Project Artichoke Part II: Maybe we should use more LSD?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to bad Press. I'm your co host Trevor, joined
by David, the guy who does the deep dive, so
I don't have to David. How's it going?

Speaker 2 (00:12):
It's pretty good?

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Made it?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
He made it to Friday night.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
I made it to Friday. I found myself looking forward
to learning about dark stuff from you every Friday evening.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, that's what we have. Not gonna be a lot
of promising, hopeful stories in here.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Is that bad? I don't know. I mean, you can't
tell these stories. There's there's never any like hopeful moral
at the end of these stories, like your government is
corrupt and does terrible things, so just love your family.
I guess that could be the take hold, you know.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, that's what it's I was like, I was talking
to someone about it, and I was like, yeah, I
don't know if it's good. I mean, sometimes I'll try
and find like maybe we'll have to do an episode
every now and then about a really promising good story,
but for now, this is not that.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, maybe we might just it might be cynical. I
don't know. I wax and Wayne. There's days where I think,
you know, we might make it, but then there's days
where I'm like, yeah, the apocalypse is right around the corner.
But you know this, this darkness has been going on
for probably since the beginning of time, so it's probably

(01:31):
the wrong way to look at it. But speaking of
all that kind of stuff, quick promo, please go pre
order my ebook now I know. Oh that was lovely.
It's a clear dip cup this evening. That was nice.
I appreciate. I appreciate you say. You know, I could

(01:53):
get an opaque dip cup and now I'm gonna get
a perfectly crystal clear dip cup.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I can switch over to the.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Just caught me off guard. I was like, what's all, Okay,
what was I talking about? Oh, please pre order my ebook,
shroud Pilled. I don't. I used to say nobody reads
e books, but good amount of people have bought my
last ebook, God's Eye View. More people definitely bought the
paperback in the audio book, but some ebooks. So we're

(02:27):
doing this pre order thing on Amazon. For a variety
of complicated reasons, we cannot yet set up a pre
order for a paperback. So if you're one of those
few e book readers out there, you can go to
Amazon and search shroud Pilled and find my book. David.
You know what, it's cool if you google shroud pilled,

(02:51):
which is a I mean, it's not a common term,
but I've heard people say that before on podcasts the
book pops up first.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
It's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
So if we can get that term to become popular somehow,
you need Tucker to say it or Joe Rogan.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
I think what we'll do is we'll just change the
name of the podcast again. We name Shroud.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
But the problem is if if it does become popular,
then it will just push my my search result down probably,
But for now you can google Shroud build and find it.
It's about the Shroud of Turn. It is been a
journey researching this topic. But we can talk about that
another time. What are we talking about tonight?

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Oh so we going.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
That's a big sigh. That's a really big sigh for Hey,
what are we talking about? Oh? Fuck it.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
I was like I had this plan and I like
teased at the end of the last episode and I
was like, we're gonna get straight into boharc At for Ditrich,
Like we were just straight from his time up in
Maine into his time in Maryland and instead where I

(04:10):
kind of found myself was getting into this like more
background of Project Artichoke, like the Project Okay ic we
would kind of later get into.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
So did he did he start? So he didn't start
Project Artichoke? He joined it?

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yes, he joined it, And that's kind of what I
got interested in. And that is like what it really
opens up is like this whole rabbit hole of research
into like the CIA mind control experiments that they were
running in the fifties. So everyone knows about mk Ultra.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Well here, since since you're bringing up mk oh crap,
since you're bringing up mk Ultra, I was gonna play
if we were good at building suspense and drama, this
is how he would start this episode. Are you ready?
What the heck is happening? Now? Could you hear it?

Speaker 2 (05:04):
I heard a very stress disturbing noise.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
What the heck it was just working a second ago? Okay,
I'll try one more time and then I'm giving up. Okay,
I don't know. It doesn't want you to hear it.
It doesn't want you to know. But basically this it's
describing it as MK Ultra's older brother, and it was
predicated on this question asked by the CIA. Can we

(05:30):
get somebody to kill somebody and not even know it.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
That's exactly right, That's basically that's basically what Project Artischruk
is in like the way, So this is interesting. So
everyone knows about mk Ultra. Mk Ultra came out in
the like seventies, and so I think it was like
after Watergate during Ford's administration, there was like an investigation

(06:01):
into the CIA because there was all this shit that
they were doing, and Congress seemingly was serious about, you know,
figuring out what the CIA had been doing for the
last you know, twenty five thirty years.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
This was Gerald Ford, yes.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
And so I don't think Gerald Ford was interested in that,
but like Congress.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Because yeah, I always thought he was kind of a jerk. Yeah,
maybe that's probably the understatement of the year for all presidents,
but that's what I had thought. His house, he used
to live in his right up the hill for me.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
But anyway, interesting, but yeah, no, he essentially the CIA
was in some trouble with Congress and they were like
committee hearings investigating them and so what they needed to do,
and there were all these questions being asked into, like
these behavior modification programs and this experimentation with drugs and

(06:57):
Manchurian candidate stuff and all this kind of thing. And
so the CIA needed a way to kind of to
cover for some of the stuff they had been doing.
And so what the CIA got together with Dick Cheney
and Donald Rumsfeld so automatically, yeah, and they were members

(07:19):
of the gerald Ford cabinet, and they came up with.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
What the assholes live forever, don't they?

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, And they're involved, you know, it's the deep state,
you know, the swamp, And so they go and what
they're trying to do is like try and provide cover
for this kind of thing. And what they thought, which
seems to be true, is that mk Ultra would be
a more sanitized version of these experiments that they could

(07:50):
give to the media and give to the public that
would kind of hide what Project Artichoke had been doing.
And so mk Ultra like, when you kind of get
into this research, it starts to look like they were
just replicating the experiments that Artichoke had first kind of

(08:14):
designed and had first kind of carried out, and that
they were kind of like double checking Artichoke's work. And
they were also running these experiments through the university system
like they had partnerships with you know, like I think
seventy different academic institutions and like prestigious hospitals and stuff

(08:34):
like that, and so there was this institutional buffer between
the CIA and like some of the experiments, and there
was more scientific oversight, Like they had more kind of
like scientific names involved in the projects, and so it
was kind of like a way to present the stuff
that it wasn't just like some dude in the CIA

(08:58):
torturing someone in a base smith, you know, at a prison,
just you know, trying to figure out what was going on.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
A little a little more oversight, a little more credibility.
That makes sense. Where quick tangent? Where do they come
up with the names for these things? Art choke?

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, so art to choke. A lot of people think,
like the common thought is that Alan Dolls came up
with it because he was the director of the CIA
kind of when artichoke got going in full force, and
he like artichoke was his favorite vegetable.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Okay, so that's more innocuous. I thought it might be
more like like the human mind is like there's a
there's a venear, a tough exterior, but once you penetrate
it it's just mushy goodness, well, you.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Know, and they could be doing a few different things.
So that's like the mainstream explanation. Then there's this other
explanation of like there used to be this gangster in
New York who's like nickname was Artichoke okay, and they
were like tied in with organized crime, and I think
that they were like running some of these experiments on

(10:06):
like mobsters, and so I think it may have been
like almost like an inside joke among some of the
CIA because it was like the yeah mobsters in order
to try and like get information out of them. And
I think either he was like on their side or
he was one of the people that they dosed and like.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
So so that that's an interesting piece of information. So
before you like really dive into this, like what what
kind of like what's the worst stuff they might do
to somebody in Project art to choke like like inject
LSD into their eyeball and turn rock music on for
thirty seven hours or was it more like therapy and electro.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
So like the stuff that comes out of like we
have more information on the experiments that were run in
MK Ultra And there is a.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
Guy which we would assume are less insane.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah, it's like they're both terrible, Like it's barbaric. But
it seems like Project Artichok was kind of like the
darker It's like some of the darker Side. But this
guy named doctor Ewan Cameron, like he was evil and
I'm pretty sure he was running like experiments out of
there's that Canadian university.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
It's like McGill or something, Yeah, McGill as, I think.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
That's where he was. And he was trying this thing
called de patterning, and so he would do things like
dose like mental health patients with LSD and then he
would like tape a helmet around them, like or you
would have like a helmet that was unremovable. And he

