Senator Joe McCarthy and His Love of Heroin

This one is a trip through midcentury America and all its paranoias, moral panics, and witchhunts. In particular, we focus on two men, Senator Joseph McCarthy and Harry J Anslinger. One was responsible for the Red Scare and the other started the War on Drugs. But also one was a daily morphine junkie and the other was his plug. Yes...this is 100% a true story! And it's guaranteed ridiculousness!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Elizabeth Dutton Zaren Burnett.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
I know you, I know you, all right, Well, I've
been waiting a week to ask you this.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Do you know it's ridiculous?

Speaker 4 (00:12):
I do, Yes, I do.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Did you see me ever here waiting to hear it?

Speaker 5 (00:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (00:15):
Okay, so check it out. Our fans' biggest passion points
are food mashups? Oh lord, who am I? Who am
I talking about? Are fans' biggest passion points are food mashups?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Americans passion points?

Speaker 4 (00:30):
Well, it could be the rude dudes, right, but no,
it's a.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's smart better than that.

Speaker 4 (00:37):
They are better than that. It's marble Slab creamery, which
I guess is like a southern East Coast version of
Coldstone Creamery.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, I'm familiar with whatever.

Speaker 4 (00:48):
I don't know how they live. So they paired up.
And now this isn't new. This is apparently a couple
of years old. But they paired up.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Now you're going to the bank of massis.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
Well, yeah they have. There's like a frequent flyer, a
repeat offender inshups, one that comes up a lot. And
I think I've talked about them. Ice cream it's not
Ranch Valley ice cream, that Ranch Valley flavor. No, it's Cheetos.
I don't think I've talked about cheetohs.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
It oh cheese.

Speaker 4 (01:24):
I don't even another cheese.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
I just don't.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
Well, so Cheetos. I get a lot of these tips
from listeners, and Cheetos comes up a lot, like they
make like all sorts of gross stuff, and you see
it out and about like a lot of the takarias
around here, Cheetos everywhere.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
You know, tacover you want to fried fish with Cheetos exactly?

Speaker 4 (01:50):
Well, apparently the Marble Slab creamer you will throw it
in some of their ice cream. Why, they said they
can't wait to bring a little mischief to summer. They've
also they did like a Kraft Mac and cheese ice cream,
So you know they're not innocent in all this. But anyway,
so they they they said that Marble Slab Creamery and

(02:11):
Cheetos have a lot in common. Our brands are both fun, witty,
youthful and provide a playful release from reality, a.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Playful releast who is a brand?

Speaker 4 (02:23):
What's in the Cheetos that they're like? I just want
to dip out of reality. Let me just get.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Well.

Speaker 4 (02:30):
So there's also.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Now there's Cheetos.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
That tip about the ice cream came from listener Jen Silvas.
Listener Allie Wilkins strikes again. She's already given us a tip.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
She came through again, ally, why are you gonna do
it to me?

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Twice?

Speaker 4 (02:45):
In twenty nineteen Fashion Week, did you know that there
was a Cheeto's couture show?

Speaker 2 (02:51):
No, because I get out of the house.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
It was it was like some serious budget project runways.
I mean, a lot of legs, fluefy orange and snake
print and God help us all. But yeah, like so
Cheetos needs to lay off, they need to back up.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Just stay in your lane. Cheat does Yeah, give me
goodness and give me snacks.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
That's what I mean.

Speaker 4 (03:18):
It's like, I feel like these things are getting wilder
and wilder, and.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
We also have more desperate, is what I get.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
We also have to really think about our definition of
a mashup though, because I am getting some stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Where definition believe I asked that question it has to be.

Speaker 4 (03:31):
Sort of like opposite ends of the spectrum. So, like
I mean, ice cream and Cheetos. I think that's on
the line for me because it's like a sweetness savory
that you.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Normally wouldn't would normally be paired together.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
Yeah, but I mean that's not always true. And so
some stuff like I've gotten a lot of like zebra
cakes that those little Debbie zebra cakes. I don't know,
there's some sort of jump, but there's like a candle,
so it's candles, so like it's just going to be
like a sweet smelling, gross smelling candle. Guess what, we
got a ton of those in the world, So I

(04:03):
don't really count that as a mash up.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Or like a colonne that smells like leather, not really
a mash up because a lot of clones smell like leather.

Speaker 4 (04:10):
Yeah, yeah, especially like the Demeter colognes that are like
smell precise and like I know you're talking about anyway, whatever. Okay,
I've had enough of the mashups myself, so that's it.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Well, that is all ridiculous. Thank you, you know I got.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
I got something for you that is definitely ridiculous. Yes, please,
the man who started America's war on drugs, that's ridiculous.
His name was Harry j Anslinger. Okay, he's what you
would call a prick and a hypocrite. He's that's not
a judgment call on my part, by the way, that's
a fact.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
I mean, that's just known.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
He was the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, right,
he was also a drug dealer. Specifically, yeah, specifically he
was the connect for a sitting US senator's morphine supply.
Wait wait, yes, that man, that senator. He was the
one who started the Red Scare witch hunt. He teamed
up with the man who started the war on drugs,
and together those two men decided to change American history forever.

(04:59):
What it was a classic example Elizabeth, of do as
I say, not as I do, these drugs myself.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Oh god, this is ridiculous crime.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
I'm a podcast about absurd and outrageous caper's heist and
cons It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one
percent ridiculous. Yes, Elizabeth, I came out hot today. I
said the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was
supplying horse or in this case, morphine to a sitting
US senator. I did to say he was a drug dealer.

(05:48):
I said he was supplying drugs to a sitting US senator.
That's a lot who was this US senator. What do
you know about Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Speaker 4 (05:57):
Terrible, terrible human being?

Speaker 3 (05:59):
Right, yeah, Now, I'm going to tell you a lot
about him today, but I knew you'd be somewhat familiar.
But just to lay out some biographical detail. Joseph McCarthy.
He was born in nineteen oh eight. He was the
son of a Wisconsin farmer. He was fifth of nine kids.
At age fourteen, he dropped out of school to help
the family on the farm. Very Midwestern, very common at
that time. Later, at twenty years old, he went back

(06:20):
and attended high school, finished in one year. Smart kid, right,
him being the son of a hardscrabble farmer, he had
to go and work his way through college. So what
does he do. He goes off to Marquette, a Jesuit university.
It's the Catholic university in Milwaukee. While he's there, he
becomes a boxer, so he's fighting to be in school.
He also earned some coin as a coach.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Right.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
He develops at this point his quote bare knuckle boxing
mentality to life. Right, So he graduates from Marquette. He
attends law school at that same university. He passed the bar,
becomes a lawyer. He's ambitious, this young Joe McCarthy. I'm
telling you. One year after graduating law school, Elizabeth, what
does he do. He runs for district attorney. Year after

(07:01):
law school. He decided I could be the DA. Yeah,
so he runs and he lost. He was young, so
what did he expect? Right, So Joe McCarthy, he goes
back to begin being, you know, a first year lawyer
and to make ends meet. He's having trouble because you know,
he's ambitious, but he's a first year lawyer.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
There's not a lot of work. So he starts gambling.
He just gambles to make ends. Made it work.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
He gambles regularly heavy he's apparently good at it. A
few years later he decides I'm going to run for
office again. This time he wants to be a judge.
He's like, I've been a lawyer for a few years,
I should be a judge.

