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LSD And The CIA
The Truth Seekers
In the spring of 1942, General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, chief of the OSS, the CIA's wartime predecessor, assembled a half-dozen prestigious American scientists and asked them to undertake a top-secret research program.
Their mission, Donovan explained, was to develop a speech-inducing drug for use in intelligence interrogations. He insisted that the need for such a weapon was so acute as to warrant any and every attempt to find it.
The use of drugs by secret agents had long been a part of cloak-and-dagger folklore, but this would be the first concerted attempt on the part of an American espionage organization to modify human behavior through chemical means.
"We were not afraid to try things that had never been done before," asserted Donovan, who was known for his freewheeling and unconventional approach to the spy trade.
The OSS chief pressed his associates to come up with a substance that could break down the psychological defenses of enemy spies and POWs, thereby causing an uninhibited disclosure of classified information. Such a drug would also be useful for screening OSS personnel in order to identify German sympathizers, double-agents, and potential misfits.
OSS scientists created a highly-potent extract of cannabis and, through a process known as esterification, a clear and viscous liquid was obtained. The final product had no color, odor, or taste. It would be nearly impossible to detect when administered surreptitiously which is exactly what the spies intended to do.
"There is no reason to believe that any other nation or group is familiar with the preparation of this particular drug," stated one classified OSS document. Henceforth, the OSS referred to the marijuana extract as TD a rather transparent cover for Truth Drug.
Various ways of administering TD were tried upon witting and unwitting subjects. OSS operatives found that the medicated goo could be injected into any type of food, such as mashed potatoes, butter, salad dressing, or in such things as candy.
Another scheme relied on using facial tissues impregnated with the drug. But these methods had drawbacks. What if someone had a particularly ravenous appetite? Too much TD could knock a subject out and render him useless for interrogation.
The OSS eventually determined that the best approach involved the use of a hypodermic syringe to inject a diluted TD solution into a cigarette or cigar.
After smoking such an item, the subject would get suitably stoned, at which point a skillful interrogator would move in and try to get him to spill the beans.
After testing TD on themselves, their associates, and US military personnel, OSS agents utilized the drug operationally, although on a limited basis. The results were mixed.
In certain circumstances, TD subjects felt a driving necessity to discuss psychologically-charged topics. Whatever the individual is trying to withhold will be forced to the top of his subconscious mind.
But there were also those who experienced toxic reactions better known in latter-day lingo as bummers. One unwitting doper became irritable and threatening and complained of feeling like he was two different people.
The peculiar nature of his symptoms precluded any attempt to question him. That was how it went, from one extreme to the other. At times, TD seemed to stimulate a rush of talk; on other occasions, people got paranoid and didn't say a word.
The lack of consistency proved to be a major stumbling block and Donovan's dreamers as his enthusiastic OSS staffers have been called reluctantly weaned themselves from their reefer madness.
Enter Mescaline
After the war, the CIA and the military picked-up where they OSS had left off in the secret search for a truth serum. The navy took the lead when it initiated Project CHATTER in 1947 the same year the CIA was formed.
Described as an offensive program, CHATTER was supposed to devise means of obtaining information from people independent of their volition but without physical duress.
Toward this end, Dr. Charles Savage conducted experiments with mescaline (a semi-synthetic extract of the peyote cactus that produces hallucinations similar to those caused by LSD) at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
But these studies, which involved animal as well as human subjects, did not yield as effective truth serum, and CHATTER was terminated in 1953.
The navy became interested in mescaline as an interrogation agent when American investigators learned of mind control experiments carried out by Nazi doctors at the Dachau concentration camp during World War II.
After administering the hallucinogen to 30 prisoners, the Nazis concluded that it was impossible to impose one's will on another person as in hypnosis even when the strongest dose of mescaline had been given.
But the drug still afforded certain advantages to SS interrogators, who were consistently able to draw even the most intimate secrets from the [subject] when questions where cleverly put. Not surprisingly, sentiments of hatred and revenge were exposed in every case.
