Oliver Stone’s a Scholar

By Brian Lancaster

Oliver Stone was a guy who volunteered for Vietnam, flew to Mexico after the war with two ounces of Vietnamese weed, got arrested at the border, and later dosed his Republican father with LSD.

Despite having no formal history education, Stone is an expert on shady American history. According to a new Joe Rogan interview, he says 15% to 20% of all American casualties in Vietnam were friendly fire (including bombings, etc.). The Pentagon tried to cover up that stat for a long time.

Stone’s later films gradually get more political, focusing on secret CIA operations, conspiracies, interviews with dictators, etc. Here’s a partial list of some of his conspiratorial movies: Snowden, JFK, Nixon, Salvador, South of the Border, Revealing Ukraine, Ukraine on Fire, Talk Radio (eerily similar to 1976 Network, which everybody must watch). In a way, Scarface was a conspiracy movie, or at least it introduced people in 1983 to the failure of the War on Drugs.

I love conspiracy theories, even the ones about how the earth is hollow and filled with lizard people, how the moon is an artificial alien satellite, how the Queen of England drinks virgin blood for longevity, how global warming is a hoax, etc. Obviously I don’t believe any of it. But I could get stoned and watch this stuff forever if I had more time.

One theory that both Stone and I think is possible, however, is that the JFK assassination was a CIA operation. I’m not gonna go barefoot on the streets with a sign yelling at people about it, I just think it’s a real possibility. My very first lady friend got unusually pissed whenever I brought it up a couple times, so I think she was a CIA informant.

Here’s some facts: Lee Harvey Oswald’s first lawyer was H. Louis Nichols, who called him in the middle of an interrogation by Dallas Police. It was not permitted in Texas in 1963 for a suspect to have a lawyer present while being questioned. Nichols did not practice criminal law. Oswald refused Nichols’ help, demanding another lawyer who was associated with the American Civil Liberties Union. Nichols then walked away, and a day later Lee Harvey Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby before any trial.

Jack Ruby was a night club owner heavily involved in organized crime, prostitution, gambling, and the international narcotics trade. Ruby mentioned the name “Davis” to his lawyer, and said that Davis was a gun dealer involved in government operations against Fidel Castro. He pleaded to be moved somewhere safe and said that his life was in danger.

Ruby was eventually allowed a retrial in 1966, but before it could happen, he died of pneumonia.

Damn, I forgot this was supposed to be an article about Oliver Stone movies. Oliver Stone.

In the Joe Rogan interview, Oliver Stone believes the last U.S. president to really make an effort to change the way the CIA worked, and really the whole structure of power in the country was JFK. He believes JFK was lied to about the Bay of Pigs invasion and given false information.

Stone, as well as many primary sources, believe that clinical psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West (Jolly West), met with Ruby for psychiatric evaluation. Jolly West was involved with MK-Ultra, the CIA thought control experiments that dealt with LSD and other substances. He was also the psychiatrist of Charles Manson, well before the murders, and recommended to Manson to stay a while in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district and experiment with hallucinogens to help ease his anger problems.

The following is supposedly a letter from Jolly West regarding Ruby’s psychiatric condition, which was burned along with all other records of MK-Ultra:

(See my article on Charles Manson and the CIA)

Whatever the truth is behind the JFK assassination, Oliver Stone is damn good. I’ve only seen a handful of his movies and after that Rogan interview I know I need to eventually watch all of them.

Footnote: Don’t play the free Windows game, JFK: Reloaded (even though it’s completely free).