Century of Lies, Dec 9, 2008

The failure of Drug War is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century of Lies.
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Dean Becker: Hello, my friends. Welcome to this edition of Century of Lies. We’re going to have two guests for you today. Here, in just a little bit, we’ll hear from Barry Cooper, he of ‘Don’t Get Busted’ fame and whose group, KopBusters, just stung the police up in, I think it was, Odessa. But first, we’re going to hear from the author of ‘Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten.’ He played a pivotal role in the psychoactive drug testing of hundreds of volunteers in the Army. His book goes a long way towards revealing the contents of once classified documents that still reside in restricted archives.

And with that, let’s go ahead and bring in our guest, Colonel and Doctor Jim Ketchum.

Hello, Dr..

Dr. Ketchum: Hi.

Dean Becker: Thank you, sir, for being with us. You were involved in the Army’s experimentation with various psychoactive drugs. Is that right, sir?

Dr. Ketchum: Yes, that’s correct.

Dean Becker: Would you, kind of, summarize what that was all about?

Dr. Ketchum: Well, the Army began to have a volunteer test program which originated when Congress, actually, approved the use of LSD in experimental settings to see if it might have some usefulness as an incapacitating agent. In other words, a chemical weapon that could incapacitate the enemy without killing him. This is not a unique idea but actually the Army’s always had a reduction of harm concept and so it fits in. But it didn’t work out too well. So, the studies indicated that LSD would produce, perhaps, too many unpredictable consequences. And, so studies were also carried out with a potent derivative of tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana. And later focused, in my case, on BZ, which was an atropine-like drug which lasts almost three day, then produced full recovery but during the period of its action would render a normal individual unable to carry out his military tasks.

Dean Becker: How would that make him unable to perform the tasks?

Dr. Ketchum: Well, BZ is much like atropine, a drug used for centuries and in small doses its used today; before surgery, for example, to dry up secretions, but in high doses it produces delirium, which is a state of confusion with hallucinations, delusions, inability to carry out instructions -- a variety of impairments that would certainly keep someone from using a weapon or carrying out any complex task. And we demonstrated this is some field exercises where we simulated military situations and observed the ability of the subject to deal with them.

Dean Becker: Now, we have, over the years, heard, I’m going to call it, lots of ‘propaganda,’ from the U.S. government talking about the dangers of LSD, talking about the dangers of marijuana and many of these psychoactive drugs, but the Beckley Foundation in the U.K. did a major study in the last few years to determine the ‘dangerousness’ of drugs -- I hope that’s a word -- and they found that LSD was number 14, well below cannabis, well below alcohol and all the other hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. What did you find, I mean, were you giving fairly substantial doses of LSD?

Dr. Ketchum: We gave mostly fairly low doses, actually, because of our concern about possible ill effects. But as we raised the dose, we got up to a level of about 300 micrograms maximum per individual, which would be considered a high street dose.

Dean Becker: Yep.

Dr. Ketchum: And that would be enough to produce inability to coordinate or carry out any complex task. We didn’t have any concern about the medical safety of LSD because its been demonstrated to be quite safe over a period of many years. Sid Cohen (*) did a follow-up study of 5,000 individuals who had taken a total of 25,000 doses of LSD and he found a very low rate of any psychiatric consequences or even flash-backs. So, I believe, as you mentioned, that the information that comes from the government about LSD and THC, and other psychedelic drugs, has been vastly overblown and appears to come under the category of scare tactics, in my opinion.

Dean Becker: I would agree with you, sir.

Friends, we are talking with Doctor Jim Ketchum, former colonel in the U.S. Army; conducted experiments with various psychoactive drugs with volunteers. You know, I think about all the experiments with nuclear bomb tests and cleaning up ships down at the Bikini Islands that had been blasted by radiation. Well, I’m just saying, comparatively speaking …

Dr. Ketchum: Oh.

Dean Becker: … this experiment was much less dangerous for the subjects.

Dr. Ketchum: Oh yes. In fact, about 7,000 volunteers took part in our program over a twenty-year period and they were actually lining up to be selected.

Dean Becker: [laughter]

Dr. Ketchum: They thought the program was a pretty good deal to have for two months. We never had, in our experience, any permanent injury from any of the drugs we studied and, of course, we were very concerned about the future and we knew that there would be propaganda that would be anti-military and would claim that we had caused damages and so forth. So, we were probably more conservative than the civilian institutions that were studying these drugs at the same time.