(11:48):
would have a phrase that would repeat like over and
over and over again for days at a time.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
And it's like the subjects I couldn't sleep. And what
he was trying to do is like basically like break
them down to a point, like shatter their personalities so
that a new personality could be built on top of it.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
Listen, listen, boys and girls. If you're out there grocery
shopping and you're looking at the price of eggs and
you're like fuck, and your boss is a jerk, and
your girlfriend's kind of sucks, and you just got a
parking ticket and the irs is upset because you didn't
do something right on your last returns. Just remember you

(12:37):
could be strapped to a chair in Canada, dosed with
LSD and get a helmet glued to your head and
hear the word Santa Claus, Santa Claus over and over
for nine years.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah, it was like even stuff like I'm pretty sure
there was like a story of this one woman who
had been like sexually assaulted by her father, the lord,
and like Cameron would play the like the phrase like
you forgive your father, like over and over and over.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Gets it was like fun.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
You would like have this talk therapy with him, like
this most vulnerable thing, like because this was at a
point like early in the process where like these people
trusted him, so he would find like your most vulnerable
like darkest secret or something that like you know really
really has affected you, like a form of trauma, and

(13:33):
then he would key into that piece of trauma like
with these kind of tactics.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Okay, the reason I the reason I asked the question,
like what kind of nasty shit did these guys get
up to. It's because I tend to believe that probably
most researchers, now not everybody, there's some sick, nasty people
out there, but most people, even in the CIA, but

(14:00):
especially in the university setting, they don't want to torture
mentally handicapped children or whatever, right, Like it's not in
their nature. So kind of makes sense that they would
start with mob bosses and stuff, you know, like criminals, like,
oh yeah, we could, we could torture some criminals. They're bad,
you know.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
So they ran like a lot of these experiments in prisons,
they ran a lot of these experiments and like mental
health institutions, and then they ran these experiments like on
our own soldiers. So initially it was just kind of like,
we don't even really know, like we let's just see
what happens. Let's just see what happens when.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
You gotta start somewhere. You're making an omlet, you gotta
start somewhere, and so.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
We'll get into that. Because it was like the drugs
is only one component of what they were looking into.
So they were looking into some other things, especially like hypnosis.
They're super interested in hypnosis as a technique to program
assassins is one element of it. They also wanted to
program messengers, and they also wanted to program like prostitutes.

(15:07):
For a popular theme of this podcast of sexual blackmail.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
Schemes that let's not start calling that a popular theme
of this podcast, even though it is true, let's not
start that, Munch. I have a question. Yes, so I've
applied for grants before, and I've gotten grants before, and
there's sort of this expectator. Now, I've never applied for

(15:31):
a grant with the Department of Defense or anything like that,
which I would love to do. People do it. I've
just I don't know, I've just never done that. And
at least for the types of grants I have had
or applied for, you clearly lay out what you're gonna
do over the course of let's say three years, five years, whatever,

(15:53):
and then every year you need to answer to your boss,
the person giving you the money, with what you've accomplished,
and you need to say, well, I published these three
papers which support my primary aim, and I answered my
primary research hypothesis, and now I'm moving on to AM
two and my secondary hypothesis. I never hear any of that.

(16:17):
When it comes to CIA mk ultra, I hear about
universities getting bookoo bucks and tons of money to study.
If LSD and a helmet glued to your head makes
you do xyz is the assumption like if it doesn't work,
you never hear about it, and if it does work,
you never hear about it. Or do we hear about it?

(16:38):
Do we know the outcomes?

Speaker 2 (16:40):
So I mean we know, Like the standard narrative goes
is that they really wanted to like figure out how
to program an assassin, that they tried all of these things,
Like they tried all these different techniques. And the idea,
like I said, is to kind of like break down
a person. So in order to like program, you have

(17:03):
to program like an alternate personality into a person. And
so you need like someone who's kind of in a
dissociative state in order to build this alter ego into them.
And even then like the person's regular ego like personality
kind of bleeds over and you have to come up

(17:24):
with like these tricks to like keep the alter ego
in power.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
It's such it's such like a friendly way of saying it,
like yeah, we we we need to help them dissociate
from their their personality. I mean, what that really means
is we need to torture and traumatize someone so badly
that they literally can't cope with being who they used
to be and they have to pretend they're not them
or it's happening to somebody else, you know.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah, and so that's the phrase that comes comes about,
is like trauma based mind control, And that's kind of
like a big kind of through this. But the so,
so the standard narrative is going, so they try to
do this and that it doesn't work, and so then
they quit trying to do it, and so yes, they
did all this terrible stuff and they heard all of

(18:12):
these people, and like that comes out and like some
of these experiments come out, not all of them have
come out, just like a few bits of information here
and there. Like that's what the CIA basically says. It's like, yeah,
we tried this, and we did it because we thought
the Soviets were doing it. We thought the Soviets were
being successful, and so we wanted to counter their mind

(18:32):
control tactics with like our own, and we just we
found that it doesn't work. But then there's obviously kind
of the conspiracy side. That's like, why would we believe
the CIA about anything? Like they kind of figured out
how to do it, and you know, they made it work.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
That's nice. That's nice though. I liked that idea. We
gave it a try, we broke a few eggs, but
then we don't do that bad stuff anymore. I mean,
it's kind of nice. It's kind of nice to be
believe that, like the human soul or whatever. If if
you believe in that sort of thing can't be replaced

(19:10):
this way, which is kind of what you're trying to do,
right You're trying to you're trying to replace somebody with
somebody new. Yeah, I mean that's not what they're They're
using scientific verbiage and psychological vocabulary, but they're trying to
take you out and put something new in it. It
would be nice to believe that's not possible, But I
suspect you don't think that, right.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Well. I think like so in like you and me,
if we were just like put in a basement and
tortured and like someone was just trying to like like
you're a different person now, that we would probably be
like no or not like or whatever.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
You say, buddy, give me the buck out.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
It, please stop, and like maybe we would go crazy,
but like that like that's what ended up happening to
a bunch of the adult subjects.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Yeah, okay, so so you're mind just breaks, but yeah,
you don't get replaced with some new functional person.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
So you can scramble the egg, but you can't get
the scrambled egg to return to a new egg. Show
you can't like so it's really that's what they found
is it's really easy to de pattern someone.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
It's really easy to it's easy to ruin someone's life
mental death, okay, yes, or depattern whatever you want to.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Go it, yea, but it is much harder to repattern.
But then you get into like a very fucked up
narrative being like, well it becomes easier with children, Yeah,
with less form things. So you have to like inflict
the trauma early on and then like begin to build
this alter ego from a young age. And that's really

(20:50):
where I think you get into like what's called like
Project Monarch, which is I think like a spin off
of this stuff that was and this is a very
all this is very controversial, Like I don't think that
they're like anyone has ever like definitively proven the existence
of a project monarch, But there's this anecdotal evidence of like, oh, well,
they realize that you can't do it to a you know,

(21:12):
thirty year old man, but you might be able to
do it, you know, to someone who's younger and doesn't have,
you know, as much of a formed personality. So that
seems to be kind of like the direction that it took.
But I don't, yeah, I don't, like I said, that's all.
That's quite controversial. And like the idea that you can reap,
like the idea that you can program someone and like

(21:35):
have them follow out a specific course of action is
also very controversial. Like what happens is like it's often
much more unpredictable, and like the person who's programmed can't
like think for themselves, like you know, they're operating under
this kind of like almost you know, hypnotic state. So

(21:55):
it's like, yeah, you can, you can do this to
a person, but like there ceased to be like a
real like not like a real person, but they cease
to act in the same way than a normal person acts.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
So I have I have heard and you know, I
always wonder if this real, But I have heard people
be interviewed. I heard this on a podcast recently, a
woman who claims to have basically been sold like on
a temporary basis by her mother to this group that
does stuff like this. Yeah, more you know less like

