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Joe Rogan Experience #2322 - Rebecca Lemov

Rebecca Lemov is a historian of science at Harvard University and has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute. Her research explores data, technology, and the history of human and behavioral sciences. Her new book, "The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control and Hyper-Persuasion," is available now. https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324075264 Get anything delivered on Uber Eats. ⁠https://www.ubereats.com⁠ Go to https://expressvpn.com/ROGANYT to get 4 months free!

Rebecca LemovguestJoe Roganhost
May 15, 20252h 40mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 3:17

    Why study mind control: behavioral engineering, autonomy, and extreme cases

    1. RL

      (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out!

    2. NA

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) All right. Hello, Rebecca. Very nice to meet you.

    4. RL

      Hi, Joe. Very nice to meet you too.

    5. JR

      So, um, first of all, what got you interested in mind control?

    6. RL

      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)

    7. JR

      (laughs)

    8. RL

      ... 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.

    9. JR

      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.

    10. RL

      (laughs) Yeah.

    11. JR

      I probably had a lot to do with it too.

    12. RL

      (laughs)

    13. JR

      But just-

    14. RL

      You and the internet. (laughs)

    15. JR

      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?

    16. RL

      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.

  2. 3:17 – 7:34

    How opinions get absorbed: identity, social conditioning, and “canalizing” behavior

    1. JR

      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?

    2. RL

      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-

    3. JR

      Right.

    4. RL

      ... 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.

    5. JR

      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.

    6. RL

      (laughs)

    7. JR

      Like, what, what do you carry around with you? And what... at the core of it, what are you? You know?

    8. RL

      Yeah, that also... I mean, that is the oldest question of Socrates. Who am I? Or...

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. RL

      ... 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.

    11. JR

      (laughs)

    12. RL

      But I had just like... I love... (laughs) I actually really like them. What's wrong with small dogs?

    13. JR

      (laughs)

    14. RL

      But I had absorbed this opinion some... from somewhere.

    15. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    16. RL

      That like, a person that... such as I was aspiring to be-You know, only like just-

    17. JR

      Ah.

    18. RL

      ... you know, big dogs or something like that. (laughs) But just noticing in yourself the way you soak up opinions and you're shaped by, you know, even, you know, even seemingly trivial things, and then also on a more profound level you can see that happening, um, made me wonder, like, what could you learn from looking at these, uh, cases where people really seem to have been brainwashed, you know, in history, or radically reshaped, perhaps, you know?

    19. JR

      And then there's brainwashing yourself, 'cause if you say, "I hate small dogs," now you have to kinda defend it.

    20. RL

      (laughs)

    21. JR

      And now, (laughs) now you, the... And even if you say, "God, that's not even true, but there's, there's gotta be reasons to hate small dogs," I don't wanna come off as a moron who just says things.

    22. RL

      (laughs) There are other people who feel the same.

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. RL

      It tur- it turns out... It... Yeah, I mean, b... E- either you end up doubling down on that opinion 'cause you don't wanna feel silly to yourself. I mean, I think sometimes we're just a series of, uh, adopted opinions that we then-

    25. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    26. RL

      ... um, adhere to. And I guess being in graduate school also made me feel that way, because you're rap- you're rapidly learning and absorbing a new vocabulary, learning things you should say, learning things you shouldn't say, ways you should express yourself and ways you shouldn't. That seemed very, like, a deeply shaping process. And I was interested in w- how did social sciences... Like, was there a science of this process of shaping? Or some- they sometimes called it canalizing or c- making, you know-

    27. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    28. RL

      ... a canal of behavior so that people would end up wanting to do what it was that... socially necessary for them to do.

  3. 7:34 – 12:55

    Interrupting conditioning: moving, travel, and meditation as a reflective defense

    1. JR

      Well, y- universities are a great place for that, right? 'Cause you g- get away from your parents for the first time, who have indoctrinated you into their cult. Like, you were born into the cult of your parents, and then you leave, and you're like, "Let me get away from these crazy people."

    2. RL

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      "And th- and now I'm gonna become a whatever."

    4. RL

      Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

    5. JR

      You know? And now I'm gonna d- figure out which group-

    6. RL

      (laughs)

    7. JR

      ... most aligns with my ideas and join them, and rebel, and fight against the machine, and become a part of a new cult.

    8. RL

      Exactly.

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. RL

      Wear something different or adopt... I suddenly-

    11. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    12. RL

      ... I don't like certain kinds of dogs, or I-

    13. JR

      (laughs)

    14. RL

      ... wear a certain thing or-

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. RL

      ... you know, we... You have an interruption in the fabric of your int- extensive conditioning.

