DISGRACELAND - The Grateful Dead (Pt. 3): What The Epstein Files Tell Us About Bob Weir’s Bohemian Grove Ties and MK Ultra

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Why was the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir a member of the secretive Bohemian Club? Maybe the answer lies in the Epstein Files or in early MK Ultra efforts? Listen to find out why a counterculture icon, one of the architects of the most consequential communities in music history, was part of a community that included conservative presidents and war criminals. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to exclusive bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace and is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about the other one. The prep school kid, the bagman, the devil's right hand. And it's also a story about Satanism, an LSD, and the CIA, in M.K. Ultra. About ritual sacrifice and the devils and the details of the Epstein vials and on the grounds of Bohemian Grove.

This is a story about the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir, about a man who made great music. Unlike that music, I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Boot Scootin' Booty MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to the fate of a Ophelia by Taylor Swift. And why would I play you that specific slice of oversaturated Kelsey cheese could I afford it?

Because that was the number one song in America on January 10, 2006. And that was the day Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weird died, promptly sending me down the rabbit hole at Bohemian Grove. On this episode, the sixth. CIA, M.K. Ultra, nearly a million dead, satanic sacrifice, LSD, Jeffrey Epstein's Files, Bohemian Grove, and Bob Weir. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. On January 10th of this year, 2006, Grateful Dead, Rat Dog, and Deaden Company guitarist, singer, and songwriter Bob Weir died. The statement from his family,

says that Bobby, as they call him, quote, transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues, unquote. Bob Weir was beloved by his family and by fans from around the globe. He not only helped mold the sound of one of the most influential and successful rock and roll bands of all time, he also helped create an institution, the Grateful Dead, an institution that built a community that will live on long after the band and its members. The Grateful Dead community is famously unique to the Grateful Dead, and no other band in music history has created or is associated with anything quite like it, the Deadheads. Aside from the unique fan behavior

that defined deadheads, following the band around from town to town, tape trading and bootlegging, the parking lot commerce, and the superficial characteristics of deadheads, the tie-dye and nouveau hippie style. Deadheads are loyal, caring, curious, and civic-minded. They come from all different socioeconomic backgrounds, rich kids, poor kids, stoners, and jocks, and frat boys and prep school kids like Bob Weir once was.

Deadheads are from all over the political spectrum as well, mostly left, but some from the right, and of course, libertarians and gonzo extremists that defy categorization. And now, 60-plus years after the group's first show on May 5, 1965, at Magoo's Pizza Parlor in Menlo Park, California, under the name the Warlocks, the Grateful Dead's fans spanned generations, from great-grandparents who saw the band back of the day to Tee's. teenage fans of the modern day Dead and Company. The single most important element of the Grateful Dead, aside from the music, an improvisational form of Americana that owes as much to Bill Monroe's mandolin as it does to John Coltrane's tenor sax, the single most important element besides that music is the dead community. And the one element of that community that has remained consistent from the time of the band's first shows as part of Ken Kesey's fame six years.

these acid tests until the recent run of Deaden Company shows at the sphere in Las Vegas, the one element of that community that has remained consistent is the Grateful Dead Community's commitment to openness, a sense of welcoming, born of curiosity and kindness, and compelled by a willingness to make the world a better place. Every Deadhead knows that community is the most important thing. change if that is indeed the goal no matter one's own personal beliefs starts from within and immediately extends to one's surrounding community bob weir understood and lived this ethos just as his fellow bandmates mickey hart and bill critsman continue to live and just as bob's past bandmates jerry garcia phil lesh ron pigpen mccurin and lyricist

Robert Hunter lived before they passed. When Bob Weir died, I thought first of the dead community. Even before I thought of his bandmates, I wondered, how will the deadheads take this? This death from the Grateful Dead will most surely spell the end of the band's live output. Somehow, remarkably, dead band members found ways to keep the community together after Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, with touring efforts by Weir's Rat Dog, Lesh's fill in friends, and most recently and most successfully with Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Bill Kurtzman's Dead & Company, a group that's success came in no small part from its collaboration

