Government Projects pt 2

I apologize for the audio quality on this episode, not quite sure what happened! But this episode is about more shenanigans that the CIA did in the 50s!

Episode Transcript

(00:11):
This podcast discusses true crime, whichmay it tell violence, and other material
intended for a mature audience. Listenerdiscretion is advised. Hey, it's Kayla
and it's Lexi. And if youguys remember a couple of months ago,
I did an episode on government conspiracy, not with the conspiracies, but the
crazy things they did. Today's parttwo because I've found more things that they

(00:32):
did about the Titanic, about justlike what I was CIA was doing in
the nineteen fifties, because I'm prettyconfident the nine and thirties was a fever
dream. Oh yeah, no,agreed. I thought you met like exactly
your last episode and I was like, oh, okay, the Titanic.
There's more the CIA. I really, I really wouldn't doubt if there was

(00:55):
a conspiracy out there with the CIAand the Titanic, the one thing they
stayed away from. Alrighty, solet's talk about the heart attack gun.
The who the heart attack gun?Does it? Do? You? Like,
point it at someone and it instantlygives them a heart attack? Yeah?
Don't they shoot? What's the medicationthat I'm thinking of that they use

(01:23):
to chemically just defibrillate the one thatlike stops your heart for a couple of
seconds. Is it a denizine?I have no idea. Shoot, I
was gonna make a joke. I'mlike, it's just that, But the
joke would be funnier if I canremember the name of the stupid medication.
We don't use it in veterary medicine, which is why it's not like at
the front of my brain. Yeah, I've never heard of that, but

(01:44):
yeah, the heart attack gun,the heart attack it's heart attacts great.
So, in nineteen seventy five,after almost thirty years of basically unrestricted CIA
activity, if I only came toa stop, I Senator Frank Church,
who along with Congress, looked intomore of they had been doing all this
time when they caught with a heartattack gun. So like basically they were

(02:04):
like turning a blind eye and likeyou know what they said, we do
not see it. It starts withan eighteen year old woman named Mary Embury,
who was a high school graduate goingto work for the CIA. She
was a secretary in a division taftwith devising hidden microphones and audio surveillance equipment.
Then she was promoted to the Officeof Technical Services, where she was

(02:24):
ordered to find an undetectable poison,where she had uncovered the lethal properties of
shellfish tocsin. Oh of all things, shellfish toxin, Like that's is that
something different than just like the likethe protein that makes people like when you
have a shellfish allergy, that's what'stoxic to you. I think it's the

(02:45):
same thing, because the way theywere describing it and here is like it's
just very heavily concentrated. The wayI think about it is like, not
everybody it's allergic to bees, butif he gets stung by a hundred bees,
you're probably gonna die because it's soconcentrated. That's how I see it.
Unknown to her, she had beenmade part of the Project mk Naomi,

(03:07):
which is a secret program dedicated tomaking biological weapons for the Cold War
arsenal and is the successor to MKUltra, which we've done an episode in
mk Ultra. If you guys remember, I think MK Naomi would be like
my drag name. I can seeit. It was created by the Department

(03:27):
of Defense and CIA and ran fromthis fifties through the seventies. It was
made to create by chemical weapons topoison livestock and crops and eventually people this
program had created a poisoned dart totake out guard dogs temporarily as to not
kill them, and they would justlike kind of pop back up after so
so long after they took out guarddogs. Oh okay, Yeah. The

(03:53):
program was terminated in nineteen seventy.The work she did started in a lab
in Fort Detrick, and there's researchersunder doctor Nathan Gordon, who was a
chemist, mixed the shellfish toksin withwater and froze it into small pellets of
or darts and would fire it froma cold M one nineteen eleven pistol.

