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[Music] you're listening to drug positive the risk reduction and benefit enhancement podcast reducing shame and stigma to save lives and end the drug war these are things you shame you see what is Medi Medi ye Midian refers to a time when one group controlled every aspect in the drug trade providing a measure of order that we could control and until somebody finds a way to convince 20% of the population to stop snorting and smoking that [ __ ] orders the best we can hope for that was a scene from narcos the Netflix series about the drug war in Colombia in it a CIA officer intentionally shoots and injures a female FBI agent who was about to bust members of a Colombian drug cartel the CIA guy apologizes to her and explains that he had to stop her because unbeknownst to her the CIA was protecting this particular cartel supposedly in order to bring order to the drug trade he laments the breakdown of the Medellin Cartel on the rise of competitors in the trade and explains they're trying to bring back a cocaine monopoly in Colombia in order to stop inter cartel violence painting CIA involvement in the drug trade in a benevolent light the idea here is that since they can't stop Americans from using cocaine they want to control the cocaine trade in order to ensure peace what a reeking pile of [ __ ] if you believe that nonsense I've got a bridge to sell you now don't get me wrong I love narcos I've watched every season it's fun it's dramatic it's an exciting series right up there with Breaking Bad and in some ways it's nice to see some mainstream media recognition of CIA involvement in the drug trade but the explanation they present for why the CIA is involved is a complete and utter lie it's what's sometimes called a limited hang out in intelligence community jargon you admit part of the truth in order to disguise the actual truth a limited admission of guilt that serves as a cover for what's really going on and of course narcos is going to do that the CIA is deeply involved in the popular media reviewing and rewriting scenes and movies and TV shows all the time that deal with geopolitics they're masters of propaganda and they have their fingers in all the big pots and if you don't believe this if you think it's conspiracy theory you need to listen to this episode in this episode i interviewed douglas valentine author of four books on the CIA the DEA and their predecessor the Federal Bureau of Narcotics no historian knows more about the inner workings of the CIA and intelligence community than him why because as you'll hear in the interview Douglas got on the good side of none other than William Colby former head of the CIA in the 70s Colby introduced him to all these high-level CIA officers and told them to speak freely with him because he believed Douglas was gonna write a book sympathetic to the CIA it's an incredible story once his first book on the CIA was published in 1990 and it wasn't a revisionist apologist decree right of CIA crimes but actually exposed the CIA for all the horrific things they did in Vietnam the CIA suppressed his book and launched a harassment campaign against him he got anonymous death threats phone calls in the middle of the night from people saying they're gonna burn his house down I love what he says about this he says he never had any fear nor did his wife because she's from Queens I guess Queens is a rough place but anyway when his wife would answer the phone to one of these [ __ ] threatening them she'd help him take a number and get in line and hang up the phone to me Douglas is a hero there's only a handful of author as I know with insider knowledge of the CIA who've been willing to expose what they do and none of them have revealed as much as Douglas I'll give you two examples the first is Philip Agee a former CIA case officer whose conscience could no longer allow him to remain in the agency in 1968 he resigned and published a book about the CIA that told it all even naming names of other CIA officers and what they did fearing for his life he fled to Cuba where he lived a long life and died in 2008 but he never returned to the United States then we have john stockwell former head of the CIA's angola task force who resigned from the CIA also after having a crisis of conscience I met Stockwell in college when I was the director of a student group at Florida State University that brought him to speak on campus after he wrote his second book on the CIA this was around 1991 we had dinner together before his talk and he told me the story of how he left the CIA he said in order to protect his life the first thing he did was check himself into a hotel where nobody knew where he was and he spent weeks writing down everything he wanted to say then he mailed the documents to Congress and the media and waited until it got reported on before coming out of hiding he said he did this for two reasons first he thought that by revealing it all upfront everything that he knew the CIA would no longer have a reason to kill him but he also wanted to let the CIA know that unlike Philip Agee he wasn't going to name any names he didn't want to jeopardize any undercover CIA officers lives so he made that clear and john stockwell is still alive today he lives in Texas and he's about 82 years old so in this interview I asked Douglas Valentine how is it that he's still alive I think part of it is that the names he named were all historical he was never in the CIA and he didn't expose any current case officers serving undercover but in any case I loved his answer which you'll just have to hear when you listen to the interview he's proud of the fact that he hustled the CIA he got access to all these higher-ups got William Colby to vouch for him and then exposed at all you can read his first book on the Phoenix program in Vietnam and his most recent called the CIA as organized crime he's also written two books on the DEA and fbn the Federal Bureau of Narcotics the DEA predecessor organization headed up by the infamous Harry Anslinger and what you're going to learn here is that there has never been a separation between these organizations the CIA controls the DEA they controlled the FBN they always have Harry Anslinger the racist [ __ ] and master propagandist behind reefer madness in the 1920s who told Americans marijuana would make white women have sex with black men he was actually one of the founders of the CIA you're gonna hear all this and more really soon this episode is the second and what I call my deep politics series deep politics is a term coined by Peter Dale Scott and refers to the clandestine organizations and their activities that control governments typically led by state intelligence agencies the KGB mi6 in Britain and the CIA in the u.s. in the first episode of this series which is episode 12 of drug positive called drug war capitalism I interview author Don Pauley about the real reasons the u.s. maintains a violent drug