Dean Becker: Well, let’s talk about another government institution that was running their tests pretty much concurrent with yours, I believe. And that was the CIA, right?

Dr. Ketchum: Yes. They weren’t exactly concurrent. They began playing, you might say, or, in their case, I suppose it was serious, with LSD in the late 1940s, early 1950s, on up to, actually, the mid-sixties, with a covert program known as MK-ULTRA. And in my book, I try to explain that this was entirely separate from what the Army was doing. They used LSD as an agent that was possibly able to change the behavior of an individual over an extended period of time. Of course, this didn’t happen so they eventually abandoned it. But they were giving LSD covertly, et cetera, to ordinary American citizens and then observing them for the effects. We did not do anything like that. There were some tests before I arrived in 1961 where the individual wasn’t told ahead of time exactly what he was getting, but those were few and we never did that after I arrived. So, we above board, I think, in all of our studies. It was approved up to the level of the Department of Defense. We had -- the Surgeon General approved of the program. And, if you go back in time, I think you’ll find that the attitude toward chemical testing was a lot more favorable, in general, but really went sour after the Vietnam War turned people against the government policies.

Dean Becker: Well, and there were those rare, I’ve heard of, instances anyway, like -- what was it? -- Art Linkletter’s daughter jumping out a window and, you know, the occasional, random, bizarre and horrible story that, kind of, led to that -- quote ‘morality’ -- against these psychoactives. Is that a fair assumption?

Dr. Ketchum: Yes. Art Linkletter’s daughter provided a case that got a lot of publicity nationally and there may have been a few other high-profile incidents that seemed to prove that LSD was a dangerous drug. But, I think, obviously, for one individual who committed suicide we have perhaps ten million people in the United States who have taken LSD at one time or another and did not have any such outcome. So, I think, its rather unfair to base a policy on one adverse effect.

Dean Becker: You bet, you bet.

Once again, we’re talking with Dr. Jim Ketchum, author of ‘Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten,’ talking about the Army’s experimentation with various psychoactive drugs in prior years. Now, Dr. Ketchum, I want to ask you about the cannabis results again. You found that the people just kind of got ‘mellow,’ right? Didn’t necessarily pass out or get violent, either extreme?

Dr. Ketchum: They certainly didn’t get violent. The variation of THC was more potent than the original compound. This was achieved through a synthetic method. And we tried it in about twelve individuals, two at each dose, going up to a total dose of about five milligrams -- not very much, you might say -- and none of those individuals showed any major impairment in performance. At the highest dose we studied, one individual kind of got a typical marijuana effect and I quoted some of his remarks in my book. He was extremely mellow. He said he’d be glad to do it again.

Dean Becker: Yep.

Dr. Ketchum: And, in general, we found nothing to indicate any violent tendency, either in the lab there or, actually, in my own studies, both in and out of the army: violence is never a problem with marijuana. [laughter] Quite the opposite, I would say.

Dean Becker: Colonel Ketchum, let me ask you this: is the ‘red oil’ -- is that what you’re talking about? Or is that a different substance?

Dr. Ketchum: Well, red oil was sort of an intermediary substance that was tried by concentrating marijuana, or the active ingredient in marijuana. But the second improvement, you might say, was finding a chemical, a minor change in the chemistry of THC that greatly increased its duration and potency and that was called EA-2233. We had numbers for most of these compounds rather than names.

Dean Becker: I want to ask you this: now, you did all these studies, the army basically rejected or shut down the program after a time. Do you feel there were any of these experiments that led to, I don’t know, something they’ve implemented at this time?

Dr. Ketchum: Led to?

Dean Becker: Any of these drugs that have still in stockpile, ready to put to use?

Dr. Ketchum: Oh. I think all of them have been destroyed, at least the Army has announced that its stocks of BZ, which was the only chemical that was, quote ‘standardized’ -- that means approved for loading into munitions and possible future use in combat. All of those have been destroyed and there is nothing at present, that I know of, from that period that would be used in any chemical attack or any chemical encounter.

Dean Becker: Once again, folks, we’ve been speaking with Colonel, Doctor Jim Ketchum, author of a great book about the history of ‘Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten,’ there’s the name, and Dr. Ketchum: I was wondering if you had a website where you might like to point folks toward learning more.

Dr. Ketchum: Yes. Look up ForgottenSecrets.net.

Dean Becker: ForgottenSecrets.net.

