Joe Rogan Experience #2419 - John Lisle

John Lisle 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music) John, what's happening, man?

John Lisle 0:14 Not much. It's good to be here.

Joe Rogan 0:14 Very nice to meet you.

John Lisle 0:15 You too. Thanks for having me.

Joe Rogan 0:16 Um, uh, I know you're in the middle of a project. You're doing a project with David Chase, right? That, it's about MKUltra and...

John Lisle 0:24 Yes. He has gotten the rights to this, to this book.

Joe Rogan 0:27 Yeah.

John Lisle 0:27 You know, this book, Project Mind Control, and he's, yeah, interested in adapting it into a series.

Joe Rogan 0:31 Well, I am endlessly fascinated with the subject, so as soon as I heard about it, and they said, "The series is coming, but you could talk to the guy who wrote the book," and I'm like, "Let's go."

John Lisle 0:40 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:40 So, here we go. Project Mind Control, Sidney, Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKUltra, which really is a tragedy.

John Lisle 0:48 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:49 Um, you know, I, uh, really got ... I mean, I knew about it, but I really didn't get completely obsessed with it until Chaos, Tom O'Neil's book.

John Lisle 0:58 Yup. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:58 Have you read that?

John Lisle 0:59 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00 And, uh, when you realize what the MKUltra program involved and how long it ran, and how insane it is, and it essentially had no oversight.

John Lisle 1:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09 And these people were just running these wild mind experiments on American citizens, and nobody went to jail for it.

John Lisle 1:16 Yeah. That, th- that's part of the crazy thing. One of the things I, I really try to focus on in the book, especially the second half in the ... of the book, are the consequences of M- MKUltra in society, but also just what happened to these people afterwards.

Joe Rogan 1:30 Right.

John Lisle 1:30 The victims of MKUltra, they launched several lawsuits against the CIA, and basically, really, nothing much came out of it. They got paid a little bit of money, but the people who perpetrated MKUltra, they didn't really face any consequences. And so I'm glad you brought that up, because one of the things I really try to talk about in the latter part of the book are, what are the failures of oversight that-

Joe Rogan 1:48 Yes.

John Lisle 1:49 ... allowed this to happen? How is that possible? How could people within the CIA be doing these kinds of drug experiments on people unwittingly, and yet never face any hardly consequences for their actions? So, I, I delve into that pretty deeply.

Joe Rogan 2:01 How did you get interested in the subject? Like, what was your in- introduct- introduction to it?

John Lisle 2:07 I feel like my introduction is a little bit different probably from most people because I didn't know that much about MKUltra, um, and I was doing my PhD at UT. And I, I studied the history of science, but my dissertation was on a group of scientists within the intelligence ... They had connections to the intelligence community. They were called the science attachés out of the State Department. The State Department would send these science attachés to different embassies, American embassies around the world, and the CIA was very interested in these people because, hey, we have these scientists going abroad. Maybe they can interrogate foreign scientists and figure out what kind of research they're doing. So that kind of led me into being interested in scientists within the intelligence community.

Joe Rogan 2:45 Mm-hmm.

John Lisle 2:45 And from that, I learned about, you know, Sidney Gottlieb, but also, m- mostly, my initial interest was this man named Stanley Lovel, who was essentially the Sidney Gottlieb of the OSS. So prior to the CIA, w- the US had the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, during World War II, and that was the US kind of intelligence agency. And Stanley Lovel was in charge of a branch within the OSS called the Research and Development Branch, and that was the branch that was composed of a group of scientists whose job was to basically invent the deadly weapons, create ingenious disguises, forge documents for secret agents that are sent abroad. So my first-

Joe Rogan 3:24 Fun stuff.

John Lisle 3:24 Oh, yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:25 (laughs)

John Lisle 3:25 My, my first book, The Dirty Tricks Department, it's about Stanley Lovel in that group, and one of the things they do are drug experiments and truth drug experiments, trying to find out whether it's possible to give someone, uh, you know, a captured enemy agent some kind of drug to make them tell the truth during an interrogation. And it turns out, when I was researching that book, I came across a series of depositions of which Sidney Gottlieb is one of the deportments who would later lead MKUltra. And in these depositions, he was talking about how when he was assigned to be in charge of MKUltra, he didn't really know where to begin. He didn't know anything about mind control. So one of the things that he did, he went into the old OSS files and was starting to look at the drug experiments that Stanley Lovel was doing. And so I thought, that's the connection between Stanley Lovel, my first book-

Joe Rogan 4:07 Mm-hmm.

John Lisle 4:07 ... and now this one. So that naturally led me into becoming interested in MKUltra. So a, a lot of the things that Sidney Gottlieb was up to with MKUltra, his blueprint was basically Stanley Lovel.

Joe Rogan 4:17 Just imagine being a government agency, the CIA, the OSS, whatever it is, and then someone says, "Hey, figure out if we can control people's minds."

John Lisle 4:26 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:26 And that's where you start from.

John Lisle 4:28 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:28 Right? It's not like Sidney Gottlieb was some expert-

John Lisle 4:32 No. No.

Joe Rogan 4:32 ... hypnotist or really was a psychologist who really understood human minds.

John Lisle 4:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 4:36 No. They, they started a program going, "What can we do? How can we fuck with people's minds? How can we figure out how to control people's minds?" And they did it for decades.

John Lisle 4:47 Yeah. Yeah. So and, and even-

Joe Rogan 4:48 And they're probably still doing it now.

John Lisle 4:50 Well, even before MKUltra, so there are a couple programs that precede it. And I mean, you know, so during World War II, the OSS was already doing truth drug, drug experiments. Not with LSD because that wasn't really around then, but with THC acetate, they would inject it into cigarettes and have people smoke it and then-

Joe Rogan 5:05 So they just get high?

John Lisle 5:06 They would get high. And the idea-

Joe Rogan 5:07 And tell the truth?

John Lisle 5:08 The ... Well-

Joe Rogan 5:08 Supposedly?

John Lisle 5:09 Supposedly.

Joe Rogan 5:10 (laughs)

John Lisle 5:10 The idea was that it lowers their inhibitions and so maybe they'll be more amenable-

Joe Rogan 5:13 Yeah.

John Lisle 5:13 ... to talking and-

Joe Rogan 5:14 Oh, that's hilarious.

John Lisle 5:14 They would do-

Joe Rogan 5:15 They just gave them spliffs.

John Lisle 5:16 (laughs) Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 5:16 They basically gave them spliffs.

John Lisle 5:17 They did.

Joe Rogan 5:17 That's what Europeans smoke.

John Lisle 5:19 Yeah. No, and, and so one of the guys who was actually on the Truth Drug Committee that was kind of overseeing these drug experiments during World War II was Harry Anslinger, who, of course, is launching this crusade-

Joe Rogan 5:28 Oh, God.

John Lisle 5:28 ... against marijuana, and at the same time, he's overseeing these experiments about dosing people with THC.

Joe Rogan 5:33 Ah.

John Lisle 5:33 So it's very ironic that that was the case.

Joe Rogan 5:35 It's, it's really stunning the kind of damage those people did to just-... our trust in government, what we, you know, what, what we know about these psychedelic compounds and drugs and, like, what they did with them that completely changed our idea of what the future of legalization and all these... There's s- there's so much negative impact to what they did.

John Lisle 6:00 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:01 On top of what they did, they essentially created Ted Kaczynski.

John Lisle 6:04 (laughs) Well, I- I'm, I'm a little s-

Joe Rogan 6:06 Are you on the fence on that?

John Lisle 6:07 I'm a little skeptical of whether MKUltra is connected to that. But-

Joe Rogan 6:10 Well, it's certainly Harvard and the LSD experiments-

John Lisle 6:13 Yeah, so-

Joe Rogan 6:13 ... they did at Harvard. And I don't imagine they would do that without the involvement of the government-

John Lisle 6:18 Yeah, well, the-

Joe Rogan 6:18 ... without them wanting to have access to research. If you have people at Harvard that are doing, like, really critical LSD studies on people, humiliation studies.

John Lisle 6:26 Yeah, well-

Joe Rogan 6:27 Right?

John Lisle 6:27 ... with, with him in particular, he, he, the, the study that he was involved in was Henry Murray was the guy who was running that. It's, like, a psychological experiment about, I think it was interpersonal relationships, where he would basically interrogate them and, you know, berate them and see how they reacted to it. Now, Henry Murray, who ran that experiment with Ted K- Kaczynski, he did have connections to the intelligence community. I just am not convinced that he had, was funded by MKUltra or something.

Joe Rogan 6:50 Hmm.

John Lisle 6:50 His connection, he has a couple of connections. One connection that I mentioned in my first book, The Dirty Tricks Department, he was tasked with creating psychological profiles of German leaders, like Hitler. And so the idea was that he would kind of figure out what their psychology was and maybe we could find ways to exploit that psychology.

Joe Rogan 7:08 Hmm.

John Lisle 7:08 So, Stanley Lovell, who was the head of this R&D branch of the OSS, he read Henry Murray's psychological profile of Hitler, and he decided, "Maybe I can figure out a way to kind of drive Hitler crazy by using this." So, Henry Murray-

Joe Rogan 7:20 Whoa.

John Lisle 7:20 ... Henry Murray said that Hitler had a very feminine kind of personality, he was on the border between masculine and feminine, and, you know, at least that's what Henry Murray is saying in this psychological profile. Stanley Low- Lovell reads that and he thinks, "Maybe I can exploit this by getting one of the gardeners near the Eagle Nest," where Hitler often had some meetings. There were some gardeners down there. "We can get an agent to slip a gardener some female sex hormone and that gardener-

Joe Rogan 7:45 (laughs)

John Lisle 7:46 ... that gardener can inject it into the beets that are destined for Hitler's plate.

Joe Rogan 7:49 Oh my God.

John Lisle 7:49 "Hitler's gonna eat it and it's gonna, like, exacerbate this feminine tendency and it's gonna make him go crazy," or something like that.

