointing the Timeline

 

In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power

by Alfred W McCoy

Haymarket Books (2016)

Book Review

Prior to 2001 and the launch of the War on Terror, the US political elite adamantly denied (despite massive evidence to the contrary), that the United States was an empire rather than a republic. Because their sudden about face (ie acknowledgement and promotion of US imperialism) was so recent, there has been little opportunity for scholarly analysis of America’s effectiveness as an empire. It’s this void Alfred McCoy seeks to fill with In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power.

Competition for Control of the Eurasian Landmass

McCoy traces America’s serious global empire building to their defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War in 1898, which won them Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Panama Canal Zone and the Philippines.* He maintains that us strategies for empire-building, like those of the former British empire, have mainly relied on seeking and maintaining control of the “World-Island.” This is a term coined by London School of Economics director Halford Mackinder’s World Island in 1904. Under this concept, the World Island consists of the vast European-Asian landmass that is home to 70% of the world’s population, 75% of its global energy resources and 60% of its current productivity.

How the US Maintains Military Control

After the US became the world’s preeminent superpower after World War II, they have used nine basic strategies to maintain military control of the Eurasian landmass: mass surveillance (based on a system of extensive personal data collection that began during their “pacification”** of the Philippines (1898-1907); CIA covert operations (involving electoral interference, military coups, installation of compliant puppet dictators, targeted assassinations, torture, advanced technological weaponry (electronic senors, satellite imagery, drones, etc) and, increasingly cyperwarfare and space-based weaponry (most information about the latter two is classified).

America Falling Behind China Economically and Militarily

For me the most interesting section of the book examines ways in which the US is rapidly falling behind China – not only economically but militarily. McCoy identifies Bush’s rash decision to invade Iraq as the start of the American empire’s steady decline. While the US has spent the last 16 years mired in unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, China is busily building alliances and investing their trade surplus (from selling Americans cheap consumer goods) in Russia and other countries located in the World Island. In Afghanistan alone, they are responsible for 79% of foreign investment.

Meanwhile China is rapidly creating a single economic zone across the Eurasian landmass, with a vast network of high speed trains and pipelines following historical Silk Road and Tran-Siberian Railway routes – and soon a high speed Southeast Asian and Moscow-Beijing line.

Even the Pentagon-linked Rand Corporation predicts China’s will exceed that of the US by 2030 or sooner. In 2010, China became the world’s leading manufacturing nation. In 2014, it took the lead in the number of new patents it awards annually.

Even more concerning is the rapid decline of US educational standards compared to those of China, which has ominous implications for the development of high tech weaponry. Chinese students consistently score first in math, science and reading, while US students score 27th, 20th and 17th respectively.

By 2025, China is expected to have better long range cruise missiles than the US, better air defense aircraft, better electronic sensors, better digital communications capacity, better computer processing power and better cyber-security. At the same time, they have a significant strategic advantage because the US spreads its military resources so thin by fighting so many foreign wars simultaneously.

According to McCoy, they already have the ability to cripple critical US infrastructure (electrical and telecommunications grid and pipelines) via cyber warfare.

Collapse Predicted Between 2030-2040

McCoy predicts (and makes an excellent case for) the demise of the US empire some time between 2030-2040. It could happen gradually, as US economic and military prowess continues its steady decline – or suddenly, if the loss of its privileged status causes the US dollar to collapse. The impending implosion may be aggravated by climate change, especially if the Pentagon is drawn into wars over dwindling food and water resources or control of massive numbers of climate refugees.

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*In a separate development, the Kingdom of Hawai’i was illegally overthrown by The Committee of Safety (a group of wealthy American/European businessmen) in 1998. The Committee of Safety used U.S. Marines to detain the Queen while they announced their takeover of Hawai’i.

**”Pacification” is a military euphemism for violently subjugating the indigenous population of an occupied country.

Originally published in Dissident Voice

 

 

Was Senator Paul Wellstone Assassinated?

Wellstone!

Snowshoe Films (2009)

Film Review

 

This documentary assesses the physical evidence suggesting the plane crash that killed Senator Paul Wellstone in October 2002 was actually an assassination. Wellstone, elected by Minnesota’s Democratic Farm Labor Party, was a true populist like Bernie Sanders. In addition to being the only candidate running for re-election who opposed the US invasion of Iraq, he was also raising questions about the official version of 9-11.

With his death – only 10 days before election day – his seat passed to his Republican opponent – granting Republicans regained control of both houses of Congress.