The mescaline experiments at Dachau were described in a lengthy report by the US Naval Technical Mission, which swept across Europe in search of every scrap of industrial material and scientific data that could be garnered from the fallen Reich.
This mission set the stage for the wholesale importation of more than 600 top Nazi scientists under the auspices of Project paperclip which the CIA supervised during the early years of the Cold War.
Among those who emigrated to the US in such a fashion was Dr. Hubertus Strughold, the German scientist whose chief subordinates (Dr. Sigmund Ruff and Dr. Sigmund Rascher) were directly involved in aviation medicine experiments at Dachau, which included the mescaline studies.
Despite recurring allegations that he sanctioned medical atrocities during the war, Strughold settled in Texas and became an important figure in America's space program.
After Werner von Braun, he was the top Nazi scientist employed by the American government, and he was subsequently hailed by NASA as the father of space medicine.
Maybe Cocaine
The CIA studied a veritable pharmacopoeia of drugs with the hope of achieving a breakthrough. At one point during the early 1950s Uncle Sam's secret agents viewed cocaine as a potential truth serum. Cocaine's general effects have been somewhat neglected, noted an astute researcher.
Whereupon tests were conducted that enabled the CIA to determine that the precious powder will produce elation, talkativeness, etc. when administer by injection. Larger doses, according to a previously classified document, may cause fearfulness and alarming hallucinations.
The document goes on to report that cocaine counteracts... the catatonia of catatonic schizophrenics and concludes with the recommendation that the drug be studied further.
A number of cocaine derivatives were also investigated from an interrogation standpoint. Procaine, a synthetic analogue, was tested on mental patients and the results were intriguing.
When injected into the frontal lobe of the brain through trephine holes in the skull, the drug produced free and spontaneous speech within two days in mute schizophrenics.
This procedure was rejected as too surgical for our use. Nevertheless, according to a CIA pharmacologist, it is possible that such a drug could be gotten into the general circulation of subject without surgery, hypodermic or feeding.
He suggested a method known as iontophoresis, which involves using an electric current to transfer the ions of a chosen medicament into the tissues of the body.
The CIA's infatuation with cocaine was short-lived. It may have titillated the nostrils of more than a few spies and produced some heady speculation, but after the initial inspiration it was back to square one.
Perhaps their expectations were too high for any drug to accommodate. Or maybe a new approach to the problem was required.
Heroin
The search for an effective interrogation technique eventually led to heroin. Not the heroin that ex-Nazi pilots under CIA contract smuggled out of the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia on CIA proprietary airlines during the late 1940s and 1950s; nor the heroin that was pumped into America's black and brown ghettos after passing through contraband networks controlled by mobsters who moonlighted as CIA hitmen.
The Agency's involvement in worldwide heroin traffic, which has been well documented in _The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred McCoy, went far beyond the scope of Operation ARTICHOKE, which was primarily concerned with eliciting information from recalcitrant subjects.
However, ARTICHOKE scientists did see possible advantages in heroin as a mind control drug. According to a CIA document dated April 26, 1952, heroin was frequently used by police and intelligence officers on a routine basis.
The cold turkey theory of interrogation: CIA operatives determined that heroin and other habit-forming substances can be useful in reverse because of the stresses produced when they are withdrawn from those who are addicted to their use.
LSD
It was with the hope of finding the long-sought miracle drug that CIA investigators first began to dabble with LSD-25 in the early 1950s. At the time very little was known about the hallucinogen, even in scientific circles.
Dr. Werner Stoll, the son of Sandoz president Arthur Stoll and a colleague of Albert Hoffmann's, was the first person to investigate the psychological properties of LSD.
The results of his study were presented in the _Swiss Archives of neurology in 1947. Stoll reported that LSD produced disturbances in perception, hallucinations, and acceleration in thinking; moreover, the drug was found to blunt the usual suspiciousness of schizophrenic patients.
