March 20, 2024 • 61 mins
You've heard of things like Agent Orange, but what about PB pills? During the Gulf War conflict, PB pills were billed as a way to combat the looming threat of nerve agents in the field. However, according to veterans and their advocates, this substance may have actually caused more harm than good. Could this be the explanation for Gulf War Syndrome? If so, have powerful forces attempted to cover up the truth? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they dive into the story.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
A production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
They called me Bed, and we're joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control Deck. And most importantly,
you are you.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You are here.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
War? What is it good for? No, we're not gonna
do the song? Well, there's absolutely nothing. But then it
also makes me think of the quote from the Fallout Games,
war never changes, you know all of that? Those are
my two top War quotes. Is the song and the
I also love a band that has a song like
named after the name of their band, and that's such
a really sick flex like Radiohead. Or no, that's not true.
(01:06):
There is a talking Head song called Radiohead. But anyway, yeah,
not good for much except for you know, well, it's
good for the population over all, great.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Medical innovation, scientific progress, technological breakthroughs.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
And you make it sound awesome. It's a number.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
It's a number one pick for unintended consequences as well. Uh,
we've heard of agent Orange, and if you are a
longtime listener of the show, you have heard about it
as well, and the horrific effects that substance wrought upon
civilians and military alike during the Vietnam War. In a
previous conversation on Listener Mail, an anonymous conspiracy realist reached
(01:52):
out to us to ask us about something called p
B pills. It's a disturbing substance, little known outside of
the military or medical school. We had not heard of
it before our listener reached out. However, according to firsthand sources,
this may be the real explanation behind the notorious, still
(02:12):
not fully understood collection of symptoms called Golf War syndrome.
Here are the facts. We have to talk about the
Golf War. It's something that happened in recent history, right
in the nineteen nineties early nineteen nineties. It's sometimes called
the Persian Gulf War, sometimes in a very dystopian way.
(02:35):
It's referred to as the First War because there was
another one. But what happened for anybody who is unfamiliar
with Saddam Hussein, well.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
The United States led a coalition of forty two countries
against Iraq, which at that point was under the control
of the dictator Saddam Hussein. You might have heard of
him kind of the first maybe not the first, but
it was a really important moment for war coverage. So
he almost attained this like celebrity status in a weird way,
(03:10):
as this like big bad. He was elevated by the
press and the video of the television media. If you
want to hear more about this guy, please do check
out Robert Evans's excellent series on Behind the Bastard Bastards.
Excuse me, he's one particular bastard.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Here, But in the end, at least my understanding is
that it was between Iraq and Kuwait, right, There was
conflict there. It had something to do with being in debt, right,
so Iraq actually owed a ton of money to Kuwait
and rather than you know, coming through with the payments,
they came through with tanks and stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
So, right now, speculation about the logic behind Iraq's invasion
of Kuwait it still thrives.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
But you're correct.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
I would say, Matt, that it does seem to go
down to money, because in all I think it was
August second of nineteen ninety, Husain's forces invaded Kuwait and
they overran the country in like forty eight hours or less.
It was very much one sided conflict there.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
And you know how George W. Bush described the second
like the second invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan as like, oh,
it's just gonna be like forty eight hours that actually
happened in this case.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Yes, yeah, Now, Hussein did not call it a crusade,
give him that. He was also an inspiring romance novelist.
Again behind the bastards check out the series It's Wild.
The Iraqi forces declared ownership over Kuwait's northern territory and
all of the rest of it came under the governance
(04:42):
of a puppet state, you know, similar to Japan's actions
on the Chinese mainland. And you know, here's why most
people agree. Money was the impetus for Hussein. Iraq had
borrowed the equivalent of fourteen billion US dollars from Kuwait
(05:03):
to finance another war against Iran, and Kuwait, like most creditors,
wanted to be paid back. They wanted their bag. But
at the same time, Kuwait and the United Arab Immirates
were overshooting the quotas that OPEC sets for oil production,
(05:24):
and there's a big deal to Iraq because they're an
oil export reliance country at the time. So the main
way that they can pay back this debt is being
aggressively devalued, and in the government's statements at this period
of time, they're pretty blunt about it. The Iraqi government
says Kuwait is doing this on purpose to make it
difficult or impossible to pay back their debt. They wanted
(05:47):
to put Iraq in a financial hole and keep it there.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Sorry, but like Iraq also massive oil production operations, right, yes,
so why was Kuwait a to exceed those quotas. It
seems like they were bending the rules a little bitter like,
how how are they able to go about that in
such a seemingly passive aggressive way.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Yet OPEC is a cartel, you know, and I know
cartel has some sinister connotations, but OPEK essentially exists to
slow the faucet of oil and.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Regulate prices the very least, yeah, even the mout.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Yeah right, right, so it's price fixing and it is
focused on providing predictability and stability for oil exporting nations.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
However, they it's a paper.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Basically, they sign a piece of paper saying we'll do this,
we'll agree to this, and there's not a way to
stop them from going back on their word.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Well, and there there are real world constraints on an
oil producing country, right, and all of it's measured in
barrels per day, which is the thing OPEC can can
kind of control, right, how much money can you get
for that single barrel of oil? And you know, if
you can only make x number of barrels when that
price fluctuates, you're in the The economics of your country
(07:08):
can fluctuate wildly, right, which is what's happening here and
why it feels. It felt like, let's say to a
rock that Kuwait had its boot on its neck.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And so it's a good example of putting all your
economic eggs in one basket. Even if that basket or
those eggs are incredibly valuable, it's still one thing, right,
and that can hamstring you down the line if you
don't have a diverse, more diverse economic outlook. Right.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Yeah, like Rizza said in the Chappelle Show, you got
to diversify your portfolio.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
And this diverse bonds I will with portfolio because it's
not a little more economically minded.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
The shout out to Chappelle's show, So did huseaning take
a lesson from our pal, King Philip Street name heavy
P because that he handles Kuwait the way that Philip
handles the templar. He says, the best way to resolve
this massive debt is to remove the creditor from the board.
(08:07):
The US disagreed, as did most of the world. The
United Nations and the Security Council specifically adopted to separate
resolutions in the beginning, and they imposed economic sanctions against
the Rock. The United Kingdom and the US deployed forces
into Saudi Arabia literal boots on the ground, and at
(08:29):
the same time they urged other nations to follow their example. Eventually,
as you said, Noel, they ended up with a coalition
of forty two different nations involved in some way and
the wallets were opened. Billions of dollars are powering this endeavor.
Officially it was an estimated sixty billion dollars. However, we
(08:52):
know war is messy and so a lot of that money.
The real toll financially is probably much higher and were
never and a note, the full extent of expense here,
but we do know the bombing begins in January of
nineteen ninety one, and for any students of warfare, there
are several notable aspects of this conflict. There are a
(09:14):
lot of first time things here.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah, do you guys have memories of watching the Iraq War,
like the invasion and the green cameras, the night vision stuff.
And I just have clear visions of CNN showing you know,
all of this stuff and watching it with my parents
just trying to understand what the heck's going on.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Well, and I sort of alluded to that earlier, just
about this being you know, or Saddam being almost like
elevated to this big, bad level by this kind of coverage,
And I guess I didn't realize until I was looking
at some of the research that Ben did here that
this really was a first and that this kind of
coverage prior even with like the Vietnam War, there were
no embedded journalists. It was all stuff sent to the
(09:56):
news stations that was very much controlled by the military,
and of course even the embedded journalists were very much
controlled and handled by the media, but this was still different.
It was very different, and yes, I do remember all
of that.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Yeah, real time updates. The media forces and the government
forces could attempt to sanitize what was depicted, but just
like how live programs can have curse words slip through,
you can't clean all of the footage. So for many,
many citizens of the US and the world entire they
(10:33):
were seeing the unedited reality of conflict and it's a
very very ugly, strange, dangerous thing.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
This is also.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
I didn't know this, three of the largest tank battles
in all of US history also took place at this time.
This is also the first time people deployed depleted uranium
in a large scale.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah, hey, and head over to our YouTube channel and
scroll all the way back to August twenty twenty three
to watch our special on It's the Gulf War, syndrome,
Agent orange and depleted uranium. There's three separate videos, so
definitely check that out. But guys, this is also Nurse Narayah, right, yes,
the testimony in nineteen ninety I guess it's right around
(11:21):
the time of Iraq and invading Kuwait is when we
got the Nurse Narayah testimony that we've talked about on
the show a couple of times. That turned out to
be not true, dealing with what was it child babies
being taken out of incubators.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
Incubator Yep, yeah, we cover it in our book as well.
I think it's chapter five, I want to say propaganda,
or maybe it's oh, it might be chapter eight political corruption,
bangor hit. Check out the art from our pal Nick
Turbo Benson.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
It's true.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
It's something that people have been talking about for quite
a long time. And this would also not be the
last of these wars. In two thousand and three, the
battle begins anew in the US. This was known as
Operation Iraqi Freedom at this point. Still, even in twenty
twenty four, in the grand scheme of things, the tragedies
(12:14):
heartbreak of war are comparatively fresh. We as a civilization
simply do not know the full consequences of these interventions.
We do know the threats were real. There were clear
and present dangers. The West was very concerned with the
Hussein administration's interest in biological and possibly nuclear warfare, and
(12:36):
as previous lessons had proven time and time again, it
is exceedingly rare, if not virtually impossible, for any government
to walk back those ambitions once they get past a
certain threshold is super uncommon. So the US and its coalition,
their ideas were going to cut this off of the
butt or at least that's there, or cut this off
(12:58):
of the route, nip it in the butts what I mean.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, Well, also, I mean people will certainly recall this
obsession with disarming Iraq. You know, in this idea of
weapons of mass destruction was sort of the mcguffin behind
the whole Iraqi freedom operation, and it ended up like
not being the case. That sort of comes back in
a way in this story, this idea of this sinister
(13:25):
secret thing that may or may not actually exist.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
And the US sought to prepare its forces in advance
for the possibilities of nasty things like nerve agents, biological weapons,
et cetera. Like the Gulf War itself. We would not
know the full consequences of these preparations for some time.
In the decades after the First Gulf War, more and
(13:51):
more veterans from all sides of the conflict began experiencing
a collection of strange symptoms that they could not expel
lane fatigue, insomnia, rashes, diarrhea, intense cognitive issues. You know,
we would call it brain fog today and muscle pain
like all around. The kind of things where you would
(14:14):
know that you were seriously sick, but you wouldn't have
a name to put on the thing, right, you would know,
you would be able to name all the stuff it
was not. It was not the flu. You know, you
would test negative for other things, but you are clearly sick.
