Joe Rogan Experience #1511 - Oliver Stone

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   All right, here we…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:03

      All right, here we go. Thank you very much for being here. I'm a really big fan, so this is a-

   2. OSOliver Stone0:07

      Thank you.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:07

      ... an honor for me. I'm real, real excited. I'm really excited about your book, I'm really excited about, uh, just your films, The Unto- Untold History in the United States, which I think is fantastic. I mean, that is, that's one of my favorite things that you've ever done, and, and, and so thorough and so interesting. But, um, the book, uh, first of all, look how good you look in there, on the cover there. You young-

   4. OSOliver Stone0:27

      Well, it's an old shot. (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:28

      ... young handsome bastard. Look at ya.

   6. OSOliver Stone0:29

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:29

      Looking good there.

   8. OSOliver Stone0:31

      Actually, it was-

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:31

      What, what year is that from?

   10. OSOliver Stone0:32

       ... it was 1968, November.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:34

       Wow.

   12. OSOliver Stone0:34

       I'd just come off the last mission in Vietnam.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:36

       Wow.

   14. OSOliver Stone0:37

       It was on a hilltop. We got stuck, uh, in the rain, in the A Shau Valley. It was First Cavalry, and, uh, we really, the helicopters couldn't get in for 11 days. It was awful.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:48

       Wow.

   16. OSOliver Stone0:48

       We had leeches everywhere, and we ... and the enemy, we didn't know where they were, but we felt that they were gonna close in. It was ... but it was too wet ultimately for them to close in, but they knew we were there. So we were praying. (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:00

       (laughs)

   18. OSOliver Stone1:01

       So the whole time was kind of nerve-wracking, 'cause it was my last few days, you understand. I was supposed to get out of there, uh, DROs, leave the country. I was due out. Uh, I had volun- I had volunteered for an extra three months in order to get out of the Army three months sooner.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:16

       Wow.

   20. OSOliver Stone1:16

       In other words, they had, there, normally you had to serve, uh, if a two-year deal, you had to serve six, uh, six months stateside on the backside of it. So, uh, I didn't wanna do that 'cause I was going nuts with the rules and the regulations, and I'd gotten into some trouble with that. So I extended in combat for another three months, and that ended up in this mission.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:36

       (laughs) How much did your time serving impact your, your directing? And you, like y- you've had these life experiences as someone who's just a filmmaker, th- they really can't draw upon. Like, you, you've had actual combat experience, and when you're making movies about combat, I mean, that has to be a, a, a gigantic advantage. Or at least it l- it adds layers to it that are almost impossible to cre- to recreate for someone who's just trying to imagine what it's like.

   22. OSOliver Stone2:05

       Yeah, and that was very important when we did Platoon. Uh, I wa- I was trying to get the exact distances and what ... and the amount of firepower is not as us- it's not as intense, generally speaking, as the movies make it.

   23. JRJoe Rogan2:20

       Yeah.

   24. OSOliver Stone2:20

       And that's the problem, because the movies have so much to pl- you know, so much to show, they bring the enemy much closer, they, they condense things, and they, they amplify as much as possible. Now, I did that too here and there, so I'm, I'm guilty too. But I think overall, it's way overdone, and, uh, the newer stuff that's come out since 2001, you know, with the patriotic stuff and the heavily, heavily militaristic stuff is way off. Way off. And, uh, people don't die that way, like, you know, in the, uh, type of films like Mark Wahlberg made or, you know, those kind of films. They're just way, way overdone. Anyway.

   25. JRJoe Rogan3:00

       In w- in what way? Like ...

   26. OSOliver Stone3:02

       Well, uh, what was the name of the film? Lone Survivor?

   27. JRJoe Rogan3:04

       Yeah.

   28. OSOliver Stone3:05

       Was that the name of it?

   29. JRJoe Rogan3:05

       Yeah.