Speaker 4 (07:29):
So I'm a gambler, yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
Exactly, And he wins that election. So he becomes a judge.
Now to beat the incumbent, the young Joe McCarthy, he
relied on the old American tradition of lies in falsehoods.
The Joseph McCarthy character, if you will, the persona he became.
He found that he was particularly good at lying professionally
as a politician. So, for instance, he lied to his
opponent was seventy three years old, an unfit for office

(07:53):
due to his age. Turns out his opponent was not seventy.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Three years old. He was actually sixty six years old.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
The lie worked because the voters never checked the facts
and instead they elected Joe McCarthy, and he becomes the
state's youngest circuit judge to ever be elected. Then come
the warriors, Elizabeth. So what does young ambitious Joe McCarthy
want to do. Well, as we know, World War Two
began September first, nineteen thirty nine, and DOSSI He's invade Poland.
America doesn't enter the war till nineteen forty one, after

(08:20):
following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. So that surprise attack,
it gets American into a wartime mood. Everyone's all gin
and because before that we're isolationist, as you know. So
Joseph McCarthy he joins up in the military. He becomes
a soldier, but he did so reluctantly. Now Joe McCarthy
had a friend, his campaign manager, no less, he was
a fellow judge and an attorney. This dude's name was
Urban Urban P. Van Susteren. Now, when the US enters

(08:43):
the war, right and Suster and he's all loyal and
gung ho. He signs up. He urges his buddy Joe.
He's like, come on, man, you got to join up
to us. Go down to the draft office. Joe's like,
I got other ideas. He's like, wait a minute, what
are you talking about. He's like, I'm a judge, man,
I got stuff I gotta do. I'm gonna stay here.
I don't I don't know if he need.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
To join the war.

Speaker 6 (09:00):
Right.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
And so his buddy Van Sustern, he ain't hearing it.
He's like, he tells Joe and I quote be a hero,
join the Marines, right. Joe's like, well, I prefer to
be a hero at home. And Van Sustern he's taken
it back by his friends. Remember he was also the
campaign manager. So he knows this guy well. He knows
his good side, his bad side, everything. He's still surprised
by this cowardice and he asks him. He's like, what's
the matter you got near blood, and so Joe McCarthy's like, WHOA.

(09:24):
So Joe McCarthy decides, you know what, I'm gonna be
good to my buddy's word. He goes he needs to
go out there, and he's planned is to go grab
some of that glory from himself. It'd be good for
politics back home. So he needs to get close enough
to the war to get some glory, but not so
close that he's actually in danger. So Joe McCarthy decides, Okay,
since I've been bullied into going and you know kind
of fighting the Nazis, I'm gonna at least go in

(09:46):
as an officer. So he joins the Marines as a
first lieutenant and accordioners war records. I looked these up.
Jose McCarthy. He begins to war as an intelligence officer.
He was aboard of dive bombers. Who's up there in
the skies. That helped him a lot in terms of
getting away from some danger, but in a dive bomber
that was not apparently at the front of the attacks
he was not part of like the bomb squads they

(10:06):
were doing the major like oh, we're getting catching flak and.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
All that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (10:10):
That's not like a safe spot, but I guess, but
if it is.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
If you're in the rear guardtrolling.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
So he apparently flew twelve combat missions, but they weren't
real combat missions, as I kind of stress. For instance, Okay,
during one bomber run, he emptied his He was a tailgunner,
so he emptied the bomber's tailguns into a stand of
very threatening palm trees. His aim was so true and
he hit so many of those enemy trees.

Speaker 5 (10:33):
Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
But the crewmen, they gave him a nickname.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
They're like, way to go, Tailgunner Joe, and nickname stuck
to him. Now they did not mean it as a compliment,
but ye, he took it like once. So after the
war he calls himself Old Tailgunner Joe. So he claims
his glory from the war. Years right, he self reports
that he was in not in twelve, but get this,
thirty two aerial missions. He ups the number. He picked

(10:56):
that number specifically because it was important because that number
qualified for the Distinguished Flying Cross Medal.

Speaker 4 (11:02):
Oh you're kidding me, which he was awarded.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
You're seven years after the war because by then Old
tail Gunner Joe was a US Senator and the medal
was given to him due to his quote political influence.

Speaker 4 (11:14):
Oh anyway, during the.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
War, old tail gunner Joe, he did get an actual
letter of commendation once. He was proud to show anyone
This letter was signed by Admiral Chester W. Ninnets. Now
he was a chief of Naval Operations.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Big man.

Speaker 5 (11:27):
Right.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
Come to find out, Old tail Gunner Joe wrote the
letter himself. He wrote it as he prepared other letters,
real letters for soldiers to be commended by the admiral,
letters for him to sign later. And then tail Gunner
Joe sort of slipped his letter of commendation into the line,
had the admiral sign it, and boom done deal. Now
Joe McCarthy was an official war here.

Speaker 4 (11:46):
We got the letter to prove it and everything of
Oh wow, So Elizabeth, Also, what do all good war
heroes have besides medals and letters of commendation?

Speaker 2 (11:56):
They have war wounds?

Speaker 5 (11:57):
Right?

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yeah, they don't have a war wound. So did old
tail gunner Joe have a war wound to show off?
You better believe he did, Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
What war hero doesn't?

Speaker 5 (12:06):
So well?

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Hell, if he's gonna give himself one. He had to
have a real good one, right, So even if the
war was over, he would make sure he had a
war wound. Overtime, old tail gunner Joe, he told his
reporters and his colleagues in the Senate that he'd broken
his leg in the war. Now, sometimes he'd tell the
story he'd broken his leg in an airplane crash. Other
times the story went he broke his leg as a
result of anti aircraft fire. The truth, Elizabeth, was his

(12:29):
war wound was a result of a shipboard party.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
So when sailors cross the equator for the first time.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
The little celebration.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Okay, so sailors.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
Have not crossed the equator, they're called polly walks. And
once you cross the equator now you are called a shellback.
So when he got his like shellback crossing all the
sailors and see him on board, they got drunk. They
started partying.

Speaker 4 (12:50):
Oh yeah, they do. They put on costumes.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
You know all about it, right, I have.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
My grandfather was a career navy and I have photos
from when he did it. And then as subsequently when
his ship would cross they would have the big party.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
And they do like like like a drag show. Sometimes
they do like a whole bit, right.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Well, anyway, while he was you know, sitting there, you know,
drunk partying with the boys, he broke he slipped, broke
his leg party and that was his war whom the
old tail jo.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
So after the Warriors, what does Joseph McCarthy do next,
now that he's a war hero. Well, he's ready to
be a politician. So he runs, goes back and he
runs for US Senate. He did this way, I'm sure
I asked you back up. He did that during the
war Riors. He couldn't wait for the war to end.

