1 00:00:09,661 --> 00:00:12,451 June 17, 1971. 2 00:00:12,490 --> 00:00:15,580 Richard Nixon declares war on a new enemy. 3 00:00:15,624 --> 00:00:18,584 It's more dangerous than the mob, 4 00:00:18,627 --> 00:00:21,797 more of a threat than Communism. 5 00:00:21,847 --> 00:00:25,677 They call it the "War on Drugs." 6 00:00:25,721 --> 00:00:29,591 America's public-enemy number one is drug abuse. 7 00:00:31,118 --> 00:00:33,338 Anytime you've got that massive amount of drugs 8 00:00:33,381 --> 00:00:35,771 flowing into one area, you're gonna have war. 9 00:00:38,777 --> 00:00:41,037 This goes out there. 10 00:00:41,084 --> 00:00:44,744 It was the CIA that introduced LSD to the United States. 11 00:00:46,263 --> 00:00:49,833 The agency was elbow-deep with drug traffickers. 12 00:00:49,875 --> 00:00:51,045 I want him dead, gentlemen. 13 00:00:52,574 --> 00:00:56,104 Nobody knows Pablo Escobar was just a customer. 14 00:00:56,143 --> 00:00:58,413 When you're making that kind of money 15 00:00:58,449 --> 00:01:01,449 and living outside the law, it's exciting as hell. 16 00:01:03,237 --> 00:01:05,627 This is crack. 17 00:01:05,674 --> 00:01:08,074 Really? is this your spokesperson? 18 00:01:08,111 --> 00:01:09,851 Any questions? 19 00:01:09,895 --> 00:01:11,545 Just Say No! 20 00:01:11,593 --> 00:01:13,513 Get your hands up, man! Get them up! 21 00:01:13,551 --> 00:01:15,811 And people want their government to get tough 22 00:01:15,858 --> 00:01:17,338 and to go on the offensive. 23 00:01:20,558 --> 00:01:22,868 Three strikes and you are out. 24 00:01:25,433 --> 00:01:27,573 It's time to stop the drugs 25 00:01:27,609 --> 00:01:30,129 from pouring into our country. 26 00:01:30,177 --> 00:01:32,047 It's a war without end. 27 00:01:46,410 --> 00:01:48,760 No, I do think that most Americans 28 00:01:48,804 --> 00:01:51,074 would be utterly shocked 29 00:01:51,111 --> 00:01:55,551 if they knew the depth of involvement 30 00:01:55,593 --> 00:01:57,903 that the Central Intelligence Agency has had 31 00:01:57,943 --> 00:02:00,163 in the international drug trade. 32 00:02:07,039 --> 00:02:10,999 11 years before the War on Drugs is declared, 33 00:02:11,043 --> 00:02:15,833 the story begins here at Miami's Fontainebleau Hotel. 34 00:02:15,874 --> 00:02:17,494 It's a favorite spot 35 00:02:17,528 --> 00:02:20,708 for one of the era's most notorious gangsters -- 36 00:02:20,749 --> 00:02:23,359 Santo Trafficante Jr. 37 00:02:23,404 --> 00:02:26,324 Born into the powerful Sicilian mob, 38 00:02:26,363 --> 00:02:28,103 he's well-known by the FBI 39 00:02:28,148 --> 00:02:31,238 as one of the world's biggest heroin traffickers. 40 00:02:31,281 --> 00:02:33,761 Santo Trafficante Jr. 41 00:02:33,805 --> 00:02:35,975 at one point had two or three 42 00:02:36,025 --> 00:02:38,415 of the most popular casinos in Havana. 43 00:02:38,462 --> 00:02:39,902 He was running heroin out of there. 44 00:02:39,942 --> 00:02:41,342 These guys were powerful. 45 00:02:41,378 --> 00:02:43,768 They were able to get people killed. 46 00:02:45,730 --> 00:02:48,650 But Trafficante is not here on vacation. 47 00:02:48,690 --> 00:02:51,780 He's here to meet with two CIA operatives. 48 00:02:51,823 --> 00:02:54,873 What's interesting about the CIA and the Cold War 49 00:02:54,913 --> 00:02:57,663 and the War on Drugs is that the CIA 50 00:02:57,699 --> 00:03:01,139 had so many shared interests with drug dealers 51 00:03:01,181 --> 00:03:03,231 and their modes of operation. 52 00:03:03,270 --> 00:03:06,620 They're meeting in this hotel to plan the assassination 53 00:03:06,664 --> 00:03:09,414 of America's newest Cold War enemy. 54 00:03:09,450 --> 00:03:11,540 Gentlemen. 55 00:03:28,295 --> 00:03:29,465 Just two years earlier, 56 00:03:29,513 --> 00:03:32,393 Havana was the Caribbean's sin city. 57 00:03:32,429 --> 00:03:35,609 Santo Trafficante ran a vast criminal network 58 00:03:35,650 --> 00:03:37,350 with no fear of arrest -- 59 00:03:37,391 --> 00:03:40,661 gambling, guns, and girls. 60 00:03:40,698 --> 00:03:44,878 But by far, the most lucrative product is heroin. 61 00:03:44,920 --> 00:03:48,580 Smuggled from the Middle East through Marseille, France, 62 00:03:48,619 --> 00:03:52,579 via Havana and on to the United States, 63 00:03:52,623 --> 00:03:55,243 they call the route "The French Connection." 64 00:03:55,278 --> 00:03:56,888 The thing about Trafficante 65 00:03:56,932 --> 00:03:59,852 and like so many of these wise guys, these Mafia guys, 66 00:03:59,891 --> 00:04:01,501 they would always claim 67 00:04:01,545 --> 00:04:03,325 they weren't in the narcotics business. 68 00:04:03,373 --> 00:04:05,773 They could say, "Oh, yeah, I killed 15 guys, 69 00:04:05,810 --> 00:04:09,120 but I never dealt heroin," which was just like, "Oh, okay." 70 00:04:09,161 --> 00:04:11,561 The fact of the matter is that they've been involved 71 00:04:11,599 --> 00:04:13,429 in the heroin trafficking from the beginning. 72 00:04:15,298 --> 00:04:17,258 Trafficante made Havana the center 73 00:04:17,300 --> 00:04:19,390 of his drug-trafficking empire 74 00:04:19,433 --> 00:04:23,833 by paying off Cuba's president, Fulgencio Batista. 75 00:04:23,872 --> 00:04:26,052 The corrupt dictator also happened to be 76 00:04:26,091 --> 00:04:27,961 on the CIA's payroll. 77 00:04:32,794 --> 00:04:36,844 at all came to end with Fidel Castro's revolution. 78 00:04:41,019 --> 00:04:43,239 Members of the old regime, 79 00:04:43,283 --> 00:04:48,163 including those involved with the mob, are rounded up. 80 00:05:00,125 --> 00:05:04,165 It was bad enough that we had the Soviet Union 81 00:05:04,216 --> 00:05:07,216 that was this threat, but it was far away. 82 00:05:07,263 --> 00:05:09,873 Suddenly, it's right at our doorstep. 83 00:05:09,918 --> 00:05:11,308 Suddenly, that threat 84 00:05:11,354 --> 00:05:14,014 is something that we can actually see, 85 00:05:14,052 --> 00:05:18,802 and that created a tremendous amount of anxiety in Washington. 86 00:05:18,840 --> 00:05:21,710 Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon, 87 00:05:21,756 --> 00:05:24,366 signs off on a covert CIA mission... 88 00:05:26,587 --> 00:05:29,017 ...take out Fidel Castro. 89 00:05:40,122 --> 00:05:41,602 You know why Kennedy wants him dead? 90 00:05:47,347 --> 00:05:49,607 Trafficante tells the agency men 91 00:05:49,653 --> 00:05:52,533 it can't be done like a normal mob hit. 92 00:05:57,139 --> 00:06:00,529 The CIA is, from its very beginning, 93 00:06:00,577 --> 00:06:03,487 collaborating with mafiosos 94 00:06:03,537 --> 00:06:05,367 who are involved in the drug trade, 95 00:06:05,408 --> 00:06:08,058 because these mafiosos will serve 96 00:06:08,106 --> 00:06:11,366 the larger agenda of fighting Communism. 97 00:06:11,414 --> 00:06:12,764 Okay, so, what are you... 98 00:06:30,520 --> 00:06:32,910 At the agency then, and even to this day, 99 00:06:32,957 --> 00:06:35,567 morality sometimes has to take a back seat 100 00:06:35,612 --> 00:06:38,402 to whatever the final end is. 101 00:06:38,441 --> 00:06:41,231 This clandestine document -- 102 00:06:41,270 --> 00:06:43,710 The Doolittle Report -- is the key to understanding 103 00:06:43,751 --> 00:06:45,321 the last half century 104 00:06:45,361 --> 00:06:48,231 of the CIA's involvement in the drug trade. 105 00:06:48,277 --> 00:06:52,367 Issued in 1954, it lays out the core mission for the agency. 106 00:06:52,412 --> 00:06:54,812 The Doolittle Report essentially said, 107 00:06:54,849 --> 00:06:57,239 we might have to bend the rules a little bit, 108 00:06:57,286 --> 00:06:59,456 or we might even have to break the rules, 109 00:06:59,506 --> 00:07:00,986 in order to combat 110 00:07:01,029 --> 00:07:03,379 this very real threat called Communism. 111 00:07:06,643 --> 00:07:09,083 The CIA undertakes extortion, 112 00:07:09,124 --> 00:07:12,214 kidnapping, torture, even murder. 113 00:07:12,257 --> 00:07:15,517 Plotting assassinations and coups in Iran, 114 00:07:15,565 --> 00:07:20,045 Indonesia, the Congo, Guatemala, and now Cuba, 115 00:07:20,091 --> 00:07:23,141 where the Mafia are natural partners. 116 00:07:23,181 --> 00:07:27,401 It doesn't matter the Mafia is also America's largest supplier 117 00:07:27,447 --> 00:07:29,267 of illegal narcotics. 118 00:07:29,318 --> 00:07:32,358 The CIA enters into a devil's bargain. 119 00:07:32,408 --> 00:07:35,978 When you're at war, you will do anything, in the short term, 120 00:07:36,020 --> 00:07:37,720 that it takes to win that war. 121 00:07:41,722 --> 00:07:44,202 The CIA delivers the ingredients to carry out 122 00:07:44,246 --> 00:07:45,896 Castro's assassination... 123 00:07:50,600 --> 00:07:54,780 ...a suitcase with $150,000 in cash... 124 00:07:54,822 --> 00:07:57,132 and poison. 125 00:07:57,172 --> 00:08:00,352 Trafficante agrees to do this, knowing that, 126 00:08:00,392 --> 00:08:03,532 once you've worked for the CIA, they have two choices -- 127 00:08:03,570 --> 00:08:05,660 they can either kill you or they can protect you. 128 00:08:05,702 --> 00:08:07,362 It's a business decision 129 00:08:07,399 --> 00:08:10,229 that has to do with the Mafia's crime empire 130 00:08:10,272 --> 00:08:12,062 and its prospects for the future. 131 00:08:16,234 --> 00:08:18,114 The plot to poison Castro 132 00:08:18,149 --> 00:08:21,759 coincides with a planned invasion of Cuba. 133 00:08:21,805 --> 00:08:23,805 The newly elected President Kennedy 134 00:08:23,851 --> 00:08:26,161 reluctantly signs off on the operation 135 00:08:26,201 --> 00:08:28,551 that will be led by a paramilitary force 136 00:08:28,595 --> 00:08:31,415 of Cuban exiles, trained by the CIA, 137 00:08:31,467 --> 00:08:33,817 known as Operation 40. 138 00:08:36,167 --> 00:08:39,557 Operation 40 were gonna go in apart from the brigade 139 00:08:39,606 --> 00:08:41,606 and they were gonna knock off 140 00:08:41,651 --> 00:08:44,611 all the political leaders of Castro's regime. 141 00:08:49,441 --> 00:08:51,751 A small group of Operation 40 commandos 142 00:08:51,792 --> 00:08:53,452 is headed to Cuban soil. 143 00:08:55,839 --> 00:08:59,189 Their goal -- make contact with anti-Castro locals 144 00:08:59,234 --> 00:09:02,324 and then seize control of the government. 145 00:09:02,367 --> 00:09:05,277 One of the leaders is this man -- 146 00:09:05,327 --> 00:09:06,937 Felix Rodriguez. 147 00:09:06,981 --> 00:09:09,721 The son of wealthy Cuban landowners, 148 00:09:09,766 --> 00:09:13,466 his uncle is Minister of Public Works under Batista. 149 00:09:13,509 --> 00:09:16,509 When his friends are executed in the Revolution, 150 00:09:16,556 --> 00:09:18,376 he is one of the first to volunteer 151 00:09:18,427 --> 00:09:20,687 when the CIA begins forming their plan 152 00:09:20,734 --> 00:09:22,874 to take out Fidel Castro. 153 00:09:22,910 --> 00:09:25,740 For Felix Rodriguez and the other Operation 40 guys, 154 00:09:25,782 --> 00:09:29,132 this was beyond just the mission of the agency. 155 00:09:29,177 --> 00:09:30,437 This was something that they were 156 00:09:30,482 --> 00:09:32,222 personally passionate about. 157 00:09:35,705 --> 00:09:38,225 Rodriguez has been undercover for six weeks 158 00:09:38,273 --> 00:09:39,363 when he receives word. 159 00:09:42,059 --> 00:09:44,109 The invasion is on. 160 00:09:53,114 --> 00:09:57,424 The CIA-trained troops land at the Bay of Pigs... 161 00:09:59,860 --> 00:10:03,860 ...but Castro is onto both the poison plot... 162 00:10:03,907 --> 00:10:05,337 and the invasion plan. 163 00:10:13,090 --> 00:10:14,660 It's a bloodbath. 164 00:10:17,399 --> 00:10:21,139 Over 100 CIA-trained soldiers are killed, 165 00:10:21,185 --> 00:10:23,225 1,200 are captured. 166 00:10:31,152 --> 00:10:35,682 But Felix Rodriguez and the other leaders of Operation 40 167 00:10:35,722 --> 00:10:38,942 escape to Miami. 168 00:10:43,730 --> 00:10:45,510 And it's here in South Florida 169 00:10:45,557 --> 00:10:47,557 where many Operation 40 veterans 170 00:10:47,603 --> 00:10:50,003 will find a lucrative new trade. 171 00:10:53,087 --> 00:10:56,607 This army of Cubans that had been trained by the CIA 172 00:10:56,656 --> 00:10:59,876 found themselves seriously underemployed. 