EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,217 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- RLRebecca Lemov
(drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out!
- NANarrator
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) All right. Hello, Rebecca. Very nice to meet you.
- RLRebecca Lemov
Hi, Joe. Very nice to meet you too.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, um, first of all, what got you interested in mind control?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Well, so this is a question I've been asking myself, just because I find myself, after two and a half decades of having this topic... (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RLRebecca Lemov
... that initially seemed pretty niche and unusual, and not many people were interested, or many people were skeptical about it. But I thought it seemed like it em- embodied some of the more extreme... If you could look at the way people are shaped by their environments and by their, you know... what parts of your life are determined by you and what parts are determined by outside forces, that mind control would be a perfect area to investigate that, because it's so extreme, especially if you looked at particular cases. So, I... because I'd done my dissertation, uh, at UC Berkeley on the history of behavioral engineering and how, you know, these kind of models for creating a society of control and, uh, encouragement in various ways, like a behaviorist kind of dream. And it seemed like the next step was to i- to look at something like brainwashing or mind control.
- JRJoe Rogan
When you first started studying it, was it a, a less, um, public sort of a curiosity? Because now, a lot of people are very much interested, and I blame the internet mostly.
- RLRebecca Lemov
(laughs) Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I probably had a lot to do with it too.
- RLRebecca Lemov
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
But just-
- RLRebecca Lemov
You and the internet. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
A lot of people on the internet are, you know... because over time, you know, people have gotten to know about MKUltra and a bu- a bunch of different, different programs that the, uh, that our own United States government was involved in, where they were working on mind control. But what, l- like, initially, what drew you to it?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Well, I guess I always have been drawn to topics that seemed, uh, unusual maybe for a professor to be looking into. And people... I mean, at the time, if you look at a Google engram for the word "mind control" or "brainwashing", they were very low, you know, around the turn of the century, or the 1990s. After there kind of... there was a peak of interest in the '70s, and it just really fallen off. But I guess I was interested 'cause it just seemed so unusual, and like maybe there was something there that people hadn't really thought about. And at the time, these documents weren't readily available, and like you say, people weren't really looking into it. So, I just thought it seemed like a rich area for research. And I'm also interested in connecting my per-... I've always been interested in connecting my personal, uh, I guess my goals for life with what I research. So, I thought, it's almost like a philosophical and existential question of how much we're controlled or how much we might ke- be controlled. And it seemed important to look at some of the more extreme cases, if you could.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I think that- that's an interesting aspect of it. Like, how much are we controlled? And how arrogant are we to think that we're not controlled? Or how arrogant are we to think that that wouldn't work on me?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah, I think that- that's embedded in our, you know, in our... in the messages we rec- receive all the time that- that freedom is something kind of effortless that we're just granted, and that autonomy is just, uh, the natural state. But actually, we're so much more malleable than we think. And these things, if you look around yourself, or e- if you observe yourself, you'll often see this to be true. That's what also drew me to anthropology, is just the idea, like, if I was born in another place at another time, I would be another person, or how much of me would be transferrable, was-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RLRebecca Lemov
... what that interested me. And I... that's why I went to... first started studying anthropology. Like, how much are we shaped by things that we don't necessarily choose, or are maybe accidental or genetic or various factors? But, um, yeah, but I think we're told that, um, that freedom of, freedom of choice or our autonomy is fairly straightforward, and all you have to do is exert your will.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, b- but clearly, we're influenced heavily by our environment, culturally. I mean, accents, uh, just cultural traditions, behavior patterns. It begs the questions, like, what, what are you? And what is the... what is the, the, the shell that you wear on the outside? You know, like a hermit crab.
- RLRebecca Lemov
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, what, what do you carry around with you? And what... at the core of it, what are you? You know?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah, that also... I mean, that is the oldest question of Socrates. Who am I? Or...