Joe Rogan 7:55 That's-

John Lisle 7:55 That was the plan. That never actually happened, but-

Joe Rogan 7:57 Hilarious.

John Lisle 7:57 ... that, so, Henry Murray is kind of connected to the OSS in that sense. And then later, he develops some personality tests for the OSS and CIA, I believe it was for recruits, to give these to recruits to determine whether they kind of have the psychological profile, file, that would amenable to being in an intelligence organization.

Joe Rogan 8:15 Did you r- see that they recently, uh, did a scan of some blood that was found in Hitler's bunker and they determined that he has a very unusual, uh, gene expression? Can you find out what that is? It's, it's something that would lead to him potentially having a micropenis.

John Lisle 8:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:33 Yeah, which is-

John Lisle 8:34 I hadn't heard that.

Joe Rogan 8:35 ... the, you know, like, the most obvious psychological profile ever.

John Lisle 8:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:40 A guy who wants to destroy everything in the world, he's got a tiny dick. Like, that's-

John Lisle 8:43 Well, may- maybe Henry Murray was onto something.

Joe Rogan 8:45 ... classic. Look it, yeah, I'm sure he was.

John Lisle 8:46 Yeah, I'm interested.

Joe Rogan 8:46 Hitler's DNA. I'm sure there was something, some research behind it. Like, somebody must have said something about them.

John Lisle 8:51 Yeah, yeah. I hadn't heard of that. I didn't know that.

Joe Rogan 8:53 "Hitler's DNA reveals Nazi leader likely had syndrome that can affect genitals, researchers say." Um, "According to the Cleveland Clinic, the syndrome can disrupt the process that drives puberty and manifest in symptoms that include, uh, undescended testicles and a micropenis."

John Lisle 9:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:08 Isn't that wild?

John Lisle 9:09 Yeah. (laughs) It is-

Joe Rogan 9:10 Which totally makes sense. Like, we should kill everyone with a micropenis. They're too dangerous.

John Lisle 9:13 Well, it is, you know-

Joe Rogan 9:15 (laughs)

John Lisle 9:15 ... maybe, uh, useful to be careful about correlation and causation. A lot of people-

Joe Rogan 9:20 Oh, yeah.

John Lisle 9:20 ... probably have this and that doesn't cause them-

Joe Rogan 9:22 Oh, it's probably the sweetest people out there.

John Lisle 9:23 ... to become a Hitler. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:23 I'm just kidding. Obviously, there's, like, the nicest people out there that just happen to have a micropenis.

John Lisle 9:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:28 It actually makes them really sensitive.

John Lisle 9:29 But that couldn't help, you know, maybe his temperament. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 9:31 Well, he was also on a bunch of drugs.

John Lisle 9:33 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 9:33 You know?

John Lisle 9:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:34 He, he had, like, a special doctor-

John Lisle 9:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 9:36 ... that just worked for him and would inject him.

John Lisle 9:37 Yeah, there was videos of him at sporting events-

Joe Rogan 9:39 Yes.

John Lisle 9:39 ... or whatever. He's like rocking-

Joe Rogan 9:40 The Olympics.

John Lisle 9:40 ... back and forth. It is incredible. It's crazy.

Joe Rogan 9:42 1936 Olympics.

John Lisle 9:43 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:43 Just completely out of his mind on something. Have you read Norman Ohler's book? W- uh, Blitz?

John Lisle 9:48 Blitz?

Joe Rogan 9:48 Yes.

John Lisle 9:48 Um, yes. I, I don't know if I've read the whole thing. I know I dipped into it. I can't remember if I-

Joe Rogan 9:53 It's insane.

John Lisle 9:54 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:54 It's insane. (laughs)

John Lisle 9:55 The, yeah, it is.

Joe Rogan 9:56 Just, that's the entire Nazi army was methed out of their minds.

John Lisle 9:59 Yeah. And, you know, with these, there are a lot of LSD experiments after World War II, within the CIA and MKUltra, of course, but also army LSD experiments that aren't really connected to MKUltra, so I don't go into them that much in this book. But there are, you know, the British are doing LSD experiments on their personnel. The US military does, too. And (laughs) , you know, it, it's, just some of the stories that come out of it are very silly and really and just insane. But there was, there was one document I found that talks about how they were giving these two army personnel, these two soldiers, LSD, to see how they reacted to it. And so each, each of them took the LSD. They were in, like, a padded room isolated with each other, so nobody else was there. And they started hallucinating and one of them pretended to, like, start smoking a cigarette. And he didn't actually have a cigarette. He had nothing, you know? But he just pretended to smoke a cigarette and the other guy was off in his own world. And then the first guy, he reached into his pocket and took out an imaginary pack of cigarettes. He didn't actually have one. It was just an empty hand, but he was just hallucinating that there was one. And he reached it out to the other guy, uh, basically to offer, "Hey, do you want a cigarette?" And the other guy looked at it and he said, "No, I couldn't take your last one." (laughs) It was just an empty hand. There was nothing-

Joe Rogan 11:08 What?

John Lisle 11:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:09 No way he couldn't take your last one.

John Lisle 11:10 They're having, like, this shared hallucination or something.

Joe Rogan 11:13 Wow. Wow. I mean, a- also, back then, we didn't really know too much about that stuff, so they were kind of gathering information about what would happen if you gave someone LSD.

John Lisle 11:24 Mm-hmm. Yep. That, that was, that's kind of the motivation for MKUltra in the first place. Th- there were several motivating factors. One of them is how do we get prisoners to speak during an interrogation? Maybe there's some, maybe there is some kind of truth drug that can get them to tell us the secrets that we want to know. Another is...... maybe we can use this to discredit individuals, like Fidel Castro.

Joe Rogan 11:45 Hmm.

John Lisle 11:45 Let's say we dose him with LSD before a big speech. He appears to be crazy, and his people are gonna lose trust in him because he's, he's making nonsense ... you know, he's just talking gibberish.

Joe Rogan 11:54 Was that proposed?

John Lisle 11:54 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Th- uh, there were proposed-

Joe Rogan 11:56 Interesting.

John Lisle 11:57 ... uh, a plan to put LSD into cigars that would sneak into Castro's, kind of, place-

Joe Rogan 12:00 (laughs)

John Lisle 12:01 ... that he would smoke before he gave a speech.

Joe Rogan 12:02 What I don't understand about that is they were trying to kill him. So if-

John Lisle 12:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:05 ... if they couldn't get poison into his cigars, why did they think they could get acid in there?

John Lisle 12:08 Well, like, they have ... N- n- ... The original plan was to discredit him, and then the later plan was to kill him.

Joe Rogan 12:13 Oh.

John Lisle 12:13 Yeah, so the- there were a couple of original plans to disc- discredit him. One is to sneak him LSD to make him appear insane so that his people will lose faith in him. Another one was to slip what's called thallium salts into his shoes, and these are depilatories, they make your hai- hair fall out. And so the idea was that, you know, he's got this mascunile ... masculine allure with his big beard, but if we can slip these depilatories into his s- shoes, and he puts them on, his beard's gonna fall out, and like Samson, he's gonna lose his power. You know, something like that.

Joe Rogan 12:40 (laughs)

John Lisle 12:41 (laughs) That was the idea. So Sidney Gottlieb was kind of involved-

Joe Rogan 12:44 Wow.

John Lisle 12:44 ... in some of these that I talk about in the book. Uh, another one-

Joe Rogan 12:46 Wow.

John Lisle 12:46 ... So you have the LSD, you have the depilatory, another one was to Photoshop images, basically, of Castro with a bunch of beautiful women around him, and a, like, a buffet of food in front of him, and to have a caption underneath it that said, "My ration is different," to indicate, like, "I'm getting all the benefits of, you know, this, uh," you know, "the spoils of society while my people are going hungry." And so, you know, the idea was to spread this around Cuba and have people resent Castro for indulging in all these

Joe Rogan 13:11 Well, that one's actually reasonable.

John Lisle 13:12 (laughs) Yeah, right?

Joe Rogan 13:13 Right? 'Cause-

John Lisle 13:13 A little bit more than the other two.

Joe Rogan 13:14 That one's probably the closest to accurate.

John Lisle 13:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:17 Yeah.

John Lisle 13:17 So tho- tho- those were attempts to discredit Castro, and then there were several attempts to assassinate him that Sidney Gottlieb and others involved, kind of, in this story do. So, some of the main assassination attempts on Castro involved his hobby of ocean diving. So he liked to dive in the ocean. And one idea was that, what if we get this really beautiful shell that he would just be unable to pass up? Like, it would be so beautiful that if anyone swam by it, they would obviously want to pick it up. We pack the shell full of explosives and put it on ... just have some kind of trigger mechanism for when you pick it up that detonates the explosives.

Joe Rogan 13:51 Right.

John Lisle 13:51 So when he's underwater, he's gonna swim by this. He's gonna see this beautiful shell. He's gonna pick it up, and it's gonna explode. But it turns out they, they couldn't really figure out a shell big enough that would catch his interest, you know, so that never happened. Another, another concept with his scuba diving hobby is that, what if we gift him a scuba diving suit? There are people, kind of, negotiating for the return of the Bay of Pigs prisoners, so what if we get one of those lawyers to gift Castro a suit? And in that suit, we would lace it with some kind of poison or some kind of fungus that would cause him to break out and wanted to develop some kind of disease. But it turns out the guy that they wanted to give him the suit had already given him a diving suit, and so it was like, "Oh, we can't use him anymore." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:31 (laughs) Wow. Y- and, and they were the people running it?

John Lisle 14:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:36 That was the best they could do?

John Lisle 14:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:38 But it's just ... The concept of not having any experience whatsoever in any studies about mind control, and just g- given this assignment. What do you know about mind control? What can we do?

John Lisle 14:50 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:50 How much does it work? What did the Nazis learn during World War II? 'Cause they did a lot of experiments, right?

