French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment

[David Morris]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7415082/French-bread-spiked-with-LSD-in-CIA-experiment.html

In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly
and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At
least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds
afflicted.

For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly
poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American
investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA
peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind
control experiment at the height of the Cold War.

[...]

Eventually, it was determined that the best-known local baker had
unwittingly contaminated his flour with ergot, a hallucinogenic mould
that infects rye grain. Another theory was the bread had been poisoned
with organic mercury.

However, H P Albarelli Jr., an investigative journalist, claims the
outbreak resulted from a covert experiment directed by the CIA and the
US Army's top-secret Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort
Detrick, Maryland.

The scientists who produced both alternative explanations, he writes,
worked for the Swiss-based Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company, which was
then secretly supplying both the Army and CIA with LSD.

Mr Albarelli came across CIA documents while investigating the
suspicious suicide of Frank Olson, a biochemist working for the SOD
who fell from a 13th floor window two years after the Cursed Bread
incident. One note transcribes a conversation between a CIA agent and
a Sandoz official who mentions the "secret of Pont-Saint-Esprit" and
explains that it was not "at all" caused by mould but by diethylamide,
the D in LSD.