Speaker 4 (13:33):
That's a big trajectory to go from new judge in
essence to then the Senate.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
To US Senate. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (13:38):
Yeah, he didn't do anything at the state level.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
By the way, he still was on active duty when
he ran. Yes, in nineteen forty four. When he ran,
he was he was an active soldier in theater. And
decides I'm going to beat the logo Wisconsin incumbent, and
he lost because Wisconsin is like, bro, you have a
job to do. Why don't you do that one you're
over there fighting.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
He's not coming to any debates exactly, he's just missing everything.
He's not gonna be able to be there to vote no.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
But anyway does it's not gonna stop Old Joe. Two
years later, when he's finally back in forty six, once again,
newly self made war hero, he decides, I'm gonna I'm
gonna be a senator, darn't it. So this time he
goes and runs for the other Senate seat in Wisconsin.
But this time he was smart enough to get backing.
He went out and he got the Republican Party bosses
in Wisconsin, that guy to back old tailgunner Joe, and

(14:27):
once that dude took him under his wing. Now he's
a real candidate. So he goes on the attack. He's
got money, he's got the backing of the boss. He
starts lying his off. He claims his opponent was a
coward and the man refused to go to war and
refuse to enlist. The truth, Elizabeth Well, his opponent was
forty six years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He

(14:47):
was too old to enlist. He wanted to the army
would have been like, thanks, love, were good, we don't
need it, you know. But what what did the truth
matter to Joe McCarthy. So he openedly also claimed that
his opponent was a war prof for teer one who
made a huge fortune. Why old tailor gunner Joe was
overseas fighting to save America from the Nazis and the
Japanese Empire. The truth turns out the opposite was true.
It was Joseph McCarthy. He was the actual war prophets

(15:09):
here made a tidy fortune, nearly a million dollars in
today's money by investing in the stock market during the war.
But there was a little little mystery about where he
got the money to initially invest. Yeah, and that mystery
never got.

Speaker 4 (15:21):
So family money because he came from farm folks.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah, he had no money and he wasn't getting paid
that well. As a judge, he's like just putting socking
away this Soverone was like, where did the money come from? Joe? Anyway,
he goes on, he wins the election. Now he becomes
wisconsin newest US senator. Yeah, so let's take a little
break and we get back. Will dive into all the
nitty the gritty, the heroin and.

Speaker 5 (15:42):
The ugly back in a flash.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
All right, Elizabeth Zabbin, Hey, what's so Joe McCarthy. Yeah,
you're digging him.

Speaker 4 (16:10):
Oh he's he's a peach.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Isn't a fun one.

Speaker 4 (16:12):
He just gets better and better the more I learned.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah, you never hear about this side of Joe McCarthy.
You always hear about what he did once he became
a USA. I wanted to share lying. Yes, God, yeah,
nothing new under the sun. So Joseph McCarthy in his
first term in the Senate, he goes out there, he
makes a name for himself. I mean he did this
by kneeing a journalist in the crotch.

Speaker 5 (16:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
This had happened in the cloak room of a Washington,
DC women's club. That's where the junior centator was set
to give a talk to a audience of women. And
somehow he got in the scuffle and he needed this
guy in the crush, but no tail gunner Joe. He
claimed he didn't need the journalist in the family jewels. Instead,
he said, he slapped the taste out of that man's mouth.
He went on the record, he wanted to be known
he slapped the slapper.

Speaker 4 (16:52):
So I'm going to think that he did a little
bit of the dirty knee.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
I think so, maybe both why not both rather cowardly.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Yeah, you know, I he's a he likes to talk brave,
he likes you to talk. I mean, he was a boxer.
So the guy can't take it as I forgot about. No,
he's not like an all talk he just yeah.

Speaker 4 (17:09):
He's not. But he's also not like he's not like
Harry Reid boxer. No, no, I wouldn't to talk about
senate boxing box.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
And now whatever happened in that clerk room that made
his reputation early on in the Senate, right, So once
again I told you he called it his bare knuckle
way of being. So he starts calling this barnuckle politics.
He's like, I'm just noting for my barre knuckle politics.
You he keeps saying baronockle politics. Anytime you look up,
it's baronnuckle politics. It's like he wants to be known
as so. And also he promised a lot more where
that came from. So he's like a real scrappy fighter

(17:39):
right now this at this point, we're in the nineteen fifties,
Elizabeth A. Right, the war is over. It's the nineteen
fifties and night by nineteen fifty two, Senator Joseph McCarthy
and his fellow politicians. They've already become irritated with old
tail gunner Joe. He's barely been in the Senate for
a few months and they're already like, I hate this guy.
He's completely Some of his colleagues have already lobbied to
have him center for his behavior right. Others are now

(18:02):
attempting to discredit him in the press. Some turned to
the power of ugly rumors, and I mean especially the
ugly ones for nineteen fifty.

Speaker 4 (18:07):
Try I love that.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
There was a publisher in a Nevada named Hank Greenspun.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yes, you know him.

Speaker 4 (18:12):
He published the Las Vegas Sun. I used to write
for the Sun.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Oh okay, I was gonna say it worked for his kids.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
I thought you.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
Worked for the Las Vegas review journals. I would say,
you're Alma Mater in the Las Vegas Red Review Journal.
It's the Las Vegas Son. Okay, Well, you're Alma Mater.
Hank Greenspun, the publisher, he was in a personal battle
with Senator Joseph McCarthy. He was called to testify in
his ongoing witch hunts and his witch hunt hearings. If
you will is his congressional hearings over and over again,
he testified, right, So he wrote a story that tailgunner

(18:41):
Joe was a secret homosexual.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
He In his daily column from October twenty fifth, nineteen
fifty two, in Las Vegas, Son Greenspan wrote this smear attack,
saying that quote, it is common talk among homosexuals in
Milwaukee who rendezvous in the White Horse Inn. The Senator
Joe McCarthy is often engaged in homosexual activities. So that's
how will he was going. Is he wanted to get
as dirty as he could in the nineteen.

Speaker 4 (19:03):
Fifteen old at that time. Like I mean even today
people kind of cast dispersions well completely, but I mean
take they to make it an insult.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
They got in the mud with Joe, is my point right?

Speaker 4 (19:13):
Right?

Speaker 3 (19:14):
So about is Cat Greenspun? We should do a whole
episode on him. I would just barely scratch the surface.
And what I found. In nineteen forty seven, he was
the press agent at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino aka
the first casino in Vegas. He was the one who
had to sell America on Vegas and and he did it.
And his boss, mind you, was the swanky gangster Bugsy Seagull.
So after he gets Vegas going, what'd he do? He

(19:34):
establishes a newspaper, So it was, you know in nineteen
this is nineteen forty nine. He buys the Sun in
nineteen fifty makes it his Now, in between being Bugsy
Seagulls press agent and founding the Las Vegas Sun and
giving himself the Daily Column, he could attack a senator. Yeah,
he conducted basically, I don't want to put this a
smuggling case of in World War two Surplus. He was
arrested and convicted of violating the US Neutrality Act. Yeah,

(19:58):
Cordi was FBI five then late forties. Green Spun had
been running fifty caliber machine guns to Israel. Then he'd
smuggled out of Hawaii out of the military Surplus, sent
them to Mexico where they were then smuggled to Israeli fighters.
He gets busted on this. For his punishment, he just
has to pay ten grand. Oh, he saw no prison time,
so clearly he was protected. So this guy Greenspun, he's

(20:20):
not afraid to go after the schmuck senator from Wisconsin.
I'll take him on. So he just keeps attacking him.
In his weekly column and like, there's some stuff when
it doesn't matter, but he he gets bad, It gets
real bad, and I'll just you know, so the smears
come out. Jigger Hoover now he's alighted by this. He's like, oh,
he has to get involved because the legendarily unscrupulous head
of the FBI he grabbed onto scandal and sallacious like

(20:42):
a baby goes from mother's milk.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
It's just like, oh, give me some of that.