(04:14):
The effect of range was about onehundred meters and it was virtually noiseless.
When shot into a target, itwould melt into the skin and go into
the blood stream. Really sorry much, my dog is like shaking my desk.
Willie would then go into the bloodstreamand he will give you a heart
attack. There was I go tothe blood stream where the toxins would completely

(04:38):
shut down the cardiovascular system, mimickinga heart attack. It would not be
observed on autopsy. It would justkind of denature in the body and disappear.
Isn't this like where they used tosay, like stab somebody with like
an icicle, you know, andthen they can't identify the weapon or something
like that. Was an old liketumbler posts from a while ago. Yeah,
except now it's with shellfish. Okay. It would leave nothing but a

(05:03):
small red dot on the skin andmay either feel like a mosquito bite or
nothing at all. So a KGBhitman. Boden Strashynski used a similar weapon
with two successful attempts in nineteen fiftyseven. In nineteen fifty nine, so
years after leaving the CIA, MaryEmbrey claimed that the KGB gun had been

(05:24):
tested on animals and prisoners and worked. It's terrifying. The gun sprayed cyanide,
which also the mental heart attack andlabshino trees. This whole program might
not have been noticed if not forthe public's growing interest and awareness of the
CIA's questionable activities, and the ChurchCommittee did more digging and investigated allegedly stationed

(05:46):
assassination plans targeting leaders such as Cuba'sPidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo
and Raphael Trichillo of the Dominican Republic. CIA director William cold He was called
to testify before the committee and broughtthe gun with him like show and tell,
like here, here, here's theHardtack gun. Here it is.

(06:06):
It is unknown what happened to thegun afterwards, and it's unknown that this
gun was ever really used up peopleor animals or pictually worked. And that's
the heart attack gun. I lovethat. That's like, that is a
cryptid weapon, Like we don't actuallyreally know for sure that it worked.

(06:28):
The government's just like, dude,trust me, like blurry pictures of it,
like sasquatch, Like I'm sure thegovernment noticed. The probably just don't
want to tell us because like Idon't know, Like I can't imagine like
that could be used on like Idon't know if they said Bedel Castro and

(06:50):
like any other political enemies that theyhad in the nineteen fifties. Yeah,
I mean yeah, Like I feellike I could be convinced either way of
this one. I just love thatit's a literal cryptid weapon. That's so
fun. That's a whole new categoryof kryptids for me. Can you imagine
being the one to make this.It's like a kid in the show and

(07:11):
say like look what I need today, Miss Johnson. A heart attack guy
like that's nice, Tommy, Like, who thinks of this? I love
that? All right? Up next, we have Operation Northwoods. Oh boy.
This was a proposed operation that calledfor CIA operatives to both stage and
commit acts of terrorism against American militaryand civilian targets and blame these attacks on

(07:38):
the Cuban government and this uses tojustify a war against Cuba in nineteen sixty
two. Okay. The possibilities detailedof the document included a remote control of
civilian aircraft repainted as US air Forceplanes, a fabricated shootdown of US air
Force fighter craft off the coast ofCuba, hospital assassination of Cuban immigrants,

(08:01):
sinking boats of Cuban refugees on thehigh seas, blowing up a US ship,
and orchestrating terroristic attacks and US cities. Oh my god. The proposal
was rejected by JFK, like,I don't know who thought of this.
And I was like, here,President, I have an idea. What
if we did all this just sowe can have a war. Yeah,

(08:24):
right, And I love the JFKwas like, yeah, we're not doing
that. We're not doing that.That's it's a no go there. It's
a very reasonable response to have,I'd be like, yeah, I don't
feel like starting a war and layingmass waste and murdering tons of civilians for
absolutely no reason. They also proposedfor public support for a war against Cuba
and acts of war on American soil. They also recommended developing a communist Cuban

(08:48):
terror campaign in the Miami area andother Florida cities and even Washington, and
have the bombing of civilian targets beblamed on the Cuban government, like they
wanted to bomb Washington and blame iton QUB. What the fuck. I'm
glad that I can say that onthe podcast, because this is what the
fuck moment like this, just likeit baffles me that they're openly admitting this