with musician John Mayer. It's hard to see how Dead and Company survives without Bob Weir, and with that it feels like this may indeed be the end of the long, strange trip for deadheads. My thoughts then turned to Bob Weir's place in the band as quote-unquote the other one, nestled slyly up Jerry Garcia's sleeve as Jerry's ace, Jerry's rhythm guitarist, his figurative kid brother, the straight man to Jerry's psychedelic Captain Trips, Jerry's literal bag man, Bobby, the dude from the Grateful Dead who looks so normal in his polo shirt and jeans that he was the one tasked to carry Jerry's heroin around on tour. And then I thought of Bob Weir the man, his background, an adopted child who never knew his biological parents growing up, who was raised privileged, the son of his adoptive parents in Atherton, California, one of the wealthiest suburbs in the United States. A prep school kid with easy, bronzed good looks, an athletic frame and old money hair. The polo shirt and cut off jeans gave it all away for me back in the 1980s. And then I thought of Bob's post-grateful dead pre-deaddened company life in those rumors,

in the wild conspiracy theories. Rumors that once spread quickly became fact. The fact that Bob Weir, in his later years, was part of a different community altogether, a community whose members had vastly different ideas about freedom and kindness and change than dead. had much different ideas. A community, it can be argued, was responsible for much of the world's death and destruction throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries.

A community that bonds over not just communal ritual, but as it's been alleged, over communal ritual sacrifice. I'm talking about Bob Weir's official membership in the community of Bohemian Club was started back in 1870. Mark Twain was among the club's earliest members, as were Jack London, Ambrose Beers, and other writers, journalists, musicians, and artists. As the 19th century turned into the 20th, so too did the Bohemian Club's membership from

the arts world to the twin worlds of business and politics. Throughout the 20th and 21st century, its members have included every Republican president with the exception of Donald Trump, not to mention secretaries of state, and defense, your Henry Kissinger's and Donald Rumsfelds, Alexander Hags, and James Bakers. And then there are the pre-Silicon Valley Titans of Industry, your Rockefellers and Forbes. Those with American names that smack of birthright power and with pedigrees that reach back into the finest preparatory in Ivy League schools this country has to offer. Some of them rooted in the Secret Skull and Bone Society at Yale from the early 20th century.

The same men who made up the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the United States' first centralized intelligence agency, tasked with gathering and analyzing foreign intelligence on America's behalf during World War II. After the war, the OSS became the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA director is William Casey, John McCone, and George H.W. Bush, were all Bohemian Grove members. George H.W. Bush, as well as his son, W. And Rumsfeld, and Cheney, and Reagan, and Casey, and Kissinger, and Nixon, Nixon, and Bob Weir. They were all part of the community at Bohemian Grove.

The men who brought you weapons of mass destruction, Enron, Iran-Contra, the crack epidemic, the secret bombing of Cambodia, Cambodia, M.K. Ultra, the Gulf of Tunkin' and the Assassin of John F. Kennedy. All those dudes and the dude who brought you sugar magnolia, the grateful deads, Bob Weir. Bohemian Grove is a 2,700-acre private campground canopied under the giant

redwoods of Montereo in northern California. The grove is owned by the all-male Bohemian Club from nearby San Francisco. Every year at the Bohemian Grove, under tight-knit security and in total secrecy, the Bohemian Club hosts a two-week camp, attended by 2,000 of the country's richest, whitest, most powerful men. What these men do each year at this camp

has long been the subject of debate among journalists and conspiracy theorists alike. Everything from innocent, old-school frat-boy antics to child sacrifice. At least that's what's alleged. And the community at the camp is instructed to follow a rule insisting that business talk is strictly prohibited. It's a rule that we know is duly ignored, however. For it was here at Bohemian Grove that the critical planning for the Manhattan Project

took place on September 14, 1942, when physicist Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest Lawrence met with Brigadier General Leslie Groves and Colonel Kenneth Cole to iron out the crucial technical aspects of the development for the atomic bomb. Three years after that meeting at Bohemian Grove, the world's first nuclear weapons were dropped onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over 200,000 people died.

And keeping up with the tradition of ignoring the Grove's community rule prohibiting business talk, it was here at Bohemian Grove in July of 1967 that Richard Nixon kicked off his successful 1968 campaign for president with a lakeside chat to potential donors and supporters. One of them, another Grove member, the popular California governor at the time, Ronald Reagan, had pledged to Nixon after hearing his Grove talk to not challenge Nixon's presidential run. And by 1973, over 100,000 innocent Cambodians would be dead due to President Nixon's secret bombing campaign. And by 74, Nixon would resign and disgrace over the federal government's intelligence agency designed Watergate, Kudetatah. An historical event of epic proportions, one that would forever destroy the American public's trust in its government. It's easy to imagine a much different world, were it not for the decisions made at Bohemian Grove.