    17. JR

      Yeah.

    18. RL

      And that is an opp- it's o- it's also an opportunity. You know, it's, it's not a nefarious thing-

    19. JR

      No.

    20. RL

      ... necessarily, but it can take that, just that truth about people.

    21. JR

      I think it can be nefarious for some people, unfortunately. But I think for a lot of people, just considering new ways to think about things is probably valuable.

    22. RL

      Yeah.

    23. JR

      It's probably a good thing to have, uh, the opportunity to reconsider the way that you've sort of, like, canaled-

    24. RL

      Yeah. (laughs)

    25. JR

      ... the, the grooves that have been deeply carved into your personality, where you automatically go towards certain things or think about certain things, just-

    26. RL

      I always think just an interruption is often good.

    27. JR

      Oh, yeah.

    28. RL

      In the... in your, in your patterning.

    29. JR

      Yeah, that's why I think moving is really good.

    30. RL

      Or traveling or-

  4. 12:55 – 21:52

    Early brushes with cult dynamics: LGATs, compliance tests, and yoga scandals

    1. JR

      Mm-hmm. Were you... When you were young, um, had you ever been exposed to any cults or anything like that?

    2. RL

      Hmm, that's a good question. Uh, not when I was really young.

    3. JR

      Like how old were you when you f- were first exposed to cults?

    4. RL

      In fact, I think... So, wow, that's a good question. I mean, my family is n- is sort of cult averse, I would say. My father... I think they had friends once, uh, you know, in later life. My m- my parents had these friends who got involved in a large group awareness training, which is a f- somewhat culty.

    5. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    6. RL

      And they take you in and you're not allowed to use the bathroom, and they lock y- kind of, like, keep you in a room until (laughs) you-

    7. JR

      (laughs)

    8. RL

      ... until you're really uncomfortable and start- start to have revelations about how you could change your life. And these are... You know, it's stuff like, um-

    9. JR

      How long did they make you not go to the bathroom?

    10. RL

      ... fast. It's to the point where it's uncomfortable. I can't remember. It's a long afternoon going into the evening, and often people come out kind of converted. And my parents' friends actually did, and they did change their lives in w- various ways, so they said, "You have to come." And my dad, in the middle of it, he s- he said, "I have to go (laughs) I have to go to the bathroom, and I'm not..." He's like, "I'm out of here." (laughs) And he just left, so I figured he had a kind of... He was not, uh, programmable in that way.

    11. JR

      Well, I feel like any group that doesn't want you to go to the bathroom is stupid.

    12. RL

      It's probably a sign that you sh- you should-

    13. JR

      Yeah, there's no reason to not go to the bathroom if you have to go to the bathroom. That's ridiculous.

    14. RL

      I mean, it's a kind of... It's a... It, it is typical of certain groups, where they start to constrain your, um-

    15. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    16. RL

      ... and if... And people who might be willing to remain in that uncomfortable state and be constrained will end up staying longer and it's sort of a self-selecting process maybe.

    17. JR

      Mm-hmm. That makes sense, right-

    18. RL

      But-

    19. JR

      ... th- the people that are more willing to comply.

    20. RL

      Yeah, and I guess with me, maybe the closest... The first brush with a cult would be something like the various yoga teachers I've worked with.

    21. JR

      Oh, so many of them are so culty.

    22. RL

      Yeah. Uh, h-

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. RL

      ... there's one kind of funny 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."

    25. JR

      Uh... (laughs)

    26. RL

      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-

    27. JR

      Yeah. I had the exact-

    28. RL

      ... yeah.

    29. JR

      ... same experience.

    30. RL

      (laughs)

  5. 21:52 – 23:25

    Why cults appeal: tribal belonging, fun beginnings, and the cost of leaving

    1. JR

      Um, but there... I- I feel like it's a default thing in the human psyche because of our ancient history of living in tribes.

    2. RL

      Mm.

    3. JR

      That human beings have been very tribal, and I think being a part of a tribe, o- one of the things that happens is you sort of have to go along with the way everybody else is doing things.

    4. RL

      Mm.

    5. JR

      If you want to fit in and you want to adapt and, especially if you're growing up in the tribe, you don't know any different. This is the only group and being ostracized from the tribe and kicked out is like, oh my goodness. That's the worst thing in the world. Now you're alone. You have to fend for yourself. There's no way you can. You have to protect yourself from the wilderness and the animals...

    6. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    7. JR

      And the elements and predators and other humans and ugh.

    8. RL

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      So you have to s- It's very dangerous to be alone, so you have to adapt to the, to the tribe itself.

