The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance by Gary Webb Part 2

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0:00 Okay, everyone, welcome to the show. Let me get us live over here on Rumble and we will be ready to go. Okay, so chapter one of Dark Alliance. It starts in July of 1979. So understanding just what's going on.

0:32 In July of 1979, we're at the end of the Carter administration, obviously the Iranian revolution. And we're going into 1980 where the Carter Reagan campaign was occurring. So Webb says.

0:58 As his enemy amassed in the hills and suburbs of his doomed capital, the dictator huddled in his mountainside bunker with his aides and his American advisors and cursed his rotten luck. For 46 years, Andasio Samosa's family had ruled the Republic of Nicaragua. The Samosas had done nearly everything the U.S. government asked.

1:24 Now, after all of his hard work, the Americans wanted him to disappear. Somoza could hardly believe it. He was glad that he had his tape recorder going so history would bear witness to his cruel betrayal. Quote, I have thrown many people out of their natural habitat because the U.S. fighting for their cause. So let's talk like friends, Somoza told the U.S. ambassador, Lawrence Prezulo.

1:54 I threw a GD communist out of Guatemala, unquote. And by communist, he's not actually talking about a communist. He's talking about when they overthrew Guatemala and accused the guy of being a communist. He reminded the ambassador, referring to the role that Somoza had played with the CIA's overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954.

2:23 personally worked on that, he said. When the CIA needed a secret base to prepare for the Bay of Pigs invasion, Somoza couldn't have been more accommodating. The U.S. called me and I agreed to have the bombers leave here and knock the hell out of the installations in Cuba. Somoza stormed like a Pearl Harbor deal. In 1965, he'd sent troops into the Dominican Republic to help the United States

2:53 quell an uprising. Hell, he'd even sent Nicaraguans off to fight in Vietnam. So he's definitely working with the CIA in all of the above. He was their guy, just like Saddam Hussein was until he wasn't. And now when Somoza needed help, when it was his soldiers who were locked in a life or death battle, the Americans were selling him out.

3:21 all because of some nonsense about human rights violations by his troops. It is embarrassing for you to be good friends with the Samoans, the dictator told Rizzolo sarcastically. Somoza then tried his trump card. If he went, the Nicaraguan National Guard would surely be destroyed. The guard?

3:48 As corrupt and deadly an organization as any in Central America, served as Samosa's military, his police, and his intelligence all in one. And they'd all been trained by the CIA. Samosa knew the Americans would loathe to let their investment go to waste. They had created the Guard in the 1930s and nurtured it.

4:13 carefully since, spending millions of dollars a year supplying weapons and schooling to its officers in the art of quote-unquote anti-communism. 1930s. Again, don't forget, the Operation Gladio under the CIA that started post-World War II was nothing new. It was just moving it into the federal government that became new.

4:43 Because obviously this has been going on for a very long time as Somoza is lecturing the ambassador. Quote, what are you going to do with the National Guard of Nicaragua? Somoza asked the ambassador. I don't need to know. But after you have spent 30 years educating all of these officers, I don't think it's fair for them to be thrown to the wolves. They have been fighting just like you taught them at Fort Gulick.

5:16 and Fort Benning and Fort Leavenworth. Out of 900 officers we have, 800 of them were taught by you. Prisulo assured Somoza that the United States was willing to do what it could to preserve the Guard. Putting aside its international reputation for murder and torture, Prisulo recognized that the Guard was

5:43 their bulwark against the anti-American interest, and as long as it existed, could be used to keep Somoza's successors, whoever they might be, in line. In other words, they were the guard for the United States. They just happened to be Nicaraguan. We are not abandoning the guard, he said. We would like to see a force emerge here that could stabilize the country. But for that to happen,

6:14 The ambassador told Somoza that his top generals needed to step down and give them what appeared to be a clean break from its bloodstained past before the Sandinistas marched in and it became too late to salvage anything. In other words, they were setting up the next government to have a built-in resistance. Sounds so familiar. To make the break now, they needed to make the break now.

6:46 The ambassador told him, just sitting here talking to you about it is strange enough. We're talking about a break, i.e. go take a rest. You can come back later when we have control of the country. Samosa knew the game was over. Let's not bullshit ourselves, he told the ambassador. I am talking to a professional. You have to do your dirty work and I have to do mine.

7:12 In the pre-dawn hours of July 17, 1979, Somoza and his closest associates, his top generals, his business partners, and their family boarded two jets and flew to Homestead Air Force Base in Miami, Florida, to begin their exile. The vaulted guard collapsed within hours. Sandinista's column swarmed into the defenseless capital.

7:43 proclaiming an end to the guard which had hunted the rebels mercilessly for more than a decade. Those National Guard officers who could escape poured across the border into El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Some of them hid inside the Colombian embassy in Managua. Those who couldn't wound up in prison, some before a firing squad. Nine days after Somoza,

8:13 Government was overthrown. A handful of congressmen gathered in a hearing room in the Rayburn building in Washington, D.C. to discuss some of the disturbing activities in Latin America. Though what had happened in Nicaragua was on everyone's mind in the nation's capital that week. These particular lawmakers had concerns that lay further in the south in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. You know, what we've now known is the crystal triangle.

8:43 They were worried about cocaine. The exotic South American drugs seemed to be winning admirers everywhere. References were turning up in movies, songs, newspapers. Surprisingly, many of them were very positive. The Republican congressman Tennyson Geyer, an elderly preacher and 33rd degree mason from Findlay, Ohio, it seemed like the media was hell-bent on glamorizing cocaine.

9:13 Geyer was fond of loud suits and white patent leather shoes, was chairman of the cocaine task force on the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. He couldn't just stand by and watch. Recent developments concerning the state of cocaine had come to his attention, which called for decisive and immediate action, he yelled during the meeting.

9:43 The availability, abuse, and popularity of cocaine in the U.S. has reached epidemic proportions. This is a drug which, for the most part, had been ignored, and its increased use in our society has caught us unprepared to effectively cope with it in the minutes it presents. Many Americans who'd grown up during the drug-soaked 1960s reasoned that an occasional sniff

10:14 A fluffy white powder was no more menacing than a couple of martinis and considerably, hold on, and was much more chic. Cocaine didn't give you a hangover. It didn't scramble your brains. Many doctors believe you couldn't get hooked on it. It made you feel great. It kept the pounds off. And there was a definite cachet associated with it.

10:41 Just the price of admission to Club Cocaine was enough to keep out the riffraff. At $2,500 an ounce and up, it was a naughty pleasure reserved for a special few elite and intellectuals. Even the paraphernalia associated with the drug, sterling silver cocaine spoons, tightly rolled $100 bills, carried an air of decadence.