(09:13):
stuff too, Like, yeah,we want to do this in the fifties,
This is no big deal bfd.Yeah, we were just going to
like actually bomb ourselves, just blameit on another nation, right. You
know this next one, Operation paperClip, yep, true do Operation Jewish,
of course, I know this one. This one sucks, Like this

(09:35):
one is in my heart. Iknow this. Yeah. Operation paper Clip
was a secret program. We're morethan sixteen hundred German scientists, engineers,
and technicians were taken from Nazi Germanyfor government employment after World War Two.
This was conducted by the Joint IntelligenceObjectives Agency or JIOA, and carried out

(09:56):
by special agents of the US Army'sCounter and Tell, many of them being
members of and former leaders of theNazi Party. The goal was to harness
German resources to develop America's rockets andother biological and chemical weapons, and to
keep it from the Soviet Union.So at first, so President Truman forbade

(10:18):
it, but JIOA and Office ofStrategic Services bypassed it by eliminating and criminating
evidence of war crimes from their records. Ma'am. They just expunged war crimes
for like for sillies, like yah, was there really no one else that
could work those jobs for any thatmuch of a worker deficit that they're like,

(10:43):
we have to import these Nazi officers. They saw it as well.
These guys seem to know what they'redoing. We don't want the Soviet Russia
to get it, so we're goingto take them so before the Soviets get
to them. It was kind oflike a s moment. They were like,

(11:03):
we can look past your flaws.Everybody has flaws. It's fine.
Uh, I think I just wentthrough the five stages of grief and like
a minute thinking about that logic,they were like, Yeah, these guys

(11:24):
seem to know what they're doing.What were they doing? What were they
doing that they seemed to be goodat. It's like when people say,
oh, the Civil War was aboutstates rights, States rights to what what
did the States want to do?That's that's what this feels like. And
like a couple of things I readwere like, yeah, we wouldn't have
the rocket science that we have nowif it weren't for the Nazi Nazi Party

(11:48):
coming to our country, Like okay, great, okay, Like cool,
I guess year do we go tothe moon? Like that's that's down play
scientific advancements. But it's not likethey invented penicillin. But yeah. Another

(12:09):
one where the president was like,guys, like we shouldn't do this,
like this seems like a bad idea, and they were like, guess why
we're going fast? You buy?Oh, we lough to keep from crying.
Mh all right. The next thenext too are silly, goofy yay,

(12:30):
that's what we need. Project PigeonOh boy, that's exactly what it
sounds like due to the birds.This program was created during World War Two
that would utilize pigeon controled guided bombsby training pigeon stag that's pilots for this
device. Have you ever met apigeon Like, I would not. I

(12:52):
would not trust a pigeon with thatlevel of responsibility. Like, so I
saw this post the other day,and it kind of makes you think,
like we domesticated pigeons and that's whythey still people friendly, but like we
stopped using them, and now theydon't know what to do with our lives.
Like have you ever seen a pigeonin nature? I haven't. I
see them in downtown Pittsburgh eat gumand instigarette. You can just like pick

(13:15):
them up in Pittsburgh too, Likethe pigeons in Pittsburgh do not care.
You can just grab one. Yeah, you grab one, take it home.
It's not illegal. Do you rememberin school when we had that project
where we had to swab something randomand grow it in a patriot dish to
see what grew? And I thinksomeone grabbed a pigeon, Like someone in
my class was like I got one. They slob I remember the teacher was

(13:41):
like, for the love of God, do not swab a homeless man's sleeping
bag. We did that and wehad to shut down the lab for three
days. Remember that that was sofoul. She was like, there's no
rules except this one, don't swabhomeless people's belongings. And all of us
were like, yeah, that seemsreason. And then of course someone on
my team was like, we gota pigeon, and she was like,

(14:03):
there might be two rules. Leapthe pigeons alone. Pour pigeons always be
kind of pigeons. So the wayit would work is that there would be
three lenses in the nose of therocket, which projected an image of the
target on the screen, mounts iton the inside of the cone. It
would be mounted on pivots and fittedwith sensors that measured any angular movement.