war in Mexico some people actually wrote me after listening to that episode that they had nightmares from it so be careful here folks well there's nothing gruesome in this episode if you're the kind of person who needs to believe in the benevolence of the United States or who clings to the fantasy that we live in a democracy that Congress or even the executive branch actually control economic and foreign policy that the u.s. defends human rights around the world that notions of a deep state or just conspiracy theory then this episode is going to disturb you I try to keep most of the interview about drugs the connection between the CIA and the drug war and why keeping drugs illegal and protecting the illicit drug trade serves the interests of the CIA and Western corporations basically you're gonna learn why everything you hear about the drug war that the u.s. is trying to stop the flow of illegal drugs is total crap the u.s. created the illegal drug trade they maintain it US soldiers are protecting the poppy fields in Afghanistan heroin flows freely to Europe and the profits our laundered through Western banks the very Wall Street banks you'll learn in this episode whose executives drink martinis at house parties alongside CIA officers I think this stuff is important to know because as drug policy reform activists we have to understand what we're up against but I also talked to Douglas about his personal story how and why he did what he did he talks about his relationship with his father who was a pow2 rolled war 2 in a Japanese controlled prison camp in the Philippines and how the secrets his father kept from him when he was a kid estranged them and caused his father to develop severe PTSD he talks about their reconciliation and this played a role in William Colby trusting him because all these spooks are also estranged from their children because they can't tell them what they actually do Douglas also talks about his positive LSD experiences in the 60s and like us he advocates for psychedelics and treating problematic drug use as a health issue not a criminal one I really love this guy he's seven years old he's honest courageous and has true insight into psychology and what drives people to do what they do he wears his heart on his sleeve and most significantly to me he's wise my absolute favorite part of the interview is when he says we're not gonna change what's going on we aren't gonna prevent the CIA from doing what they do and exposing their dastardly acts he loves to use the word dastardly by the way isn't even a threat to them anymore say whatever we want publish a podcast like this they don't care it's no threat to them but what we can do with this information is learn about ourselves our own dark side or what is often called the shadow understanding the darkest side of humanity and and make no mistake the CIA reflects the absolute darkest side imaginable should help us understand ourselves better and become better people we all have a shadow side you know and Shulgin told me once that the most important work she did as a therapist was to help people bring their shadow to consciousness so buckle up people were about to take a deep dive into the abyss much different from the last episode the the fun one I released with Mitchell Gomez where we talk about the DMT Elves this episode is what those elves are trying to tell us we need to figure out if we want to free our souls from material bondage because love people cannot expand without fully embracing its opposite love includes everything even the dark side okay just a little housekeeping before we get to the interview and that is I just want to tell you that I've started up drug nonsense again my other podcast you can hear by going to patreon.com/scishow Mason Burke's director of the New Mexico chapter of Dance safe he's young smart and entertaining drug nonsense is the podcast that critiques the misinformation and sheer idiocy of the mainstream media's reporting on drugs you will love it and so you know your support there helps me keep this podcast going too it takes a shitload of time to produce these episodes people and my patreon is the only way I support all this so please go to patreon.com/scishow drug nonsense okay are you ready are you sure you're ready here it is then my interview with Douglas Valens Douglas I'm a big fan of your work so this is very exciting to me thank you so much for being on the show it's my pleasure great so you know I began my career in harm-reduction and drug policy when I founded Dance safe back in 1998 and in 1999 so right around the same time I read Alfred McCoy's book the politics of heroin and it blew me away and so this relationship between drug trafficking and the CIA has kind of evolved parallel with my career and it's often a difficult topic to convey to people but it's been reinforced every step of the way including in my recent work producing a documentary on the drug MDMA in that work I interviewed a lot of veterans including some Afghanistan veterans who told me that essentially they were there in Afghanistan protecting the poppy fields and so there is a way in which the CIA utilizes drug traffickers and this may be one of the reasons it's so hard to decriminalize or legalize drugs and solve all these problems are having now and this is largely a focus of your work so I wanted to begin there can you describe this connection between drug trafficking and the CIA sure I think probably the best way to begin it is to stress that opium which is the basis for a lot of the pharmaceutical and medical industry here in the United States opium is a strategic resource and the the CIA and of course the US military one of their primary functions is to obtain and secure for the United States strategic resources around the world the United States invaded Iraq and occupies countries in the Middle East primarily to assure the United States access to oil I mean in it the United States maintains relationships with dictatorial nations which provide the United States with oil because it's it's transportation and you know all sorts of industries rely on oil well it's the same thing with and and so one of the functions of the CIA has been to make sure that the United States has relations with opium producing countries either Turkey or India clandestinely the CI will make sure that there are people in power in these nations that are willing to sell the opium to United States had not cut it off and start selling it to Russia instead or or cutting off the supply of opium you know these is very important to have a continual supply of these things so there's a lot of reasons for it on the open market on the legal market the United States has relies on the CIA to make sure it has good relations with opium suppliers off the books they'll make sure that there are warlords in countries like Afghanistan nowadays have a steady supply of opium so that they can fight the wars on the United States path whether it's against