11:11 In the public's mind, cocaine was associated with fame and fortune. The rediscovery of cocaine in the 70s was unavoidable. A Los Angeles psychologist gushed to a convention of drug experts in 1980. And this is a quote. Because its stimulating and pleasure-causing properties reinforce the American character with its...

11:40 initiative, energy, and restless activity, it has boundless optimism. While the street corners played host to the much more dangerous drugs like angel dust, smack, and meth, Coke stayed up in the penthouses, nestled in carved bowls, glittering little boxes. It came out at private parties or in washrooms of trendy nightclubs.

12:07 Unless some celebrity got caught with it by accident, street cops never saw it. My first 10 years as a narcotics officer, my contact with cocaine was very minimal, recalled Gerald Smith, who ran the San Francisco office of California's Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement during the 80s.

12:31 As a matter of fact, the first few years, the only cocaine I ever saw was an ounce some guy would take around as a training aid to teach you what it looked like because it was something you saw so rarely. But Congressman slash Reverend Geyer thought the experts he had summoned to Washington were going to help him change the public's mind about sniffing cocaine. He was badly mistaken.

12:58 Witness after witness trooped up to the microphone to tell Congress that cocaine was not only a relatively safe drug, but so rare that it could hardly be called a nuisance, much less a menace. Daily cocaine use is extremely uncommon simply because it costs too much, said one director of research. Under present condition of use, it has not posed very serious health problems.

13:28 Rarely does it become a problem. Lee Dogeloff, the White House drug expert, concurred. It is our assumption, he said, that the current relatively low level of health problems associated with cocaine's use reflects a relatively high price and relatively low availability. To make the point, the head of the DEA, Peter Benzinger, told the committee he had brought eight

13:56 He had brought $800,000 worth of cocaine to show them. He pulled out a little bag and dangled it to his audience. This is simulated, I trust, the congressman said. He goes, no, no, it's actually cocoa. They had seized it as contraband. The congressman said, I can't believe you're holding up almost a million dollars there. We ought to have security in the hearing room.

14:28 We have some special agents in the room, I assure you, Benzinger said. The experts were careful to note that if cocaine became cheaper, it would be more widely available and might pose a bigger problem than anyone realized. But no one seemed to think that there was much chance of that happening. Most of the smugglers, Benzinger said, were just bringing amounts small enough to put in a suitcase or stash on their body.

14:55 We don't think people are bringing cocaine across the border to a large extent in a car from Mexico. He recommended that Congress, instead of trying to prevent the drug from coming in over the borders, concentrate its efforts on getting the Peruvian Bolivians to stop growing the coca plants. Dr. Robert Beck, a drug expert at Yale, sat in the audience listening to the testimony. When it was Beck's turn to speak,

15:24 warmly welcomed him to the witness table, complimenting him on a very, very impressive academic credentials. Beck thanked him and then publicly ripped into the federal government for spreading misinformation about the drug. Now, keep in mind, he's from Yale. Yale's captured. What I would like to talk to you about is, for the most part, is the importance of telling the truth. Beck, a professor of psychiatry,

15:54 At Yale, the truth was that cocaine wasn't the horrible health hazard Americans were being told it was. Cocaine doesn't have the kind of health consequences that one sees with drugs such as alcohol or cigarettes. Right now, we look at the hospital admission records and death records. Cocaine doesn't look like a dangerous drug at all. We have given a great deal of cocaine to many individuals.

16:21 and find it to be the most remarkable drug. We are giving cocaine by nose to normal young men. When anyone visits our laboratory, they look at the television screen and say, that guy took cocaine. They don't jump around. They don't get excited. They sit calmly and experience a drug high, and it doesn't become dangerous. What about five years from now, Geyer asked? Are the membranes...

16:52 and so on affected at all. The response, the danger to people's membranes is quite rare with cocaine. It does occur, but it's a rare phenomenon. Part of this is because people don't use very much cocaine. It is too expensive. Tell me the last alcoholic you saw with cirrhosis of the liver when cirrhosis was caused by Dom Perignon. It's almost never seen.

17:22 As most Americans were using it, Beck said, cocaine is a very safe drug. You almost never see death due to cocaine. Here, excuse me, these have been a series of 14,000 consecutive doses of cocaine given with no deaths. Deaths from cocaine are very, very rare. They do occur, and I think it's important to recognize that they do occur. But actually, the drug in terms of the risk of killing people

17:52 It's comparatively safe. If you want a dangerous drug, take dioxin. It's a heart drug. And that is really deadly. One of the deadliest poisons known. But that is used to save life, he said. Yes, it's used to save life. Cocaine is also used medically. So you cannot take whether or not something can kill you as a measuring of its dangerousness.

18:20 What the government was doing with the scare campaign about cocaine, Beck said, was poisoning the well. It was ruining the government's credibility with the public. And when the government needed its credibility to be impeccable, he also added, I think we make a mistake when we say that snorting cocaine every once in a while is a dangerous habit and is going to kill people because it doesn't.

18:47 There are a great many people around here who've been snorting campaign for a while. If you then tell those people that cocaine is very dangerous, they won't believe you. Then when you get to the next step, when you're talking about something that really is dangerous, they're still not going to believe you. And that brought back to the real reason he was in Washington, DC. He was there to deliver a warning from the scientific community. Something bad was coming.

19:16 Beck knew something so deadly, awful, that the only way to prevent a catastrophe was for the government to tell the truth and pray to God that it was believed. I think we have to be careful that the government is believed about cocaine because there are dangers associated with the drug, but these dangers are not particularly associated with the present use pattern.

19:44 Beck told the committee that he hesitated for a long time about coming forward with the information and was still reluctant to discuss it in a public hearing. Usually when things like this are reported, the media advertises them, then the attention has been a problem with cocaine all along. The chairman, who'd spent two decades as a public relations man for an Ohio tire company, said,

20:12 the purpose of our panel is to bring into the open what has been up to now a pretty secret kind of a thing. The information Beck had known to only a handful of drug researchers around the world, and it was as frightening a spectacle as any they'd seen. For about a year, a Peruvian police psychiatrist named Dr. Raul Gen had been insisting that wealthy drug users in Lima

20:42 were being driven insane by cocaine. A psychiatrist in Bolivia, Dr. Nils Noya, began making similar claims shortly thereafter. Their reports, written in Spanish and published in medical journals, went largely unnoticed in the U.S. because they sounded so weird. The first problem was that all of the recorded history was against them. Peru and Bolivia had been producing cocaine products for thousands of years.