Speaker 4 (20:45):
He was like, yeah, thirsty for it. He loved.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
He lived off the dirt.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
Yeah, and the creepier, the weird of the better.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Completely it was his mana. It was like this kept
him going. It crossed the desert of time. From this,
he immediately has his g men investigate there's any truth
to these rumors. Now he finds a letter from this
one army lieutenant who claimed that he slept with the senator,
and he finds a bunch of other rumors in Washington.
But Jagger Hoover determines and he announces that old tail
gunder Joe's no homosexual. So a year after Greenspan's column

(21:15):
in nineteen fifty three, Joe McCarthy he marries a researcher
in his office, someone he'd married. So he marries his secretary,
essentially right, Everyone says this is to quell talk about
his sexuality. Now, despite all these many personal enemies and
these serious attacks that are being leveraged against him, old
tail gunner Joe, he keeps his position in the US Senate.
But not only that, he grows in power. At first,
he was this isolated figure, a man who always ate

(21:36):
a loan in the Senate lunch room. But then Elizabeth,
just like Steve Martin's the Jerk, he found his special purpose.
In nineteen fifty two. He finds that a witch hunt
can earn him friends, fame, infamy alike. And so the
news coverage, Oh my god, the news coverage. So his
name is now known from coast to coast.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
He loves this.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
This is all Joe needs to hear. It's like, oh,
everyone's talking about Joe McCarthy. So he starts stoking the
flames of his communist which hunt with this speech nineteen
fifty Wheeling, West Virginia. He claims the quote, the state
department is infested with communists. I have here in my
hand a list of two hundred and five a list
of names were made known to the Secretary of State
as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless

(22:19):
are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
That's a major claim.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
That is, so he had a secret list, Elizabeth so
ws like that. They can't be ignored, though, So the
Senate votes to unanimously, mind you, to conduct an investigation.
So the Tidings Committee is launched.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Right now.

Speaker 3 (22:35):
This is never intended to be a serious committee. It's
a show committee. It's just meant to like make people see.

Speaker 5 (22:40):
What you know.

Speaker 4 (22:41):
That's a common Washington.

Speaker 5 (22:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Look, look we're theater.

Speaker 4 (22:45):
We're not really doing We have real issues, but no,
continue with the theater.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
So Democratic Senator Millard Tidings himself, he said, quote, let
me have him, this is McCarthy for three days in
public hearings, and he'll never show his face in the
Senate again. So now, how wrong was he? So well
glad Tidings missed on that one. So the first investigation
was the beginning of the Red Scare. In the years
of the this is we got marks the rise of McCarthyism.
So now the Senator, he said, of his own this

(23:12):
new term McCarthyism. He said, Coote McCarthyism is Americanism with
its sleeves rolled.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
Like that.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
See, that's all bare knuckle politics. So now he decided, uh,
you know, okay, well we'll skip ahead of Elizabeth. I
just I really want to tell you this. Can you
guess which American political family dynasty did the most to
empower and legitimize Senator Joseph McCarthy. Which American political family dynasty?
We only have a few of them. Yeah, it's not

(23:41):
the Adams.

Speaker 4 (23:41):
Family, paper the Kennedy's. Well, that's what I mean. I
just couldn't imagine.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
Yeah, the Catholic connection, I anti communism and Catholicism.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yeah, so the most.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
Virulent anti communists of the mid center we were Catholics.
That was their bag, right, So Joe McCarthy Catholic, Kennedy's Catholic.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
They line up there. Now.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Joseph Kennedy, he was a former bootlegger and a gangster,
and he was shepherding his sons into politics. He wants
to go legit and he's like Senator Kennedy, President Kennedy anyway,
he's eager for the one of them to be elected president.
That's where he's got his eyes set on. He wanted
to be He got to be ambassador to Ireland, but
he really wanted to be president. So Joe Kennedy thought
the other Irish Joe and politics could be helpful to
his boys. So McCarthy could soft pedal the idea of

(24:28):
a papist holding high office.

Speaker 4 (24:30):
That was a big deal, right, you.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
Don't even hear that term anymore, A paper stand for
those who don't know. A papist to somebody who is
a Catholic, Yeah, it goes basically. In the fifties, most
Americans were distrustful of Catholics.

Speaker 4 (24:41):
Yeah, they didn't know are you beholden to the pope
or are you beholden to the American people? That was
the lad who to whom were you loyal?

Speaker 3 (24:49):
They really believe that the Pope could tell the president, look,
I need you to go do this, and they're like, oh,
they gotta do it.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
YO told me, there you go.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
So that was a problem for Joe Kennedy. But then
they had Joe McCarthy kind of ahead of them. So
he did right, and he did right by the good
of America and blah blah blah. Then his Kennedy boys
good too, So they decided to help Joseph McCarthy, you know,
win office. Because remember he's not popular, he's not looking
like he's going to be a two term senator. So
old tail gunner Joe gets tight with the Kennedys. He
actually dated two of the Kennedy daughters. Really, he dated

(25:16):
Pat and Eunice. So you can often find him at
the Hyenas Port compound in Massachusetts.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
So despite his unpopularity, the fact that he's getting tight
with the Kennedy's helps him because they then put all
of their efforts behind him and they get him re elected.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Right.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Meanwhile, the Senate is like trying to sideline him. He
gets named the Chairman on Government Operations. It was supposed
to be just like a sideline for him. They just
shunt him off. He'll always do some business over there.
But turns out there's also inside of that a secret,
powerful subcommittee called the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, And
that's what Joseph McCarthy used to start his witch hunts. Yeah,
and by the way, he had to pay back some favors.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
So what does he do.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
He's like, oh, I need to hire people. He goes
in for his team of investigators. He hired some lawyers,
two rising legal s of note, a twenty seven year
old named Robert F.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Kennedy.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
He goes and joins, and then that's probably had no
doubt a favored of his father. Then there's another star
legal mind who would be the future mob lawyer for
two of the five families of New York and New Jersey,
and later a Trump lawyer, Roy Khne. Oh god, it
was a power show, just the center, the nexus of
dark energy. So now the ground is set for Joe

(26:23):
McCarthy's meteoric rise and for him to change the very
face of American politics and really the culture. So he
was right there right at the time, the early nineteen fifties.
Everything's been primed for him because America is about to
descend into paranoid and delusions, and he's going to be
a prime driver. So we got Bebop and beat Nicks,
we got the hula hoop and suburban grass yards and everything.
But also we got also the civil rights movement. People

(26:44):
are getting a little weird about that. Suddenly there's commis everywhere.
Now everyone's freaking out, and the commis, according to the
people like Joe McCarthy, they have plans to take down America.
Sinister plans, Elizabeth. They're plotting in opium dens in Red
China right at this scary moment, Vidually, the comedies were
conspiring with the Red Chinese to grow opium and import
the morphine and heroin into the US. And then the

(27:06):
commis in Red China would create a generation of drug
addict American teens, Elizabeth, And you know what that means.
Forget Elvis, forget your rock and roll. That would undermine
the nation. Who would protect the good Americans from this
grave new menace. Well, enter our man tailgunner, Joe. So
of course he's the one who first finds these suspected
comedies and brings them to light. He creates the panic

(27:28):
and then plays firefighter. It's a perfect role for right
bare knuckle boxing.

Speaker 4 (27:31):
I like how they're gonna blame China when really the
CIA was going to take care of that for them
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
I just give him time. Hold on, We're then too
a whole business.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
So the Senate his set at subcommittee in McCarthy's they
started investigating rumors of communists in the US military. He
starts with his signal Corps. Then he moves on to
finding compromised homosexuals in the government who can be turned
by the Commis. Then he doubles back to finding communists
because that makes for better headlines. So now full steam
ahead on the Red Square. Meanwhile, his team, the team,
remember like Bobby Kennedy, Roy Come, and they had their doubts,

(28:00):
Like Bobby Kennedy even said of McCarthy's subcommittee that quote,
no real research was ever done. Most of the investigations
were instituted on the basis of some preconceived notion by
the Chief Council of It or his staff members, and
not on the basis of any information that had been developed.