173 00:10:59,920 --> 00:11:01,310 And they looked around, 174 00:11:01,356 --> 00:11:03,266 and there was a great way to make money, 175 00:11:03,314 --> 00:11:04,934 and they had the skills for it. 176 00:11:04,968 --> 00:11:06,358 It was smuggling drugs. 177 00:11:06,404 --> 00:11:08,024 The Bay of Pigs 178 00:11:08,058 --> 00:11:10,018 may have been one of history's greatest blunders, 179 00:11:10,060 --> 00:11:12,720 but the men behind it will play oversized roles 180 00:11:12,759 --> 00:11:15,199 when the Cold War and the War on Drugs collide 181 00:11:15,239 --> 00:11:16,939 in the years to come. 182 00:11:16,980 --> 00:11:18,590 You start having this boom 183 00:11:18,634 --> 00:11:20,334 of drugs and lawlessness in Miami, 184 00:11:20,375 --> 00:11:23,725 which is the very first experience of blowback 185 00:11:23,770 --> 00:11:26,030 from this whole Cuban fiasco. 186 00:11:26,076 --> 00:11:27,946 By the end of the '60s, 187 00:11:27,991 --> 00:11:33,211 an estimated 20% of America's heroin and 60% of the cocaine 188 00:11:33,257 --> 00:11:35,907 are connected to anti-Castro operatives. 189 00:11:38,915 --> 00:11:42,745 The seeds of the War on Drugs have been planted. 190 00:12:05,028 --> 00:12:06,808 Sandoz Laboratories, 191 00:12:06,856 --> 00:12:09,466 one of the world's leading pharmaceutical factories. 192 00:12:10,817 --> 00:12:14,597 Two American spies have just arrived. 193 00:12:14,646 --> 00:12:17,476 The mission -- corner the market on the world's supply 194 00:12:17,519 --> 00:12:20,609 of a powerful new psychoactive drug. 195 00:12:20,652 --> 00:12:23,742 The CIA saw itself as being in a kind of 196 00:12:23,786 --> 00:12:29,396 Cold War psychological warfare arms race with the Soviet Union. 197 00:12:31,402 --> 00:12:33,842 What's the answer to controlling people 198 00:12:33,883 --> 00:12:36,063 and brainwashing them or getting them to confess? 199 00:12:36,103 --> 00:12:37,763 It's drugs. 200 00:12:37,800 --> 00:12:40,460 The CIA has just authorized the purchase 201 00:12:40,498 --> 00:12:43,408 of 10 kilograms of pure LSD-25, 202 00:12:43,458 --> 00:12:45,628 enough to dose more than half the population 203 00:12:45,677 --> 00:12:47,327 of the United States. 204 00:12:47,375 --> 00:12:50,065 Sandoz even supplies the CIA with a receipt 205 00:12:50,117 --> 00:12:52,547 and shipping information. 206 00:12:52,597 --> 00:12:57,167 The CIA were scared stiff the KGB was gonna get all this LSD 207 00:12:57,211 --> 00:12:59,131 and come over and start dosing people. 208 00:12:59,169 --> 00:13:03,699 So they bought every drop of LSD in existence at that point. 209 00:13:03,739 --> 00:13:07,219 They gave it to George White and let George start dosing people. 210 00:13:24,412 --> 00:13:26,332 George Hunter White, 211 00:13:26,370 --> 00:13:29,900 a larger-than-life undercover federal narcotics agent. 212 00:13:29,939 --> 00:13:32,119 He's known for busting international drug rings 213 00:13:32,159 --> 00:13:35,549 at home and abroad. 214 00:13:35,597 --> 00:13:37,687 But unbeknownst to his supervisors, 215 00:13:37,729 --> 00:13:40,469 White also works for the CIA. 216 00:13:40,515 --> 00:13:43,815 His job -- to conduct experiments for an operation 217 00:13:43,866 --> 00:13:45,556 called Midnight Climax. 218 00:13:49,002 --> 00:13:51,742 White pays prostitutes to lure their clients 219 00:13:51,787 --> 00:13:54,527 to the agency safe house. 220 00:13:54,572 --> 00:13:59,062 George had a CIA safe house stocked with booze. 221 00:13:59,099 --> 00:14:01,839 George would sit behind this one-way mirror, 222 00:14:01,884 --> 00:14:05,374 drinking martinis, sitting on a portable toilet. 223 00:14:05,409 --> 00:14:07,849 If he had to take a leak, he didn't want to get up and leave. 224 00:14:14,723 --> 00:14:17,603 Hookers would bring these suckers back to the apartment... 225 00:14:25,560 --> 00:14:28,350 ...and dose them with pure LSD-25. 226 00:14:30,391 --> 00:14:33,051 This is where I have my effect -- 227 00:14:33,089 --> 00:14:34,699 in the mind. 228 00:14:34,743 --> 00:14:37,833 This is Lysergic acid diethylamide, 229 00:14:37,877 --> 00:14:39,747 better known as acid. 230 00:14:39,791 --> 00:14:41,621 The powerful drug was first synthesized 231 00:14:41,663 --> 00:14:43,673 in 1938 in Switzerland. 232 00:14:43,708 --> 00:14:46,448 With a dose of mere micrograms, 233 00:14:46,494 --> 00:14:48,544 the mind becomes confused. 234 00:14:48,583 --> 00:14:50,283 Perception in distorted. 235 00:14:50,324 --> 00:14:52,804 Personal identity is called into question. 236 00:14:52,848 --> 00:14:56,498 The results can be euphoric bliss or deadly panic. 237 00:15:02,118 --> 00:15:05,598 Do you see that? The light? 238 00:15:07,080 --> 00:15:09,730 White observes the effects of the acid-laced cocktails 239 00:15:09,778 --> 00:15:11,428 on the unsuspecting men. 240 00:15:11,475 --> 00:15:13,425 White was very much into S&M. 241 00:15:13,477 --> 00:15:15,647 He would visit prostitutes himself, 242 00:15:15,697 --> 00:15:18,397 and they would strap him to a bed and whip his butt. 243 00:15:18,439 --> 00:15:20,309 Oh, my God. What's that? 244 00:15:22,530 --> 00:15:25,530 Recognizing the bizarre behavior brought on by the drug, 245 00:15:25,576 --> 00:15:29,276 he gives LSD the code name "stormy." 246 00:15:29,319 --> 00:15:31,799 White takes meticulous notes... 247 00:15:33,236 --> 00:15:36,666 ...and files his reports to his CIA handlers. 248 00:15:36,718 --> 00:15:39,978 So, that was how LSD was introduced to this country. 249 00:15:40,026 --> 00:15:43,026 Operation Midnight Climax is part of a larger, 250 00:15:43,072 --> 00:15:46,682 top-secret CIA program called MKUltra. 251 00:15:46,728 --> 00:15:48,858 The goal -- learn how to control 252 00:15:48,904 --> 00:15:51,734 and even reprogram people's minds. 253 00:15:51,776 --> 00:15:55,346 The CIA believes LSD might hold the key. 254 00:15:55,389 --> 00:15:57,129 Over the next 10 years, 255 00:15:57,173 --> 00:16:00,093 the agency doses a cross section of the American public. 256 00:16:00,133 --> 00:16:04,663 Everyone from unwitting housewives to soldiers 257 00:16:04,702 --> 00:16:08,582 to even criminals, like gangster Whitey Bulger, is tested. 258 00:16:22,982 --> 00:16:24,982 The Allan Memorial Hospital. 259 00:16:27,595 --> 00:16:30,205 A psychiatric patient is being prepped for treatment. 260 00:16:34,297 --> 00:16:37,607 But this is no ordinary mental hospital. 261 00:16:37,648 --> 00:16:39,648 The doctor is not looking for a cure. 262 00:16:42,131 --> 00:16:45,871 The patient has no idea what they are about to endure. 263 00:16:45,917 --> 00:16:47,697 This goes out there. 264 00:16:54,361 --> 00:16:57,451 Dr. Ewen Cameron -- the former president 265 00:16:57,494 --> 00:16:59,934 of the American Psychiatric Association. 266 00:16:59,975 --> 00:17:04,455 During the Nuremberg trials, he evaluates Nazi war criminals. 267 00:17:04,501 --> 00:17:06,811 But Cameron has another side to him. 268 00:17:06,851 --> 00:17:10,161 He's fascinated by the idea that the identity can be erased 269 00:17:10,203 --> 00:17:11,993 and the mind reprogrammed. 270 00:17:13,423 --> 00:17:15,773 While George White's tests become inseparable 271 00:17:15,817 --> 00:17:17,987 from his own sexual obsessions, 272 00:17:18,037 --> 00:17:21,477 Cameron's approach is clinical and deadly serious. 273 00:17:23,520 --> 00:17:26,090 Cameron was working for the CIA. 274 00:17:26,132 --> 00:17:28,742 They were looking into brainwashing. 275 00:17:28,786 --> 00:17:31,006 They were looking into mind control. 276 00:17:31,050 --> 00:17:34,100 They were looking into how they could create 277 00:17:34,140 --> 00:17:36,190 what they called "Manchurian candidates." 278 00:17:38,796 --> 00:17:41,226 Even his own nurses don't know he is working 279 00:17:41,277 --> 00:17:43,757 on a top-secret CIA program. 280 00:17:52,941 --> 00:17:56,291 He was doing a lot of different testing with LSD. 281 00:17:56,336 --> 00:17:59,506 They were trying to figure out if they could get people 282 00:17:59,556 --> 00:18:01,686 to go out and do things 283 00:18:01,732 --> 00:18:05,302 that they would ordinarily not do, like assassination. 284 00:18:09,175 --> 00:18:13,085 Once the subject is dosed with a sufficient amount of LSD, 285 00:18:13,135 --> 00:18:16,435 Cameron begins to try and reprogram the patient's mind. 286 00:18:22,536 --> 00:18:24,836 He shocks them with high voltages... 287 00:18:32,154 --> 00:18:34,594 ...and forces them to listen to repetitive audio loops 288 00:18:34,635 --> 00:18:36,935 for days at a time. 289 00:18:47,648 --> 00:18:52,218 The drug began to take hold very rapidly. 290 00:18:52,261 --> 00:18:54,871 Things became very frightening, 291 00:18:54,916 --> 00:18:56,916 and I became more and more despondent, 292 00:18:56,961 --> 00:18:58,701 and I thought, "I can't -- 293 00:18:58,746 --> 00:19:00,916 I can't live like this any longer." 294 00:19:10,323 --> 00:19:12,933 But not every subject in the MKUltra program 295 00:19:12,977 --> 00:19:16,287 finds the drug's effects so terrifying. 296 00:19:16,329 --> 00:19:19,419 The CIA's quest to create mind-controlled zombies 297 00:19:19,462 --> 00:19:21,642 is about to have an unintended consequence 298 00:19:21,682 --> 00:19:23,382 that will change America. 299 00:19:26,339 --> 00:19:28,299 You know, what the CIA really dreamed of 300 00:19:28,341 --> 00:19:31,341 was sort of like a drug you could give to someone, 301 00:19:31,387 --> 00:19:34,217 get them to commit all sorts of unspeakable acts, 302 00:19:34,260 --> 00:19:35,740 and they wake up the next day 303 00:19:35,783 --> 00:19:36,873 and they don't remember what they've done. 304 00:19:42,442 --> 00:19:45,922 Another CIA LSD experiment is under way. 305 00:19:47,447 --> 00:19:49,577 Volunteers have been paid $75 306 00:19:49,623 --> 00:19:52,543 to participate in a research study. 307 00:19:52,582 --> 00:19:56,802 One of the volunteers -- Ken Kesey, 308 00:19:56,847 --> 00:19:59,237 a young writer, wrestler, and graduate student 309 00:19:59,285 --> 00:20:01,765 at nearby Stanford University. 310 00:20:01,809 --> 00:20:03,589 He'll go on to write the bestseller 311 00:20:03,637 --> 00:20:05,597 "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." 312 00:20:10,296 --> 00:20:12,166 A nurse turns on a recording device 313 00:20:12,211 --> 00:20:15,211 and asks Kesey what the drug is doing to his brain. 314 00:21:12,793 --> 00:21:16,803 The case of MKUltra has to be one of the craziest cases 315 00:21:16,840 --> 00:21:18,540 of blowback in CIA history. 316 00:21:18,581 --> 00:21:22,411 Because here, they took this drug, LSD, 317 00:21:22,455 --> 00:21:24,275 and thought that they were gonna be able to use it 318 00:21:24,326 --> 00:21:27,586 to control people's minds, and the unbelievable irony 319 00:21:27,634 --> 00:21:32,334 is that LSD is a drug that does exactly the opposite. 320 00:21:32,378 --> 00:21:36,858 It frees your mind and causes people to question authority. 321 00:21:36,904 --> 00:21:40,264 Within months, Kesey will be hired as a nurse's aid 322 00:21:40,299 --> 00:21:44,559 and given access to the hospital's supply of LSD. 323 00:21:44,607 --> 00:21:48,567 Perhaps the CIA never meant to "turn on" Ken Kesey, 324 00:21:48,611 --> 00:21:50,271 but they did. 325 00:21:50,309 --> 00:21:53,359 Soon, he is turning his friends on to acid, 326 00:21:53,399 --> 00:21:56,619 then the entire West Coast, 327 00:21:56,663 --> 00:21:59,493 then an entire generation. 328 00:21:59,535 --> 00:22:02,885 It created the counterculture, as we know it, of the '60s. 329 00:22:02,930 --> 00:22:06,540 All that was a kind of blowback, or backfire, 330 00:22:06,586 --> 00:22:09,976 of the CIA's attempt to control people 331 00:22:10,024 --> 00:22:13,204 turned out to be just the opposite. 332 00:22:13,244 --> 00:22:16,604 It was the CIA that introduced LSD to the United States. 333 00:22:34,744 --> 00:22:38,534 While LSD takes hold in the United States, 334 00:22:38,574 --> 00:22:41,364 in Southeast Asia, a covert CIA war 335 00:22:41,403 --> 00:22:45,713 will fuel a new drug epidemic -- heroin. 336 00:22:49,237 --> 00:22:52,017 O0 337 00:22:56,462 --> 00:23:00,072 The President of the United States is dead. 338 00:23:00,117 --> 00:23:03,027 President Kennedy has been assassinated. 