These movies are based on the book Drugs as Weapons Against Us: The CIA’s Murderous Targeting of SDS, Panthers, Hendrix, Lennon, Cobain, Tupac, and Other Activists by John L. Potash. Within the pages of that tome, you’ll learn how a group of opium-trafficking families came to form an American oligarchy and eventually achieved global dominance.

Sure, they may have helped fund the Nazi regime and then saved thousands of the Third Reich during Operation Paperclip to start the CIA and push LSD through MK-Ultra, but in the midst of their war on drugs which was funding by drugs, they got into targeting the left leaning groups that sought to usurp their power.

And then, they went after rock ‘n roll.

Drugs as Weapons Against Us: The CIA War on Musicians and Activists (2018): After going after so many of the younger politically radicalized types that made up organizations like the Black Panthers, the ruling class — according to this film, directed and written by Potash — went after the artists who inspired them.

How did LSD get into the public consciousness? Did MK-Ultra agents party at acid tests? Why did George Harrison and John Lennon’s dentist dose them? Why would the FBI give the Rolling Stones drugs and then turn around and bust them? Who killed Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin? Did this strange method of connecting with the youth culture also claim the lives of Tupac and Kurt Cobain?

As we hear from narrator Douglas Barron, the film contends that everyone from Yoko Ono and Timothy Leary to Ken Kesey and Courtney Love were government agents used to hook stars on different drugs and then kill them when they tried to get clean.

It all seems a little too simple, but this documentary reminds me of the times when conspiracy theories were ramshackle narratives that collapsed when you pricked the balloon of them too much. Sure, we’d love to believe that John Lennon wasn’t an egomaniac drug abuser and wife beater. We hope that Tupac is still alive. Maybe through conspiracy, we are able to get back to the parasocial relationships that we have with rock stars.

Or maybe not.

This also willy nilly rips off so many web sites, Nick Broomfield’s documentaries, Benjamin Statler’s Soaked In Bleach, YouTube videos and anything it can get its hands on to build its narrative which skips around so much and frankly skips so many things that you wonder if this is also a compromised conspiracy. Or, you know, if you’re like me, deny everything until finally you can’t deny the idea of reality itself.

I kind of do love the idea that the government created Courtney Love to be a James Shelby Downard-style wires out the butt honey pot exotic dancing in Japan before she could legally drive and getting Cobain hooked on heroin so that his stomach would stop hurting which is the exact opposite of how heroin usually treats its addicts before he heals his stomach and she pays El Duce to shoot him.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CIA Drugs R Us! A Drugs as Weapons… Sequel (2024): Listed as a “comic sequel” to the first movie, this covers much of the same ground with more focus on Lennon, Cobain and Tupac, as well as how MK-Ultra was connected with the Manson Family (never mentions that sex films including Sharon Tate and the Hollywood elites), the government infiltrating the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and finally, gloms on to The Keepers by exploring the Maryland’s Catholic Church sex abuse scandal and how it may be connected to MK-Ultra.

This has the same YouTube of the 2000s quality along with music by a band called ElectroCult Circus which I figure has director and writer Potash as a member. That may also because none of the many bands in this would be OK with their music being taken for it. Then again, there’s a Chris Rock joke taken directly from one of his specials.

This also goes deep into Amanda Claire Marian Charteris, Countess of Wemyss and March, who founded the Foundation to Further Consciousness (now the Beckley Foundation). This group uses psychoactive drugs to treat depression, anxiety, and addiction while enhancing well-being and creativity. She also trepanned herself in 1970 with a dental drill. That means she drilled directly into her brain to expand her consciousness. In the world of this film, this woman is behind so many things and that LSD can have no positive benefits no matter what because it was used by Nazis to kill your favorite rock star.

I’m paraphrasing.

Despite having a three-hour length, I watched and enjoyed all of it. Your mileage — like that of my wife — may vary, as she said that she felt that this lasted for a week and only cared when The Keepers was mentioned. The connection this movie makes, like all of the best conspiracy theories, is tenuous.

I yearn for the days when politics hadn’t yet invaded my safe space of fake moon landings and UPC codes being the Mark of the Beast. Yes, this is beyond left-leaning, but it made me wistful for Art Bell and wildcat lines.

You can watch this on Tubi or buy it from MVD.