If only the community followed its number one rule prohibiting business talk. And the rule is there for a reason. Grove members attend their yearly retreat in part to shed the stress that accompanies, companies their high-powered positions as masters of the universe. The Grove community is serious about the concept of care, and boasts a motto nicked from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream that says, weaving spiders come not here, which is loosely translated to mean,

leave all your scheming and power brokering and bullshit networking at the gate so we can blow off steam and escape the pressures of running the world for a couple of weeks. To signal the community's seriousness about this concept of quote-unquote care, i.e. giving too much of a fuck about your job when it isn't your time to give a fuck, the opening ceremony for every Bohemian Grove yearly retreat is the signature cremation of care. An event where masked, robed members emerged from the woods looking every bit the part of eyes wide shut extras to promptly take part in the burning of a massive human effigy under the intense, watchful eyes of a 30-foot concrete statue of an owl.

The human effigy is named Dull Care, and its theatrical burning is meant to represent the unburdening of community members' everyday pressures and professional burdens. Now, I like to imagine Bob Weir at opening night of the Bohemian Grove Retreat, glancing upon the burning embers of dull care and relinquishing all his past frustrations with Jerry Garcia. Being forced to carry Jerry's heroin to manage his early 90s decline, the parking lot violence, dead and gone deadheads,

Jerry's refusal to take any responsibility for any of it, his clinging to a juvenile definition of adolescent freedom, one that resulted in unnecessary deadhead mayhem. Jerry's own version of id-powered obstinance that was ironically, much like that of a man Bob Weir, was now sharing a cabin with. Donald Rumsfeld. That's right.

Bob Weir and Donald Rumsfeld. Not only were at Bohemian Grove at the same time, but were part of the same camp, eating, sleeping, and socializing together as members of the quote-unquote hillbillies camp. What exactly did the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir and the architect of the Iraq War, George W. Bush's Donald Rumsfeld,

get up two together at Bohemian Grove. Was it simple fraternizing? Or was it something much darker? We'll be right back after this world, word, word. A lot is said to happen at Bohemian Grove. But the straightest explanation depicts Grove activities as basically a much larger, more posh, Ivy League frat party from a bygone era,

less animal house and more skull and bones. Grove members group themselves together into camps. There's the aforementioned hillbillies whose members not only include Bob Weir and Donald Rumsfeld, but George H.W. Bush and Walter Cronkite. Grateful Dead member Mickey Hart, like Bob Weir, was said to also be a Grove member and a member of the Hillbillies, though I found conflicting information listing Mickey as being part of the Rattlers.

There's also Camp Mandalay known as the preeminent camp. Some of Mandalay's famous past members include Kissinger and Reagan's Secretary of State George Schultz. And there's the caveman camp, I guess unsurprisingly, this is the camp that housed Nixon, and the Owls Nest camp was populated by Reagan and fellow actor Eddie Albert from Green Acres.

Clint Eastwood from neighboring Carmel took a bunk in the roaring camp while industry titans like the Rockefeller, and Morgans bedded down in the Stowaway camp. These camps, the hillbillies, the rattlers, etc., they're also the entertainment. In addition to the cremation of care in the lakeside talks, Bohemian Grove programming includes plays and performances staged by different camp members,

often in drag, a tradition dating back to early Ivy League fraternizing and one that prompted President Richard Nixon to say about Bohemian Grove that it's, quote, the most faggy goddamn thing you could ever imagine, unquote. However, some claim that there's more than frat party antics at the core of Bohemian Grove traditions, and that the drag performances are part of an overall luciferian subversion of American morals, one that is best represented by the massive 30-foot owl statue that presides over the creation of care effigy burning, which it's alleged isn't about cleansing one's connection to the pressures of the real world, but is instead a sacrifice offered to the Babylonian deity Mollock,

who watches over the evil deeds of Bohemian Grove attendees. Conspiracy theorists claim that Bohemian Grove isn't a community, but is instead a secret religion in disguise, one that planned the New World Order as we've experienced it over the past century plus through a series of malevolent deeds, executed by compromised world leaders, honey trapped through local prostitution rings and massive orgies, into pulling off some of the most dastardly murderous shit in global history,

all because, well, you know, Satan, I guess. It's February 26, and the world is freaking out right now over the redacted release of a trove of government files related to a more recent power player, the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The files paint a picture of a modern-day master of the universe up to all kinds of secret evil behavior.

