French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment

[Robert Mahnke]

http://bit.ly/cB7DS3

On 3/12/10, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>