(22:32):
like not not based in a research lab. But but
you know it's it's abuse of a child. She was
five years old or something like that. And then you know,
a lot of children she knew in this group, you know, disappeared.
I'm assuming you know, they didn't go home and live
a normal life, you know, but those that kind of

(22:53):
made it into their like teens and adulthood in this
group would be groomed to become like wives of powerful
political figures. And you know, the group that sort of
owned them would use them to accomplish different means. Right,

(23:14):
And some of these like testimonies that I've heard are
they just don't sound made up. Man, they don't sound
made up. I don't know, I mean I could be fooled,
but they don't sound made up.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Well, So like this whole thing and like we're definitely
getting a little bit ahead, but it's fine. It's a good,
you know conversation.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Really like you can't bring a script to this show.
I'm gonna ask you the craziest questions.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
Well, that's what I mean, Like this is where it goes.
I mean, this is where like the eventual you know,
story like goes of like okay, well, like if this
kind of thing is happening, and so we know that,
you know, we know that these experiments happened, and then
it gets really murky somewhere in the sixties. It's even
murkier in the seventies when they start burnings and like

(24:00):
they start doing all this kind of thing to like
cover it up because it starts to kind of leak out,
but like it ties into this whole kind of conversation,
ties into like the satanic ritual abuse narrative that like
comes up in the eighties and everyone thinks that the
Satanic ritual abuse is like an op. But it again,
it's like this thing of like okay, well they could

(24:22):
have like parts of it could have been an op,
Like this could have been a.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Everyone thinks it's an op in what way? What do
you mean by that? Sorry?

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Like, like there's the main stories that broke about satanic
ritual abuse. I think they broke in like the eighties
and the nineties, and it was from like a couple
of these people who were getting like hypnotically recovered memories,
and it seemed like the therapist who was involved with
it was trying to like lead them while they were

(24:49):
in a hypnotics and so it's like very like shaky testimony.
And so everyone freaks out about this thing. And then
a few years later, like the person credibility is destroyed
and the CIA is like, see, look at this, Like
this person was lying. So like everyone who claimed satanic
ritual abuse was lying.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Pretty standard misinformation type practice, Okay, okay, yeah, And the
side effect of that is your mom thinks you're a
demon worshiper if you played Dungeons and Dragons or Pokemon. Yeah,
but that was down to the cultural effects for decades,
and that's what.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
And there's you know, super interesting things when you look
into like you know, the history of like RPGs and
like different things like that. So it's like there's even
like everything's a rabbit hole, so like you know, every
hole and that's what, like, you know, there's all of
these weird just quickly on the RPG thing. It wasn't
Dungeons and Dragons. But there was this vampire role playing

(25:50):
game that became super popular in the nineties, and there
were these Kentucky vampire cults. There's like two of them
operating in eight and these people who were like a
part of this role playing game.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
Can you remember the game?

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Not off the top of my head, but I will.
I'll look it up at some point and I'll say, yeah,
I'll look it up. But it was like they were
like super super into it and they started like taking
this and I don't necessarily think like they're interest in
vampires started with the game, like they were probably into
like all this kind of stuff before, but like one

(26:27):
of the guys like there were a couple of murders
that came from these like vampire colts. So there was
this like you know, huge craze around it, and like
a like a tell like one of the big televangelists
like was caught up in it, like one of his
family members or was involved or something like that. And
so it was just this really interesting like nexus of

(26:49):
RPGs and vampire colts and you know, Satanic Richard like
kind of the same kinds of like televangelist narratives that
were around like satanic ritual abuse in the eighties.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
And so when when was Jack Parsons? When was that?
When was he summoning redheads in the desert?

Speaker 2 (27:07):
That was like nineteen forty five, forty six, forty seven,
somewhere in there.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
And I mean this, this is like og I would
say demon satan worshiping. I mean, I don't think they
called it that, but you know, it's kind of how
if we walked in on someone sitting in a pentagram
with candles, going oh muh, you know, like okay, you're
you're doing some demon worshiping, right, So that was like

(27:36):
in its heyday then in like the forties fifty sixties.
It's interesting that the Satanic panic doesn't happen until the eighties.
It does feel a little it feels like some of
maybe had their their thumb on the cultural knob, which
I think is what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
That, Yeah, that's what I think. It's like that they
were that they were involved in some of this kind
of stuff and that they were like doing it. And
then you know, it's kind of this classic disinformation campaign
where they like either plant stories or they you know,
there's crazy people everywhere, so they find you know some
of the crazier people, and they highlight those and be like, well,

(28:15):
this is the wider representation of you know, everything that's
going on. And it's like interesting because I think, like
the Satanic panic, like they were right for the wrong reason,
Like they just they were on the right track.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
But then those are the best ops, right, I mean
ones that have like truth running through them, a real
reason you should be afraid or obsessed. Sam Tripoli was
on Joe Rogan yesterday or today. He's a you know,
a funny character. He's into all this stuff. And Joe
when Sam comes on, I noticed joke is like very

(28:53):
non conspiratorial because Sam's a little out there. He's all crazy.
He's a little crazy because like he just goes out
the handle. Like he's not a good ambassador of the
conspiracy movement really, but he's hilarious, so you know. But
and so Joe Rogan made a comment like, so you
think they like actually set this up and manipulate this,

(29:16):
so so like let's apply that to what you're saying,
like he'd be saying, so you think the CIA goes
out and finds hypnotists and gets them to lie about
demon possession and mind. I'm like, I don't think that's
what happened. I don't think you need to go to
that length. I think at any given time, there's always

(29:37):
somebody doing something batshit crazy, and it's just a matter
of finding those people that advance your narrative and publicizing it,
you know. Like so right now there's somebody doing hypnotic
regression about demons in Santa Monica, right all. The CIA
does not need to find this person. They need they

(29:59):
need to get someone at you know, KTLA to do
it a piece. Yeah, on this, you know, it's not
I don't think it's nearly as difficult to get a
narrative out into the public as people might think.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Well, and especially so like just on the topic of
like see it the CIA and like hypnotists like in
this story that like I kind of like how prepared
the CIA actively recruits like the leading hypnotists of the
day to like and this is like late forties, early

(30:36):
fifties to come help them run these experiments. And the
guy who runs Project art to show his name is
Morse Allen. He is super interested in hypnotism and he's he's.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
The first guy, like the first guy we know of
who ran it or one of the first.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, he's like the guy that takes control. Okay, so
we'll kind of get we'll get a little bit into that.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Because yeah, yeah, yeah, before.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
So that there's factions within the CIA, and so Artichoke
is one faction and it's run by and so is
run by the Office of Security. And so I just
want to make a note because I actually reached out
to this researcher and was like, hey, dude, I really like,
I really appreciate your work. Can I use your research

(31:23):
as an outline for my podcast? He was like, yes,
just give me credit. So a lot of this research
that I'll be talking about in this episode it comes
from he goes by Recluse. His name is Steven Snyder.
I mentioned him in the Epstein stuff because he has
a book on that. But he has a ton of
work on his blog, which is called a visip vi

(31:44):
SUP And this is his series on the Office of Security,
which is a branch of the CIA. So everyone if
they want to learn more about this kind of thing,
should go read that. He gets He starts out with
like Watergate and the sex blackmail scandal that was happening
around Watergate and some of like the CIA activity that
was happening there super fascinating, and then he gets he

(32:06):
kind of backtracks into Project Artichoke with this, So this
is where I'm getting a lot of the informations. Anyway,
go check out his blog, Go check out his podcast.
His podcast is called the Farm. But so he describes,
so there's two factions. There's the Office of Security, which
is Project Artichoke, and then there's the Technical Services Staff,
which is mk Ultra. So a lot of people think