21:12 with few reports of the drug causing serious medical effects. At the same time, some of America's leading researchers were claiming that cocaine was non-addictive and perhaps should be legalized. Now, keep in mind, as we've already learned, the coca leaf for tea and medicinal purposes had been being produced for thousands of years, not cocaine.

21:38 Jen, a professor of clinical neurology at the National University of San Marcos, claimed a cocaine epidemic had swept through Lima fashionable neighborhoods in 1974 and spread like grass fire to peruse other major cities. Within two years, he said, the epidemic had engulfed Ecuador and Bolivia. No one had heard of anything like this before.

22:04 It also didn't help that the psychiatrist's studies read like a script, painting scenes of jails and insane asylums filling up with legions of half-mad drug fiends. When seen, these patients were generally very thin, unkept, pale, and looking suspicious from one side to the other. These movements were associated with visual hallucinations, and they observed that their temporal field vision was affected. Many of the patients have

22:37 bore scabs and wounds from digging at their skin during hallucinations. They claimed that they were being followed by people or shadows that wanted to kill them. It wasn't a new drug that was causing this reaction, they reported, but a new trick from an old dog. Instead of sniffing tiny crystals of cocaine up their nose,

23:03 As the Americans were doing, the Peruvian and Bolivians were smoking a paste known as basically the chemical version of cocaine. It was a gooey mess that leached out of solvent-soaked coca leaves. The coca paste was an intermediate substance created on the way to manufacturing the white powder known as cocaine.

23:34 People had started drying the paste, crumbling it into cigarettes and smoking it. For the serious drug abusers, the paste advantage over powder was enormous. You could smoke as much as you wanted. With powder, only a small amount could be snuffed up your nose. And it took time for the drug to kick in because first it had to be absorbed through your nasal membranes. Cocaine vapor.

24:03 on the other hand, hit the vast surface of the lungs immediately and was delivered like an instantaneous sledgehammer. Users described the feeling more intense. Some called it a whole body orgasm, and there was no limit to the amount of vapor the lungs could process. Paste had the added advantage of being richer in actual cocaine than the powder. That was usually

24:35 only 40 to 85 percent because it was being cut with other things. Many patients said they had found no other drug as pleasurable as this one. The paste almost unknown six years ago. Now it is the main drug reported by patients who are admitted to psychiatric hospitals. There is no zone of this city where youngsters do not get together and smoke coca paste.

25:03 and where pushers do not sell the drug in their own homes or on their street. But there is a price to pay for this blissful rush. The feeling lasted only a few minutes. The nirvana could only be reattained by doing it again quickly. Jen was deeply troubled by his research comparing paste smokers to those suffering from malignant diseases. It is hard to believe that

25:35 Extremes of social degradation these men have experienced, especially those who were brilliant students, professionals, and successful businessmen. These individuals became so dependent on that drug that they had no other interest in life. The Bolivian psychiatrist Niles Noah claimed that the drug caused irreversible brain damage and wrote that cocaine smokers literally could not stop once they started.

26:03 Some users, he reported, smoked 60 to 80 cocaine-laced cigarettes in a single session. Cocaine-smoking parties would go on for days, ending only when the supply dried up. Immediately after smoking a cigarette, they have diarrhea. I mean, immediately. But the worst part is they just go on smoking. Jerry wrote that cocaine smoking was largely confined to

26:33 Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia, but there were ominous signs that it was coming to America. We do not know if coca paste had been introduced to America at that time, but pandemonium authorities have reported heavy transportation of coca paste by American and Peruvian citizens. Beck, who among other things had collected and edited Sigmund Freud's cocaine papers,

27:02 had been skeptical of the South American reports until he sent one of his students down to Peru on a summer project. In the spring of 1978, a first-year Yale med student by the name of David Pally, P-A-L-Y, came to Peck with an idea the scientists found intriguing. Pally wanted to measure the blood plasma levels of Peru.

27:30 coca leaf chewing Indians to see what it was that got the Indians high. Plenty had been written about the cultural aspect of the habit, but no one had ever done any real experiments about it. Polly, who had an interest in Peru from earlier travels, said he dreamed up the project in order to start work on his thesis. It was a fairly rudimentary proposal, but Yale

27:56 has a thesis requirement for being a doctor. It's the only medical school at the time that did. Coincidentally, Beck had recently gotten a letter from a prominent Peruvian neurosurgeon who proposed some cooperative research on cocaine. At the time, the Peruvian government was cracking down on coca chewing.

28:19 and believed that the Indians were being harassed unfairly. He was looking for some scientific evidence to back up his arguments that the Indian social customs should be left alone. But Beck and the research committee liked Polly's idea, and the Peruvians agreed to provide the lab facilities to do it. Soon, Polly was on his way to South America to spend his summer among the Indians in the mountains of Peru.

28:51 they took the young Yale student around Lima and introduced him to his friends in the art and science area. One of the men that Polly met through his liaison was Dr. Raul Jerry, who latched onto him and began telling him of his research into cocaine smoking. Jerry, who had also was a general in the Peruvian military police.

29:20 insisted on showing Polly the wretched victims of this new drug. Mostly to humor his influential new acquaintance, Polly agreed to accompany him to the psychiatric institution. Polly left the hospital more doubtful than before. I interviewed some of the quote-unquote pastilleros, and to my mind, one of them was clearly schizophrenic.

29:51 called a Polly drug abuser. I mean, the guy had done everything from Valium to Quaaludes. So I was very unimpressed with associating it with cocaine. Reading Jerry's studies did nothing to enhance Polly's opinion either. They were mainly observational and not scientific. It wasn't until Polly began making friends in Lima that he started changing his mind about the insistence of the general's work.

30:20 I began to hear about these friends who were dropping out of medical school, dropping out of college, and basically turning into cocaine addicts. They were good kids who had essentially abandoned their lives and turned to addicts. They were stealing from their grandmothers. They were doing all kinds of crazy things. On motorcycle trips through Lima with his friends, Polly said he'd drive down streets and the places would stink of cocaine. They would stink all over.

30:50 You'd come around a corner and all you could do was smell it for miles. Alarm Polly called Beck at Yale and told him what he had seen. The substance of my conversation with Beck, if I can remember correctly, was that if this shit ever hits the U.S., we're in deep trouble. Beck said, I remember the phone call very vividly. He said something was going on down there and I told him to get some blood samples and bring them back.