339 00:23:03,077 --> 00:23:05,427 It's official now. The president is dead. 340 00:23:05,471 --> 00:23:09,211 The United States is shaken to its core. 341 00:23:09,257 --> 00:23:13,607 JFK is shot down in the streets of Dallas... 342 00:23:13,653 --> 00:23:18,013 and Lyndon Johnson takes over as Commander in Chief. 343 00:23:19,485 --> 00:23:22,175 The war against Communism in Vietnam 344 00:23:22,226 --> 00:23:25,966 becomes President Johnson's most pressing issue. 345 00:23:26,013 --> 00:23:28,363 What the American public doesn't know 346 00:23:28,407 --> 00:23:31,667 is just across the border from Vietnam, in Laos, 347 00:23:31,714 --> 00:23:36,594 more seeds are being planted for the War on Drugs. 348 00:23:36,632 --> 00:23:39,162 Everybody at the time was focused on Vietnam, 349 00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:42,600 but in nearby Laos, there was one of the hugest 350 00:23:42,638 --> 00:23:45,818 paramilitary covert operations going on. 351 00:23:45,859 --> 00:23:47,859 And President Johnson, in fact, 352 00:23:47,904 --> 00:23:51,434 was under a tremendous amount of pressure to keep it secret. 353 00:23:59,133 --> 00:24:02,623 Local forces are waging a secret war 354 00:24:02,658 --> 00:24:06,578 against communist guerrillas in the remote Laotian highlands, 355 00:24:06,619 --> 00:24:10,709 and they're being trained by a legendary CIA operative... 356 00:24:10,753 --> 00:24:12,973 Tony Poe. 357 00:24:13,016 --> 00:24:15,576 A World War II fighter pilot, 358 00:24:15,628 --> 00:24:19,108 he earns two Purple Hearts in the Battle of Iwo Jima. 359 00:24:19,153 --> 00:24:23,903 After the war, he becomes one of America's most prolific spies. 360 00:24:23,940 --> 00:24:28,250 Now he's the CIA's man in Laos. 361 00:24:28,292 --> 00:24:30,642 A lot of people think of someone like James Bond 362 00:24:30,686 --> 00:24:32,686 as the kind of spy prototype, 363 00:24:32,732 --> 00:24:34,822 you know, suave and wearing a tuxedo. 364 00:24:34,864 --> 00:24:36,694 In a place like Laos, 365 00:24:36,736 --> 00:24:39,346 that's not the kind of spy we were sending over there. 366 00:24:42,350 --> 00:24:43,920 Keep moving forward! 367 00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:46,440 Tony Poe breaks CIA rules 368 00:24:46,485 --> 00:24:48,875 and leads a regiment to battle himself. 369 00:24:51,533 --> 00:24:53,973 If you take a situation like Laos was at the time, 370 00:24:54,014 --> 00:24:56,454 that kind of craziness, 371 00:24:56,495 --> 00:24:58,495 and you insert someone like Tony Poe, 372 00:24:58,540 --> 00:25:01,630 that's basically like adding gas to a fire. 373 00:25:07,244 --> 00:25:09,464 After the battles, he'd send his guys out... 374 00:25:11,597 --> 00:25:14,297 ...to chop the ears off of these dead enemy. 375 00:25:16,602 --> 00:25:18,432 And then they would pack the ears up 376 00:25:18,473 --> 00:25:21,523 and send them back to the CIA headquarters, like trophies. 377 00:25:24,044 --> 00:25:25,574 Another thing that they would do 378 00:25:25,611 --> 00:25:27,351 is chop the heads off their victims, 379 00:25:27,395 --> 00:25:29,175 and then they would fly over with helicopters 380 00:25:29,223 --> 00:25:32,753 and drop the heads, like bombs, on the villages. 381 00:25:46,675 --> 00:25:48,495 Tony Poe's ally against communists 382 00:25:48,547 --> 00:25:50,417 is a powerful local warlord... 383 00:25:52,638 --> 00:25:54,938 ...Vang Pao. 384 00:25:54,988 --> 00:25:57,338 A resistance fighter in World War II, 385 00:25:57,381 --> 00:26:00,911 he now commands a ragtag army of Hmong Hill people 386 00:26:00,950 --> 00:26:04,430 against communists infiltrating their tribal land. 387 00:26:04,475 --> 00:26:08,175 Guys like Vang Pao and a guy like Tony Poe 388 00:26:08,218 --> 00:26:10,218 get in business together because they had a common enemy, 389 00:26:10,264 --> 00:26:12,184 which was Communism. 390 00:26:17,532 --> 00:26:19,532 But what Poe doesn't realize 391 00:26:19,578 --> 00:26:23,318 is that Vang Pao is not just fighting Communism. 392 00:26:23,364 --> 00:26:26,934 He's also lining his own pockets. 393 00:26:26,976 --> 00:26:30,626 Northern Laos is in the heart of the Golden Triangle, 394 00:26:30,676 --> 00:26:33,236 an area which includes Burma and Thailand, 395 00:26:33,287 --> 00:26:35,507 known as one of the most fertile opium growing-regions 396 00:26:35,550 --> 00:26:36,860 in the world. 397 00:26:38,466 --> 00:26:41,596 Here, the Hmong have used opium for centuries as medicine. 398 00:26:41,643 --> 00:26:44,123 But on the international drug market, 399 00:26:44,167 --> 00:26:46,387 the real value of the poppy's sap 400 00:26:46,430 --> 00:26:49,740 is that it can be refined into heroin. 401 00:26:49,782 --> 00:26:53,922 When the CIA is focused on a mission, 402 00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:56,090 on a particular end, 403 00:26:56,136 --> 00:27:00,096 they're not going to sit down and pontificate about 404 00:27:00,140 --> 00:27:04,010 "What are the long-term, global consequences 405 00:27:04,057 --> 00:27:05,487 of our actions going to be?" 406 00:27:12,674 --> 00:27:15,294 Tony Poe has ordered a CIA plane 407 00:27:15,329 --> 00:27:17,329 to drop off weapons and ammunition 408 00:27:17,374 --> 00:27:19,164 for the Hmong warriors 409 00:27:19,202 --> 00:27:23,122 and to pick up injured soldiers, women, children, and cargo. 410 00:27:26,906 --> 00:27:29,686 The plane is owned by Air America. 411 00:27:31,693 --> 00:27:35,133 One of the most important aspects of fighting Communism 412 00:27:35,175 --> 00:27:37,605 in Laos involved a company called Air America, 413 00:27:37,656 --> 00:27:39,656 which was actually a front for the CIA. 414 00:27:44,010 --> 00:27:46,970 The CIA plane lands back at this secret base 415 00:27:47,013 --> 00:27:49,803 in the Long Tieng Valley, in Laos. 416 00:27:49,842 --> 00:27:53,242 Unmarked on any map, it's fast becoming 417 00:27:53,280 --> 00:27:55,850 one of the busiest airports in the world. 418 00:27:57,414 --> 00:28:00,814 But this plane isn't just carrying the wounded and frail. 419 00:28:05,118 --> 00:28:08,028 Vang Pao has begun using Air America 420 00:28:08,077 --> 00:28:11,777 to transport his raw opium from the hills to the cities. 421 00:28:11,820 --> 00:28:16,000 The Hmong people see Americans coming and going with planes 422 00:28:16,042 --> 00:28:19,002 and having the resources to be able to help them 423 00:28:19,045 --> 00:28:22,175 transport something that's been in their culture for decades. 424 00:28:22,222 --> 00:28:23,402 It's a no-brainer. 425 00:28:30,273 --> 00:28:32,673 The CIA built Air America 426 00:28:32,711 --> 00:28:36,931 to move people and weapons and money below the radar. 427 00:28:36,976 --> 00:28:42,366 Well, that's identical to what drug traffickers have to do. 428 00:28:42,416 --> 00:28:46,246 It's almost inevitable that the CIA and drug traffickers 429 00:28:46,289 --> 00:28:49,079 are continually crossing through the same worlds, 430 00:28:49,118 --> 00:28:51,158 continually using the same methods 431 00:28:51,207 --> 00:28:52,857 and on a rather intimate basis. 432 00:28:56,256 --> 00:28:58,206 The CIA turns a blind eye 433 00:28:58,258 --> 00:29:01,958 to Vang Pao's growing heroin operation. 434 00:29:02,001 --> 00:29:06,481 But Tony Poe didn't come to Laos to enrich a local drug lord. 435 00:29:13,142 --> 00:29:16,622 Tony Poe hated Vang Pao 'cause he knew he was selling drugs. 436 00:29:16,667 --> 00:29:18,147 [Bleep] you, you son of a bitch! 437 00:29:20,497 --> 00:29:22,797 Tony Poe was actually the model 438 00:29:22,848 --> 00:29:26,108 for Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now." 439 00:29:26,155 --> 00:29:28,195 At one point, I was sitting, talking with him, 440 00:29:28,244 --> 00:29:30,334 and he was running his hand over his bald head 441 00:29:30,377 --> 00:29:32,547 like Marlon Brando did in the movie. 442 00:29:32,596 --> 00:29:34,336 And I said to him, "Did you get that from Brando, 443 00:29:34,381 --> 00:29:35,731 or did Brando get that from you?" 444 00:29:37,819 --> 00:29:39,729 In 1965, 445 00:29:39,778 --> 00:29:43,388 the CIA pulls Tony Poe out of Long Tieng. 446 00:29:43,433 --> 00:29:45,313 There are probably a lot more Tony Poes 447 00:29:45,348 --> 00:29:47,048 that we don't know about -- 448 00:29:47,089 --> 00:29:51,789 people who went in believing in the higher cause, 449 00:29:51,833 --> 00:29:54,403 and then found that there was a lot of activity 450 00:29:54,444 --> 00:29:58,014 that they either had to sanction or turn a blind eye to. 451 00:29:58,057 --> 00:30:01,277 When your moral compass starts to stray 452 00:30:01,321 --> 00:30:03,851 so far back and forth, you can start to lose it, 453 00:30:03,889 --> 00:30:05,189 as Tony Poe did. 454 00:30:08,807 --> 00:30:11,027 With Tony Poe reassigned, 455 00:30:11,070 --> 00:30:13,380 the CIA will send in a new team 456 00:30:13,420 --> 00:30:15,990 to help run their secret war in Laos. 457 00:30:16,031 --> 00:30:21,381 Vang Pao is now unleashed to continue his drug dealing, 458 00:30:21,428 --> 00:30:23,258 and that region becomes 459 00:30:23,299 --> 00:30:25,779 the epicenter of global heroin production. 460 00:30:34,745 --> 00:30:37,175 What is going to be the theme of your meeting? 461 00:30:37,226 --> 00:30:39,786 Are you going to tell what's bad about LSD? 462 00:30:42,188 --> 00:30:44,278 Not necessarily. 463 00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:46,500 Man #2: Will LSD be in evidence 464 00:30:46,540 --> 00:30:49,330 at the graduation ceremony, Ken? 465 00:30:49,369 --> 00:30:52,199 Um... 466 00:30:52,241 --> 00:30:54,291 Why don't you guys come? 467 00:31:01,947 --> 00:31:06,167 Five years since Ken Kesey was first introduced to LSD 468 00:31:06,212 --> 00:31:09,962 through the CIA's MKUltra mind-control program, 469 00:31:09,998 --> 00:31:12,258 he is now a psychedelic convert 470 00:31:12,305 --> 00:31:16,605 committed to spreading the LSD gospel across America. 471 00:31:16,657 --> 00:31:19,567 He throws parties known as "acid tests" 472 00:31:19,616 --> 00:31:23,006 where LSD-laced Kool-Aid is served, 473 00:31:23,055 --> 00:31:26,965 and partygoers are invited to achieve a communal high. 474 00:31:32,891 --> 00:31:34,891 Meanwhile, across the country, 475 00:31:34,936 --> 00:31:37,496 there's a smaller, but growing hippie scene, 476 00:31:37,547 --> 00:31:39,197 and a group of them have turned 477 00:31:39,245 --> 00:31:41,765 this country estate into a commune 478 00:31:41,812 --> 00:31:43,812 and are about to drop acid. 479 00:31:47,209 --> 00:31:50,949 Leading them on their acid trip is Timothy Leary. 480 00:31:50,996 --> 00:31:54,346 A popular lecturer at Harvard, Leary's fascinated 481 00:31:54,390 --> 00:31:58,050 by the effect of psychedelic drugs on the brain. 482 00:31:58,090 --> 00:32:01,790 LSD was legal then, and he was giving it to graduate students 483 00:32:01,832 --> 00:32:03,882 to open their minds 484 00:32:03,922 --> 00:32:08,142 and, like Timothy Leary said, "question authority." 485 00:32:08,187 --> 00:32:10,057 And that's when he became an outlaw. 486 00:32:10,102 --> 00:32:13,322 Our aim is to transform American society. 487 00:32:13,366 --> 00:32:15,406 America today is an insane asylum. 488 00:32:15,455 --> 00:32:18,275 We're going to try to bring about a religious renaissance 489 00:32:18,327 --> 00:32:20,367 and a spiritual revolution. 490 00:32:20,416 --> 00:32:23,116 When he urged people to take LSD, 491 00:32:23,158 --> 00:32:25,158 the effect that it had on people 492 00:32:25,204 --> 00:32:28,774 was so powerful that they almost treat him like a guru of sorts. 493 00:32:31,297 --> 00:32:35,907 Millbrook is a bastion of old New England, 494 00:32:35,954 --> 00:32:37,914 had all of these hippies coming in there, 495 00:32:37,956 --> 00:32:40,346 and Ken Kesey showed up there on his bus 496 00:32:40,393 --> 00:32:42,533 with all his merry pranksters. 497 00:32:42,569 --> 00:32:44,749 And that scared the hell 498 00:32:44,788 --> 00:32:49,578 out of this old, blue-blooded, WASP aristocracy 499 00:32:49,619 --> 00:32:52,489 that lived in Millbrook, New York. 500 00:32:52,535 --> 00:32:55,625 Leary's acid crusade has made him a target. 