you know the Taliban supposedly in Afghanistan or against the Communists in Southeast Asia communists in South America for the CIA engineer engineer Duncan Kane coup in Bolivia 1980 you know I mean I'm wear it constantly interviewers in the politics of governments in South America so that it can control the the drug industry it's there you know for various purposes for the purposes of destabilizing a government so a lot of that happens off the oven charts so is that about preserving the flow of profits to Western corporations or is it about the geopolitics of opium traffickers doing the dirty work for us Wars it's that and a bunch of things the Vietnam War signaled a big shift and the reason was what are the functions of opium in the sense of it being part of the unstated policy of the United States which the the CIA affects the State Department affects the United States stated policies in the CIA affects its unstated policies and in World War two skooby and a Vietnam War the CIA was making sure that its client states in Vietnam and Laos and Thailand were assured a steady flow of opium and its derivatives including heroin in order to fight against the communists in those countries the one of the reasons that Vietnamese generals we're willing to sort of betray the interests of the Vietnamese people and go against the interests of the Vietnamese people was that these journals in south vietnam were allowed to make a fortune through the through the drug business and the CIA assured them a steady flow of opium and heroin from the what was called the Golden Triangle and that whole policy was affected by the CIA these generals would create basically totalitarian States and fight wars that were unpopular because they were allowed to make vast fortunes doing it and that's something that the CIA does it organizes the trafficking networks it works with the the media to make sure nobody reports about it they call it national security but also Congress in terms of blind eye and allows it to happen because it's in the national security interests of the United States this has been unstated policy ever since the United States decided to support the nationalist government in China in the mid 1920s Chiang kai-shek's government in China basically supported itself through the opening opium industry and the United States government even before there was CIA allowed the the the nationalist Chinese to deal only because and make money from it because that's how they bought airplanes for their airports that's how they were able to fund their armies so so this has been going on for a long time but as the world evolves technology the CIA has played a bigger and bigger role right so do you also think that one of the purposes is to funnel money into Western corporations because another thing that happened in 1999 right when I was starting dan safe is Richard Grasso the former head of the New York Stock Exchange flew down to Columbia and met with the leaders of the farc the revolution armed forces of Colombia the lefty guerrillas who were one of three major cocaine cartels if you will in the country and asked them to invest their drug profits in u.s. stock markets and of course they refused to do it saying we believe the resources of the people of Colombia belong to the people of Colombia and there's a picture of Grasso actually hugging the FARC commander the one that they ended up bombing in that cross-border raid and so Grasso comes back and two weeks later Plan Colombia starts the program where the US government gives millions of dollars to the Colombian government to supposedly fight the cartels but of course all that money only goes to fighting the FARC in the southern portion of the country not the other two cartels in a way it's sort of assuring that the the money comes to the West rather than to Russia or China well sure and according to certain statistics the illicit narcotic trade is worth 300 billion dollars a year and even if that money is in cash it has to eventually find its way into a bank and before it can be invested in some stocks or some real estate or Trump's hotels or whatever it has to wander through a bank and by actually monitoring drug trafficking organizations whether they're in Colombia or Mexico you know it's a financial crime and the CIA and the DEA have vast financial crime units which are dedicated to following where the drug money goes all that money winds its way into banks eventually and the whole idea is to make sure it goes into banks where where the interest is racking up for people who are from the United States so if you can't control where the drug might go then you can make tons of money just off channel eight and through banks and and you know so backers can get their percentage to understand in talking about the CIA that bankers and stockbrokers and and their lawyers on Wall Street were the people who created the CIA these are people who like intrinsically a knowledgeable and adept and and the CIA over the years has created many offshore accounts many new many bank banks actual banks around the world arms traffickers and bankers of the CIA's main exploits these are you know it's not well-known people still tend to think of an informant or a CIA a so there's some guy running around the alleys of you know Marseille or or or Mumbai but actually it's most important that since our drunky major drug traffickers and and bankers those are the people who know what's going on at the highest levels of a foreign country so they're the most desirable people to have on the payroll them and airplane air industry executives and oil executives and major criminals which is why I called my book latest book the CIA's organized crime the criminal underworld is worth vastly more than three hundred billion dollars a year and all that money has to be a counter for somehow it has to be controlled and managed and that is the job one of the jobs of the CIA is actually control the criminal underworld including the drug trafficking underworld and they have the technology and the weapons and the the desire to do it and they do do it the legal aspect and there's a legal aspect and they cover all the bases one of the more interesting things I discovered in reading your book the strength of the wolf is that Harry Anslinger was not just the racist head of the FBN prosecuting black people for cannabis and heroin he also was one of the founders of the CIA so the real you taught me that in your book the relationship between the CIA and drug interdiction efforts has always been I would necessarily say a scam but I would say while they're trying to bust some people for trafficking drugs they're also protecting others and Anslinger did this from the beginning of his job can you talk about Harry Anslinger some sure you know I was born in the late 19th century and and one of his first Jobs was working for the Pennsylvania railway police and where he got his law enforcement experience and after that he went into oh he