And this became known as Gulf War syndrome for sure.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
And I mean, you know, well, there isn't a name
exactly for this kind of thing. There's sort of a vague,
foggy name for a thing that we don't know the
name of. I mean, in this case, it was deemed
or dubbed Golf War syndrome or Golf War illness. But
according to a report released by the Institute of Medicine
in twenty thirteen, about a third of Gulf War veterans
suffer from what is referred to as a CMI or
(14:57):
chronic multi symptom illness, which, like you said, is a
series of symptoms that cannot be medically explained. And if
anyone has ever had to deal with anything like this,
or even just an illness that won't go away, and
the doctors don't believe you, or they keep treating it
with the wrong thing. It can be so frustrating, you know,
because Western medicine doesn't always get it right.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
You know, Well, there's a thing where depending on how
rare the illness you've got or the disease you've got,
it's like if you imagine the graph, the more rare
it is, the less likely you know, a general practitioner
is going to say, oh, this is it right, because
you're going to go through the checklist of all the
other things that could cause all those different symptoms with
(15:43):
this Gulf War syndrome. It is so strange because it
is so there's so many human beings that are experiencing
similar symptoms right that are i don't know, broad spectrum right,
dealing with exactly.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
Yeah, And it's tough because this is not saying that
the medical professionals were purposely bearing this, but a lot
of times these guys are these guys feel like there
is a conspiracy of foot to suppress what is actually
happening to them. And unfortunately, there is a great deal
of validity to that concern. We will see as we
(16:22):
continue this evening that veteran advocacy groups had to fight
tooth and nail to get this acknowledged to not be dismissed.
The public is still searching for an official explanation behind
Gulf War syndrome. What could cause these otherwise inexplicable series
(16:43):
of ailments? Is it possible people were asking that the
US government, in a rush to protect their soldiers, accidentally
poison them. This is the story of PB pills. We're
going to pause for a word from our sponsor, and
then we'll dive right in. Here's where it gets crazy.
(17:08):
Paridistigmine bromide worked on that one for a seconds.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
It's a it's a doozy, the bromide part alone. I
mean anything anything I've heard bromide attached to usually isn't
something that you necessarily want to jest. I don't know.
Maybe I'm thinking of like potassium bromides.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Yes, that's the last one I remember, which is the
Mountain Dew guy.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
A good right, and was a brominated vegetable oil.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Orange. Yeah, we're here to ruin the things you enjoy.
So right now, I could just picture how many people
drink orange Fanta? Do you think while they listened to
the show.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Oh, somebody had it in their mouth when you said that.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
We are sorry to you. But but the potassium bromide
was apparently used as a sedative in the nineteenth century,
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but I believe it was
discovered to not be great for you.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Yeah, it happens. It happens, And that might be the
story with PB pills as well. This stuff dates back.
It was clearly established well before the Gulf War. It
was patented in nineteen forty five. It's been used in
civilian medicine since nineteen fifty five, and primarily then as now,
(18:28):
it is used to treat an extraordinarily rare autoimmune neuromuscular
condition called myasthenia gravis.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Guys, is it weird to you at all? My asthenia gravis?
So let's stay right there. But just as an aside,
is it weird to you guys hearing that medicine is
patented in nineteen forty five? Just considering I guess there's
chemical warfare occurring in World War two, right, with all
kinds of gases and things that people are going to
be exposed to, it would make sense that this is
(18:58):
around the time when it gets patented and deployed.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
But it is just I don't know, it seems like yeah,
oh for sure, but you know, you know, so many
things they figure out down the line that's been around
for asias. You can prescribe off label and it does
other things. But I'm always suspicious when I hear off
label thrown around. It's like, hey, just so happens that
it kind of sort of does this other thing that
(19:23):
we didn't really realize, and let's let's prescribe it for that,
even though it's not for that.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
I mean a lot of a lot of medicine. And indeed,
great invention is trial and error and finding something that
you didn't intend when you were trying to do another
thing unsuccessfully. Shout out to alchemy, which created chemistry. Shout
out to viagra, which was supposed to help with heart
with heart problems.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, the microwave, right with something to do with the
chocolate that melted in the guy's pocket, Like that was
an accident, and then they realized they could harness.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
That, and I guess, tech, I guess if we're waxing poetic,
viagra can help with heart problems, I mean hard problems.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Of the hearts.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
You know.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Yeah, but Okay, So here's here's the thing. Here's why
PB pills matter. So this substance is what's known as
a cholinesterase inhibitor. There is a protein in your body
if you're human, called calinesta RaSE and it breaks down
a chemical called aceta. Calling wildly mispronouncing this maybe, but
(20:34):
the reason this chemical is important, this aceta colding, is
because it helps your nerve cells and your muscles talk
to each other. It's like a zoom call for them
or a telephone for them. And as a result, this
PB substance helps that useful protein stay in your system longer.
(20:58):
It helps your body activate the muscle. It lessens muscle weakness.
So if you have a condition like my esthenia gravis,
this is a godsend for you. It just keeps your
body running the way it should. So it's preventative.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
Since this stuff helps your nerves and your muscles communicate,
then the theory is the logic is that if another
substance interferes with that communication, these PB pills can sort
of hold the line. They can lessen the impact of
some very nasty stuff. It sounds good, Oh yeah, it
(21:35):
sounds great. I think we're done for today.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Are there a lot of people in the military that
have myasthenia gravis?
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Uh not, actually not a time, not disproportionately.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Maybe with the rest of the population. The weird, it
is a little weird, but like you know, of course
I was, you know, sorry, this isn't we're not talking
about patasium bromi. But I did look it up just
to see what I was thinking about, and it was
taken off of the market. It's used in veterinary medicine,
but it's taken off the market for human use because
of a litany of side effects that just outweighed any positives,
(22:09):
and it was used as a sedative, and other they
call them hypnotics had come out that were far more effective.
So it was fully pulled for human use, and now
it's apparently only used to you know, sub do pooches
and kiddies. But let's talk about the side effects of
these this other bromide situation, these PB pills.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Oh, it's got them. Like every good drug, he's got
side effects. And it's the scary stuff you gotta read
in the ad.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It's the fine print that they say really really fast.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
But in this case, there's no ad for this. You
just get handed some you know as a person in
the military. But let's talk about them. There's uncommon side
effects as again or always read in the ads.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Well, let's currently welcome to the welcome to the good
guys marine take these. Make sure you don't get a
hit with nerve gas, but just in case you do,
you're gonna want to take some PB pills. Oh, thank
you sir. Currently these are uncommon side effects, but include
stuff like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps and cramps, twitching,
or weakness of the muscles.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Wait, how is it going to cause weakness of the muscles?
It's supposed to do the opposite.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Wow, is your specialty questions? Get out of here, you
know what I mean? Like that's and also there's a
hell of a ven diagram right between again slowly nausea, vomiting, diarrhea,
stomach cramps, muscle cramps, twitching, and muscle weakness. That's pretty
similar to Gulf War syndrome.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Is this an antidote situation?
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Like?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Do you only supposed to take these if you're exposed
to nerve gas? Now it's any it's a mephyl.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Yeah, oh button, it's preventative.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Oh okay, uh yeah, sorry, I have a very specific
image of that word.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
I think most people do.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
But tech tech.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
It is preventative, but it's not a vaccination. The idea
is that if you are in a conflict situation, right,
if you're in the armed services, you're out there in
the Middle East, you might get exposed to nerve gas
from Hussein's force, stuff like Sarah or Soman, and then
this stuff will It won't cure you, but it will
(24:22):
make it more likely that if you are exposed to
a nerve agent, you have a higher chance of surviving
with no long lasting ill effects.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Quick quick review, what are the effects of these agents
or some maybe hit lists of some particularly gnarly effects.
If you get hit with a nerve agent.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
It's gonna mess with your body's ability to have your
nerves connect to your bid. It's the communication that the
pbpills are actually supposed to be helping out here, right,
and the concept of taking them every day. The way
that we were told by our anonymous listener is that
you never know when a chemical attack could occur. It
could be in you know, the place where you're sleeping,
(25:04):
and all of a sudden there's a nerve agent or
something that you're going to be affected by, so you've
got to make sure it's in your system, just continually cycling.
So sorry, I didn't mean a derail, but let's get
back here.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Why not at all? I think that's it's incredibly important important,
But it's funny how some of the side effects of
nerve agents are kind of similar to the side effects
of these bills, right exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
And again, a lot of people who are taking these
they are trusting the authorities. They are not themselves medical professionals.
But like most people listening to tonight's show, they would
like to not die. And so this is where it
gets tricky. Right, Like many substances, this was always thought
to be non harmful below a certain threshold, And that's
(25:49):
where it gets tricky. How can we keep track of
how much an individual person ingested? And when the VA Veterans'
Affairs has a lot of information on this, we pulled
some quotes directly from them.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yes we did, and here goes one. PB pills were
supplied to service members as twenty one tablet blister packs
with prescribed dosage as one thirty milligram tablet every eight hours.
Veterans actual exposure is not known because pills were self administered,
and there are few examples in individual or unit health
(26:23):
records from the Department of Defense. And we're all get
to a real weird reason why that's the case, are
we ben there are some very interesting instructions that were
given when people were handed these pills.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
Yeah, and there's a huge caveat in there that we
have to spend some time on the VA then and
now is saying that soldiers were left on their own
when it came to the dosage. They were given recommendations
like we outlined, but administering the PB pills was up
to the individual themselves. And so if we asked scurselves
(27:01):
how the dosing worked, like you said, one thirty milligram
tablet every eight hours. So that is, for some quick math,
that's ninety milligrams every day. And the FDA recommends that
people who have my esthenia gravis take up to six
hundred milligrams of PBE pills or the PP substance every
(27:25):
twenty four hours, depending on the needs of the patient.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
And I saw this in a couple of places, but
not everywhere. About this stuff. There was some indication from
folks that they were asked to destroy records of who
received these and whether or not they were taking them.
Or again, if it's self administer, the would necessarily be
a record of how many times or how often they
were taken. But I did hear in a couple of
(27:49):
talks and in some articles that there was this sense
that they didn't want a record of like how these
were distributed.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Right, similar to burn pits or documentary that.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Oh yeah, well, and just to go back to our
anutomous listener again, this person said that they chose not
to self administer the PB pills, or at least they
began just a little bit and then stopped. But then
this person witnessed a whole bunch of other people in
the same platoon who are taking it religiously, like just
won't like, oh it's eight hours, I'm taking my pill.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Well, there were apparently a lot of bullying tactics deployed
by commanding officers as well, saying if you didn't take them,
you're gonna get you know, have to scrub the or
whatever you know, or not be court martialed. But just inconvenient,
mean spirited kind of tasks.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Right, and from their perspective, by the way, these commanding
officers are kind of doing like a tough love thing.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Yeah, take care medicine, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
I'm saving your life, maggot.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
All right.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
It's like that's kind of the energy that they had.
They weren't purposely trying to poison. And also, you know,
another thing about the horrors of conflict is that it
creates superstition, right, very quickly. So even if you are
not going to be evolved with any kind of nerve agent,
(29:16):
you can feel a sort of safety by taking the thing,
you know what I mean, Like every so often I
do this, and this is somehow a safety measure, even
if I don't know how it works totally. Yeah, And look,
not everyone here's the thing. Not everyone who took these pills,
these PB pills got sick. And not everyone who fought
(29:38):
in the Gulf War returned with Gulf War syndrome. There
is therefore a mystery afoot, and to those who believe
the government may be covering up something, this leads to
a series of increasingly disturbing allegations.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
It does, indeed, first and foremost and probably the most plausible.
Let's just start from where they where they stemmed from.