John Lisle 14:55 They, they were doing a lot of s- experiments. And it, it is ... You know, I, I mentioned the OSS is doing truth drug experiments. The Nazis are doing truth drug experiments in their concentration camps, as well. And the British are doing some truth drug experiments during World War II, as well.

Joe Rogan 15:08 You can get the British ones online. The, the ... Well, at least the post- post-World War II ones. Was it 1950s? You can wa- ... Have you seen the, the British-

John Lisle 15:16 Mm-hmm. No.

Joe Rogan 15:16 ... LSD studies? Oh, you haven't seen it?

John Lisle 15:17 Uh, no, I don't think so.

Joe Rogan 15:18 Oh, it's wonderful. You should watch it.

John Lisle 15:19 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:19 We'll watch it real quick, 'cause it's kind of hilarious. They start breaking out. They can't-

John Lisle 15:22 Oh! Uh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:23 They can't ... You have seen it?

John Lisle 15:24 I think so, yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:24 They can't concentrate.

John Lisle 15:25 The soldiers all in a row, and they ... Yeah. Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 15:26 And some of them just start laughing-

John Lisle 15:28 I know what you're talking about.

Joe Rogan 15:28 ... they're in the middle of doing their task and they just start laughing uncontrollable and then they sit down.

John Lisle 15:32 Yeah. Well-

Joe Rogan 15:32 And s- some of them-

John Lisle 15:32 You know, during ... I- I mentioned those, like, THC acetate experiments during World War II?

Joe Rogan 15:37 Here they are.

John Lisle 15:39 (laughs) Here these guys are.

Joe Rogan 15:39 Just giant smiles on their face.

John Lisle 15:41 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:42 This guy's having a guard go of it. (laughs)

John Lisle 15:44 Yeah, he, he might have been having a-

Joe Rogan 15:45 Yeah.

John Lisle 15:45 ... downer or something. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:46 He had to re- be removed from the experiment after 35 minutes. Look at the radio operator try to figure out how to work it. (laughs) Just, they're just so confused. (laughs) And eventually, they just start laying down and just laugh like these guys. These guys just can't ... (laughs)

John Lisle 16:08 Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, in these, these THC experiments during World War ... Oh, that guy's so ... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:12 (laughs)

John Lisle 16:12 Um, ye- uh, for some of the people, they would give them this THC. They would smoke it f- through a cigarette. And, you know, some of the reactions it talked about was it made them just uncontrollably start laughing, and it put them in a good mood. And, like, some of the reactions were, oh, yeah, I mean, they, they were just getting these people high, and they were reacting to that.

Joe Rogan 16:29 It didn't make them tell the truth.

John Lisle 16:30 No, no.

Joe Rogan 16:31 Of course not.

John Lisle 16:31 They d-

Joe Rogan 16:32 Yeah.

John Lisle 16:32 It did actually make them talk more, though. Because they, they actually recorded these interviews, and they would count the number of words per minute that these people spoke. And it turns out, after they smoked this, they would, they would talk about, like, 40% more words per minute. But it's not that this guaranteed the truth.

Joe Rogan 16:45 Right.

John Lisle 16:45 They were just, they were just talking.

Joe Rogan 16:46 They were just rambling. (laughs) They're talking about cartoons. (laughs)

John Lisle 16:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:50 Yeah, it's ... It just ... What other drugs did they experiment with? Did they experiment with amphetamines as well?

John Lisle 16:55 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:56 Yeah?

John Lisle 16:56 So, um, one of ... Well, I should mention that MKUltra was broken into 149 sub-projects.

Joe Rogan 17:02 Whoa.

John Lisle 17:03 So MKUltra was the umbrella term, and within MKUltra, there were, uh, 149 sub-projects that were kind of farmed out to, in many cases, independent researchers who might be working at a hospital or a prison or a university, something like that. One of the main people who was running these studies is a guy, uh, named Harris Isbell at the Lexington Narcotic Farm. This is where drug ac- drug addicts could go, um, to get treatment for their addiction. Prisoners could go there as well. And whenever Sidney Gottlieb-... found a drug that he was interested in, he would basically just give it to Harris Isbell, who could try it out on these prisoners to see how they reacted, and then Isbell would write reports back to Gottlieb. So, he tried psilocybin when that came out, LSD, but also stuff like, I mean, heroin. The CIA was particularly interested in heroin because if you can induce an addiction in a captured agent, let's say, then you can use that as leverage in int- interrogation, the- the withdrawal symptoms. So, you get them addicted to heroin-

Joe Rogan 17:58 Mm.

John Lisle 17:58 ... and then use the withdrawal symptoms saying, "Well, if you tell us about this, maybe I'll, you know, give you a little..."

Joe Rogan 18:03 Right.

John Lisle 18:03 So, that- that was at least the concept. But there were, I mean, dozens and dozens of different kinds of drugs they were testing just to see how people reacted to them if- and if any of them could be used as a potential truth drug.

Joe Rogan 18:14 The heroin one actually makes sense. I never thought of that.

John Lisle 18:16 Yeah. Well, one of the- one of the ironies as well about this experiment that I mentioned, you know, Harris Isbell and giving these prisoners all these drugs, the prisoners are in this place, it's called the narcotic farm because they're supposed to be getting off drugs, you know? They're- they're- they're supposed to be, you know, curing them of their addiction, at the same time, they're giving them all these drugs to test them out. And then as a reward for participating in these trials, they had two options. Either they could get like, a positive letter in the parole board and like, $100 or something, or they could go to the drug bank window, stick out their arm, and they would get a needle full of heroin as a reward.

Joe Rogan 18:48 Oh my God.

John Lisle 18:49 So, they were supposed to be getting off drugs, and yet you're incentivizing them to participate in these drug trials by giving them drugs.

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John Lisle 19:52 Yeah. So, that's one of 149 sub-projects. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 19:56 (laughs) Do you- are you aware that heroin was created as a- a- a- it was a substitute for people that were addicted to morphine?

John Lisle 20:03 Uh, no, no.

Joe Rogan 20:05 Yeah.

John Lisle 20:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 20:06 I think- W- Google- that- that's correct, right? Search that. I'm pretty sure that's correct. Yeah, they- they c- came up with heroin to treat people that were addicted to morphine.

John Lisle 20:16 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:18 It's... What? (laughs)

John Lisle 20:22 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 20:22 You know- you know, it's... Well, that's like OxyContin, giving them OxyContin if they're addicted to heroin.

John Lisle 20:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:25 It's like the same thing.

John Lisle 20:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:27 But getting someone addicted to that and then pulling it away from them seems like it would be very effective in terms of like, getting- getting them to give up information.

John Lisle 20:37 Yeah, that was the idea. And-

Joe Rogan 20:39 So, here it is. We put it into our sponsor perplexity. Heroin created as a morphine treatment. Originally developed in late 19th century as a medical drug that was indeed marketed as an improved non-addictive alternative to morphine, and as a cough suppressant.

John Lisle 20:52 Oh. Hey, what do you know?

Joe Rogan 20:54 (laughs) Yeah, how nuts. Who, uh... What company came up with it? German- Bayer. There you go. Fucking Bayer.

John Lisle 21:01 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:04 I think w- at the same time they were doing this, they de- um, find out if it's true that acetaminophen is what's toxic in Tylenol, correct? Uh, find out if it's true that at the same time they decided that acetaminophen was too dangerous.

John Lisle 21:20 That they- I think that is Tylenol. You mean Tylenol?

Joe Rogan 21:21 Yeah. I mean the- the substance.

John Lisle 21:24 Uh...

Joe Rogan 21:24 You know, that's- Tylenol is the name brand.

Narrator 21:27 What's the question again?

Joe Rogan 21:28 Um, did they... Poor Jamie, if you hear his voice, ladies and gentlemen.

Narrator 21:32 (laughs)

John Lisle 21:33 That was fun.

Joe Rogan 21:33 I'll inform the people at home, poor Jamie got a tooth pulled last night.

John Lisle 21:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 21:36 It was- it was rough.

Narrator 21:38 Oh, God.

Joe Rogan 21:38 And he- it l- not even- yeah, excuse me. Last night you were in pain.

Narrator 21:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:41 Today, he got a tooth pulled, and he's got what- what looks like a softball stuffed in his cheek.

Narrator 21:47 (laughs) Yeah.

John Lisle 21:47 Oh, man. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:48 Um, did they- did Bayer decide not to release acetaminophen during the same time period?

Narrator 21:54 Oh, god.

Joe Rogan 21:58 I- During, um, the pandemic, I got fascinated with acetaminophen because I read this horrible story about this poor lady who got COVID and she was in real pain, so she took a bunch of acetaminoph- she pu- took a bunch of Tylenol and kept taking it.

John Lisle 22:10 Mm.

Joe Rogan 22:10 And apparently didn't realize how dangerous it is-

John Lisle 22:13 Ah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:13 ... to overdose on Tylenol, and she died of liver poisoning.

John Lisle 22:15 Ah, that's true.

Joe Rogan 22:16 Yeah. And I was like, "Oh my God, how many people die of liver poisoning?" It's like 500 a year in this country. It's like-

John Lisle 22:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:21 ... acetaminophen, it's scary stuff. Was not being actively held back by Bayer at the same period that it promoted heroin and aspirin, it was simply not yet recognized or marketed the way those drugs were. And its development and adoption followed a different path. Existing historical accounts focus more on scientific uncertainty and competing drugs than on deliberate suppression campaign by Bayer. I don't think I was... I- I don't think they were saying in w- this, uh, article that I read that it was a, uh, that they were suppressing it. That they decided not to, uh, focus on it because it was dangerous. Why- why acetaminophen lasts. Eh, early clinicians favored phenizyline and, uh, acetanil- how does that work? Was it-

John Lisle 23:04 Acetanilide?

Joe Rogan 23:05 Acetanilide. Despite their later recognized toxicity, an- instead of- acetaminophen's advantages, better safety profile at therapeutic doses was not clearly distinguished at first. Okay. Anyway.

John Lisle 23:18 Well-

Joe Rogan 23:18 We're getting off track.