(32:28):
that Project Artichoke ran for a couple of years before
mk Ultra and was rolled into mk Ultra, that mk
Ultra became like the blanket for everything, but that's not true.
Project Artichoke was its own program, run by its own
branch of the CIA, with its own leader. So like Sydney's.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Crazy, how vast these webs are, you know, And.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
That's what you get into, and like you also have
to realize that, like there are internal politics, there's competition,
and they're like the CIA is a monolithic organization. It
has you know, different actors with different interests and different goals,
and so that's kind of like there was competition between
Artichoke and mk Ultra and like there was a you know,

(33:12):
political battle within it, and MK Ultra was made because
they wanted a little bit more of like a scientific
angle to it, Like they wanted to bring in more
institutions and stuff like that, whereas Project Artichoke was just
kind of like spies just doing, you know, doing what
they wanted to do. And so Morse Allen is the

(33:33):
guy who starts to kind of run it, and so
he is involved with the Office of Naval Intelligence. So
before the CIA was created, you know, you had the OSS,
which was the direct precursor to the CIA, but like
the Navy had their own intelligence network, and in the

(33:54):
last episode we noted that like there was some like
naval intelligence people swirling around, you know, up in Maine,
and so that's like one of the you know, an
interesting kind of component to it. So he starts out
there and then he ends up working for the CIA,
like when the CIA gets established, and so before it

(34:16):
was named Project Artichoke, it was called Project Bluebird. So
they start getting interested in a lot of these kinds
of research. And like I said, Morse Allen was super
into hypnotism, and so he like took this hypnotism seminar
from this famous hypnotist, and the hypnotist was like, let

(34:41):
me see if I can find this guy's name. But
the guy was like four hundred pounds and he was
always bragging about how he could like seduce women through hypnotism,
and that was what let me see. His name was
William Joseph Bryant, and so he would talk about how
he would like hypnotize women and like convince them that

(35:01):
like he was their husband and that they desperately wanted him,
and so he was just exploiting women through hypnotism, and
so more soualent looks at this guy, like this is
a great guy to bring on board. And so this
is where like they kind of like start hypnotizing, Like
they're hypnotizing women and they're having them approach political figures

(35:23):
in Washington, d C. And trying to like get them
to sleep with them.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
And so are you what are your thoughts on hypnotism?

Speaker 2 (35:33):
So, like I said, it's like one of those things
where it's like only I think it's like only one
in five people have the kind of like personality type
that allows for hypnotism.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
I wonder if that's ever been studied, Like, what are
the commonalities of someone who can't quote unquote be hypnotized.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
You know, So I think, like what I was reading
is that it like has to do with that dissociative state.
So it typically has to do like with or like
someone who's very prone to like suggestive states. And so
a lot of times it's like the people that they
would find and not in every case, but like the
people that they would find would be like have trauma

(36:14):
in their past and so that they could kind of
like they were more prone to associates dissociated states because
of that trauma, and so then that would like predispose
them to hypnotism.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
This is see, this is this is what I this
is what I think is weird about hypnotism. Yeah, I'm
this is just like the Google AI description, but I'm
sure it's based They've linked to something. So it says,
while not everyone is equally succept susceptible, Okay, we know
that most people can be hypnotized to some degree if

(36:49):
they are willing and cooperative. And I'm like, it's not
really hypnotism if you're willing, right, It's just like it's
just like if I say, hey, David, can you pretend
to be a duck and you choose to be a duck.
Like to me, I don't understand how that's hypnotist. Like,
I don't get this. I don't understand it. It's presented

(37:12):
as like a psychological mastery, like if I say the
right series of words in the right way, if you're
the certain type of person, that's I just I don't
get it. I don't get it. I'm not sure what
to think about it. I'm not saying it's not real.
I just don't know what to think about it.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah, I don't know the like mechanics of hypnotism super well,
Like I don't know how you like how they go
about like inducing that state. But there was this experiment
and this is kind of a tangent, but it was
something that like has really stuck with me. And it

(37:50):
was from this show called Hellre and Hellure is about
these like two magicians in Cincinnati. They're like into the
cult and they're always like making documentaries about like the
occult and like the paranormal kind of like haunted objects
and stuff like that. Greg and Dana Newkirk are their name,

(38:12):
And anyways, they like received this email about this man
who says that he's seeing goblins in Kentucky and this
ties back to a UFO event that happened in Hopkinsville
and it's called like the Hopkinsville Goblins. But it was
like this crazy event where this family like saw a

(38:32):
saucer land in their yard and these like goblins came out,
these like goblin looking creatures came out and terrified them.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
They went to the What do you know about what
year this would have been.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
This would have been like fifty three, so it was
right in this like behavioral modification, and we'll get like
this may have been like you know, the like CIA
like dosing the water of the thing.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
How do you how do you get this fucking Like
I don't I don't want to hurt people, but like,
if I could get paid, you know, a nice six
figure salary to fake goblin invasions and Kentucky farms, that
would cry I think about it. I'd probably turn it
down because I'd be ruining lives at the end of

(39:19):
the day. But I'd be like, wait, what I get
to fake flying saucer landings in Kentucky and you'll pay
me how much? Like how do you get the gig?

Speaker 2 (39:27):
So that's what, Yeah, I mean, and that's where I
have no idea.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
I mean, you can go, you can go and c
a dot govn apply. So I mean, I guess I
know how you get the gig. It just I like
the idea of like someone coming up to me at
a coffee shop and being, hey, take my card. You
know we've been we've been fault, We've been paying attention
to you here call this number. But I would just
I wonder how it happened. Anyway, Sorry, I'll keep sidetracking us,

(39:52):
keep going.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
You're good because it's I mean, it's a it's a
really interesting question. But immediately after like this sighting you had,
so Fort Campbell is really close. And I always liked
stories about Fort Campbell because I grew up going to
the base, like, you know, a few times a month
because my grandfather used to work there. But this is
where like one hundred and first Airborne is stationed, which

(40:15):
is like the one of two like rapid response air
units in the United States military. And so there's a
lot of like high level military operations happening out of
Fort Campbell. But they had investigators from Fort Campbell on
the scene, which is like, why would you if there's
just like a crazy family in Kentucky saying that they
saw goblins, Like why are the you know police from

(40:39):
Fort Campbell like on the scene, And there were I'm
pretty sure like there were CIA like MK Ultra people
also on the scene, so they were like it looked
like running that kind of thing. So anyways, but like
the Hopkinsville Goblins thing like kind of takes off and
it turns into like one of this kind of cryptid
ufo like community things. And so Greg and Dana Newkirk

(41:01):
receive an email from this guy in Kentucky. He's like,
I'm seeing weird you know goblins in my yard, Like
will you come investigate this? And then the guy drops
off the map. And so anyways, they like go on
this huge paranormal investigation to go like track this guy down,
and it leads them all these weird places. But in
one of the episodes, they run this experiment and what

(41:24):
they do is they bring in a professional hypnotist and
they have their friend who's willing to go through with
the experiment. And so it's Greg and Dana Newkirk are
in the room filming, there's a hypnotist and there's their
like their friends sitting in the chair and they're in
a hotel room and the hypnotist like hypnotizes the guy
and then he like leads him down this path of like, oh,

(41:46):
you're seeing a UFO. You're seeing a UFO land. He's like,
there are beings, you know, they look like grays coming
out of the aliens or like coming out of the saucer.
He's like, what are they saying? And then the guy
will like tell him what the aliens are saying to him,

(42:06):
and then he's like what do they do next? And
he's like they're taking us into the ship. And he's
like what does the ship look like? And so he
like described the ship and so he's like it's almost
like inception of this idea of like trying to plant
an idea in someone's mind and then letting them like
kind of take it whatever route it goes.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
It's like the most extreme possible version of an open
ended question.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah, And so he goes and he like has this
abduction experience, Like he's there, yeah, like physically like freaking out,
and like he does look like he's hypnotized, Like he
doesn't look like he's just like you and I being like, oh, shit,
he looks like his eyes are closed and he's kind
of like, you know, looks like he's in this experience.