These were from veterans and veteran advocate groups, which includes
a lot of different individuals, whether it be family members
trying to go to bat for their loved ones and
(30:14):
speaking out publicly. I saw really really great TED talk
from a woman named Jennifer Jackson Gorillas gay G K
O U R I, L L A S who had
a loved one and she does this talk as an
advocate for that individual. But then there's also you know,
veterans affairs groups and less so maybe the veteran the VA,
(30:36):
but there are advocates groups that sort of exist to
improve the way the VA functions. Right, So the most
plausible that comes out of these various sources is that
Uncle Sam administered PB pills without proper oversight, methodology and research.
Because this was put out without FDA approval, they were
(31:00):
given something called a waiver, which I believe is very
similar to what happened with COVID nineteen vaccines.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Guys. I found that the waiver again, I have it
on my refrigerator.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Now.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
I think we've mentioned this several episodes back, but it's
the waiver that you got in place of actual consent
and information about a drug because of that Emergency Act.
And it's just basically you're saying, look, I understand this
is an experimental drug. There could be side effects that
we don't know about yet, haven't gone through clinical trials,
(31:32):
but we're taking it anyway, and I'm doing it on
my own volition.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Yeah, isn't that counter to like the Nurmberg Treaty or
whatever it was. I forget if it's a treaty, but
there was some official document that makes it illegal to
experiment on vulnerable populations. And you could very much class
people in the heat of battle who are terrified for
their lives and to your point, Ben, wanting that safety blanket,
(31:56):
even if it's just a feeling, they'd be more compelled
to take something like this if they're in that situation,
therefore making them vulnerable. Doesn't this go completely counter to that?
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Well, they didn't. In their opinion, this was not an experiment.
This was not human experimentation. Their opinion, this was a
kind of like a band aid rollout of something, you
know what I mean. Like you would say, hey, we
understand the concept of parachutes. Therefore it is not human
experimentation to have people jump from a plane with a parachute.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Well yeah, and theoretically this is almost a piece of
technology that it is a piece of technology that can
be deployed with your troops to lessen the effect your
enemy's weapons have on them.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
It's kind of a greater good argument, and that leads
us to just to follow that first allegation. They didn't
do their homework. That's the first allegation, right, The intentions
were good, but there wasn't enough due diligence applied before
this was rolled out to a ton of people. The second,
(33:06):
more sinister allegation is that someone in the halls of
power may have known full well that there was potential
or ill side effects and they either buried it or
ignored the research.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
That's tough, that's the old fodder viewpoint, right, yes, yeah,
Like we know that these guys are going to be
down there with the enemy tanks, they might be in
tanks themselves. There is a much higher chance that one
or an entire group of these human beings gets killed
in combat. Let's take this precaution, even though it's dangerous,
(33:42):
because it is also likely that they will get killed anyway.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
If that's true, that means the US government ran a
brutal cost benefit calculus, right or calculation, and they concluded, Look,
the potential for harm is below a certain percentage, so
it's an acceptable risk. And that might sound morally repugnant,
because you know it is. Yeah, but we have to
(34:09):
admit there is a contextual logic to it. Would you
rather risk injury to say, one out of three soldiers
or do you want to roll the dice on Saddam
Hussein in nerve gas knowing that if you don't try
to prevent that deployment it will kill thousands of people
very quickly.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Esh Man, I don't want to be the one making
those kinds of decisions, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Do we have evidence that that nerve gases were deployed,
that definitely were deployed or is this all preventative for
a thing that made like I was asking earlier, may
or may not have actually been on the tablet at
the time.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
At the time, they were in a little bit of
a black box, but they were pretty sure that saren cyclo,
sarin and mustard gas were possessed by the husay In administration,
and if they were possessed, then they would be used.
That was the only logical conclusion they could make. And
I'm not defending them, but I'm just saying from their perspective,
(35:12):
we can see the steps that they walked through.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Oh, well there, I mean, there was an extensive chemical
weapons program in Iraq, right, and we know that from history,
like this was a thing in the eighties specifically, So
it's I don't know there. If you listen to Immortal Technique,
the you know, we knew they had chemical weapons because
(35:37):
we helped them get them to them.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
I'm sorry, I totally forgot about that detail in that
previous conflict, right, I believe what they're on We had
sold there are allies at that point, and we sold
them these various agents, which is what led us to
do the research to figure out how to use the
PB pills in the first place.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Right now, you're right, all right, History, sometimes, you guys,
is such a he said, She's a kind of thing.
You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
History is written by the victors, which is a terrible
editorial standpoint, but it's the standard operating procedure.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Right.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
There's a third, unproven and more sinister allegation wartime profiteering.
We know that pharmaceutical companies have an outsized lobbying influence,
and just like defense companies, they make a lot of
money from government contracts. Then, as now, so is it
possible then that private pharmaceutical companies successfully lobbied to get
(36:41):
their products sold consequences be damned.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Oh, I didn't even think about that. Just the contract,
that government contract to buy all the pills.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
And none of this is proven, right, I mean, we
know that they did sell the pills to the government,
but we can't ascribe motive. There's no smoking gun for it,
and that leaves us with the first allegation as the
most likely scenario. Because there may be some science to
back up this idea. There were discoveries made about PB
(37:15):
pill exposure far after it was given to America's fighting forces.
Suggests we take a pause for a word from our
sponsors and then put on our house stuff works hats
and dive into some disturbing science.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
And we've returned, so let's just get into it, guys.
Veterans Affairs officially says that these PB pills that we're
describing in this entire episode are not connected to the
thing that is recognized as Gulf War syndrome. Right, that's
the official stance.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
Yeah, yeah, that's the official conclusion, but the science appears
to go back and forth. In twenty fifteen, or we
found a study from twenty fifteen at Baylor University, a
pretty small study, but it found something revolutionary. It linked
the use of anti nerve agent pills PB pills to
Gulf War syndrome and it also found a missing link,
(38:17):
a possible genetic factor that would result in sickness. There's
an article from the Military Times that puts it this way,
quote genetic factors may contribute to a veteran's risk for
Golf War illness, which they were calling at the time.
And this study links the PB pills and their adverse
effects to the genetic makeup of individual soldiers.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
So there's a.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
Gene variant that, to put it very simply, because we're
not geneticists, there's a gene variant that complicates your body's
ability to metabolize chemicals in these PB pills. And if
you have this variant, then you are going to be
up to forty times more likely to have Gulf War
(39:03):
syndrome symptoms. And people who don't have this variant, are
gonna be fine. Wow, it's something, you know, It's something
no one like the idea of searching for cyanide poisoning
or attempting to diagnose an illness. It's something people just
didn't think to look for, is the argument.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Jeez, guys, I'm just thinking about for what forty times
actually means. So I was just imagining someone telling me, hey, Matt,
you have two times the chance of getting in a
car wreck if you leave in if you leave your
house in your car today. So I would be like, oh,
I'm not not going to do that. But if somebody say, hey, Matt,
you have a forty times larger chance of getting in
(39:43):
a car wreck today, I'd be like, hmmm, car.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
This it's it's weird too, because you know, it reminds
me of the genetic factors and things like the taste
of cilantro. You know, this genetic variant is likely something
that most people will never know about themselves. It simply
won't come up because genes are very complicated and you
(40:14):
don't think about it most of the time.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Right.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
No, And well, and this drug, these chemicals that are
in this drug were meant to be administered only to
people who were dealing with a pretty rare problem, right, So,
like I'm just thinking about the number of the number
of people that it would have gone to if it
weren't being used for this purpose, we never would have
(40:40):
known that there are any major issues and.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
The original thing was rare, like right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Because if you think about a clinical trial with side effects,
like any any drug that gets tested, there are a
few people that develop cancer. There are a few people
that develop things, and it may have nothing to do
with the actual drug that's being administered. It may be
what that individual was going through prior to getting the drug,
but because it was involved in the trial, you have
to list it, right.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yes, And we're talking about people that had goal war
illness or goal for syndrome, whatever that is. It's it's
within a niche specific community obviously, and people I believe
that even interacted with some of those folks, like family members,
I believe even could have received some effect from this.
But it's it's not a tiny number. It's a what
(41:26):
we're talking like in the dozens of thousands, Like, like,
do do we have that? Yeah, it's a little hazy,
and it's not certainly not really confirmed by the government
per se.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
No, yeah, yeah, government is uh. The government is still
disagreeing with veterans and their advocates. And originally they were
out of sight, out of mind about it, and they
discredited a lot of things that they should have been
looking at. That's just that's not political statement, no ideology
(42:02):
applied objectively.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
That is true.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
And even now the US government officially considers what we
call Gulf War syndrome to be a quote cluster of
medically unexplained chronic systems end quote, meaning they acknowledge something exists,
but they don't conclude much else about it. They don't
even like using the term Gulf War syndrome. They say
the symptoms vary far too widely.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
That's the thing too, right, Like these are unrelated symptoms
that don't usually get lumped in with the same malady.
That's another thing that made it difficult for medical practitioners
to kind of figure out based on the normal clues
they would usually have. It's like a set of symptoms
that equals something like a particular condition or adjacent conditions,
but these were it was a real mystery.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
Who what if PB pills are one part of a
much larger equation.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
Yeah, what if history is not super cut and dried.
What if real life is kind of complicated, just like
people's genetic code. This is something that the VA seems
to tacitly acknowledge because they say the following quote, certain chronic,
unexplained symptoms existing for six months or more are related
(43:22):
to golf war service without regard to cause. So if
you are a veteran and you are in theater during
that time, then you can apply for disability for compensation
for assistance without specifically without the VA having to specifically
say golf syndrome is real and you have it, they
(43:44):
can just say unexplained things you happen to be in
the Gulf War.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
We know the government is all about plausible deniability, both
internally and you know publicly, especially publicly, they have whole
divisions that are designed to do damage control control about
this kind of stuff. And we know that they're not
gonna treat somebody or give them extra treatment because that
would acknowledge the thing exists in the first place and
(44:10):
that it was their fault.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Right.
Speaker 4 (44:12):
A lot of the conspiracies that you see in the
world of government are someone messed up and then someone
tried to cover it up or cya. Right, and there
are to your point, Matt, there are other possible causes,
and they likely did affect people. We're talking about things
like burn pits, oil well fires because this is a
(44:34):
resource war, right, oil wells are set on fire and
Kuwait by the Iraqi army as they're retreating. They're doing
this scorched stirth thing.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Right.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
If I can't have it, you can't either. And the
smoke from those fires was inhaled by a lot of
soldiers on both sides of the conflict, and a lot
of those folks went on to have acute pulmonary consequences
like you know asthma, bronchitis, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Has to do with your lungs, right pullmaner, Oh yeah,
other chronic evict Just throwing that out there in case
anybody didn't catch it.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
When did we talk about burn pits recently? It feels
like a blur, but I swear it came up very
recently about the kind of nasty stuff that they were burning,
you know, near camps or in the midst of camps.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
Yeah, but this wasn't this wasn't goal for war. We
were talking about Iraqi freedom, we're.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Talking about talking about the thing. You know, they got
a for sure. And I think I had mentioned earlier
the idea of the peb pills there being some obfuscation
going on in terms of the records. I think that
was less. I think I was maybe misconstruing that more
with what you were saying then that the locations uses
and the proximity of these burn pits. They have a
(45:46):
very hard time producing any records about that, as well
as medical records for the folks that were around them.