501 00:33:00,500 --> 00:33:04,680 A local prosecutor is on a crusade of his own -- 502 00:33:04,721 --> 00:33:06,851 G. Gordon Liddy, 503 00:33:06,897 --> 00:33:09,857 a former FBI agent turned assistant district attorney 504 00:33:09,900 --> 00:33:11,860 in Dutchess County, New York. 505 00:33:14,296 --> 00:33:18,816 Gordon Liddy was an obscure anti-drug, 506 00:33:18,866 --> 00:33:22,646 right-wing prosecutor in Dutchess County, New York, 507 00:33:22,696 --> 00:33:28,436 until he took on Timothy Leary and the LSD movement. 508 00:33:28,484 --> 00:33:32,664 No one was as determined to take Leary down as G. Gordon Liddy. 509 00:33:32,706 --> 00:33:35,056 He just went after Leary with a vengeance. 510 00:33:41,758 --> 00:33:43,278 We waGo, go, go!is 511 00:33:43,325 --> 00:33:45,585 Keep your eyes open. Watch out for drugs. 512 00:33:45,632 --> 00:33:49,592 Inside, the officers find hippies tripping on LSD, 513 00:33:49,636 --> 00:33:51,326 watching a loop of a waterfall. 514 00:33:51,377 --> 00:33:54,077 Are you on drugs? 515 00:33:54,119 --> 00:33:55,599 Are you on drugs? 516 00:33:55,642 --> 00:33:57,642 Where's Leary? 517 00:33:57,687 --> 00:34:01,737 Leary was into disrupting the normal culture 518 00:34:01,778 --> 00:34:04,388 of America with LSD. 519 00:34:04,433 --> 00:34:06,353 Hands in the air! Get up against the wall! 520 00:34:06,392 --> 00:34:07,442 Hands in the air! 521 00:34:07,480 --> 00:34:08,960 That scared the hell 522 00:34:09,003 --> 00:34:13,753 out of this old, blue-blooded, WASP aristocracy 523 00:34:13,790 --> 00:34:16,100 that lived in a place like Millbrook, New York. 524 00:34:16,141 --> 00:34:19,971 Liddy's men find a stash of LSD 525 00:34:20,014 --> 00:34:21,974 and some marijuana. 526 00:34:23,931 --> 00:34:28,111 But Liddy can only arrest Leary for marijuana possession 527 00:34:28,153 --> 00:34:31,073 because LSD is still legal. 528 00:34:34,985 --> 00:34:38,465 The marijuana charges against Timothy Leary are dropped 529 00:34:38,511 --> 00:34:40,771 when it's revealed G. Gordon Liddy 530 00:34:40,817 --> 00:34:43,517 failed to read him his rights. 531 00:34:43,559 --> 00:34:45,169 But Liddy doesn't give up. 532 00:34:45,213 --> 00:34:48,783 He continues a relentless campaign against Leary, 533 00:34:48,825 --> 00:34:52,085 tracking his moves over the course of the next year. 534 00:34:54,353 --> 00:34:57,103 Worn down by Liddy's crusade, 535 00:34:57,138 --> 00:35:00,838 in 1967, Leary leaves Millbrook and the East Coast 536 00:35:00,881 --> 00:35:04,151 and heads west, where the LSD-fueled counterculture 537 00:35:04,189 --> 00:35:05,579 is in full swing. 538 00:35:07,801 --> 00:35:10,151 Despite the fact it was the CIA 539 00:35:10,195 --> 00:35:13,195 that first introduced LSD to America, 540 00:35:13,241 --> 00:35:15,291 the drug is now in the hands of a group 541 00:35:15,330 --> 00:35:18,680 that's increasingly seen as a threat. 542 00:35:18,725 --> 00:35:23,025 Young people, they were fighting for racial justice and equality. 543 00:35:23,077 --> 00:35:26,387 They were fighting against the Vietnam War. 544 00:35:26,428 --> 00:35:29,908 They were seriously opposing the government, 545 00:35:29,953 --> 00:35:33,173 and drugs were at the forefront. 546 00:35:33,218 --> 00:35:37,608 There was this propaganda that the hippies, Timothy Leary, 547 00:35:37,657 --> 00:35:41,397 and LSD were all part of a communist conspiracy. 548 00:35:52,976 --> 00:35:56,756 LSD begins to be distributed by an underground organization 549 00:35:56,806 --> 00:35:59,456 called the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. 550 00:35:59,505 --> 00:36:01,505 The Brotherhood of Eternal Love 551 00:36:01,550 --> 00:36:06,340 was actually an organization of hippie Mafia drug dealers 552 00:36:06,381 --> 00:36:10,431 dealing specifically in black Afghani hash 553 00:36:10,472 --> 00:36:12,302 and then, later, LSD. 554 00:36:12,344 --> 00:36:16,094 To keep the sale of LSD flowing, 555 00:36:16,130 --> 00:36:18,610 the Brotherhood will need a brand ambassador 556 00:36:18,654 --> 00:36:22,014 who encompasses everything the organization stands for. 557 00:36:22,049 --> 00:36:25,789 Turn on, tune in, drop out. 558 00:36:29,404 --> 00:36:31,674 Timothy Leary's attention-grabbing antics 559 00:36:31,711 --> 00:36:34,371 make him the perfect public face for the movement. 560 00:36:36,411 --> 00:36:39,591 It was really kind of a political-social movement. 561 00:36:39,632 --> 00:36:42,682 But in order to keep that movement going, you need money. 562 00:36:42,722 --> 00:36:45,732 Fortunately for the Brotherhood, 563 00:36:45,768 --> 00:36:49,208 Leary has brought with him a rich and connected friend... 564 00:36:49,250 --> 00:36:51,770 William Mellon Hitchcock -- 565 00:36:51,818 --> 00:36:54,388 playboy millionaire, 566 00:36:54,429 --> 00:36:57,389 owner of the Millbrook estate where Leary was arrested. 567 00:36:57,432 --> 00:37:00,132 Billy Hitchcock was the scion 568 00:37:00,174 --> 00:37:03,224 of one of the most famous old WASP families. 569 00:37:03,264 --> 00:37:05,794 His father was the model for Tom Buchanan 570 00:37:05,832 --> 00:37:08,232 in Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." 571 00:37:08,269 --> 00:37:11,099 So, for the son, Billy Hitchcock, 572 00:37:11,141 --> 00:37:14,281 to now team up with Timothy Leary was a big scandal. 573 00:37:16,234 --> 00:37:18,414 Hitchcock begins to help bankroll 574 00:37:18,453 --> 00:37:22,203 the Brotherhood's mass production of acid. 575 00:37:22,240 --> 00:37:23,850 It was never about the money, 576 00:37:23,893 --> 00:37:25,423 but it was always about the money. 577 00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:29,250 As an entire generation 578 00:37:29,290 --> 00:37:31,860 looks for ways to expand their consciousness, 579 00:37:31,901 --> 00:37:35,471 the Brotherhood of Eternal Love moves in to fill the void. 580 00:37:35,514 --> 00:37:37,434 LSD has escaped from the lab. 581 00:37:37,472 --> 00:37:39,172 You've got Leary espousing 582 00:37:39,213 --> 00:37:41,913 "turn on, tune in, and drop out." 583 00:37:41,955 --> 00:37:44,565 Huge cultural changes were taking place in the country. 584 00:37:44,610 --> 00:37:46,870 You're listening to a rock-'n'-roll radio station, 585 00:37:46,916 --> 00:37:47,866 you bet. 586 00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:05,760 The Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, 587 00:38:05,805 --> 00:38:09,195 a haven amidst the chaos of San Francisco's streets. 588 00:38:13,726 --> 00:38:16,556 This man has just taken acid for the first time 589 00:38:16,598 --> 00:38:18,508 and he's having a bad trip. 590 00:38:20,167 --> 00:38:23,077 The doctor treating him keeps detailed notes, 591 00:38:23,126 --> 00:38:25,346 but who he's working for is a secret 592 00:38:25,390 --> 00:38:28,390 no one in San Francisco knows. 593 00:38:28,436 --> 00:38:32,436 Colonel James Ketchum, a psychiatrist in the Pentagon's 594 00:38:32,484 --> 00:38:36,494 top-secret psycho-chemical warfare program. 595 00:38:36,531 --> 00:38:38,361 He's obsessed with finding the key 596 00:38:38,403 --> 00:38:41,323 to manipulating the mind of the enemy. 597 00:38:41,362 --> 00:38:43,892 And like the CIA's MKUltra program, 598 00:38:43,930 --> 00:38:45,890 he's willing to do whatever it takes 599 00:38:45,932 --> 00:38:48,062 to find the answers he's looking for. 600 00:38:55,768 --> 00:38:57,858 Here, at the Edgewood Arsenal, 601 00:38:57,900 --> 00:39:00,990 Ketchum first puts his LSD research to the test. 602 00:39:03,471 --> 00:39:06,781 After ingesting LSD, volunteers are instructed 603 00:39:06,822 --> 00:39:09,132 to perform basic military tasks. 604 00:39:09,172 --> 00:39:11,222 The confused volunteer needed help 605 00:39:11,261 --> 00:39:14,531 as he attempted to traverse part of an obstacle course. 606 00:39:14,569 --> 00:39:17,049 Influenced by an obvious lack of purpose, 607 00:39:17,093 --> 00:39:19,143 the drugged volunteer made no effort 608 00:39:19,182 --> 00:39:21,712 to traverse the trail of tires 609 00:39:21,750 --> 00:39:23,540 and, in obvious confusion, 610 00:39:23,578 --> 00:39:25,748 wandered aimlessly through the woods. 611 00:39:27,626 --> 00:39:31,106 Other trials move into more dangerous territory... 612 00:39:34,241 --> 00:39:37,291 ...pushing the soldiers to the limits of sanity. 613 00:39:44,294 --> 00:39:46,254 How do you feel right now? 614 00:39:46,296 --> 00:39:48,726 I just can't figure it out. 615 00:39:48,777 --> 00:39:50,037 It's hard to figure out. 616 00:39:50,083 --> 00:39:51,653 It's hard to figure out. 617 00:39:51,693 --> 00:39:54,043 I don't see it. I don't believe it. I feel it. 618 00:39:54,087 --> 00:39:56,127 Reefer, reefer, reefer! 619 00:39:59,048 --> 00:40:01,488 Many of these soldiers have been offered a powerful incentive 620 00:40:01,529 --> 00:40:05,099 to take part in the program -- 621 00:40:05,141 --> 00:40:08,281 time away from combat duty in Vietnam. 622 00:40:19,547 --> 00:40:21,717 Just over the border, in Laos, 623 00:40:21,767 --> 00:40:24,287 the CIA's Air America airline 624 00:40:24,334 --> 00:40:28,474 is increasingly becoming part of the international drug trade. 625 00:40:28,513 --> 00:40:31,863 When those planes were returning to American bases, 626 00:40:31,907 --> 00:40:35,957 they were often used to bring back 627 00:40:35,998 --> 00:40:37,648 some of the bounty of Laos. 628 00:40:37,696 --> 00:40:40,476 And that bounty was heroin. 629 00:41:05,375 --> 00:41:08,805 O0 C1Narrator: In the remote highlands of Laos... 630 00:41:08,857 --> 00:41:11,467 Communist forces are increasingly threatening 631 00:41:11,512 --> 00:41:16,132 to overtake the territory controlled by CIA ally Vang Pao. 632 00:41:17,910 --> 00:41:22,040 The situation in Laos really called for extraordinary means 633 00:41:22,088 --> 00:41:23,998 conducted by extraordinary men. 634 00:41:25,657 --> 00:41:29,047 The CIA has sent in a veteran spy 635 00:41:29,095 --> 00:41:32,445 to run the Laos operation -- 636 00:41:32,490 --> 00:41:37,100 Ted Shackley, known as The Blond Ghost, 637 00:41:37,146 --> 00:41:41,316 former head of the CIA's top secret Miami station, 638 00:41:41,368 --> 00:41:44,888 where the CIA ran failed missions to kill Fidel Castro, 639 00:41:44,937 --> 00:41:46,717 which included poisoned milkshakes 640 00:41:46,765 --> 00:41:48,765 and exploding cigars. 641 00:41:48,810 --> 00:41:53,340 Now he's here fighting another secret war. 642 00:41:53,380 --> 00:41:56,560 The CIA itself was under a tremendous amount of pressure 643 00:41:56,601 --> 00:42:00,001 to accomplish this mission to fight Communism. 644 00:42:06,611 --> 00:42:09,181 To help finance his war, Vang Pao 645 00:42:09,222 --> 00:42:12,622 has been using Air America to traffic heroin. 646 00:42:12,660 --> 00:42:16,010 But with the war raging, Shackley and the CIA 647 00:42:16,055 --> 00:42:18,925 don't just turn a blind eye to the drug trafficking. 648 00:42:21,756 --> 00:42:25,716 The U.S. provides Vang Pao two transport planes. 649 00:42:27,588 --> 00:42:31,368 Now he's able to fly his opium directly to his refineries... 650 00:42:33,594 --> 00:42:36,384 ...one right on the American air base. 651 00:42:38,425 --> 00:42:42,035 The CIA at the same time it was fighting, in its mind, 652 00:42:42,081 --> 00:42:45,431 a very successful anti-communist war, 653 00:42:45,475 --> 00:42:50,215 was also standing up an army of drug smugglers. 654 00:42:50,263 --> 00:42:53,403 Vang Pao is fast on his way 655 00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:57,230 to becoming the biggest heroin trafficker in the world, 656 00:42:57,270 --> 00:42:59,270 and he's got a growing customer base 657 00:42:59,315 --> 00:43:01,615 just over the border in Vietnam. 658 00:43:01,666 --> 00:43:04,706 One side effect of this covert war in Laos 659 00:43:04,756 --> 00:43:07,626 is that there's a lot of heroin in the theater of war, 660 00:43:07,672 --> 00:43:10,112 and many American troops get addicted. 661 00:43:21,686 --> 00:43:25,116 One of my fellow soldiers 662 00:43:25,167 --> 00:43:27,997 was found dead after a firefight. 663 00:43:36,657 --> 00:43:38,267 We thought he had been shot, 664 00:43:38,311 --> 00:43:40,531 and actually he had the needle stuck in his arm. 665 00:43:44,056 --> 00:43:47,446 Heroin, a highly addictive opioid 666 00:43:47,494 --> 00:43:51,024 extracted from the poppy plant and synthesized for morphine. 