Speaker 4 (28:15):
So it's you know, it's a tradition.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
Yeah, they're running around there like just making stuff up
and chasing their illusions right now, even the shark and
lawyer's clothing, Roy Cone, he conceded, Senator McCarthy undermined his
own battles with communism with quote his penchant for the
dramatic and quote by making statements that could be construed
as promising too much. So basically he was just lying

(28:38):
and selling things. So but what did Joseph McCarthy care
about that. He didn't care. He had witnesses to grow.
He had TV. Elizabeth, you know that classic question, are
you now or have you ever been a member of
the Communist Party?

Speaker 2 (28:53):
You remember that?

Speaker 4 (28:54):
Yeah, that's him.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Yes, well, yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
That became a refrain, a chorus, a pop song chorus
across America nineteen fifties two, nineteen fifty three.

Speaker 4 (29:02):
Oh yeah, no, it was a scary time. Oh, completely
creatives and people like my grandma, Oh yeah, it was scary.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
The reason Joseph McCarthy got so famous so fast is
because he got his his Subcommittee hearings on TV. He
was real tight with the press and he's like, yeah,
bring your cameras in. So yeah, for two years, she's
just a ton of hearings. They're all on TV. And
keep in mind, TV basically only comes about nineteen forty eight,
so we're fifty two. There's not everyone has TVs.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
That's a big deal.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
There's not a programming. Joseph McCarthy becomes one of the
first big TV stars. Yeah, he's on all the time,
and he's so neat and it's dramatic.

Speaker 4 (29:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Anyway, the witnesses he's calling to testify before his witch
hunt trials. They aren't just the famous Hollywood stars that
you hear about the blacklisted, Yeah, the screenwriters Dalton Trombo. No,
there are also a lot of regular everyday Americans, and
they all had their lives ruined by his allegations. Now
a witness, they could be accused of being a Communist
because they were one a member of a union that
had communists in his membership exactly. Or witness could be

(29:59):
a accused of being a Communist because they had purchased
say It insurance policy from an organization that was later
designated to be a communist front by Joseph McCarthy. Or
my favorite, though, this is my favorite, we are the
book Club comedies. One witness was accused of being a
Communist because their Great Books book club had read Karl Marx. Now,
if I'm not mistaken, your mother's is a great book.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
Clubs books she's in. Yeah, she is a member of
actually two different great books.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
Wow, See, your mama would have been a comedy.

Speaker 4 (30:27):
It would have been.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
During those years of McCarthyism. There were many folks in
power in Washington who despised them. As I founded out,
they distrusted him. They thought he was deranged, a danger
to the republic, but they did very little to stop
him because McCarthy had the people in a full froth.
They didn't want that being aimed at them, so they
had to be smart about how they took him down.

Speaker 4 (30:48):
Well, and everyone knows he's a liar, so it's like,
say whatever, it doesn't have to you know exactly.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
So when you were unbeholden to the truth, I mean,
you can pretty much fly over anything doesn't matter because
it's all lies.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
You're you're powered by.

Speaker 4 (31:02):
Live well, and you have this new era of television
and so you have like people getting fast brief bits
of information into their home, yes and so not everything
is going to be able to be fully explained or
fleshed out or investigated.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yes, or corrected. So say the statement gets out there
and then later on it gets correct.

Speaker 4 (31:19):
You can't unring those bells.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
Not everyone hears the corrections.

Speaker 4 (31:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
So, now, looking back, you have to wonder why did
Joseph McCarthy act like he did. His subordinates Roy Cone RFK.
They both called him ill prepared. They said he was mercurial, petty,
sometimes he was messionic. He could be prone to delusions,
to my ears, Elizabeth, what I hear? There's a clear
explanation for why Joseph McCarthy might be focused on threats.
Only he saw those enemies, only he perceived It's obvious

(31:43):
to me dupe was high as hell. He was high
as hell. Yeah, he's the drawing us. So it turns
out this was actually an open secret in Washington. It
could have been used to take down Joseph McCarthy, but
unlike his suspected homosexuality, the people thought that we can't
put that out there. That's unfair. So this was the
the like the line they would not cross. But so
it never gets used against him. But it also helped

(32:05):
explain his paranoia, his odd behavior right, because Joseph McCarthy
was a full on dope junkie, like a morphine daily attict.
Dope junk wow, like Charlie Parker dope junkie.

Speaker 6 (32:17):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yes, dope junkie. Yes, I did not know that, so
did you know? Like?

Speaker 3 (32:22):
So he you know why he felt safe to use
morphine on the daily as a sitting US senator in Washington, DC,
while he ran a witch hunt of morality where all
the press following him because his dealer was the US government. Specifically,
his plug was the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics,
the man who started America's war on drugs, Like, how
do you even make sense?

Speaker 4 (32:41):
Did he say that it was just like you know,
war wound treatment, No, you would hope.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
No, it's even worse than that. Let's take a little
break and after this, I'll tell you about the man
who was his plug, Harry j Anslinger, and answer all
your questions.

Speaker 6 (32:55):
Yeah, all right, Elizabeth, Yeah, you're ready to really get

(33:18):
sick twisted in sideways always because we're about to get
into the Harry j Anslinger portion of this.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Now, what do you know about like reefer badness, the
war on drugs, the early.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Years, the war on black culture, jazz?

Speaker 4 (33:30):
You know, right, it's you know, it's a panic, it's
as Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
It's a lot of like taking a lot of social
concerns and throat lumping them together and saying they're all gonna,
you know, go after your children.

Speaker 4 (33:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
So the well, first, just to clear the air, I'll
just I'll confirm for you the allegations I'm throwing out there.
So casually, Yes, after Joseph McCarthy died, Harry j. Anslinger,
the former federal head of the Bureau of Narcotics. He
published a memoir called The Murderers, and in his memoir,
an Slinger confessed his time as a drug dealer for

(34:02):
America's leading commy With witch Hunter Right, he basically discovered
that one of the most powerful men in America was
a morphine junkie, and he recalled how he confronted Joseph
McCarthy about it, and the Center was unapologetic, just like,
he's like, what you coming for, old tailgunner? Joe, bring it?
So he he goes. She goes on the attack because
that's his thing. He threatened the head of the Federal
Bureau of Narcotics. He's the junkie, he threatens the cop.

(34:26):
So Anslinger quoted the Senator and he writing that he
was warned, I wouldn't try to do anything about it, Commissioner.
It'll be worse for you, and if it winds up
in a public scandal, and that should hurt this country,
I wouldn't care.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
That choice is yours.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
Oh God, So why did Harry j Anslinger back down?

Speaker 2 (34:43):
Who is this Harry Jnslinger?

Speaker 4 (34:45):
Who is this Harry j? Answer?

Speaker 3 (34:46):
I'm so glad you asked great question, Harry j Anslinger.
He's why we fought and lost the war on drugs.