31:19 Polly drew blood samples from random smokers and had them analyzed at a lab. Peter Jatlow, who had been the lab director, said they had the highest plasma level of cocaine that he'd ever seen in someone who wasn't already dead. If the average experimental plasma level that they were getting in the lab from ingesting or snorting cocaine was 100 nanograms, these were in the thousands.

31:47 Beck quickly got some federal grant money and sent Polly back to Lima to do some more controlled experiments on cocaine smokers. Jerry, with his police connections, obtained the necessary permits and approval and procured half a kilo of coca paste and some cocaine smokers and allowed Polly to bring them all to a room at the health science building. Most of them were young men in their 20s. Polly put on some music, served food, and referenced, and then...

32:16 brought out the box of coca paste. All the subjects, calm while sitting in the room before the experiment, became markedly anxious at the box containing the paste when it was brought into the room. This nervousness became pronounced as they were preparing for their first cigarettes and was evidenced by shaking hands and sweaty palms. The nervousness was bore out by high blood pressure, heart rates taken immediately before

32:45 This anxiety reaction is common in most experienced cocaine smokers and will often be brought on by mere thought of smoking. Holly was both fascinated and repelled. It's like a Pavlovian response. It was just unbelievable. Some of these kids in the lab would smoke 20 grams of paste and then after you had paid them for their time, they would run out on the street with the money to buy more.

33:14 While Polly was running his experiments in Peru, further evidence was emerging in the U.S. that Raoul Jerry's laughable predictions in North America's cocaine invasion was right on the mark. In February of 1979, a psychologist from UCLA, Ronald Siegel, had a letter printed in a prestigious New England Journal of Medicine warning about the growing trend towards cocaine smoking in western U.S.

33:42 Siegel, who'd been researching cocaine use in the L.A. area since the 1970s, was a well-known drug expert and had something of a media darling. He had become something of a media darling, already with a good quote for reporters wanting an inside scoop in La La Land.

34:03 Siegel had started a pioneering research project in 1975 by taking out newspaper ads seeking long-term cocaine users. L.A. being L.A., he got plenty of responses. He selected 99 cocaine users, mostly young males, and proposed keeping in touch with them over the next four years so he could monitor their use.

34:27 His findings were great news for cokeheads. Not only did cocaine make you feel good, Siegel reported, but it had very few adverse psychological effects, and as a bonus, it helped you lose weight. By the end of the study, approximately 38% of the subjects had shown increased elevation of euphoria, indicating increased happiness and contentment with life. Only 5% of the subjects

34:55 had psychological problems such as suspicious or paranoia. Taken together, individuals reported experiencing some positive effects. In all intoxications and negative effects, only 3% had negative effects. Even those negative effects were usually of short duration and infrequent in their occurrence. There was, however, a curious footnote in his study.

35:25 which the psychologist mentioned in passing. Over the course of his study, which ran from 75 to 78, six of the original 99 cocaine users had become confirmed cocaine smokers, pumping something known on the streets called freebase. Siegel was sufficiently intrigued to perform cocaine smoking experiments on monkeys, discovering that three out of the three apes

35:53 which was given a choice between smoking lettuce or cocaine, clearly preferred Coke. So when Siegel read Jerry's report about cocaine smoking epidemic in South America, he realized the Peruvians was wrong about one thing. The habit wasn't confined to South America anymore. It had already planted its seeds in L.A. and was starting to pop up in other cities. Building a devoted following among certain circles of rich drug users,

36:24 Worse, Yankee ingenuity had already been at work improving upon the deadly product, making it easier to use and more appealing to refine American taste. The substance Jerry's subjects were using, coca paste, came mostly from the jungle cocaine processing labs that dotted Peru and Bolivia. Wonder why they keep leaving out Colombia.

36:54 glob laden with residue of the toxin solvents used to extract it from the coca leaves, kerosene, acid, and other chemicals, as we already learned. Some analysts had even found brick dust and lead gasoline in it. Paste was hardly ever sold in the United States. What Americans got from their drug dealers was the finalized product, the sparkling white crystals of cocaine.

37:24 but cocaine powder was made to be able to snort. It was extremely difficult to smoke because of the high boiling point. So what was it that Siegel's patients were using? This cocaine they called Freebase. Siegel learned that it was cocaine powder that had been reversed engineered to become smokable again. He traced the discovery of the process to the San Francisco Bay Area.

37:51 in January 1974, around the time that coca paste smoking had started to become popular in Peru. According to Siegel, California cocaine traffickers who were journeying to Peru and Colombia for their wet wares heard of the people down their smoking base. Though the Colombians were referring to coca paste, Siegel said, the Americans mispronounced it in the translation and

38:21 thought that it was cocaine base. So they looked it up in a Merck manual, saw cocaine base, and said, yeah, it's just an alkaloid of cocaine hydrochloride, which is the street cocaine. By a relatively simple chemical process, Siegel said the dealers took the powder and removed the hydrochloride salt, thus freeing the cocaine base.

38:50 Hence the expression freebasing. I didn't know that. That was something that they could smoke because it was volatile. And they were wowed by it when they smoked it. The traffickers thought they were smoking base. They were not. They were smoking something that nobody else on the planet had ever smoked before. In 1977, kits to extract freebase from cocaine powder was available commercially.

39:17 Ads were appearing in underground press and in drug magazines. But since cocaine powder was so expensive, freebasing was a habit practiced by only a few rich people. They had very inefficient processes in those days and thought you needed large bags of cocaine to reduce to the cocaine freebase. So doing the early years, only dealers and very wealthy people did this.

39:45 Dr. Sidney Cohen, another California scientist who recognized the dangers of cocaine smoking early on, wrote in 1980 that the only good thing about freebase was that it was the most expensive of all mood changers when the price is measured based on euphoric time. Affluent people are the only ones that can afford it. In December 1978, after comparing notes with Jerry,

40:12 Siegel fired off his letter to the New England Journal of Medicine alerting the medical profession that there was a problem ahead. Users are now experimenting with smoking cocaine, alkaloid, or base. Free base parties have become increasingly popular and the practice has spread from California to Nevada to Colorado to New York, South Carolina, and Florida. Siegel's letters

40:39 appeared in the journal in February 1979. Five months later in July, he along with Polly, Beck, Jerry, and other cocaine researchers found themselves together in Lima for an international symposium on cocaine. It was the first chance North American and South American drug researchers were able to compare notes. While the research split on what to do about powder cocaine, those who'd been studying cocaine smoking were unanimous about their findings.