(42:54):
So anyways, after they do it.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
Looks like so this is recorded? Is that what you
said is taping it?

Speaker 2 (43:01):
And so then he like wakes up and he's like,
what the fuck just happened? And he believes that this
experience really happened to him, and he becomes this like
like he like claims to be an experiencer and he
starts going to like these UFO conferences and it like
completely changes this guy's life. And so one way to
look at it is like, well, maybe like Greg and

(43:22):
Dane and Newkirk are just like doing it for theatrical effect,
like maybe this guy's in on the thing, and like
the story isn't true, But if it is true, then
it reveals a lot more about like the UFO phenomenon.
To me, and like kind of how some of these
things and how some of these experiences happen is that
it's more of kind of this psychological like mental phenomenon

(43:46):
where people could be able to like you know, manipulate
and influence people into thinking that, like, you know, these
things happen to them when you know it's really a
result of hypnotic suggestion or something like that.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Yeah, that that checks out with me. I mean, obviously
that's not as exciting if you want to think that
there's a little green men from Zata Articula or whatever.
But yeah, it would explain the variety in experience. It's
like it's kind of perfect because there's like a lot
of variety in the phenomenon, but then there's also like

(44:22):
similarities in the similarities. It can just easily be explained
by our shared cultural experience, and the differences can be
explained by the fact that we're just kind of imagining
might be the wrong word, but being led.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
I don't know, Well, that's what it's like. And there's like,
you know, not to say that I'm not trying to
say that like all UFO experiences are like in a
person's head or like psychological or something like that. But
I think what it reveals is that like there's this
psychological component to it that you know, leans more towards

(45:01):
like the it's not just like nuts and bolts spaceship. Yeah, yeah,
Zata reticuli.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
That there's like a yeah, they hit they hit you
with the alien gun. And you see a flying saucer
or whatever. You know, Yeah, they hit you with the gun.
You see a tik dak boom done.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
And like maybe like when they're sending these people into
these like states of mind, it makes them more you know,
open to experiences like that, and like maybe there's something happening,
you know, where they're going into, Like you know, they're
leading them into a different place. I don't know what's happening, but.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
The truth is there could be some wild stuff we
don't know about that's still natural like natural meaning it's uh,
I don't mean natural like in nature. I mean natural
like not supernatural, you know, man made. There could be
for all we know, there could be a ray gun
that takes you to the d MT world and they

(45:58):
can hit you with that thing a mile away.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, that's what I mean, is that, like you know,
they could be sending these people, you know, to these
places like you know, kind of journey to the underworld
style or something you know.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Along Yes, yes, they have had unchecked budget and curiosity
for at least what seventy eighty years.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
Well, and it's a similar like I think like this
stuff kind of is rooted in like this ancient practice too,
and like when you look into like, okay, what are
shamans doing?

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Right?

Speaker 2 (46:28):
You know, I think like hypnotism, like our idea of
hypnotism probably has its roots and something like shamanism where
it's yeah, this person, you're sick or something and you
go to this healer and he's just like putt like
he puts you into a trance or whatever, like he's
you know, that's the kind of form of medicine, and
then he's like taking your soul on this journey like

(46:51):
you know, to a you know, the realm of the
spirit or whatever. And so it's like I don't know
what they're doing, but it's like it seems like this
like idea of hypnotism is just like this new age
phenomenon that like this kind of magic trick you know,
may have been you know, I think that there's been
like hypnotists and yea quote unquote for a long time.

(47:13):
So I don't know, like that's what I just But
what I do know is that this guy in the
CIA like was very he was very interested in hypnotism,
and he believed, at least on some level, that like
hypnotism would work.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
Okay, what was his name again, sorry, William Morse Allen.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
And so yeah, they're into the hypnotism. They're also into
electroshock therapy, and so when you hit someone with electroshock,
it'll create the state of amnesia. So they're what the
other thing that they're interested in.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
Is like also called near death.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Yeah. Yeah, but they go and they're interested not just
in like programming assassins and programming messengers and stuff like that.
They're also interested in an interrogation tactics. They're trying to
find kind of like a truth serum type of thing.
And so they found that sometimes like when you hit
people with electro shock, it'll create this state of amnesia,

(48:11):
and then you can start pounding them with questions and
they might tell you, you know, because their guard is lower,
that lie because.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
They don't they don't even really remember. So maybe it's
like a short term amnesia, like they don't even remember
that they should be keeping a secret.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
Yeah, that's what it is, is that like produces this
small state of amnesia. And then they also were like, oh,
this is a great form of torture too, so we
can just use it as a torture method. Yeah, so
they're into that and then they're it.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Almost sounds more like more like like you're you're knocking
down their executive function, Like they're going into more of
like an automatic like question answer type state, like they've
lost their Yeah, because because I don't think they're losing
their memory. Oh that's interesting anyway, Okay, sorry, keep going.
That's cool.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
Well, and then they go and then they're like they
gut more. Sold was like, oh okay, well, like in
the state of amnesia, can you hypnotize someone? He's very
kind of on the hypnotism thing, But it was just
like they were looking for this concoction of different methods
and substances that would like.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
They were the kitchen sink. They were throwing the kitchen
sink out. They're like, here, let's inject him with cocaine.
Let's hit him with electricity. Oh, that one died, Okay,
next one, let's hypnotize electrify. Wow, dude, I would just
think about the unlucky car. Do you draw when you

(49:37):
see mor salin walk into your jail cell?

Speaker 2 (49:40):
Yeah, it would be.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
My name is doctor Allen. You're gonna be coming with us.
We have some Just just call me doctor, call me
doctor Alan. We're gonna take you in the other room
and you're going to serve your country. Yeah, oh my god,
the horror.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
And so they so they're also interested in drugs, especially hallucinogen.
So this is artichoke. So this is a quote from
This is HP Alborelli's book. And Albarelli wrote this like
eight hundred page tome on the death of Frank Olsen
and it really deals with like artichoke and mk ulture
and stuff like that. So hb. Albarelli is a he's

(50:20):
just like a brilliant kind of like parapolitical researcher. He
has tons of books that are like all into this
kind of thing. But this is a quote from his book.
So in nineteen fifty one, just weeks before Bluebird was
renamed Artichoke, officials within the CIA's Security Office, working in
tandem with cleared scientists from Camp Dietrich's Special Operations Division,

(50:41):
who in turn worked closely with a select group of
scientists from Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, began a series of
ultra secret experiments with LSD, mescaline, peyoti, and a synthesized
substance sometimes nicknamed smasher, which combined an LSD like drug
with pharmaceutical amphetamines and other answers. So former scientists doctor

(51:03):
Gerald Yohnette described the substance it was like a rocket
ship to Mars. So when you're combining LSD with amphetamines
and then dosing people like while they're chained to.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
A chair there, you feel.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Like more terrifying, you know, and then you have someone
interrogating you, like that's like a nightmarish scenario.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
And now we're just going to place a helmet on
your head that repeats.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
The words you forgive your father. So the one experiment
that was like linked to like bluebirds slash artichoke that
I wanted to mention is super fascinating, but it was

(51:52):
this one and it gets connected into I mentioned like
Frank Olsen's death has suspected his like alleged murder like
kind of the CIA. But it stems back to this
in his guilty conscience over this event. But it happened
in nineteen fifty one, and it's called the Pont Saint
Spirit incident. And so this is like in a small

(52:14):
village in France, but in nineteen fifty one, residents of
this small town in France went completely insane, people became
extremely ill in some experienced hallucinations. Here's a quote from
a Mental Floss article. The town became gripped and pandemonium.
A little girl screamed as she was chased by man
eating tigers. A woman sobbed about how her children had

(52:36):
been ground into sausages. A large man fent off terrific
beasts by smashing his furniture. A husband and wife ran around,
chasing each other with knives. Even the local animals had
gone mad. A dog chewed on stones until its teeth
chipped away. Ducks began marching like penguins everywhere. People ran
wildly as they tried to avoid imaginary flames. One man,

(52:58):
convinced that red snakes were devouring his brain, jumped out
of a window. Another reportedly leapt from a window, broke
both legs, stood up, and continued running.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
When was this?