   30. OSOliver Stone3:06

       Yeah, they get dropped off, whatever, 10 guys, and they manage to kill how many Taliban for each guy, you know?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   It's interesting when you…

   1. OSOliver Stone15:00

      uh, a big concern of the Pentagon. They knew they w- the thing was not going to work. It was cracking from within. So we, we gave more and more, let's say, uh, more and more, uh, credit to the Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, and saying that they were going to take our place. We're going to put more money. We put a fortune into them, South Vietnamese army, like we're doing now with the Afghan army (laughs) .

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:22

      It's interesting when you look back. What year did Platoon come out? '80...

   3. OSOliver Stone15:26

      We finally made it out in '86.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:28

      '86.

   5. OSOliver Stone15:28

      December.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:29

      When, when you really think about it, you're only talk- you're not talking about that much distance, distance between that movie coming out and the Vietnam War ending. I mean, in terms of how we look at the world now.

   7. OSOliver Stone15:40

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:40

      I mean, if we look at, it's 2020. If we look at 2000, that doesn't seem like 2003. That doesn't seem that long ago.

   9. OSOliver Stone15:47

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:47

       But that's kind of the timeline you're looking at.

   11. OSOliver Stone15:49

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:49

       And so, in a lot of ways, it was probably very fresh in a lot of people's eyes, particularly people in the Pentagon.

   13. OSOliver Stone15:57

       It was quite something when it came out. It was a, you know, it was, it was like a bomb went off.

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:01

       Hmm.

   15. OSOliver Stone16:01

       I mean, it went around the world, first of all. It wasn't just America. This film played everywhere. And was, I guess, as a shock at the time because it was more realistic than any war film that they had seen. And of course, it was dirty. It got, you know... I mean, it was... We had drug use in it, which was, you know, description of the division. There was a division in the, uh, army. We were draftees, many of us. So it wasn't all volunteer, you know, and it wasn't all like gung-ho at all. It was a split, and I just... I described, I showed the split as much as I could. Uh, I would be in the... I joined the camp with the people who I would say were anti-authoritarian. I wouldn't say they were anti-war because we didn't have anything like that going on. It was just, "The army sucks. The man sucks." You know, a lot of the Black troops knew this. So there was a lot of dissension with the Black troops too, because when Martin Luther King got killed in April of '68, that had, that had negative impact over there. So there was a lot going on in the country, and people were seeing it, feeling it, and, uh, new, new troops were coming in all the time from the country draftees. So we were, you know, you get a feeling for what's going on.

   16. JRJoe Rogan17:18

       Did the mo- did the movie feel different to you than anything else you've ever done in terms of your obligation? Because y- I really do think that that was the most realistic, at that point, for sure, war movie ever made, and the, the one that left people with the most conflicted feelings, and just th- this, this feeling of... As much as you can relay it in a film with notable actors, that y- y- you, you showed the horrors of war in a way that I don't think had ever been portrayed before in a film.

   17. OSOliver Stone17:51

       Well, we got the details right. I mean, when you see a dead body and you see it being lifted into a helicopter, that's really looks like a dead man. And-

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:59

       Yeah.

   19. OSOliver Stone17:59

       ... y- y- the pain of death. I mean, you feel the danger. You fe- it's, it's never what you think it's going to be. It always comes up in another way. It's, like, sloppy sometimes. And battle... And that's what I don't like about a lot of the movies. Battle is often just confusion, breaking down, things don't work. It's like Mike Tyson said, you know, y- "Your plan goes out the window when you get hit in the face." It's... That's the way it goes. It never pla- e- c- See, the Americans had a methodical way of doing it. We, we go into the jungle. We send the, the little guys into the jungle. They meet resistance, pull back, bomb, artillery, do anything.... take minimum casualties. That's not what the Marines did, but that's what the army's idea was. And that, it works to a degree, but it eradicates the whole... The, the bombing is, is very sloppy.

   20. JRJoe Rogan18:53

       Hmm.

   21. OSOliver Stone18:54

       And not only do you have friendly fire, but you have a lot of civilians killed too.

