LSD? CIA? ETC?

[Tim Strzechowski]

Here are a few extracts that may (or may not) further the thread:

from Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain.  _Acid Dreams: The Complete Social
History of LsD: The Cia, The Sixties, and Beyond_.  Grove Press: New
York, 1985.

"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 Hofmann's, was the first person
to investigate the psychological properties of LSD" (12).

[ . . . ]

"When the CIA first became interested in LSD, only a handful of
scientists in the United States were engaged in hallucinogenic drug
research.  At the time there was little private or public support for
this relatively new field of experimental psychiatry, and no one had
undertaken a systematic investigation of LSD" (19).

[ . . . ]

"The [clandestine LSD] experiments continued without interruption until
1963, when CIA inspector general John Earman accidentally stumbled
across the clandestine testing program during a routine inspection of
TSS operations.  Only a handful of CIA agents outside Technical Services
knew about the testing of LSD on unwitting subjects, and Earman took
Richard Helms, the prime instigator of MK-ULTRA, to task for not fully
briefing the new CIA director, John J. McCone" (33).

[ . . . ]

"By the mid-1960s nearly fifteen hundred military personnel had served
as guinea pigs in LSD experiments conducted by the US Army Chemical
Corps.  Some later claimed they were coerced into 'volunteering' for
these experiments by their superior officers.  A number of GI veterans
complained they suffered from severe depression and emotional
disturbances after the LSD trials" (40).

[ . . . ]

"During the early 1960s the CIA and the military began to phase out
their in-house acid tests in favor of more powerful chemicals such as BZ
[quinuclidinyl benzilate], which became the army's standard
incapacitating agent . . . As [Major General William] Creasy warned
shortly after he retired from the Army Chemical Corps, 'We will use
these [drugs] as we very well see fit, when we think it is in the best
interest of the US and their allies'" (43).