Speaker 2 (53:11):
This is nineteen fifty one. In a small town in France,
so outside, a local postal worker complained that he was shrinking.
A person sprinted down the street, claiming that he was
chased by bandits with donkey ears. Near the Rhone River,
a man convinced that he was a circus tightrope walker
attempted to balance his way across the cables of a
suspension bridge. Time.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
So then this is spread out over a big distance.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
This is like a whole town. This is like a
whole city.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
So another tried to jump into the river, only to
be saved by friends. I am dead and my head
is made of copper, and I have snakes in my
stomach and they are burning me. He yelp.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
And so this is actually wait, so it wasn't everybody, though,
because he was saved by friends. It was just certain
people and a.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
Lot of people, Like a lot of people got sick
and that was like all that happened to them. So
it was kind of like they felt really ill and
like they got really like lightheaded, and they kind.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
Of had.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
And some of it. Yeah, Like so some of them
thought that their children had been ground into sausages. I
thought that they were being chased by man eating tigers.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
Now that's interesting because like there are cases of like
I guess you would say, like mass delusion, like it,
if you want to be skeptical, mass illusion, like that
town in Brazil that saw the UFOs and the aliens
and stuff, but they all saw the same thing. These
people are seeing all different things, which makes it sound
like a drug or technology or something. What was it?

Speaker 2 (54:40):
Yeah, there was. So there's also like some good experience,
like some people like looked into the heavens and like
they opened up and they have this kind of like
profound spiritual experience. But on the whole it was kind
of a nightmare. And so there's a traditional, like the
mainstream explanation for this is that the madness was brought

(55:01):
about by widespread GOT poisoning.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
And so basically what Tolly's ergot whenever they need a villain,
I guess it could be her guy.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
And so they say that like the it was a
really wet summer in France and that their grain supply
had been infected by like Saint Anthony's fire, and like
that there were like other examples of this happening in history.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Wait, what Saint Anthony's fire.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
St Anthony's fire is like the name of the like
growth on the plant. It's just like what they So
Saint Anthony was like he's actually super linked into hallucinogens
and he discovered GOT poisoning like when he was a
part of the he like saying Anthony is like the
patron saint of healing.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
I thought he was the patron saint of lost and found.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
There's there's the one. Yeah, I don't know there's I
think that this one is referring to this guy in
Germany who said and he was like the patron saint
of mushrooms too interesting. Yeah, he's like the and so
he was kind of like the and there was these
group of healers called like the Anthonites, and they were

(56:14):
into like kind of this like folk medicine type thing,
but they were like, you know, accepted by the Catholic
Church because he was, you know, a saint of Germany.
But anyways, I think he discovered like what was causing
ergot poisoning like before science like existed, and so they

(56:34):
called it Saint Anthony's fire because it was like this
that was what like the ergot poisoning was called. And
so anyways, that's like the mainstream explanation. But in hb.
Abarelli's book A Terrible Mistake, he has like CIA sources
and I think they're unnamed, but they attribute the event

(56:58):
in France to a joint operation between the CIA and
the Special Ops Division of the Army and Basically, what
that story looks like is that a potent LSD tincture
was prepared and deployed through aerosols as well as placed
in local food products, and that they just like wanted
to see what would happen if they just mass dosed

(57:20):
a community, and.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
So well, listen, this is like right out of the
CIA playbook. This is not this would not be like
a no, they wouldn't do that sort of thing, you know.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
Yeah, and I'm pretty sure like this is coming out
of like Fort Dietrich and Edgewood Arsenal, which is the
if we'll remember that's the like the center of biological
weapons research in you know, and this is this is
exactly a biological weapon.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
And so yeah, if you wanted to drop this an
LSD bomb on like the enemy war camp, you know.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Yeah, they're experimenting around with it. They were like, Okay,
so we'll do this in France and we'll just see
how it goes and then it like produces the desired results,
then we'll go do it in the Soviet Union.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
I just love this idea of like we'll just do
it in a town in France.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
Fuck them, you know, That's what it just like by
all accounts it did. This did not go how they
wanted it to go, like that they did not.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
But what does that mean, because they must have wanted
it to be horrible, right if they're thinking about using
it in Russia.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
Well, I think it was just like they didn't expect
like at least four people died. I've heard like maybe
seven people die, like fifty people get like seriously injured,
and it turns into like an international affair. French government's
kind of like, Okay, what the fuck.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
Isn't isn't that like a huge success then, like it's
a possible weapon.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Yeah, I mean it's but like like if.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Everyone started a drum circle, you wouldn't be like, get
this to the Soviet Union right away, you know, you
gotta get those comedy bastards.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
But I don't think that they, like I don't think
that they turned and like started using it because it
was too unpredictable and so like, I don't think they
were able to like operatetionally continue flowing this kind of tactic.
And this guy Frank Olsen starts to like really get
a guilty conscience about this, and Frank Olsen also goes

(59:11):
to Germany during like when they're recruiting like kind of
paper clip scientists and he's watching them dose like these
Soviet war prisoners with LSD and torture them and like
all the sudden, So he gets kind of fucked up
about all this and he starts like maybe talking a

(59:32):
little bit about it, and the absolutely not. We can't
have anyone knowing that we did this.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
So they gave him an early retirement and a nice
pension plan.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
That's exactly right, and but they and institutionalized him. And
then when he kept having a psychotic break the Frank
Olsen story, Yeah, I'll tell a little like a brief
version of it. They did allegedly because they wrote it
was a suicide because he fell out of a hotel
room window.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
But what they this is a situation where you don't
really have to say allegedly, like for your own personal protection,
because I don't think the CIA is going to take
you to court. But but I think what you mean,
like they.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
May probably, but it's just like it's like I said,
I mean, it's not like I just say.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
It's not known for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Yeah, you know, it's like maybe the guy did have
a psychotic break and jump out of a window and
the CIA just happened to be in the room.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Always it's always jumping from a high place, man, But
that's what.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
So what they did is like this guy starts kind
of talking and they invite him out to a retreat
for CIA Edgewood Arsenal forty trick people.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
So they get him out of the difficult to control
environment with witnesses.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
And then they dose him with LSD And.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
What a dick move. Just kill the guy. Why are
you going to dose him? He's having a psychotic break.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Think they wanted to like interrogate him, you know, and.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
So losing his mind.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
This guy freaks the fuck out already he's already having
a psychotic break before you know, he's already has this
guilty conscience and he's talking to his wife. He's like,
I need to get out of the CIA. And the
CIA invites to a retreat and we're gonna dose you
with LSD.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
And this was the premise of the retreat. He knew
it was the CIA, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
I mean, he worked for the CIA. So just they
were like we're like, oh, like we're just gonna have
a retreat for the boys. You know, we're gonna get out,
get out into the woods, get away.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Oh bro, never going to retreat with the boys of
the CIA.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
And so anyway, so they go through this whole thing
where like he so he gets like his psychotic break steepens,
and so they try and get him in like an
institution and get him to like shut you know, shut
the fuck up, and he's still like, you know, super
super parent, and they can't keep him in the institution,
and so they take him to this guy named John
mulholland who is a stage musician who was also into

(01:02:08):
this kind of like hypnotism thing, but he worked for
the CIA too, and John m'hon's like he's fucked, like
so they don't know what to do with this guy,
and so they end up just like having to kind
of kill him. And so they take him to a
hotel room and push him out of a window and
he falls on the street.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
And I love this idea of like, well, have you
tried giving him more LSD? Yeah, we gave him more
give him LSD again, but they're not getting better. Doc
give him more LSD.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
And that's what like, this sounds like something that you
would do if you were living on like a commune.
In like sixteen sixty eight in California, was like, dude,
our buddy, you know, he's been he's going through some
rough times. He's having a lot of stress, a lot
of paranoia. Like maybe we just give him some acid
and he'll kind of take him to a show and.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
Love how perplexed they are each time, like it didn't work.
I don't, We're stand We've done everything we can. We
gave them LC three thousand times. It does seem like
a huge part of the CIA's strategy for like fifteen
years is just give everybody acid.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
Yeah, and then they were like doing it on the streets,
you know, like it wasn't even like they were you know,
trying to like like I said, like a lot of
these were run in kind of like these covert things,
but they would have like safe houses so they would
like later in this kind of like whole story, they
ended up having a safe house and it was called

