And Another Thing with Dave · Dave Smith

#467 How Did We Get Here?

April 10, 2026·47 min·3 clips

Dave connects JFK's assassination to CIA drug smuggling and 9/11, promising a deep dive into hidden history.

1. And Another Thing with Dave, episode 467, 'How Did We Get Here?', is a solo video podcast by Dave presenting a PowerPoint-guided history of interconnected US government and CIA operations. 2. Dave is the sole host; the episode features embedded audio and video clips from Gary Webb, General Wesley Clark's Democracy Now! interview, and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. 3. The episode's core thesis is that a chain of connected operations—from the JFK assassination through the CIA drug trade, 9/11, and Middle East wars—explains the current geopolitical moment. 4. Dave begins with the JFK assassination, stating Kennedy was planning to dismantle the CIA and was pressuring Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to allow IAEA inspections of the Dimona nuclear facility. 5. The CIA drug smuggling section uses Gary Webb's own audio to describe how the agency flew cocaine into Mena, Arkansas under Bill Clinton's governorship, which Dave links to the crack cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s. 6. Webb describes how the Washington Post—whose national security reporters 'coincidentally used to work for the CIA'—ran a coordinated campaign to discredit his Dark Alliance story after it gained traction through the early internet. 7. Dave presents a chart showing opium production in Afghanistan spiking to its highest levels after the US military arrived in 2001, having been reduced to near zero by the Taliban before the invasion. 8. The 9/11 segment centers on Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, founded by what Dave describes as 1,200 architects and engineers, which argues the official NIST account defies physics. 9. Dave presents forensic evidence including eyewitness accounts of molten steel, iron microspheres in WTC dust, and NASA heat signatures persisting for weeks after 9/11 as indicative of a thermitic reaction. 10. An independent peer-reviewed study found red-gray nanothermite chips throughout WTC dust; Dave notes that NIST explicitly declined to test for explosive residue during its investigation. 11. Dave presents a backyard experiment by a 30-year engineering veteran demonstrating that directionally focused thermite can cut vertical steel columns—something NIST's own thermite experiment did not attempt. 12. A Democracy Now! clip of General Wesley Clark describes a classified memo he was shown at the Pentagon approximately 20 days after 9/11, listing seven countries targeted for regime change: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. 13. Dave notes that all seven countries on Clark's list are Israel's neighbors and that Iran is the only one the US has not yet militarily confronted. 14. The Operation Ajax section describes the 1953 CIA and UK overthrow of Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh after he nationalized Iran's oil industry, leading to 25 years of the Shah's repressive rule and then the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 15. Dave frames the current Iranian theocracy as 'blowback'—the CIA's own term for unintended consequences of covert foreign policy. 16. The Economic Hitman section describes John Perkins's account of approaching target countries with a 'suitcase full of money' followed by CIA saboteurs if they refused, and military invasion as the final option—citing Libya, Iraq, and Iran as cases that reached the military phase. 17. The Flexner Report section describes how the Carnegie Foundation commissioned a 1910 study of US medical practices that was used to eliminate homeopathic and natural medicine from mainstream education in favor of pharmaceutical-based Western medicine. 18. The format is a solo video podcast with a presented PowerPoint, embedded video and audio clips, and direct-to-camera commentary—an educational explainer rather than a conversation. 19. Listeners interested in alternative historical narratives about CIA covert operations, 9/11 skepticism, and US foreign policy motivations will find the episode densely argued. 20. Listeners who require primary source citations, peer-reviewed verification, or mainstream-accepted historical accounts will find the claims insufficiently sourced.

As heard by us

A brisk, slide-led theory session that keeps the claims moving.

Dave's live video episode moves like a slide-heavy monologue, jumping from JFK to Operation Northwoods, CIA drug smuggling, 9/11, Iran, and John Perkins as if they belong to one continuous line. The pace is the point.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a live PowerPoint conspiracy rant that starts with JFK and keeps widening the frame, press play.

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