Dr. Ketchum: Yeah. There’s an extensive discussion of the contents of the book and some of the issues and some commentary by readers, so check it out. I hope you’ll buy it. [laughter]

Dean Becker: Well, yes, sir. It’s a great book. Dr. Ketchum, I see where you have met up with Dr. Sasha Shulgin and, you know, I find him to quite the pioneer, and here’s hoping that, you know, we can bring some more truth forward on this and find a more rational way to deal with these psychoactive drugs. Any closing thoughts from you, sir?

Dr. Ketchum: Well, yes. Dr. Shulgin is much more famous than I’ll ever be, but he was kind enough to write a forward to my book and actually we’ve become friends, partly as a result of that. And I value that friendship highly.

Dean Becker: He’s quite a guy. And so are you. I appreciate you coming forward with this, sir, and outlining this for our listeners and I highly recommend the book. One more time, it is ‘Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten.’ Thank you, Dr. Ketchum.

Dr. Ketchum: Thank you. Bye-bye.
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[Musical interlude]

We are the plant police.
With each arrest we bring peace.
We fight eternal war
So you can never score
Yes, we are the plant police.
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Dean Becker: And with that, let’s go ahead and bring on our second guest of the day. His name is Barry Cooper, he produced a fine DVD called ‘Don’t Get Busted.’ And just last week he initiated his new television program, KopBusters. And let’s bring in Barry Cooper.

Barry Cooper: Hello, Dean. How are you?

Dean Becker: I’m good, my friend, glad to have you with us. Barry, you don’t take [bleep] from nobody, do you sir? You understand that we’ve got to expose this fraud of drug war one way or another, right?

Barry Cooper: Well, yeah, I believe that. That’s why we came up with KopBusters. It’s something that we’ve not seen in America yet, whereby … Candy and I hired a group of detectives and we planted them all over the United States and we’re setting up stings to catch crooked cops. And our first sting we set up last week, it took six months, but we got the Odessa Narcotics Unit to raid a KopBusters house. And you can see this on YouTube, just search KopBusters. The actual raid footage is there. And when they got inside the house they realized it was a reality TV show and it was a false raid. So our first operation was a success.

Dean Becker: Now, Barry, I want to talk about … this was in Odessa?

Barry Cooper: Yes, it was in Odessa. I used to work with some of those guys years ago in narcotics and we were involved in illegal activities. So we targeted them, in that area, along with the fact they planted drugs on a girl named Yolanda Madden. And we were all wearing ‘Free Yolanda’ tee-shirts when we confronted the police with the illegal raid. So, it’s an attempt to shed light on a mom that’s in jail for something she didn’t do at the hands of the corrupt narcotics unit in Odessa.

Dean Becker: Barry, her case, Yolanda’s case, is exemplary of thousands of similar situations that have happened, and are still happening, across America where cops ‘testa-lie,’ where they shade and slant the evidence where they … and as in, I think, this KopBuster situation, how did they get that search warrant to come into that place?

Barry Cooper: We don’t know how they got the search warrant. They will not release the affidavit. There’s two parts to a search warrant: there’s the affidavit the cops fill out giving the reasons they believe a judge should sign the actual search warrant. Well, the judge signed the actual search warrant and they gave that to us. They did not give us the affidavit. What we did was set up a dummy grow room but we grew two little tiny Christmas trees under one 1,000 watt light and we pumped the heat out of the wall. And it’s my understanding they received an anonymous tip. Well, an anonymous tip is not enough to get a raid. And it is not illegal to grow two little Christmas trees in your house under a grow light.

Dean Becker: [laughter]

Barry Cooper: But we’re interested in seeing the affidavit, exactly what they put on there to get the judge to sign the warrant. If I were to guess, Dean, it would be they lied and said that they smelled the odor of marijuana coming from the house and/or a criminal informant went in and came out and saw the plants, and we know none of that’s true because we had the house monitored with hidden cameras the entire time and have that on film.

Dean Becker: And I want to commend you for having, I think you had, at least some of the cameras were set up to feed over the Internet. Is that correct?

Barry Cooper: Yes. We had the cameras in the house, outside and inside, and of course they were feeding off premise to our laptops in our secret mobile KopBusters van that we have rigged out with all the surveillance equipment.

Dean Becker: And that’s a smart move because I know, very likely, that were that to have happened with cameras that were only on location that film might never have even seen the light of day.

Barry Cooper: Well, if you go to YouTube you can see at the end, when they found our surveillance equipment, they pulled the cord to the router to keep it from feeding off premise.