was in World War one with the State Department and they are actually got involved in drug trafficking but through his on time in the State Department he met very a lot of people who were involved in foreign policy the United States foreign policy and so his early jobs were in Venezuela where he was looking after the oil industries of the Van Pelt's and in the Bahamas where he dealt a lot with the British who of course were you know freewheeling in the end in 1920s in the drug business then he went into the Treasury Department where a guy named andrew --velum was the Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon was a millionaire one of the richest men in the United States and soon answered her married intent balance family and at which point is his career was you know guaranteed that he was going to be intimately involved in the foreign policy and domestic policy issues of the United States once he had married and so though this really stratosphere of deep state family and thereafter he was given some of the most important security jobs in the United States you know man he had what was called an slingers army and it was based on both the pharmaceutical industry the drug manufacturing industry and the medical industry the AMA and these were the people that who he was aligned with it he was making sure on behalf of Andrew Mellon you know this phenomenally wealthy guy that all their interests were taken care of and he did all that basically behind the scenes and he kept people's interests Americans American public focused on things like reefer madness while he was actually taking care of you know primarily the interests of the rich political elite of both parties then one more than World War two came around and the United States wanted to create an organization that could work behind enemy lines in places where the military wasn't serving places like nationalist China or occupied Germany or occupied France they called on the people who created the OSS qualm on Harry Anslinger to help them because his work forms these federal narcotic agents that were under his command was maybe about 300 of them were the only people in the United States government who had a lot of experience working undercover in the criminal milieu be in foreign countries and so Anslinger provided his workforce to actually help create the offices that's so interesting for listeners don't know the OSS is the Office of Strategic Services which is really the first covert organization to operate overseas and eventually became the CIA and your thing Harry Anslinger kind of started it that's crazy to me yeah yeah he was you know I mean for many reasons again it's not just for one reason the primary two reasons are that he's connected to the rich political banking industrial elite and he he knows his planks and he knows that they're his bosses and that he ultimately serves their interest and he's a master of propaganda of being able to dissemble before Congress and to to say right things in Congress just like CIA officers in the future always do you know I mean it's easy once you know how to do these things an answer was a master on the plus he has a workforce who know how to handle mercenary formats they know how to work undercover go into the underworld in countries like France or Germany and to avoid detection by the law enforcement services off of those countries which is exactly what the CIA does it goes to a foreign country it's it's models in guns or its moguls in radios or something clandestinely acrosses knows how to whether the CIA officers adopt on you know a false identity they disguise themselves they go into a foreign country they run around doing illegal things avoiding the attention of the law enforcement and security and agencies in that country and this is what Harry and slivers agents teach CIA or officers how to do in World War two so they're basically joined-at-the-hip his some of his most senior agents become top OSS officials in the field and at home plus his brother-in-law what you know a guy that he's related to is a guy named David Bruce was in charge of all the OSS intelligence operations I mean so he so when they needed people to create a truth drunk in World War two the OSS went the Harry Anslinger tapped into his supply of confiscated marijuana after World War two the CIA and a truth drug it went to Harry Anslinger and he provided them with LSD and they set up safe houses around the country and they started experimenting on American citizens in safe houses that were set off by you and slingers Federal Bureau of Narcotics so they're really joined at the hip the CIA and and the bureau of narcotics oh they have been since the origin of the CIA they're in inseparable well this is a fascinating to me because I think a lot of our listeners know about MKULTRA and the CIA experimenting with LSD in the 60s either as a truth drug or possibly even just to destabilize or arrest anti-war leaders but I never knew until I read your book that they also used cannabis as a truth serum much earlier during World War Two and Anslinger was the guy behind it but I just want to ask do you really think it worked as a truth drug yeah sure until you worked with OSS scientists you know and helped them to create liquid THC and actually in Anslinger's office him in Samoa so scientists laced some regular cigarettes with liquid THC and then gave them to one of their agents a guy named George white and he brought him to New York City and he got one of some very important mafia guy stoned on stoned and started pumping him for information he was hands on all this stuff and this was the Commissioner of narcotics so so one time that the United States is and this is important lobbying through the first the League of Nations and later the UN itself to get other nations to create law of narcotic units and and trying to get other countries to create reporting formats to talk about how much opium they produce or how much morphine they are manufacturing the United States was the force behind this around the world that Harry Anslinger was the guy that was making sure all this was done at the nuts the stated policy that everybody should be moral and abide by the law at the same time he's got this whole clandestine service that's that's doing things like making sure that Chiang kai-shek in China can deal while the opium he wants so that his army can get any airforce can have planes and that it's you know they have guns for their soldiers and making sure that nobody knows about it you know and and and organizing the you know what really became the template for the CIA a whole clandestine service Det knows what to say and what not to say and is basically deceiving the American public into thinking that the United States as before is for good when actually some of its most important unstated policies are under winding everything well this it may be a good shift to talk a little bit about that because the first book of yours I read was the CIA