Shrinks and LSD

[Peter M. Fitzpatrick]

The Church Committee brought details of these clandestine, and in many
cases, Illegal operations to public knowledge in 1975. Operation Paperclip
was under the direction of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency.
Operation Paperclip spawned several other operations, such as Operation
CHATTER (1947) and Project BLUEBIRD (1950), renamed Project ARTICHOKE by
1953. The Watergate scandal caused panic in the CIA in 1973 and it
destroyed most of the extensive records on MK-ULTRA and other Operations.

                                    In 1977, the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence revealed 20,000 pages of records the CIA had missed, and
revelations included the widespread implementation of these "programs" at
44 American Colleges and Universities, 15 research foundations, chemical
and pharmaceutical companies (including Sandoz and Eli Lilly).
Additionally, 12 hospitals not affiliated with universities took part in
MK-Ultra.
       Some speculate that the CIA has never really stopped these
"programs" and countless conspiracy theories have resulted from the lack of
integral records. The LSD-fueled radicalism on American colleges campuses
in the 1960's has been discussed as a possible psychological misdirection
away from prior, more level-headed opposition to American involvement in
Southeast Asia. It cannot be doubted that LSD and other drugs escaped from
the CIA's control and helped to create a "counter-culture" response to
consumerist materialism, but questions have arisen as to possible military
or intelligence influence behind the music emanating from Laurel Canyon in
Los Angeles, which produced a very disproportionate number of famous
musicians who publicly advertised their use of drugs like LSD in their
music but somehow never seeming to receive attention from law enforcement.
These are unsubstantiated claims, of course, and the truth will probable
never be known.
                                                             It is
interested that the devisers of the torture programs in the modern "war on
terror" cited the same rationale, i,e. the methods used by Soviet,
.Chinese, and North Koreans Communist to effect "brainwashing" or "thought
reform" in American POW's in the Korean War, that Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the
head of MK-Ultra, said was his motivation for using drugs to influence
behavior. Nazi doctors had administered mescaline to concentration camp
inmates for observation of its effects, though what the motivations for
these experiments is not well understood by those not privy to the
documents recovered from the era.

                                                                    How Mr.
Pynchon could have known about Nazi-CIA (Paperclip) use of hallucinogens is
a good question. His time in the Navy is one possible source, Naval
Intelligence also being implicated in the Church Committee findings. Other
writers, like William S. Burroughs, voiced misgivings about the ultimate
source of hallucinogenic drugs like LSD during its heyday of popularity.
Not everyone was convinced of its "messianic" effects. The "California
Summer" of the mid to late 60's could have also raised questions in the
more soberminded, particularly as it received so much media "attention".
Again, elements of secrecy and clandestine subterfuge make the skeins of
truth difficult to unravel.

On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 3:26 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <
thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:

> I wouldn't know about Cary Grant taking drugs but agree that Pynchon in
> COL49 hints at a link between Nazi human experimentation and LSD
> experiments conducted by the CIA within the context of what became known
> much later as MK-Ultra (it seems that the Edgewood Arsenal experiments were
> part of a different programme run by the military).
>
> How could Pynchon know about this when the first full-length study of CIA
> human experimentation, John Marks' brilliant "The Search for the Manchurian
> Candidate" was not published until 1979?
>
> Recommended reading:
>
> Hank Albarelli, A Terrible Mistake (could have used an editor but provides
> a lot of information not found elsewhere).
>
> Alfred McCoy, "A Question of Torture" (traces the methods used in
> "enhanced interrogations" back to MK-Ultra).
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Am 21.10.2015 um 10:00 schrieb matthew cissell:
>
>> So I guess you folks know that before Kesey or Timothy L got on the
>> bus, there were some Hollywood people getting thier heads cleared with
>> LSD. This was thanks to a Dr Oscar Janiger. Cary Grant got turned on
>> because his gal Betsy was seeing the good Doc.
>>
>>    Does anyone know if anything has been written in the Pynchon
>> criticism suggesting a link between the real life Dr Doses and the
>> CL49 Dr Hilarious.
>>
>> (Apparently there is a connection - Edgewood Arsenal experiments -
>> between MKULTRA and its LSD experiments and some of the Nazi
>> scientists who were brought over by Paperclip.)
>>
>> Apparently Cary was rather public about his LSD use since it wasn't
>> illegal until later. Could TP have know about the Dr.s and their
>> treatments or experiments?
>>
>> mc
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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