41:09 It was a monster. At the Lima conference, the stories continued to pour in. Two Bolivian psychiatrists told of seeing patients coming in for treatment in bare feet and borrowed clothes. One of the patients said, this damn drug, doctor, I have had to sell even my clothes in order to buy it. 80% of their patients, they reported, had committed impulsive acts such as thefts, swindling, clothes stealing,

41:39 and other things to buy more drugs. The Lima conference had taken place only two weeks before Beck appeared in Washington, and the stories he heard were fresh in his mind when he sat before the committee. Once Beck testified, he was in their camp no longer. I have come to the absolute clear conclusion that it should not be legalized under any circumstances.

42:05 He said cocaine smoking can represent the same threat that the speed epidemic did in the 1960s. Beck also wasn't the only American scientist who attended the Lima conference that came back alarmed. The impact of these experiences were impressive, and observers of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the White House, and the State Department reported on the growing problem in South America when they returned to the U.S.

42:33 But there was still time to prevent a catastrophe, Beck told the committee. We do not have to have an epidemic of freebase or cocoa paste smoking in the United States. The possibility is strong that this might occur. I have reports from California, from Chicago, and from New York about people who are smoking the substance. And I hear that there are numbers of people now in San Francisco.

43:00 Here is a chance for the federal government to engage in an educational campaign to prevent it. The government needed to do three things rapidly. Number one, find out about it. Number two, establish the kind of collaboration with the media. And number three, show what happens when drug is used so that people don't get into an epidemic. We need our best minds to figure this out.

43:25 but the congressmen weren't interested in discussing educational campaigns or public service announcements. That wouldn't get any cocaine off the streets. What they wanted to know was this. What about the DEA's plan to ask Peruvian and Bolivians to quit growing the coca plants? Beck scoffed. He said, I don't think you can eliminate the growing of coca in Peru and countries that have done it for thousands of years.

43:52 Not with crop substitutions, Geyer asked. I don't think so. That is not going to work, Geyer said. Beck said, if you consider that these crops are grown on the slopes of mountains near jungles and grown by people for their own use for 2,000 years and talk about wiping it out, you had a better chance of wiping out tobacco in Virginia. Well, we'll come back to this, he said.

44:23 They never came back to any of it. When the hearings resumed, the congressmen peppered the witnesses with such questions as whether they thought Hollywood cocaine use was just contributing to the deterioration of the quality of TV shows. If it is true that Coca-Cola was once contained cocaine, and if the TV series Quincy, in which Jack Klugman played a coroner, was accurate, or if it was way out.

44:52 Those are the kind of questions that the congressmen were interested in. Not another word was said about doing research or warning the public about the dangers. Beck left the hearing stunned. Nobody paid any attention. They listened to it and everyone said, so what? I felt strongly that the information that I had, that someone should be doing something about it, but they didn't. Another kabuki dance.

45:21 hearing from our infamous Congress. Instead, Congress and the Carter administration did the exact opposite of what Beck advised. It embarked on an Andrian strategy advocated by DEA to wipe out the coca plant, a tactic that even its supporters now concede was a failure. Nor did the federal government seem all that eager to allow scientists to do their own research into cocaine smoking or to help spread the alarm.

45:49 When Siegel, under U.S. government contract, finished a massive report on the history and literature of cocaine smoking, he couldn't even get the government to publish it, allegedly due to concerns that readers would rush out and start smoking it once they found out you could turn it into freebase. Now, what's interesting, obviously, about all of this is the simultaneous plan that we now know the CIA had running along with this.

46:17 They wanted me to do a scientific paper about cocaine smoking, but not to tell anyone how it was done. I tried to explain that people already knew how it was done. That's why there was a problem. In 1982, Raul Jerry came to the United States to deliver his warning in person. He showed up at the California Conference on Cocaine, a well-attended affair held in the hotel in Santa Monica.

46:45 just south of Los Angeles, surrounded by palm trees. If any of them sat through Raul Jerry's presentation, it is likely they came away with the conviction that the thin, dark Peruvian was even stranger than fiction. Jerry showed the American colleagues a few slides.

47:08 In his broken English, tried to bang the drum about the dangers of cocaine smoking, which he claimed would result in grave incurable cases of dementia. He trotted out the horror stories about the walking dead, the coke zombies that populated Peru. He showed more slides. I would like to warn the U.S. against the plague, which is about to reach its borders. The speech was followed by an uneasy silence. A doctor in the audience remembered.

47:37 How did Jerry treat such patients, someone asked. Nothing worked, really, he said. They tried everything. Long periods of confinement, heavy doses of tranquilizers, lobotomies. It didn't matter. The relapse rate was 50 to 80 percent. And someone asked him, you actually did lobotomies? He said, yes. To be precise, he assured the audience that the brain surgery was done only in desperate cases of incurable repeaters.

48:08 often upon the request of the family. It was hard for Jerry's listeners to imagine how cocaine could become so addictive that a person would volunteer for brain surgery. One said that that was barbaric. Beck said that the FDA shut down attempts to do any serious research on addiction or treatment.

48:30 refusing to approve grant requests or research proposals, and withholding the government's permits necessary to run experiments with controlled substance. The FDA almost totally roadblocked our getting anything done. They insisted that they had total control over whether we could use a form of cocaine for experimental purposes, and without a so-called investigation of new drug permit, we weren't allowed to do any experiments with cocaine.

48:59 Why not? Once you get into the morass of government, you never understand exactly what it's doing. Eight months before he appeared before the task force, Beck had requested official government permission to bring a CocoPaste sample into the United States for lab analysis. He filled out many forms, turned the sample over to DEA agents in Lima, and never saw it again. I now have a number of licenses I never had before, but no samples.

49:29 The regulations which govern the legal importation of cocaine and coca research are much more effective than the regulations to keep it away from you. So obviously, the government didn't want to know. And of course, we now know why they didn't want to know. Because the government had plans to use it. And they didn't want people to be scared off. So that's the end of that chapter.

50:03 freaking crazy. So we have very effective rules for the people that follow the rules. And we have no rules for the people who don't follow the rules, nor do we have any follow up on the people who don't follow the rules. So as much cocaine as you want illegally, you just can't do anything legally in order to scare the hell out of people so they don't do it illegally.

50:36 Oh, my God. SR, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. And thank everyone for attending here in Spaces and on Rumble. What I find kind of flabbergasted me here a moment is that somebody would actually say, oh, it seems barbaric concerning brain surgery to stop this stuff. But nobody stopped to think how barbaric it was to bring it in in the first place. Right. Yeah. I don't get it. Crazy.