John Lisle 23:19 One- one- uh, I- I was just gonna say, one of the, uh, ironic things too with some of these MKUltra sub-projects, they're interested in finding these supposed truth drugs that could get someone to tell the truth during an interrogation. But it turns out the- even just the threat of giving someone a truth drug turned out to be a lot more effective than any drug that they actually tried out. So for instance, in an interrogation, if you tell someone that this is a truth drug and I'm gonna give it to you and, you know, it's gonna make you tell the truth-... that can lower their defenses in a, a bit, in a, in, in a, in a sense that the person who takes this, th- that might give them kind of the permission to be able to talk.

Joe Rogan 23:53 Right.

John Lisle 23:53 Because it makes them think, "Well, I couldn't have stopped myself. Well, if, you know, I mean, they gave me this truth drug, of course I'm gonna have to say this, so I can't be blamed. No one's gonna blame me." So it takes kind of the burden off their shoulders if they think they've been given a truth drug, even if they haven't and just give them a sugar pill. So that actually turned out to be a lot more effective than any of the drugs that they actually tried. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:09 Oh, that totally makes sense.

John Lisle 24:11 They did the same thing with hypnotism, too. Um, the hypnotism turned out to be not that effective in, at least in an interrogation. But if you could convince someone that they had been hypnotized even if they hadn't, then that could be effective. So for instance, this is what a guy called Martin Orne, he was one of the psychologists who was w- in charge of one of these sub-projects. Um, but he, he put forward what's called the hypnotic situation, not hypnotism but the hypnotic situation. So for instance, you pretend to hypnotize someone, the person you're interrogating, and they know they're not hypnotized. They obviously can tell that, you know, "You're not controlling me. This, nothing's happening." However, you start saying things like, you know, "I'm hypnotizing you, and your hands are getting warmer." And they're gonna think to themselves, "No, they're not." But under the table, you secretly implanted a heater and that their hands actually are getting warmer, because where they're sitting there's this heater under there that they don't know exists and it's making their hands warmer. So after a certain period of time, they start thinking to themselves, "Maybe I am being hypnotized. Like, the things that he's saying are actually happening."

Joe Rogan 25:09 (laughs)

John Lisle 25:09 And so if you can make them think that they've been hypnotized, again, that lowers their, um, resistance because, I mean, who could blame me for talking now? I've been hypnotized.

Joe Rogan 25:16 Right.

John Lisle 25:17 I couldn't help myself but talk. At least that's the idea. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:20 Bl- it's just so fascinating to me how much time and effort was spent just studying how to control people's minds and t- and trying to come up with ways-

John Lisle 25:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 25:29 ... to do it.

John Lisle 25:29 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:29 So it must've been really exciting to be them.

John Lisle 25:32 Um-

Joe Rogan 25:32 I mean, I think what they did is horrible. I, I don't ... You know, I'm not c-

John Lisle 25:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:37 ... in any way forgiving MKUltra for what they did. However, boy it must've been fun just to have no oversight. No one even knows you exist.

John Lisle 25:46 You, you kind of get this impression by looking at some of these MKUltra documents, especially at the beginning before the Frank Olson in- incident, and Frank Olson eventually dies after one of these experiments, and so that kind of, that definitely puts a damper on a lot of things that are going on. Before that, though, I do get the sense that it's almost like they're a bunch of guys just trying to, you know, play around with each other in a way, even though what they're doing is completely unethical. But they would just be dosing, like, the CIA coffee pot and see what happens to people who are taking drinks of it-

Joe Rogan 26:13 (laughs)

John Lisle 26:13 ... just to, to ... I mean, their rationale is that, "Well, if the Soviets possess some kind of hallucinogenic drug and they were gonna, going to release it into the water supply of a city, we need to know how people would react to that, 'cause we need to know how to defend against that. Therefore, we should be doing that to people just to see how they react to it so that we know what kind of signs to look for in case the Soviets do that."

Joe Rogan 26:34 Didn't they dose up a town in France?

John Lisle 26:37 Um, I, I don't think the CIA was connected to that. I mean, I think it actually-

Joe Rogan 26:40 Somebody did.

John Lisle 26:40 ... was, like, an ergot poisoning that came from the bread.

Joe Rogan 26:43 Oh, it was ergot? Okay.

John Lisle 26:43 From the ... I, I think so. But yeah, there, this-

Joe Rogan 26:45 But there was some speculation-

John Lisle 26:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 26:47 ... that it was purposeful.

John Lisle 26:48 Yeah. Their, their, the town's called Pont-Sa- Saint-Esprit, I believe. But yeah, there were multiple, dozens of people who came down with hallucinogenic symptoms. They were ... One guy stripped naked and started running around the street. M- multiple people died after this. Um-

Joe Rogan 27:01 Oh, God.

John Lisle 27:02 But that was one of the things that led the CIA to become really interested in hallucinogens, because if a poisoning from a bakery could cause that much havoc within this one French town, how much more damaging would it be if the Soviets did that to a city's water supply?

Joe Rogan 27:14 Right.

John Lisle 27:14 And so that, that kind of leads the CIA-

Joe Rogan 27:17 There's the justification.

John Lisle 27:17 That's the justification. So they-

Joe Rogan 27:19 And then next thing you know-

John Lisle 27:19 ... start dosing the coffee pots and, yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:21 They're running brothels.

John Lisle 27:22 Oh, yeah. Yeah, so-

Joe Rogan 27:23 That's the crazy one. O- Operation Midnight Climax. Look it up, folks, 'cause it's really crazy. They, they had their own brothels, and they would use two-way mirrors with cameras behind-

John Lisle 27:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:33 ... them, and they would dose the johns up. They'd give them a dr- "Would you like a drink? Have a seat." And they go, "Sure, I'll have a drink." And this poor guy, getting off of work, has a drink, thinks he's gonna be with a prostitute and have some nice sex. Next thing you know, he's just tripping out of his mind-

John Lisle 27:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:46 ... while he's being recorded by Jolly West. (laughs)

John Lisle 27:49 Yeah, and, you know, the guy who actually ran that is a guy named George White, and he was involved in the OSS. So he was, you know, I, I mentioned Stanley Lovel and the THC acetate. George White was the guy who was hired to do that in the OSS. Then Sydney Gottlieb-

Joe Rogan 28:03 Wow.

John Lisle 28:03 ... when he's thinking, "I need to do these drug experiments for myself, who am I gonna get at, to, to do it for me? I need someone who has connections to the underworld, who has criminal connections," George White was a Bureau of Narcotics officer, and so Gottlieb was going through the OSS files and it turns out, "Oh, this guy's already done these experiments. I'm gonna hire him." So that's how George White eventually gets involved in the CIA stuff.

Joe Rogan 28:22 Wow. I can't wait for this show. (laughs)

John Lisle 28:26 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:26 'Cause if David Chase gets ahold of a subject like this, it's g-

John Lisle 28:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:29 There's so much room. Like, it's so endlessly fascinating.

John Lisle 28:34 Yeah. I'm, I'm really excited. Obviously, for me, I mean, it, it's just so lucky that he happened to be interested in this kind of topic. I mean, there are a lot of books out there on any number of topics that anyone could be interested in. But the fact that, you know, I mean, I do consider myself extremely lucky. I happened to write this book at the right time, and someone happened to be interested in it at the right time. So yeah. I, I can't wait for that to come out.

Joe Rogan 28:55 Yeah. I'm, I'm very happy that you did write this book, and I'm very happy that this is happening 'cause I talk to people about the subject, you know, like normies per se, and they, they look at you sideways. Like, "What did they do? They do what? They're responsible for Manson. What? Huh?" And it's like, oh, my God, the rabbit hole is so deep. I don't have enough battery in my flashlight to take you down this rabbit hole. (laughs)

John Lisle 29:18 Well, that's one of the things with MKUltra just in general. I mean, uh, initially reading about this, my first impression is that o- obviously that that's, like, a, you know, conspiracy theory-

Joe Rogan 29:27 Right.

John Lisle 29:27 ... or it can't be right. But some conspiracies are true, and the MKUltra stuff, they actually did this. They were dosing people, using prostitutes behind a one-way mirror.

Joe Rogan 29:35 Yeah.

John Lisle 29:35 George White sitting on a toilet watching this happen. They're ... You know, I mean, even besides drugs, MKUltra is involved in, in a lot of psychological experiments. So not just LSD. Uh, most people associate MKUltra with LSD, but one of the-One of the most, uh, expansive of the sub-projects is Sub-Project 68. It was by this guy named Ewen Cameron. Have you heard- heard that name before?

Joe Rogan 29:56 No.

John Lisle 29:56 Cameron? Okay, Ewen Cameron, he is a psychiatrist up in Montreal in Canada, working at what's called the Allan Memorial Institute. And Gottlieb wanted to expand MKUltra besides drugs, because he already had a lot of people doing drug experiments, so he wanted to see if there were psychological techniques th- that, that could be used to manipulate a person. So not just in an interrogation, but can we actually, like, control a person's personality? Can we make them behave in certain ways, make them do something? So the idea that Ewen Cameron had come up with, before the CIA is involved, um, I- I should mention, Ewen Cameron is a behaviorist. So he thinks that all behavior is a result of nurture, not nature.

Joe Rogan 30:33 Mm-hmm.