So DOA did a pretty crappy job of tracking this stuff. Well.
Speaker 4 (45:56):
Also, it's kind of it's not outright covered it up right,
It's kind of a supply chain dilemma as well. You know,
one of the most expensive parts of fighting a conflict
abroad is you have to build the logistics out. You
have to build the supply chain. So when you have
a bunch of trash and things that you need to
throw away, you don't have your you know, the city
(46:20):
garbage truck to come by.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Halliburton doesn't send in a you know, a chinook and
pick up all the garbage.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
They're a little expensive, oh weird.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
But guys what we received, I don't know. I would
estimate a dozen personal accounts from different individuals who talk
to us about burn pits at very specific camps, very
specific bases that in it was the range of like
a very large forward operating base to just a place
(46:50):
where when you first arrive in a rack camp was
on the side.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
So I don't know that it seems like it was
just it seems like they could figure out where there
was burn pit, because if there were troops there, there
was probably a burn pit.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And I'm sure that you guys saw this in your
research as well. But I did find a full text,
I guess versions very no bells and whistles of the
second report by the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight,
which is indicated as a you know, investigation into Gulf
War veterans illnesses. It says VA D O D continue
(47:27):
to resist strong evidence linking toxic causes to chronic health effects.
And if you do a search for the word records
in this seventy six instances of that occur, and almost
every one of them tied to there are none. So
just that's where I got that information. It's a real
report from nineteen ninety seven from Congress.
Speaker 4 (47:46):
And there are there's a lot of research on the
part of legislative bodies regarding this, and it continues because
you know these individuals for a long time. Or again
we're being roundly ignored, and we're going to get to
something here another possible cause that should bother you. But first,
(48:07):
actually they should all bother you. But first let's talk
about depleted uranium. The Gulf Wars the first time this
stuff is used on a large scale as a weapon, right,
in military applications, du or depleted uranium is ideal for
use in armor penetrators. As one marine Front of the
(48:30):
Show put it, it shoots through stuff good.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
Yeah, especially tanks, the armoring on tanks, right, which we
know in the Gulf War that was an issue. There
were big tanks that were coming at you. The US
had larger tanks, more technologically advanced tanks and depleted uranium rounds.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
And this is just a byproduct of nuclear energy creation
or where is this stuff coming from? They US have
all this depleted uranium laying around, is that right? It
is kind of just like a trash that they're re
using to blow up tags.
Speaker 4 (49:01):
Yeah, depleted uranium is naturally occurring uranium, and it's been
stripped of most of but not all, of the radioactive goodies.
And it is a byproduct it comes from preparing uranium
for nuclear application.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
That makes perfect sense. And how lucky for them they
were able to make lemons to lemonade or whatever.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Well, and it does stick around, right, it's uranium. It
doesn't just naturally decay real quick. Now it's a radioactive substance.
Speaker 4 (49:33):
Yeah, but it's great for shooting stuff, is the thing.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Real good.
Speaker 4 (49:38):
It's really good at it. It's also really not good
for humans. And if you ever are hanging out with
some friends on the weekend and they're like, hey, do
you want to play with depleted uranium, you should say no,
I hope that's not a hot take.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Okay, good to know.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
Well, just imagine though, if you're in that situation in
there are du rounds going off all over the especially
in a large battle in maybe a somewhat urban environment,
right where you're now going through that same city that
you just shot up like crazy. That stuff's in the
air via like dust, that stuff's on the ground.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
It's so there're SOPs for wearing gas masks or protection
when circling back through these areas. I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (50:26):
Yeah, there's always going to be a standard operating procedure
or like an order of operations for stuff, but that
can fall to the wayside very quickly in the chaos
of a hot conflict. Multiple studies by the US government
appear to show that, yes, depleted uranium is nasty stuff,
but they conclude it does not itself cause what we
(50:49):
call Gulf War syndrome double however, so that's two howevers
for US played along at home. Since twenty eleven, US
combat veterans can still claim disability compensation for any health
problems related to depleted uranium, and this is up to
the VA. They decided on a case by case basis,
(51:12):
which means, yet again you're at the mercy of bureaucracy, right.
And this is not to disparage the people working at
the VA. It's the system that's the problem.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
Hip because it really does become bureaucratic. As you said,
where were you deployed, when were you there? What you know,
battalion and blah blah blah blah blah, all that stuff,
and then you can basically the VA could say, well,
there's an x percent chance that you were actually exposed
to du right, which could be good or bad.
Speaker 4 (51:41):
And it's like, do you have the right form from
the right medical professional. Oh, do you need to see
the medical professional. Okay, that'll be like a couple of years.
I mean, hopefully it's not that extreme. But there are
systemic problems here. This is another cause that we personally
don't care for, and it was it was bandied about
(52:04):
a lot in the early days. Factions of the US
government were going to veterans and saying, well, you think
you have Golf War syndrome, Even before they had a
name for it, they said, what you really have is
PTSD post traumatic stress disorder. Now gaslighting, Yeah, before we continue,
PTSD is very real. It can affect absolutely anyone civilian
(52:27):
or military alike. Given the right circumstances, it happens. It
is a real thing. We're not dismissing that, but we
are saying lumping all of those proven physiological symptoms of
Gulf War syndrome into one umbrella and saying it's just PTSD.
That can seem profoundly offensive to some people. It is
(52:48):
like gaslighting. It feels like that it's dismissing a genuine
health condition as being quote all in your heads.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
And that is messed up. Yeah cool, and again we
you know, I mean I should get but like you know,
my kid has as aversion to certain types of antibiotics
were particularly penicillin. It causes a severe psychological reaction. There
was this time where they were given penicillin and all
of a sudden, like we're acting like they were having
(53:14):
an emotional, uh, you know, anxiety attack basically. But that's
a really hard thing to convince doctors to believe in
because they don't. There's not a whole lot of exact
precedent for it, but it happens every time. So this
is like that, but with even more documented cases. And
you've basically got people saying, sorry, I don't know what
you're talking about. That's all in your head, buddy.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
I would say, I've I have personally been diagnosed with
PTSD one time by a neurologist, and it was not
that huge collection of symptoms that are you know, those
that are described as Gulf War syndrome. So if this
for my money, guys, it makes sense that PTSD is
a component of all that other stuff. Yes, oh, but
(53:59):
it is not.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
Yes, portfolio, as I believe he.
Speaker 4 (54:05):
It's an ocean's eleven of terrible stuff. You know, it's
a heist crew on your health. And the question is
it aided? Has this heist grew been aided and embedded
by the US government? Unfortunately at certain points in the
narrative that appears to be the case, right, and the
VA and other research organizations have concluded that evidence does
(54:29):
not support an association a causual connection between PB pills
and what they call chronic multisymptom illness and what the
rest of the world calls Gulf War syndrome. But the
VA still again says, if you have chronic, unexplained symptoms
existing for six months or more that are related to
(54:51):
your time in the Gulf War, then you are deserving
of assistance, compensation, and resources, regardless of what the cause is,
what the official cause is. So really, what they're saying
again is agree to disagree on the specifics of what's happening,
but we will help you in theory. And this like
(55:14):
it seems like I don't know after looking into this, folks,
we believe the most likely factor for PB related GWS
Golf War syndrome, it has to hinge on that previously
unknown genetic variant. And again there are people who never
took PB pills who do have golf war syndrome because
(55:35):
as we've as we've shown, there are other factors that
can create this.
Speaker 3 (55:39):
Yep, and I do gosh, I do wonder how many
of those factors add up to create Wait, how many
do you need?
Speaker 2 (55:50):
Right?
Speaker 3 (55:51):
Do you need the burn pits and the PB pills
and then you're in golf war syndrome territory? Do you
need PTSD in burn pig? You know? Like, just what
is what are the things?
Speaker 2 (56:01):
It reminds me of the stuff with AstroTurf giving people
cancer where it was really difficult to show the correlation
or maybe cause that I can't remember. I always get
those confused. I know the difference, But there was something
with that where it was very tricky to show that
these people that got cancer definitely got it because they
were rolling around an AstroTurf.
Speaker 4 (56:22):
Right, because there were other factories yea, yeah, And this
is all unfortunately true. We know that the idea of
a genetic variant can explain why some people ingested these
pills with no lasting effect, while others may have incurred
lifelong medical consequences as a result, even when following official
(56:43):
guidelines to the letter. And just like the VA decides
stuff on a case by case basis, the causes of
Golf War syndrome for a lot of individuals in the
Armed Services may vary case to case as well. To
your point, Matt, and the most important thing here is
that if you served in the Gulf War in Operation
(57:04):
Desert Shield or Desert Storm anytime after August second, nineteen ninety,
the VA wants you to know that you may be
at risk of certain health conditions. So they are admitting
that something is up, and that is, as strange as
it sounds, that's actually progress from the nineteen nineties. Now
(57:25):
they're admitting the house is haunted.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
And like you said, Man, I mean, that's a big deal,
because that just doesn't happen unless they've got no other route,
you know, And at that point it's like damage.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
Control really quickly. Guys. Imagine twenty three years after that
August date in nineteen ninety, we made our video series,
right and then what ten years later, a little yeah,
less than ten years, less than ten years later, we're
talking about it again, and it's still a problem. Just
(57:55):
the span of time. And there are people out there
who have been dealing with this since nineteen ninety or
at least, you know, nineteen ninety one ninety two, after
they were exposed to all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
Well, you know, we haven't really talked about personal experiences
or personal accounts of people that actually suffer from this,
but they are out there. And that Ted Talk I
mentioned Ted x talk. If you want to hear someone
describing how debilitating this is for a loved one, that's
a good source. And just just search for you know,
golf for syndrome testimonials. There they're out there, and this
(58:29):
is stuff that literally is causing people's quality of life
to just be just absolutely in the tank.
Speaker 4 (58:34):
Yeah, and there are you can find just through a
quick YouTube search. You can find some contemporaneous reporting. I'm
thinking especially about an interview out of KMOVTV four in
Missouri that was from like nineteen ninety six, and they
interviewed veterans about this before the VA reached its current conclusions.
(58:59):
So you can see the pendulum moving in the right direction.
But for many veterans, leaving combat only led to another battle,
a battle for their conditions and injuries. To be acknowledged
rather than buried under paperwork or swept under a bureaucratic rug.
It is tragically a battle that many of our fellow
(59:19):
listeners in the audience tonight continue to fight one day
at a time. But the VA, as imperfect as it is,
it exists to help. So if you are a loved
one or experiencing medical conditions physiological, psychological as a result
of your time in the service, contact the VA at
the following number eight seven seven two two two eight
(59:41):
three eight seven. You might be on hold for a while,
but that's why they're there to help you, not to
put you on hold. Just to clarify, and with that,
we want to hear your experiences to your point about
personal stories. Tell us about your your encounters with golf
or syndrome as well as other potential conditions related to combat,
(01:00:05):
and let us know whether you think there's a cover
up a foot. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
That's right. You can find us at the handle conspiracy Stuff,
where we exist on Facebook, on YouTube, where we have
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Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
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(01:00:50):
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Speaker 4 (01:01:01):
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Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
A production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
They called me Bed, and we're joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control Deck. And most importantly,
you are you.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You are here.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
War? What is it good for? No, we're not gonna
do the song? Well, there's absolutely nothing. But then it
also makes me think of the quote from the Fallout Games,
war never changes, you know all of that? Those are
my two top War quotes. Is the song and the
I also love a band that has a song like
named after the name of their band, and that's such
a really sick flex like Radiohead. Or no, that's not true.