   22. JRJoe Rogan18:58

       Imagine when you finish your final cut of that movie and it got re- that had to be a very strange, almost like you're, you're releasing a child. You're, you're, you, I mean, it was... It had to have been so much more personal and so much, so much more significant.

   23. OSOliver Stone19:13

       Yeah, I'd been through so much. I really, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't think it was gonna... I thought it was a good movie, and I thought it was a good script. And I didn't think, I didn't expect anything. I had just done Salvador, which was about a dirty civil war down in, uh, in Central America, in which America again supported some pretty bad guys-

   24. JRJoe Rogan19:31

       Yeah.

   25. OSOliver Stone19:31

       ... some death squads. And I showed that. And that picture had not done very well, because it had been... America had been very little, no interest really in the Central American issues of the 1980s. Remember the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. There was a lot of turmoil in Guatemala, turmoil in, uh, Honduras where... I, I went down there to research, uh, Salvador and what I saw in Honduras was the beginning of another Vietnam. That's one of the reasons I really committed to Salvador heavily. When I saw the troops, the American troops... Now there were women, men and women, uh, young, in uniform, many of them National Guard troops, reserves. They were there building up for this at- I think it was pretty clear that Reagan was gonna attack Nicaragua in some way, but it never happened because of a fortuitous accident when the CIA got busted for flying a cargo, uh, a cargo over Nicaragua. And it was a huge scandal that led to the Iran-Contra unraveling, uh, with Reagan. So Reagan was unable to do what he wanted to do in, um, in, uh, Nicaragua. Although we had mined the port, we'd done everything possible supporting the Contras. All that pissed me off. In other words, it was like 20 years after the war, 15 years after the war, here I am back in Central America. I'm seeing the same thing, young guys like me in a country yet, uh, you know, just believing what they're hearing from their superiors.

   26. JRJoe Rogan21:03

       So you felt like this obligation to not just release Salvador, but also release Platoon as... In Platoon, your experiences showing what the Vietnam War was really like, and with Salvador saying, "Hey, this is happening again."

   27. OSOliver Stone21:17

       Yeah. I did them simultaneously, except I didn't really beli- I didn't believe Platoon was gonna work-

   28. JRJoe Rogan21:23

       Yeah.

   29. OSOliver Stone21:23

       ... come out, so I didn't have much faith in it.

   30. JRJoe Rogan21:25

       Well, when it did come out, how much of a surprise was it when it was a giant hit?
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yeah. …

   1. OSOliver Stone30:00

      (laughs) . I wanted to see what, what this country was about. I, you know, I was, I was inquisitive. I was... I wanted to know what life was about. I mean, I'd grown up rel- relatively sheltered, you know?

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:11

      Yeah.

   3. OSOliver Stone30:11

      I went to, uh... My father, uh, made a living on Wall Street. He was a Republican, Eisenhower supporter. He was a lieutenant colonel in World War II when he met my mother. So, I mean, he was a, a, a s- strong Republican, and all his life, uh, I grew up in that ethic. Uh, and it really... It's something that when I went to Vietnam, he had never been in combat, but when I saw what I saw over there, coming from a sheltered existence relatively, it was shattered. The look in the... The glass was shattered. It was just... I wasn't like... I couldn't take my father's word for it anymore on anything, so I had to learn for myself. That's why.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:53