667 00:43:51,063 --> 00:43:53,283 Once ingested, morphine molecules 668 00:43:53,326 --> 00:43:55,676 rush opioid receptors in the brain stem 669 00:43:55,720 --> 00:43:58,680 that controls the body's survival functions. 670 00:43:58,723 --> 00:44:01,203 It can lead to intoxicating highs 671 00:44:01,247 --> 00:44:05,467 or shut down the respiratory system and lead to death. 672 00:44:09,516 --> 00:44:13,216 The rule was you don't get high while on patrol. 673 00:44:13,259 --> 00:44:15,609 But you can't control depression. 674 00:44:15,653 --> 00:44:19,573 We were wet during the monsoon season 24/7. 675 00:44:21,528 --> 00:44:24,528 The miserable life we lived -- we were homesick. 676 00:44:26,141 --> 00:44:29,191 As the war progresses, 677 00:44:29,231 --> 00:44:33,151 two G.I.s are overdosing every day. 678 00:44:50,122 --> 00:44:52,432 A nightclub in Saigon, 679 00:44:52,472 --> 00:44:56,042 a refuge from the horrors of combat. 680 00:45:00,959 --> 00:45:02,919 Sitting at the back of the club 681 00:45:02,961 --> 00:45:05,491 is a man well-known to the CIA -- 682 00:45:05,528 --> 00:45:09,748 mobster Santo Trafficante Jr. 683 00:45:09,794 --> 00:45:14,064 Trafficante had assured protection back in 1960. 684 00:45:14,102 --> 00:45:16,712 He was involved in these plots to kill Castro. 685 00:45:16,757 --> 00:45:18,847 Once you've worked for the CIA, 686 00:45:18,890 --> 00:45:21,980 you're what they called, in that business, a million-dollar man. 687 00:45:22,023 --> 00:45:25,983 Trafficante is meeting with a Corsican gangster, 688 00:45:26,027 --> 00:45:29,377 a middleman for another CIA-connected drug trafficker -- 689 00:45:29,422 --> 00:45:32,082 Vang Pao. 690 00:45:32,120 --> 00:45:34,040 They are discussing a deal 691 00:45:34,079 --> 00:45:38,299 that will bring tons of heroin into the United States. 692 00:45:38,344 --> 00:45:42,134 With the booming heroin trade, 693 00:45:42,174 --> 00:45:46,224 which was because of the influx of American troops, 694 00:45:46,265 --> 00:45:48,525 Trafficante had to go out there 695 00:45:48,571 --> 00:45:51,711 and make sure that his family got its fair share. 696 00:45:53,402 --> 00:45:57,062 The deal allows Trafficante to ramp up his operation. 697 00:45:57,102 --> 00:46:00,372 Soon his couriers are trafficking Vang Pao's heroin 698 00:46:00,409 --> 00:46:03,979 from refineries in Hong Kong via South America 699 00:46:04,022 --> 00:46:07,722 and the Caribbean onto the United States. 700 00:46:07,765 --> 00:46:11,545 In one shipment alone, they smuggle in as much as 20% 701 00:46:11,594 --> 00:46:14,384 of all the heroin consumed that year. 702 00:46:14,423 --> 00:46:17,733 The history of the CIA is really the history 703 00:46:17,775 --> 00:46:21,255 of unintended consequences and blowback. 704 00:46:21,300 --> 00:46:25,130 With CIA secret wars being fought in places like Laos, 705 00:46:25,173 --> 00:46:29,873 they became instrumental in flooding America with drugs. 706 00:46:40,580 --> 00:46:43,450 By 1970, New York City alone 707 00:46:43,496 --> 00:46:46,456 will have over 200,000 heroin addicts. 708 00:46:46,499 --> 00:46:48,369 A lot of people came back, 709 00:46:48,414 --> 00:46:50,984 who had served in Vietnam, addicted to drugs. 710 00:46:51,025 --> 00:46:54,805 Doesn't help that the economy is also declining, 711 00:46:54,855 --> 00:46:57,415 depressing situation for a young person 712 00:46:57,466 --> 00:47:00,026 who's just spent a year, maybe two years, 713 00:47:00,078 --> 00:47:01,818 in a terrible and confusing war. 714 00:47:05,126 --> 00:47:07,256 With the demand for heroin rising, 715 00:47:07,302 --> 00:47:11,392 a new breed of homegrown dealers emerges. 716 00:47:13,308 --> 00:47:15,268 One of these dealers has just arrived 717 00:47:15,310 --> 00:47:17,700 to check on his operation. 718 00:47:19,837 --> 00:47:21,877 These women are part of a production line 719 00:47:21,926 --> 00:47:24,746 that runs 24 hours a day 720 00:47:24,798 --> 00:47:26,498 They're made to work in the nude 721 00:47:26,539 --> 00:47:28,369 so that can't steal the product. 722 00:47:32,153 --> 00:47:35,903 Pure, uncut heroin that's sold by this man. 723 00:47:35,940 --> 00:47:38,160 I say we're gonna make some money today or what? 724 00:47:38,203 --> 00:47:40,553 Frank Matthews. 725 00:47:40,596 --> 00:47:45,296 Born in rural North Carolina, his first arrest comes at 14 726 00:47:45,340 --> 00:47:48,600 when he's busted for leading a gang of chicken thieves. 727 00:47:48,648 --> 00:47:50,608 He moves to Brooklyn, 728 00:47:50,650 --> 00:47:53,740 where he opens a barber shop as a front for selling heroin. 729 00:47:53,783 --> 00:47:55,443 The heroin business 730 00:47:55,481 --> 00:47:58,051 has always been controlled by organized crime 731 00:47:58,092 --> 00:48:00,362 and then along comes a guy named Frank Matthews. 732 00:48:10,235 --> 00:48:12,585 Haven't got all day. 733 00:48:12,628 --> 00:48:15,628 At any given time, 734 00:48:15,675 --> 00:48:19,715 hundreds of pounds of heroin are being diluted and packaged. 735 00:48:19,766 --> 00:48:21,676 He actually had two places in Brooklyn -- 736 00:48:21,724 --> 00:48:24,644 the Ponderosa and the OK Corral. 737 00:48:24,684 --> 00:48:27,864 The thing that fascinates me is how could you operate 738 00:48:27,905 --> 00:48:31,035 two drug mills like this, busing in 40 women every day, 739 00:48:31,082 --> 00:48:33,172 and not anybody getting suspicious. 740 00:48:33,214 --> 00:48:36,704 With a nearly unlimited supply of heroin 741 00:48:36,739 --> 00:48:39,179 coming in from Southeast Asia, 742 00:48:39,220 --> 00:48:42,480 Matthews begins building an empire that stretches the length 743 00:48:42,528 --> 00:48:45,618 of the Eastern Seaboard, west to St. Louis. 744 00:48:45,661 --> 00:48:49,141 They call him Black Caesar. 745 00:48:49,187 --> 00:48:50,967 That's what I'm talking about. 746 00:48:51,015 --> 00:48:52,575 Frank Matthews became one of 747 00:48:52,625 --> 00:48:54,495 the biggest heroin distributors in the world. 748 00:48:57,064 --> 00:48:58,854 But with the thousands of addicts 749 00:48:58,892 --> 00:49:02,072 that come with every new deal... 750 00:49:02,113 --> 00:49:04,993 Matthews will find himself in the cross hairs 751 00:49:05,029 --> 00:49:08,339 of a very powerful enemy -- 752 00:49:08,380 --> 00:49:12,730 the newly elected president, Richard Milhous Nixon. 753 00:49:12,775 --> 00:49:14,595 When Nixon came into the White House, 754 00:49:14,647 --> 00:49:16,997 it was essentially to clean up 755 00:49:17,041 --> 00:49:20,001 this chaos and anarchy in the streets 756 00:49:20,044 --> 00:49:22,004 and to impose law and order. 757 00:49:22,046 --> 00:49:23,866 There was this legitimate fear 758 00:49:23,917 --> 00:49:26,877 that heroin was going to take over 759 00:49:26,920 --> 00:49:28,270 and destroy the United States. 760 00:49:37,061 --> 00:49:40,061 The grand opening of an exclusive resort -- 761 00:49:40,107 --> 00:49:42,937 Paradise Island in the Bahamas. 762 00:49:42,980 --> 00:49:45,160 The crowd celebrating New Year's Eve 763 00:49:45,199 --> 00:49:48,029 is a star-studded collection of Hollywood actors, 764 00:49:48,072 --> 00:49:51,512 politicians, and wealthy investors. 765 00:49:51,553 --> 00:49:53,903 People look back on the '60s and they go, "Oh, it was great." 766 00:49:53,947 --> 00:49:55,907 The music was great, rock 'n' roll, 767 00:49:55,949 --> 00:49:57,729 but then it started to change. 768 00:49:57,777 --> 00:49:59,427 '68 was like a turning point. 769 00:49:59,474 --> 00:50:01,784 Martin Luther King was assassinated. 770 00:50:01,824 --> 00:50:03,914 Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. 771 00:50:03,957 --> 00:50:07,217 It was the end of the hippie era of the '60s 772 00:50:07,265 --> 00:50:09,915 where it was all about peace, love, and brotherhood. 773 00:50:09,963 --> 00:50:12,183 Things were starting to turn dark. 774 00:50:16,143 --> 00:50:18,933 It's been a good year for at least one of the partygoers, 775 00:50:18,972 --> 00:50:22,502 the President-elect Richard Nixon. 776 00:50:22,541 --> 00:50:26,681 Richard Milhous Nixon is no stranger to the White House. 777 00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:30,159 He served two terms as vice president under Eisenhower, 778 00:50:30,201 --> 00:50:32,161 where he signed off on the secret plan 779 00:50:32,203 --> 00:50:34,293 to assassinate Fidel Castro. 780 00:50:34,335 --> 00:50:38,035 He narrowly lost to Kennedy in 1960. 781 00:50:38,078 --> 00:50:40,078 By the time he runs for president again, 782 00:50:40,124 --> 00:50:42,344 crime rates are skyrocketing, 783 00:50:42,387 --> 00:50:46,257 and he appeals to what he calls "the silent majority." 784 00:50:46,304 --> 00:50:50,004 These besieged middle-class suburbanites 785 00:50:50,047 --> 00:50:54,357 who fear what, at that time, seems to be a society 786 00:50:54,399 --> 00:50:57,009 going through really profound and negative changes. 787 00:51:00,144 --> 00:51:03,634 At Paradise Island, it all seems a world away. 788 00:51:03,669 --> 00:51:07,459 But Nixon has no idea he's celebrating alongside 789 00:51:07,499 --> 00:51:09,679 one of his counterculture enemies. 790 00:51:09,718 --> 00:51:13,458 William Hitchcock is the millionaire playboy 791 00:51:13,505 --> 00:51:14,975 and sometimes-financier 792 00:51:15,028 --> 00:51:17,988 of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love. 793 00:51:18,031 --> 00:51:20,031 He's also invested the equivalent 794 00:51:20,077 --> 00:51:25,257 of 35 million in today's dollars in Paradise Island. 795 00:51:25,299 --> 00:51:28,089 But Hitchcock is not the only one at this party 796 00:51:28,128 --> 00:51:30,698 moving large sums of cash to the Bahamas. 797 00:51:30,739 --> 00:51:33,179 You could take as much money as you wanted in cash 798 00:51:33,220 --> 00:51:34,610 and deposit it in banks down there 799 00:51:34,656 --> 00:51:36,266 in the Bahamas and launder it. 800 00:51:36,310 --> 00:51:38,050 Next thing you know, wired back into 801 00:51:38,095 --> 00:51:39,435 a bank account in the United States 802 00:51:39,487 --> 00:51:41,317 and nobody would ever know that it came 803 00:51:41,359 --> 00:51:43,449 as a result of illegal activity. 804 00:51:43,491 --> 00:51:47,971 The Bahamas is full of banks that launder dirty money, 805 00:51:48,017 --> 00:51:52,807 but none will become as infamous as the Castle Bank & Trust. 806 00:51:52,848 --> 00:51:56,238 Founded by a former CIA spy, 807 00:51:56,287 --> 00:51:59,287 its clients include celebrities like John Fogerty, 808 00:51:59,333 --> 00:52:03,513 Tony Curtis, and Hugh Hefner. 809 00:52:03,555 --> 00:52:06,685 But Castle serves another purpose. 810 00:52:09,038 --> 00:52:11,778 Money that was coming from the drug business 811 00:52:11,824 --> 00:52:13,704 was deposited in these banks 812 00:52:13,739 --> 00:52:18,349 and then used to finance covert CIA operations. 813 00:52:20,224 --> 00:52:23,444 Drug trafficking is really all about laundering money, 814 00:52:23,488 --> 00:52:28,278 and it turns out that so is being a CIA officer. 815 00:52:28,319 --> 00:52:31,539 Because everything the CIA does has to be secret, 816 00:52:31,583 --> 00:52:34,803 and in order to be secret, you have to launder your money. 817 00:52:34,847 --> 00:52:38,937 Even the president-elect banks at Castle. 818 00:52:42,333 --> 00:52:46,823 While Hitchcock is celebrating in the Bahamas, 819 00:52:46,859 --> 00:52:49,689 back in California, another of his investments 820 00:52:49,731 --> 00:52:51,521 is working around the clock. 821 00:52:58,218 --> 00:53:01,478 In this makeshift lab, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love 822 00:53:01,526 --> 00:53:04,216 is producing a potent new brand of LSD 823 00:53:04,268 --> 00:53:07,748 that they hope will stamp out all competition. 824 00:53:07,793 --> 00:53:11,453 It will become the most famous acid ever produced. 825 00:53:11,492 --> 00:53:14,152 They call it "Orange Sunshine." 826 00:53:14,191 --> 00:53:17,981 Orange Sunshine, after Sandoz LSD-25, 827 00:53:18,020 --> 00:53:21,500 was the purest LSD manufactured in the world. 828 00:53:24,940 --> 00:53:28,290 Steve Jobs dropped acid, The Grateful Dead. 829 00:53:28,335 --> 00:53:32,335 It infiltrated music, business. 