Drugs As Weapons Against Us with John L Potash

play and enjoy. By subscribing, you get notified when new episodes drop, and you'll help the show reach more listeners, which means we can bring on the guests that you want to hear more from. So new episodes will drop three times a month. That's on the sixth, sixteenth, and twenty sixth, so mark your calendars today. My guest is John L. Potash. Did I say that right?

know that. I would never have known that from watching the videos either.

and doing addictions counseling in Baltimore City. I went from I just kind of saw a lot of corruption and saw a lot I actually worked as a bartender in Fells Point area of Baltimore, a place where that was owned by some people that were both high up in the state government and connected to the mafia. And that's

not unusual. I came to find and so, and then worked as a proletarvation officer, and I saw some of the same people that were kind of connected to that bar ended up having a you know, having an easy way in court, and saw the corruption with drugs and and the mafia and in the high end, you know,

getting off in court easy. And uh So when I was working as an addictions counselor, I would hear things about from my clients who I counseled, saying, oh, you know, we we don't have the ships and planes to bring the drugs you know, over into the into the city,

and so obviously the government can only do that. And so yeah, sure, the government you know, sells traffic drugs, and so I kind of explored those ideas and started researching more and after having a drugg and alcohol problem myself in high school and kind of weaning off things and kind of whige. I I just was able to, you know, just see, hey, how how did these different

things affect my body and brain? And you know, even though I had a hard time, I was kind of denial of like psychedelics messing me up a bit, even though it hurt my grades for a full year. For sure,

I ended up, you know, kind of denying it. But then looking into it more, I found out that it's really hard to find studies when it but studies do say that LSD can you know, cause some mild cerebral damage and a loss of emotional control in a bit in a way, and m D M a ecstasy causes some even more serious damage with the memory loss and stuff and harder, you know, having a hard time with your memory. And so when I explored all these things, and then I explored the political side of it all,

particularly around cocaine traffic king and Central America. I was protesting the Iraq War and I was sitting in a street blocking traffic to you know, about the nineteen ninety one invasion of Iraq, and a woman next to me, I said, oh, you're a drug counselor. I you know, I've got I worked for the Christic Institute, and we're suing over the fact that the CIA is helping, you know, bring cocaine in front to the United States from Nicaragua

and the contrast. And so she gave me a whole like Senate report on that from Senator John Kerrey, who was more honest at that time before you you know, ran for president. And so here was evidence that what some of my you know, people I counseled were saying was right that, yeah, this is nineteen ninety one and they were already finding out that the CIA was trafficking cocaine. And then Gary Webb kind of blew it all open in nineteen ninety five or so or ninety six, you know,

with his viralting on that. And so I ended up going to conferences meeting Ramsey Clark, the former US Attorney General under President Johnson, who said, I said, you know, what do you think the government's doing with drugs, you know, in terms of the population in the inner cities. He says, well, I think, you know, the government uses drugs to sedate

and divide the masses. And then I met a CIA agent named John Stockwell who was lecturing in Baltimore, who said that he knows, you know, his fellow CI officers were trafficking heroin from the Vietnam area where we're at war, into the United States. And so, you know, I used all that, plus my exploration of LSD through a book called Acid Dreams and articles on the CISM C Culture program, to show that, yes, here's all the ways that the CIA was using drugs against us. And so I thought,

how did they How did they promote the drugs? Obviously through the people we love the most, musicians and so you know, sometimes actors and writers, and and then you know how much who's got you know, who's got the power to even kind of oppose the CIA and their influence. And really the people with the most power and influence, you know, are the people we look up to the most, and that's usually musicians, and especially with their lyrics, you know, kind of hitting our hearts in our minds the way

the CIA wants to. They're the ones that you know, have the power to influence people against the CIA. And so I found the evidence that, yeah, the CIA was targeting musicians not only to promote drugs, but also to do away with them when they you know, oppose their racist pro war agenda and and found the tactics they used against them.