(01:03:33):
the name of the operation was called Operation Midnight Climax.
Yeah sucking. As far as CIA operation names, that's a
pretty good. But they would have like these they would
have these students who were like medical researchers, like either
in medical school or in like getting their PhDs or
whatever it was. They would be like, we want you

(01:03:54):
to recruit these hippies off the street to come into
this house and we're gonna like give them drugs and
we're gonna see what happens.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
And so it's the medical students to that said, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
Yeah, the medical students were like awesome, So they bring
them in and so it's like medical students like sitting
in a corner like writing down while like people are
having sex and you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
Know, talking to goblins while having and they have.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Like interesting has like two way mirrors or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
So it's like, what do you think about that? Doctor?
That's certainly not the move I would have gone with,
but it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
And this was in uh, like San Francisco, and this
is around like the same neighborhood that like Manson ends
up in like a few years later. So they're running
all these like drug experiments and like these same places
that these crazy fucking characters and well.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
See, but it's stuff like that. It's stuff like this
that makes me suspect just rampant incompetence. When I hear,
like when I hear about the CIA being evil, and
then I hear this story. It's like they're just a
bunch of dumbfucks, like how many times do you need
a drug? Homeless people and watch them have sex and

(01:05:12):
take notes before you're like, you know what, we nailed
this operation. You know, pat each other on the back.
Another good one.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Guys.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
Let's keep hey, let's keep this shit up. We're killing it.
Sylviets don't stand a chance.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
Like well, that's what like if they weren't like like
if it was just this, then it would be like okay,
But then these are the same people like carrying out
coups and und like they're carrying out coup like we
talked about the one in Guatemala. They're trying to like
assassinate Castro down in Cuba, like causing the nuclear like

(01:05:44):
the you know, the nuclear missile crisis. They probably had
a hand and you know, definitely had a hand. And
you know, the assassination of JFK and RFK, like this
Manchurian candidate thing comes up with Lee Harvey Oswald, it
comes up with the dude who killed you know RFK.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
It's just it's like they're just obsessed with death and
control and sex and destruction.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
And that's what you know it's and it's just like
they get you know, they're very intense about it, you know,
like what I mean, like they're very committed to like
exploring this to its fullest extent. Like they don't go
like what you're saying of like, oh, they don't just
dose people a few times and be like, well that
was weird and move on. They're like no, they carrying

(01:06:33):
out like two decades long of just being like, well,
I wonder maybe if we give these people right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
Right right, but they last homeless guy we dosed and
introduced to a hooker, this, what if we give them
twice as much?

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
So and then you know, like I said, it's like
and then you know I mentioned like like Manson and passing.
But that's another one who like seems to kind of
be connected into like the MK Ultra Arto Choke kind
of stuff, and he has like a super interesting backstory
with that. But it's just like it's just like this
element of the CIA is just so fascinating to me where.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
It's just it's fascinating, it's disturbing. It's just like I
wish I could see what these guys were thinking. It's
like just like the utter disregard the utter like devaluation
of human life to dose somebody, have them hook up

(01:07:36):
with the hooker and then be like, I wonder what
happened if you stick a lightning rod up his ass
and do it again. Like it's just it just seems insane.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
So they like fuck up all these people, like they
shatter their personalities and like, you know, Operation Midnight Climax
is kind of like the like one of the funnier ones,
but like with this other stuff they were doing, and
they actually like it became such a problem that it
was termed like I don't know if this was a
term at the time, but it became it was essentially

(01:08:03):
like a disposal problem. It's like, we don't know what
to do with these people after this, and so we
have to like either institutionalize them or kill them or
like you know, find a way to get rid of them.
Because then they start like talking about this, you know,
to other people.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
And it's like did you get recruited to a whorehouse
and get electrocuted an LSD? Yeah, just we should compare notes.
H it's horrible, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
And then they yeah, and it's like there's this super
dark side of it too, where they were you know, going.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
Like so that was the light side. That's the good part.
We just hearded. Yeah, I mean all the of all
the experiments I've heard so far, that's the one. If
I was going to get kidnapped for any of these,
it'd be that one.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
But okay, so willingly, you willingly walk into a house
because of a medical student's like, Hey, I've got some
LSD at this house. Do you want to go do it?

Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
Oh? So there was like some inform don't consent even wow,
this is quite nice.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Like they were like it wasn't like they were just
like kidnapping him off the street, like make like the
operation Midnight Climb Outs itself was just like.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
Hey do you want to do you want to do
drugs and have sex? Okay, that's what I was hoping
to do. Anyway, it's so crazy, you asked. Okay, well
that's nice. Okay, So what's the dark side.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
Well, they were like in one of like they were
obviously and they would target like mental health patients and
stuff like that. So they were in the hospitals and
doing that kind of thing. And then they were in
the penitentiaries and of course you know they were targeting
like black inmates, you know, for them because the you know,
the guy the penitentiary was like you know these so
they was like you know a lot of these like

(01:09:44):
nameless victims of this because it's like you know where
these experiments were run, but it's like they weren't you know,
keeping track of like names.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
No one would believe you back then, Like you couldn't
go on a podcast tour and be like, yeah, the
CIA stuck a you know, a glass rod in my
mouth and put a helmet on me. Yeah, lava in
my I don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
You couldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
You couldn't tell this story, like no one would believe you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
Yeah, And so all of that to be said is
like you have these people who are interested in like
the drugs, the hypnosis, the electro shock, and we talked
about like Pooharic's interest of all of this, like you know,
stuff with the roundtable and he's into channeling and he's
into telepathy and esp and so there's this like marriage

(01:10:34):
that occurs with Artichoke and Pooharic and like these things
kind of like begin to blend in, you know, because
it's like the CIA at this point, doesn't seem super
interested in like telepathy like they might like there might
be a couple of people, like some of the I
think some of the hypnotists they recruited were like kind
of interested in it. Like one of the hypnotists, I

(01:10:56):
think it was Esther Brooks was his last name, and
he was like involved in the military experiments with hypnosis,
even like as far back as like the middle of
World War two. But he was like he's helped, like
he worked closely with the people who started, like started
the Boston Psychical like Research Society. He was kind of intelepathy,

(01:11:16):
but like the CIA doesn't look like they're super interested
in like remote viewing at this point. But then Poohart
comes along and he brings kind of this roundtable perspective
to it and like this telepathy ESP thing, and then
from there it looks like, you know, oh, okay, well mate,
we've tried the drugs. You know, we've tried dosing an
entire town and driving everyone insane, Like we've tried inviting

(01:11:39):
them all into like the whorehouse to have sex on LSD.
Like what if we, you know, start playing around with
like ESP and telepathy and some of these other you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:48):
Know, they're just never there, never seems like there's a
clearly defined aim.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
No, this guy is just like you're in a room
with like a few people and they're like, I mean,
there's a basis to this. So the thing that I
didn't mention with Artichoke is it comes out of like
there were Nazi drug experiments and so the Nazis were
using mescaline and so they didn't have access to LSD

(01:12:15):
because it hadn't been synthesized yet. I think LSC was
synthesized in nineteen forty five, like right towards the end
of the war, and that's a like I've always found
that the mainstream story of how LSD was synthesized. I
found that suspicious. Seems like there was like some Nazi
influence going on in there because it was synthesized in

(01:12:35):
Switzerland by Sandow's laboratories. But like, obviously the Germans had
like a hold on kind of the you know, European
pharmaceutical industry at the time, so it seems like they
were kind of like trying to spur research into ERGOT
and like how to you know, come up with more

(01:12:56):
of these drugs.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
Probably assume, because that's something that always bothers me with
all these stories, like there's something deeply unsatisfying listening to
like a thousand podcasts about stuff like this, and there's
always something unsatisfying with it, you know, Cause like if
I were to show up at a research lab like
New Hire, I'd want to know, like, okay, what does
success look like? And they would say, well, you know,

(01:13:21):
we know that this drug causes this blood marker to
go down, but we don't know why. So we as
a group, we want to devise a series of experiments
to determine what the mechanism of action is. Okay, boom right,
So okay, I'm gonna do this experiment, this experiment is
and then it either works or it doesn't. And it's
like it's all very easy to understand and systematic and mechanical.

