Page 43 - 201210 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - October 2012

The CIA Testing LSD Did the CIA test LSD engaged in tests to find ways of undermining CIA LSD Experiments The Russians, the CIA knew, were on unsuspecting the behavior and personalities of regular people. George Hunter White was already a legend in They wanted to create a truth serum or learn to the law enforcement community by the time he Americans? program everyday individuals into unwitting was recruited by the CIA to carry out Dr. Sidney Gottlieb's experiments. He'd made a name for and involuntary assassins. So, too, did the Americans. himself by working undercover as a heroin How Stuff Works When the Sandoz supply became trafficker and taking down a syndicate of known, the United States moved to take it off Chinese opium dealers. White was a little too You, like any other sane person, perceive a the market. It turned out Sandoz had good at his job; he was excommunicated from concrete world, one that's generally calm and manufactured only about 40,000 doses. The New York after digging up political dirt on the unmenacing. Everyday objects remain still and United States bought them anyway. And with governor. He was a swinger, whose sexual solid and don't tend to melt into their the LSD in their possession, military proclivities tended toward the kinky. By all surroundings. There is no one out to get you; researchers and the CIA began conducting their accounts, White was crazy, reckless and the strangers aren't actually actors in an elaborate own experiments. perfect man to get the job done when the job and nefarious ruse at which you are the In 1975, Congress held inquiries into the took nerve, heartlessness and a complete uninformed center. There may or may not be a clandestine operation known as MKULTRA, disregard of established laws and social norms. God; the secrets of the universe remain the code name for an umbrella operation At first it was White who carried out sequestered from you. covering 149 subprojects. Most of these were Gottlieb's tests. White and his ostensibly All of this changes with LSD. The involved with exploring new methods of informed wife held parties at their New York potent hallucinogen lysergic acid diethylamide chemical and psychological warfare. The apartment wherein White furnished his guests can temporarily occupy the psyche of a person Church Committee, the Senate group that held with LSD-laced martinis. As the drug took hold, who ingests it. Because of its potency and the inquiry, learned little about the details of the he observed its effects on the unwitting ability to unlock the "doors of perception," as operations. The CIA maintained its standard participants, making notes on their reactions. In author Alduous Huxley put it, LSD can be silence -- files had been destroyed, new some instances, the effects included giddiness psychically violent. It can hijack the user's directors had no knowledge of old projects. and euphoria; others were darker, with the mind, gently revealing life's latent truths, or it Two years later, the skeleton that was subjects realizing something was terribly wrong can turn bully, reducing the user to a state of MKULTRA in the CIA's closet emerged and reacting badly. White noted this type of abject fear. Dr. Timothy Leary proposed that the entirely. A Freedom of Information act request reaction as "the horrors" [source: Valentine]. latter, a bad trip, could be prevented by mindset filed by a journalist turned up several boxes of Eventually, the experiments were moved and setting. The mindset of the user and the materials that escaped destruction but were from White's apartment in New York to a CIA- atmosphere where the trip takes place are of the overlooked during the Church inquiry. A second funded safe house in San Francisco dubbed "the utmost importance, in Leary's view. "LSD Congressional inquiry was held into pad" [source: Stratton]. It was here that White favors the prepared mind," agrees one MKULTRA in 1977. Information on 149 recruited Ike Feldman. In his guise as pimp, the psychiatrist [source: Stratton]. MKULTRA subprojects was unearthed -- from cop collected prostitutes and paid them to bring In other words, LSD is not to be taken learning to deliver poisons using magicians' back customers to the pad and surreptitiously flippantly. This makes dosing an unsuspecting sleight of hand to electroshock therapy as a administer LSD into their drinks. Throughout, person with it, especially one who isn't already means of making an unwilling subject talk George White sat quietly behind a two-way experienced with LSD's properties, a [source: Turner]. mirror, drinking martinis, watching the ignorant particularly ghastly act. A person unacquainted With the release of the newfound test subjects trip and taking notes on their with LSD and unaware he or she'd been given it documents, dates, locations and names of reactions. could be brought to the edge of mental crumble. unwitting participants in the CIA's experiments White also continued the same kind of It's cruel to surreptitiously spike someone with came to light. The names of some of the people direct involvement in the San Francisco the drug. who conducted these experiments were also MKULTRA LSD tests that he had in New York. So one could consider the Central revealed. Often on acid himself, he'd adopt the alter ego Intelligence Agency (CIA) cruel for Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, a clubfooted of a merchant sailor or an artist, delving administering LSD to an unknown number of stuttering scientist with a penchant for dancing, headlong into San Francisco's seamy underbelly unsuspecting Americans during the 1950s and ran the technical division for the CIA. George of hookers, drug addicts and sexual deviants. It '60s. The agency conducted clandestine Hunter White, a former Army Office of was this population that the CIA had identified experiments on college students, drug addicts, Strategic Services (the predecessor of the CIA) as fair game for the tests, since the agency veterans, soldiers, sailors, johns, mental officer who'd reputedly killed a Chinese spy figured they were degenerates [source: patients, at least one young mother and a jazz with his bare hands in Calcutta, directly Stratton]. In his alternate personas, White singer. For a time, the drug was so prevalent in oversaw the undercover acid tests for Gottlieb. rooted out test subjects. the CIA, agents dosed one another for fun. And Ike Feldman, a narcotics agent who posed Unlike the legitimate experiments held for a punch line, the heyday of 1960s comfortably as a pimp and racketeer, did much in research facilities, the covert experimenters counterculture -- including its subversion of the of the leg work at White's direction. Separately, failed to keep an appropriate and objective establishment -- was preceded and directly but especially together, these three men filled distance from their tests. Instead, the CIA created by the CIA's acid tests. out every inch of the shady public image of CIA higher-ups determined it would be best for their operatives. They were the spooks of pulp fiction operatives to try LSD themselves, an effort to Acid in the Hands of the CIA: MKULTRA realized. prepare them in the event they should be slipped Most of the MKULTRA experiments the drug by Soviet agents. They would be better In 1951, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were conducted under the scientific method equipped to handle the bent version of reality. received word from a military envoy that the with informed, willing test subjects at This official decision either led to or Swiss drug company Sandoz Pharmaceuticals universities, CIA labs and independent research justified a culture of acid users in the CIA in the had 100 million doses of LSD, available to facilities. Some of these tests fell outside of the 1950s; it's unclear which came first. Either way, anyone who cared to purchase them. This bounds of acceptable protocol: One study lured in the middle of the 20th century, a significant "anyone" included the Russians -- people who, heroin addicts to participate as test subjects by number of CIA operatives knew what it meant in the minds of the U.S. military and paying them in heroin. Another studied the to trip on acid. Coming down was a intelligence communities, were "10-feet tall" effects of LSD on black inmates in a prison. The disappointment: "I felt like I would be going shady, powerful and unscrupulous [source: experiments carried out by White and Feldman back to a place where I wouldn't be able to hold Grittenger]. In the hands of the Soviet Union, at Gottlieb's behest were less scientific. These on to this kind of beauty," one reported [source: entire U.S. cities could be driven mad or made resembled torture or a party, depending on how Stratton]. to revolt against the U.S. government from a the subject reacted to the acid. water supply spiked with LSD. Continued on Page 45