Among the anomalies explored in this film are

• the strange electrical fire (which the National Air Safety Board neglects to mention in their report) that melted copper components in the instrument panel.
• the loss of strobe and other warning lights (which the NASB report also neglects to mention), pointing to electrical failure preceding the crash.
• the mysterious disappearance of the cockpit voice recorder (black box)
• the discrepancy between witness statements and the NASB report about the altitude of the plane when it stalled out (according to eyewitnesses it was 75-90 feet, while the report indicates 1,000 feet).
• the failure of the pilots to call in a warning of the crash to air traffic controllers.
• the failure of the NASB (or FBI investigators) to mention links between one of the pilots, Michael Grass, and the “20^th 9-11 hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui’s computer, the one FBI investigator Colleen Rawley failed to get a warrant for, had Michael Guess’s aviation instruction software on it.
• the failure of the NASB to hold a public hearing on the crash, which is routine in high profile cases.
• the conclusion reached by the NASB that Wellstone’s plane crashed due to “pilot error” without presenting a shred of evidence to support this conclusion.

Independent forensic experts who reviewed both the evidence and the NASB report concluded that Wellstone’s plane crashed because the pilots were incapacitated in some way. There were a number of odd electronic anomalies reported in the vicinity of the crash that Minnesota assassination researcher Jim Fetzer believes are compatible with a directed electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or microwave weapon similar to those the Pentagon was experimenting with in Iraq.

At exactly 10.18 (two seconds before the aircraft stalled) a Duluth lobbyist traveling to the same funeral as Wellstone and his family heard a loud wailing/humming sound on his cellphone. At the exact same time a number of residents south of the airport reported garage doors mysteriously opening. In addition, a local meterologist reported a large hole in the ice clouds immediately above the crash area. This, too, would have been consistent with a directed EMP weapon.

The Robert Kennedy Assassination: Why the Official Story is a Fake

The Assassination of Robert Kennedy

Christopher Plumley (1992)

Film Review

This classic documentary from 1992 neatly summarizes a reasonably ironclad case that a second gunman, not Sirhan Sirhan, shot and killed Robert Kennedy in June 1968. It also reveals how the Los Angeles police (LAPD) systematically destroyed and suppressed evidence pointing to the true killer.

Filmmaker Christopher Plumley begins with the forensic and autopsy evidence. The latter shows clearly that the bullet killing Kennedy came from immediately (2-3 inches) behind, whereas Sirhan was in front of him. According to 76 eyewitnesses he was never closer than three feet to Kennedy. At the time if Sirhan’s, trial there were approximately 1,000 photos of the shooting, which the LAPD subsequently destroyed in a hospital incinerator.

Too Many Bullets

The “official” LAPD crime scene reconstruction shows eight bullets (Sirhan’s gun only held eight) hitting Kennedy three times and wounding five other victims. Both the FBI and the LAPD crime scene officer disputed the official reconstruction, based on eyewitness testimony, the autopsy report and bullet holes in the woodwork of the Ambassador Hotel pantry showing there had to be at least 12 bullets.

The autopsy alone proves Sirhan couldn’t have been the assassin. Instead of challenging the autopsy evidence at trial, his defense attorney (who seems to have been party to the conspiracy) advised him to plead diminished responsibility. To this day, Sirhan maintains he has no recollection whatsoever of the shooting.Neither the defense nor the prosecution presented any eyewitness testimony, which clearly would have exonerated the supposed deranged lone gunman.

Witness Coercion

LAPD browbeat and threatened several eyewitnesses who saw Sirhan together with another man and a woman in a polka dot dress. According to at least one witness, the woman claimed responsibility for the shooting as the couple fled the crime scene. Plumley plays a choice selection of a recorded polygraph examination of an ex-CIA polygraph specialist emotionally abusing her – as he tries to coerce her into change her story.

The CIA’s Project Artichoke

The most damaging evidence against Sirhan was a notebook in which he repeatedly scribbled nonsensical threats about killing Kennedy. The last ten minutes of the film looks at declassified evidence about the CIA’s Project Artichoke, a top secret program in which robot assassins were hypno-programed to commit murder and have no subsequent recollection of their actions.

This section features a 1974 audiotape made by Dr William Bryan Jr, who reportedly bragged about being the hypnotist who hypno-programed Sirhan. The psychologist who examined Sirhan in prison confirmed he had been hypno-programed. The latter was fired after seeking permission to deprogram him.

 

The Assassination of Julius Caesar: Parallels with Trump

The Assassination of Julius Caesar

Michael Parenti (2012)

Film Review

In this presentation, Michael Parenti discusses the fraudulent history we are taught about the late Roman Republic. In particular, he focuses on the popular resistance movement that led to the rise of the Populares in the Roman senate in the second century BC. The revolt of the Roman proletariat was largely a reaction to the privatization of Rome’s collective agricultural lands as latifundia (plantations owned by Roman aristocrats). Historically there was no private land ownership in Rome until thugs hired by aristocrats drove the peasants off their land around 200 BC.