Speaker 6 (34:52):
Now.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
Anslinger he was the head of the f as I said,
the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics for thirty
two years. He was the very first one, and he
pretty much formed it. So he he led the bureau
from its inception until his forest retirement in the nineteen seventies.
By all accounts Anslinger was an extremely racist, bigoted man.
For instance, he despised jazz music. He tells agents to
raid the home of jazz men and to quote shoot
first and ask questions later. He particularly despised and feared

(35:15):
Billie Holiday personally. An Slinger did everything he could to
make her life a living hell. Billy Holliday was a
known heroin junkie and thus an easy target for him.
So Anselinger had his agents hound and Harassmer for years,
always underwatched every day of her life. They once he
was aware of her, he didn't rest until she was
locked up in a West Virginia prison on a one
year stretch. They made a movie about it recently that
the case was called The United States of America Versus

(35:37):
Billy Holiday in her memoir Billy Roade, That's just the
way it felt, the United States of America versus Billy Holiday.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
Now, even after she was out of prison, Antlinger he
assigned an undercover agent to get close to her to
get him the charges he needed to put her away forever.
He picked a black undercover agent. It was very rare
he could this guy named Jimmy Fletcher. This agent did
his part. He gets close to Billy Holiday, becomes her friend.
He starts doing drugs with her, arranged for her to
be busted on a drug possession charge, and that charge
meant she would lose her cabaret card in New York.

(36:05):
So now we talked about this in the past, the
Lord Buckley, how women he passed it was the end
of the cabaret card system. Well, at this point, this
is the height of it, very much in right. So
Billy Holiday couldn't perform at Harlem, she couldn't perform anywhere
in New York. Now thanks to Anslinger in his felony,
she can't perform anywhere in the United States. So she
asked to travel. She has to go to Europe, she
has to go to Cube. But by the way, the
drugs from the bust they never got entered into evidence

(36:27):
to when she had to fight this case, she decided
she would show them that she had been clean, that
she was not on drugs, and that she had basically
been the drugs had been faked. So Billy Holiday she
goes to rehab in surprise, surprise, she didn't have a
single moment to withdrawal. She was indeed clean. So the
jury finds us out they sided with Billy Holiday. So
this pisses off an Slinger, So what's he gonna do?
He reassigned Jimmy Fletcher, the undercover agent, to stay by

(36:50):
her side, get me something to bust her. He drives
her to the brink of an early death, and she
was indeed at the end of her life in a
hospital bed being treated for liver problems. An Slingers agents
they spring into action. They claim that they found heroin
hidden in a tinfoil envelope suspended from a nail in
the wall or a hotel room, a hospital bed right
the government narcotics agents. They held her in custody in

(37:11):
the hospital and they basically this means her friends or
family nobody can visit her. So Lady Day she dies
with federal narcotics agents at her bedside. She's literally surrounded
at her.

Speaker 4 (37:19):
Deathbank, which they basically drove her to it.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
Yeah, so this is like how crazy he is. At
one point ansling her, He's like, he's like high on
his power. He plots to organize a massive nationwide roundup
of all known potsmokers. This is the entire country. She
wrote to all of his agents, quote, prepare all cases
in your jurisdiction involving musicians in violation of the marijuana laws.
We will have a great national round up and arrest
all such persons in a single day. So before he

(37:43):
could have his nationwide raids, and senators they catch wind
of what he plans to do, right, and they decided
to question his bureau's new gestapo like tactics because some
of them had just fought a war. They're like, didn't
we just fight a world war.

Speaker 4 (37:54):
To stop this art bare Yeah exactly.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
Hanselinger is like, well, you know my semi fascistic plot here.
It's a crackdown. And by the way, it's not focused
on quote the good musicians, but the jazz type. That's
what he said. So he didn't get approval for his
nation wide round up. Now, meanwhile, remember this is the
same guy who is Joseph McCarthy's morphine connect this guy.
So the irony is ridiculous his pain and not in

(38:17):
that good fun way. It's in that American history way.
So anyway, so the Senator Joseph McCarthy and Harry Anslinger, like,
how do they mix? Right now? I told you like
Anslinger is a prick, right, I told you up top.
But we've kind of seen how he's a jerk with
all of these behavior. Let's get into how he's a hypocrite.
Some might call Harry j Anslinger the Jaeggar Hoover of

(38:38):
the drug war. This is fitting right. He did have
similar powers. He did lord over a federal bureau for decades.
He held grudges against many of the same Americans, many
of them black. Now, the two men, they were not
particularly close. They were friendly, but they were not close.
They were essentially rivals. Because Jaeger Hoover famously didn't trust anyone.
He was also very territorial. Anslinger was smart enough not

(38:59):
to trust, not to side with him. Also, he is
smart enough not to grow his bureau too big that
it threatened Hoover. Otherwise Hoover would just swallow it into
the FBI. So Anslinger. He's a cage bureaucrat. He's figured
out how to survive and so. And as we saw
with the Billie Holliday, like with jig Or Hoover, he
was just as much of a bigot. So this guy
he loved or ass black celebrities culture figures until they

(39:19):
were dead. He's just a class act all the way around. Right,
So he makes his name for himself in the Prohibition.
During Prohibition he worked in the Bahamas. He tried to
bring down rum runners like your boy, the real McCoy.
Yeah right, they may even cross paths.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
But in nineteen thirty he gets appointed by President Hoover
to be the first Commissioner of the newly established Federal
Bureau of Narcotics. Right, so he's the man who launched
would later become America's War on drums. I'm sorry, that's
the typeo America's war on drugs. Drugs, So anyway, he
called it the War on narcotics. It gets paired with
the legal precedent of the Marijuana Act of nineteen thirty seven,

(39:53):
and boom, this is the beginning of the War on drugs. Yeah,
so during the World War two years Antler he starts
to play on the paranoid of the war to both
the profile of his Federal Bureau of Narcos. He needs
to make some headlines. Right, this plays well with the
racist attitudes of the time. So the press they start
gleefully reporting about whenever Anslinger tell him stuff about the Japanese,
for instance, that they've been using dope as quote an

(40:14):
instrument of national policy for the last decade to poison
the American people. Now remember later on is going to
be the Red Chinese. Now it's Japanese. So what randemy
it is? They're plotting with opium to take us down.
Same story, it doesn't matter. But it doesn't matter if
it's true or not true. It sells papers. So after
this war, the same approach of misinformation. It continues. The
plot gets moved to China. The Reds are doing it?

(40:36):
Why not?

Speaker 4 (40:36):
Right?

Speaker 3 (40:36):
Nineteen fifties roll on. Vague mood of paranoia and suspicion
gets turned into a real era of paranoia. Now they
love it. Politicians find they can use Anslinger's crusade to
gain some media attention for themselves. They discover that fear
sells just as well as sex in America. They're like,
oh hot, darn enter Senator Estas Keyfoby remember truth a

(41:00):
comic book story. No, he let his crusade. I told
you against the perils of comic books in the nineteen fifties.
He was trying to use this same paranoia to get
himself some headlines of his own right. So he tries
to leverage a growing paranoia, and he sides with Harry Anslanger.
He signed with the car. He sides with anybody. Well,
Once Harry Anslinger decides, I'll play ball with this cat,

(41:22):
he's another center that I can work with. Out come pamphlets,
We get readers, digest articles, Time magazine articles all about
the dangers of dope in America. One pamphlet warned of families,
our teenagers today are menaced by a danger more virulent
than cancer, as deadly as the H bomb. Do you
know what that danger was, Elizabeth, caffeine, Mexican pot. It

(41:42):
was pott, not the pot we smoked. Now, that is
the really strong stuff that's been all like, you know, chemically,
like crystals exactly. No, it was just like that old
Mexican ditch weed, like the sticks and stems of the
baby Boomer smoked like on album records covers, and they're
separating out the seeds. That stuff that was the great threat,
that was worse than the H bomb, worse than cancer.

Speaker 4 (42:04):
I mean, like take a step back, worse than the
H bomb.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Yes, we also, like you know, as we're going to
be putting money into these threats, we've decided we're gonna
put a lot of money into this threat and less
money into cancer research because this threat.