away about the Rolling Stones. In All History of the Rolling Stones details so much about them and the times, and A. Hotchner was the one time editor for Ernest Hemingway and so he was great, great writer himself, and the oral history of this is really well done. And so he came out with the fact that the CIA was basically getting in the late sixties. I was trying to get acid, you know, LSD, and it's as many rock

musicians' hands as possible in Britain. And he said that the head of our assistant director, MK Ultrick, Guymed Robert Lashbrook went over to London in January sixty five and did this, brought tons of acid, loads of agents and you know, and loads of money and instructed them to do that. And so so John Lennon gets his first

of acid through a dentist, through George Harrison's Dennis. He's dosed. Basically, his coffee is spiked with LSD without him knowing it, and him and George Harrison ended up tripping without you know, knowing that they were going to be you know, didn't do it voluntarily, and you know, John Lennon was furious. George Harrison said, what's LSD? I'd never heard of it because at that time, you know, it was late coming

to Britain. And so so they took a while to ever do it again, but they did remembe six or eight months later in Los Angeles were convinced to try it again, but with Mick Jagger he held out. He didn't try it until nineteen sixty seven. And only then when a bunch of people at a party, I believe

at Keith Richard's house. We're trying where you were doing it, and this guy named David Schneiderman convinced him to try some tea that happened to be you know, lace with LSD, and he finally tried it when you know, voluntarily, and started tripping. And so the police, you know, a few hours later, raided the party and they arrested you know, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and you know, made headlines

that he's tripped. You know, they arrested while they're tripping, and so it's happened to be his first time tripping and he gets arrested. And so obviously they set that up to promote asset, to promote l STE to others. There's little here's to your favorite, you know, the top musicians tripping and so you know, why don't you two kind of thing, And meanwhile they don't, they don't arrest David schneider Man. So it's obvious that police are working

with Schneiderman because Schneiderman. It came out in a Daily Mail article, which is a you know London daily newspaper on the top two daily newspapers, the Daily Mail in the Guardian. But Daily Mail article said in the it came out in the past ten years, said that Schneiderman was working for both the FBI and the British version that I M I five Military intelligence five and so, and he was underground. You know, he's exposedly this underground Acid King they called him, and it was his nickname,

the Acid King. And you know, and here he is working for intelligence, both American and British intelligence. So this was some of the ways that they targeted both Jagger and the Rolling Stones. Plus they tried to promote acid to the masses to basically quell the rising anti war movement and to quell the pro civil rights movement that was rising up more and more. And you know, later at UH they targeted Brian Jones, who was the founding member of the Rolling Stones and considered the best musician

the Rolling Stones. They murdered him and A Hotchin's book details how there was witnesses, you know, told him that he was murdered. He was drowned in his own swimming pool, so it was an accident, but people saw him being drowned by some strangers. And so the Brian Jones and Mick Jagger were the most anti war outspoken the anti Vietnam War, and it was obviously they were targeting them

for that and their influence. And Jones had been, you know, worked to sober upright before he was killed, he had already talked to Jimmy Hendricks and John Lennon about forming a new group, a supergroup of those three, and that was a danger to US intelligence because they both were worried about John Lennon's socialism and Jimmy Hendrix's growing radical

activism at that time. And this was nineteen seventy And meanwhile, Brian Jones had just been disallowed from coming into the United States because of a drug like a former drug arrest, and so it was just, you know, so he was like temporarily out out of the Stones at that time, while the Stones are touring in the US at that time. So this is some of the stuff that was going

on there. And Jagger, meanwhile, he ends up playing what's called an alternative Woodstock It's the Altamont Fest in I believe it was the Woodstock game was in New York and this was in the San Francisco somewhere in California between closer to San Francisco, between San Francisco and La I believe, and in the Aldermont fest was had a really low stage and there was a guy dressed in a suit in a strange way, but they have to be a black man dressed in a suit who took

a step up on the stage while the Rolling Stones were playing, Mick Jagger was singing, and he had a gun on him and he takes a step on the stage within a few feet from Mick Jagger and the people, I'm sorry, the Hell's Angels, who were the security guards at that festival, grabbed him and pulled him off the stage. And he was carrying a gun in his hand as if ready to shoot, and they pulled him off the stage and stabbed him and killed him. And it was,

you know, very sad to kill him. But this guy was obviously you know, I can only say he must have been programmed or brainwashed to do something like that because bringing it, you know, jumping on stage with a gun and shooting Mick Jaggers practically a good is like

willing your own death. Really, because there were so many, so many Hells Angels over there who were you know, had weapons on them and that were peeked out their mind on speed and all kinds of other stuff that you know, it was like asking for your death to do that. So it's just a bizarre thing that happened, and it was I think it was obviously a murder

attempt of Mick Jagger. And then later there they said there there was a bounty on Mick Jagger's head that other Hell's Angels, uh said that Mick Jagger owed them money or something like that, and they were gonna kill him if he you know, didn't pay him like some kind of money for whatever happened. It's hard to explain.

