MK-Ultra, LSD and the CIA War on Musicians and Activists

Drugs as Weapons Against Us: The CIA War on Musicians and Activists

https://www.drugsasweaponsmovie.com/

Film Review

On January 29, John Potash will release his film Drugs as Weapons Against Us: The CIA War on Musicians and Activists – based on his 2015 book Drugs as Weapons Against Us: The CIA’s Murderous Targeting of SDS, Panthers, Hendrix, Lennon, Cobain, Tupac and Other Activists. A virtual encyclopedia of illegal government drug trafficking, the film begins with the involvement of the JP Morgan, Russell and other first families with the British East India Company and the opium wars that forced China to allow their opium trade.

Potash crams a massive amount of detail in his two-hour film, tracing how these and other powerful Wall Street families were instrumental in launching he CIA to protect their financial and political interests and how illegal drug trafficking (initially heroin trafficking from Southeast Asia) was essential to the CIA’s MO from its very inception in 1947.

He goes on to explore how the CIA/FBI assisted 9,000 Nazi war criminals to secretly settle in South America after World War II – where they helped establish paramilitary death squads to assassinate labor and human rights leaders who threatened US-installed dictators. Under the leadership of Klaus Barbie, they would also link up with local cocaine barons in establishing CIA-supported networks to smuggle the to the US.

Potash next details the probable role of the CIA/FBI in a host of suspicious OD’s, suicides and “lone nut” assassinations of activist rock stars and political figures who posed a threat to Wall Street interests. The list (as the book’s title suggests) includes John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Janis Joplin, Jim Hendrix, Tupac Shakur and Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, among others.

For me the most fascinating part of the 2015 book concerns the extensive distribution of the hallucinogen LSD via the CIA’s MK-Ultra program in the sixties and seventies. Potash documents how CIA drug agents deliberately sought out targeted civil rights and anti-war activists and activist rock stars (eg John Lennon, George Harrison and Mick Jagger) in the hope of “neutralizing” any threat they might pose to corporate interests.

Although a two-hour film can’t possibly offer the same level of documentation as a 440-page book, the evidence this documentary presents paints a cogent and credible picture of the CIA as an immoral criminal enterprise dedicated to serving the interests of a tiny US financial elite.

About the Filmmaker

John Potash first came across evidence of the CIA role in disseminating LSD to activists and rock musicians in FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in the Media) co-founder Martin Lee’s book Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion (Grove Press 1985). The book details a high level Italian investigation of US intelligence officer Ronald Stark, who oversaw the trafficking of tens-to-hundreds of million of acid hits world wide. This led Potash to Operation Julie (W.H. Allen 1978), a book by high level British detective Dick Lee. Lee also investigated Stark’s operation and its network of intelligence links. Later Potash, a drug and alcohol counselor, would deal with clients who obtained LSD from the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a Stark-linked operation in the US.

Potash is also the author of the FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders (Progressive Left Press 2008) and has made a prior documentary (by the same title) based on the book.

Full interview with John Potash at Drugs as Weapons Against Us – Interview with John Potash

 

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/

The Unauthorized Biography of Barack Obama

The Unauthorized Biography of Barack H Obama

by Webster Tarpley

Progressive Press (2008)

Download free PDF

Book Review

Published in the lead-up to the 2008 election, Tarpley’s unauthorized biography of candidate Obama makes some uncanny predictions about his administration’s pro-corporate and pro-war policies. While some aspects of the book are purely speculative – namely those related to Obama’s psychological make-up – Tarpley raises important concerns about Obama’s background which still haven’t received the public attention they deserve.

Tarpley was one of the very first to publicize the extensive links Obama’s family had with the CIA, as well as his early grooming for the presidency – starting at Columbia University under the tutelage of Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Bzrezinski.

Obama’s CIA Career

Following his graduation from Harvard Law School, Obama himself went to work for a CIA front company called Business International Corporation (the New York Times exposed BIC as a CIA front company on 12/27/77). Tarpley cites former Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) leader Carl Oglesby (writing in Ravens in the Storm) that BIC’s main goal was to infiltrate student and leftist groups.

After leaving BIC, Obama became a civil rights lawyer and so-called “community organizer.” In actuality, he served on the board of a number of “progressive” foundations like the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). Tarpley, who examines the funding and specific activities of these foundations, questions the genuineness of their progressive credentials. All the evidence suggests they actually played a “gatekeeper” or “counterinsurgency” function similar to the programs McGeorge Bundy pioneered as head of the Ford Foundation.

Obama and the Agenda to Privatize Chicago Schools

In fact CAC itself, where Obama was a board member for six years (three years as chair), appears to have replicated Bundy’s 19968 strategy to pit minority boards (in Chicago they were called Local School Councils) against the New York City teachers unions. As Tarpley discovered, the campaign to give LSC’s the power to fire teachers and school principals was championed – not by grassroots minorities – but by business interests headed by Thomas Ayers.

Ayers, by coincidence, happens to be the father of Obama’s pal the former Weather Underground “terrorist” Bill Ayers. Ayers senior has impeccable corporate credentials, which include heading Commonwealth Edison for seven years in the seventies and serving on the board of General Dynamics, Searle, Chico Pacific, Zenith, Northwest Industries, First National Bank of Chicago and the Chicago Tribute.

This may possibly explain his son Bill’s “magical ability” to secure foundation funding. Ayers wrote the grant to secure Annenberg funding for CAC, and he credits himself as one of its co-founders.

By Obama’s own admission, the project on which CAC spent $100 million was unsuccessful in improving the education achievement of black students. What the CAC did accomplish, very successfully, was to drive a wedge between minority parents and the teachers unions, when they could have united to block extensive federal and state education cutbacks. It also threw Chicago schools into such chaos they became ripe for school privatization efforts (ie creation of private Charter schools), championed by the same elite business lobby that pushed through the 1988 School Reform Act. The latter created the LSCs, which ultimately laid the groundwork for former White House staffer Ron Emanuel to close 49 Chicago public schools in favor of private charter schools.

Bill Ayers: the Bomb Making Terrorist

As Tarpley points out, this raises the tricky question of how Bill Ayers transformed himself from a bomb making terrorist to a tenured Professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a pre-eminent education reformer. Tarpley and others allege the Weather Underground was actually a US intelligence creation, formed with the specific objective of infiltrating and shutting down SDS. This view is substantiated by FBI documents that came to light in 1973 reveling the role of agent provocateurs in instigating much of the violence attributed to the Weathermen – evidence Ayers used to have his own weapons and bomb-making charges dismissed.

Considerable circumstantial evidence supports these allegations. First is the striking “coincidence” that many of the Weather Underground leadership were, like Ayers, the sons and daughters of wealthy members of the corporate elite. Second is the report of former SDS members that the Weathermen, who did no fundraising to speak of, appeared to have unlimited funds to spend on organizing and military-style training. Third are their classic (successful) Cointelpro-style schemes to undermine. And last is the troubling question of how Bill Ayers can openly brag about his terrorist activities in his 2002 book Fugitive Days – and instead of the facing the death penalty for conspiracy to commit murder, enjoy status and privilege as a tenured professor of education.