(01:06):
There is a talking Head song called Radiohead. But anyway, yeah,
not good for much except for you know, well, it's
good for the population over all, great.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Medical innovation, scientific progress, technological breakthroughs.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
And you make it sound awesome. It's a number.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
It's a number one pick for unintended consequences as well. Uh,
we've heard of agent Orange, and if you are a
longtime listener of the show, you have heard about it
as well, and the horrific effects that substance wrought upon
civilians and military alike during the Vietnam War. In a
previous conversation on Listener Mail, an anonymous conspiracy realist reached
(01:52):
out to us to ask us about something called p
B pills. It's a disturbing substance, little known outside of
the military or medical school. We had not heard of
it before our listener reached out. However, according to firsthand sources,
this may be the real explanation behind the notorious, still
(02:12):
not fully understood collection of symptoms called Golf War syndrome.
Here are the facts. We have to talk about the
Golf War. It's something that happened in recent history, right
in the nineteen nineties early nineteen nineties. It's sometimes called
the Persian Gulf War, sometimes in a very dystopian way.
(02:35):
It's referred to as the First War because there was
another one. But what happened for anybody who is unfamiliar
with Saddam Hussein, well.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
The United States led a coalition of forty two countries
against Iraq, which at that point was under the control
of the dictator Saddam Hussein. You might have heard of
him kind of the first maybe not the first, but
it was a really important moment for war coverage. So
he almost attained this like celebrity status in a weird way,
(03:10):
as this like big bad. He was elevated by the
press and the video of the television media. If you
want to hear more about this guy, please do check
out Robert Evans's excellent series on Behind the Bastard Bastards.
Excuse me, he's one particular bastard.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Here, But in the end, at least my understanding is
that it was between Iraq and Kuwait, right, There was
conflict there. It had something to do with being in debt, right,
so Iraq actually owed a ton of money to Kuwait
and rather than you know, coming through with the payments,
they came through with tanks and stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
So, right now, speculation about the logic behind Iraq's invasion
of Kuwait it still thrives.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
But you're correct.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
I would say, Matt, that it does seem to go
down to money, because in all I think it was
August second of nineteen ninety, Husain's forces invaded Kuwait and
they overran the country in like forty eight hours or less.
It was very much one sided conflict there.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
And you know how George W. Bush described the second
like the second invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan as like, oh,
it's just gonna be like forty eight hours that actually
happened in this case.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Yes, yeah, Now, Hussein did not call it a crusade,
give him that. He was also an inspiring romance novelist.
Again behind the bastards check out the series It's Wild.
The Iraqi forces declared ownership over Kuwait's northern territory and
all of the rest of it came under the governance
(04:42):
of a puppet state, you know, similar to Japan's actions
on the Chinese mainland. And you know, here's why most
people agree. Money was the impetus for Hussein. Iraq had
borrowed the equivalent of fourteen billion US dollars from Kuwait
(05:03):
to finance another war against Iran, and Kuwait, like most creditors,
wanted to be paid back. They wanted their bag. But
at the same time, Kuwait and the United Arab Immirates
were overshooting the quotas that OPEC sets for oil production,
(05:24):
and there's a big deal to Iraq because they're an
oil export reliance country at the time. So the main
way that they can pay back this debt is being
aggressively devalued, and in the government's statements at this period
of time, they're pretty blunt about it. The Iraqi government
says Kuwait is doing this on purpose to make it
difficult or impossible to pay back their debt. They wanted
(05:47):
to put Iraq in a financial hole and keep it there.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Sorry, but like Iraq also massive oil production operations, right, yes,
so why was Kuwait a to exceed those quotas. It
seems like they were bending the rules a little bitter like,
how how are they able to go about that in
such a seemingly passive aggressive way.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Yet OPEC is a cartel, you know, and I know
cartel has some sinister connotations, but OPEK essentially exists to
slow the faucet of oil and.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Regulate prices the very least, yeah, even the mout.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Yeah right, right, so it's price fixing and it is
focused on providing predictability and stability for oil exporting nations.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
However, they it's a paper.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Basically, they sign a piece of paper saying we'll do this,
we'll agree to this, and there's not a way to
stop them from going back on their word.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Well, and there there are real world constraints on an
oil producing country, right, and all of it's measured in
barrels per day, which is the thing OPEC can can
kind of control, right, how much money can you get
for that single barrel of oil? And you know, if
you can only make x number of barrels when that
price fluctuates, you're in the The economics of your country
(07:08):
can fluctuate wildly, right, which is what's happening here and
why it feels. It felt like, let's say to a
rock that Kuwait had its boot on its neck.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And so it's a good example of putting all your
economic eggs in one basket. Even if that basket or
those eggs are incredibly valuable, it's still one thing, right,
and that can hamstring you down the line if you
don't have a diverse, more diverse economic outlook. Right.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Yeah, like Rizza said in the Chappelle Show, you got
to diversify your portfolio.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
And this diverse bonds I will with portfolio because it's
not a little more economically minded.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
The shout out to Chappelle's show, So did huseaning take
a lesson from our pal, King Philip Street name heavy
P because that he handles Kuwait the way that Philip
handles the templar. He says, the best way to resolve
this massive debt is to remove the creditor from the board.
(08:07):
The US disagreed, as did most of the world. The
United Nations and the Security Council specifically adopted to separate
resolutions in the beginning, and they imposed economic sanctions against
the Rock. The United Kingdom and the US deployed forces
into Saudi Arabia literal boots on the ground, and at
(08:29):
the same time they urged other nations to follow their example. Eventually,
as you said, Noel, they ended up with a coalition
of forty two different nations involved in some way and
the wallets were opened. Billions of dollars are powering this endeavor.
Officially it was an estimated sixty billion dollars. However, we
(08:52):
know war is messy and so a lot of that money.
The real toll financially is probably much higher and were
never and a note, the full extent of expense here,
but we do know the bombing begins in January of
nineteen ninety one, and for any students of warfare, there
are several notable aspects of this conflict. There are a
(09:14):
lot of first time things here.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah, do you guys have memories of watching the Iraq War,
like the invasion and the green cameras, the night vision stuff.
And I just have clear visions of CNN showing you know,
all of this stuff and watching it with my parents
just trying to understand what the heck's going on.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Well, and I sort of alluded to that earlier, just
about this being you know, or Saddam being almost like
elevated to this big, bad level by this kind of coverage,
And I guess I didn't realize until I was looking
at some of the research that Ben did here that
this really was a first and that this kind of
coverage prior even with like the Vietnam War, there were
no embedded journalists. It was all stuff sent to the
(09:56):
news stations that was very much controlled by the military,
and of course even the embedded journalists were very much
controlled and handled by the media, but this was still different.
It was very different, and yes, I do remember all
of that.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Yeah, real time updates. The media forces and the government
forces could attempt to sanitize what was depicted, but just
like how live programs can have curse words slip through,
you can't clean all of the footage. So for many,
many citizens of the US and the world entire they
(10:33):
were seeing the unedited reality of conflict and it's a
very very ugly, strange, dangerous thing.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
This is also.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
I didn't know this, three of the largest tank battles
in all of US history also took place at this time.
This is also the first time people deployed depleted uranium
in a large scale.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah, hey, and head over to our YouTube channel and
scroll all the way back to August twenty twenty three
to watch our special on It's the Gulf War, syndrome,
Agent orange and depleted uranium. There's three separate videos, so
definitely check that out. But guys, this is also Nurse Narayah, right, yes,
the testimony in nineteen ninety I guess it's right around
(11:21):
the time of Iraq and invading Kuwait is when we
got the Nurse Narayah testimony that we've talked about on
the show a couple of times. That turned out to
be not true, dealing with what was it child babies
being taken out of incubators.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
Incubator Yep, yeah, we cover it in our book as well.
I think it's chapter five, I want to say propaganda,
or maybe it's oh, it might be chapter eight political corruption,
bangor hit. Check out the art from our pal Nick
Turbo Benson.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
It's true.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
It's something that people have been talking about for quite
a long time. And this would also not be the
last of these wars. In two thousand and three, the
battle begins anew in the US. This was known as
Operation Iraqi Freedom at this point. Still, even in twenty
twenty four, in the grand scheme of things, the tragedies
(12:14):
heartbreak of war are comparatively fresh. We as a civilization
simply do not know the full consequences of these interventions.
We do know the threats were real. There were clear
and present dangers. The West was very concerned with the
Hussein administration's interest in biological and possibly nuclear warfare, and
(12:36):
as previous lessons had proven time and time again, it
is exceedingly rare, if not virtually impossible, for any government
to walk back those ambitions once they get past a
certain threshold is super uncommon. So the US and its coalition,
their ideas were going to cut this off of the
butt or at least that's there, or cut this off
(12:58):
of the route, nip it in the butts what I mean.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, Well, also, I mean people will certainly recall this
obsession with disarming Iraq. You know, in this idea of
weapons of mass destruction was sort of the mcguffin behind
the whole Iraqi freedom operation, and it ended up like
not being the case. That sort of comes back in
a way in this story, this idea of this sinister
(13:25):
secret thing that may or may not actually exist.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
And the US sought to prepare its forces in advance
for the possibilities of nasty things like nerve agents, biological weapons,
et cetera. Like the Gulf War itself. We would not
know the full consequences of these preparations for some time.
In the decades after the First Gulf War, more and
(13:51):
more veterans from all sides of the conflict began experiencing
a collection of strange symptoms that they could not expel
lane fatigue, insomnia, rashes, diarrhea, intense cognitive issues. You know,
we would call it brain fog today and muscle pain
like all around. The kind of things where you would
(14:14):
know that you were seriously sick, but you wouldn't have
a name to put on the thing, right, you would know,
you would be able to name all the stuff it
was not. It was not the flu. You know, you
would test negative for other things, but you are clearly sick.
And this became known as Gulf War syndrome for sure.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
And I mean, you know, well, there isn't a name
exactly for this kind of thing. There's sort of a vague,
foggy name for a thing that we don't know the
name of. I mean, in this case, it was deemed
or dubbed Golf War syndrome or Golf War illness. But
according to a report released by the Institute of Medicine
in twenty thirteen, about a third of Gulf War veterans
suffer from what is referred to as a CMI or
(14:57):
chronic multi symptom illness, which, like you said, is a
series of symptoms that cannot be medically explained. And if
anyone has ever had to deal with anything like this,
or even just an illness that won't go away, and
the doctors don't believe you, or they keep treating it
with the wrong thing. It can be so frustrating, you know,
because Western medicine doesn't always get it right.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
You know, Well, there's a thing where depending on how
rare the illness you've got or the disease you've got,
it's like if you imagine the graph, the more rare
it is, the less likely you know, a general practitioner
is going to say, oh, this is it right, because
you're going to go through the checklist of all the
other things that could cause all those different symptoms with
(15:43):
this Gulf War syndrome. It is so strange because it
is so there's so many human beings that are experiencing
similar symptoms right that are i don't know, broad spectrum right,
dealing with exactly.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
Yeah, And it's tough because this is not saying that
the medical professionals were purposely bearing this, but a lot
of times these guys are these guys feel like there
is a conspiracy of foot to suppress what is actually
happening to them. And unfortunately, there is a great deal
of validity to that concern. We will see as we
(16:22):
continue this evening that veteran advocacy groups had to fight
tooth and nail to get this acknowledged to not be dismissed.