John Lisle 30:34 So it's- it's the environmental input that causes a person to behave a certain way, and he thought that if you could bring a person back down to a blank slate, remove all the environmental inputs that have been put into them, and then you can build them back up in your image into whatever you want them to be. So his idea to bring someone down to the blank slate was to induce enough stress that they forgot who they formerly were. And so you reduce them to the blank str- slate, and then the CIA's really interested in if you could do that, then you could form them into whatever. So Ewen Cameron, his main goal is to try to figure out what can induce enough stress on a person to bring them down to that blank slate. And so he performs a lot of experiments. His most famous one is called psychic driving, where he was doing a, uh, a therapy session, uh, quote-unquote "therapy" with one of his patients, and she had ... He was recording the session, and she said something about how, you know, "My mother, when I was young, used to tell me blah, blah, blah." You know, she said something negative to her. And so Ewen Cameron re- rewinded that on the tape that he was recording and made her listen back to it and said, "Hey, I want you to listen back to what your- you say your mo- mother used to say to you." When he re- rewinded the tape and played it forward, as soon as the woman was kinda quoting her mother and she listened to that herself on the tape, she recoiled. And Cameron thought, "Oh, you have a negative reaction to that." So he rewinded again, and again, and again, and he kept rewinding it, and she just got more and more emotional, had this more and more kind of visceral reaction to what she was saying her mother used to tell her. So this led Cameron to develop the concept of psychic driving, which is you record some kind of negative message, and then you make someone listen to it for thousands and thousands and thousands of times for weeks on end, for hours every day. All their waking day, they basically are strapped into a headphone that is playing this negative message, and it will break them down over time. That's how you induce enough stress to b- break them down to the blank slate. And then you can record a positive psychic driving message to build them up into whatever image you want them to be. So that was his initial, um, idea.

Joe Rogan 32:27 But, but was it based on anything?

John Lisle 32:29 Not really.

Joe Rogan 32:29 Or was it just-

John Lisle 32:29 It wa- it was just based on he had this one encounter with this woman and she had a negative reaction. And he's just trying to induce stress. This obviously seemed to induce stress in her, therefore we're gonna start playing these negative in- tapes to them.

Joe Rogan 32:40 So it was just his idea?

John Lisle 32:41 It's just his idea.

Joe Rogan 32:42 Wow.

John Lisle 32:42 He- he was known for doing this kind of thing, like, kind of spur of the moment. In fact, there was one, there was one kid, basically, who had been at this Allan Memorial Institute where Ewen Cameron was. He eventually had gotten out, but he had tried to commit suicide, and so he was sent back to the Allan Memorial Institute. But the way that he had tried to commit suicide was to close the garage and have the CO2 build up with the running car, and then he would, you know, breathe it in and pass out and die. Um, that ended up not working. However, when he went back to the Allan Memorial Institute, Ewen Cameron thought, "You know, his personality seems like a little bit better than it was th- when he was here before. Maybe CO2 can, like-"

Joe Rogan 33:17 (laughs) .

John Lisle 33:18 ... "influence someone." (laughs) And so, so he sent out some of his, uh-

Joe Rogan 33:21 (laughs) .

John Lisle 33:22 ... some of his assistants to go buy, like, CO2 canisters, and, "We're gonna start, like, giving this to people."

Joe Rogan 33:25 Ah.

John Lisle 33:25 But it turns out the assistants knew that this was, like, completely unethical. There's no medical basis for anything. And so they lied to him and said, "Oh, the canisters were way more expensive than we could actually afford, so we can't do that." But ... So he was, he was just, he was trying to find any way that he could have a breakthrough to cure mental illness, and he was using his g- patients as guinea pigs, basically.

Joe Rogan 33:43 Complete guinea pigs?

John Lisle 33:44 Complete guinea pigs.

Joe Rogan 33:44 What was the result with the woman? The- the woman where they played the negative-

John Lisle 33:49 Um ...

Joe Rogan 33:49 ... recordings?

John Lisle 33:50 I don't ... Well, there are, there are dozens and dozens of people who that happened to. I don't know about her in particular, 'cause I don't know if she's actually named in the documents. So I don't, I don't know-

Joe Rogan 33:58 Did any of these experiments have a positive effect?

John Lisle 34:02 Oh.

Joe Rogan 34:02 Did it work?

John Lisle 34:02 Hardly. Hardly. Hardly. So that, that was only-

Joe Rogan 34:04 I- I shouldn't even say positive. I should say were they effective?

John Lisle 34:08 No. No. I- for the most part, the people who he did his practice on came out way worse than when they went in. So-

Joe Rogan 34:14 (laughs) .

John Lisle 34:15 ... psychic driving, that's initially what got the CIA interested in Cameron. So it's important to keep in mind, it's not that the CIA told Cameron to do this. He's doing this on his own 'cause he thinks he's gonna cure mental illness by having this radical breakthrough where we break them down and build them back up, and we can build them back up and make them forget their schizophrenia or depression or whatever they have.

Joe Rogan 34:32 Wow.

John Lisle 34:32 The CIA reads his article about psychic driving, and they think, "This is the kind of thing we're interested in." So from that point on, they start funding him not only to do psychic driving experiments, but also he does, um, like, puts people in chemical comas for months on end.

Joe Rogan 34:49 (laughs) .

John Lisle 34:49 And while they're in these chemical comas, he would put a r- an audio device next to their pillow playing these psychic driving messages.

Joe Rogan 34:55 Oh.

John Lisle 34:55 And he would put them in sensory deprivation chambers for weeks. You know, they would have goggles over their eyes, earmuffs on their ears. They would have cardboard tubes over their arms so that they couldn't feel anything, and they would just be in a room for weeks on end. The idea, again, being to induce enough stress so that it breaks them down so that you can eventually build them up. Um, but one of the saddest stories in the book, really, is of this woman named Mary Morrow, who was one of the patients of Ewen Cameron in Montreal. The- the sad thing about her especially is she had been a resident in training at the Allan Memorial Institute under Ewen Cameron. So she had been training to be a doctor under him, and she had administered some of these techniques, including electric shock. So that's one of the things, too. We would put these electrodes on the heads of people and just- he would continually shock them until ... Again, the idea was to reduce them to, like ... In- in one case, he says an infantile-like state where they lose control of their bladder. They can't eat, they can't talk, they can't go to the bathroom on their own. They can't put on their own c- clothes or anything like that. So she was in charge of administering some of these, um, I mean, you know, therapy sessions or whatever they would call it, but th- just basically torture to these pe- people.She ended up, um, having almost kind of a psychotic break herself. She, she became anorexic and she failed her neurology exams, and so she went into a really deep depression. She attempted to commit suicide, that didn't work. She was admitted to the hospital and, to another hospital. Ewen Cameron came to visit her and he said, "I think you should come back to the Allen Memorial, not as a doctor, but as a patient, and let me treat you." So she ends up going back to the Allen Memorial-

Joe Rogan 36:26 Mm-hmm.

John Lisle 36:26 ... as a patient and she thought to herself that, "It's gonna be okay. They're not gonna do the electric shock to me," because you had to sign a consent form and, you know, for that to happen to you, you know? The people who are signing the consent forms, they don't know how bad it's actually gonna be, they're just signing their name. But she knows, "I haven't signed a consent form, so they can't do that to me." But it turns out, in the time since she went to the hospital and came back, they had stopped doing the consent forms and he would just do this on whoever. And so they ended up doing this electric shock treatment "treatment" on her, and, you know, afterwards, she would be babbling, incontinent, couldn't put on her makeup or clothes or anything. Eventually, her m- she would call her mother after some of these treatments and her mother knew something was going on because she just became more and more incoherent as time went on. So the mother sent Mary's sister, Margaret, in order to go to the Allen Memorial to basically bust her out of there. So the sister walked in the front door and said, "I'm not leaving until I see Mary, you know, I'm gonna call the police if you don't let me through." So eventually she goes to her sister's room, opens the door, and Mary is sitting there just with wide bug eyes, you know, doesn't even recognize her sister. It takes several days for her to figure out where she actually is, and then she gets busted out of there. Um, so it's a very-

Joe Rogan 37:34 Was it reversible in any way? Was it-

John Lisle 37:36 Um, it's, in her case, I'm not exactly sure. She went on to have a little bit of a career, but she eventually attempted to commit suicide later again. That was unsuccessful. Then her and several of the victims of Ewen Cameron's experiments, in the 1980s, they ended up suing the CIA for supporting Ewen Cameron. And during those lawsuits, the attorneys who were representing them, they took the depositions of several of the people who were involved in MKUltra to try to use this during their trial. So they took the depositions of Sidney Gottlieb, Robert Lashbrook, Richard Helms, the head of the CIA, and many of the victims who were victims of all this, and that's basically the basis for my book. I found thousands of pages of these depositions that's just verbatim transcript of these people talking about either what they did or what was done to them. And so I'm using that throughout the book to explain here's what they're doing in their own words, or here's what was done to them in their own words.

Joe Rogan 38:26 Wow. Well, so what was the result of the trial?

John Lisle 38:29 Oh, well, so it was actually settled out of court before it went to trial. So the plaintiffs, the CIA gave the plaintiffs $750,000 to be split among them, but, you know-

Joe Rogan 38:39 Oh, boy.

John Lisle 38:39 ... after attorneys' fees and everything, it doesn't really amount to much anyway.

Joe Rogan 38:42 Oh, boy.

John Lisle 38:42 And so, you know, they settled out of court. They got a little bit of money, but it never went to trial.

Joe Rogan 38:47 Ugh. But they-

John Lisle 38:47 And so the, these depositions, though, you know, since it never went to trial, these were just in the papers of Joseph Rauh, who's the main lawyer who was involved in this case. And when he passed away, his, his papers were donated to the Library of Congress that had all these thousands of pages of depositions in there, 823 pages of which are Sidney Gottlieb testifying about what he did in MKUltra. And so I was rooting around the Library of Congress and happened to find them. So that's how I found, basically, the basis for what this book is.

Joe Rogan 39:13 Wow. Wow. I wonder how much of that woman's psychological breakdown had to do with the guilt of performing those experiments on people and realizing that it wasn't doing anything-

John Lisle 39:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:26 ... that he thought, that Ewen Cameron thought it was gonna do.

John Lisle 39:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 39:28 In fact, it was destroying people's minds.

John Lisle 39:30 Yeah, maybe some. I mean, it's, it's just speculation 'cause I'm not sure about-

Joe Rogan 39:32 Yeah, of course.