Dean Becker: Right.

Barry Cooper: But by that time we had gotten enough footage. Now, I found out from a source today that they’re 99.99% chance sure they’re going to arrest me for that operation.

Dean Becker: For what charge, Barry?

Barry Cooper: Either false report to a peace officer or manufacturing evidence. None of the charges are fair. None of them will stick. But, just like they arrested me for not returning two DVDs on time, for theft...

Dean Becker: Oh, God.

Barry Cooper. … you can be arrested in America for almost anything. But we’ll beat this in court. And it just shows that if there is a group of citizens out there busting cops, if the cops do put me in jail that really points to the corruption in our system. And that’s fine. I’ll sit in jail for a little bit to free Yolanda. She’s there for eight years on an informant plant. She passed the polygraph, the informant that said the cops made her plant the drugs on her passed the polygraph, and we have doctored jail records where they actually whited-out the name of a booking officer and put in another officer’s name, but they forgot to change it on the computer. And they did that to cover some things up. We’ll be releasing that on my website, KopBusters.com, tonight sometime.

Dean Becker: All right. Friends, once again we’re speaking with Barry Cooper, former Texas cop, known as a big drug-buster back when, right, Barry?

Barry Cooper: Yes, sir. I worked for the Permian Basin Drug Task Force and other agencies and my boss, you know, mentioned in one article that I was one of the nation’s top drug officers at the time I was doing that so I know how these guys work. I used to do that. I used to raid houses illegally and search cars illegally. I’ve sent messages to the Odessa Narcotics Unit a year-and-a-half ago to stop doing that kind of stuff, that I would be standing against it if they didn’t quit, and they didn’t quit so we surprised them with that sting.

Dean Becker: Well, when you mess with the authorities, they do tend to mess back. We had a guest on, a few weeks back, Cele Castillo, former DEA agent and whistle-blower in the Iran-Contra affair and he got busted for selling guns at a gun show. They wait a long time for that revenge sometimes, eh?

Barry Cooper: Yes, they do. But we’re patient as well. I could have went in there are busted those cops in a week but I wanted to build a good case so it took us six months. I took my time. That is one thing I learned from the Feds. I take my time and it worked. The support that we’re getting on the Internet is overwhelming. The word ‘KopBusters’ three days ago was number ten in Google search words in the entire world. We put up the video of the sting and then the Channel 7 news clip and between the two they have over 200,000 hits. And the responses have been incredible. So we’re sitting at a right time. Yes, the Feds and the police do fight back but we’re sitting in a time in America, what I call a ‘New America,’ where, kind of, the old guard is losing out. You know, it’s the old guard that got us in this position, the reason we’re still having to fight corrupt cops is ‘cause they didn’t do their job back then. Well, the younger generation and the younger activists are willing to go to these types of lengths and really get something done.

Dean Becker: To delve down to the heart of the issue, to truly examine what in the heck is going on in this country.

Barry, you and I both work together, or work to end this drug war, to speak and preach and talk anyway we can, to get the truth out there, to motivate and encourage people. You’ve had this DVD, ‘Don’t Get Busted,’ up for, what now, about two years?

Barry Cooper: Yes. Two years. It’s Volume One: ‘Traffic Stops’, and Volume Two: ‘Never Get Raided,’ and those two videos teach all the police tactics that I was taught and later used to teach cops. I teach those to the public and how to counter them to keep them from going to jail for marijuana, and it’s actually ‘Never Get Busted.’

Dean Becker: Thank you. Barry, earlier this year, late springtime, I was coming back from California with a buddy in a wheelchair and we got stopped about a hundred miles east of El Paso. The drug dog danged near jumped in the truck with us. Now, I don’t think that’s a proper alert, is it?

Barry Cooper: Yes, it can be an alert.

Dean Becker: Well, anyway, they found a little bit and told us to get on our way. They didn’t want to mess with searching the van. It was, I guess, a good situation. Cost a lot of money.

Barry Cooper: Well, it was a good situation. I was hired two weeks ago, you know I live in Austin now, where it’s safer for me in Texas. And I was hired in an adjacent county to testify as an expert witness. We haven’t went to court yet but I’ve got the video and the police officer made his drug dog false alert. They do that constantly. And I have that information on my website, Never Get Busted.com, as well. But this cop walked his dog by the driver’s door eleven times and the dog wouldn’t alert so the cop took the toy out, stirred the dog up, and then stood back for about two minutes and waited and finally the dog alerted and then they searched the lady’s car. So we look forward to beating that one in court.