51:13 Yeah, I mean, and obviously there is some group of people, especially if you grow up like in Peru, where like the guy said, they've been using it for thousands of years. It's crazy to think that there had not been ups and downs on its use. The real problem became when we.

51:40 decided that we were moving our drug operations to Latin America and began importing massive amounts of chemicals in order to create the coca paste. Because as you heard here, until the 1970s, there was no coca paste and you can't have coca paste without massive amounts of chemicals. So if you have countries that did not have access to the chemicals, there would never have been coca paste.

52:11 And where did the initial chemicals come from to create the coca paste? The United States. Go ahead, SR. Thank you. The other thing I found while I was digging through this is I don't know how many people here are old enough during the 80s to understand the cocaine that was coming in left and right. Even my friends that were on cocaine were saying.

52:39 Oh, it's good. It's great. It ain't going to hurt you. You never overdose. That's the main thing. I never got into it being in the military. I was like, nope, not for me. But anyway, concerning all that, it wasn't, I, reading up here a little bit, it wasn't until I think 1986 when Lembias died of a cocaine overdose. When who did? Or died of using cocaine. Who did?

53:07 That's when everything really went wild. Hold on. Who died of an overdose? Lynn Bias. Oh, okay. He was a collegiate basketball player that just had gotten drafted into the NBA. Yeah. He was going to be the next big player to go. I just didn't hear who you said. I'm sorry. That's okay.

53:38 Anyway, that's when it really became notable in the U.S. To me, it was on everybody's tongue now about cocaine and limb bias and what's going on in sports and what's going on with cocaine in the entertainment industry and everything else. Other than that, it was quiet before that. Because it was at parties you and I don't get invited to. Yeah, I mean.

54:12 That's kind of weird because obviously I grew up, I graduated high school in 1979. Now, I'm one of those rare ducks that has never done any drugs at all, ever. Nothing. And almost, I would say, over 50% of the people that I knew in high school and then in college eventually, all...

54:39 had access to some drugs. But I did not know anyone who ever did cocaine. Like, you know, any of my network that they admitted to. And they admitted to doing marijuana and stuff like that. So it's not like their use of illegal drugs was not a topic of conversation. But I was so...

55:06 paranoid about stuff like that, especially after I joined the military. If anyone even jokingly said something about doing that, I was like, I can't be anywhere with you. And at my very first duty station at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois, they had a massive marijuana drug bust and it took out half of our cop squadron.

55:35 Like half of the cops on base was either dealing marijuana or using it. And yeah, I was like, are you freaking kidding me? They had like a huge big deal because I don't know if you guys know, but in the military, you're anybody that doesn't have an essential job on base, you're trained to be like a stand in security forces person.

56:02 For like when the balloon goes up, because, of course, we're not man to do 24 seven at every single critical point on a base. There's a special program. You have to be qualified on the M-16, blah, blah, blah. And like half of our instructors at our school ended up being activated in this program to go work the front gate and stuff like that, because we literally had.

56:31 half of our cop squadron sitting in a jail um guru go ahead yeah good morning guys how you going very interesting and how they done all this colonel but yeah like i've got a question for you and i'm just wondering you know yeah what your thoughts are but in australia here okay so let's just say i'm 64 year old guys i come up through the 80s and uh

56:58 Maybe I might have got caught with a bit of this substance and gone to jail for a year because they were coming down with the crack cocaine in 1986. So probably could talk on this topic, but why, why if they want to flood the market, did they leave Australia, you know, three times the price per kilo for cocaine? Now, okay, we're on an island, but hang on, this shit's got to come from South America.

57:24 get to America, then it's got to get to, you know, it goes to Europe. I know plenty of people in Europe. Cocaine is very accessible in England, the UK, Europe, et cetera, for the same prices as what it is available in America. Yet in Australia, you know, I think the going price at the moment is between $280,000 to $320,000 per kilo. Now, you could buy a kilo over in America for probably $20,000, $25,000 if I'm correct.

57:52 You could buy a kilo down in Columbia for about frigging four grand. So why did they hit us with such a high price if they wanted to get it into the public? Or did they not have any any real want to come to Australia with that sort of drug? I'm just curious. That's a very interesting question. So obviously, I have like several thoughts playing in my head.

58:25 And has it always been excessively high in Australia from the 80s on, Guru? Yeah, look, it's always been around. You know, look, we could always get it and it was cheap in the early days. We had a lot of hash come into this country. We know how that was coming in. You know, I know a bus that went on and then next minute the cops are putting it out on the streets.

58:54 But now it's really expensive, but it wasn't back like in the 80s and 90s. Well, still compared to what you guys were, it was. Okay, let's go back to the 80s. Probably about, I think the cheapest I could remember, I'm not saying I bought Cleggs or any guys, but from just being around town and that, you know, the cheapest I can remember a kilo of cocaine for was probably about $95,000 to $100,000. Okay, so it was always significantly higher.

59:24 And that's very interesting given the location. Well, but so smuggling routes is very, very important. And the transportation of it is a key node. So obviously the CIA's target was America as far as in, you know, as you pointed out, Europe was flooded.

59:53 But they use Spain. And if you look geographically, getting a covert illicit drugs through the Caribbean from Colombia, stopping off points, Jamaica.

1:00:14 And the Dominican Republic was two of their favorites. And then into Miami. And interestingly enough, the Bush family owned one of the docks down there. So getting it into America logistically was a lot easier. And the same with Spain and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, because they owned or controlled would be the better word.

1:00:43 They controlled significant ports of entry. So I don't know as much about Australia. Now, obviously, leaving Colombia, it's a long trek around to Australia if you're not flying it in. And obviously, flying it in is a lot more expensive than shipping it in. Now, ours all primarily came, not all of it.

1:01:11 But primarily the way they did it was they overthrew governments in Latin America during Operation Condor. And so the aircraft was going down there full of weapons and they were coming back empty. So they basically have no cost of transporting it by air back into the United States. They would routinely use food exports.

1:01:39 ships out of New Orleans and Miami under the guise of shrimp boats to go down to Colombia and some of the ports down there, Jamaica, like I said, in the Dominican Republic. So obviously you're cutting a large chunk of the money out just by pretending that you're, not pretending, that's not the right word, by invoking revolutions in South America to keep that arms thing going.

1:02:08 And aircraft available to ship it back basically free of charge to the United States under CIA proprietary airlines.

1:02:18 I don't know how much, I've never done a research project on the cost of distribution of cocaine, but I would imagine that the majority of the cocaine into Australia comes in through ships. And that's going to exponentially increase the cost of that supply chain. So that would be my guess. You're right in the fact that the majority of it came from Latin America.