Parenti starts by demolishing the myth promulgated by mainstream historians that Rome was a republic. The Roman senate was a self-appointed oligarchy. For the most part Roman senators paid no taxes though. Instead they loaned money at interest to the Roman government (sound familiar?). The lower classes, in contrast, were heavily taxed.

The first great Populares to serve as consul was Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC. He and his brother Gaius, who succeeded him, fought for land reform to break up the latifundia and redistribute them to the landless. Despite their aristocratic background, all the Populares consuls challenged a Roman economic system that was rigged in favor of the elites All were assassinated by aristocratic death squads.

Julius Caesar would be the last Populares consul, and he, too, would be assassinated in 44 BC. Among the reforms he enacted were

• Lowering interest and fines on debts
• Building exceptional public libraries to be used by all Roman citizens
• Guaranteeing freedom of religion to Roman Jews
• Ending the practice of forcing people with unpaid debts into slavery
• Introducing a democratic constitution
• Creating state jobs in Rome and the colonies for the unemployed
• Ending Cicero’s* witch hunts and extrajudicial executions

The aristocrats in the senate, who detested Caesar because he threatened their wealth and privilege, responded by labeling him a brutal tyrant and assassinating him. Ironically the emperors who succeeded him were far more tyrannical. Yet the senate aristocrats supported them as they protected their wealth and privilege.

What strikes me most about this presentation are the clear parallels with the current period, with the liberal elite and intelligence establishment portraying Trump as an unspeakable fascist tyrant based on little evidence other than his rhetoric. I’m aware that much of the liberal establishment is justifiably frightened of the ultraconservative bent of Trump’s appointees. However most of the strident anti-Trump rhetoric seems over the top to me.

For me the two main ways the parallels break down are 1) the absence of a genuine reform movement from below similar to the Roman resistance movement that led to the formation of the Populares 2) the absence in Trump of the towering intelligence, charisma and military and political ingenuity that Caesar displayed. Trump’s lack of political experience raises the vital question whether he or his conservative cabinet will be in control. Despite his promise of numerous populist reforms, I’m extremely skeptical whether the prominent conservatives in his cabinet support them.

The FBI War on Rap

The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders

John Potash (2008)

Review

In the video below, author John Potash uses a slideshow format to discuss his 2008 book The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders. The book is a compilation of years of research (based on court documents, news reports, archival photos and FOIA documents) into the FBI role in the assassination and false imprisonment of black political leaders and rock stars.

This presentation mainly focuses on the FBI assassination of Tupak Shakur in 1996, though Potash also briefly covers the FBI murder of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton, Huey Newton, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley and the CIA murder of Robert F Kennedy.

As background, Bishop also outlines the key strategies of Cointelpro the FBI war against the Black Panther Party.  In addition to assassinating their leaders, the FBI collaborated with police intelligence units to imprison multiple Panther leaders on false charges, as well as extensive infiltrating their groups.

The Panther 21 Trial

Both Tupac’s Black Panther parents were framed on fictitious charges in the infamous Panther 21 trial in 1971. Tupac’s mother Afeni, who handled their defense pro se, got all of them acquitted. Tupac, who had numerous Panther mentors growing up, would become president of the New African Panther Organization (NAPO) in 1989,

In 1992, he helped broker a truce between the Bloods and Crips, encouraging them to focus their anger on the white power structure. In part due to his growing fame, the FBI responded with repeated attempts to assassinate him, as well as numerous arrests on fictitious charges.

By 1995, his financial resources depleted by multiple arrests and frivolous lawsuits, Tupac was eventually framed by an FBI informant on a phony sexual assault charge. Although he was acquitted on a rape charge, he would be sentenced to four years in prison (on a $5 million bond) for “touching a woman’s buttocks without her permission.”

Death Row Records

What horrified me most about this presentation was learning about Death Row Records, a recording company run by three undercover cops from the LAPD intelligence unit. The latter used their position in the recording industry to traffic drugs (the president of Death Row was an affiliate of Freeway Ricky Ross who distributed cocaine imported to the US by the CIA Contras) and guns and to murder performers who attempted to politicize rap music.

Death Row Records was also instrumental in ending the Bloods/Crips truce by instigating a fictitious East Coast/West Coast rap war and collaborating with police “rap squads” in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere to frame truce leaders on phony charges carrying long prison sentences. They were also instrumental in breaking up Niggas wit Attitudes (N.W.A.)