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RLRebecca Lemov
... you know, just the quest- it's the... it's a deep question, and it's also kind of like a practical question. So, I thought, if you could look at it more in, in actual examples, that would be interesting. And I also... I guess I was drawn to the topic, maybe... yeah, maybe because other people weren't studying it, or also because of experiences in my life. Just seemingly small things, like one day I remember, when I was in graduate school, I was walking down the street, and I said, uh... we passed a small dog, and I said, "I really, I really hate small dogs." Like, and I, I realized as I said it that it wasn't true.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RLRebecca Lemov
But I had just like... I love... (laughs) I actually really like them. What's wrong with small dogs?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RLRebecca Lemov
But I had absorbed this opinion some... from somewhere.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Uh... (laughs) …
- RLRebecca Lemov
story, is I got very into yoga when I was living in Oakland, uh, also in graduate school, and I, I would go... It was... It, it was really helpful with school just to have a very physical demanding practice, and... But, uh, there was a whole community around it, and it turned out that the teacher was sleeping with many of the students, but I just didn't know it. I thought he was p- He was a... I don't know, I just thought he was, uh... I admired him. I brought my boyfriend at the time to pick m- He came to pick me up after class, and he said something like... And he's now my husband, he said, uh, "Oh, it just... I just got the vibe that everyone there is sleeping with everybody else," and I was shocked. (laughs) I was like, "No, that's not happening."
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh... (laughs)
- RLRebecca Lemov
But it actually (laughs) it actually was. So you could say it's a bit... I don't think it was a cult, but it certainly was a scandal and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. I had the exact-
- RLRebecca Lemov
... yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... same experience.
- RLRebecca Lemov
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
The first time I started taking yoga, there was a guy who was a yoga teacher who, um... I have always been, uh, very wary of control and controlling people and those kind of environments, and that this guy was like... There, there was something inauthentic about his spirituality that-
- RLRebecca Lemov
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... greased me the wrong way. I was like, "Yuck." Like, just the way he would chant and the things he would say, there was just too much ego involved, and I found out he was banging all the students, and I was like, "Of course he is. I knew it."
- RLRebecca Lemov
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause my wife roped me into going to the class. That was the first time I went. I was like, "I really like the stretching."
- RLRebecca Lemov
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It's, like, really great. I really like yoga itself as a practice, but, I mean, the problem is these people that are... And it's kind of the problem with everything, like when one person is in control and one person is the person who gets to lead the class, and then they get praise heaped upon them by the students, and then they start to think that they deserve it, and then they don't have a lot of self-reflection, and they're not very objective, and then they sort of revel in it and enjoy it, and the next thing you know, they're taking advantage of it-
- RLRebecca Lemov
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... and it's like, ugh (sighs) .
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah. It's a... Yeah, it's very helpful to have that defense, uh, radar-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RLRebecca Lemov
... of a certain kind. Also, sometimes I think these, uh, prominent teachers, they have had some sort of... I don't wanna say enlightenment experience, but some sort of breakthrough, something that, that felt profound to them, 'cause many people do. We now know that these experiences are incredibly common, and yet... So they take that as a kind of license. "Well, now-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- RLRebecca Lemov
... I must be enlightened or what I'm... You know, I have to take the mantle. I- my people are awaiting this," or they sort of then justify things they wouldn't otherwise do.
- JRJoe Rogan
Spiritual narcissism. Yeah, yeah.
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah, it can actually engender that because of... Or... Yeah, and I think there's some... This has been described too. Spiritual narcissism is a good phrase though.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's legit.
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you see a lot of it. There's a lot of it in the psychedelic community, a lot of it-
- RLRebecca Lemov
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in the meditation community, a lot of it in the yoga community. So they just start thinking that they're better than people that don't do it.
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah, it feels very special.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Yeah. …
- RLRebecca Lemov
or you could say even monasteries maybe aspire to this.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RLRebecca Lemov
Some kind of religious organizations also have that intentional quality. And some... So I've done some research into some of these 'cause you wouldn't consider them cults necessarily, but they can end up having some of those qualities, such as sexual, um, just the demand that people, uh, have sex with each other, which tends to just create a lot of chaotic...... circumstances.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why do you think it always involves-
- RLRebecca Lemov
Why-
- JRJoe Rogan
... that?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Why does it always go that way? I don't know. I mean, it's very interesting, 'cause it... I even read, uh, Norman Cahn's classic, uh, History of Millen- Millennialism, which are a lot of groups in the Middle Ages and, um, afterwards that... like Christian sects, where they would break off and... including things like the Children's Crusade and others. And they often would end up with a kind of free love, uh... Even though they're very devout and, uh, extreme, and sort of devoted to giving up their worldly possessions, there was sometimes this component of, uh, this kind of sexual, uh, freedom that would end up destructively... having destructive outcomes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you think that is just because of just genetics? Just th- the, the encoded desire to spread your seed because life is very fragile and especially in tribal life, when you're going back to the hunter-gatherer days, people didn't live very long, and it was very difficult to... Like, have you ever met- read, uh, John Marco Allegro's... any of his work?