    10. RL

      I think that's true. Yeah, small scale societies have to... I mean, even the word cult, in its technical or dictionary definition, doesn't necessarily mean abusive...

    11. JR

      Right.

    12. RL

      ... organization. It just means small scale religious group that may be... You know, I think people deeply yearn for that sense of belonging, and that's why it does look so fun and in... And by all reports, is very fun to get inducted into a cult. People get these exhilarated states. They often have altered, you know, experiences of altered consciousness.

    13. JR

      Yes.

    14. RL

      And the exili- You know, they're empowered by it too.

  6. 23:25 – 29:29

    Case study: ‘Holy Hell’ and engineered bliss through suggestion

    1. JR

      Well, um, fun fact. Before I, um, bought the place that I put my comedy club on 6th Street: I was under contract for a theater called the One World Theatre that was run by this cult, and, uh, I kind of vaguely heard about it, and, um, my friend Ron told me that "The theater's amazing. Y- you should buy it," 'cause we were talking about buying a comedy club. "You should buy that place." And so I got under cont- And my friend Adam called me up. He goes, "Have you seen the documentary on that cult?"

    2. RL

      (laughs)

    3. JR

      I'm like, "Oh, no. There's a documentary?" (laughs)

    4. RL

      (laughs)

    5. JR

      That's never good. That's never good, and it's really bad.

    6. RL

      (laughs)

    7. JR

      The, the documentary's called Holy Hell, and it's about this guy...

    8. RL

      Mm.

    9. JR

      ... who's a hypnotist, uh, a yoga teacher, and a gay porn star, and that's a...

    10. RL

      (laughs)

    11. JR

      That's a one, two, three combination, and, uh, he started out his cult in West Hollywood...And then after Waco, after that went down-

    12. RL

      Hmm.

    13. JR

      ... The Cult Awareness Network started really cracking down, and they were investigating him, so he changed his name and moved to Austin.

    14. RL

      Oh.

    15. JR

      And had his followers build him this theater.

    16. RL

      Oh.

    17. JR

      Uh, fortunately, I got out of the deal.

    18. RL

      (laughs)

    19. JR

      But... (laughs)

    20. RL

      But I guess he was selling it, or...

    21. JR

      Well, he was gone.

    22. RL

      Okay.

    23. JR

      Uh, it had already fallen apart.

    24. RL

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      The cult had completely fallen apart. But what's fascinating is in the documentary, in the beginning, again, it looks amazing. They're all cooking together and eating together and doing yoga, and they look so happy. And let's just be honest, modern society, the day-to-day grind, the, you know, keeping up with the Joneses, the stuck in traffic and doing things you hate under fluorescent lights in a cubicle all day long is not attractive.

    26. RL

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      Not only is it not attractive, it makes cults attractive.

    28. RL

      Yeah.

    29. JR

      And these people were longing for something that was, uh, that, that showed them that, "No, you're right. This is stupid. The way your parents lived is stupid. The way all these people live in society, you know, the way Thoreau described men living lives of quiet desperation, like, yeah, that sucks."

    30. RL

      Yeah.

  7. 29:29 – 44:21

    Back-to-the-land communes and the recurring problem of sex, power, and ecstasy

    1. RL

      It does seem to be. I think some of the... So there seemed to be, in the '70s, so many cults and back-to-the-land groups, and some of the back-to- the back-to-land stories are also, you know, have many cautionary sides to them and many of the aspects of cultism.

    2. JR

      What is the back-to-the-land?

    3. RL

      So just people leaving the city-

    4. JR

      Oh, okay.

    5. RL

      ... heading off to the country and starting an-

    6. JR

      Okay.

    7. RL

      ... like, an intentional community, I guess-

    8. JR

      (laughs)

    9. RL

      ... would be what you're-

    10. JR

      Right.

    11. RL

      ... what you're describing with the idea that we're gonna collectively raise, even collectively raise our children-

    12. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    13. RL

      ... uh, sell hammocks, or (laughs) you know, make our own jam, or, or you could say even monasteries maybe aspire to this.

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. RL

      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.

    16. JR

      Why do you think it always involves-

    17. RL

      Why-

    18. JR

      ... that?

    19. RL

      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.

    20. JR

      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?

    21. RL

      No.

    22. JR

      He wrote, uh, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross-

    23. RL

      Oh.

    24. JR

      ... which is a fascinating book about the Dead Sea Scrolls, and he's got a very controversial perspective on Christianity.

    25. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    26. JR

      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."

    27. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    28. JR

      "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-"

    29. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    30. JR

      "... 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?