      What was different from your father's perceptions of what, what it was like for-

   5. OSOliver Stone30:56

      Well, he supported the war, like many, many people did, uh, for several years, until he got older, and then he came around one day, and he said, "You know, I think it's a... And I think you're right. I think it was a s- it's a futile thing." Because, uh, the, the whole idea of the Cold War, he wa- he, he began to question it at the age of, uh, 70 about, 65. He said, "You know, what, what, what difference does it make, uh, this domino bullshit?" He said, uh, "You know, the Russians have a sub off Long Island. You know, they can bl- they can nuke us from anywhere. You know, it does- it doesn't make sense to play this, uh, uh, zero-sum game of fighting for land, fighting for one country or another, intervening in other countries." He began to question everything. So, uh, and I was too. So it... I didn't change, uh ... I know you're gonna go to later in my life, but basically, I didn't change until I gone, went to this trip into Honduras, which I just told you about, with my friend, Richard Boyle, for Salvador. In 1985, I went down there, and what I saw in Central America confirmed that we were doing it again. We were going into these countries. We didn't know what the fuck they were about. We didn't... And we were fighting these, in most cases, the interests of most of the people, the majority of the people. They'd had a revolution in, in Nicaragua 'cause it was so corrupt, major revolution in 1979, and, uh, the, the, uh... We've been opposed to that new regime ever since.

   6. JRJoe Rogan32:27

      So when you first... When you entered into the army, when you signed up, did you, did you have clarity about this? Did you... Would you just have this idea in your head-

   7. OSOliver Stone32:36

      No.

   8. JRJoe Rogan32:36

      ... that you needed to find out-

   9. OSOliver Stone32:37

      No, no.

   10. JRJoe Rogan32:38

       ... what it was like?

   11. OSOliver Stone32:39

       No. No, I had no clarity. I was... I wanted to get out of New York. I wanted to get away from my, the whole w- my parents were divorced. My father, I wanted to get away from my father. I wanted to get away from everything I knew. I didn't, I didn't like Yale University. I was in the class with George Bush (laughs) .

   12. JRJoe Rogan32:56

       (laughs)

   13. OSOliver Stone32:56

       You know, I come from that generation of Donald Trump-

   14. JRJoe Rogan32:58

       Yeah.

   15. OSOliver Stone32:58

       ... George Bush, Bill Clinton.

   16. JRJoe Rogan33:00

       Yeah.

   17. OSOliver Stone33:00

       It's the same generation.

   18. JRJoe Rogan33:01

       Yeah.

   19. OSOliver Stone33:01

       But I don't identify with those people, uh, uh, because maybe they, they didn't have that sense of service at all. I did. I had a sense of patriotism. I thought, yeah, but I think, call it, I really think it was misplaced, but I felt that I owe my country something.

   20. JRJoe Rogan33:17

       Yeah.

   21. OSOliver Stone33:18

       I can't work just for myself.

   22. JRJoe Rogan33:19

       The reason why I keep going back to this, it's so significant that you had that moment in your life when you were involved in Vietnam and you were in combat duty, because all of your films, although they are these big commercial successes, they all have a message. I mean, uh, Midnight Express, even Scarface. There's a, there's a message in these films that's based on real live scenarios that took place that a lot of people are unaware of, you know. A lot of people got their education about, uh, Cuba releasing prisoners to America based on Scarface. I mean, that's how a lot of people found out about that.

   23. OSOliver Stone33:56

       That's too bad because it's... I wish we had more con- more study of what's going on in the world, more contemporary studies, but-

   24. JRJoe Rogan34:03

       Well, that's, again, what I really loved about The Untold History of the United States. It's a fantastic piece that you put together. Want another chair?

   25. OSOliver Stone34:10

       Okay.

   26. JRJoe Rogan34:10

       Get slacked on that chair right there.

   27. OSOliver Stone34:12

       Yeah. Excuse me.

   28. JRJoe Rogan34:14

       No worries. Um, but you, that, that's something that's really flavored your life is that your, your work is not just commercial. You don't, you don't just put out these commercial success-

   29. OSOliver Stone34:26

       No.