But so there's just different attacks, and they basically were scaring Mick Jagger into quiet, you know, and to calm down and not be involved in the kind of anti war songs he was producing at that time and to go more low key in terms of his activism and h yes, some of the ways that occurred. Now, you also asked about the Black Panthers and who else there.

with the human beings. So they went from like a few dozen people at the first acid test party where they and I don't know if you heard the Acid Test Party or your listeners have, but they would have a basically a big like a trash can full kool aid, and the kool Aid, you know, is plastic insert into the trash can, then filled with kool Aid, and then pouring tons of LSD into that kool aid, so that every time you got a cupful, you'd be tripping. And some people knew that it was it was you know,

spiked with it was electric coallid, they call it. It was spiked with acid. Some people didn't, and they first started with a small party with it and then it got bigger. It went from a few dozen to a few, you know, to maybe one hundred to a few hundred to one thousand. These parties got bigger and bigger, you know, been bigger

and bigger venues. And so I argue that they were promoting LSD in a big way that way, and promoting it to more and more people around the hot bed San Francisco UH anti war scene, and uh, it was like a grow It was a big time UH activist

scene around Berkeley. Then with the free speech movement, you know, starting in Berkeley, California, and University of California, Berkeley, and then the Civil rights movement, a lot of the Freedom Summer activists came from from Berkeley and other schools around there and took a bus all the way to the to the South, you know American South where Martin Uther King was trying to you know, organize to get people,

you know, blacks the right to vote. And so there was loads of buses coming from New York and even all the way from that area of San Francisco, you know, area of California, and so that they were trying to target those activists at that time, and they were successful with it. They were getting loads of UKL Berkeley activist you know, people on a trip and hurt their minds and take you know, make them not as good as activists when they were kind of scatterbrained from all the acid.

And so the Grateful Dead were instrumental in that way. And so they also played you know, had acid tests. Well. First thing it was, you know, it was an extension of King Keyesy and the Mary Pranksters, which I show the evidence was actually an intelligence operation. Loads of military, one guy who was part of the pranksters, and you know Ken Kizi's group. They could so they called themselves. They were getting having acid parties all over the place.

And then they painted a bus and dig low colors in about nineteen sixty five or so and took it across the country promoting acids. It was actually nineteen sixty fours when that happened into nineteen sixty five in their cross country trip, and that bus actually followed left the

same day that day. Glue Bus left the same day as the Freedom Summer Bus and from the activists of cal Berkeley and then took the same path into the South where the Freedom Summer movement was organizing, and so it was trying to get loads of these activists tripping and turned, you know, getting away from the civil rights

movement work and tripping and being diverted into that. And then they went to New York and then came all the way back across the country, veering up to Canada, through parts of Canada, and coming came back to San Francisco. They then start the acid test parties and then they hold you know, in that bus trip, they actually went through Harlem, and they went through Harlem in New York, you know, right after the first riot, the Harlem riot

against police brutality in there. And then they came back and they ended up doing these big acid tests right in the middle of Watts in Los Angeles. And Watts is a black neighborhood of Los Angeles where they had just rioted also against police brutality and for civil rights. And you know, we could call them rebellions instead of riots. They rebelled for you know, for civil rights and against police brutality and things like that. And so this is

what they were trying to do. They were trying to hurt the minds of these kinds of activists and so you know, sadly enough, the Grateful Dead seem to be part of that. And now I don't know if Jerry Garcia it was a victim and he was being duped into being part of that or not, but he did come out of the army, But who knows for sure. I do think some of the other members of the bands were, you know, probably knowing more knowing what they

were doing. Nonetheless, then you got the Black Panthers, and the Black Panthers were you know, many community organizing people and activists consider them some of the best community organizing activists, you know, maybe of the twentieth century. They did great work for you know, the basically taking where Martha King kind of left off in a more traditional kind of marching and organizing to a little more of where Martha Malcolm X was standing in terms of self defense. And

so they armed themselves for self defense. But they organized free breakfast programs for poor black kids. They organized housing rights education, they were organized free health clinics. They did just some incredible organizing around so many different issues in the black communities. And and they were of course brutally targeted,

but you know, they were bruly murdered. A number of the Black Panther leaders were murdered, you know, particularly uh sorry Fred Hampton and uh people like Los Angeles leaders like Bunchie Carter and John Huggins. And but Huey Newton was founding member and you know with I'm sorry, his name just leaves me all of a sudden, but you know, he founded the Black Panther Party with chairman Bobby Seal.

