Title: Unfiltered With S.A.M.
Show: Unfiltered With S.A.M.
Date: 2026-06-11
URL: https://youtu.be/hu8QgZGyOIQ
Duration: 9:00

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[00:00] Now, I want to um go into something completely different. Critics have long pointed to CIA linked operations intersecting with cocaine trafficking from Latin America during the Cold War and with opium networks in Afghanistan after 2001. So, what's your take on that? Yeah, it's correct. That's immoral. Let's talk Let's talk about cocaine first. Created a huge problem in the US in the 80s. Gigantic problem in the US. It led to the crack epidemic. Yeah. So, the CIA

[00:32] still to this day denies that it had anything to do with cocaine trafficking. That's a lie. It's hard to explain. So, so there there was a reporter for the Sacramento B, I think it was, uh, Gary Webb. Uh Gary Webb was on to this story that the CIA was shipping cocaine to the United States in the 1980s, the early 1980s, and using the money from the cocaine

[01:05] to buy weapons for the Contra rebels who were fighting in Nicaragua. That was true. There was one minor detail that he got wrong, and this is what the CIA has hung its hat on ever since. There were two separate groups of Contraore rebels. one in the north and one in the south. The US was arming the group in the north. In the south, they were selling cocaine and they were using the money from the cocaine to arm themselves.

[01:36] The CIA allowed the trans shshipment of the cocaine through the north and into the United States. So, was it the CIA's cocaine? Not really. Not technically, but the CIA still allowed the cocaine to come into the United States. totally immoral and illegal. It's actually a death penalty case to import large amounts of drugs like that. Gary Webb um stumbled on this story and the minor detail that he got wrong was he didn't realize there were two separate Contra groups.

[02:10] He ended up committing suicide um on the very same day. Listen to this for a coincidence. On the very same day, the Washington Post and the New York Times wrote nearly identical articles saying, "Gary web's a liar. Gary Webb's a phony. He made the whole thing up. None of this is true." He was fired from his job uh at the newspaper and then bounced around from little unknown

[02:41] newspaper to little unknown newspaper. And then finally, in a state of depression, he committed suicide in a motel room in Colorado. Maybe maybe he didn't commit suicide. I don't know. Uh but he was right. The CIA was at the very least allowing the importation of cocaine, which led to the crack epidemic. It was it was the CIA cocaine that was turned into crack first in Oakland, California, later in uh Los Angeles that began then sweeping east

[03:15] until, you know, 1985 it arrived in Washington. And Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York had the highest murder rates in the history of the country. The whole country went crazy over crack. I've talked about heroin a lot. So in the last year of Taliban rule before 911, Afghanistan produced zero heroin, nothing. Um the Afghans actually were net food exporters in 2000

[03:49] and the first half of 2001. But by the time the United States invaded and occupied uh Afghanistan, it was producing 93% of the world's heroin. So to make a long story short, when I was the senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I told John Kerry, I want to go to Afghanistan and do an in-depth Senate study on heroin trafficking. And so I went to Afghanistan. Nobody wanted to help me. It's the only time in my career I ever

[04:23] pulled rank on someone. As a senior congressional staffer, I had the rank of Brigadier General. Oh. And I always felt kind of weird about that. And I I never used it for anything until this trip. I I went to Bagram Air Base outside of Kabull and I told them and I had cabled them in advance. I said, "I want to go to Kandahar. I want to go to Helmund to Lashkar and then back to uh Bagram." And they said, "No, no, can't do it. Too dangerous." I said, "Bullshit. You do this

[04:54] all the time. Literally every day." "No, can't do it. You're a civilian." And I said, "No, I have the rank of Brigadier General. I'm not asking you. I'm telling you, you will fly me to Kandahar and then to Lashkar and then come back." And so, okay. Okay. They agreed. So, I go to Kandahar. We have meetings there for half the day. We fly to Lashkar. As you're flying into Lashkar, all you can see for miles around is poppy. Nothing but poppy, like an ocean of poppy.

[05:30] And this village is in the middle of this ocean of poppy. So I said, I want to drive into the poppy fields and talk to a a farmer. They hated that idea. But we got into two jeeps. We had security. I had a translator. And sure enough, we find a poppy farmer in his field. So, I go to talk to him and I asked him what turned out to be a naive question. I said, 'Why do you grow poppy when you can grow things that have two growing seasons like onions or pomegranates? And he goes,

[06:03] "The Americans told me in 2001 that if I told them where the Arabs were, I could grow all the poppy I wanted." I said, "What Americans told you you could grow poppy?" And my military handler says, "Meeting's over." He pulled me by the arm. Meeting's over. We're under threat. We have to get back to Bagram. He did it on purpose. So, we get back to the helicopter. We fly back to Bagram. I I fly back to Washington. I write this paper, in-depth paper.

[06:35] And I had a friend at the Drug Enforcement Administration. So, I I called him and I said, "I'm going to send you a paper that I just wrote, eyes only. don't tell anybody, but I want your thoughts before I publish it." So, he calls me back, I don't know, 3 days later, and he said, "Buddy, you know, you're never going to get this published, right?" And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Afghanistan produces 93% of the world's heroin. Almost all of that heroin goes to Iran and Russia, and we want them to be addicted to heroin. It makes their societies weaker.

[07:13] He was right. (Senator John) Kerry never allowed me to publish it because the CIA told Kerry not to allow me to publish it. And uh and then we have to ask ourselves, you know, 10 years later, 15 years later, the same question. Why won't the Chinese stop the flow of fentanyl exactly into the United States? Because they want us to be addicted to fentanyl. It makes our society weaker. Very very very interesting what you just said and it's so true. You're right.

[07:45] Yeah. I mean who who doesn't have a friend or relative that's died of a fentanyl overdose in the US? I have three friends who've lost children to fentanyl. Really? Three. Mhm. But isn't fentanyl also produced inside the US by the Sackler family? That's medical fentanyl. But they also use that and get addicted to it. That's different. They get to it by the doctors. They get addicted to it and then that's how they turn to the other one. Right. In some cases. Yes. And and that's how that's how that's how that family has they've lost

[08:17] I mean they were fined a billion dollars in a class action suit. Yes. U their name has been stripped off of museums. Yeah. But the fentanyl that the Chinese are producing and a lot of it is Chinese-owned and it's produced in Mexico and smuggled across the border. Um, a lot of it is so potent that there have been there have been examples of police officers who have fainted just from being in the presence of fentanyl and they have to be given Narcan to bring them back.

[08:48] Oh wow. Yeah. It's completely unregulated. It's just you never know. a good friend of mine. Um, oh, and this just he he he's just spilled his soul on Facebook about this. He wasn't getting along with his daughter for years. It was a bitter divorce. His daughter was with the mother. Finally, as an adult, they finally forge a relationship. They become very close. She tells him she's going to meet friends out at a bar in Washington. Two hours later, she's

[09:18] dead. Oh. Because somebody offered a little bit of cocaine, it turned out to have fentanyl in it. It killed her instantly. Oh god. Oh god. And this happens every day in America. So sad.