It appears, and I say this in all seriousness, it appears in an almost indisputable way that Jeffrey Epstein was speaking in code about what is presumed to be sex with prostitutes and underage girls and getting chummy with some of the most powerful men and women in the world after, I repeat, after he was convicted in 2008 of procuring a child for prostitution and for soliciting prostitution. Epstein's post-conviction conversations with other masters of the universe include in exchange with President Barack Obama's former Treasury Secretary

and President of Harvard University, Larry Summers, where the two discussed one of Summers as Epstein-related female relationships. There are conversations with the the New York Giants co-owner, Steve Tisch, referencing a quote-unquote Ukrainian girl of an unknown age. In another email with the Dubai Sultan, a literal torture video is discussed. Barclay CEO, Jess Staley, speaks with Epstein, about quote-unquote Disney princesses,

alleged code for young women. And former Obama General Counsel and Goldman Sachs attorney, Catherine Rumler, is in numerous emails with Epstein seeking career advice and flirting with the conviction. sex offender while thanking him for numerous luxury gifts that he showered upon her. The files also proved that the current U.S. Commerce Secretary under President Donald Trump, Howard Lutnik, maintained a long-standing relationship with his neighbor Jeffrey Epstein,

one that he lied to the public about just a few months ago, a relationship that included a trip to Epstein Island with his wife and children, again after Epstein was proven to be a convicted child sex offender. Now, these are the verifiable, indisputable, indisputable facts from the Epstein files, not the conjecture. The conjecture is nuts, like the coded conversations about pizza and grape soda and jerky, whatever the hell those are in reference to, or the fact that on December 6, 2018, the same day that Epstein found out that the Southern District of New York was renewing its federal investigation into his behavior, Epstein himself ordered 330 gallons of sulfuric acid,

a powerful dehydrating agent known for breaking down organic materials like human skin and bone. What was up with that? Or the claim in the files by one alleged victim who states that at the age of 16, she was used as a human incubator and impregnated by someone from Epstein's inner circle in an attempt to create a superior being, and that upon giving birth to that child,

The baby was allegedly immediately taken from her by Epstein partner in crime, Galane Maxwell. And then the baby was never seen or heard from again. In fact, the baby was referred to in the past tense. And the alleged implication, if we're to believe the victim, is that the baby was sacrificed. And the teen accuser states that hours after she gave birth, she heard Maxwell say that the baby was beautiful. Was. Perhaps there are legitimate explanations for all of them.

this. Perhaps the conspiracy theorists are doing what conspiracy theorists do best, taking bits of information and, well, theorizing. I sincerely hope so. Or perhaps comedian Tim Dillon put it best when he said, and I'm paraphrasing here, maybe the Bohemian Grove rituals were innocent. But maybe one dude watching the cremation of care was like, fuck this figurative sacrificial bullshit. Let's sacrifice some real babies. And maybe that dude ended up in Epstein's circle. And maybe the human effigy wasn't enough for the likes of Jeffrey Epstein's masters of the universe. Maybe the worst behavior from the Epstein files is just the natural outgrowth of Bohemian Grove. I hope not.

I do not want to believe that. In fact, as of right now, I don't believe it. To date, as I write this, on February 17, 2006, There's nothing in the Epstein files that proves child's sacrifice. All that's been proven so far is the criminal and questionable behavior of a few women and a lot of rich and powerful men. Many of them nerds like Bill Gates, who I'm guessing never got laid in high school or college, and these nerds who found themselves with loads of power as adults and the means to behave in truly disgusting ways. And there's a corollary with Bohemian Grove.

but it's less disgraceful, and I believe more innocent, despite claims of child sacrifice and satanic rituals. Bohemian Grove was, I believe, just a bunch of former Ivy League trihards who chose hard work overplay as adolescents and responded as adults by going into the woods for a couple of weeks out of the year so that they could behave like the irresponsible kids

that they were never allowed to be. But it still begs the question, What the hell was Bob Weir doing there? Unlike his Grateful Dead band members, and much like most of his Bohemian Grove community members, Bob Weir was a prep school kid. And similar to most deadheads, Bob Weir was a curious and open-minded individual. Bob Weir centered his life around the concept of community. There was the Grateful Dead community,

and there was the community he lived in in Northern California. a community with political, social, and environmental causes Bob Weir supported throughout his life. In a mid-a-a-a-a-a-t's interview with a local paper, weir said, quote, I believe in community everything. I practice that in my life. In a given year, probably 20% of the gigs I play are benefits. I walk the talk. I work for the community, and the community works for me.