And and they targeted Huey Newton with cocaine, and they can certain people can have more of a susceptibility to addictions. And it's not clear that Huey Newton developed addiction, but they put a woman named Lane Brown in his life. She said she you know, I mean people she admitted in one place that she brought cocaine, or at least people that knew them said she brought cocaine and beautiful women all around him to get him using cocaine. And Bobby Seal said he did develop a cocaine problem at

that time. And Elaine Brown was caught with cocaine and received like just in order to do yoga lessons versus going to jail for it. But Elaine Brown is a Black Panther who was likely in undercover agent. Sorry to say, it's the best evidence. Even Kathleen Cleaver, the national spokesperson for the Black Panthers, has said this, as well as John ro Pratt, who was the Los Angeles Black Panther

leader at one time. And so, you know, Huey k. Newton developed a cocaine addiction, sadly enough, as did a number of other Black Panthers that were introduced to either cocaine or heroin at different places around the country. And it just really hurt the Black Panthers as a whole that they're one of their leaders was was manipulated into getting involved with cocaine and hurt himself and as best organized and because of it.

And so John Lennon was openly said he was a socialist and was very actively anti war and interviewed Black Panthers and other you know, Abby Hoffmann, other I can't he wore people and like the MERV Griffin Show when he was a host for a week of the MERV Griffin Show. So like these kinds of musicians were more open about it. But Kurt Cobain was very you know it said made anti capitalist statements. He was you know, he's just talked about a lot of activist causes. It

was very anti materialistic. He talked about he would only appear on Rolling Stone magazine's cover if he could wear a shirt that said corporate magazines still suck, you know. So he supported independent media before it was just a you know, big thing to do. And so he was really brilliant guy about the media, about the you know, corporate kind of control over society and things like that. He was very anti war and things like that. So

he was he was like a lesser known activist. But I argue that he was manipulated by Courtney Love and US intelligence to get to develop a short term heroin problem. You know, I said short term maybe a year or two or three. At the most a heroin problem. And then when he sobered up and got away from the heroin and more into his you know, good causes and in a little more independence and was divorcing Courtney Love,

they did away with him. They killed him. And so he I argued that he was manipulated to promote heroin.

And when he when Nirvana got big every year from nineteen ninety one to ninety two to ninety three, you know, when he was when he died, each year that the heroin use went up by ten percent, and it continued going up by ten percent, you know, when Nirvana was still popular and Courtney Love was still promoting it with hole and awe, you know, each year of the nineties, and you know, uh, and it's just very sad that

he inadvertently promoted heroin. And then when he sobered up, people didn't you know, didn't even really know it because they hit it. They hit the fact that he had sobered up, and uh that he said in an interview or two that he found a cure to a stomach problem he had and had gotten away. It was just so glad, you know, to get away from h had a son problem in the year when he was in Rome touring with Nirvana. All the people around him, all the other band members says he wouldn't even smoke weed

or do anything like that. He was just so so so you clean and sober at that time. And the blood test. When Courtney Love visited him with their daughter Francis, she basically brought her her sleep medication that that you can get in England, which was roe hypnol and rohypnoll is rufie's and so she brought her roal hypno and the best evidence says that she dosed a drink his drink with ro hypno and rufied him to the point that she caused him to go into a coma. She

put a huge amount of hypnoa on his drink. He went to a coma, almost died, but didn't die, but he couldn't remember what happened, because that's what rufe's do to you, and so you know, she tried to kill him. He was divorcing her at the time, but he did want to see his daughter Francis. He loved his daughter Francis. And I have in my film, I have you know, the tape tape recording of his lawyer him and Courtney's lawyer saying that, you know, she thought that there his