Dean Becker: [laughter] Eleven times, huh? That’s just not a good ratio, is it?

Barry Cooper: It’s insane what our police officers are doing. You know, there was a day that people could say, ‘Well, not all police are bad. There’s only a few of them are bad.’ Well, the truth is, it’s 2008 and the majority of cops are corrupt and the cops that aren’t corrupt are working within a corrupt system. Our criminal justice system is so broken we’ve turned an America into a ‘Russia.’

Dean Becker: Exactly, kind of a KGB-ism going on with the snitches and informants and all the various ways they can wiretap and infiltrate your home.

Barry Cooper: Right. So we’re taking our KopBuster van across America, infiltrating and doing these reverse stings on the cops and I can’t wait for y’all to see some more of the busts that we have planned.

Dean Becker: Well, Barry, if I might put a bug in your ear: Houston’s ready to go, man. These guys, they hornswaggle about ninety people a day here with their drug war so I’m sure there’s some ripe pickin’s here for you guys as well.

Barry Cooper: We’ve got our eye on Houston. The strange thing is, well, it’s not strange, but this is the absolute truth: every person that hears about KopBusters tells us, ‘please come into our jurisdiction.’ Our email box has hundreds and hundreds of requests.

Dean Becker: [laughter]

Barry Cooper: So it’s kind of like -- it’s not just Houston, it’s not just Odessa, it’s everywhere.

Dean Becker: Well, but if I may, appeal for that involvement here in Houston: we lead the world in our incarceration rate. We need some help.

Barry Cooper: Excellent. I didn’t know that. That’ll even make us keep a bigger eye on Houston. Maybe we can make a splash there like we did in Odessa.

Dean Becker: Well, about six months ago the local CBS affiliate actually did a major news piece about the fact that Houston leads the world in its incarceration rate. So there’s some bona fides there to hold that thought together.

All right, my friends. We are again speaking with Barry Cooper, producer of ‘Never Get Busted,’ also of the very recent KopBusters video you can check out online on YouTube and on Barry’s site.

Barry, I want to ask you something here. As I indicated earlier, you and I try to appeal to people, to motivate them, to get them to do their part, to … it doesn’t take a whole lot. They don’t have to do what you’re doing or I’m doing … they just have to write a little letter, they just have to visit their congressman, they just have to get involved, right?

Barry Cooper: Yes. Well, our older people in this country didn’t use the courage and the sacrifice that they needed to. And because of that, now we’re left with a country that’s like a ‘Russia.’ So, yeah, it takes time to write a letter. It takes time to protest. It takes time to get on the Internet and help. It takes time to donate money. It takes time to join NORML, it takes time to join LEAP and MPP and all those good organizations out there but I encourage the American people to sacrifice -- let’s get away from the Nintendo games, the air conditioners, skip one party -- and sacrifice and have courage and help us in America. Politically, it couldn’t be a better position to be in with Obama coming in as President and it’s sort-of ‘trendy’ to throw rocks and hate the ultra-conservative right-wing now, that kind of high-jacked our country -- nothing wrong with right-wing, nothing wrong with left-wing, that’s what keeps things centered -- but the ultra right-wing that has driven our country intro the ground has, kind of, been exposed like the Wizard of Oz. So I encourage the American people to get the courage, the ‘new Americans,’ get the courage and sacrifice and once you do that, there’s a feeling you get like no other. That’s called ‘building a character’ in the person, I teach my kids the same thing.

Dean Becker: All right, Barry. Well, we’re going to have to let it go. One more time -- your website?

Barry Cooper: It’s NeverGetBusted.com and KopBusters.com.

Dean Becker: All right, Barry Cooper. Thank you so much.

All right, my friends, as always, I guess, we’re going to wrap it up here. But as we were saying: you’ve got to get involved. You’ve got to participate. You have to get it done.

I remind you there is no truth, justice, logic, scientific fact, medical data, in fact no reason for this drug war to exist. We’ve been duped.

Please do your part.

Prohibido istac evilesco.

For the Drug Truth Network, this is Dean Becker asking you to examine our policy of Drug Prohibition.

The Century of Lies.

This show produced at the Pacifica studios of KPFT, Houston.

Transcript provided by Gee-Whiz Transcripts. Email: glenncg@zoominternet.net