830 00:53:32,383 --> 00:53:35,083 Orange Sunshine was all over the country. 831 00:53:39,607 --> 00:53:41,257 In the coming months, 832 00:53:41,305 --> 00:53:44,345 Hitchcock's lab will produce 10 million hits -- 833 00:53:44,395 --> 00:53:46,785 enough to dose the entire population 834 00:53:46,832 --> 00:53:49,232 of New York City and L.A. 835 00:53:53,752 --> 00:53:56,762 I figured out where we could load the water supply 836 00:53:56,798 --> 00:53:59,108 with a 55-gallon drum of acid. 837 00:54:02,282 --> 00:54:04,152 Timothy Leary stopped us. 838 00:54:04,197 --> 00:54:06,157 Timothy said, 839 00:54:06,199 --> 00:54:08,289 "Thou shalt not alter 840 00:54:08,332 --> 00:54:12,162 thy brother's consciousness without his permission." 841 00:54:12,205 --> 00:54:14,155 Wow. 842 00:54:14,207 --> 00:54:16,687 That's Timothy Leary. 843 00:54:16,731 --> 00:54:20,001 Timothy Leary wasn't promoting "Go give everybody acid." 844 00:54:20,039 --> 00:54:23,039 We were. "Everyone should take LSD." 845 00:54:23,085 --> 00:54:27,215 But soon, the luck of Orange Sunshine's 846 00:54:27,264 --> 00:54:30,054 most famous advocate will run out. 847 00:54:38,797 --> 00:54:42,277 A cop on the night shift makes a routine traffic stop. 848 00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:49,979 The driver is LSD evangelist Timothy Leary. 849 00:54:50,025 --> 00:54:52,155 The police searched the car 850 00:54:52,201 --> 00:54:55,251 and in the ashtray was a joint and a roach. 851 00:54:57,511 --> 00:55:01,301 And they busted Timothy for a minute amount of pot. 852 00:55:04,257 --> 00:55:06,737 Shortly after his arrest, 853 00:55:06,781 --> 00:55:09,701 he makes a surprise announcement. 854 00:55:09,741 --> 00:55:11,961 I'm going to run for the governorship 855 00:55:12,004 --> 00:55:13,704 of the state of California. 856 00:55:13,745 --> 00:55:16,045 I think that we need a new party, 857 00:55:16,095 --> 00:55:18,315 and by "party", I mean party. 858 00:55:20,665 --> 00:55:24,625 Leary's platform included, among other things, banning football, 859 00:55:24,669 --> 00:55:27,889 banning all money, creating a barter system 860 00:55:27,933 --> 00:55:30,983 that would kind of take over capitalism. 861 00:55:31,023 --> 00:55:34,293 The song "Come Together", which was written by John Lennon, 862 00:55:34,331 --> 00:55:37,381 was actually a campaign song for Timothy Leary. 863 00:55:37,421 --> 00:55:39,031 Let the kids get high. 864 00:55:39,074 --> 00:55:40,604 As a matter of fact, President Nixon, 865 00:55:40,641 --> 00:55:43,691 why don't we all turn on together? 866 00:55:43,731 --> 00:55:47,171 His Republican opponent -- Ronald Reagan. 867 00:55:47,213 --> 00:55:51,303 There's nothing smart, there's nothing grown-up 868 00:55:51,348 --> 00:55:54,568 or sophisticated in taking an LSD trip at all. 869 00:55:54,612 --> 00:55:56,662 They're just being complete fools. 870 00:56:06,319 --> 00:56:09,979 When anti-war protesters descended on Washington 871 00:56:10,018 --> 00:56:13,068 and protested Nixon's policies, 872 00:56:13,108 --> 00:56:16,588 Nixon probably could smell the marijuana smoke 873 00:56:16,634 --> 00:56:19,904 wafting in through the windows of the White House, 874 00:56:19,941 --> 00:56:23,511 and so Nixon associated marijuana 875 00:56:23,554 --> 00:56:25,734 with his political opponents. 876 00:56:28,080 --> 00:56:30,430 But in the Nixon administration, 877 00:56:30,474 --> 00:56:32,914 Leary's old nemesis, G. Gordon Liddy, 878 00:56:32,954 --> 00:56:34,964 has been brought in by the Treasury Department 879 00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:38,740 to hatch a plan to clamp down on drugs. 880 00:56:38,786 --> 00:56:40,396 We can then try and cover that section 881 00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:42,360 of the border, okay? 882 00:56:42,399 --> 00:56:43,569 Sounds good. 883 00:56:45,445 --> 00:56:48,705 G. Gordon Liddy was the law-and-order figure 884 00:56:48,753 --> 00:56:50,453 in the White House. 885 00:56:50,494 --> 00:56:52,804 And when Nixon was elected into the White House, 886 00:56:52,844 --> 00:56:55,024 Nixon saw and Liddy saw 887 00:56:55,063 --> 00:56:58,243 that drugs were this powerful hot-button issue. 888 00:57:03,507 --> 00:57:06,467 Liddy launches Operation Intercept -- 889 00:57:06,510 --> 00:57:10,950 shutting down the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico, 890 00:57:10,992 --> 00:57:14,172 cutting off the source of most of America's marijuana. 891 00:57:17,259 --> 00:57:18,739 For over 20 days, 892 00:57:18,783 --> 00:57:21,353 all vehicles crossing the border are searched. 893 00:57:24,528 --> 00:57:27,838 It's the largest operation of its kind in history. 894 00:57:33,493 --> 00:57:35,503 The interesting thing about the very beginning 895 00:57:35,539 --> 00:57:37,319 of the War on Drugs -- 896 00:57:37,366 --> 00:57:41,016 many of these acts were completely symbolic. 897 00:57:41,066 --> 00:57:43,326 It actually had no impact whatsoever 898 00:57:43,372 --> 00:57:45,332 on the drug trade in the U.S. 899 00:57:47,594 --> 00:57:50,604 A few marijuana smugglers may have been apprehended, 900 00:57:50,641 --> 00:57:53,121 but the most successful traffickers in America 901 00:57:53,165 --> 00:57:55,555 are not waiting in line at the Mexican border. 902 00:58:03,175 --> 00:58:06,865 A small private plane is losing altitude, fast. 903 00:58:10,748 --> 00:58:14,058 The pilot, Juan Restoy, 904 00:58:14,099 --> 00:58:18,319 a former Cuban politician who fought against Fidel Castro, 905 00:58:18,364 --> 00:58:20,284 now a key player in the nation's largest 906 00:58:20,322 --> 00:58:22,412 narcotics distribution network. 907 00:58:32,421 --> 00:58:34,861 1970, there was a plane crash in California. 908 00:58:34,902 --> 00:58:37,172 Juan Restoy was flying this plane. 909 00:58:37,209 --> 00:58:39,389 Turns out that this guy was a veteran 910 00:58:39,428 --> 00:58:42,818 of the Bay of Pigs Operation and a CIA operative. 911 00:58:56,271 --> 00:58:58,191 Restoy survives, 912 00:58:58,230 --> 00:59:01,020 but the crash catches the attention of federal agents 913 00:59:01,059 --> 00:59:03,019 working on Operation Eagle, 914 00:59:03,061 --> 00:59:06,151 a national investigation of narcotics smuggling. 915 00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:14,380 Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for being here. 916 00:59:14,420 --> 00:59:15,900 The Attorney General will have a statement, 917 00:59:15,943 --> 00:59:17,423 and I introduce to you now 918 00:59:17,466 --> 00:59:18,556 the Attorney General of the United States. 919 00:59:20,948 --> 00:59:22,908 We have called all of you this morning 920 00:59:22,950 --> 00:59:26,480 to tell you about Operation Eagle, 921 00:59:26,519 --> 00:59:29,869 which is the code name for the biggest operation 922 00:59:29,914 --> 00:59:31,574 of its kind in history. 923 00:59:31,611 --> 00:59:35,271 10:00 a.m. last night, 924 00:59:35,310 --> 00:59:38,970 special agents of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs 925 00:59:39,010 --> 00:59:43,190 made simultaneous raids in Miami, 926 00:59:43,231 --> 00:59:45,151 New York, and Chicago 927 00:59:45,190 --> 00:59:47,370 and seven other cities. 928 00:59:47,409 --> 00:59:50,589 Please. 929 00:59:50,630 --> 00:59:53,200 We are very pleased to report that the raids 930 00:59:53,241 --> 00:59:55,551 have already resulted 931 00:59:55,592 --> 00:59:59,602 in the arrests of 123 defendants. 932 01:00:04,905 --> 01:00:06,905 What Attorney General John Mitchell 933 01:00:06,951 --> 01:00:11,521 neglects to mention is as many as 70% of those arrested 934 01:00:11,564 --> 01:00:16,094 are Cubans who fought for the CIA against Fidel Castro. 935 01:00:16,134 --> 01:00:20,054 The agency's secret war against Communism has given rise 936 01:00:20,094 --> 01:00:23,624 to an entire generation of drug traffickers. 937 01:00:23,663 --> 01:00:27,283 Cuban exiles trained by the CIA for the Bay of Pigs 938 01:00:27,319 --> 01:00:31,579 had all these skills in radios, flying airplanes, boats, 939 01:00:31,628 --> 01:00:34,668 and applied these skills to smuggling drugs. 940 01:00:45,946 --> 01:00:50,646 The crackdown on drugs begins to attract unlikely allies -- 941 01:00:50,690 --> 01:00:52,260 Elvis Presley. 942 01:00:52,300 --> 01:00:55,430 The King of Rock 'n' Roll has seen better days. 943 01:00:55,477 --> 01:00:58,387 Elvis has developed a prescription drug habit 944 01:00:58,437 --> 01:01:01,527 that includes uppers, downers, and needles. 945 01:01:01,570 --> 01:01:05,050 Doctors are on call to provide an endless supply of drugs. 946 01:01:07,751 --> 01:01:12,151 At the time, Elvis Presley was essentially a stoned junkie. 947 01:01:12,190 --> 01:01:15,540 He also was obsessed with firearms. 948 01:01:15,584 --> 01:01:20,894 He actually wanted to obtain a drug agent badge from Nixon 949 01:01:20,938 --> 01:01:23,768 so he could safely travel the world 950 01:01:23,810 --> 01:01:25,900 with his drugs and -- and firearms. 951 01:01:32,079 --> 01:01:36,739 Elvis wrote this rambling letter requesting a visit with Nixon. 952 01:01:36,780 --> 01:01:38,520 Expressed all these concerns 953 01:01:38,564 --> 01:01:41,094 and the Communists in the entertainment industry, 954 01:01:41,132 --> 01:01:42,612 the un-American people, 955 01:01:42,655 --> 01:01:44,565 foreign acts like the Beatles 956 01:01:44,613 --> 01:01:46,793 that were coming over to our country 957 01:01:46,833 --> 01:01:49,923 and subverting clean-cut American youth. 958 01:01:52,709 --> 01:01:55,409 The letter works, and Nixon agrees to meet. 959 01:01:58,062 --> 01:02:00,372 Being seen with the rock-'n'-roll legend 960 01:02:00,412 --> 01:02:04,292 makes for a public relations coup for the president... 961 01:02:04,329 --> 01:02:07,939 but it's also part of a larger strategy. 962 01:02:07,985 --> 01:02:11,335 If you look at the wider framed photos, 963 01:02:11,379 --> 01:02:14,509 there's Elvis Presley, there's President Nixon, 964 01:02:14,556 --> 01:02:18,256 and there's this young man wearing glasses 965 01:02:18,299 --> 01:02:21,739 and he was this White House high-end political fixer, 966 01:02:21,781 --> 01:02:25,261 And his name was Egil "Bud" Krogh. 967 01:02:25,306 --> 01:02:27,266 Egil "Bud" Krogh. 968 01:02:27,308 --> 01:02:30,048 As Nixon's deputy of domestic affairs, 969 01:02:30,094 --> 01:02:32,314 he'll help hire G. Gordon Liddy, 970 01:02:32,357 --> 01:02:34,097 and they will spearhead policies 971 01:02:34,141 --> 01:02:37,321 that will lead to the declaration of the War on Drugs. 972 01:02:37,362 --> 01:02:40,192 That's why Bud Krogh brought in Elvis Presley. 973 01:02:40,234 --> 01:02:41,454 He was the "drug" guy. 974 01:02:44,021 --> 01:02:46,631 Elvis gets his badge, 975 01:02:46,675 --> 01:02:48,455 but there's no record of The King 976 01:02:48,503 --> 01:02:50,683 ever performing any drug busts. 977 01:02:55,336 --> 01:02:58,076 Meanwhile, at a state prison in California, 978 01:02:58,122 --> 01:03:00,392 one of Nixon's political enemies 979 01:03:00,428 --> 01:03:04,168 is beginning a sentence for a small amount of marijuana. 980 01:03:04,215 --> 01:03:07,345 Timothy Leary's run for governor has been cut short. 981 01:03:09,263 --> 01:03:11,313 But the underground hippie organization, 982 01:03:11,352 --> 01:03:13,572 the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, 983 01:03:13,615 --> 01:03:17,135 doesn't want their LSD guru to die behind bars. 984 01:03:17,184 --> 01:03:19,104 Timothy was one of us. 985 01:03:19,143 --> 01:03:21,973 So Timothy being in prison -- We weren't gonna let him down. 986 01:03:25,323 --> 01:03:27,723 Brotherhood was extremely well-financed. 987 01:03:27,760 --> 01:03:30,850 So the Brotherhood hires the Weathermen 988 01:03:30,894 --> 01:03:32,594 to break Leary out of prison. 989 01:03:32,634 --> 01:03:36,604 Launched by radical students in 1968, 990 01:03:36,638 --> 01:03:38,768 the Weather Underground has turned into 991 01:03:38,815 --> 01:03:41,245 a violent revolutionary organization, 992 01:03:41,295 --> 01:03:44,385 carrying out bombings across the United States. 