On this edition of West of The Rockies, we are joined by John Potash, an author and filmmaker known for his investigative work on the CIA's alleged use of drugs as a tool for social control, mainly targeting musicians and activists. His book, Drugs as Weapons Against Us, was published in 2015, followed by a documentary in 2018.
Potash recently released a sequel to that documentary, titled “CIA Drugs R’ Us”, which explores the CIA's historical involvement in drug trafficking and its impact on cultural figures like John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, and Tupac Shakur. The film further details the CIA’s Project MK Ultra involvement with The Manson Family regarding activist actors and The Black Panthers. It also details the influence of oligarchical families to stop any threat to the status quo.
The sequel also covers the Netflix documentary series “The Keepers,” focusing on the church abuse scandal in Baltimore, which Potash connects to the MKUltra program. He discusses the program's origins in Nazi Germany and suggests that MKUltra operations may still be ongoing today.
Below is a partial transcript from our interview with John Potash—it has been edited for clarity and readability. For the full interview, click the YouTube link at the top of this page.
West of The Rockies: This new documentary, “CIA Drugs R’ Us,” is a follow-up to your first documentary, “Drugs as Weapons Against Us.” What events or series of events made you put out a sequel?
John Potash: I wrote the book “Drugs As Weapons Against Us” in 2015, and I made a film about that in 2019. And films usually take me at least a few years to make and get out there. So between 2017 and 2019, a lot of new information came out, such as a book by an award-winning reporter named Tom O'Neill, who came out with book "Chaos" about the Manson Family and CIA's MKUltra program, which is the majority of what my "Drugs As Weapons Against Us" film is about and my "CIA Drugs R' Us" film is about.
Then, more information came out about John Lennon, and more information came out about both Tupac Shakur and Kurt Cobain. So this made me want to put another, you know, a sequel out there.
WoTRradio: In this sequel, we also cover the Netflix documentary series “The Keepers.” Why did you choose to include that in this film?
JP: The last third of my film is about the issues surrounding "The Keepers,” an Emmy Award-winning docu-series that premiered on Netflix in 2017 and is about the church sex abuse scandal in Baltimore and other cities. However, I focused mostly on the Baltimore situation because I have the most information on it.
So, I sent the evidence that was in my mind when I saw the docu-series to the star civilian investigator of "The Keepers,” a woman named Gemma Hoskins. I sent her evidence because I believed it was related to the CIA MK-Ultra program. She took the evidence and information and ran with it, re-interviewing all these victims and interviewing the psychiatrist who wrote a book on CIA doctors about MKUltra. She then let me use all of her podcast interviews for this new film.
WoTRradio: Can you briefly talk about how the CIA's MKUltra program has its roots in Nazi Germany?
JP: Professor Al McCoy wrote about Kurt Plötner, I believe the name was, was one German Nazi scientist who would experiment with psychedelics on concentration camp victims, and other Nazi scientists that were using different drugs to experiment on concentration camp victims were brought into the CIA when I was born in 1947 through an operation called Paperclip to take those experiments into MKUltra, where they continued those ghastly experiments.
WoTRradio: To your knowledge, has the MK Ultra program ended, or is it still active today?
JP: I think it's still happening today. The key FBI counterintelligence program agent, Wes Swearingen, wrote a whistle-blowing memoir about that and said that even though they officially closed CONINTELPRO, the counterintelligence program, in 1971. They kept it going under different names until the mid-1990s, when he came out with his memoir.
And, of course, I show the evidence that the targeting of Tupac Shakur was a latter-day counterintelligence program. And so a CIA whistleblower named John Stockwell, who I saw speak and I got to talk to after a speech in Baltimore in 1991. He talked about, in an interview later, that, yes, the CIA’s MKUltra program did continue under different names well past the 1973 date that the head of the CIA ordered all the MKUltra documents shredded, and the estimates are they shredded about 200,000 documents.
But he didn't realize that there were 20,000 copies of the documents still being saved in the accounting department that he didn't get to shred. And those were discovered and revealed by U.S. congressmen who were looking that up. But the church was very much investigating that. The 20,000 documents came out and were revealed to the public, though most of the press refused to look at them because they're, sadly, I show the evidence, in cohorts with some of these CIA agents and the oligarchs that owned much of the press.
WoTRradio: President John F. Kennedy’s attempt to dismantle the CIA is pivotal when discussing the CIA and its activities. As a famous quote attributed to JFK goes, he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” What can you tell me about that and how it relates to the MKUltra program? Was Kennedy aware of the CIA's involvement in these types of projects?
JP: When President John F Kennedy tried to close down the MKUltra program in 1961, when he came across it, he officially closed it down. He fired the CIA director, but they kept it running behind his back, and he found it again right before his assassination, and he closed it down again because down again. They changed the name to MK Search, and it continued under that name until 1973. So again, I argue and show the evidence that, yes, it did continue.