- RLRebecca Lemov
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
He wrote, uh, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross-
- RLRebecca Lemov
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
... which is a fascinating book about the Dead Sea Scrolls, and he's got a very controversial perspective on Christianity.
- RLRebecca Lemov
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And his perspective was... and this guy was an ordained minister who was agnostic, because he be- he was an ordained minister, but then when he started studying theology, he started st- seeing all these parallels to all these various religions, and he was like, "Well, th- you know, uh, clearly, like, it's not one religion has it right."
- RLRebecca Lemov
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
"There's something in all these things, but it's not, like, I have to... I am a Catholic, and that's it, or I'm a Muslim, and that's it." He was like, "There's something here that's... that e- exists throughout all of them-"
- RLRebecca Lemov
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... this constant thread." So, he gets hired to be one of the people that deciphers the Dead Sea Scrolls. So, the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is, you know, a parchment, which is, you know, like, animal skins, and they have to do... Do you know the whole story behind it?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
They, they found them-
- RLRebecca Lemov
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in these clay tab- th- these, uh-
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... clay pots in Qumran and these caves, and it turns out to be, like, some of the oldest works of the Bible.
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, he deciphers it for 14 years-
- RLRebecca Lemov
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and after 14 years, his conclusion is that the entire religion was based on fertility rituals and the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms and that all of this had been sort of hidden in parables and stories, but he maintains that the root of it all was all about these people and the... these cults of fertility rituals-
- RLRebecca Lemov
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and consuming psychedelic mushrooms. And he even brought the... he- he f- traced the word Christ back to... and this is very controversial for... Christians, put your hackles up, I'm not saying I agree with this, but he tr- traced the word Christ back to an ancient Sumerian word which meant a mushroom covered in God's semen.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Yeah. I think the…
- JRJoe Rogan
mind control studies, the federal government?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah. I think the initial motivation was a kind of national... Internal, uh, em- emergency, national security emergency that emerged right after World War II. Uh, actually at the beginning of the Korean War, uh, when s- US, uh, pilots were coming back, uh, or were shown confessing to having shown- flown germ warfare missions over China. And then many POWs were coming back and, um, seemed to have been converted to communism or have been concerningly affected by something that was seen as brainwashing, by the... So, many of the, the soldiers coming back seemed to have been brainwashed or have be- have collaborated to some degree when they were he- held as prisoners. And then there were 21, uh, US, uh, POWs who elected to stay in China, and this really was a disturbing, um... You know, they all had a chance to choose when they were in the UN camps after they'd been held prisoner for four, four years or so, and 21 of them decided that they'd like to try their lot in China. And so this caused this kind of collective, this, this, uh... Caused a crisis of, you know, did the communists possess a super weapon of some s- some kind that no other war... There was even a famous article in The New Yorker that said, "Something new in history," that there was something that... Some capacity that this ideological system had, the communists had, that would... That was somehow rendering am- uh, Americans, uh, powerless against it. So, this, this was kind of the crisis of mind control, and MKUltra was an attempt to tov- to basically, uh, reverse engineer what this was. So, Jolly West was one of the first people. He was, he was th- in charge of studying the brainwashed pilots initially, and that's how he-
- JRJoe Rogan
What year was this?
- RLRebecca Lemov
That was in '52. But he also pre-... Before that, he was invol-... I mean, his... He had been trained to some degree with, um... He was trained by, uh, Harold Wolfe, who was at Cornell. He had done his residency at Cornell with Dr. Harold Wolfe, who was a s- a world ex- neurologist, a world expert in migraine, and, and basically the type of pain that comes from migraine, so you could say he was an expert in the pain, fear of pain cycle. And he had CIA connections from even before MKUltra was started.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, what did they determine the Chinese were doing?