Tupac was released from prison within days of signing with Death Row, which closely censored the political content of his recordings and performances. The FBI and the undercover cops at Death Row also instigated the phony feud between Tupac and rap star Biggie Small.

After Tupac left Death Row to start his own record company, the FBI organized his assassination and planted rumors in the press that Biggie Small had ordered the drive by shooting. They subsequently murdered Biggie Small to cover up the FBI role in Tupac’s murder.

Empire Building US-Style

Apologies of an Economic Hitman

Directed by Stelios Kouloglou (2008)

Film Review

This is a very intriguing Greek documentary about John Perkins, author of the 2004 book Confessions of an Economic Hitman. In the film, Perkins summarizes his recruitment by the NSA to work as an “economic hitman.” Despite his close affiliation to US intelligence, he was technically under the employ of a private engineering company called Charles T Main Inc. It was his role to approach third world presidents with bribes to accept World Bank loans for massive infrastructure projects – which were usually built by major US companies such as Bechtel and Halliburton.

This was done with the deliberate intention of saddling the third world countries with debt they couldn’t repay. Their only option would be to seek refinancing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which usually demanded they slash public services and open up their resources to further exploitation by Wall Street interests .

As Perkins describes it, this was the strategy of choice (as opposed to direct military intervention) for expanding US empire between 1945-2000. Any third world leader who refused to play ball was openly threatened with assassination. The first step in dealing with a recalcitrant leader was to send in the “jackals,” CIA officers and contractors who would try to instigate a military coup. If this failed, US intelligence would send in an assassination team. If this also failed, they would fall back on military invasion and occupation (always a last resort).

The film zeroes in on the assassination (via plane crash) of Ecuadorian president Jaime Roldós Aguilera and Panamanian president Omar Torrijos in 1981. It also provides interesting background to the US invasion of Iraq, following Saddam Hussein’s rejection of a massive Bechtel oil pipeline project.

I was previously unaware of the CIA effort to instigate a military coup against Saddam in 1996. The CIA discarded the option of assassinating him because he had too many doubles. Even his own bodyguards never knew if they were guarding the real Saddam.

Whistleblower Leaks Secret Assassination and Kill List Documents

In the following video, Jeremy Cahill discusses his book The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program. For the most part, the book consists of leaked documents about the CIA’s “secret” drone assassination program. This is the first time any official documents have been made public.

Cahill’s latest book includes documents setting out the criteria for putting Americans and others on the terrorist “watch list.” Other documents describe the “kill chain,” the process by which prospects are moved from the “watch list” to the “kill list.” When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she signed off on every targeted assassination carried out by the Obama White House.

According to Scahill, the watch list contains over one million entries, including 21,000 Americans. Among other data, the watch list includes bank records and confidential medical records.

Scahill begins his talk with fascinating commentary on the three main presidential candidates. Among other observations, he points out 1) that Bernie Sanders supports both the kill list and drone warfare 2)  that Trump didn’t bring fascism to the US – that he merely brought existing US fascism into public view and 3) that Bill and Hillary Clinton were using her private email server to operate a parallel government structure.

In Scahill’s words, Hillary is the “empire candidate.” She has already been endorsed by William Kristol, Max Booth and other neoconservatives. He maintains most of the Republican leadership is preparing to support her presidential campaign.

Scahill is also scathingly critical of Ben Rhodes and the other 20 to 30-year-old “frat” boys who manage Obama’s foreign policy, ie make the decision who to kill next and which countries to invade.

 

Debunking the Notion of Good Wars

In the following video author David Swanson discusses his book War is a Lie. As a long time anti-war campaigner, Swanson’s purpose is to demolish the widespread belief that some wars (eg the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War and World War II) are “good wars. He carefully dispels the lies ruling elites have told us about each of these wars, simultaneously clarifying that each had the true purpose of expanding American empire.

With numerous historical examples, he demonstrates that war was totally unnecessary to win American independence (eg the US launched the War of 1812 as an excuse to invade Canada.). And not only was the Civil War unnecessary to end slavery, but slavery didn’t end in the US until World War II. (See 1941: The Year Slavery Finally Ended)

Swanson is extremely critical of environmentalists who are too timid to condemn war as the major destroyer of the environment and civil libertarians who condemn torture and assassination without condemning war as the root cause of these atrocities. He’s also highly critical of activists who bemoan that the corporate elite is too powerfully entrenched to be crushed by a mass movement.

Unlike most presentations, the Q&A’s – which start at 31:00 – are the best part of this video.