  8. 44:21 – 50:59

    Why mind control research began: Korean War ‘brainwashing’ panic and DDD

    1. JR

      Oof. Um, the Manson family is a fascinating one, right? Because, um, I know that you have, uh, studied Jolly West-

    2. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JR

      ... and the, the whole MKUltra program and what, what they were experimenting with, with psychedelic drugs, and, and, and cults and mind control. Um, d- do you... What is- what is your perspective on why they were doing that?

    4. RL

      Why, uh, why MK-

    5. JR

      Why Jolly West was involved. Why, why were they involved? What do you think was the initial motivation to sort of pursue mind control studies, the federal government?

    6. RL

      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-

    7. JR

      What year was this?

    8. RL

      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.

    9. JR

      So, what did they determine the Chinese were doing?

    10. RL

      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.

    11. JR

      Maoist thought reform?

    12. RL

      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.

  9. 50:59 – 54:39

    MKUltra’s aims and scope: offensive weapons, defensive training, and unchecked experimentation

    1. JR

      So, how do they go from that to, like, sponsoring the Manson family and, you know-

    2. RL

      So-

    3. JR

      ... Operation Midnight Climax and all the crazy stuff that they were doing?

    4. RL

      Yeah, it may seem like a leap.

    5. JR

      Yeah.

    6. RL

      But, uh, I think it, I mean ...

    7. JR

      Sort of.

    8. RL

      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.

    9. JR

      Mm.

    10. RL

      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.

    11. JR

      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?

    12. RL

      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.

    13. JR

      Right.

    14. RL

      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-

    15. JR

      Did you say '63?

    16. RL

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      But it went on. I mean, the Harvard LSD studies, when were those?

    18. RL

      Um, I actually, I don't know which ones exactly. There were some that were earlier that-

    19. JR

      What did, what are the ones that made Ted Kaczynski?

    20. RL

      Okay. That, yeah, that's earlier. Th-

    21. JR

      Was it earlier than '63?

    22. RL

      Yeah, yeah.

    23. JR

      Yeah?

    24. RL

      And, uh, that's Henry Murray.

    25. JR

      Oh.

    26. RL

      Yeah. But, so, I don't, I don't actually know the answer to that question of exactly how it per- continued, but they officially discontinued it and destroyed all the records. So, they may have continued under other forms

    27. NA

      Mm-hmm.

    28. JR

      But Manson was '69?

    29. RL

      Yeah, so Manson is after that.

    30. JR

      So, they didn't discontinue it. They kept doing things.

  10. 54:39 – 1:01:09

    Manson, Haight-Ashbury, and ‘Chaos’: what’s provable vs. suspicious

    1. JR

      Well, it's ironic because it seems like they were kind of a cult.

    2. RL

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      Because, uh, the, the amount of power, the amount of unchecked power and influence that Jolly West had and MKUltra in general had, and all the people that were working on this, you have this power, the fact that you are working in complete secrecy. You, uh, are the puppeteer. You're-

    4. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JR

      You're controlling all these people. And then this idea that-... uh, have you read Chaos, the-

    6. RL

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      ... Tom O'Neill book?

    8. RL

      Yeah. That's good.

    9. JR

      What did you think about that?

    10. RL

      I thought it was great research.

    11. JR

      Amazing.

    12. RL

      Yeah. It's really-

    13. JR

      It's an amazing book.

    14. RL

      It's a really good book.

    15. JR

      And just-

    16. RL

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      ... so stunning.

    18. RL

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      I had never considered that before. I thought Manson was a crazy guy, and he got together with a bunch of crazy people and he ran a cult. I had no, no suspicion that the government was involved in orchestrating the entire thing.

    20. RL

      Well, they may, they may not have been. I don't think O'Neill, Tom O'Neill thinks that he made an absolute link. He just brought... He... You do get West in the same room, potentially the same-

    21. JR

      You get West visiting-

    22. RL

      Ye-

    23. JR

      ... Manson in jail.

    24. RL

      I don't, I don't remember that.

    25. JR

      Yeah. Wes- West visited Manson in jail.

    26. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    27. JR

      Uh, West, he believes, at least Tom O'Neill does-

    28. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    29. JR

      ... supplied him with LSD. And then every time Manson would get arrested, he would get released.

    30. RL

      This is true, but this wasn't West necessarily. This was, uh, Roger Smith, who was West's... He was an associate of West's.

  11. 1:01:09 – 1:06:09

    Paper trails, FOIA luck, and the modern archiving crisis

    1. JR

      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?

    2. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JR

      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.

    4. RL

      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.

    5. JR

      Mm.

    6. RL

      That's, that's... and it really is accidental that they didn't think to purge their financial files.

    7. JR

      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.