- RLRebecca Lemov
So, they determined... West, uh, wrote a paper in 1957, and the part that was publicly- that was published in a journal called Sociometry described, uh... He, he described it as DDD, or debility, uh, dependency and dread, and he said basically these camps, uh, were systematically inducing a state of debility, which was, which was that s- uh, soldiers were starved and basically worn down. They were, uh, deprived of medical care. They were... I mean, this is also in the historical record. Something I studied extensively is that, you know, they had... Men were marched in, for example, the Tiger Death March north of the Yalu River from, uh, in... You know, from the war, where they'd been captured, and by the time they got there, they'd often lost half their body weight. They had been, uh, bombed by their own forces at night. They had sometimes, you know, where they had to pour the blood out of their boots every morning just to keep going and not be... Anyone who stopped would be shot. So, by the time they got to the camps, they were really worn down and... A missionary who saw th- who passed them in a train at that time wrote, or described in an oral history, uh, he, he didn't recognize them as Americans, but they were, they were the most bedraggled, um-... you know, that it was just a very, uh, they were in a terrible state. And so, so, uh, debility was the first thing West, West described when he was extracting what had happened. Dependency was, uh, you know, later there was a layer added in which the soldiers were ... the POWs were dependent for all their ... If they were going to survive, they required, um, you know, the camp, the camp, uh, leaders would provide it, so it made them very dependent. And there, they also engaged in, um, very formal Maoist thought reform with the men as a kind of experiment. And the third part was dread, which was just the idea that you could be killed at any time, or perhaps your family could be 'cause they threatened the family.
- JRJoe Rogan
Maoist thought reform?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah. The ... In the camp, in the POW camps, um, the Chinese, once the Chinese took over from the Koreans running the camps, they, because they s- they decided, I think it was almost a formal experi- at least that's how it looks to me. I don't think West wrote about this. But, um, in my own, uh, research on the camps, it, it transpires that they w- they wanted to see, 'cause Mao believed that thought reform would work on anybody, not just on Chinese people and not just on Chinese peasants. He felt that only something like 7 or, to 8% of the human population was unreformable, and those people would be disposed of. But he wanted to check if these American, uh, soldiers would also be, uh, susceptible to reeducation. So, they really did a formal, you know, three-part reeducation program on them. And men had many different responses to it. But when West met them, he, he studied, uh, some of, many of the returning men when they came back to Lackland Air Force Base, and he extracted those three, those three components of what had happened to them, DDD and then. And that's the way he became an expert on what he called brainwashing or coercive persuasion.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, how do they go from that to, like, sponsoring the Manson family and, you know-
- RLRebecca Lemov
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
... Operation Midnight Climax and all the crazy stuff that they were doing?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah, it may seem like a leap.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RLRebecca Lemov
But, uh, I think it, I mean ...
- JRJoe Rogan
Sort of.
- RLRebecca Lemov
It's sort of a leap and it's sort of not. I think that MKUltra was funded, um, around, i- in direct response to this crisis of the, of the POWs. And in addition to reverse engineering what had happened to them, they also wanted to turn it into a weapon and continue certain programs in, in, uh, interrogation procedures and making them more effective. So, MKUltra just had m- a wide reach and it was pretty free rein. Uh, it was a free rein program and, um, you know, the historian Alfred Mc- Alfred McCroy says it was modeled on the, uh, Los Alamos in a way, a kind of Manhattan Project for the mind.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- RLRebecca Lemov
So, just as the atom had been disassembled and, you know, transformed into this new, uh, this new world had emerged from that program, that intensive, uh, exertion of scientific acumen, the same thing could be done with a mind. The mind could be sort of pulled apart (laughs) and human consciousness and functioning could be understand ... You know, people could be broken down and rebuilt.
- JRJoe Rogan
Were they trying to optimize the use of the mind to their advantage? Like, what was the end goal that they were trying to do with this?