John Lisle 39:33 ... you know, that had to have weighed on the consciences. Uh, uh, you know, there's, in what was called the Sleep Room, Ewen Cameron's Sleep Room, this is where they would do the chemical comas. The, one of the nurses, I have kind of, uh, her, her diary entries basically describing what she was seeing, and she does seem to be pretty reluctant to have done what she was actually doing. And Ewen Cameron, she said, would often come over to her and pat her on the back and say, you know, "You're helping these people. You're helping these people," just trying to coax her along to go along with what he was telling her to do.

Joe Rogan 40:02 Ewen Cameron seems like h- like a complete madman.

John Lisle 40:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:04 Like he was in a d- it almost, like, too good to be true. Not to- too good, but too, too, like, mad scientist to be true. Was he on any sort of drugs?

John Lisle 40:16 I- I- I mean, I've never seen anything to indicate that he was on drugs, but he definitely had a, almost like a messiah complex.

Joe Rogan 40:22 Ah.

John Lisle 40:22 He thought, "I'm gonna be the one to win the Nobel Prize in medicine because I'm gonna cure all mental illness through this psychic driving," or whatever it was. He was gonna be the next Sigmund Freud. He really had delusions of grandeur, just like I think Jolly West did as well.

Joe Rogan 40:34 Mm-hmm.

John Lisle 40:34 And so I think that drove a lot of what he was doing. His patients were just a means to his own end. They, they're, they're the guinea pigs that I can use to prove that these medical techniques s- actually work, and therefore everyone's gonna praise me because I've cured, you know, schizophrenia or whatever it is.

Joe Rogan 40:49 I would j- I'm just always suspicious of something that has that, someone has that kind of access to all sorts of compounds.

John Lisle 40:56 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:56 Like, and then you're experimenting on people and, you know, especially with things like amphetamines, which do tend to make people a little l- less empathetic-

John Lisle 41:03 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 41:04 ... and a little more driven. You know, I would, I would, would be very curious to see if he was interested in anything like that.

John Lisle 41:10 Yeah, I don't remember specifically for him in that case. Um, there, I mean, many of the people who were either running the sub-projects or, um, approving them, like Sidney Gottlieb. Gottlieb took a lot of LSD. He, you know, he was... When the CIA got LSD, before it gave it to other people, the first thing they did was try it for themselves to see what actually happened. So Sidney Gottlieb took it multiple times before he ever even gave it to people to-

Joe Rogan 41:32 Wow.

John Lisle 41:32 ... understand what it was like.

Joe Rogan 41:34 Wow.

John Lisle 41:35 And, you know, one of the, the physician who was the attending physician the first time he took LSD, 'cause they did it in kind of a controlled setting with, uh, several other people there, a, a guy named Harold Abramson. And for anyone listening who knows much about the Frank Olson incident, Frank Olson is a guy that would later be dosed with LSD. He would go out the hotel window in New York. And Harold Abramson is the guy who S- Sidney Gottlieb and Robert Lashbrook, they took to New York to get treatment from Harold Abramson afterwards. So he had the CIA connection.

Joe Rogan 42:06 Wow.... the, the reason why I brought up amphetamines is because, uh, I, I feel like it might be the... one of the unheralded or undiscussed drivers in a lot of, like, psychopathic behavior that we see-

John Lisle 42:20 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:20 ... in our culture today.

John Lisle 42:22 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:22 I think there's, (clears throat) there's a lot of people on prescribed amphetamines-

John Lisle 42:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:26 ... that operate in a way that is, is, is very, very much like a, a functional meth head.

John Lisle 42:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:33 You know what I mean? And I would wonder, like, if you were in charge of doing something this evil, just running experiments where you're destroying people's minds and you're getting no positive results, none of it's working, yet you continue to do it. And you even do it to people that used to be involved in the program-

John Lisle 42:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:49 ... like that poor woman. Like, what, what's the psychological profile of that guy? 'Cause he's obviously mentally ill, which is fascinating, right?

John Lisle 42:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:57 It's fascinating that a mentally ill person is working on a mind experiment program-

John Lisle 43:01 Yes.

Joe Rogan 43:01 ... because there's no way he's not mentally ill. Like, to have no empathy to these people that you've tried all this stuff on, and not only has it not been effective and not rid them of mental illness, it's made them far worse.

John Lisle 43:11 Mm-hmm. Yeah. For... Yeah, for Ewen Cameron, he, uh... I feel like he definitely lacked empathy, whether that's some kind of medically... medical thing or whatever. There, there are a couple people in the book, I think, who are like that. One of them is Ewen Cameron. Another is George White, who was in charge of Operation Midnight Climax. He wa- he was in it just for the fun of it. He would, he would dose his own friends with LSD just to see what would happen. You know, there's-

Joe Rogan 43:33 (laughs)

John Lisle 43:33 ... there's one story in the book. There was a woman who had gone over to a dinner party, basically. She had actually gone over with her husband a, a few weeks before, but George White didn't dose them because the husband was there. The husband went away on a business trip, so the woman and her friend, she en- they ended up going to see George White to hang out, and White dosed them with LSD. The woman had her one-year-old son there with her, but he still dosed them with LSD. She ends up basically going crazy. I mean, she, you know, she goes home. She ends up calling, you know, George White asking, "What's happened to me? What's going on?" Um, one of these women, she ended up being committed to a mental institution for basically the rest of her life after this happened to her.

Joe Rogan 44:13 Oh my God.

John Lisle 44:13 So she had some kind of, like, psychotic break after this unwitting, surreptitious dose of LSD. Of course, she didn't know what was going on, so she thought her whole world was collapsing. Yeah, she, she lost her husband. It was said that she would cower in the corner of her parents', you know, uh, house before she went to this mental institution, convinced that an unidentified they was, like, looking after her or trying to get her, you know, calling on the phone. None of this was happening, but she was just having these delusions that-

Joe Rogan 44:39 Wow.

John Lisle 44:39 ... someone was out to get her.

Joe Rogan 44:40 Oh my God.

John Lisle 44:40 That's kind of a recurring theme that you see in these people who are unwittingly dosed. One of them... One of the saddest stories in the book is a guy named Wayne Ritchie, and George White did the same thing to him. But, um, Wayne Ritchie was this... He was a guard at Alcatraz for a while. This is in San Francisco. And he had gone to a Christmas party at the post office there in San Francisco just for, you know... He was a US Marshal too, so just the US Marshals, whatever. And that night, he was drinking, you know, some of the punch at this party, and he started feeling very strange. He started seeing colors. The room started spinning around him. He ended up going upstairs to where his locker was and, you know, getting his things, and he wound up going home because he didn't, you know, know what was going on. When he got home, his girlfriend was upset at him. She said that, you know, "I'm not happy here, I want to move to New York." And so when he's in this fog, he decides, "I know how to set my life on track. I'm going to grab a couple of my service revolver, revolvers. I'm gonna go to a bar downtown. I'm gonna rob it, and I'm gonna give the money to my girlfriend so she can go to New York and she'll be happy an- and so she won't break up with me." So when he's in this fog, he ends up doing all this. He gets his revolvers. He goes to a bar downtown. He, you know, basically has a stick-up, "Give me all the money in the till." A quick-thinking patron who's sitting next to him basically gets the mug of beer and smashes it over his head so he falls down. The cops come later. They arrest him. He's in jail. After a day or two, he kind of sobers up and kind of awakens from this fog, and he doesn't know what happened to him at, at that point. He ends up losing his job, losing his friends for the next 30, 40 years, he doesn't know what happened, until in 1999, he was reading The Washington Post and he saw an article describing MKUltra, and two things in particular stuck out to him. One was George White, whom he knew back in the days when he was a US Marshal, Marshal, and the other one was a description of LSD. And so Wayne Ritchie starts putting all this together and thinking, "I think George White gave me LSD that night at the holiday, you know, party, and s- spiked the punch bowl, and that's what happened." And it turns out, you can see in this book, in the, in the photo section, the last photo in the photo section of my book, it's a image of George White's diary from the day that Wayne Ritchie went insane, and it says, "Federal Building Christmas party." (laughs) So he was there at the Christmas party.

Joe Rogan 46:58 Wow. Imagine being that guy reading that article 30 years later, realizing, "This guy ruined my life."

John Lisle 47:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 47:05 "For fun."

John Lisle 47:06 Yeah. So he, he ended up suing the CIA, but the judge said that he couldn't prove that he had been dosed with drugs, so they couldn't rule in his favor, and so that was it.

Joe Rogan 47:15 Oh, Jesus. (sighs)

John Lisle 47:18 Yeah, but there are... I mean, there are dozens of stories like that.

Joe Rogan 47:21 What a fucking psycho.

John Lisle 47:22 Yeah, insane.

Joe Rogan 47:22 What a fucking psycho.

John Lisle 47:24 So he's, he's pu-

Joe Rogan 47:24 Just dosing up the punch bowl-

John Lisle 47:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 47:26 ... ruining lives.

John Lisle 47:27 And, and he knows how messed up it is, 'cause by that point, he had done this to multiple people and called them... and caused them to, to, to lose a lot, you know? So he, he knew what he was doing at that point. Um-

Joe Rogan 47:40 God.

John Lisle 47:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:42 Thi- this is just what happens with people when they have that kind of unchecked power and no oversight.

John Lisle 47:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:47 And they're the kind of psychopaths that would be involved in this sort of experimentation in the first place.

John Lisle 47:52 Yeah, yeah. No, so, so I think he's probably the most, um, heinous of the individuals in this book. All of them are to a degree. Sidney Gottlieb, um, I think he... I, I don't think he's ha- as heinous in the sense that he's, like, intentionally trying to harm people. He thinks he's doing this for a patriotic reason. He thinks MKUltra is actually going to help us defend ourselves against the Soviet Union. There is some, like, moral justification, at least he has for himself, so it's not all just, you know, whatever George White is doing. Um, but at the same time, I...... Sidney Gottlieb doesn't really take any responsibility for what happens to these people. Basically, the way that MKUltra was structured with these sub-projects, Sidney Gottlieb wasn't running these experiments himself. What he would do is, he would fund other people to do experiments. And most of the time, these people were experts in their own field, so they were, like, reputable people. Ewen Cameron was the head of the American Psychiatric Association, the Canadian Psychiatric Association, and the World Psychiatric Association. He was, like, the most famous psychic- psychiatrist in the world, and he was being funded by this. So Sidney Gottlieb thought, "Well, if I can fund reputable psychiatrists or drug researchers to do these experiments, then it's up to them to provide the safety and the procedures, you know, for, to keep these patients safe. It's not my job. They're the ones who are conducting the experiments." That's how he justified it to himself. But that's how the structure of MKUltra typically worked.