his kind of suicide note was faked. Was somebody copied his handwriting and used terms that he would use kind of thing. And so the best evidence is is that Courtney Love either knowingly or unknowingly because she had a twuly twisted life of growing up going to counseling at by different accounts, at different memoirs, either you know, either age two or three or four she started counseling. And if you say, you know, you do some counseling yourself, you know, two or three or four years old is

a ridiculous age to start counseling. And so she ends up saying that these all these counselors she was sent to were having sex with her. In the psychiatrists that they were sending her to, we're having sex with her. And she mentioned she told her father in a letter to her dad when she was in a juvenile delinquent facility at about thirteen years old, she said, Dad, can

you get me out of this facility? Because her father had been had been forced by her mother to lose all custody of her because the mother had had basically the super wealthy parents, and she was basically adopted daughter of super wealthy parents. And the super wealthy parents abused Courtey Love's mother, and her name was Linda Carroll and and they basically then put tons of money into buying

out the lawyer for Hank Harrison. Courty loves adopted you know, I mean Courtey loves biological dad, so that he would lose all lose the case and lose all custody of Courtney. And so this is what happened. He lost total custody. He was really depressed, and all of a sudden he gets this letter when she's thirteen years old, please get

me out of the juvenile de Linquent facility. She gets her out of there and he finds out she's she She said in her letter that they were giving me ro hypnot I mean they were giving me all these exotic drugs. And these drugs were seen in mk ultra documents as you know, kind of drugs that can be used with hypnosis to successfully you know, help brainwash people. And so you know, the second all two and all is things like that, and that he shouldn't be given

to a thirteen year old. But anyway, peers. You know, he can't be sure, but appears that with the sexual assaults and the drugs, they created her as a you know, having created the social of identity in her which she used to be called multiple personality disorder, and led her to be, you know, a kind of prostitute for the CIA, a prostitute and you know, someone who would do their bidding, and she did. You know, Hank Harrison found she was

using when she got out. When he broke got her out of the delinquents facility and took her in, she would leave needles around his basement and be prostituting herself and he just couldn't even keep her for more than a year or two because she was his new wife. His wife was just saying, we can't have these needles all over the house as she's leaving on the floor and stuff. But she turned into a prostitute, appeared, you know, in terms of her letters. People have letters from her

talking about her prostituting herself. From her letters to a boyfriend saying, I prostituted myself to get back to you. She was doing this in Asian countries before she was out of ten years and by the time she was

seventeen years old. She was in Dublin visiting her dad who was doing research for a book, and a guy who befriended him ended up having sex with her who befriended her dad ended up having sex with her a guy named Steveen O'Leary, and Stephen O'Leary then takes her to England and she just turned seventeen and she's got a thousand hits of LSD on her and she brings that to England and passes around like candy to a bunch of you know, rock musicians in England in the

budding rock scene. And she also has tons of other drugs own hers she's passing around for free. And so she becomes this groupie h doing what the what a you know what Robert Lashbrook them killed assistant director did back in the sixties. She's doing this in the eighties, giving you know, getting loads of LSD to different musicians, as well as other drugs like you know, pain pills,

opiates and stuff, you know, leading to addictions. She's having sex with a number of the musicians and these are all in different memoirs of her, I mean different biographies, and you know she admits some of this and in an authorized biography, and so she was obviously, uh doing

the bidding of intelligence. And when she entered Kurt Cobaine's life, when when when never Mind, his best selling the album never Mind was first rising up the charts, and gets starts dating him, gets pregnant with him really quickly, and then you know, the oldest trick in the book to

get to get someone to marry you. And they see all the friends of Cobain say, that's the first time that they saw Cobaine developed, you know, start using heroin regularly, and that's how they they started promoting heroin so much

through him. And then when he sobered up, the best evidences that he was murdered, he didn't kill himself, and a former Los Angeles murder detective named Tom Grant end up investigating this whole situation, uh quitting Love actually hired him to just have a pretend version of why she wasn't involved in his death, and he ended up finding tons of evidence that Courtney Love was involved in Kurt Cobain's death, like in what he found to be the murder of Cobain, and that he had basically died of

a huge. What Cyril whacked that one of the top forensics, you know, doctors in the country, said president of the Forensic Society, said, was a massive amount of heroin was in the system when he died, and for someone to he's never seen someone do that, you know, do that much heroin and then pick up a shotgun and kill themselves. It's just that it doesn't make sense. But he also said it was just a staged suicide. Someone murgered him

and tried to make it look like a suicide. And I have that all my film You can see Sarah Wick talking about that, and so yeah, it was basically you know. And now I also have someone in my films saying that he was offered fifty grand by Courtney Love to kill Kurt Kubin. So and he didn't take it, but he knows who did take it take that offer, And and that's the way it all played out, sadly enough.