(01:13:43):
This just sounds like I wonder what happens if we
watch someone have sex on LSD. That's what's it feels.
That's what it feels like. I mean, it sounds like
that's what it is. Or I wonder what happens if
we electrocute somebody and then hypnotize them. And it's like
what like and I guess maybe the aims are classified,

(01:14:08):
like is the aim like we want to we were
trying to create assassins that don't remember killing people. It's
you mentioned that that just seems so not methodical, it
doesn't seem scientific.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
Well that's what like, so they go and so like
I said, the Nazis were performing like these drug experiments,
and the whole like Nazi thing is its own like
is its own rabbit hole. So we like won't really
have time and like we'll do kind of a probably.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
Are we going to do a Nazi episode, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:38):
We'll probably do a Nazi series because like they had
this it was like the society was called like the
Oninerbe and they were all into the occult and they
were like looking for secret artifacts.

Speaker 1 (01:14:48):
That gets downplayed a lot like in mainstream history telling
like people are like, no, that's not really true, but
it sounds it is true, right it is.

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
Yeah, I think it's pretty clear that not all elements
of the Nazi already where that was like you have
kind of the two You have like the bureaucracy and
you have like the straight science people, and then you
have like this other branch that's like article and see
what's doing there.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
Somebody needs to make better tanks, somebody needs to channel
demons in an Arctica. It's two different types of divisions,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
And so yeah, marketing, Yeah, I think the one who
was like super occult was like Rudolph Hess. And the
way that they actually like got Hess was they like, uh,
they got like I think Crowley was involved in this
scheme and like another like witch in Great Britain that
was recruited by m I six, But they planted like

(01:15:42):
a false astrological prediction in his like inner circle and
he just like bit like hook line and sinker on
this like acid like fake astrology thing that they created
for him.

Speaker 1 (01:15:56):
Like it said, great, a great job is waiting for
you in Berlin something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
What do you mean, Well he waited, I forget, I don't.
I don't remember what the exact like astrological thing was.
But he ended up on a plane with like sensitive
information and then his plane got shot down and he
like landed in like the middle of nowhere in Great Britain.
He was on a plane like I'm pretty sure to
meet with like officials from Great Britain to like try

(01:16:23):
and broker some like peace deal or something like that.
This was like towards the end of the war, and
so like he just delivered like Rudolph Hess. I'm pretty
sure this is Hess. I hope I'm not wrong about
like who this is, because that would be embarrassing. But
I'm pretty sure Hess like just delivers himself straight to
the enemy like because of a like basically a fake.

(01:16:44):
So I mean, if you're out there and you are
reading astrological profiles, just be careful because they could have
been curated especially for you so that you would deliver
yourself into the enemy's hands.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
I wish wish they were true. I wish they were
trying to get me that way. No one's trying to
give me. That's what hurts the most about the CIA
is they're not trying to get me.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
But there was so like they were conducting like these
experiments with mescaline and it's unclear to me, like I
just I need to do a little bit more research
into it, but of what they were trying to do
with mesculine. But in the scramble for Nazi scientists that
happens that Operation Paperclip comes out of, like where we
recruit all the Nazi scientists, like there were kind of

(01:17:30):
these rumors going around the military that they had like
these drugs that were like a truth serum or like
that you could program assassins. And so the reason that
they're motivated to study this is a because the Nazis
were doing it, and then b because the Soviets got
some of these scientists. And so it's kind of like, well,
if the Soviets have this and like they're pursuing this

(01:17:51):
mind control of technology and they're program assassins and they're
going to be able to brainwash people, then we have
to be able to brainwash people. And so there's no
like method to it. Really, they're just afraid that like
their biggest enemy is going to have this power. And
so yeah, it's just like these spies sitting in a room.

(01:18:11):
It's like, well, maybe they're doing this, like maybe they're
maybe they're dosing homeless people in Moscow and inviting them
into a whorehouse and you never know, you don't know
what's going about.

Speaker 1 (01:18:22):
But we don't want to get out paced on the
whole Miss Hooker lsd fret. So we got to do
it for America.

Speaker 2 (01:18:29):
God damn, it's like, you know, I'm not saying that
their logic like makes a ton of sense, but it's
like a deeper It wasn't like they just came up
with this idea in like nineteen forty nine. It was
like it has this history to it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
No that I mean that kind of sounds right, Like
I want to believe it is like this, like you know,
somebody's talking to a demon, and the demon saying, you
need to break these people. You need to change the culture,
you need to ruin this, you need to do that.
But it could just be fear, you know, and fear

(01:19:03):
that the the communists are doing it, so we got
to do it. That that sounds right, I mean that's
human nature.

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
And that's how they justify it. I mean that's how
they're like have excused this. That's why I like a
lot of people are angry about MK Ultra and that
kind of thing. But like they got away with it,
you know without you know, super serious consequences and what
they were you know, the reason they were able to
get away with it, it was like, oh, we thought
the we thought the Soviets for doing it, so like
we needed to we needed to counter it. But like

(01:19:32):
what you to your point of like channeling demons. Like
what I was thinking about throughout this kind of entire thing,
it was like a breaking down a person and like
subjecting them to extreme trauma and getting them into a
dissociative state and trying to build an alter ego into them.
I'm like that sounds a lot like you're trying to
create the conditions for possession.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
Yes, and I and I recently had demons explained to
me in a way that kind of made sense. And
can we end with something batshit crazy? Can you land
project artichoke a little bit?

Speaker 2 (01:20:04):
Yes, Yes, we're landed.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
Let's land the bro on the ground. Okay, all right, yeah,
are we going to do another artichoke?

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
We'll do well, we'll actually pick up with kind of
the original, like we'll get back into pooharc because I
went off.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
On this kind of like no, it was interesting my.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
Control stuff, and then we'll bring Poharak back into But
I just wanted to like set the scene. So you
have the scene set of pooharrec up in Maine doing
the roundtable, and then you have the scene at Fort
Dietrich dosing a small town in France. You know, like, yeah,
these are the kind of two and then there's this
marriage that occurs of these kind of two different worlds.

(01:20:48):
So anyways, that's what I wanted to do.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
So I love that. I feel like it's contextualized. It
makes a little bit more sense to me. And so
now I'm just gonna say some stuff that's going to
make me sound like a raving lunatic. But one of
the things, listen, been listening to this stuff for years,
the CIA stuff, the this, the that, the conspiracy, the science,
the weird science, the normal science, and a lot of

(01:21:14):
this like ancient stuff, you know, the Graham Hancock stuff
and was there a civilization before a worldwide flood? And
is that flood myth captured in the Bible and others
bla blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And I
think one of the things that's frustrating as someone who
is curious and likes to take in information, is how

(01:21:35):
do I unify all of this? Like, how do I
fit all of this into one coherent framework? Is there
a narrative that explains the most possible amount of observations?
You know? And that everyone is the sound of my

(01:21:56):
computer running out of storage space, So you'll have to
stay tuned to listen to all my wisdom and grand
theories to the next episode. Email David if you'd like
to start talking about writing a book at editor at
hemispheric press dot com. Check out our substack at hemispheric

(01:22:17):
press dot substack dot com, and most importantly, buy my
book Gods I View on Amazon and Audible and pre
order Shroud Build on Amazon while you're at it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
Thanks everybody,

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