as organized crime a little less about drugs in that one more about the Phoenix program and these horrible things that the CIA does torture and kidnapping and terrorizing populations and yet you talk a lot about the hero mythology that they employ and believe in that justifies for them why they can do these things and you got access to all these high-level CIA agents because William Colby a former director who liked your book about your father basically told them to a lot to get give Douglas the interview he wants so you had this privileged access I'd love for you to talk a bit about the mentality of these folks that justifies the horrible things they do well certainly there's a range of the kind of personalities that you find that the CIA you know and I've spoken with guys who were certified Psychopaths who enjoyed torturing or or disembowelling somebody you know what they thought they were a communist you know I and I've also met people that were apparently very upstanding and upright members of their church family men who would run in to the neighbor's house and save their cats and dogs if it was on fire you know all of them throughout the organization consider themselves soldiers and if their superiors tell them do this or do that they salute and they took and you know that's basically the who are disciplined and they believe that their leaders are even if they're told to do things that are nasty or violent or destructive to us as society they believe that it's in the interests of the of the American people and they you know blindly OPEC so there's a whole range of people and you know you gotta nothing for a person like me who was introduced into this milieu of vastly different types of personalities it helps to have vast experience yourself dealing with all types of personalities so that you you know what you're the kind of person you're talking to and and what they expect to hear from you and the way to massage them so that you can get the kind of information that you want from them you know for example I spent over a year in San Francisco when I was a young man and I lived in the urban underworld and I got to see what it was like and later on years later when I was dealing with federal narcotic agents and CIA offices it was a priceless you know I mean they didn't have to explain the nitty-gritty of what they were doing to me they didn't have to not what they were doing to me but they didn't have to explain to me the nitty-gritty of what they did down on the street level and when they would say things about that I would understand immediately and they would you know this huh so you understand and and they would you know we didn't have to get lost in a lot of explanation and and they would trust me because of that um I had anecdotes that I could tell them which would assure them that I knew what they were talking about it that I would not stand in judgment of them because I had done these same things myself and if yous are a sinner and you have sinned other people who pull are sinners and have sinned but not to more Reynolds you know I'm not only that you one of the things you on the streets in the underworld is who is a predator and who isn't a predator it's a deeply psychological thing and one of the first things you learned on the street is every predator recognizes in your eyes the moment that you recognize that that's a predator okay you know I mean it's uncanny but I knew things like that and I knew how to deal with predators you know really hard people and so when I would talk to CIA officers like did not react to the fact that they were predators because I had them on predators and this is a plan you know I mean they're if you go in there and you're a kid from the Columbia School of Journalism and you've never lived on the street now you're not gonna take you into their confidence they you know so there were many things and that's just one of the kinds of experiences I had that gave me some credibility with CIA officers plus my mother wasn't Italian I think you know I knew what it was like to I knew the nature of corruption I grew up in a mafia family I grew up where where the police were corrupt and my father introduced me to that realm you know he actually he he once said to me I was working in this little town where I grew up and he was working in the post office and I was climbing trees I was a blue-collar worker and he said maybe tomorrow morning early at the bank you know we both had breakfast at the same diner so I know and very early in the morning we've walked to this diner and the Mafia bread truck which I did not know at the time was a rock mafia bread truck the Pellegrino bread truck was in front of this iner and the owners car and my father sort of took me by the hand and he brought me out into the street and he flung open the back of this bread truck and inside were four the village policeman this mafia bread truck driver in the owner of the diner who was the local bookie in town and the cops actually went around town picking up all the numbers and these guys who are in the back of this broad bread truck passing numbers and counting up money and stuff than they all looked at me and their mouths dropped over my father said to me this is the true relationship between crime and the law-enforcement any closed doors and the next day the these guys didn't act like anything happened do you know I mean I went to school with their kids I saw him on the street nobody batted an eye all of a sudden I was just a member of this inner Club nothing changed no there was nobody skipped a beat but so I knew things like that and and I had experienced things like that which were invaluable and which were unusual because you know the other kids like you were having experiences like this right and that gave you some credit with the CIA officers you interview but has anyone seen you after your first book now as sort of a traitor to the class what about your father did he read your second book in 1990 on the CIA yeah sure my father and this was really essential as well and of course it's all psychological I mean a nephew I was the kind of personality who could absorb and incorporate these kind of experiences you know not everybody can and not everybody wants to be a writer so there was a lot of it was just made but my father and I hated each other and after his second open-heart surgery I was up in New Hampshire and he was recovering in New York and he called me up and he said you want to be a writer frighten I said yeah I said come home I have a story deciding you know I need and he told me how he had been a prisoner of war I didn't know that and he's you know he had been in a prison camp in the Philippines the Japanese rabbit and event happened in that camp that were incredibly unusual to the point that the military made my father at my after the champ was liberated you know he had been suffered horribly wait about 100 pounds you know he malaria dysentery all sorts of diseases that the