No favorable aftereffects were described. Two years later in the same journal Stoll contributed a second report entitled A New Hallucinatory Agent, Active in Very Small Amounts.
The fact that LSD caused hallucinations should not have been a total surprise to the scientific community. Sandoz first became interested in ergot, the natural source of all lysergic acid. The rye fungus had a mysterious and contradictory reputation.
In China and parts of the Mideast it was thought to possess medicinal qualities, and certain scholars believe that it may have been used in sacred rites in ancient Greece.
In other parts of Europe, however, the same fungus was associated with the horrible malady known as St. Anthony's Fire, which struck periodically like the plague.
Medieval chronicles tell of villages and towns where nearly everyone went mad for a few days after ergot-diseased rye was unknowingly milled into flour and baked as bread.
Men were afflicted with gangrenous limbs that looked like blackened stumps, and pregnant women miscarried. Even in modern times, there have been reports of ergot-related epidemics.
FOOTNOTE: In 1951 hundreds of respectable citizens in Pont-Saint-Esprit, a small French village, went completely berserk one evening. Some of the town's leading citizens jumped from windows into the Rhone.
Others ran through the streets screaming abut being chased by lions, tigers, and bandits with donkey ears.
Many died, and whose who survived suffered strange aftereffects for weeks. In his book The Day of St. Anthony's Fire, John C Fuller attributes this bizarre outbreak to rye flour contaminated with ergot.
Initial reports seemed promising. In one instance LSD was given to an officer who had been instructed not to reveal a significant military secret.
When questioned, however, he gave all the details of the secret... and after the effects of the LSD had worn off, the officer had no knowledge of revealing the information (complete amnesia).
Favorable reports kept coming in, and when this phase of experimentation was completed, the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) prepared a lengthy memorandum entitled Potential New Agent for Unconventional Warfare.
LSD was said to be useful for eliciting true and accurate statements from subjects under its influence during interrogation.
Moreover, the data on hand suggested that LSD might help in reviving memories of past experiences.
It almost seemed to good to be true a drug that unearthed secrets buried deep in the unconscious mind but also caused amnesia during the effective period. The implications were downright astounding.
Soon the entire CIA hierarchy was head over heels as news of what appeared to be a major breakthrough sent shock waves rippling through headquarters. (C.P.Snow once said, The euphoria of secrecy goes to the head.)
For years they had searched, and now they were on the verge of finding the Holy Grail of the cloak-and-dagger trade.
As one CIA officer recalled, We had thought at first this was the secret that was going to unlock the universe.
But the sense of elation did not last long. As the secret research progressed, the CIA ran into problems.
Eventually they came to recognize that LSD was not really a truth serum in the classical sense. Accurate information could not always be obtained from people under the influence of LSD because it induced a marked anxiety and loss of reality contact.
Those who received unwitting doses experienced an intense distortion of time, place, and body image, frequently culminating in full-blown paranoid reactions.
The bizarre hallucinations caused by the drug often proved more of a hindrance than an aid to the interrogation process.
There was always the risk, for example, that an enemy spy who started to trip out would realize he'd been drugged. This could make him overly suspicious and taciturn to the point of clammy up entirely.
When CIA scientists tested a drug for speech-inducing purposes and found that it didn't work, they usually put it aside and tried something else. But such was not the case with LSD.
Although early reports proved overoptimistic, the Agency was not about the discard such a powerful and unusual substance simply because it did not live up to its original expectations.
They had to shift gears. A reassessment of the strategic implications of LSD was necessary. If, strictly speaking, LSD was not a reliable truth drug, then how else could it be used?
Perplexed
CIA researchers were intrigued by this new chemical, but they didn't quite know what to make of it. LSD was significantly different from anything else they knew about. The most fascinating thing about it, a CIA psychologist recalled, was that such minute quantities had such a terrible effect.
Mere micrograms could create serious mental confusion... and render the mind temporarily susceptible to suggestion.