shot him up. They shot up Bob Marley but didn't kill him, but a shot Rita Marley, his wife and others that were in the home. And when they didn't kill him, and he was going to play a concert that that was considered to be promoting Michael Manley, and Michael Manley was hiding him, you know, somewhere so he wouldn't get attacked again. The a CIA agent actually a director of the CIA's son, the guy in Colby, Carl

Colby was UH William Colby's son. William Colbe was UH had at one time head of the c I. A UH Carl Colby had infiltrated a film crew that was covering the concert that Bob Marley was doing, and Colby

gave Bob Marley this gift shoes. Bob Marley put his you know, try to on the gift shoes as his like traditional amongst Rosparians when they're given a gift like that, and he was jabbed in the toe and stabbed in the toe by metal spike in the shoe and he ends up getting a few months later, he gets ends up getting cancer in that toe and that can't cancer

metastasizes fast throughout his body. But one of the eyewitnesses to that was a guy named Leelu Lee who confirmed that, and uh, you told me he appreciated my work investigating all this, but he was there, saw it happened, didn't think anything of it at the time, but then when Bob Marley crushed that toe playing soccer a few months later, he thought, you know, something might be suspicious about it all, and especially when he got cancer and that seemed toe

And so they just wanted to stop him from doing what he was doing now in terms of you know, being Rosafarian, and they smoked a lot of weed. Is it possible that they wanted to promote you know, smoking weed at one point. I don't know, I mean to make yeah, I really I don't know much about that, but I just think they wanted to stop him from from promoting you know, Jamaica independence from the CIA, and and he says, you know, his lyrics, Bob Marley said,

stand up for your rights. And you know, Rosses don't deal with any CIA. They don't want a CIA around in his songs and his lyrics and and so. But you know they wanted to do away with Bob Marley because of that. And Marley was popular internationally in a huge way before he died.

standard for trauma treatment. It's non invasive. You know. Benzodiazepines you know, like adavan, xanax, valume all that, they're invasive, and they have side effects and they can cause addictions and stuff. Psychedelics like m D m A. You know, ecstasy can cause you know, brain trauma, has bad side effects to have brain trauma that way and hurt your memory. Acid is causing some problems in the brain, you know,

with emotional control troom psychedelic mushrooms. Maybe maybe that might be a some kind of safer form of trauma you know PTSD treatment. I don't know, I don't know if I believe what's coming out of studies with that, just because I mean it's possible could help in some way, and great if it does that one at least at least shrooms. I haven't found necessarily negative side effects of

I just don't know. I felt like when I did trooms in high school, I wasn't as strong mentally after doing the shrooms for at least a few weeks, if not a few months, but it didn't have as bam of effect as me or as acid did. And I haven't found the studies saying it's as bad as acid at all when when our brains. But it's hard to

believe the studies that are being done. They are coming out though, because the fact that they all my best evidence shows that they're funded by m culture like projects, the CIM culture like projects, So it's hard to know their authenticity because they were funding faked studies back in the sixties and with a front group called the Human Ecology Fund, which was a CIM culture fund group accord into Anthropology today and you know the Anthropology like that

it's a journal for the Anthropology Association, and so yeah, it's just hard to know about that. But I you know, the fundings coming from billionaires like the Rockefellers who funded CIM culture Front group Human Ecology Fund enc and you know m culture itself, and the Rockefellers are funding the funders of the current stuff. These their funding and the groups are called the MAPS, the Multidispinary Association of Psychedelic Studies,

and the Hefter Institute who work with them. And so I don't believe the Rockefellers have good intent, you know, regarding these things.

causes and positive work on positive causes in our country. And and I guess you know, learn from some of the tactics that the CIA and US intelligence uses against us, to learn from them and to avoid them and to organize better, you know, with with the knowledge they have around these different tactics.