The public is still searching for an official explanation behind
Gulf War syndrome. What could cause these otherwise inexplicable series
(16:43):
of ailments? Is it possible people were asking that the
US government, in a rush to protect their soldiers, accidentally
poison them. This is the story of PB pills. We're
going to pause for a word from our sponsor, and
then we'll dive right in. Here's where it gets crazy.
(17:08):
Paridistigmine bromide worked on that one for a seconds.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
It's a it's a doozy, the bromide part alone. I
mean anything anything I've heard bromide attached to usually isn't
something that you necessarily want to jest. I don't know.
Maybe I'm thinking of like potassium bromides.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Yes, that's the last one I remember, which is the
Mountain Dew guy.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
A good right, and was a brominated vegetable oil.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Orange. Yeah, we're here to ruin the things you enjoy.
So right now, I could just picture how many people
drink orange Fanta? Do you think while they listened to
the show.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Oh, somebody had it in their mouth when you said that.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
We are sorry to you. But but the potassium bromide
was apparently used as a sedative in the nineteenth century,
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but I believe it was
discovered to not be great for you.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Yeah, it happens. It happens, And that might be the
story with PB pills as well. This stuff dates back.
It was clearly established well before the Gulf War. It
was patented in nineteen forty five. It's been used in
civilian medicine since nineteen fifty five, and primarily then as now,
(18:28):
it is used to treat an extraordinarily rare autoimmune neuromuscular
condition called myasthenia gravis.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Guys, is it weird to you at all? My asthenia gravis?
So let's stay right there. But just as an aside,
is it weird to you guys hearing that medicine is
patented in nineteen forty five? Just considering I guess there's
chemical warfare occurring in World War two, right, with all
kinds of gases and things that people are going to
be exposed to, it would make sense that this is
(18:58):
around the time when it gets patented and deployed.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
But it is just I don't know, it seems like yeah,
oh for sure, but you know, you know, so many
things they figure out down the line that's been around
for asias. You can prescribe off label and it does
other things. But I'm always suspicious when I hear off
label thrown around. It's like, hey, just so happens that
it kind of sort of does this other thing that
(19:23):
we didn't really realize, and let's let's prescribe it for that,
even though it's not for that.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
I mean a lot of a lot of medicine. And indeed,
great invention is trial and error and finding something that
you didn't intend when you were trying to do another
thing unsuccessfully. Shout out to alchemy, which created chemistry. Shout
out to viagra, which was supposed to help with heart
with heart problems.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, the microwave, right with something to do with the
chocolate that melted in the guy's pocket, Like that was
an accident, and then they realized they could harness.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
That, and I guess, tech, I guess if we're waxing poetic,
viagra can help with heart problems, I mean hard problems.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Of the hearts.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
You know.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Yeah, but Okay, So here's here's the thing. Here's why
PB pills matter. So this substance is what's known as
a cholinesterase inhibitor. There is a protein in your body
if you're human, called calinesta RaSE and it breaks down
a chemical called aceta. Calling wildly mispronouncing this maybe, but
(20:34):
the reason this chemical is important, this aceta colding, is
because it helps your nerve cells and your muscles talk
to each other. It's like a zoom call for them
or a telephone for them. And as a result, this
PB substance helps that useful protein stay in your system longer.
(20:58):
It helps your body activate the muscle. It lessens muscle weakness.
So if you have a condition like my esthenia gravis,
this is a godsend for you. It just keeps your
body running the way it should. So it's preventative.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
Since this stuff helps your nerves and your muscles communicate,
then the theory is the logic is that if another
substance interferes with that communication, these PB pills can sort
of hold the line. They can lessen the impact of
some very nasty stuff. It sounds good, Oh yeah, it
(21:35):
sounds great. I think we're done for today.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Are there a lot of people in the military that
have myasthenia gravis?
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Uh not, actually not a time, not disproportionately.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Maybe with the rest of the population. The weird, it
is a little weird, but like you know, of course
I was, you know, sorry, this isn't we're not talking
about patasium bromi. But I did look it up just
to see what I was thinking about, and it was
taken off of the market. It's used in veterinary medicine,
but it's taken off the market for human use because
of a litany of side effects that just outweighed any positives,
(22:09):
and it was used as a sedative, and other they
call them hypnotics had come out that were far more effective.
So it was fully pulled for human use, and now
it's apparently only used to you know, sub do pooches
and kiddies. But let's talk about the side effects of
these this other bromide situation, these PB pills.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Oh, it's got them. Like every good drug, he's got
side effects. And it's the scary stuff you gotta read
in the ad.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It's the fine print that they say really really fast.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
But in this case, there's no ad for this. You
just get handed some you know as a person in
the military. But let's talk about them. There's uncommon side
effects as again or always read in the ads.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Well, let's currently welcome to the welcome to the good
guys marine take these. Make sure you don't get a
hit with nerve gas, but just in case you do,
you're gonna want to take some PB pills. Oh, thank
you sir. Currently these are uncommon side effects, but include
stuff like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps and cramps, twitching,
or weakness of the muscles.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Wait, how is it going to cause weakness of the muscles?
It's supposed to do the opposite.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Wow, is your specialty questions? Get out of here, you
know what I mean? Like that's and also there's a
hell of a ven diagram right between again slowly nausea, vomiting, diarrhea,
stomach cramps, muscle cramps, twitching, and muscle weakness. That's pretty
similar to Gulf War syndrome.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Is this an antidote situation?
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Like?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Do you only supposed to take these if you're exposed
to nerve gas? Now it's any it's a mephyl.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Yeah, oh button, it's preventative.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Oh okay, uh yeah, sorry, I have a very specific
image of that word.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
I think most people do.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
But tech tech.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
It is preventative, but it's not a vaccination. The idea
is that if you are in a conflict situation, right,
if you're in the armed services, you're out there in
the Middle East, you might get exposed to nerve gas
from Hussein's force, stuff like Sarah or Soman, and then
this stuff will It won't cure you, but it will
(24:22):
make it more likely that if you are exposed to
a nerve agent, you have a higher chance of surviving
with no long lasting ill effects.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Quick quick review, what are the effects of these agents
or some maybe hit lists of some particularly gnarly effects.
If you get hit with a nerve agent.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
It's gonna mess with your body's ability to have your
nerves connect to your bid. It's the communication that the
pbpills are actually supposed to be helping out here, right,
and the concept of taking them every day. The way
that we were told by our anonymous listener is that
you never know when a chemical attack could occur. It
could be in you know, the place where you're sleeping,
(25:04):
and all of a sudden there's a nerve agent or
something that you're going to be affected by, so you've
got to make sure it's in your system, just continually cycling.
So sorry, I didn't mean a derail, but let's get
back here.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Why not at all? I think that's it's incredibly important important,
But it's funny how some of the side effects of
nerve agents are kind of similar to the side effects
of these bills, right exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
And again, a lot of people who are taking these
they are trusting the authorities. They are not themselves medical professionals.
But like most people listening to tonight's show, they would
like to not die. And so this is where it
gets tricky. Right, Like many substances, this was always thought
to be non harmful below a certain threshold, And that's
(25:49):
where it gets tricky. How can we keep track of
how much an individual person ingested? And when the VA Veterans'
Affairs has a lot of information on this, we pulled
some quotes directly from them.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yes we did, and here goes one. PB pills were
supplied to service members as twenty one tablet blister packs
with prescribed dosage as one thirty milligram tablet every eight hours.
Veterans actual exposure is not known because pills were self administered,
and there are few examples in individual or unit health
(26:23):
records from the Department of Defense. And we're all get
to a real weird reason why that's the case, are
we ben there are some very interesting instructions that were
given when people were handed these pills.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
Yeah, and there's a huge caveat in there that we
have to spend some time on the VA then and
now is saying that soldiers were left on their own
when it came to the dosage. They were given recommendations
like we outlined, but administering the PB pills was up
to the individual themselves. And so if we asked scurselves
(27:01):
how the dosing worked, like you said, one thirty milligram
tablet every eight hours. So that is, for some quick math,
that's ninety milligrams every day. And the FDA recommends that
people who have my esthenia gravis take up to six
hundred milligrams of PBE pills or the PP substance every
(27:25):
twenty four hours, depending on the needs of the patient.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
And I saw this in a couple of places, but
not everywhere. About this stuff. There was some indication from
folks that they were asked to destroy records of who
received these and whether or not they were taking them.
Or again, if it's self administer, the would necessarily be
a record of how many times or how often they
were taken. But I did hear in a couple of
(27:49):
talks and in some articles that there was this sense
that they didn't want a record of like how these
were distributed.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Right, similar to burn pits or documentary that.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Oh yeah, well, and just to go back to our
anutomous listener again, this person said that they chose not
to self administer the PB pills, or at least they
began just a little bit and then stopped. But then
this person witnessed a whole bunch of other people in
the same platoon who are taking it religiously, like just
won't like, oh it's eight hours, I'm taking my pill.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Well, there were apparently a lot of bullying tactics deployed
by commanding officers as well, saying if you didn't take them,
you're gonna get you know, have to scrub the or
whatever you know, or not be court martialed. But just inconvenient,
mean spirited kind of tasks.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Right, and from their perspective, by the way, these commanding
officers are kind of doing like a tough love thing.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Yeah, take care medicine, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
I'm saving your life, maggot.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
All right.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
It's like that's kind of the energy that they had.
They weren't purposely trying to poison. And also, you know,
another thing about the horrors of conflict is that it
creates superstition, right, very quickly. So even if you are
not going to be evolved with any kind of nerve agent,
(29:16):
you can feel a sort of safety by taking the thing,
you know what I mean, Like every so often I
do this, and this is somehow a safety measure, even
if I don't know how it works totally. Yeah, And look,
not everyone here's the thing. Not everyone who took these pills,
these PB pills got sick. And not everyone who fought
(29:38):
in the Gulf War returned with Gulf War syndrome. There
is therefore a mystery afoot, and to those who believe
the government may be covering up something, this leads to
a series of increasingly disturbing allegations.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
It does, indeed, first and foremost and probably the most plausible.
Let's just start from where they where they stemmed from.
These were from veterans and veteran advocate groups, which includes
a lot of different individuals, whether it be family members
trying to go to bat for their loved ones and
(30:14):
speaking out publicly. I saw really really great TED talk
from a woman named Jennifer Jackson Gorillas gay G K
O U R I, L L A S who had
a loved one and she does this talk as an
advocate for that individual. But then there's also you know,
veterans affairs groups and less so maybe the veteran the VA,
(30:36):
but there are advocates groups that sort of exist to
improve the way the VA functions. Right, So the most
plausible that comes out of these various sources is that
Uncle Sam administered PB pills without proper oversight, methodology and research.