WoTRradio: In your documentaries, you present information that shows the apparent attempts to control influential cultural figures using MK Ultra tactics. What is the profile that would make someone an ideal target of the MK Ultra program? And once their target is acquired, how are these individuals used?
John Potash’s first documentary "Drugs As Weapons Against Us" available as an Audiobook, Paperback, and Documentary (Prime Video), Documentary (Tubi).
JP: The type of subjects that they target are the kind of targets that are going against what I call the oligarchs, the wealthiest families in this country that really run this country. And so, their agenda is to stop any public figure that can counter what they're trying to do: they try to manipulate public opinion. And, you know, the CIA’s motive is to control people's hearts and minds—they can't control them physically because people outnumber them.
The oligarchical families are, maybe, anywhere from a few dozen to maybe a few hundred oligarchical billionaire families. And so when they control the media, they think that we will fight for something that may not be good for us. Thinking that we’re fighting for a just war in, say, Iraq, to invade Iraq because there are weapons of mass destruction.
And then we come to find that there were no weapons of mass destruction. We just caused the death of over a million people in Iraq. These are some of the things that they don't want anyone with popularity to rise up and speak out against.
WoTRradio: As explained in your documentary “CIA Drugs R’ Us,” these oligarchical families you mentioned appeared to have a hand in drug running in major armed conflicts around the world, among other activities. Can you tell us who they are, how they operate, and what they hope to achieve?
JP: The Rockefellers, the JP Morgans, the Harrimans, the Carnegies, and how many others that we just don't even know the names of—but tell some of their names, the Cabots that started Harvard University was originally involved in opium shipping, the Russles that started Yale University, and the Lows of Columbia University, etc..
They are basically the wealthiest oligarchical families, and they’ve proven to be incredibly racist and incredibly prejudiced against all but their fellow super-wealthy, white Anglo-Saxon, protestant families. They basically are hyper-capitalist in terms of being incredibly greedy, wanting to use the U.S. military to try to take more and more resources from other countries for themselves.
They don't have any thought of social justice. They are against civil rights. They attack countries for oil; they attack countries for their opium crops. The opium crops are particularly lucrative because heroin is so costly on the black market. And, of course, cocaine is very expensive on the black market, too.
That's why they were also involved with the groups that were helping traffic the cocaine from the South American and Central American countries to North America and to other areas of the world.
WoTRradio: The Vietnam War is a war that haunts the United States to this day. In your documentary “CIA Drugs R’ Us,” you present information to the viewer that shows that this war was a cover for a major drug-running operation. Can you tell us a bit more about that and how the oligarch families are involved?
JP: When they wanted to control the opium crops of the Golden Triangle of the Vietnam area, which was the best place to grow, poppy fields that produce opium and heroin. They, you know, push this Vietnam War saying you're trying to stop communist takeover. And really it was just to try to get more control over the opium crops—there's other reasons, too. But that was a big one.
I have Judy Woodruff talking in a documentary where she basically says the CIA documents say they were shipping heroin from the Vietnam area to the United States, and I have a CIA agent whistleblower John Stockwell saying, yes, his fellow agents were shipping, heroin from the Vietnam area to the U.S. So when we had John Lennon rise up in popularity and say he's against the war that helped the agenda of the people wanting peace. The students said, “I don't want to sacrifice my life in Vietnam just to enrich these oligarchs that are going to gain more control over the opium in that area.
And obviously, John Lennon became a target because of that, because he was so popular that he could change hearts and minds about that war a bit. And then when Kurt Cobain threatened to become the John Lennon of his generation, and he was anti-war and anti-racism, he became a threat because, as I said, oligarchs are so pro-war and so racist.
Later in the interview, we further discuss John’s research into the targetting of John Lennon, as well as the targetting of Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur. We take a look at the CIA’s involvement in the hippie movement and how this movement was engineered to steer activists away from their message. We also explore the possible CIA links to The Manson Family and the murders of Sharon Tate and a group of her friends carried out by Manson’s followers and the true motive behind this terrible act.
Don't forget to check out the documentary we discussed here, “CIA Drugs R’ Us,” and be sure to also check out his first documentary, “Drugs As Weapons Against Us,” available as a book, audiobook, and documentary. There is a lot of information in those two films that will leave you thinking,
LINKS
John Potash's Website | https://www.johnpotash.com
"CIA Drugs R Us!" Documentary | Prime Video and Tubi
"Drugs As Weapons Against Us" | Audiobook, Paperback, Documentary (Prime Video), Documentary (Tubi)
WoTRradio first interview with John Potash | "Drugs As Weapons Against Us: The CIA War on Musicians & Activists" with Author, John Potash