1:02:47 But unless they left the Pacific coast with Peru or Bolivia, and even then, it's a long trek to Australia. I don't know if that makes up for the whole distribution chain increasing cost, because that is crazy. That's a lot. And it might have to do, what's the total population of Australia right now? Let's call it about 27, 28 million.

1:03:16 Yeah, so you're a small country. We have 330 million people. And again, you have economies of scale when you're talking about distribution networks. The same thing in Europe. You have all of the European continent as potential buyers. So you have a much smaller market. You have a much smaller demand, which is going to drive up prices. That's my best economics 101.

1:03:47 Yep. No, no problem. I probably agree with you. I was just asking the questions because, yeah, like in everything, and I'm not saying, you know, cocaine's a good thing or anything else, guys. No comment there. But, I mean, like everything else, this country just seems to have been rape pillaged and plundered and hit with the, you know, the largest prices they can get. And then, you know, they've taken all our natural resources and given us back the minimum price.

1:04:12 You know, Australia was corrupt from the start. And as I said, I know a little bit about what went on here and the amount of officials, you know, the Nugent Hand Bank for, you know, we've discussed this before, Colonel. You know what I mean? Why was Nugent Hand set up, you know, for Australia? Well, it was set up because they had to do some money laundering, you know, when we had the heroin dealers doing that. Were the cocaine dealers involved in that or was it just the heroin, Colonel?

1:04:35 The heroin. So the Nugent Hand Bank primarily money laundered for the Golden Triangle out of Asia because you guys are just straight down from there. So you are very, very handy. Plus, Australia had a very and this may have a lot to do with it, too. Y'all have a law. I learned when I did the research into BCCI that doesn't allow Australian money to leave the country.

1:05:03 And so they had to set up elaborate fronts in order to convert Australian money into other money. And that's the reason why Nguyen Han had all of those branches throughout Asia in Chiang Mai, Hong Kong and all of that. So in a lot in Thailand, which Chiang Mai is part of. And so.

1:05:30 Your whole money supply and not being able to allow Australian money outside the country is a huge limiting factor on selling anything illicit in your country. So that probably too drove up the price. I forgot all about that. Yeah.

1:05:51 That's funny that, you know, because we give away money at the moment, like billions and billions of dollars at a time, you know what I mean? Anywhere they want. So, yeah, very interesting that. But through your central bank, an Australian cannot do money exchanges outside the country because your money is not allowed to leave your country. So that probably has a lot to do with the price increase as well.

1:06:23 OK, I didn't know that. I'm going to look into that. Yeah. And I don't know if the laws changed, but that was part of that book about BCCI, that your money laws created a huge friction. And that's the reason why they put Nugent Hand there so that they could facilitate heroin into Australia.

1:06:51 And use that bank for that particular reason. Would you know if that was after 1973 that those things happened about the money? Nugent Hand, I believe, was set up in 72. I'm going to go on this and dig in. Thank you very much. SR-71, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. Another point here that I'd like to make is even in the military, the military didn't start drug testing.

1:07:23 until I believe it was 1981. So up until then, the military was pretty wide open. You could get drugs practically anywhere you wanted in the military at that point in time. Once drug testing started, it tended to wane down. But other than that, the other thing I'd like to note is that when drug testing went in, the other...

1:07:55 The other thing we were seeing during that time is, and this probably ties into a lot of what's going on with Operation Gladio and the International Syndicate and everything else in the music industry. In the music industry, all of a sudden, songs were coming out that glorified drugs. If you stop and think about it, you had songs like Ice Ice Baby. You had songs like Cocaine. You had songs like...

1:08:26 Casey Jones, all of these songs glorified drugs. So that's my point. Yeah. And we know that the CIA had a lot to do with the music and movie industry as well. Texas, Annie, go ahead. Can you hear me? Yeah. All right. Yeah, you graduated the year before I did. I was in 78.

1:08:59 Guru, who the hell did you hang out with who could afford to buy a kilo? Come on. He's just talking about the price. I'm pleading the Fifth Amendment there. I just have the knowledge and that's all. That's unheard of. All right. Thank you. All right. Anybody else have any questions or comments about today?

1:09:30 And just so that you guys know, Bridget's being very kind to her husband who's not feeling well, which is why she's not talking today because he's resting. She'll be back with us hopefully tomorrow in a talking role. So please keep her husband in your prayers for a quick recovery.

1:09:49 And also, I don't do this very often, but I did want to extend a huge thank you to you guys who have subscribed to me on X and also on Substack. I really do appreciate that. You guys know that I have spent literally thousands of dollars on these books and all of this information. And I do not.

1:10:17 do that as often as I should, but just know that it is a huge heartfelt thanks. Bridget and I both are very grateful for your support in this endeavor. So I just wanted to put that out there because you guys know me. I'm like off on a different track. And SR71 for always stepping up and being the co-host along with Bridget.

1:10:47 and being here as often as they can to help us through this. They have done, especially Bridget, she has figured out how to keep bots out of here and make this experience a whole lot better than it normally is. I also, some of the stuff we just can't fix because it's on the X platform itself.

1:11:12 I also wanted to let you know that I am working behind the scenes to set up a show for eight o'clock on Thursday night with military people to have a we're going to keep it as a panel discussion initially on the radicalization of our military. And I will be inviting some guests on. I will let you guys know who all accepts.

1:11:41 the invitation probably tomorrow so we can put together, Bridget can put together our little thumbnail thing. But it's 8 o'clock East Coast time on Thursday evening. We will have a panel discussion and then at the end we will open it up for comments. We're only going to have, Alpha's going to be there for sure.

1:12:05 And hopefully CanCon is going to join us as well. But they have a nine o'clock show. So they will only be there for, you know, probably 45 minutes of the show. But I did want to let everyone know that we were going to be doing that. So for whatever it's worth, I will also broadcast that on Rumble for you guys that prefer that forum. But it's going to take the format of a spaces.

1:12:35 here on X as well. And we will be interacting with speakers like we normally do during this show. So if you guys are interested in listening in, I would appreciate you guys attending that space. And we'll get the invitation out sometime tomorrow when I schedule that. So take care, have a nice evening, and we'll be back tomorrow at four o'clock. Take care.