Because this was put out without FDA approval, they were
(31:00):
given something called a waiver, which I believe is very
similar to what happened with COVID nineteen vaccines.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Guys. I found that the waiver again, I have it
on my refrigerator.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Now.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
I think we've mentioned this several episodes back, but it's
the waiver that you got in place of actual consent
and information about a drug because of that Emergency Act.
And it's just basically you're saying, look, I understand this
is an experimental drug. There could be side effects that
we don't know about yet, haven't gone through clinical trials,
(31:32):
but we're taking it anyway, and I'm doing it on
my own volition.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Yeah, isn't that counter to like the Nurmberg Treaty or
whatever it was. I forget if it's a treaty, but
there was some official document that makes it illegal to
experiment on vulnerable populations. And you could very much class
people in the heat of battle who are terrified for
their lives and to your point, Ben, wanting that safety blanket,
(31:56):
even if it's just a feeling, they'd be more compelled
to take something like this if they're in that situation,
therefore making them vulnerable. Doesn't this go completely counter to that?
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Well, they didn't. In their opinion, this was not an experiment.
This was not human experimentation. Their opinion, this was a
kind of like a band aid rollout of something, you
know what I mean. Like you would say, hey, we
understand the concept of parachutes. Therefore it is not human
experimentation to have people jump from a plane with a parachute.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Well yeah, and theoretically this is almost a piece of
technology that it is a piece of technology that can
be deployed with your troops to lessen the effect your
enemy's weapons have on them.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
It's kind of a greater good argument, and that leads
us to just to follow that first allegation. They didn't
do their homework. That's the first allegation, right, The intentions
were good, but there wasn't enough due diligence applied before
this was rolled out to a ton of people. The second,
(33:06):
more sinister allegation is that someone in the halls of
power may have known full well that there was potential
or ill side effects and they either buried it or
ignored the research.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
That's tough, that's the old fodder viewpoint, right, yes, yeah,
Like we know that these guys are going to be
down there with the enemy tanks, they might be in
tanks themselves. There is a much higher chance that one
or an entire group of these human beings gets killed
in combat. Let's take this precaution, even though it's dangerous,
(33:42):
because it is also likely that they will get killed anyway.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
If that's true, that means the US government ran a
brutal cost benefit calculus, right or calculation, and they concluded, Look,
the potential for harm is below a certain percentage, so
it's an acceptable risk. And that might sound morally repugnant,
because you know it is. Yeah, but we have to
(34:09):
admit there is a contextual logic to it. Would you
rather risk injury to say, one out of three soldiers
or do you want to roll the dice on Saddam
Hussein in nerve gas knowing that if you don't try
to prevent that deployment it will kill thousands of people
very quickly.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Esh Man, I don't want to be the one making
those kinds of decisions, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Do we have evidence that that nerve gases were deployed,
that definitely were deployed or is this all preventative for
a thing that made like I was asking earlier, may
or may not have actually been on the tablet at
the time.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
At the time, they were in a little bit of
a black box, but they were pretty sure that saren cyclo,
sarin and mustard gas were possessed by the husay In administration,
and if they were possessed, then they would be used.
That was the only logical conclusion they could make. And
I'm not defending them, but I'm just saying from their perspective,
(35:12):
we can see the steps that they walked through.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Oh, well there, I mean, there was an extensive chemical
weapons program in Iraq, right, and we know that from history,
like this was a thing in the eighties specifically, So
it's I don't know there. If you listen to Immortal Technique,
the you know, we knew they had chemical weapons because
(35:37):
we helped them get them to them.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
I'm sorry, I totally forgot about that detail in that
previous conflict, right, I believe what they're on We had
sold there are allies at that point, and we sold
them these various agents, which is what led us to
do the research to figure out how to use the
PB pills in the first place.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Right now, you're right, all right, History, sometimes, you guys,
is such a he said, She's a kind of thing.
You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
History is written by the victors, which is a terrible
editorial standpoint, but it's the standard operating procedure.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Right.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
There's a third, unproven and more sinister allegation wartime profiteering.
We know that pharmaceutical companies have an outsized lobbying influence,
and just like defense companies, they make a lot of
money from government contracts. Then, as now, so is it
possible then that private pharmaceutical companies successfully lobbied to get
(36:41):
their products sold consequences be damned.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Oh, I didn't even think about that. Just the contract,
that government contract to buy all the pills.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
And none of this is proven, right, I mean, we
know that they did sell the pills to the government,
but we can't ascribe motive. There's no smoking gun for it,
and that leaves us with the first allegation as the
most likely scenario. Because there may be some science to
back up this idea. There were discoveries made about PB
(37:15):
pill exposure far after it was given to America's fighting forces.
Suggests we take a pause for a word from our
sponsors and then put on our house stuff works hats
and dive into some disturbing science.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
And we've returned, so let's just get into it, guys.
Veterans Affairs officially says that these PB pills that we're
describing in this entire episode are not connected to the
thing that is recognized as Gulf War syndrome. Right, that's
the official stance.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
Yeah, yeah, that's the official conclusion, but the science appears
to go back and forth. In twenty fifteen, or we
found a study from twenty fifteen at Baylor University, a
pretty small study, but it found something revolutionary. It linked
the use of anti nerve agent pills PB pills to
Gulf War syndrome and it also found a missing link,
(38:17):
a possible genetic factor that would result in sickness. There's
an article from the Military Times that puts it this way,
quote genetic factors may contribute to a veteran's risk for
Golf War illness, which they were calling at the time.
And this study links the PB pills and their adverse
effects to the genetic makeup of individual soldiers.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
So there's a.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
Gene variant that, to put it very simply, because we're
not geneticists, there's a gene variant that complicates your body's
ability to metabolize chemicals in these PB pills. And if
you have this variant, then you are going to be
up to forty times more likely to have Gulf War
(39:03):
syndrome symptoms. And people who don't have this variant, are
gonna be fine. Wow, it's something, you know, It's something
no one like the idea of searching for cyanide poisoning
or attempting to diagnose an illness. It's something people just
didn't think to look for, is the argument.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Jeez, guys, I'm just thinking about for what forty times
actually means. So I was just imagining someone telling me, hey, Matt,
you have two times the chance of getting in a
car wreck if you leave in if you leave your
house in your car today. So I would be like, oh,
I'm not not going to do that. But if somebody say, hey, Matt,
you have a forty times larger chance of getting in
(39:43):
a car wreck today, I'd be like, hmmm, car.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
This it's it's weird too, because you know, it reminds
me of the genetic factors and things like the taste
of cilantro. You know, this genetic variant is likely something
that most people will never know about themselves. It simply
won't come up because genes are very complicated and you
(40:14):
don't think about it most of the time.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Right.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
No, And well, and this drug, these chemicals that are
in this drug were meant to be administered only to
people who were dealing with a pretty rare problem, right, So,
like I'm just thinking about the number of the number
of people that it would have gone to if it
weren't being used for this purpose, we never would have
(40:40):
known that there are any major issues and.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
The original thing was rare, like right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Because if you think about a clinical trial with side effects,
like any any drug that gets tested, there are a
few people that develop cancer. There are a few people
that develop things, and it may have nothing to do
with the actual drug that's being administered. It may be
what that individual was going through prior to getting the drug,
but because it was involved in the trial, you have
to list it, right.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yes, And we're talking about people that had goal war
illness or goal for syndrome, whatever that is. It's it's
within a niche specific community obviously, and people I believe
that even interacted with some of those folks, like family members,
I believe even could have received some effect from this.
But it's it's not a tiny number. It's a what
(41:26):
we're talking like in the dozens of thousands, Like, like,
do do we have that? Yeah, it's a little hazy,
and it's not certainly not really confirmed by the government
per se.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
No, yeah, yeah, government is uh. The government is still
disagreeing with veterans and their advocates. And originally they were
out of sight, out of mind about it, and they
discredited a lot of things that they should have been
looking at. That's just that's not political statement, no ideology
(42:02):
applied objectively.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
That is true.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
And even now the US government officially considers what we
call Gulf War syndrome to be a quote cluster of
medically unexplained chronic systems end quote, meaning they acknowledge something exists,
but they don't conclude much else about it. They don't
even like using the term Gulf War syndrome. They say
the symptoms vary far too widely.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
That's the thing too, right, Like these are unrelated symptoms
that don't usually get lumped in with the same malady.
That's another thing that made it difficult for medical practitioners
to kind of figure out based on the normal clues
they would usually have. It's like a set of symptoms
that equals something like a particular condition or adjacent conditions,
but these were it was a real mystery.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
Who what if PB pills are one part of a
much larger equation.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
Yeah, what if history is not super cut and dried.
What if real life is kind of complicated, just like
people's genetic code. This is something that the VA seems
to tacitly acknowledge because they say the following quote, certain chronic,
unexplained symptoms existing for six months or more are related
(43:22):
to golf war service without regard to cause. So if
you are a veteran and you are in theater during
that time, then you can apply for disability for compensation
for assistance without specifically without the VA having to specifically
say golf syndrome is real and you have it, they
(43:44):
can just say unexplained things you happen to be in
the Gulf War.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
We know the government is all about plausible deniability, both
internally and you know publicly, especially publicly, they have whole
divisions that are designed to do damage control control about
this kind of stuff. And we know that they're not
gonna treat somebody or give them extra treatment because that
would acknowledge the thing exists in the first place and
(44:10):
that it was their fault.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Right.
Speaker 4 (44:12):
A lot of the conspiracies that you see in the
world of government are someone messed up and then someone
tried to cover it up or cya. Right, and there
are to your point, Matt, there are other possible causes,
and they likely did affect people. We're talking about things
like burn pits, oil well fires because this is a
(44:34):
resource war, right, oil wells are set on fire and
Kuwait by the Iraqi army as they're retreating. They're doing
this scorched stirth thing.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Right.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
If I can't have it, you can't either. And the
smoke from those fires was inhaled by a lot of
soldiers on both sides of the conflict, and a lot
of those folks went on to have acute pulmonary consequences
like you know asthma, bronchitis, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Has to do with your lungs, right pullmaner, Oh yeah,
other chronic evict Just throwing that out there in case
anybody didn't catch it.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
When did we talk about burn pits recently? It feels
like a blur, but I swear it came up very
recently about the kind of nasty stuff that they were burning,
you know, near camps or in the midst of camps.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
Yeah, but this wasn't this wasn't goal for war. We
were talking about Iraqi freedom, we're.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Talking about talking about the thing. You know, they got
a for sure. And I think I had mentioned earlier
the idea of the peb pills there being some obfuscation
going on in terms of the records. I think that
was less. I think I was maybe misconstruing that more
with what you were saying then that the locations uses
and the proximity of these burn pits. They have a
(45:46):
very hard time producing any records about that, as well
as medical records for the folks that were around them.
So DOA did a pretty crappy job of tracking this stuff. Well.
