John Potash’s recent book, Drugs As Weapons Against Us: The CIA’s Murderous Targeting of SDS, Panthers, Hendrix, Lennon, Cobain, Tupac and other Activists, was published in May of 2015, with the corresponding documentary released just this past January (2019), titled, Drugs as Weapons Against Us: The CIA War on Musicians and Activists. Both have been received extremely positively, pulling together a host of historical facts, analyses, and thorough research, resulting in a well-presented stance that certainly holds water. His first book was titled, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders, released in 2007.
Potash has been featured on C-Span’s American History TV, A&E, The Reelz Channel, The Real News Network, and RT television networks. Furthermore, he’s appeared on hundreds of radio programs in the U.S, England, and New Zealand, including Coast to Coast AM, and has published a handful of articles in various magazines.
That aside, though, it is also important to mention that he has worked as a counsellor for people with mental health problems and addictions for over 25 years now. So he is certainly no newcomer or sideline spectator when it comes to this topic.
The following is taken from Potash’s website (as regards the book):
Approval of an MKULTRA subproject on LSD from Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, best known for his involvement with the CIA's 1950s and '60s assassination attempts and mind control program, known as Project MKULTRA.
Drugs as Weapons Against Us meticulously details how a group of opium-trafficking families came to form an American oligarchy and eventually achieved global dominance. They directed the CIA in operations such as MK-Ultra, pushing LSD and other drugs on leftist leaders and left-leaning populations at home and abroad. Evidence supports that this oligarchy further led the United States into its longest-running wars in the ideal areas for opium crops, while also massively funding wars in areas of coca plant abundance for cocaine production under the guise of a “war on drugs” that is actually the use of drugs as a war on us. Drugs as Weapons Against Us tells how scores of undercover U.S. Intelligence agents used drugs in the targeting of leftist leaders from SDS to the Black Panthers, Young Lords, Latin Kings, and the Occupy Movement. It also tells how they particularly targeted leftist musicians, including John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Tupac Shakur to promote drugs while later murdering them when they started sobering up and taking on more leftist activism. The book further uncovers the evidence that Intelligence agents dosed Paul Robeson with LSD, gave Mick Jagger his first hit of acid, hooked Janis Joplin on amphetamines, as well as manipulating Elvis Presley, Eminem, the Wu Tang Clan, and others.
Chemical Structure of LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide)
We question Potash from an array of different angles. We ask him when he first noticed the correlation between drugs in the music scene, and the possibility of conscious and targeted manipulation. We also briefly delve into the debate of whether LSD might actually be a “mind-opening” and beneficial drug. We’ve all heard both sides before: 1) it heightens your state of consciousness and makes you more spiritually aware, 2) it is extremely bad for you and turns your brain to mush (yes, of course that’s the technical term). Things start to get murky when you start wondering whether the government has been double-bluffing all along, i.e. demonising the drug, in turn leading leftists to believe it is beneficially mind-altering, but in actuality pushing its use in this nefarious and roundabout manner.
We also address the beginnings of CIA involvement and experimentations in the UK, as well as their involvements in the Laurel Canyon scene, often touted as the epicentre of the hippie and counterculture movement.
Former CIA Director and U.S. President, George H. W. Bush holds up a bag of crack cocaine during his Address to the Nation on National Drug Control Strategy.
We then move into discussing how the Black Panther Party was affected, and how Tupac Shakur (and Afeni, his mother) played into this. Particularly pertinent to this point is the rise of the crack epidemic and drug-trade in general. The story has roots that many might not be comfortable acknowledging: Nazis that fled to South America and established their own colonies created a partnership with local cocaine drug manufacturers. Thus, they had found a new career in drug trafficking, helping to shape a number of cartels, including Escobar’s Medellin cartel. I think people who know a little about Nazi history wouldn’t be so surprised: after all, they were known to be drug fiends, with their soldiers being prescribed methamphetamines during battle, and Hitler known to have been addicted to opiods, cocaine, and meth.
Also covered in this episode is the East Coast-West Coast feud (including discussion of the Notorious BIG); the death of Kurt Cobain; and the infamous “27 Club.”
The big question at the end of the day: do oligarchs control alternative media and news outlets? To what extent can we trust “regular” news sources, and to what extent can we hold “fringe” and “alternative” news up to the same test? You start to gradually realise that our rational thinking becomes foggy, facts become clouded, and we have to begin truly sieving through all this information in a far more critical manner that we had previously thought.
We hope you enjoy the show, and do let us know what you think.
Over and Out.
Don’t forget to check out John Potash’s website—also, be sure to grab your copy of his book and watch the documentary (also available in Blu-ray!)