993 01:03:46,518 --> 01:03:49,958 For a rumored $20,000 fee, the Weather Underground 994 01:03:50,000 --> 01:03:52,570 breaks Timothy Leary out of prison. 995 01:03:54,439 --> 01:03:57,529 After they break him out of prison, he ends up in Algeria. 996 01:03:57,572 --> 01:04:00,752 While he's in Algeria, he hooks up with Eldridge Cleaver 997 01:04:00,793 --> 01:04:03,403 and a lot of the Black Panthers who were also on the lam. 998 01:04:08,540 --> 01:04:10,410 It's an audacious move, 999 01:04:10,455 --> 01:04:13,715 but the Brotherhood doesn't lay low for the rest of 1970. 1000 01:04:13,762 --> 01:04:15,902 One of their associates will attempt 1001 01:04:15,939 --> 01:04:19,769 one of most brazen drug distribution stunts of all time. 1002 01:04:23,076 --> 01:04:26,076 Laguna Beach, California. 1003 01:04:26,123 --> 01:04:28,823 25,000 young people have gathered 1004 01:04:28,865 --> 01:04:33,165 for an outdoor rock concert to celebrate the counterculture. 1005 01:04:33,217 --> 01:04:34,957 The idea initially was just to have 1006 01:04:35,001 --> 01:04:36,961 a Woodstock-type rock concert, 1007 01:04:37,003 --> 01:04:39,443 but some of the local artists decided that it would be better 1008 01:04:39,484 --> 01:04:41,144 to give it kind of a spiritual connotation 1009 01:04:41,181 --> 01:04:44,921 to try to avoid any unnecessary law-enforcement scrutiny, 1010 01:04:44,968 --> 01:04:47,578 but it became completely out of control. 1011 01:04:50,016 --> 01:04:52,626 One of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love's associates 1012 01:04:52,671 --> 01:04:54,411 has hired a private plane, 1013 01:04:54,455 --> 01:04:56,365 and it's flying towards the festival. 1014 01:05:01,593 --> 01:05:05,163 The plane flew over the Christmas Happening 1015 01:05:05,205 --> 01:05:08,335 and dropped thousands of Christmas cards, 1016 01:05:08,382 --> 01:05:10,862 and in the middle was a tab of Orange Sunshine. 1017 01:05:14,345 --> 01:05:16,085 It's just a legendary moment 1018 01:05:16,129 --> 01:05:18,039 in the countercultural history of the United States. 1019 01:05:18,088 --> 01:05:21,608 An actual acid drop from the sky 1020 01:05:21,656 --> 01:05:23,826 on a huge crowd of young Americans. 1021 01:05:45,463 --> 01:05:48,383 Over the past decade... 1022 01:05:48,422 --> 01:05:52,512 secret government drug tests and covert CIA operations... 1023 01:05:55,473 --> 01:05:58,823 ...have unleashed a wave of drugs into the United States. 1024 01:05:58,867 --> 01:06:01,217 It's fueled the counterculture 1025 01:06:01,261 --> 01:06:04,261 and, increasingly, anarchy in the streets. 1026 01:06:04,308 --> 01:06:06,348 The economy's starting to falter. 1027 01:06:06,397 --> 01:06:09,917 There's riots in the major cities of the United States, 1028 01:06:09,966 --> 01:06:14,096 so all these things are coming to a boiling point. 1029 01:06:14,144 --> 01:06:16,194 The Nixon administration is looking at this and going, 1030 01:06:16,233 --> 01:06:17,893 "My God. What are we gonna do? 1031 01:06:17,930 --> 01:06:21,330 We can put the controls back on our society 1032 01:06:21,368 --> 01:06:22,978 that seems to be out of control. 1033 01:06:23,022 --> 01:06:25,022 We're gonna declare a war on drugs." 1034 01:06:47,177 --> 01:06:50,047 June 17, 1971. 1035 01:06:50,093 --> 01:06:52,533 President Richard Nixon is about to make 1036 01:06:52,573 --> 01:06:54,363 one of the most important speeches 1037 01:06:54,401 --> 01:06:56,621 in presidential history. 1038 01:07:01,365 --> 01:07:03,055 Do you want to join me here? 1039 01:07:03,106 --> 01:07:04,366 Won't you be seated, please, ladies and gentlemen? 1040 01:07:04,411 --> 01:07:07,681 Come on, Dr. Jaffe. 1041 01:07:07,719 --> 01:07:09,069 Fine. All right. 1042 01:07:10,678 --> 01:07:12,458 Standing next to the president, 1043 01:07:12,506 --> 01:07:15,766 31-year-old drug policy guru Bud Krogh. 1044 01:07:15,814 --> 01:07:18,214 Standing to his left, his boss, 1045 01:07:18,251 --> 01:07:21,691 Nixon's chief counsel John Ehrlichman. 1046 01:07:23,735 --> 01:07:26,125 Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to summarize for you 1047 01:07:26,172 --> 01:07:29,612 the meeting that I have just had with the bipartisan leaders 1048 01:07:29,654 --> 01:07:33,794 which began at 8:00 and was completed two hours later. 1049 01:07:33,832 --> 01:07:37,922 America's public-enemy number one in the United States 1050 01:07:37,966 --> 01:07:40,446 is drug abuse. 1051 01:07:40,491 --> 01:07:43,021 In order to fight and defeat this enemy, 1052 01:07:43,059 --> 01:07:47,589 it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive. 1053 01:07:47,628 --> 01:07:50,108 This will be a worldwide offensive. 1054 01:07:50,153 --> 01:07:53,423 Fundamentally, it is essential for the American people 1055 01:07:53,460 --> 01:07:55,640 to be alerted of this danger, 1056 01:07:55,680 --> 01:07:58,810 to recognize that it is a danger that will not pass 1057 01:07:58,857 --> 01:08:01,287 with the passing of the war in Vietnam, 1058 01:08:01,338 --> 01:08:03,778 which has brought to our attention the fact 1059 01:08:03,818 --> 01:08:06,038 that a number of young Americans 1060 01:08:06,082 --> 01:08:08,432 have become addicts as they serve abroad. 1061 01:08:08,475 --> 01:08:11,735 This offensive deals with the problem there, 1062 01:08:11,783 --> 01:08:13,223 but will then go on to deal 1063 01:08:13,263 --> 01:08:16,743 with the problem throughout America. 1064 01:08:16,788 --> 01:08:20,138 President Nixon never actually uses the word, 1065 01:08:20,183 --> 01:08:22,753 but for everyone listening, it's clear -- 1066 01:08:22,794 --> 01:08:27,844 Richard Nixon is declaring a war on drugs. 1067 01:08:27,886 --> 01:08:31,146 The briefing team will now be ready to answer any questions 1068 01:08:31,194 --> 01:08:33,114 on the technical details of the program. 1069 01:08:36,373 --> 01:08:40,383 Nixon proclaiming this War on Drugs is this epic moment -- 1070 01:08:40,420 --> 01:08:44,030 Nixon standing up as the law-and-order president. 1071 01:08:44,076 --> 01:08:46,946 We'll proceed in about five minutes. 1072 01:08:46,992 --> 01:08:49,392 Nixon has launched one of the most expensive 1073 01:08:49,429 --> 01:08:53,869 and politically complicated initiatives ever attempted. 1074 01:08:53,912 --> 01:08:58,442 But behind the scenes, there's another agenda at work. 1075 01:08:58,482 --> 01:09:01,702 In the eyes of the inner circle of the Nixon administration, 1076 01:09:01,746 --> 01:09:04,176 the War on Drugs brought together 1077 01:09:04,227 --> 01:09:06,227 the peace movement, the hippies, 1078 01:09:06,272 --> 01:09:09,062 the counterculture, African-Americans. 1079 01:09:09,101 --> 01:09:12,501 All of this stuff can be captured and addressed 1080 01:09:12,539 --> 01:09:15,759 by force with law enforcement 1081 01:09:15,803 --> 01:09:18,283 under the rubric of the War on Drugs. 1082 01:09:18,328 --> 01:09:22,808 And the trick is to create a system that deals with this 1083 01:09:22,854 --> 01:09:24,294 without appearing to. 1084 01:09:26,771 --> 01:09:30,951 This announcement this morning is the culmination of a project 1085 01:09:30,992 --> 01:09:33,652 that began about a year ago. 1086 01:09:33,691 --> 01:09:37,301 It will be decades before one of Nixon's top advisers 1087 01:09:37,347 --> 01:09:39,827 will allegedly admit to a magazine writer 1088 01:09:39,871 --> 01:09:43,571 this deception behind the origin of the War on Drugs. 1089 01:10:17,430 --> 01:10:19,430 We got a problem with the blacks, 1090 01:10:19,476 --> 01:10:20,826 we got a problem with the hippies. 1091 01:10:20,868 --> 01:10:22,258 What are we gonna do? 1092 01:10:22,305 --> 01:10:24,305 We're gonna declare a war on drugs. 1093 01:10:24,350 --> 01:10:26,310 And we criminalize these elements 1094 01:10:26,352 --> 01:10:29,442 and we broadcast it all over the nightly news. 1095 01:10:29,486 --> 01:10:33,096 We can put the controls back on our society 1096 01:10:33,141 --> 01:10:34,581 that seems to be out of control. 1097 01:10:39,104 --> 01:10:41,244 Right. Right. Okay. 1098 01:10:41,280 --> 01:10:43,240 Fine. 1099 01:10:43,282 --> 01:10:46,112 Nixon soon finds himself increasingly frustrated 1100 01:10:46,154 --> 01:10:48,424 by the War on Drug's lack of progress 1101 01:10:48,461 --> 01:10:50,721 and grills his inner circle for answers. 1102 01:11:19,840 --> 01:11:21,630 Inner cities are increasingly 1103 01:11:21,668 --> 01:11:24,448 in the grip of a heroin epidemic. 1104 01:11:24,497 --> 01:11:27,147 Drug-related deaths are up to 1,000 a year 1105 01:11:27,195 --> 01:11:29,845 in New York City alone. 1106 01:11:29,894 --> 01:11:32,464 Junkies steal to finance their addictions, 1107 01:11:32,505 --> 01:11:35,465 and police corruption is rampant. 1108 01:11:35,508 --> 01:11:38,558 NYPD narcotics detective Frank Serpico 1109 01:11:38,598 --> 01:11:40,028 tells a mayor's commission 1110 01:11:40,078 --> 01:11:42,208 that cops are paying off their superiors 1111 01:11:42,254 --> 01:11:44,744 for a transfer to the narcotics division. 1112 01:11:48,869 --> 01:11:52,089 I saw what was going on. 1113 01:11:52,133 --> 01:11:55,573 Being transferred to the Gold Coast, as it was called, 1114 01:11:55,615 --> 01:11:58,265 where there was big money -- of course. 1115 01:11:58,314 --> 01:12:00,844 Narcotics was where the money was. 1116 01:12:02,709 --> 01:12:06,189 Cops would notify drug dealers 1117 01:12:06,234 --> 01:12:10,724 whenever some other cops were going to raid their place. 1118 01:12:13,720 --> 01:12:16,420 There was no limit. There was no morality. 1119 01:12:18,290 --> 01:12:21,550 Cops are also putting drugs on the street. 1120 01:12:21,598 --> 01:12:23,898 And in one of the strangest coincidences 1121 01:12:23,948 --> 01:12:27,168 in the War on Drugs, fact will collide with fiction. 1122 01:12:27,212 --> 01:12:29,392 A movie called "The French Connection" 1123 01:12:29,432 --> 01:12:31,392 is a favorite for an Academy Award. 1124 01:12:31,434 --> 01:12:35,444 It tells the story of a NYPD 1962 bust 1125 01:12:35,481 --> 01:12:38,221 of the famous French Connection heroin smuggling network 1126 01:12:38,266 --> 01:12:42,046 run by gangsters like Santo Trafficante. 1127 01:12:42,096 --> 01:12:45,056 So this great movie comes out, "The French Connection." 1128 01:12:48,189 --> 01:12:51,449 Gene Hackman plays the narcotics cop 1129 01:12:51,497 --> 01:12:54,807 who made the big French Connection bust. 1130 01:12:57,721 --> 01:13:01,551 For 10 years, the confiscated heroin is thought to be held 1131 01:13:01,594 --> 01:13:04,424 in a secure Manhattan police lockup. 1132 01:13:04,467 --> 01:13:07,727 So they had all this heroin that they busted, 1133 01:13:07,774 --> 01:13:12,344 and it was in the property vault in NYPD custody. 1134 01:13:12,388 --> 01:13:14,478 Open them up. 1135 01:13:14,520 --> 01:13:17,390 But when they ultimately went down there to get it... 1136 01:13:23,573 --> 01:13:25,013 ...they found it was gone. 1137 01:13:25,052 --> 01:13:27,142 Large amounts of heroin 1138 01:13:27,185 --> 01:13:29,225 from the famous French Connection bust 1139 01:13:29,274 --> 01:13:31,494 have been stolen from the police evidence room 1140 01:13:31,537 --> 01:13:34,447 and replaced with flour. 1141 01:13:34,497 --> 01:13:37,667 $70 million worth of heroin 1142 01:13:37,717 --> 01:13:42,157 goes from NYPD into the streets of New York City. 1143 01:13:42,200 --> 01:13:43,850 And they couldn't figure out, "Well, what happened?" 1144 01:13:43,897 --> 01:13:45,937 Of course, we know what happened -- the cops stole it. 1145 01:13:45,986 --> 01:13:47,636 And, amazingly, as people are sitting there 1146 01:13:47,684 --> 01:13:49,564 watching the movie "The French Connection," 1147 01:13:49,599 --> 01:13:52,649 that heroin was on the streets of New York 1148 01:13:52,689 --> 01:13:55,519 being sold to dealers and drug addicts. 1149 01:13:55,561 --> 01:13:58,431 The French Connection heroin robbery 1150 01:13:58,477 --> 01:14:01,867 remains the single largest theft in American history, 1151 01:14:01,915 --> 01:14:06,215 and it was done by the police themselves. 1152 01:14:06,267 --> 01:14:09,097 The French heroin was big -- it corrupted New York City, 1153 01:14:09,140 --> 01:14:10,790 and it corrupted the New York cops. 1154 01:14:10,837 --> 01:14:12,137 It corrupted everybody. 