Speaker 4 (45:56):
Also, it's kind of it's not outright covered it up right,
It's kind of a supply chain dilemma as well. You know,
one of the most expensive parts of fighting a conflict
abroad is you have to build the logistics out. You
have to build the supply chain. So when you have
a bunch of trash and things that you need to
throw away, you don't have your you know, the city
(46:20):
garbage truck to come by.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Halliburton doesn't send in a you know, a chinook and
pick up all the garbage.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
They're a little expensive, oh weird.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
But guys what we received, I don't know. I would
estimate a dozen personal accounts from different individuals who talk
to us about burn pits at very specific camps, very
specific bases that in it was the range of like
a very large forward operating base to just a place
(46:50):
where when you first arrive in a rack camp was
on the side.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
So I don't know that it seems like it was
just it seems like they could figure out where there
was burn pit, because if there were troops there, there
was probably a burn pit.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And I'm sure that you guys saw this in your
research as well. But I did find a full text,
I guess versions very no bells and whistles of the
second report by the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight,
which is indicated as a you know, investigation into Gulf
War veterans illnesses. It says VA D O D continue
(47:27):
to resist strong evidence linking toxic causes to chronic health effects.
And if you do a search for the word records
in this seventy six instances of that occur, and almost
every one of them tied to there are none. So
just that's where I got that information. It's a real
report from nineteen ninety seven from Congress.
Speaker 4 (47:46):
And there are there's a lot of research on the
part of legislative bodies regarding this, and it continues because
you know these individuals for a long time. Or again
we're being roundly ignored, and we're going to get to
something here another possible cause that should bother you. But first,
(48:07):
actually they should all bother you. But first let's talk
about depleted uranium. The Gulf Wars the first time this
stuff is used on a large scale as a weapon, right,
in military applications, du or depleted uranium is ideal for
use in armor penetrators. As one marine Front of the
(48:30):
Show put it, it shoots through stuff good.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
Yeah, especially tanks, the armoring on tanks, right, which we
know in the Gulf War that was an issue. There
were big tanks that were coming at you. The US
had larger tanks, more technologically advanced tanks and depleted uranium rounds.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
And this is just a byproduct of nuclear energy creation
or where is this stuff coming from? They US have
all this depleted uranium laying around, is that right? It
is kind of just like a trash that they're re
using to blow up tags.
Speaker 4 (49:01):
Yeah, depleted uranium is naturally occurring uranium, and it's been
stripped of most of but not all, of the radioactive goodies.
And it is a byproduct it comes from preparing uranium
for nuclear application.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
That makes perfect sense. And how lucky for them they
were able to make lemons to lemonade or whatever.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Well, and it does stick around, right, it's uranium. It
doesn't just naturally decay real quick. Now it's a radioactive substance.
Speaker 4 (49:33):
Yeah, but it's great for shooting stuff, is the thing.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Real good.
Speaker 4 (49:38):
It's really good at it. It's also really not good
for humans. And if you ever are hanging out with
some friends on the weekend and they're like, hey, do
you want to play with depleted uranium, you should say no,
I hope that's not a hot take.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Okay, good to know.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
Well, just imagine though, if you're in that situation in
there are du rounds going off all over the especially
in a large battle in maybe a somewhat urban environment,
right where you're now going through that same city that
you just shot up like crazy. That stuff's in the
air via like dust, that stuff's on the ground.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
It's so there're SOPs for wearing gas masks or protection
when circling back through these areas. I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (50:26):
Yeah, there's always going to be a standard operating procedure
or like an order of operations for stuff, but that
can fall to the wayside very quickly in the chaos
of a hot conflict. Multiple studies by the US government
appear to show that, yes, depleted uranium is nasty stuff,
but they conclude it does not itself cause what we
(50:49):
call Gulf War syndrome double however, so that's two howevers
for US played along at home. Since twenty eleven, US
combat veterans can still claim disability compensation for any health
problems related to depleted uranium, and this is up to
the VA. They decided on a case by case basis,
(51:12):
which means, yet again you're at the mercy of bureaucracy, right.
And this is not to disparage the people working at
the VA. It's the system that's the problem.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
Hip because it really does become bureaucratic. As you said,
where were you deployed, when were you there? What you know,
battalion and blah blah blah blah blah, all that stuff,
and then you can basically the VA could say, well,
there's an x percent chance that you were actually exposed
to du right, which could be good or bad.
Speaker 4 (51:41):
And it's like, do you have the right form from
the right medical professional. Oh, do you need to see
the medical professional. Okay, that'll be like a couple of years.
I mean, hopefully it's not that extreme. But there are
systemic problems here. This is another cause that we personally
don't care for, and it was it was bandied about
(52:04):
a lot in the early days. Factions of the US
government were going to veterans and saying, well, you think
you have Golf War syndrome, Even before they had a
name for it, they said, what you really have is
PTSD post traumatic stress disorder. Now gaslighting, Yeah, before we continue,
PTSD is very real. It can affect absolutely anyone civilian
(52:27):
or military alike. Given the right circumstances, it happens. It
is a real thing. We're not dismissing that, but we
are saying lumping all of those proven physiological symptoms of
Gulf War syndrome into one umbrella and saying it's just PTSD.
That can seem profoundly offensive to some people. It is
(52:48):
like gaslighting. It feels like that it's dismissing a genuine
health condition as being quote all in your heads.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
And that is messed up. Yeah cool, and again we
you know, I mean I should get but like you know,
my kid has as aversion to certain types of antibiotics
were particularly penicillin. It causes a severe psychological reaction. There
was this time where they were given penicillin and all
of a sudden, like we're acting like they were having
(53:14):
an emotional, uh, you know, anxiety attack basically. But that's
a really hard thing to convince doctors to believe in
because they don't. There's not a whole lot of exact
precedent for it, but it happens every time. So this
is like that, but with even more documented cases. And
you've basically got people saying, sorry, I don't know what
you're talking about. That's all in your head, buddy.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
I would say, I've I have personally been diagnosed with
PTSD one time by a neurologist, and it was not
that huge collection of symptoms that are you know, those
that are described as Gulf War syndrome. So if this
for my money, guys, it makes sense that PTSD is
a component of all that other stuff. Yes, oh, but
(53:59):
it is not.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
Yes, portfolio, as I believe he.
Speaker 4 (54:05):
It's an ocean's eleven of terrible stuff. You know, it's
a heist crew on your health. And the question is
it aided? Has this heist grew been aided and embedded
by the US government? Unfortunately at certain points in the
narrative that appears to be the case, right, and the
VA and other research organizations have concluded that evidence does
(54:29):
not support an association a causual connection between PB pills
and what they call chronic multisymptom illness and what the
rest of the world calls Gulf War syndrome. But the
VA still again says, if you have chronic, unexplained symptoms
existing for six months or more that are related to
(54:51):
your time in the Gulf War, then you are deserving
of assistance, compensation, and resources, regardless of what the cause is,
what the official cause is. So really, what they're saying
again is agree to disagree on the specifics of what's happening,
but we will help you in theory. And this like
(55:14):
it seems like I don't know after looking into this, folks,
we believe the most likely factor for PB related GWS
Golf War syndrome, it has to hinge on that previously
unknown genetic variant. And again there are people who never
took PB pills who do have golf war syndrome because
(55:35):
as we've as we've shown, there are other factors that
can create this.
Speaker 3 (55:39):
Yep, and I do gosh, I do wonder how many
of those factors add up to create Wait, how many
do you need?
Speaker 2 (55:50):
Right?
Speaker 3 (55:51):
Do you need the burn pits and the PB pills
and then you're in golf war syndrome territory? Do you
need PTSD in burn pig? You know? Like, just what
is what are the things?
Speaker 2 (56:01):
It reminds me of the stuff with AstroTurf giving people
cancer where it was really difficult to show the correlation
or maybe cause that I can't remember. I always get
those confused. I know the difference, But there was something
with that where it was very tricky to show that
these people that got cancer definitely got it because they
were rolling around an AstroTurf.
Speaker 4 (56:22):
Right, because there were other factories yea, yeah, And this
is all unfortunately true. We know that the idea of
a genetic variant can explain why some people ingested these
pills with no lasting effect, while others may have incurred
lifelong medical consequences as a result, even when following official
(56:43):
guidelines to the letter. And just like the VA decides
stuff on a case by case basis, the causes of
Golf War syndrome for a lot of individuals in the
Armed Services may vary case to case as well. To
your point, Matt, and the most important thing here is
that if you served in the Gulf War in Operation
(57:04):
Desert Shield or Desert Storm anytime after August second, nineteen ninety,
the VA wants you to know that you may be
at risk of certain health conditions. So they are admitting
that something is up, and that is, as strange as
it sounds, that's actually progress from the nineteen nineties. Now
(57:25):
they're admitting the house is haunted.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
And like you said, Man, I mean, that's a big deal,
because that just doesn't happen unless they've got no other route,
you know, And at that point it's like damage.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
Control really quickly. Guys. Imagine twenty three years after that
August date in nineteen ninety, we made our video series,
right and then what ten years later, a little yeah,
less than ten years, less than ten years later, we're
talking about it again, and it's still a problem. Just
(57:55):
the span of time. And there are people out there
who have been dealing with this since nineteen ninety or
at least, you know, nineteen ninety one ninety two, after
they were exposed to all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
Well, you know, we haven't really talked about personal experiences
or personal accounts of people that actually suffer from this,
but they are out there. And that Ted Talk I
mentioned Ted x talk. If you want to hear someone
describing how debilitating this is for a loved one, that's
a good source. And just just search for you know,
golf for syndrome testimonials. There they're out there, and this
(58:29):
is stuff that literally is causing people's quality of life
to just be just absolutely in the tank.
Speaker 4 (58:34):
Yeah, and there are you can find just through a
quick YouTube search. You can find some contemporaneous reporting. I'm
thinking especially about an interview out of KMOVTV four in
Missouri that was from like nineteen ninety six, and they
interviewed veterans about this before the VA reached its current conclusions.
(58:59):
So you can see the pendulum moving in the right direction.
But for many veterans, leaving combat only led to another battle,
a battle for their conditions and injuries. To be acknowledged
rather than buried under paperwork or swept under a bureaucratic rug.
It is tragically a battle that many of our fellow
(59:19):
listeners in the audience tonight continue to fight one day
at a time. But the VA, as imperfect as it is,
it exists to help. So if you are a loved
one or experiencing medical conditions physiological, psychological as a result
of your time in the service, contact the VA at
the following number eight seven seven two two two eight
(59:41):
three eight seven. You might be on hold for a while,
but that's why they're there to help you, not to
put you on hold. Just to clarify, and with that,
we want to hear your experiences to your point about
personal stories. Tell us about your your encounters with golf
or syndrome as well as other potential conditions related to combat,
(01:00:05):
and let us know whether you think there's a cover
up a foot. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
That's right. You can find us at the handle conspiracy Stuff,
where we exist on Facebook, on YouTube, where we have
video content galore rolling out every single week, and also
on x FKA, Twitter, on Instagram and TikTok. We exist
at the handle conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
Hey, you want to call us, talk to us, tell
us a story. Why not call our voicemail system. It
is one eight three three std WYTK. When you call in,
give yourself a cool nickname. No government names please, unless
it's important to you for one reason or another. Generally,
if you say your full name, we're not going to
use it. We will make up a name for it
(01:00:50):
or something. You've got three minutes when you call in.
If you've got more to say than that three minutes,
or you've got links, pictures, anything, why not instead shoot
us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (01:01:01):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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