    8. RL

      In... yeah, it was in the 70s. And it's in '77 or so, I think.

    9. JR

      Yeah. So you're dealing with, you know, a decade past, who knows if the people currently in charge were even aware-

    10. RL

      Right.

    11. JR

      ... 'cause I would imagine a lot of this stuff is very compartmentalized.

    12. RL

      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.

    13. JR

      Whoops.

    14. RL

      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.

    15. JR

      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-

    16. RL

      Of course.

    17. JR

      ... 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.

    18. RL

      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-

    19. JR

      Right.

    20. RL

      ... a kind of a... almost Messianic purpose.

    21. JR

      Yeah. We're doing it to save America.

    22. RL

      We're saving the world.

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. RL

      Not just America, but the world.

    25. JR

      Oh, yeah.

    26. RL

      And that's one thing I... one, one of the inspirations for my research was finding a book on the street many years ago when I was living in California, and I love to find a good, uh, just a accidental, uh, inspiration, which was this book called The Captive Mind that somebody had left out, uh, by Czeslaw Milosz, the Pol- who was a Polish poet, and he had grown up in Warsaw, or come of age in Warsaw and seen his city, the city that he lived in just deteriorate into sheer... he said it was an experience no human being would ever want to live through, if you were lucky enough to live through just watching the city destroyed and people shipped off to Auschwitz and all these things. But he said that, um... and like social life completely deteriorating before him, and then afterwards, the Soviet troops came in. And even though he watched as his friends kind of had to remake themselves in order to survive, in order to be artists, in order... and so if you're a poet, you don't just go along, you have to actually start to think differently.

    27. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    28. RL

      And at first they would sort of pay lip service to it or make it, you know, on the surface they would pretend to agree and then secretly have their own, you know, writing. But after a while they would start to internalize the... and he called it the new faith. He- you know, the kind of, uh, this, this doctrinaire ideology, and that's what he, he ended up himself defecting 'cause he couldn't do that. He said it's an operation you perform on yourself. So I just think one important factor is this true bel- true belief.

    29. JR

      Mm.

    30. RL

      This sense... and it... and out of that can come the justification for a, a number of violations, I think.

  12. 1:06:09 – 1:37:37

    Jolly West’s capabilities and contradictions: Ruby, Hearst, and a charismatic operator

    1. JR

      I was fascinated also in Chaos, Jolly West's connection to Jack Ruby.

    2. RL

      Right.

    3. JR

      That he visited Jack Ruby after Jack Ruby had shot Lee Harvey Oswald, then all of a sudden Jack Ruby goes crazy. And-

    4. RL

      Yeah. He was never coherent again after meeting-

    5. JR

      (laughs)

    6. RL

      (laughs) This happened to several-

    7. JR

      (laughs)

    8. RL

      ... sh- shocking number of people. And in West's papers you can actually find the unredacted documents where he talks about some of the things he's been able to do with s- combinations of sodium amytal, LSD, and various other-

    9. JR

      What did he say?

    10. RL

      ... psychoactive drugs. Well, he s- I mean, among other things, he says... he, he started to s- say or suggest that he could create memories. He could... I mean, he knew that, um, he could destroy a person's orientation to self and time, and, uh, so basically disassemble a person. Uh, but he also f-... he also said he could use hypnosis to... not as anesthesia, which is a known possibility with hypnosis, but to create extra pain. So hyperesthesia. And he kind of said that he could actually make someone develop blisters or asthma or an ulcer.

    11. JR

      Wow.

    12. RL

      Just by hypnotizing them. I don't think he did that to Jack Ruby, obviously. He had a very... he had a, uh, morning with him or something. Uh-

    13. JR

      He had a what with him?

    14. RL

      He had just had a short amount of time with him, but-

    15. JR

      That's enough to dose him.

    16. RL

      ... Ruby emerged-

    17. JR

      Yeah.

    18. RL

      ... apparently inco-... I don't know that much about the Ruby episode, but I do know that West intended to write a book. He w- he intended to write about eight books, at least. This is a note I found in his papers.

    19. JR

      He also developed cancer shortly afterwards.

    20. RL

      Well, actually not shortly, but eve- in the 90s.

    21. JR

      Oh, was it in the '90s?

    22. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    23. JR

      Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I thought it was quickly.

    24. RL

      No, he... And he, um, oh, this is a note.

    25. JR

      Th- so this is it?

    26. RL

      Yeah. This was from around, around 1980 or so. But I thought it was interesting.

    27. JR

      So who wrote this?

    28. RL

      We-... This is West.

    29. JR

      This is all West's handwriting?

    30. RL

      Handwriting.

Episode duration: 2:40:49

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