1155 01:14:15,929 --> 01:14:18,669 While drugs are corrupting the nation's police, 1156 01:14:18,715 --> 01:14:21,455 the White House itself will soon be engulfed 1157 01:14:21,500 --> 01:14:23,500 in its own criminal conspiracy. 1158 01:14:26,505 --> 01:14:27,805 Abort. 1159 01:14:27,854 --> 01:14:30,684 I repeat -- abort. Get out of there. 1160 01:14:30,727 --> 01:14:31,677 Hello? 1161 01:14:33,164 --> 01:14:34,604 Hello? 1162 01:14:42,478 --> 01:14:43,908 O0 C1Reporter: Good evening. 1163 01:14:43,957 --> 01:14:45,697 We have a mystery story out of Washington. 1164 01:14:45,742 --> 01:14:47,962 Five people have been arrested and charged with breaking 1165 01:14:48,005 --> 01:14:50,005 into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee 1166 01:14:50,050 --> 01:14:53,140 in the middle of the night. 1167 01:14:53,184 --> 01:14:55,624 One year to the day after President Nixon 1168 01:14:55,665 --> 01:14:57,745 declares a war on drugs, 1169 01:14:57,797 --> 01:15:02,017 his law-and-order presidency is about to unravel. 1170 01:15:03,716 --> 01:15:06,886 One of Nixon's top lieutenants, G. Gordon Liddy, 1171 01:15:06,937 --> 01:15:08,847 is arrested for trying to break into 1172 01:15:08,895 --> 01:15:11,715 the Democratic National Committee's headquarters. 1173 01:15:14,640 --> 01:15:17,340 When his five burglars are interrogated, 1174 01:15:17,382 --> 01:15:20,992 it's revealed they're part of a secret White House team 1175 01:15:21,038 --> 01:15:23,688 that includes an ex-CIA officer 1176 01:15:23,736 --> 01:15:28,476 and four former anti-Castro operatives. 1177 01:15:28,524 --> 01:15:30,444 As Congress begins hearings 1178 01:15:30,482 --> 01:15:33,352 investigating just how high the plot goes... 1179 01:15:33,398 --> 01:15:35,878 Mr. Ehrlichman, are you telling me that the break-in to Dr. Fielding's office 1180 01:15:35,922 --> 01:15:37,752 was to satisfy the President of the United States? 1181 01:15:39,970 --> 01:15:42,710 ...across the country... 1182 01:15:42,755 --> 01:15:46,405 another kind of conspiracy is brewing. 1183 01:15:46,454 --> 01:15:49,634 A casino in Vegas. 1184 01:15:49,675 --> 01:15:52,195 The East Coast's biggest heroin dealer 1185 01:15:52,243 --> 01:15:54,683 is enjoying a run on the roulette table. 1186 01:15:54,724 --> 01:15:56,464 Frank Matthews was ahead of his time, 1187 01:15:56,508 --> 01:15:58,338 'cause he was the Al Capone 1188 01:15:58,379 --> 01:16:00,119 of African-American drug dealing. 1189 01:16:04,690 --> 01:16:08,170 But Frank Matthews is not in town just to gamble. 1190 01:16:11,175 --> 01:16:13,125 The drug trade is changing, 1191 01:16:13,177 --> 01:16:16,827 and he wants to find a way to stop the growing violence. 1192 01:16:18,704 --> 01:16:21,494 Just recently, one of Matthews' top dealers 1193 01:16:21,533 --> 01:16:23,803 was gunned down in a popular nightclub. 1194 01:16:25,755 --> 01:16:28,145 How you all doing? 1195 01:16:28,192 --> 01:16:30,242 Yo. You good? 1196 01:16:30,281 --> 01:16:31,591 So he's called a summit 1197 01:16:31,630 --> 01:16:34,890 of the country's top black drug lords. 1198 01:16:34,938 --> 01:16:36,978 A lot of people in law enforcement will tell you 1199 01:16:37,027 --> 01:16:39,327 that when the mob was in control of the neighborhoods, 1200 01:16:39,377 --> 01:16:41,157 there was a lot less crime. 1201 01:16:41,205 --> 01:16:44,245 The days of sharing with the Italians, they're over now. 1202 01:16:44,295 --> 01:16:45,905 Y'all hear me? Over. 1203 01:16:45,949 --> 01:16:47,299 This is our time now. 1204 01:16:47,341 --> 01:16:48,781 This is our time! 1205 01:16:48,821 --> 01:16:52,261 Now you had the emergence of these gangs 1206 01:16:52,303 --> 01:16:54,743 that were cutting out the mob. 1207 01:16:54,784 --> 01:16:57,264 It created these turf wars and these battles. 1208 01:16:57,308 --> 01:16:59,478 What I'm saying first, though, we got to stick together, though, 1209 01:16:59,527 --> 01:17:00,957 without killing each other. 1210 01:17:01,007 --> 01:17:03,617 His objective was to form some kind of network 1211 01:17:03,662 --> 01:17:06,712 where they could work together rather than kill each other. 1212 01:17:06,752 --> 01:17:09,452 This business is ours now. All the way. 1213 01:17:09,494 --> 01:17:11,714 That's it. That's it. 1214 01:17:11,757 --> 01:17:16,107 But before he can see his dreams of unity fulfilled... 1215 01:17:16,153 --> 01:17:19,373 he's arrested in Vegas. 1216 01:17:19,417 --> 01:17:23,377 Matthews jumped bail on July 2, 1973, 1217 01:17:23,421 --> 01:17:25,681 and has never been seen again. 1218 01:17:25,728 --> 01:17:28,818 To add to the mystery, 1219 01:17:28,861 --> 01:17:32,521 the testimony of nine of his French Connection suppliers 1220 01:17:32,560 --> 01:17:36,830 is suppressed for national security reasons by the CIA. 1221 01:17:39,480 --> 01:17:42,180 Frank Matthews may be one of the few 1222 01:17:42,222 --> 01:17:45,442 of the big drug kingpins who actually got away. 1223 01:17:45,486 --> 01:17:48,136 But unlike Matthews, most of the guys 1224 01:17:48,185 --> 01:17:49,795 who were involved in the drug trade 1225 01:17:49,839 --> 01:17:52,449 were getting hammered with these huge sentences. 1226 01:17:52,493 --> 01:17:56,763 Possibly the most enduring legacy of Nixon's war on drugs 1227 01:17:56,802 --> 01:18:00,282 is a series of laws passed in New York State. 1228 01:18:00,327 --> 01:18:02,627 Life sentence for pushers. 1229 01:18:02,678 --> 01:18:03,978 We saw guys coming in 1230 01:18:04,027 --> 01:18:06,637 who were like low-level street dealers 1231 01:18:06,682 --> 01:18:08,952 with 20, 30 years' time. 1232 01:18:08,988 --> 01:18:12,858 Under what are known as the Rockefeller Drug Laws, 1233 01:18:12,905 --> 01:18:16,335 anyone caught with more than four ounces of drugs -- 1234 01:18:16,387 --> 01:18:20,477 even marijuana -- faces a 15-year-to-life sentence. 1235 01:18:20,521 --> 01:18:22,441 It's the same as second-degree murder. 1236 01:18:22,480 --> 01:18:24,920 Other states soon follow suit. 1237 01:18:24,961 --> 01:18:28,881 Rockefeller Drug Laws reverberate to this day, 1238 01:18:28,921 --> 01:18:33,451 because 90% of the people who were arrested under those laws 1239 01:18:33,491 --> 01:18:34,751 were black and brown. 1240 01:18:54,773 --> 01:18:58,523 But for the man who declared America's War on Drugs, 1241 01:18:58,559 --> 01:19:01,169 the battle has come to an early end. 1242 01:19:04,043 --> 01:19:08,183 The irony of Nixon championing a war on drugs 1243 01:19:08,221 --> 01:19:10,011 is his own criminality. 1244 01:19:10,049 --> 01:19:12,399 The guy leaves office in disgrace. 1245 01:19:20,364 --> 01:19:22,804 For their roles in the Watergate scandal, 1246 01:19:22,845 --> 01:19:25,325 four of the key architects of the War on Drugs 1247 01:19:25,369 --> 01:19:27,549 will go to prison -- 1248 01:19:27,588 --> 01:19:29,288 the former Attorney General 1249 01:19:29,329 --> 01:19:34,159 who spearheaded Operation Eagle, John Mitchell... 1250 01:19:34,204 --> 01:19:36,384 the senior adviser who introduced Nixon 1251 01:19:36,423 --> 01:19:39,993 to Elvis, Bud Krogh... 1252 01:19:40,036 --> 01:19:44,556 the president's chief counsel, John Ehrlichman... 1253 01:19:44,605 --> 01:19:47,425 and the former prosecutor who first made his name 1254 01:19:47,478 --> 01:19:50,738 trying to take down LSD guru Timothy Leary, 1255 01:19:50,786 --> 01:19:54,306 G. Gordon Liddy, will be sent to a Connecticut federal prison. 1256 01:19:55,965 --> 01:19:58,785 And it's here where one of the strangest connections 1257 01:19:58,837 --> 01:20:02,147 in the history of the War on Drugs will be made. 1258 01:20:14,070 --> 01:20:17,990 O0 C1Narrator: The federal prison at Danbury, Connecticut, 1974. 1259 01:20:19,902 --> 01:20:22,642 Richard Nixon's dirty tricks mastermind, 1260 01:20:22,687 --> 01:20:25,037 G. Gordon Liddy, 1261 01:20:25,081 --> 01:20:29,351 is here serving time for his role in the Watergate break-in. 1262 01:20:29,389 --> 01:20:31,349 When Gordon Liddy found himself in federal prison, 1263 01:20:31,391 --> 01:20:35,351 he found a fellow inmate there, Carlos Lehder. 1264 01:20:37,310 --> 01:20:40,180 Carlos Lehder, a Colombian car thief 1265 01:20:40,226 --> 01:20:43,316 who will soon change the face of the drug trade. 1266 01:20:43,360 --> 01:20:46,710 Liddy had all these ideas about the will to power, 1267 01:20:46,754 --> 01:20:49,324 to impose your will on circumstances 1268 01:20:49,366 --> 01:20:52,666 and do heroic things as an individual. 1269 01:20:52,717 --> 01:20:55,497 Lehder was completely inspired by this man. 1270 01:20:55,546 --> 01:20:58,716 This weird admiration society built up. 1271 01:20:58,766 --> 01:21:00,896 Carlos Lehder started dressing like him, 1272 01:21:00,943 --> 01:21:03,773 started talking about the same ideas, 1273 01:21:03,815 --> 01:21:06,465 and Carlos Lehder would then get out 1274 01:21:06,513 --> 01:21:10,003 and basically flood America with cocaine. 1275 01:21:10,039 --> 01:21:11,949 And as a founding member 1276 01:21:11,997 --> 01:21:14,517 of Pablo Escobar's Medellín Cartel, 1277 01:21:14,565 --> 01:21:18,605 he'll revolutionize a new drug trade. 1278 01:21:22,660 --> 01:21:25,880 The power dynamics that forged the War on Drugs 1279 01:21:25,924 --> 01:21:29,414 will now reverberate across five decades. 1280 01:21:29,449 --> 01:21:31,969 Sometimes people say that the War on Drugs 1281 01:21:32,017 --> 01:21:33,367 really wasn't about drugs. 1282 01:21:33,410 --> 01:21:36,200 And they state that like that's news. 1283 01:21:39,895 --> 01:21:41,415 It's only news to people 1284 01:21:41,461 --> 01:21:44,331 who just haven't been paying attention. 1285 01:21:44,377 --> 01:21:46,247 Of course it wasn't about drugs. 1286 01:21:49,382 --> 01:21:51,082 It was a fraud. 1287 01:21:51,123 --> 01:21:54,303 It was a political maneuvering that was designed 1288 01:21:54,344 --> 01:21:59,134 to keep certain aspects of the culture under control. 1289 01:22:02,482 --> 01:22:04,222 In many ways, the counterculture 1290 01:22:04,267 --> 01:22:08,837 was a product of the CIA LSD program 1291 01:22:08,880 --> 01:22:11,490 that released it into the populace. 1292 01:22:11,535 --> 01:22:13,965 All of these individual experiences 1293 01:22:14,016 --> 01:22:17,976 that people had taking LSD collectively 1294 01:22:18,020 --> 01:22:20,500 completely altered society. 1295 01:22:20,544 --> 01:22:24,644 What's really remarkable is that a lot of these patterns 1296 01:22:24,678 --> 01:22:29,508 that have their origins in the 1960s become cyclical. 1297 01:22:33,035 --> 01:22:36,165 Virtually all of the CIA activities abroad 1298 01:22:36,212 --> 01:22:39,822 always came on the backs of drug smuggling 1299 01:22:39,867 --> 01:22:41,127 and drug financing. 1300 01:22:43,001 --> 01:22:46,961 And we're going to see those relationships develop 1301 01:22:47,005 --> 01:22:49,965 again and again throughout the War on Drugs. 1302 01:22:51,488 --> 01:22:53,708 The War on Drugs is not about one thing, 1303 01:22:53,751 --> 01:22:57,361 it's about many things in relationship to each other. 1304 01:23:13,379 --> 01:23:17,639 On the next episode of "America's War on Drugs"... 1305 01:23:17,688 --> 01:23:20,948 Pablo Escobar had tremendous political ambition. 1306 01:23:20,996 --> 01:23:23,166 If you were gonna mess with Pablo, 1307 01:23:23,215 --> 01:23:24,905 you know, Pablo will kill you. 1308 01:23:24,956 --> 01:23:27,646 This is an outlaw regime. 1309 01:23:27,698 --> 01:23:30,568 Man #2: They're flying secret shipments of weapons down 1310 01:23:30,614 --> 01:23:34,054 and then coming back with cocaine. 1311 01:23:34,096 --> 01:23:37,356 Man #3: I'm going after the drug dealers that they were protecting. 1312 01:23:40,102 --> 01:23:43,892 We were really playing Russian roulette with our lives. 1313 01:23:43,931 --> 01:23:48,111 Man #4: I knew it went all the way to the White House. 1314 01:23:48,153 --> 01:23:52,683 You basically have a secret CIA operation laid bare. 1315 01:23:54,029 --> 01:23:55,899 MAN #5: It was really hard for me to fantasize 1316 01:23:55,943 --> 01:23:58,563 that something so small could be so valuable. 1317 01:23:59,860 --> 01:24:02,040 It was like, "This is what I was made for."