(14:28):
It would contain between one and threebirds that would be stationed in front of
the screen. It would peck thescreen with the target on it between one
and three birds, like like akaiju or not a kaiju A yaeger.
I don't know if that is Likehave you ever seen Pacific rim where it
takes two people to pilot the giantrobots that fight the kaijus. Like,

(14:48):
that's what I'm picturing, like twolike synced up pigeons and a giant robot.
It's like, and each bird hasapproximateity a quarter of a brain,
So it's like you can have aquarter of a brain, sell or you
can have one in a quarter exactly. Let's see here the census whore detect

(15:11):
any movement of the screen and sendssignals to the control surfaces steer the bomb
in the direction of the screen moved. The National Defense Research Committee saw it
as impractical, but they still gavetwenty five thousand dollars just to see how
it would play out. Is thiswhy like we're in debt nowadays, is

(15:31):
because the government was just like,let's throw millions of dollars at pigeons.
We have nothing to do. Theywas like, you know why we don't
have universal health care in the USbecause because they were funding pigeons and then
hunting pigeons, they were funding bomberpigeons. So there was success in this.
They did have success in training,but it never took off because no

(15:54):
one took this program seriously. That'sthe only reason that it is not like
we don't have like fighter pigeons fightingin the wars. Oh, because nobody
took this seriously. Gee, Iwonder why this is another one where it's
like, look what I did,Miss John said, I chased the birds
to a rocket. That's nice.No one's gonna buy this, right all

(16:21):
right? Acoustic kitty, acoustic kitty. What did they do to the cat?
Realthy? Oh my god. Anotherproject that utilized the animals for secret
CIA programs. It intended to usecats to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet
embassies. A veterinary surgeon took acat and implanted a microphone in the air

(16:44):
canal, a small radio transmitter atthe base of the skull, and a
thin fire into the fur. Weshould not have let them do that,
just rebocat. It would allow thecats for cord and trans and cost the
government twenty million dollars. And keepin mind this is nineteen fifty, so

(17:07):
twenty million dollars today I'll be acouple million at least, probably not a
couple of billion, but maybe likethey quid a little like five hundred million,
like some sort of let's sort ofupsetting about money calculator nineteen fifties.

(17:29):
Let's see yere value of nineteen inflationcalculator. That's what I want. Oh
my god, that's a big number. Oh boy, two hundred and fifty
four billion, No trillion, huhhuh. Two hundred and fifty four trillion
dollars. That is how much wespent on a cat that was incorrect.

(17:51):
Oh my god. I never wantto hear a single owner complain about the
hospital price as I work out.Ever again, can you imagine? Can
you imagine your bill will be twentyfive trillion? What do we do?
We fixed his ear, We takescratch pay and care credit. How are
you paying today? So, theirfirst attempt at the cat spying on two

(18:11):
men on a bench, It wasallegedly hit by and killed by a taxi,
but they say it may also befalse, as it's also claimed that
the cat did not do it wasintended, as they could not get the
cat to listen to whatever they said, and tried to train to do it.
Try to they tried to train itto do well. Any one of
the texts could have told you that. Yeah. So it underwent surgery again

(18:36):
to remove on devices and lived innormal cat life. So good for him.
Yeah, so that's every article Isaid. It was either died by
a taxi or it lived a normalcat life. But either way they couldn't
control the cat. They were like, this cat's just catting and we can't
get it to catuli worn it's cat. This is why, this is why

(19:00):
we have texts. We have textsto tell the surgeons. Hey, some
of your ideas might not be thebest. And that was one of them.
Okay, Project artichoke Fruit, Imean, it's a vegetable. I
don't know how they come up withthese names. This has nothing to do

(19:22):
with vegetables. Great, Okay.This was a CIA program to research methods
of interrogation and was initially named ProjectBluebird and came to be in August of
nineteen fifty one. This program wasmade to determine whether a person could be
made to involuntary perform and assassination,yes, to be forced to assassinate somebody

(19:47):
against your will. It also studiedhypnosis, forced addiction, and withdrawal from
morphine and other chemicals like LSD,and to produce amnesia. This was succeeded
by MP Ultra in nineteen fifty three. At first they used cocaine, marijuana,
heroin, pagots, and mescaline,but saw LSD as more promising.