Joe Rogan 49:15 Such a diffusion of responsibility.

John Lisle 49:16 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 49:17 Yeah.

John Lisle 49:17 Gottlieb is funding people, and he's not even funding them directly. In most cases what's happening is he's using cutout organizations. So he's giving the money to-

Joe Rogan 49:25 Of course, of course. (laughs)

John Lisle 49:26 ... the... One of them is called the Getchell Fund, one of them is called the National Institutes of Mental Health. And then the CIA sets up, sets up its own cutout organization called The Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology-

Joe Rogan 49:37 Oh. (laughs)

John Lisle 49:37 ... which is just a, it's just a made-up organization. But, um, so the CIA would-

Joe Rogan 49:42 Oh.

John Lisle 49:42 ... transfer the funds to the society, who would then transfer it to the researcher. In many cases, the researchers didn't even know they were being funded by the CIA. They just thought, "Oh, I got a grant from this organization. That's great." So they don't even know that their true patron is Sidney Gottlieb and MKUltra, they just know, "Oh, they want me to do these experiments." And in many cases, they're allowed to still publish their work, you know, so, you know, they're publishing this. Nothing's changed that much from what they were doing before. Um, but it turns out their patron is actually the CIA, who wants to make sure they continue doing these experiments just in case they find something that could be of use.

Joe Rogan 50:13 Oh, my God. What was your journey personally, like, both researching these subjects and, and then writing books about it? Because what, what, what, how, what was your opinion on all this things before this? And how much of it's, um, how much of it has shaped your world view?

John Lisle 50:33 Um, so with the... Probably the first book is more formative to the shaping of my world view just because, you know, I, I, that was the first one I did, so it-

Joe Rogan 50:42 What did, what was your perspective before getting involved in any of this material?

John Lisle 50:47 Well, I, I, I'm pretty much, um, I would consider myself a skeptic, generally, you know. So when stuff gets a little too outlandish, I, I am pretty skeptical. Um, but of course that, the existence of MKUltra and, uh, even in my first book, The Dirty Tricks Department, there are some, there are some projects that are even more outlandish than some of the stuff I've been talking about with MKUltra. And so that kind of lowered my barriers to thinking that, "Oh, people are crazier, like, oh, the government does actually perform these crazy, you know, projects." One, one of the, one of the ones that really lowered my barriers to that for the first book was called Operation Fantasia. And, uh, again, it's just a testament to the absurdity of some of the ideas that were happening in World War II and with, just within the intelligence community. Operation Fantasia was the brainchild of this guy named Ed Salinger, and he had been a businessman who had done imports and exports with Tokyo, in Tokyo. So he knew Japanese culture, he knew the language, he knew the religious beliefs. The OSS wanted to exploit that by trying to find a way we can, we can demoralize the Japanese. "You know a lot about the Japanese psyche," the idea was, Ed Salinger, "so figure out a way we can demoralize the Japanese and make them basically give up this war, because, you know, they're dug in, they're not giving up. We need to find a way that we can basically use psychological warfare on them." So his idea is that in the Shinto religion, there are these kind of mystical figures called kitsune. And in many cases, they take the form of like a fox, a glowing fox. And oftentimes, they represent portents of doom. So, you know, if you see one of these kitsune, it's an indication that something bad is about to happen. And so Salinger knew what if we can artificially create kitsune, spread them around Japan, then all these Japanese soldiers are gonna see them and think, "Oh, that's a portent of doom. Surely it means we're going to lose the war, therefore, we might as well lay down, down our arms right now." And so Salinger initially his idea is we're going to create whistles that can make fox sounds, and we're gonna distribute them across Japan to our agents there, and they can blow these whistles like anyone would recognize a fox sound. He, he had the idea that we're gonna create artificial fox odors and spread it around places, and people are gonna think that it's because kitsune foxes that are walking around. None of those ever materialized. But then he thought, "What if we actually do it? What if we capture foxes from China and Australia, we paint them with glowing radioactive paint, and then we-" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:07 (laughs)

John Lisle 53:07 "... and then we drop them in Japan? Surely that's gonna scare the Japanese."

Joe Rogan 53:11 (laughs)

John Lisle 53:12 So there are actually several experiments-

Joe Rogan 53:13 Oh, my God.

John Lisle 53:14 ... that, that they did this. So they captured foxes. The United States Radium Corporation produced a paint with radium. It was radioactive, but-

Joe Rogan 53:21 So lume from like-

John Lisle 53:23 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 53:23 ... dials of watches.

John Lisle 53:24 Exactly. It's the same kind of thing.

Joe Rogan 53:25 Yeah.

John Lisle 53:26 It glowed in the... So they decided, "We're gonna paint foxes with this," but they first needed to test whether it's possible to paint fur with this and it stay on. So they went to the Central Park Zoo, and they got a raccoon, and they painted it and kept it under lock and key. And it turns out after a few days of ordinary raccoon shenanigans, the paint stayed on. So they thought, "Okay, this might have something going for it." So then Salinger decided, "We're going to paint these foxes, roll them out into the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, and throw them overboard to see if they can actually swim to shore, because if we're gonna get these foxes to Japan, we're gonna have to throw them off the coast and they're gonna have to swim and then scare people." But can foxes even swim? He didn't know.

Joe Rogan 54:00 (laughs)

John Lisle 54:00 So he gets these foxes-He paints them with this paint. He throws them in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay-

Joe Rogan 54:05 Oh my God.

John Lisle 54:05 ... and it turns out they actually swam to shore, so that worked. However, by the time they had gotten to shore, the paint had all washed off. And so-

Joe Rogan 54:12 So they poisoned the water?

John Lisle 54:13 ... so i- w- well, yeah. Well, it's like-

Joe Rogan 54:15 They made the water radioactive?

John Lisle 54:15 ... if we were to do this in Japan, the paint's o- it just... you see a fox, it's not a kitsune. It has to be a glowing fox.

Joe Rogan 54:20 Right.

John Lisle 54:20 And so he decided, "Well, that's not gonna work." So his next plan, this is, this is one of the craziest things I found from my first book. The next plan was, we're going to stuff a fox, a dead fox, just taxidermy it, have this fox body. We're gonna paint it with this glowing paint. We can drape a cloth over it and paint glowing bones on it to make it look like a skeleton. And we're gonna put a human skull over this fox head to make it look as if it's a human skull, 'cause apparently this was, like, an even more potent version of the kitsune myth that was going around in Japan. So we're gonna put this human skull on this taxidermied, glowing fox. We're gonna have the jaw open and close as if it's talking, and we're gonna blast propaganda out of the skull, and we're gonna attach balloons to it so that it can fly over Japan.

Joe Rogan 55:02 (laughs)

John Lisle 55:02 The Japanese are gonna look up-

Joe Rogan 55:03 Mm-hmm.

John Lisle 55:03 ... and see this flying, glowing, radioactive fox spreading this propaganda, and they're apparently gonna lay down their arms. I guess that was the plan. And so that was his, his ultimate idea of what we can do to did they attempt it? Tha- that never actually made it. About, about the time that he was writing all this up and doing these experiments, the Manhattan Project had performed the Trinity test, and so it was like, "Well, we already have the weapon that's gonna win the war, so-"

Joe Rogan 55:26 (laughs)

John Lisle 55:26 "... we don't need the glowing foxes. Thank you very much."

Joe Rogan 55:28 Wow.

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Joe Rogan 56:57 Wow.

John Lisle 56:58 Yeah, so wha- when you, when you research stuff like that, all of a sudden it's like, "Well, anything is kinda possible." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:03 The, the problem is most people haven't researched it, so when you're having conversations with people... Like, I've always been conspiratorially minded, but more in the fun side-

John Lisle 57:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:12 ... like Bigfoot, UFOs-

John Lisle 57:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:14 ... dumb stuff, as a distraction. Like, I know what it is. I, I'm interested 'cause it's silly.

John Lisle 57:20 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:20 You know? And I just find it fun. Like, the Bigfoot thing is, uh, I, my... I watched a Bigfoot documentary the other night against my own better judgment, and now my YouTube algorithm is filled with Bigfoot stories. It's just the dumbest thing ever. But-

John Lisle 57:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:34 ... when I started doing the podcast, it slowly shifted my perspective of a d- n- not only are there real conspiracies, but they're way more prevalent than you would ever think. And you, you almost have to get lucky to find out about them.

John Lisle 57:50 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:50 You know? Like, one of the things from the book Chaos was Tom O'Neill describing some of the documents that were discovered in... God, I b- I believe it was a storage unit that, where they, they had some-

John Lisle 58:05 Oh, uh, like the MKUltra documents?

Joe Rogan 58:07 Yes.

John Lisle 58:07 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 58:08 Yeah.

John Lisle 58:08 Yeah, that's a-

Joe Rogan 58:08 Do you remember that story?

John Lisle 58:08 ... yeah, that's a big part of my, my book. Uh, so in 1975 or so, real- really in 1974, there was something called the Rockefeller Commission, and that was an executive commission set up to investigate past abuses of the intelligence community, and that kind of led to the Church Committee in 1975, and, and also the Pike Committee in the House. But after they published their final reports, those reports included things about MKUltra, that the US government had performed these secret drug experiments in the past. And that led a former State Department employee named John Marks to file a Freedom of Information Act request, basically for any and all documents related to these former drug experiments. And so, you know, not too long afterwards, this, uh, the, a CIA, um, this guy named Fr- Frank Lau- Laubinger. He was, he was working in, like, the CIA archives, but he discovered these six or seven boxes of material that Sidney Gottlieb hadn't destroyed when he retired from the CIA 'cause Gottlieb incinerated most of his files, and so did Richard Helms. They, they were in on this together.