- RLRebecca Lemov
One thing, uh, a couple things. I think one idea was it potentially could be a weapon. W- one goal. W- another, so it could be used on, on an enemy, perhaps even a city, so that's one reason they were researching LSD. It had certain properties that made it easily, it could be easily dispensed to an entire population through the water supply. So, they wanted to know what exactly are the properties of LSD. People didn't really know at the time. So, there was an offensive part of it, but there's also a defensive part. So, the US military needed to be trained to resist whatever this was. Once they understood it, they developed the SERE training, and that was, West was involved in that, as well. And then a third thing was, a more, maybe a broader curiosity about, you know, which would lead you to be able to interrogate people better and perhaps also to, um, un- you know, just really understand. I think there was also kind of a, a curiosity about what would happen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RLRebecca Lemov
I think 'cause, just 'cause they had so much power to, uh, experiment in a way without any oversight. And it wasn't until 1963 that the inspector general of the CIA himself said, "This is, this is, um, unethical." And, you know, "We have done," uh, basically put a s- put a stop to it. But it, it really was-
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you say '63?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But it went on. I mean, the Harvard LSD studies, when were those?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Um, I actually, I don't know which ones exactly. There were some that were earlier that-
- JRJoe Rogan
What did, what are the ones that made Ted Kaczynski?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Okay. That, yeah, that's earlier. Th-
- JRJoe Rogan
Was it earlier than '63?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah, yeah.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
Yeah, that's a little…
- RLRebecca Lemov
was regularly taking acid, which can kind of shape your consciousness
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that's a little problematic. (laughs)
- RLRebecca Lemov
... and your moods. But, you know, interestingly, since you mentioned that, there was a peer-reviewed side of it, and they actually threw the he- But I got really interested in the cutouts from MKUltra. So they had a legitimating, a legitimate side. And many scientists who worked for them, they were almost subcontracting to them, and some of them knew it was CIA money, and some of them didn't know. So even someone like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Interesting.
- RLRebecca Lemov
... BF Skinner received money from the M- from MKUltra, but it was conduited, it was, I wanna say, conduited through the Human Ecology Society, which was, uh, part of it. But it was just a, a front organization. And they were really into these fronts. So some scientists, there was the group that later people would call the unwitting scientists who would just be... They were doing the research they wanted to do, it just happened to be of interest-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RLRebecca Lemov
... to the CIA. And then others, others would publish in legitimate journals, but then they'd have an, uh, classified version of their research that went more into detail in the aspects that MKUltra was interested in.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, that's also one of the more interesting aspects of MKUltra is that it's very difficult to find out what was really going on un- Unless they... There was a, uh, a bunch of files that were discovered, right?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
That sort of, uh, unveiled what, what was go- And if had not...... been, if those files had not been discovered, who knows what we would actually know about all this stuff.
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah. We wouldn't, we wouldn't know. And there are act- amazingly, so this was the result of a FOIA request by John Marx, who was a journalist at the time. And he made the request and, um, everything had been destroyed except for the financial records. And that just... but one thing I also want to mention, the CIA kept very good records of a lot of things. And even in the financial records, they still had copies of some of th- the commissioned, uh, projects, so that's how we know about them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- RLRebecca Lemov
That's, that's... and it really is accidental that they didn't think to purge their financial files.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it was probably so secretive that the people that were in charge currently when the FOIA requests were filed, probably weren't really aware of it all.
- RLRebecca Lemov
In... yeah, it was in the 70s. And it's in '77 or so, I think.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. So you're dealing with, you know, a decade past, who knows if the people currently in charge were even aware-
- RLRebecca Lemov
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 'cause I would imagine a lot of this stuff is very compartmentalized.
- RLRebecca Lemov
I think the destruction of the records had happened earlier, but that, that destruction had been, as you said, they, they made a mis-... I mean, from their point of view, they neglected this batch of documents.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoops.
- RLRebecca Lemov
And then, then the Church Committee came out in '75 and many revelations were made, although it was still partial. And then John Marx made his FOIA request sometime around then.
- JRJoe Rogan
It, it brings me back to yoga teachers, cult leaders, and then clandestine government operations. Like, the... whenever people have power, unchecked power and an insane influence, particularly influence to manipulate people, and influence over people's minds, and if your entire... if your established goal is to try to find out how you can manipulate people and what, what can be done-
- RLRebecca Lemov
Of course.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and you're, you're doing this complete, in complete secrecy with basically unlimited funding. That's all just all under the table stuff. Like, you could get away with so much.
- RLRebecca Lemov
You also... I think one component you also that helps (laughs) this develop is to have a high ideal at the same time. Something like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RLRebecca Lemov
... a kind of a... almost Messianic purpose.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. We're doing it to save America.