Moreover, the drug was colorless, odorless, and tasteless, and therefore easily concealed in food and beverage. But it was hard to predict the response to LSD.
On certain occasions acid seemed to cause an uninhibited disclosure of information, but oftentimes the overwhelming anxiety experienced by the subject obstructed the interrogation process. And there were unexplainable mood swings from total panic to boundless bliss.
How could one drug produce such extreme behavior and contradictory reactions? It didn't make sense. As research continued, the situation became even more perplexing.
At one point a group of Security officers did an about-face and suggested that acid might best be employed as an anti-interrogation substance: Since information obtained from a person in a psychotic state would be unrealistic, bizarre, and extremely difficult to assess, the self-administration of LSD-25, which is effective in minute doses, might in special circumstances offer an operative temporary protection against interrogation.
This proposal was somewhat akin to a suicide pill scenario. Secret agents would be equipped with micro-pellets of LSD to take on dangerous assignments.
If they fell into enemy hands and were about to be interrogated, they could pop a tab of acid as a preventive measure and babble gibberish. Obviously this idea was impractical, but it showed just how confused the CIA's top scientists were about LSD. First they thought it was a true serum, then a lie serum, and for a while they didn't know what to think.
To make matters worse, there was a great deal of concern within the Agency that the Soviets and the Red Chinese might also have designs on LSD as an espionage weapon.
A survey conducted by the Officer of Scientific Intelligence noted that ergot was a commercial product in numerous Eastern Bloc countries. The enigmatic fungus also flourished in the Soviet Union, but Russian ergot had not yet appeared in foreign markets. Could this mean the Soviets were hoarding their supplies?
Since information on the chemical structure of LSD was available in scientific journals as early as 1947, the Russians might have been stockpiling raw ergot in order to convert it into a mind control weapon.
Although no Soviet data are available on LSD-25, the OSI study concluded, it must be assumed that the scientists of the USSR are thoroughly cognizant of the strategic importance of this powerful new drug and are capable of producing it at any time.
Security officials proposed that LSD be administered to CIA trainee volunteers. Such a procedure would clearly demonstrate to select individuals the effects of hallucinogenic substances upon themselves and their associates.
Furthermore, it would provide an opportunity to screen Agency personnel for anxiety proneness; those who couldn't pass the acid test would be excluded from certain critical assignments.
This suggestion was well received by the ARTICHOKE steering committee, although the representative from the CIA's Medical Office felt that the test should not be confined merely to male volunteer trainee personnel, but that it should be broadened to include all components of the Agency. According to a CIA document dated November 19, 1953, the Project Committee verbally concurred in this recommendation.
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Books
Acid Dreams:
The Complete Social History of LSD:
The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond
An accurate, well researched book. As the title implies, it covers such things as the origin of LSD and the CIA funded research for use as a mind control tool. But more importantly it explains how LSD and other drugs have affected society.
Not a boring text book, this is probably the best book available on the social history of LSD from its synthesis in the 1940's to the present day. Students looking for information about LSD should borrow this book at a local library.
Acid Dreams
Liquid Conspiracy:
LSD, JFK, the CIA, Area 51, and UFOs
A passport into the shadowy world of the CIA and the dark underbelly of the military. This book is filled with illustrations, maps, and drawings it invites readers into a web of conspiracy that reaches all the way to the White House.
Liquid Conspiracy
The Search for the Manchurian Candidate:
The CIA and Mind Control
Thorough book about U.S government mind control research, specifically the CIA. The CIA's obsession with LSD is fascinating. MK-ULTRA was the code name the Agency used for its program directed at gaining control over human behavior through covert use of chemical and biological materials.
The MK-ULTRA program ran from 1953 to 1964 at which time it was renamed MK-SEARCH and continued until 1973. It did an undetermined number of bizarre and grotesque experiments that included hypnosis, electronic brain implants, microwave transmissions, parapsychology, and others.
The Search for the Manchurian Candidate
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