Speaker 4 (42:16):
Is more of a threat Smoka jay And suddenly all
that's left on the sidewalk is their shadows break.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
So come nineteen fifty, the Senate launches a new Special
Committee to investigate organized crime and interstate commerce. The chairman
was Tennessee Senaer Estra's q Fauba. And now, like Joseph
McCarthy's later Red Scare hearings, his subcommittee hearings were also televised.
So once again he's trying to work the fame game.
And he you know, so Keith Faber's hearings, you know,
they were really really powerful, Like that's why McCarthy's like,

(42:45):
I gotta get in on this because Key Father kind
of set the mold for him. Life Magazine looked back
a year after his his hearings in nineteen fifty, so
basically nineteen fifty one, Life Magazine wrote that quote the
sending investigation into interstate crime was almost the sole subject
of national conversations. Papers gave it ten times as much
space as the Korean War.

Speaker 4 (43:04):
So yeah, because they're all too busy listening their.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
Exactly they're actually worried about fighting the commies. They're fighting
him in a war, but instead they go chasing this imaginary,
elusive thing they've come up with, Like, yeah, ten times
more attention anyway. Star witness during these hearings was Harry
j Anslinger. He thrilled the public by being the first
federal official to admit the existence of the mafia. He
claimed that the gangster Lucky Luciano was in charge of

(43:28):
all the narcotics in the United States, one man Elizabeth
all the dope. He called the mafia the Black Hand,
which connected it to its Sicilian roots, and that also
gave it allure that the news media loved. Right So
before that nobody wanted to admit the mafia was real.
They talked about the syndicate, blah blah, but not the mafia.
Right now, all of a sudden, there's the mafia. But
the real story is far more complex than the mafia.

(43:50):
When it came to heroin and opium and morphine, he
also went, oh, no, it's the red Chinese. He's like
he's got multiple lemmies. Right, So the Commies are the
dope peddlers and are sending in drugs to our country
to ruin your America. So now at this point, the truth, however,
is actually the opposite, because it was the nationalist Chinese,
our allies who were exporting the opium and the heroine
from China. It was not the communist it was Shanghai

(44:13):
Scheck's boys, So our allies selling us the dope. Anyway,
Anselinger ignored that, and of course, because he preferred his vision,
it was so much more powerful.

Speaker 6 (44:20):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
So, also, guy's a gifted storyteller. Why go with the truth?

Speaker 2 (44:23):
Why be so?

Speaker 3 (44:25):
American culture becomes convinced that it's about to be overrun
by Mexican dope smugglers, aided and abedded by a band
of black jazz musicians, assisted by the inscrutable Chinese opium peddlers,
all of them hell bent on turning Iowa City into
ground zero for like a full communist revolution.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Right, totally reasonable.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
So now this fever paranoia, it isn't partisan binds you.
This is Democrats and Republicans. They're both in on this
and the sweep. They're swept up in the mood. The
Democrats actually asked Harry j Anslinger, who was a Republican,
to run as the VP on the Democratic presidential ticket.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Really yes, but because they cited, like.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Well, this used to be used to American politics tradition,
used to be split tickets. So this is like a
call to decency. We're gonna get Harry Anslinger to help us. Anyway,
This same count who is hounding and harassing Billie Holiday
at this exact same time on his little sick, little
pet mission. And he's also not busy creating the war
on drugs, he's also, mind you, creating the legal justification
for mass incarceration, also the justifications for all the like

(45:20):
mandatory minimums and so forth. Right, all this is happening
while they chase these imaginary boogeymen. And he's getting heroin too,
his buddy. That's the like, Yeah, there's no substance to
McCarthy or Harry j Anslinger's multiple scare campaigns and the
paranoia they stoked. They just make stuff up, then they investigate.
They ruined people's lives. Then McCarthy, he often didn't conclude
his hearings. He would just make a new hearing and

(45:42):
move on to that, and the press would move right
on with him. They would never conclude the hearing, just
new allegations, all right on, Yeah, wash rents repeat yeah,
all the while the press, as I said, happily to
report it because the public bought lots of newspapers, they
watched lots of news, and they this is how they
helped grow the fear mongering.

Speaker 4 (45:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
Anyway, back to morphine. Meanwhile, as I told you, the
head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry j Anslinger,
is secretly the main morphine dealer to his buddy, the
most powerful man in Washington. According to numerous sources I
checked for this story to see if it was true.
There was one source that convincing me the most, and
I told you it was Harry j Anslinger, and in memoirs.

(46:19):
In his memoir The Murderers quote one of the most
influential members of Congress at the time, and one of
my most dependable supporters, was a confirmed morphine addict. He
was an amiable man, but would do nothing to help
himself to get rid of his addiction. He refused medical
advice and insisted that no one would ever be permitted
to interfere with him or with whatever habit he wished
to indulge in. That was not all, Elizabeth Hanslinger went
on to write quote, he was also a heavy drinker,

(46:40):
but it was his addiction to morphine which was the
greatest threat to himself and his country, even though in
the national interest his uninterrupted supply of the drug was
guaranteed by my bureau. On the day he died, I
mourned him deeply as a friend, but also thank God
for relieving me of a great burden and a certain danger.
Oh God, Hanslinger summrise. It was a diyl look a
moment in world affairs. There was imminute danger that the

(47:02):
facts would become known and used to the fullest and
the propaganda machines of our enemies. So he's worried that
they're gonna spin live. He's worried about is the lines
because you project but you know, but how did the
morphine dealing? But the head of the Federal Bureau to
a sitting US Senator, how did this even start?

Speaker 6 (47:19):
Like?

Speaker 3 (47:19):
What was the deal? Well, closure eyes, because I'd like
you to picture it. You are currently in the US Capitol,
the wing of the Senate Leadership Offices. Specifically, you were
in the office of the chairman of the most powerful
subcommittee of the day, Senator Joseph McCarthy. It is mid
century America at its most mid century. Outside the windows
thick squat round Sedan's Drive, luxuriously along the avenues of Washington,

(47:42):
d C. The cherry blossoms dot the trees. They are
the last ones to fall in the season. Spring is
saying goodbye. And you are an FBI listening device.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
You were planted by one of Jaeger Hoover's g men.
You are a sleek and stylish little number placed in
the glazing of a window pane. You are unlikely to
ever be found, but you have a great view and
you can hear everything. You hear the door to the
senator's office clothes you see Senator Joseph McCarthy. Look up,
he's a sweaty faced, nervous, like a kid caught with
his hand in the cookie jar. That is, if that

(48:12):
kid was a serious morphine habit and the kid was
kind of jones in for a hit, and the hit
was in the cookie jar. Anyway, you turn your attention
to the man who just walked in. You recognize him.
He's been here before plenty of times. It's the head
of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Hanslinger. He
looks mad, but he's containing it barely. He says in
a clear, unmistakable boy, Senator, I know about your habit.

(48:34):
Senator McCarthy sinks into his desk chair. The leather makes
it sound kind of like a fark, but it's not
a party.

Speaker 5 (48:38):
Hears of it.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
Don't laugh and slinger. He sits opposite the senator across
his desk. McCarthy responds, what do you think you know, Senator,
I'm the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. My
agent's discovered. Senator McCarthy interrupts him.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
Wait.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
He reaches over to a fan near to his desk.
He turns it on small tabletop fan and with its
metal blades, begins to words slice the air. It makes
it difficult for you to hear. But the FBI they
made a damn good bug. You can still clearly make
out the men's words. McCarthy says, in his brusque, bare
knuckle way, I don't care what you think. You know,
I'm not gonna stop it. You can't stop me, Senator.