(20:11):
So I've never heard of I thinki've heard of pegot, but I've never
heard of mescaline. I'm assuming thoseare other types of psychedelics. Is mescaline
the one you get from licking frogs? Because I know peyote is a cactus.
Yeah, that's a naturally occurring aspsychedelic pro protoalkaloid of the substituted vanilathmine

(20:32):
class known Fortalucina Gym's parents, andit's comparable to LSD. Doesn't say anything
about frogs. Oh, okay,I've heard of mescaline before, I just
can't remember what where it comes from. Subjects were left with amnesia and foggy,
vague memories of the experience. Innineteen fifty two, Eliste was increasingly
given to unknown CIA agents to determineeffects on unsuspecting people. One was given

(20:57):
LSD for seventy seven days, unknowingly, for seventy seven days, unknowingly.
That sounds like hell, like justtripping every day, things getting weirder every
day. I don't know, Ihaven't really heard fantastic things about LSD.

(21:18):
Yeah, I couldn't own months ofit. He had to have been fried
afterwards. I could only imagine whatit does to the brain. Oh yeah.
If this project succeeded, it couldcarry out assassinations on politicians or on
American officials. The results of thisprogram are unknown, unknown to us.

(21:41):
I'm sure the government knows it hasdidn't release the results. Someone somewhere knows
what happened, all right, thelast one, this one's the still out
there compared to the other ones,Operation Midnight Climax. And why is it
called that? That sounds like anAshniko song? So like So this program

(22:15):
was a subproject of mk Ultra andsimilar to Project Artichoke, only this one
gave city got leave. The scientistsbehind mk Ultra permissioned to test drugs on
unknown citizens in nineteen fifty four.Okay, how did he get these unknown
citizens? Let's dive into this.The official results were never released, but

(22:36):
supervisors of the program know the subjectsbook more freely when under the combination of
drugs and sex. No one knowswhere the subjects are or what the effects
are that they may have suffered.Before this program, the CIA had safe
houses in San Francisco, Mill Valley, California, and New York City.
So sex, I don't think thatmid century America was a real place.

(23:00):
It wasn't. That's what I mean. That's why I said at the beginning
of the nineteen fifties was a feverdream. It was a favorite dream.
Nothing was real like now. Whenlike old people say things to be like
back in my day, I'm gonnabe like, don't get me started.
Started on your day. So sexworkers that worked for the CIA would take

(23:21):
clients to these safe houses where theywere given substances such as LSD. It
would be monitored behind a one wayglass. I'm sorry sex workers that worked
for the CIA. I wasn't preparedfor that statement. Yes, they One
uncle I saw said that they werenot only paid, but they were basically
excused if they were arrested. Theythe government stuff and be like no,

(23:42):
no, no, she's clean.She said, Oh she's one of ours.
Is one of us? Oh mygosh. The workers were instructed in
the use of post quotal questioning toinvestigate whether their clients could be convinced to
involuntarily reveal secrets. Would sometimes begiven subliminal messages and at just to induce
them into involuntary actions such as criminalactivities such as robbery, assault, and

(24:04):
assassinations. What don't look on yourfaces? Like just discussed, we need
to find a way to introduce videointo this podcast so that people can get
like the full effect of the facesthat we make when reacting to the others

(24:26):
information. So many of the CIAagents also indulged on the drugs and sex
workers as well. Okay, Likecan you imagine, like you're a CIA
agent and you're like, man,I can't wait, just started my cool,
cool projects. I wonder if I'mwant to be sent like Owercas sent

(24:48):
to the city and they're like,nope, you get coconos. That's what
you get. Congrats, you justwant the lottery. Like I can't even
make fun of the Space Force anymorebecause like they had like the Cats on
Drugs Force like eighty years ago.So the Senate investigators were told the goals

