Lawrence Rockefeller Bankrolled MKUltra-Adjacent Esalen and Decades-Long UFO Disclosure Operation
"Lawrence Rockefeller was funding a lot of the Human Potential Foundation. You were funding Terrence McKenna's operation, you were funding that, the Green Earth Foundation. And this goes back, he was originally one of the key guys at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in the '30s, like late '30s, funding the 'War of the Worlds' broadcast—now we know that was a social engineering scheme."
About this episode
On this episode, host Daniel Jones is joined by historian and researcher Matthew Ehret for a sprawling four-hour exploration of multi-generational psychological operations, occult influence on Western institutions, and the hidden agendas behind UFO disclosure. Ehret, co-author of the four-volume 'Clash of the Two Americas' and 'The Revenge of the Mystery Cults' series, presents a thesis that Lawrence Rockefeller orchestrated decades-long campaigns funding MKUltra-adjacent psychedelic research at Esalen, bankrolling Terrence McKenna, and engineering UFO disclosure narratives from the 1990s onward with figures like Stephen Greer and John Podesta. Ehret argues the UFO phenomenon is stage magic designed to seed a new global religion centered on extraterrestrial gods, citing declassified CIA memos from director Bedell Smith advocating UFO beliefs for psychological warfare. The conversation moves through assassinations of American presidents—Lincoln by the Knights of the Golden Circle (a precursor to the KKK), JFK by networks that later ran UFO programs—and the theosophical roots of Silicon Valley technocracy, including revelations that Elon Musk's grandfather led Canada's Technocracy Inc and fled to apartheid South Africa. Ehret details how key JFK assassination figures like C.B. Scott Jones later managed UFO disclosure, and how the National Enquirer was a CIA creation designed to blur truth and fiction. The discussion ranges across Platonic epistemology, the rehabilitation of Nazism, Jacques Vallée's occult ties, and the strategic release of Epstein files as potential demoralization tactics. Ehret closes by urging focus on reclaiming constitutional powers like Glass-Steagall to break up banks rather than consuming manufactured scandals, framing the UFO disclosure movement as a Rockefeller-backed Rosicrucian operation aimed at mass psychological reset by 2033.
Key takeaways
- Ehret alleges Lawrence Rockefeller funded MKUltra-adjacent Esalen programs, Terrence McKenna, and orchestrated UFO disclosure with Clinton starting in the 1990s.
- Declassified CIA memos show director Bedell Smith explicitly discussed weaponizing UFO belief for psychological warfare in the 1950s.
- Key JFK assassination network figures including C.B. Scott Jones and Guy Bannister later became central UFO disclosure operatives, Ehret claims.
- Lincoln was assassinated by the Knights of the Golden Circle, an 80,000-member secret society seeking a slave empire centered on Cuba, precursor to the KKK.
- Elon Musk's grandfather Joshua Haldeman led Canadian Technocracy Inc advocating surveillance and UBI, then fled to apartheid South Africa calling it 'the freest place.'
- Ehret argues UFO disclosure is a multi-generational Rosicrucian operation to replace Abrahamic faiths with alien-god perennialism by 2033.
- The National Enquirer was founded by CIA Office of Policy Coordination operative Generoso Pope Jr. to deliberately mix truth with fiction for perception management.