The Journey 127. John Potash: War-Makers and Drug Traffickers, Political Theater and Perpetual War

Publisher R. A. “Kris” Millegan speaks with John Potash, author of DRUGS AS WEAPONS AGAINST US: The CIA’s Murderous Targeting of SDS, Panthers, Hendrix, Lennon, Cobain, Tupac, and Other Activists, which details the drug-trafficking families that formed the American oligarchy and achieved global dominance. They also discuss the firehose of mis- and disinformation with which we contend.

John: In the US, the dominant forces, the warmakers, the oligarchs who have perpetual war going on, and who are so involved in the drug trade, they seem to just want to keep attacking. I wish the perpetual war could stop, but it never does. We are constantly given reasons to go into a new war.

I hope that somebody can rise up in whatever kind of democracy we have here and that they can defeat the warmakers and the drug traffickers that we’ve both talked about in our books.

I focused on the musicians that I thought tried to stand up to them, but I [found] that they were manipulated, but when they sobered up and tried to change things for the better, they were done away with. And I think that’s still going on today, too, but they have a hard time getting their voice out [since they’re giving] oppositional opinions to wars going on today.

But with independent media, alternative opinions are getting out there. But the powers-that-be won’t listen.

Kris: We’re definitely all tired of war. I remember, I did an event in L.A. with Daniel Hopsicker and Cheri Seymour, and a guy came up and said, “Kurt Cobain is still alive.” There’s just so much mis- and disinformation out there. I got something the other day saying that the whole FOX-Dominion thing was all false. It was just a show thing and they weren’t really going to pay. The level of mis- and disinformation is just over the top.

John: I studied the voting machine issue with E. S. and S. and Diebold, the biggest voting machine owners, and the E. S. and S. president or vice president wrote a letter to Republicans saying, “We’re going to do whatever it takes to get,” I think it was Bush Jr., “back in the White House.” That’s real neutral.

And it turned out that the E. S. and S. guy was related to the owner of Diebold. It’s so insular, these powers-that-be that control our democracy. And many professors have come out and said that it’s so easy to hack these voting machines, it’s absurd. A young kid these days can hack these machines. I think it was New York that went back to the old machines they used to use.

All we can do is try to find out, about the information we get, is how biased are the sources? What’s their motive for giving [us] that information? Is it firsthand information, did they witness it themselves? Or is it second or thirdhand information? For DRUGS AS WEAPONS AGAINST US, I tried to do primary source reporting. For instance, I interviewed people who witnessed the shooting of Tupac Shakur in Atlanta.

And in the media. Who are the companies? Do they share [directors on their boards]? [I believe], by corporate law, if you’re a director, you’re not allowed to affect your company’s profits by what you might publish [or say] through another company. So, I tried to analyze that. It’s not easy but you do your best.

Kris: You’re in Baltimore. You’re in the Washington DC media bubble. What reverberations from January 6 did you feel?

John: I tend to think of a lot of stuff as political theater. I watched Tucker Carlson’s coverage [recently], [and] the way these 2 guards escorted the guy with horns all over the Capitol Building was just bizarre to me. It cements in my mind all the coverage I saw that made it look like theater. In some videos, they were just letting people pour into the Capitol. I think it’s just a lot of political theater. It’s terrible if someone died. But to focus all this attention on this is just overkill.

Kris: Who’s the impresario of this theater?

John: The oligarchs who want us to look at [nothing but] the Republicans versus the Democrats, the Republicans versus the Democrats. I feel, just give me a break. They’re both war parties. They both believe in perpetual war. When have they NOT believed in perpetual war? In the JFK days and Robert Kennedy days. That’s when it looked like people were going to get us out of war. Carter was maybe a little better than most. But after Carter, we’ll say, it’s just been perpetual war.

I’m glad the Democratic Party is a little better on racism and women’s reproductive rights. But generally speaking, both parties are pretty similar, it seems to me.

Kris: Are you still a drug counselor?

John: I work as a trauma counselor more now. I studied EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s kind of a miraculous form of trauma counseling that really helps a lot of different issues.

Kris: I was scared of white powders [in my youth]. Now you’ve got fentanyl and these animal tranquilizers. It just seems horrendous.

John: It’s nonstop with the new forms of drugs that keep coming at us. During the Covid pandemic, when we were all stuck indoors and AA and NA meetings [Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous] were closed, we had the biggest rate of overdose deaths in history in the US. One of the best answers to addiction was closed down. A lot have opened up again. But not all 12-step programs have opened up, and they’re not really as strong as they used to be. People are still scared and [not going to meetings] really hurts addicts.

These powers that I talk about in DRUGS AS WEAPONS AGAINST US, like the JP Morgan family, they’re still getting caught with ships they own coming in with cocaine, to Philadelphia [for example]. JP Morgan TANKERS, coming in with huge amounts of cocaine, coming into Philadelphia. That was just in the last 5 or 10 years they were caught doing that.

They’re just finding new substances that can cut down the population. It’s just so strong. I’m hearing about people smoking weed that they didn’t know had fentanyl and they die.