Entities here

Robert Bick23 Peru18 Australia17 Anastasio Somoza15 Ronald Siegel12 United States12 Bolivia12 Jerry Ray10 David Pally9 Colombia8 Raúl Jellen7 National Guard (Nicaragua)7 Lawrence Pazulo7 Yale University6 William J. Polk5 Tennyson Guyer5 Congressional hearings on crack profits5 Nugan Hand Bank5 U.S. Congress4 Lima conference4 Los Angeles4 Nicaragua4 New England Journal of Medicine3 Lenny Wilkens3 Sandinistas3 Dominican Republic3 Miami3 Operation Gladio3 Peter Benzinger3 Lima3 House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control3 Asia2 Nils Noya2 San Francisco2 Spain2 Manhattan2 Ecuador2 Jamaica2 BCCI2 Carter Administration1

Claims made here

Somoza family headed Nicaragua book_quoted ▶ 0:58

“As his enemy amassed in the hills and suburbs of his doomed capital, the dictator huddled in his mountainside bunker with his aides and his American advisors and cursed his rotten luck. For 46 years, …”

Anastasio Somoza carried_out_attack 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état book_quoted ▶ 1:54

“I threw a GD communist out of Guatemala, unquote. And by communist, he's not actually talking about a communist. He's talking about when they overthrew Guatemala and accused the guy of being a communi…”

Anastasio Somoza supplied_arms_to Operation Pluto book_quoted ▶ 2:23

“personally worked on that, he said. When the CIA needed a secret base to prepare for the Bay of Pigs invasion, Somoza couldn't have been more accommodating. The U.S. called me and I agreed to have the…”

Anastasio Somoza carried_out_attack Dominican Republic book_quoted ▶ 2:23

Anastasio Somoza supplied_arms_to Vietnam book_quoted ▶ 2:53

“quell an uprising. Hell, he'd even sent Nicaraguans off to fight in Vietnam. So he's definitely working with the CIA in all of the above. He was their guy, just like Saddam Hussein was until he wasn't…”

Sandinistas overthrew Anastasio Somoza book_quoted ▶ 7:12

“In the pre-dawn hours of July 17, 1979, Somoza and his closest associates, his top generals, his business partners, and their family boarded two jets and flew to Homestead Air Force Base in Miami, Flo…”

Anastasio Somoza removed_from_power Nicaragua book_quoted ▶ 7:12

Tennyson Guyer headed House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control book_quoted ▶ 9:13

“Geyer was fond of loud suits and white patent leather shoes, was chairman of the cocaine task force on the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. He couldn't just stand by and watch. R…”

Robert Bick member_of Yale University book_quoted ▶ 14:55

“We don't think people are bringing cocaine across the border to a large extent in a car from Mexico. He recommended that Congress, instead of trying to prevent the drug from coming in over the borders…”

Raúl Jellen member_of National University of El Salvador book_quoted ▶ 21:38

“Jen, a professor of clinical neurology at the National University of San Marcos, claimed a cocaine epidemic had swept through Lima fashionable neighborhoods in 1974 and spread like grass fire to perus…”

David Pally member_of Yale University book_quoted ▶ 27:02

“had been skeptical of the South American reports until he sent one of his students down to Peru on a summer project. In the spring of 1978, a first-year Yale med student by the name of David Pally, P-…”

Raúl Jellen member_of Peru book_quoted ▶ 28:51

“they took the young Yale student around Lima and introduced him to his friends in the art and science area. One of the men that Polly met through his liaison was Dr. Raul Jerry, who latched onto him a…”

Robert Bick recruited David Pally book_quoted ▶ 30:50

“You'd come around a corner and all you could do was smell it for miles. Alarm Polly called Beck at Yale and told him what he had seen. The substance of my conversation with Beck, if I can remember cor…”

William J. Polk carried_out_attack Lima host_asserted ▶ 31:47

“Beck quickly got some federal grant money and sent Polly back to Lima to do some more controlled experiments on cocaine smokers. Jerry, with his police connections, obtained the necessary permits and …”

Ronald Siegel member_of California State University, Los Angeles documented ▶ 33:14

“While Polly was running his experiments in Peru, further evidence was emerging in the U.S. that Raoul Jerry's laughable predictions in North America's cocaine invasion was right on the mark. In Februa…”

Ronald Siegel exposed United States documented ▶ 40:12

“Siegel fired off his letter to the New England Journal of Medicine alerting the medical profession that there was a problem ahead. Users are now experimenting with smoking cocaine, alkaloid, or base. …”

Robert Bick member_of Lima conference documented ▶ 40:39

“appeared in the journal in February 1979. Five months later in July, he along with Polly, Beck, Jerry, and other cocaine researchers found themselves together in Lima for an international symposium on…”

Jerry Ray member_of Lima conference documented ▶ 40:39

William J. Polk member_of Lima conference documented ▶ 40:39

Ronald Siegel member_of Lima conference documented ▶ 40:39

Robert Bick exposed U.S. Congress documented ▶ 41:39

“and other things to buy more drugs. The Lima conference had taken place only two weeks before Beck appeared in Washington, and the stories he heard were fresh in his mind when he sat before the commit…”

Trump administration member_of Lima conference documented ▶ 42:05

“He said cocaine smoking can represent the same threat that the speed epidemic did in the 1960s. Beck also wasn't the only American scientist who attended the Lima conference that came back alarmed. Th…”

U.S. State Department member_of Lima conference documented ▶ 42:05

National Institute on Drug Abuse member_of Lima conference documented ▶ 42:05

Jerry Ray member_of California Conference on Cocaine host_asserted ▶ 46:17

“They wanted me to do a scientific paper about cocaine smoking, but not to tell anyone how it was done. I tried to explain that people already knew how it was done. That's why there was a problem. In 1…”

Ronald Siegel member_of California Conference on Cocaine host_asserted ▶ 46:17

Bush family secretly_owned Miami host_asserted ▶ 1:00:14

“And the Dominican Republic was two of their favorites. And then into Miami. And interestingly enough, the Bush family owned one of the docks down there. So getting it into America logistically was a l…”

Nugan Hand Bank funded Australia host_asserted ▶ 1:04:12

“You know, Australia was corrupt from the start. And as I said, I know a little bit about what went on here and the amount of officials, you know, the Nugent Hand Bank for, you know, we've discussed th…”

Nugan Hand Bank laundered_money_for Golden Triangle host_asserted ▶ 1:04:35

“The heroin. So the Nugent Hand Bank primarily money laundered for the Golden Triangle out of Asia because you guys are just straight down from there. So you are very, very handy. Plus, Australia had a…”

Nugan Hand Bank front_for Australia host_asserted ▶ 1:05:03

“And so they had to set up elaborate fronts in order to convert Australian money into other money. And that's the reason why Nguyen Han had all of those branches throughout Asia in Chiang Mai, Hong Kon…”