(49:12):
If this were to get out, if America were learned
that a member of the of the US blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
Look, baby needs this bottle and I need my dope.
That's just how it is, Harry.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
If you cut off my morphine, I will just go
and buy heroin off the street from dope dealers. How
long do you think that will last? Are you threatening me?

Speaker 2 (49:28):
Senator?

Speaker 3 (49:29):
You are riveted all your days is an FBI bug.
You have never heard anything as juicy as this.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
Jagger.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Hoover is going to lose his mind. Let me get
this rate. You are threatening me. If my bureau interferes
with your dope supply, you will get intentionally busted and
destabilize the entire US government. You listen for Joseph McCarthy's response,
but all you hear is the fan and then I
want my dope.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
By Anslinger.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
He counters, you can take a medical lead from the
Senate Nope dope. Anslinger reasons Senator Dope.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
Anslinger gives in.

Speaker 3 (49:58):
You promise you wi go to the street pushers, I promise, Anslinger.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
Agreens fine, but you.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
Get your morphine from me from a druggist of my choice.
In return, I get all the dope I want. Anslinger
accepts this deal with the double agreed all the dope
you want.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Yay dope.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
So you cannot believe this is really happening. But you
were there to hear every word, and there it was
the deal with the devil Elizabeth. Now, despite the fact, Anslinger,
as I told you, hard hearted, big up, mean spirited, hypocrite,
a man who ruined lives, killed others for the same
sins that he not only tolerated, but he ate it
in a beat with his friends, you have to admit.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
The guy was a loyal friend.

Speaker 4 (50:33):
I can.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't
know how many of my friends I could convince to
give me heroin if I was a sitting senator and
they were the head of the War on drugs.

Speaker 4 (50:43):
Good plan.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
I mean, these guys are some real criminals, right, My
childs are like pretend criminals compared to these guys. Anyway,
of course, all this had to a senator Republicans. They
eventually turned on Joseph McCarthy in nineteen fifty four. He
gets censured. He remains a senator, mind you, but now
he's a broken man, and he's still a full on
morphine junkie and an alcoholic. He's just cruising as a
senator for his last couple of years, high as hell.

(51:03):
Sitting in the Senate President Eisenhower, who was not known
for his sense of humor, he dryly remarked that rather
than McCarthyism, it was now McCarthy was.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Him oh by burn.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
Eventually, Joe McCarthy dies in nineteen fifty seven at the
rifle of age of forty seven. Official cause of death
acute hepatitis aka inflammation of the liver. After he died,
the story of his secret morphine habit gets out, an
slinger had been using the same drug as to get
the morphine for Senator McCarthy. So what does this mean, Well,
the druggist comes forward to the tabloids. He wants to
cash out at this point, so then Anslinger. He went

(51:36):
after the syndicated reporter who ran the story for the
first time, with the full powers of his office. He
threatens to imprison the journalists for two years for violation
of I don't know what what do we got?

Speaker 2 (51:45):
Oh Harrison Act?

Speaker 3 (51:46):
Throws the Harrison Act at him, and one provision about
revealing the records of a pharmacist's hippo violation, So the
news story goes away. Joseph McCarthy he cashed out early
an Slinger, though he lived long enough to become a
hateful old man. Yes, he even got to see the
world change and all his life work be washed away
by the hippies. So Anslinger. He was confronted with the

(52:07):
emergence of the Hippies in their nineteen sixty seven Summer
of Love. He definitely, of course, felt some kind of
way about that. So Anslinger. He wrote that the blame
of the new generation belonged not to him and Jagger
Hoover and their repressive tactics for social hard or No. No, no,
not that everyone's rebelling against them, No no, no, It
was rather their parents and these professors in the Columbia
University and so forth. Anslinger said, he blamed and I

(52:27):
quote permissive parents and college administrators, pusilanimous judiciary officials, dual
good or bleeding hearts, and new breeds sociologists with their
fluid notions of morality. To see to his eyes, Elizabeth,
what he saw was quote nothing less than an assault
on the foundations of Western civilization. And that was way
more of a force than he could possibly imagine he

(52:49):
could confront. He said, the only person to infrighten me
are the hippies. So these are the things they're scared of.
Hippies and some Mexican dope. So that scares of more
than cancer the h bomb anyway. But too bad he
didn't live long enough to see our modern day news
chirons with kids today. You want to attack and dethrone
God because this guy he's up against anyway, he would
have flicked. But what did Ancelinger do professionally in the sixties.

(53:11):
Once his old buddy Joe McCarthy kicked the bucket well,
he partnered with the CIA, decided to create mind control drugs.
He got it on the MK ultra wagon because that's chill, right,
So Anslinger, he was conducting experiments with drugs to come
up with a way to break down psychological defenses, or,
as he put it in a nineteen sixty eight interview quote,
we were trying to discover a truth drug by using
payote and sodium amatol. Oh do you imagine them practicing?

Speaker 5 (53:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (53:37):
Trip.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
Anyway, So this guy, he sure seems he's doing exactly
what he claims everyone else wants to do it, like
he's really good at Like that's usually the tell with
these guys, right, It's like they project unto you what
they themselves would think. Anyway, Eventually, after decades of work
and after he'd bolted embraced his classicist, racist, xenophobic war
on drugs onto American culture enough that it would stick,
Anslinger felt like his job was done, so he left

(53:59):
the During the Nixon years, his end starts to sneak
up on him at that end, deep in pain, when
he was the one who was finally the one hurting,
when he was aching suddenly that double drug opium, it
was heaven on earth. And that's how he went out
dope to the gills on morphine. Wow, So what's our
ridiculous takeaway here?

Speaker 4 (54:17):
Oh? My god, you know, don't lie, don't lie, don't lie.
It's the perpetual lying and the and thinking that you're getting.
It's a means to an end that you've got to
You've got to do this to get to the end
of it all. And it's like the.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
Lives become the end. It means and the end.

Speaker 4 (54:37):
Yeah, and we all suffer for it. Also, this demonization
of like the artist and the intelligentsia to turn the
public against him, you know why, to keep the public
from wanting to be artists or intelligencia or educated.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
To enjoy life sands fear.

Speaker 4 (54:50):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
My ridiculous take away. Once again, thanks for asking.

Speaker 4 (54:55):
So welcome. I'm so glad you asked.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
I want to do Heroin with Joe McCarthy.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
I don't want to do. Can you imagine how horrendous
that would be?

Speaker 3 (55:05):
That's like one of the worst things I can possibly
imagine on her anything. All Right, Well, there you go.
That's all I got for us. You can find us
online at Ridiculous Crime, Twitter, Instagram. We have a website
ridiculous Crime dot com. You can always leave us a
talk back on the iHeart app and email us if
you like a Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. As always,
start dear a listen. Okay, thanks for listening. We'll catch
you next Crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton

(55:31):
and Zaron Burnette, produced and edited by Ball Gunner Dave Houston.
Research is by Marissa Brown, Tar Heroin and Andrea I
Love a good jazz song sharpened here. Our theme song
is by Thomas the Dope Man Lee and Travis the
Beat Nick Duttey.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
The host wardrobe provided by Botany five hundred.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
The executive producers are Ben Commie, Lover Bolin and Noel
Brown versus the Board of Education.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Preous Crime, Say It One More Time, Riudiquious Crime. Ridiculous
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