The Main Scientist behind MK-Ultra - a book recommendation

[Hübschräuber]

What did Pynchon know and when did he know it...

> Ok, now for the bigger stuff, TP, LSD and MK-Ultra. You wrote: "As I see it, the passages in question do not refer to a specific event but blend together two notorious aspects of OSS/CIA/MKULTRA activity: rescue and employment of Nazi doctors wanted for crimes against humanity, LSD experiments." I suppose my response is that the blending is yours more than Pynchon's.

This is well possible. Unless the author tells us something about his ideas while writing the text in question, which I consider highly unlikely, we will unfortunately never know.

> Part of the problem may be in what we mean by "public knowledge". Photos in newspapers from the period make it clear that in a certain sense the presence of German scientists (not doctors) in the post-WWII US was not hidden. Of course, it's another question altogether as to how much of the US public was aware of that, as compared to knwing what team won the World Series in '47 or '53. So, it seems we agree that TP could have known about German scientists without knowing about Paperclip. However, I don't think that extends to Nazi doctors despite the character of Dr. Hilarius.

I agree. Except that Pynchon not only "could have known" but definitely knew about German rocket scientists who had worked on the V-1 and the V-2 in Peenemünde by the time he wrote "V." See below.

> Let's take a minute to talk about CoL49 and LSD and TP and the time period. Col49 hit shelves in '66. But a lot had already happened. The Acid Tests, for example. The first one was in late '65, but by early '66 several were celebrated in the LA area - so TP would have heard about that. (It would be bigger news when California banned the substance in May of '66.) LSD was out there. Whether it was Sandoz product that Kesey stole, or Owsley or some other chemist, it was creating a socio-pyscho seismic ripple in the US and abroad as the genie took flight. What did TP think?

Pynchon would have heard about the LSD tests, yes. COL49 is proof to that.

We are talking about this (from the Wiki entry on "Acid Dreams", for brevity's sake):

-- Under the direction of Sidney Gottlieb, the drug was used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in cooperation with participating "colleges, universities, research foundations, hospitals, clinics, and penal institutions". LSD was tested on "prisoners, mental patients, volunteers, and unsuspecting human subjects." --

(The suburban housewives of COL49 would have been "volunteers", not "unsuspecting human subjects". Hilarius tries to get Oedipa to participate. Whether consent was informed or not is a different matter.)

The question is: Did Pynchon know that the CIA was behind the Acid Tests? To me, the participation of Hilarius in the experiments seems to point in that direction.

> In my mind, 2 things give the reader an idea of how the almost 30 year-old TP likely felt about LSD at that time. LSD really makes its appearance in the novel with Mucho and Dr. Hilarius, and both are basically negative.

Yes, definitely.

> Mucho gets lost in "rich, chocolaty goodness", which leads in part to his disappearing relationship with Oedipa, and as such makes LSD look bad. (We might mention that anti-LSD government propaganda would grow through the period and make its appearance in the Dragnet episode with Blue-boy in '67. Thereafter it became absurd.) Next, we have Dr. Hilarius who is definitely not köscher. He is a bad guy. And what better way to make him sound really off his tracks? Have him give LSD to his patients. How wicked is that_

I take your point. I just don't find it very convincing. Hilarius is not simpy a bad guy or an evil doctor, he is an evil Nazi doctor who has conducted human experiments in a concentration camp.

> A brief note on that. Journalist Joe Hyams published interviews with Cary Grant in '59 that detail Grant's therapy with LSD. Hyams was inundated with calls after that by psychologists and more that wanted to obtain the substance for their patients who were clamouring for it. Kesey signed up for the Menlo VA experiments in '59, and his book came out in '62. The idea of doctors administering LSD was not that far from the imagination, especially by '65.

Thank you for the historical references. There is also one or more episodes of "Mad Men" about the arrival of LSD in NYC. My point remains that Hilarius is not just an evil American doctor but a Nazi war criminal. The presence of some of these doctors in the US was only known by very few persons, among them the same persons who conducted the MKULTRA experiments from Fort Detrick and the human experiments of the military in Edgewood Arsenal.

> The real difference is, as you say: "Yes, I believe the creation of a character like Hilarius requires that knowledge." And I don't.

I am perfectly happy to agree with you that we disagree on this.

> I think it's more plausible that TP included LSD and used it to depict characters in a less than flattering light. It is worth noting that his position changes, and by the time we get to IV the chemical is being treated in a much more favourable manner. The other possibility (re. that he had some information about Blome, LSD and the US doctors involved) would mean that he had information not even the President had. Very few people, other than Sydney Gottlieb, knew about the flat in San Fran or the dark sites and all the rest that constitutes a big part of the Family Jewels.

US support for people like Blome (who probably was saved from the gallows in Nuremberg due to US intervention and whose transfer to the US under Paperclip was thankfully rejected by the US consul in Frankfurt; instead he got the job at Camp King) or Ishii (who collaborated with Blome, an axis of evil if there ever was one) or the activities of Hubertus Strughold ("The Father of Space Medicine") during the war were indeed known only to a happy few at the time. As for other, less prominent Nazi scientists who were brought to the US, see Linda Hunt's "Secret Agenda" and indeed Stephen Kinzer (fun fact: Kinzer was singled out as a negative example in Chomsky's and Herman's "Manufacturing Consent"). But how then did Pynchon come up with Hilarius? It should have been impossible for him to even speculate that this kind of war criminal was allowed to live in the US, no?

> You asked: "Or are you arguing that he had not done the research yet when he he wrote V. and COL49?" I'm not prepared to say what research was done when and where. It's pretty clear from that letter in which he states he has several projects going, that he is working on several things at once. I'm not sure how far had gone by the time V. was published. Did he know about the V-2? That seems quite a safe bet.

Oh yes. Kurt Mondaugen, working at Yoyodyne in "V.", had worked on "Vergeltungswaffe Eins and Zwei" (Picador edition, 227-228) at Peenemünde during the war. I note in passing that Yoyodyne (see "Rocketdyne") also does "research for the government on the effects on high-altitude and space flight" (284) which was the expertise of Hubertus Strughold (this is probably just coincidence).

> Let's just hope that TP has thought of some way to produce a biography that he controls and will give us some of the answers many of us want. Like his favorite ice-cream flavour. (har har).

Same as Horst's, I trust...

Thank you and be well,
Thomas