military made him to sign a nondisclosure statement saying he had never been in this and they gave him a whole new set of military records and he was told if you ever tell anybody about what happened in this camp which involved a murder that he was involved in that he would be prosecuted for murder and put up stood up in front of a military firing squad okay and I would have woken up that's my first book and during the course of this my father and I weren't enough through a transformation and he said to me that all our problems were the result of him keeping this information from me it had caused in him PTSD psychological problems which he had projected on me and my sisters and one of the problems the miscommunications between my father and I were his fault and he admitted this and the doctors told him if you don't admit admit this and confront this you'll never get better and you'll die and so there's sort of magical process for a kid who wants to write a book and as always wanted to write a book and as a nod to this father and then all of a sudden this thing happens it was like magic and also my world changed and I had a better relationship with my father of there told you a whole new range of psychological realities that again helped me when I was dealing with the CIA and professional narcotic agents who for a large part were estranged from their families and from their sons because they were forced to keep secrets from them and they had stresses in their family relationships because of the nature of they were work which they too would preclude them from being honest with their own families well this this book comes out and all of a sudden they say to them saw themselves this guy understands Who I am he understands what my problems are I'm gonna tell him about the Phoenix program because he'll understand some kid from this event some adult man from the New York Times or Columbia School of Journalism is not gonna understand with this guy ultra stance because his father went through it and they any understands the meaning of of this kind of coerced secrecy and once you've joined the CIA or the Federal Bureau of Narcotics now the DEA DEA you sign a document that says I'm not gonna tell anybody what I'm doing and if you tell you can go to prison you know so it's it's the same psychology it's the same set of psychological prohibitions and all these guys go through the same have the same heart attacks and the same drinking problems because they're under the same crushing alright so let me go back because you talked about how William Colby read your first book that you wrote about your father and in the book you talk about the reconciliation you have with your father and how Colby was really impressed by that so I want to ask do you think that Colby gave you these introductions hoping that you would write a book that would help maybe even him and others to reconcile with their families and and when it came out and it was critical sure they'd be you know it's a two-part thing there's a father and you know all great literature has to do with the hero you know the young young man wanting to kill his father you know and and and creating on symbolically destroying his father and creating its own identity you know I mean that's a big part of literature that the hero it's there's two parts you know if you want to have a reconciliation the son has to be as aware of what's going on as the father so even if a father wants to have a reconciliation with a kid if the sons not ready or can't understand what happened to a father then it won't happen but anyway it worked with my father died and so call me who was estranged from his kids as were so many other CIA officers saw me as a person who would portrayed them in such a way in my book that it would become evident to their children and the and the public at large that these were people who were sort of coerced into doing something that was dastardly but that they were doing it for the well-being of everybody in the world in the country well they were deluding themselves in several ways you know first of all there's a difference between being in a prison camp where you know and doing things for your survival and and for the honour of the prisoners then actually volunteering for the CIA knowing that would get in there you're gonna do a lot of really things up dastardly things that aren't in the final analysis necessary for anybody sir survival then it was really you know an illusion that the CIA exists to somehow preserve the national security of the United States it exists preserved the enjoyment of the privileged status that the rich political lead enjoy is the CIA is not a social services organization it does not have the interests of the urban poor or blue-collar workers or the middle class in mind when it goes out and do the dose of things it does and even many of the things that it does include terror which are which has no other permits then terrorizing terrorizing people in order to coerce them into doing things that they don't want to do and as he I exactly antithesis of what happened to my father and this is one of the problems with people in the CIA I know I'm getting deep and psychological here but it's one of the problems with the CF people in the CIA and then caught a federal narcotics is that their self-deluded and they it's a prerequisite for people who are going to join those organizations just like a person who joins the Republican Party how's it the myth dismissed from their mind from their consciousness any of the concerns of Democrats you know I mean it's so hyper partisan that that you can't be an objective person once you commit to this sort of partisan Andale course that's going on in the United States will the same kind of CIA officers and federal narcotic agents or my clock my ploys self-deluded they're not interested in writing the Great American Novel are interested in serving their masters in a sort of military structure and they blindly do what they're told to do so there was a lot of misunderstandings going on on the part of the people that I were I was interviewing and and I had no one of those none of those misunderstandings I'm going back to my time on the streets of San Francisco when the criminal underworld everybody had a hustle and everybody had a game and the preeminent blame the preeminent hustle was hustling the hustlers and it's you know like sort of like a counterintelligence operation oh my god good at that and all the time I was dealing with the CIA and the agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics I knew I was hustling them and I knew how to affect the kind of mannerisms that were necessary to hustle the hustlers all right so I got a half and I pulled it off it was it was funny to me because here are the people that are supposed to be the smartest most brilliant and and and capable people in the country and a kid who came off the streets was a little hustle because of their just by playing on