Joe Rogan 59:09 Right.

John Lisle 59:09 But it turns out those boxes escaped the destruction because they had sent- been sent to the CIA records center several years before Gottlieb and Helms retired. Therefore, they weren't incinerated in this purge, and so they survived. So Marks filed that information request, these boxes were found, and then they were released. And this was right around the time that there were a couple of subcommittee hearings on MKUltra, and that's right when all these documents came out too, so it became kind of a big deal. But, so that's how s- m- thousands and thousands of documents related to MKUltra survived, even though Gottlieb and Helms incinerated most of the files that they actually had.

Joe Rogan 59:45 Which leads you to consider, what would we know if those documents hadn't been discovered?

John Lisle 59:51 Mm-hmm. W- yeah. We-

Joe Rogan 59:53 We would be decades behind on this.

John Lisle 59:55 Yeah. They, they do reveal a lot of information. That said, we can actually kind of run this scenario because we do know what we kind of knew before those documents were released. So before those documents were released, you still had the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee and a few other things, but... Um, so we, we would have known still, because it came out before those documents, about the Frank Olson incident. This guy was dosed with LSD at this place called Deep Creek, and he ended up going out the window of the Stateler Hotel in New York. He died. We would have known about Operation Midnight Climax, even though I don't know if that name was specifically used within these committee...... publications. So we would have known-

Joe Rogan 1:00:30 Such a great name.

John Lisle 1:00:31 (laughs) Well, that's George White's doing.

Joe Rogan 1:00:33 Is it?

John Lisle 1:00:33 Sidney Gottlieb said he had a flair with a pen. Like, he, he was a journalist before he-

Joe Rogan 1:00:36 Fucking psycho.

John Lisle 1:00:37 Yeah. Yeah, he was. In fact, while we're on that topic, he, at the end of Operation Midnight Climax, he wrote a letter to Sidney Gottlieb, basically thanking him for "supporting me for all these years." Out of all the MKUltra sub-projects, uh, you know, a lot of them started in 1953. Many of them were done by 1963, but several continued into the late '60s. But he ... After this was done, he wrote a letter to Sidney Gottlieb and in the depositions that I found, the attorneys confront Gottlieb about this and they ask him, "What was in that letter?" And Gottlieb says, "Oh, you know, he, he had a flair for writing. You can't trust anything he said." But they, "No, what was in it?" Turns out what was in it, George White wrote, "I toiled in the vineyards wholeheartedly because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?"

Joe Rogan 1:01:25 (sighs) And he wrote that down?

John Lisle 1:01:26 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:28 God.

John Lisle 1:01:29 Yeah. So we, we, we would, we would have known about the Frank Olson incident. We would have known about Operation Midnight Climax, though maybe not that name. We would have known the broad outlines of MKUltra because that was already least- released before those files, but the files g- give us a really detailed view of what happened.

Joe Rogan 1:01:45 But you ... We don't know what was in the files that were incinerated.

John Lisle 1:01:50 That's correct. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:50 Can you imagine that?

John Lisle 1:01:51 Yeah. We (sighs) we kind of do know a little bit about what was in them because there was an investigation that was done afterwards because it was illegal for them to destroy these files, not that anything ever happened to them. They didn't face any consequences for it. However, Gottlieb's secretary, this woman who had only been working for, for him for a few weeks before he retired, he told her to basically incinerate these files, you know, to help him do this. So she didn't know it was against protocol or whatever. She was new to the job, but she was interviewed later as part of a CIA investigation into the destruction of the files and she does say a little bit about what she thinks were in the files. She says it was some of his personal papers and there was secret and secret sensitive files in there. We don't have a, really have a great idea about what it could be, although I do think m- a lot of the files were ... In the depositions that I found, George White, or Sidney Gottlieb says that George White would write to him personal updates about the experiments that he was doing in these, you know, brothels basically. And so, I'm, I kno- I'm assuming that a lot of those files consisted of George White's personal reports on what was going on.

Joe Rogan 1:02:56 (sighs) Oof. Now, when y- you get deeper and deeper into this stuff, how much has it sh- shaped your worldview?

John Lisle 1:03:05 Um, a, a decent amount in the sense that, uh, just as it did for kind of the American public in general in the 1970s when this was coming out, it really led people to cast a skeptical eye toward the government and thinking ... It's just assumed that the government is supposed to be the protector of civil li- civil liberties, but after Watergate, after MKUltra, after the Vietnam War, it starts to seem as if the government is infringing on those civil liberties, you know? Instead of being the protector of it, in many cases, it's infringing on them. Um, not that it doesn't protect civil liberties, but one of the main things that I came away after writing this book is the problem of oversight. You know, I think the, the constitutional system of government that we have is ingenious, the fact that we have checks and balances and these sep- the sep- the separation of powers. However, you have to enable the separate branches of government to be able to check the other branches. For most of the Cold War, that external check on the executive branch, the, the, like Congress checking the executive, the president or the CIA, didn't really exist. Um, so any time that the CIA was doing an operation, I have a chapter about this, but, you know, sometimes the CIA personnel would try to inform members of Congress of what they were doing. I have one specific quote where a CIA guy walks up to a sitting senator and says, "Hey, let me tell you about what we're doing in Chile or whatever it is." And then he says, "No, I don't want to hear it. Don't tell me. Just do what you're going to do." He doesn't even want to know. So it's like, how can you expect Congress to give oversight of the executive if they are completely unwilling to even know what the executive is doing? So fortunately, in the aftermath of these revelations, there have been some, um, some programs or committees that are set up within Congress to provide that external check. However, it's, you know, it's not even clear how effective those are. Um, for, one, one check on the executive after this is that the president now has to, um, sign off basically on covert operations, so that, that eliminates the president's plausible deniability. One of the main themes throughout this book is th- it is what I call this, uh, the vicious cycle of secrecy. So, an organization like the CIA that has secrecy, that kind of leads to what I, I see as this vicious cycle. Secrecy leads to plausible deniability because if it's secret, nobody can know that I'm doing this, therefore I'm not going to be blamed for it. So secrecy leads to plausible deniability. Plausible deniability leads to reckless behavior, like MKUltra. If nobody's gonna find out what I'm doing, therefore I'm incentivized to do some crazy stuff because I'm not going to be held accountable for it. So secrecy to plausible deniability, plausible deniability to reckless behavior. Reckless behavior, in many instances, leads to embarrassment. It's almost inevitable for many of these projects that they get found out. Someone leaks something to the press. This is how the family jewels that the CIA had that was like a compilation of all the illegal stuff that it had done over the past couple of decades, it eventually got leaked to Seymour Hersh who published it on the front page of The New York Times. So, reckless behavior leads to embarrassment, but embarrassment leads to secrecy because now that we've been found out, we got to make sure that never happens again. We need more secrecy. And the vicious cycle ten- continues. So if you can break that vicious cycle by having some kind of external check, that's what you actually need, like an empowered Congress that is willing to check the executive.

Joe Rogan 1:06:22 Yeah.

John Lisle 1:06:22 So ...

Joe Rogan 1:06:22 And then you realize, well, who's running against them? Who wants that job? Not a lot of impressive people. A lot of really driven, successful, intelligent people are involved in-... other activities that consume their time.

John Lisle 1:06:39 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:06:40 They have families, they have careers, they have a lot... They don't have the desire to be a congressperson. So you're not getting the cream of the crop. You're not even getting anything-

John Lisle 1:06:49 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:49 ... remotely similar to the cream of the crop. You're occasionally getting great people that really wanna serve the country, but that is rare. That is, that is like... I wouldn't say rare, but if 20% of the food you ate at a place was poison, would you go eat at that place?

John Lisle 1:07:04 (laughs) No.

Joe Rogan 1:07:04 You would not, right? You would say, "I'm assuming there's fucking poison in that place." That's Congress.

John Lisle 1:07:09 Yeah. And, you know-

Joe Rogan 1:07:10 That, that's elected officials.

John Lisle 1:07:11 Yeah. And Andrew Yang has made this point before, I know I've heard him say it, that the, the reelection rate of Congress is super high. It's like 80, 90%, whatever it is.

Joe Rogan 1:07:20 Yeah.

John Lisle 1:07:20 The approval rating for Congress is like in the teens.

Joe Rogan 1:07:23 Yeah.

John Lisle 1:07:23 So how is it we have such a divergence between the reelection rate and the approval rating? It has to do with the in- the, the kind of electoral system, you know? The people who are incentivized to actually run for Congress, in many cases, they're the most ideological on either side, because the only race that matters is actually the primary. Because if you're in a, you know, uh, a district that is 90% Trump voters, the Republican is going to win the general r- election. It doesn't matter who it is. So, you know, the, the primary is the, the main election that happens in those districts. And if that's the case, well, the person who can win the primary is gonna win the general. And who's gonna win the primary? Well, it's gonna win... I- It's gonna be the person who can get 90% of Trump voters to be more interested in them than whoever the other Republican, you know, is.

Joe Rogan 1:08:08 Right.

John Lisle 1:08:08 In many cases, that drives ideological extremism because, you know, you're, you're already selecting a sample size of voters within the primary who are the most ideological extreme. And so, they're going to elect basically whoever it is-

Joe Rogan 1:08:22 Yeah.

John Lisle 1:08:22 ... because the general election's a foregone conclusion. So if you can realign the electoral system in a way to where, you know, I mean, I don't know the, the answer to this, but it would be some kind of open primaries or ranked voting or proportional representation, ending gerrymandering, something like that-

Joe Rogan 1:08:38 Mm-hmm.

John Lisle 1:08:38 ... then you better incentivize Congresspeople to actually want the job or incentivize people who