LSD? CIA? ETC?

[cj hurtt]

is it possible that pynchon, like keysey, was one of these lsd guinea pigs?
i know there's no record and this will only lead to wild conjecture...but
still i wonder


>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).