their own delusions and and of grandiosity and a lot of their psychological weaknesses because they wanted to be understood you know when they didn't even understand themselves so it was kind of you know funny to me but of course it was a price to pay for but that sort of like biology behind the whole thing well so that's what I wanted to ask you first of all I'm glad you did it because I've learned so much from you but you must have known that you were on dangerous ground were you afraid and then what were the consequences once he published your first book on the CIA John wasn't afraid it's not illegal to I mean to like Philip page you wrote a book on the CIA and he had to flee to Cuba he was so afraid that CIA does kill people right I don't know okay gone into it and done it if I was going to be afraid frankly for me it was fun as it developed and as I started getting further and further into it people would call me up on that you know call out for the middle of my and I should say my wife is from Queens and women from Queens are not afraid of anything either and people would get on the phone they send a burger house go and my wife would say we'll take a number and get in line you know I mean people weren't actually coming up to me on the street and and threatening me and that never happened and as I said you know I mean there was a time in a bar and Bangkok Burt got hairy you know you know then I was completely deaf defenseless in a foreign country and I had some palpitations at that point but otherwise I was never afraid and and I would never have gotten into it or done it if I was afraid and at any point along the way I had shown fear that people would not talk to me oh these guys like but you know I mean they liked walking into a room with me you know I related to these people because define large they're not afraid people either but after you published your book there were some consequences particularly for the prophets CIA suppressed your book right you told me that early you want to talk about that sure well the price I mean at the same time that I went into this I always knew that there would be a price to pay there's an old adage if you the ball you get the horns you know I mean it's that's the way it works but they didn't realize that until near the end and then by then you know that I was hustling them by then it was too late for and but what they did is they do what the CIA does in this country they affect you that they try to steal your accomplishments they try to affect you economically so that you can't make any money you know they they try to marginalize you and they're very good at that for example my publisher thought that my book the Phoenix program he actually recommended it to the Pulitzer Prize Committee you know the people that look at books for you know publishers send their books in and say this is a good book if they send it to a committee and the people look at it you have done that but at the same time they had sent a copy of the manuscript to the New York Times and the CIA in particular William Colby method knew that the manuscript with incensed at a time so he did what CIA officers did he talked to the ownership of the CIA and he said kill this book and what the CIA with the New York Times did was they gave it to a guy named Morley Safer to do a review and safer David and Astrid Lee review in The New York Times they devoted a half page to it which is like unheard of for uh you know what nobody liked me to get a book review in the New York Times what they did it especially to kill the book and years later I found out that that Morley Safer actually out of favor to William Coley and that's why the times and and and Colby selected safer to do the review and it's interesting no I didn't actually find out about it the nature of the relationship until five or six years ago when a friend who lived in Germany sent me a link to a talk that's a Ferg a that's from State Department war correspondents conference in Washington DC in which he said during the Vietnam War called II who was an in charge of the Phoenix program and related kind of things I'd call up safer and said can you get away for three days can you disappear for three days you know and everybody in this conference chocolate will haha CIA once safer to disappear for three days and come he proceeded to take Morley Safer to every CIA base in Vietnam and he introduced some to all the top CIA officers in Vietnam this is around 1970 and safer part took and father discussions he saw how the death squads were organized and how the operator he saw the in terribly secret interrogation centers at the CIA how they were organized and operated he was into you know told about other top espionage and drug operations in Vietnam and when it was done you know called me said well now you know but you can never tell anybody you know it's just this is just for your knowledge and and safer at this conference which was 101 he said five or six years ago said and I still can't tell you the things that he showed me but it was like The Godfather had happened you know and the movie The Godfather what he says about what my granddaughter City Undertaker some day I'm gonna ask you know for forty years normally safer almost call me a favor you know and then the engine once and said well we want you to kill Valentine's book so that's how the CIA gets back at people that's that's what they basically do in the United States you know they ruin your career they try to ruin your career later and I try to deny you an income they may have somebody in their ranks sue you see you know so that they can tie you up in court for twenty years you know it's one of their favorite races having some guy who's not actually in the CIA but you know through their own boy network is connected with them see you you know Morales hassle suits whatever the core you know has been suit so there's many ways that they can kneecap a person in the country without killing them and and really just you know the it's psychological warfare and it destroys or anybody who goes against them and the way they control people in the mainstream crust and the mainstream media is the same way if somebody who becomes a reporter or correspondents for the New York Times steps out of line well the guy is out of a job you know so everybody in the New York Times knows that if you want to climb the ladder and you want to have that success get all right out the CIA you know I mean you do with your editors and your publishers tell you and that's how the whole that's why today our mainstream media is a constant source of misinformation and disinformation about everything not just drug policy you know nobody in the mainstream media is gonna tell you about CIA drawing operations in Afghanistan you know what they all know it it's all there you know but they're never gonna say anything because if you say anything about the CIA your career is over not only that somebody's gonna sue your you might even go