   30. JRJoe Rogan34:26

       ... movies.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   ... space- peace of…

   1. GUGuest45:00

      r- gaping wound in the rear right of his, Mr. Kennedy's head. Yeah. And that was covered up. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there was, um, there was also the reason why they needed to make that magic bullet work. The guy who got hit under the underpass- Oh, yeah, yeah. ... which is a, uh, a- Well, I know you're, I can see your enthusiasm on this. No, it's deep. I ca- Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, uh, come on, I mean, you know, if you're an infantryman, you, it's a har- you can't fire three shots like that. Why aren't you not firing at him when he's coming towards you if you really- Mm-hmm. ... if you're serious? It's very unlikely, but possible. I mean, it can be done. The shot can be done, but that's one of the least ridiculous things about that story is whether or not one person could have pulled off those shots. I don't think it could be done. I don't think it could be done. I don't think the, I think the world's l- best, uh, marksmen couldn't do it. I remember reading something about that. Mm, I'm not sure about that. No, it's a hard shot. Three shots- It's a hard shot, but hard shots can be made. Hard shots can be made. Three shots in that time period? Depending upon how much he train- trained for it, depending on what ... I mean, I've, I've, know some people that are s- spectacular marksmen that can do some ridiculous shit, and do it so fast, like- But he wasn't. He wasn't. But he was also trained, and if he, d- depending upon how much training he did between his time in the service and his time actually getting ready to shoot Kennedy, you can get a lot better. I don't know how much training he did. I mean, you could take someone who's three years ago a terrible shot, and then he, they kill someone, you go, "Well he couldn't have done it, he's a terrible shot. Look, three years ago he was a terrible shot." Mm-hmm. Well, if that guy was training that entire time- With a, with that rifle? Well, see the, there, I don't think the rifle ... Look, it can be done, but again, whether it's likely or not, that could be debated. Anyway, yeah. But it's the least ridiculous thing about that story. Well, w- wait 'til you see the documentary- I can't wait. ... 'cause we, we, we go, we, I think we pretty much prove that there's no chain of evidence on the, on the rifle either. Hm, oh, no, I'm sure. I'm sure. Did you read Da- uh, David Lifton's book, Best Evidence? Years ago, yeah. Yeah, that's what got me into the Kennedy assassination. Oh. Somebody gave it to me, a friend of mine, a c- musician friend of mine when I was on the road, and, uh, I re- (laughs) I read it unfortunately all day right before my stand up comedy shows that night, and I was so depressed. Yeah. I didn't think anything was funny, and I went on stage, I had a terrible show. And then, uh, I had to shake myself out of it for the second show- Yeah. ... because I was bummed out. I was like, I had never considered it before. I'm like, "Jesus Christ, they killed the president and they covered it up." Yeah, and we're paying for it to this day, 'cause I think, uh, Mr. Kennedy was one of the, really on the road to being a great president, and I think he did a lot of great things that people don't even know, and we put that in the documentary. What he was actually doing in Africa- Mm-hmm. ... people don't know. What he was doing around the world in Asia, in Cuba, obviously, South America, what his plans were. People don't understand that there was a big divide between Ly- Lyndon Johnson, who he, he was about to get rid of him as vice president and for the next election. There was a big divide in thinking between Kennedy and Johnson. Kennedy was without doubt pulling out of the war. Y- there was a directive, we, we, we bring it up in the, from the, uh, a, a sec def conference in Hawaii from earlier that year. He was pulling out, he w- made that very clear. Well, there was also the Northwoods document, which was really crazy. Oh, that's shocking, yeah, that's crazy. Shocking when you- Sure. ... actually, because this is not speculation or, uh, any kind of conspiracy theory, this is all from the Freedom of Information Act signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff- (laughs) ... they were going to blow up a jet airliner and blame it on the Cubans. They were gonna arm Cuban friendlies and attack Guantanamo Bay. They were gonna do all this to get us to go to war with Cuba. Yeah. And it was, it's, it's stunning that this, this is an, this is an actual plan by the United States government, vetoed by Kennedy. Wasn't there a plan also to fly a plane into a building, as I remember? I don't know if there was. There was a plane, a plan to blow up a drone jetliner. They were gonna take a jetliner, fly it- Yeah. ... and blow it up in the sky, and, and, you know, attribute, uh, all these deaths to that. That came about actually, the Northwoods came about as a result of the movie, because that was what they, was found by the Assassination Records Review Board. Really? Yeah. Wow. So, it's one of many documents that have come out. That's why it's important from my, s- sp-

   2. OSOliver Stone49:00

      ... space- peace of mind to finish this thing. It's kinda like, "Okay, this is the end. I have to just-"

   3. JRJoe Rogan49:05

      Mm-hmm.