(25:14):
of the program were to study mindcontrol and sexual behavior and to learn about
brainwashing, to gain control over enemyspies and to protect US agents. Other
goals included finding drugs that could incapacitateentire buildings via poisoned food, create a
confusion anxiety and fear, headaches andearaches. Also looked up the drugs that
could create amnesia effects intended for foreignspies volume interrogations. They also tested the

(25:38):
effect of combining LSD and isolation byDOSY and isolating people for months at a
time with limited food and water.And that is operation in that kind of
act. All right, drop thesingle ashn Eco. Yeah, So out

(26:02):
of all of these, I don'tknow which one sounds more like. I
might I'm nice Shyamala on film becausethey're all pretty out there. Oh my
god. Yeah. Uh. Andthat's and that's that wow, okay,

(26:23):
and that is that concludes it.That is all of the things I have
for us. That was a lot. That was a lot that you just
threw directly into my brain. I'mgonna have very bizarre dreams about all of
that. There was another one Icouldn't like find too much information on,
but the gist of it was likethere was the Indonesia the leader that the

(26:47):
CIA was trying to blackmail, sothey made like these fake porn tapes about
him to blackmail him with something likeyeah, that's awful. It was something
like that. It was I don'tknow that's like they're really a bridge version.
You're like, yeah, this alsokind of happened, but yeah,
that's what I have for you guystoday. So you know, trust the

(27:11):
government. Everything is fine, nothingbad ever happens. I wonder what once
they're keeping from us that aren't ontheir website that we can just openly look
at. I hope it's like stupidones like I hope it's equally as stupid,
like I hope it's nothing as sinisteras like mk ultra, Like I

(27:33):
hope it's really dumb shit, likethey're like, oh, we tried to
put a machine gun on a slugand it didn't work, and we're too
embarrassed to tell you all about.It's like, that's what I want it
to be deep in my heart.Yeah, probably something like that, or
I don't know. I really don'twant to think about it. It's kind
of terrifying to think about machine gunslug twenty twenty four for President twenty twenty

(27:56):
four. Machine gun slug for Presidenttwenty twenty four. That should be something
we put in the merch store.We should make bumper stickers that say machine
gun slug for President. We shouldI need to find a way to like
make better merch. I'm not goodat designing. I'm not a graphic designer.

(28:18):
I got a little tipsy one nightand I found a website that lets
you make custom bumper stickers, andvery long story short, I made an
election bumper sticker that said Bigfoot isreal and he tried to suck my dick.
And that went like pretty viral onTumblr for like a few years,
to the point that I actually soldthem on Zazzle and I made like two

(28:38):
total. I don't sell them anymorebecause for some reason they got me on
a copyright violation. I'm like,I don't think this is copyrighted, but
I'm taking my shop down anyway becauseI don't make enough money for Tomac.
I found like all these like unhingedbumper stickers on Etsy, stuff like don't
hit me or I will kill myself. My coworker has one that says,

(29:00):
don't tailgate me. I have rabies. It was like, please don't hit
me. I don't know how insuranceworks, which is me I I was.
I was passed by someone the otherday that had a bumper sticker that
said Bestie, let me merge.But yeah, if you google Bigfoot is

(29:21):
real and he tried to suck mydick bumper sticker. That's that's my creation
that that was the result of vodkaand access to a laptop when I was
like twenty two or twenty one.My legacy, truly say, if you
guys enjoyed that and would like youknow, bonus us you can get to

(29:42):
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(30:06):
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(30:26):
us. Be gentle, We'll cry. It was just to say hi,
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I just I suck. But westill love hearing from you guys. We
do our best. A lot's goingon life. Yeah, life continues to

(30:52):
happen and truly does not stop.So yeah, if you guys message us
and you don't hear back, don'tworry. We did get it, we
did look at it. We doappreciate you guys champ to us. But
that was that was comically wicked.I just oh man, that was who

(31:12):
that That was animalistically wicked.