to jail so nowadays there's a lot of internet websites I mean mint press news for example consortium news that do run stories like this how do you think the CIA do you think the CIA is worried about the Internet this new freedom of information and a breaking of the stranglehold of corporate CIA propaganda you're getting more play now and podcasts because of people like me for example or we treading on dangerous ground here not not dangerous ground there we are flies they're concerned with very big things you know you know they have agents inside the KGB you know or what used to be the KGB they're trying to find out what putti is thinking you know what he's gonna do next you know they're there they they have big fish to fry they're really they're concerned with manipulating and controlling political and social movements around the world they're in the process now of removing the Socialists from Bolivia and putting in fascist you know they operate overseas so so it doesn't matter if men new says the CIA is overthrowing the socialist and putting in the fascists in Bolivia what matters is that the CIA is overflowing and socialism for even the fashion I'm Karen nanu says about it they're just doing it and that's the same thing all around the world I mean people can comment on it or expressed some frustration about it or outrage about it but we have known no ability to prevent the CIA from doing these things and and you know how could you you know I mean they have the 50 billion dollar budget and guns and airplanes and stuff at their disposal so so no commenting on the CIA talking about it's dirty Dee's dangerous at all you know if you're Allende in Chile in the 1973 you're in danger no I if you're the leader of our socialist leader of a foreign government you're in danger well Whitney Webb it was a guy that got under our skin you know but I'm not preventing them from doing anything that they need to do so the free about it folks you know on the thing is to become aware of what's going on and to have some influence you know within your own world and to first of all you know solve your hos psychological problems you know to free yourself from whatever your hang-ups are and start looking at things objectively you know don't worry so much what the CIA is doing you know find out what's going on in the world and free yourself before you you worry about freeing you know everybody else right right I always thought understanding the truth of this import it's always been important to me I think some people can't can't stomach it and shy away from these kinds of conversations awarenesses and and then if there is one thing I've always thought I could help accomplish it would be around drug policy I think we might see the legalization legal regulation of psychedelics like we're seeing cannabis legally regulated because I think those drugs are impossible to monopolize and they're not addictive and there isn't 300 million dollars of profit being made from them as opposed to heroin and cocaine say but so we might see the legalization of psychedelics but we also might see the decriminalization of these other drugs such that users aren't arrested and we treat them as a public health issue and that could save a lot of lives yet continue to allow the CIA to engage in drug trafficking around the road sure that's that's the whole solution to the United States is to is to treat it as a public health problem not a law enforcement problem you know I'm and for example our last date I did a lot of osv of my younger days and it was one of the things that helped me to break out of the hole of conditioning that I have been subjected to and were subjected to as you know a young kid growing up and I and on Saturday a conservative community you know I highly recommend it to everybody who has any interest in expanding their consciousness and me too you know I you know I remember the first time I interviewed the one time I interviewed Daniel Ellsberg about his CIA exploits his association with the I should say yeah one of the first things out of his mouth was I love to see above LSD you know I mean it's not something that is specific to outcasts or people who are antisocial or something it's something that actually can make you a better citizen and and and help you to understand things better and be a better person you know so I'm all for having access to psychedelic drugs you know for people who want and I know lots of people who feel the same way you know and I think that to a certain extent everybody should go through the experience you know and if you go through it you know under the guidance of somebody who can move you you know properly through it it's it's a wonderful experience and you know things like um I think that all drugs are created as a public health issue and if instead of pouring billions of dollars into drug law enforcement that money goes into universal health care a full and poor people are lifted out of poverty and they and they're given opportunities and that the need for drugs Nash's you know and and and and maybe people who want to do recreational drugs sure but they're not going to be getting involved in gang gang warfare they're not going to be poisoning their own communities so we're pushing it on other people because they won't hate themselves and they won't hate their environment and they'll be looking forward to tomorrow and and having a good time and prospering in the world so so you know one of the report of the last things on say because I fade now and one of the things that Gary Webb had made clear in his book is that our rulers this rich political elite that I was telling you about areas I worked for and every other senior executive in the United States government works for did not have the best interests of the people at heart they have their own interests apart and what are the things that the CIA has been doing for years with the help of the DEA and the various federal and local law enforcement agencies before as making sure that the illegal drugs get to the United States and going support communities because it's a way of suppressing them and keep discipline making them politically disenfranchised so that true reform in the United States and and it's political and social systems will never happen and and it's the reason this this collaboration between the CIA and drug law enforcement and our political parties taun behalf of the rich politically that only fifty percent of the people in this country you've got folk because they're so simple and they're so stoic about their ever being any a chance for any kind of equality or justice in this country that they have just given up and the CIA's involvement in drug trafficking is one of big reasons for that right that's okay for you today I'm kind of keeper it out now it's fine so we'll do a closing here thank you so much for being on the show I look forward to reading your other books when they're published it's been great okay thank you [Music]