   4. OSOliver Stone49:06

      "... put down the evidence, because I couldn't do it in a film."

   5. JRJoe Rogan49:09

      Right. Yeah, that's what I was gonna get to. Like, what, what is it like when you have this passion for this story, and this is a, a critical story in the history of the United States.

   6. OSOliver Stone49:18

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan49:19

      And a clear piece of... I mean, it's, it's a clear historical record of an assassination of a president, and most likely-

   8. OSOliver Stone49:26

      (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan49:27

      ... whe- who... I mean, I don't know, who do you, who do you think was behind it?

   10. OSOliver Stone49:30

       I think, um, it... I'm not gonna, you know, get sued because they're all dead-

   11. JRJoe Rogan49:34

       Right.

   12. OSOliver Stone49:34

       ... but I think that Allen Dulles has to be looked at a lot closer, and I think hi- he was no longer in the CIA but he had a tremendous amount of influence, and I think he needed some organized, very organized top people to help him. So I think it could've been a group of people that were involved, and that may be involving certain people in the Pentagon too, because there was an awful lot of strange things that happened.

   13. JRJoe Rogan49:58

       Yeah, he certainly had some ideas that didn't jive well with the, the people that were in power.

   14. OSOliver Stone50:03

       Dulles was fired by Kennedy, let's call it-

   15. JRJoe Rogan50:05

       Yeah, that's true too.

   16. OSOliver Stone50:05

       ... call a spade a spade, which had never been done.

   17. JRJoe Rogan50:08

       Right.

   18. OSOliver Stone50:08

       This was a shock, uh, to the American way of government. I mean, we'd come from a pro-military system and here was Kennedy questioning it. And then, uh, w- you know, when after he was killed, I mean, it was insane for Lyndon Johnson to appoint him to the Warren Commission-

   19. JRJoe Rogan50:25

       Hmm.

   20. OSOliver Stone50:25

       ... where he managed to control pretty much the hearings and who, who was heard, who wasn't heard-

   21. JRJoe Rogan50:30

       Right.

   22. OSOliver Stone50:30

       ... and what the CIA was delivering to the... It was a joke, it was transparent a joke.

   23. JRJoe Rogan50:34

       There's a qu- a couple things that are a joke. Arlen Specter, being the guy who comes up with the magic bullet theory, is another joke.

   24. OSOliver Stone50:40

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan50:41

       There's, there's a lot of that that's ve- just very disturbing. When... It's one of those things where you go over that subject and you just leave in this state of d- discomfort and unease, and, and it's very hard to relax afterwards.

   26. OSOliver Stone50:53

       (laughs) Well, you'll wait till you see our documentary.

   27. JRJoe Rogan50:55

       I can't wait. I love... Look, I lo- like I said, I love the untold history of the United States-

   28. OSOliver Stone50:59

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan50:59

       ... and I think you do a great service, uh, with that, that series-

   30. OSOliver Stone51:04

       Yeah.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:14:50

   Yeah. …

   1. OSOliver Stone1:00:00

      he-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      Yeah.