- RLRebecca Lemov
We're saving the world.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- 1:15:00 – 1:22:20
Really? …
- RLRebecca Lemov
... They write about this in a publication in Science magazine. If you could trigger ... So elephants regularly go through musth cycles where they become ... Even though they're very pacific animals, peaceful, they go through a cycle of violence yearly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- RLRebecca Lemov
And he wanted to see if LSD would trigger that cycle chemically.
- JRJoe Rogan
Does it coincide with breeding season like it does with other animals, like deer when they start fighting each other?
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah, it's just the males, I think.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- RLRebecca Lemov
And it does have something to do with breeding. I'm not sure. So it's the male Asiatic elephant. So West found this elephant named Tesco at the Oklahoma Zoo and famously gave him LSD in 1962 or '61, and then the elephant died, uh, tragically.
- JRJoe Rogan
From the acid?
- RLRebecca Lemov
From the acid. 'Cause nobody ... Uh, it was just ... Maybe that's what (laughs) elephants do, maybe, or the dose was too big or something like that. It certainly didn't have the effect that he wanted, but if you actually read the scientific publication, it's curiously all about this question of whether you could trigger a massive, uh ... Could you trigger violence, almost like a push button? Could you find a chemical trigger for violence or aggression? And you see that running through a lot of West's other work with MKUltra and also with psychosurgery and some other developments that I wrote about. But, so by the time he gets to the Neuropsychiatric Institute, he's very interested in violence, and he has this major plan. And to come back to my, my friend, Dr., uh, Coopers, he was a young resident training at UCLA at the time West proposed this Violence Center, and among things he wanted to do was track teenagers who he thought would be potentially violent. Uh, he had racial categories that he wanted, that he thought were especially worth tracking, and he had this whole program. And so a student movement and a movement at the university developed to shut down the Violence Center before it even opened, and, uh, anyway, Terry Coopers was a leader of that resist- of that, um, of that student movement, and they ended up ... It never was, uh ... It never went forward, this huge project that West had. But Coopers at some point said that if you met Jolly West, you would like him. He was, he was very genial. He had the name Jolly for a reason, and that ... So I found that confusing. Like, how do I think about this? If you just read about him and the things he did, he seems like a character or a cartoon or, like, a very evil man.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- RLRebecca Lemov
And no doubt he destroyed ... I, I mean, I think his ... What he did was, was, uh, ethically indefensible. But how do you reconcile that, or how do you even think about the fact that, you know, he, he, uh, also was incredibly esteemed in his profession? His portrait stood in the Neuropsychiatric Institute for many years. He w- you know, he was ... And people actually liked him. He said... People said he was likable. Uh, he had-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- RLRebecca Lemov
... this kind of charisma to him.
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs) Well, I guess you'd kinda have to have some of that-
- RLRebecca Lemov
(laughs) Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... just to be able to run something like that. And, o- and also, if you wanted to manipulate people, what better way than to be affable and kind of jolly and friendly and-
- RLRebecca Lemov
It's true.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, like ...
- RLRebecca Lemov
And I think he had a, uh, a s- a strong dose of narcissism too 'cause, uh, a reporter who worked with him named Shana Alexander, she said ... She has these, um, funny descriptions of him during the time of the Patty Hearst trial where she says, "He was giving ... He was handing out his own papers to anybody who walked by, like he was giving out, uh ... like a hen giving out eggs," or something. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RLRebecca Lemov
She was just saying that he's ... You know, he's very expansive. He would get out of his limousine. He had a, like, personal driver, and it was ... Which was pretty high-level for an, for an academic. And he's just very, uh, kind of like a big man. And he was also physically very large.
- JRJoe Rogan
Thought very highly of himself.
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I- imagine delusions of grandeur. If you're pulling the strings on so many different people and manipulating them-
- RLRebecca Lemov
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and then you're also working in complete secrecy with the government in a high-level position, that's manipulating minds.
- RLRebecca Lemov
He was very ... I think especially when he was young, he was ... He had a gift for this. He could really ... He was ver- he could understand how to manipulate people really well. He had insight into the processes that were ... You know, that's why the, that's why, um, Sidney Gottlieb said, "We've been looking for somebody like you, and it seems that our dreams have been answered."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RLRebecca Lemov
In this famous, famous letter, he writes, he writes under a pseudonym.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, no.
Episode duration: 2:40:49
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