It's been that way for 40-some years now, and it hasn't let me down. I think that what we discovered in the 60s is that community culture is a really good paradigm. With that community-focused thinking at the center of his life, alongside the obvious principles of openness and curiosity, it's very easy for me to understand why Bob Weir was a member of not just the deadhead community, but of the local Bohemian Grove community as well.

Bob Weir's comments about his affiliation with Bohemian Grove, however, were vague. And I believe intentionally so, in keeping with the secretive wishes of the community. But that doesn't mean that his intentions were nefarious, despite some of the malevolent outcomes spawning from the retreat. There are a couple of reasons, I believe, Bob Weir became a member of Bohemian Grove. One obvious and one not so much. The obvious reason is that given Weir's background of privilege, he was experienced enough to know that change can something something.

sometimes only happen from within existing power structures. And given the societal change for the better, for Bob Weir was part of his principled outlook on life. Weir understood that he was in a unique position to make a difference. All he had to do is Don a robe and duck into the woods and pound beers with Don Rumsfeld and others once a year to make his case. And what's better? Bitching about the Iraq war to your friends who can't do anything about it? or making your case directly to the Secretary of Defense.

The other reason, I believe, is LSD. More specifically, the origins of LSD. If you've listened to the first disgrace land episode on The Grateful Dead, you'll hear all about how the ban was unwittingly used by the CIA to indirectly spread the use of LSD throughout American culture in the late 60s. This was in part the result of the CIA's M.K. Ultra program. Bob Weir was well aware that this program was designed by many of the men who were part of the Bohemian Grove community. In 2019, I released my Grateful Dead episode of Disgraceland,

and a few days later was contacted by Grateful Dead publicist and biographer Dennis McNally, author of the definitive biography of the band, A Long Strange Trip. Dennis explained to me that he and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter had some questions for me based on what I'd researched and wrote. Part of my thesis in that episode was that Grateful Dead manager and sound man Augustus

Owsley Stanley III, aka Bear A.k.a. Bear Owsley, himself, an LSD chemist and distributor, was an actual CIA operative. Owsley was the son of an FTC attorney and grandson of a

U.S. Senator. The exact type of young man the CIA would choose to turn. I didn't prove my thesis, but I think I came pretty close based on what McNally told me Hunter believed before he died later that year. Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead lyricist, never believed Bear Owesley's claim that Bear learned everything he needed to know about the recipe for processing LSD from what Bear pulled from the books he found in the UC Berkeley Library. because Robert Hunter apparently dove into the stacks at the UC Berkeley Library himself

and what he found out was that the scientific information on LSD processing that the UC Berkeley Library held was not part of the library until after Bear Asley made his first batch in 1965. So where to Bear get the recipe? And what I'm saying is the LSD processing information was, I mean, it was, but it wasn't there until after Owsley made his first batch. Therefore, it was theorized that perhaps Owsley received his recipe from the CIA. And perhaps Bear Osley had a deeper relationship with the secret organization whose members, including many of its directors, were frequent attendees of Bohemian Grove. the same Bohemian Grove Bob Weir was inexplicably a member of.

Perhaps part of the reason Bob was a Bohemian Grove member was to uncover the truth about his former manager's relationship, if any, to the CIA, from actual members of the CIA who he attended Bohemian Grove with. Or perhaps Bob Weir was just living in accordance with his principles. to affect change in the community as best he could. In this case, from the inside. Among power players, he found himself in the unique position to not just entertain, but to himself in it.

Either way, neither reason is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. All right, thanks for hanging with me on another episode of Disgraceland. Appreciate you guys. Listen, what do you think about all this? think? Do you think Bob Weir was up to no good at Bohemian Grove or do you think my reasoning is the correct one? Give me your theories. Also, give me any wild information you guys have conspiracy information on Bohemian Grove. 617-9066638. I want to know what you think about

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