   3. OSOliver Stone1:00:00

      ... has that thread. That whole Dallas section is part of the, uh, is part of the structure. It starts the movie, but it also, we go back to it at the right time, and at the climax, we go back to it for the final time, the way, the way it, it probably happened, see? So then the, that's three stories, and then the fourth story, if you want to know the truth in my thinking at that time was the Donald Sutherland, uh, business.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:22

      Yes. That was something I know-

   5. OSOliver Stone1:00:22

      He comes into the movie at the halfway point, and he gives Garrison a lot of new information l- because Garrison thinks he was dealing on a local level. He thinks he's de- dealing with something that's in New Orleans. He's not sure what beyond it. So he, and now Cohen says, "It's a much bigger story," which sends Costner into the last act, going to Dallas, and f- it's too much for the, for the Costner character. He c- you know, he, uh, he's blown away by it. He knows he's up against forces much larger than he ever thought.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:54

      And this tri- w- who was the c- uh, what was the motivation for the Donald Sutherland character?

   7. OSOliver Stone1:01:00

      Fletcher Prouty, he was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. He was the focal officer between the CIA and the Pentagon, l- an old-timer World War II, did a lot of service.... and, uh, he was in charge of basically providing the CIA with military equipment for covert operations. He worked in Tibet. He worked on a lot of the, uh, operations in the '50s and the late '40s. We had operations going on in Ukraine, uh, Ukraine, uh, and China, Tibet. He was, uh, he trained, uh, Tibetans in the, the Colorado mountains and many stories. He's written several books. You should... He, uh, he was a, he was a keen observer of the differences that were going on. He knew Dulles, used to brief him, and told me stories about then. Everything changed after Kennedy was killed. He described-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:01:53

      So you got, you got to meet him?

   9. OSOliver Stone1:01:54

      Oh, yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:01:55

       Yeah.

   11. OSOliver Stone1:01:55

       Oh, yeah, I hung out with him. He had Garrison too. I mean, the both of these were authentic men and Fletcher described, you know, the difference after November '63. He felt it right away. He left the Pentagon a year later. It was over. Uh, there was something that changed in the country. And sure enough, we were in Vietnam faster than you can imagine with combat troops.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:02:18

       Yeah, another crazy character in that whole, that, that whole historical record is Jack Ruby.

   13. OSOliver Stone1:02:25

       Oh, yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:02:26

       He's a, he's a very strange one. And, uh, I just read a book called, uh, Chaos by Tom O'Neil. It's about the CIA and, uh, Manson in the '60s.

   15. OSOliver Stone1:02:35

       Oh, yeah. I read, I know the book, yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:02:37

       Yeah, it's very interesting, but Ruby is in that book as well, because Ruby was actually visited by, uh, I forget his name, Jolly, something Jolly. Jolly West. What's his name? Jolly West. Jolly West, thank you, um, who was the central character in MKUltra, who they believe was involved in these various, uh, C... Yeah, that's a Plastisol.

   17. OSOliver Stone1:03:01

       Oh.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:03:01

       No, it comes off my arm. Don't worry about it.

   19. OSOliver Stone1:03:03

       No, no. I'm listening. (laughs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:03:04

       Uh, but he was a, a central character in the, the CIA's use of LSD during the whole Operation Midnight Climax in San Francisco, and they ran a free clinic in Haight-Ashbury that's connected to Manson, where they were prescr- giving people LSD and running studies on 'em.

   21. OSOliver Stone1:03:22

       Yeah, and I read about that.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:03:22

       He went to visit Ruby in prison, and Ruby, who had shown no psychological trauma or distress, after he left was a mess, curled up in a fetal position on the ground and was si- thinking they were burning Jews in the streets and lit- literally was-

   23. OSOliver Stone1:03:39

       No.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:03:39

       ... in, in a psychotic state, and they think they dosed him up while he was in jail.

   25. OSOliver Stone1:03:43

       Yeah, he seems to be the mob connection to this thing.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:03:45

       Yes, yeah.

   27. OSOliver Stone1:03:47

       You can put your arm back.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:03:48

       I'll fix it back, yeah. It's, uh...

   29. OSOliver Stone1:03:50

       No, Ruby's, uh, h- his contacts alone is, goes back many years to the '40s. He was quite a, he was mobbed up completely and didn't wanna do it. He was forced into doing it.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:04:01

       Why do you think he was forced? What, what do you think it was?

Episode duration: 1:43:27