Drug info - The CIA and LSD, by Alfred McCoy

[enquirewithin]

Prof. Alfred McCoy, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Author of "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror" and also "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade" gave an interview recently, part of which is about the CIA's infamous LSD research.

As a part of this comprehensive survey of human consciousness, the C.I.A. tried every possible techniques. And one of the things that they -- at the time that this research started in the 1940s, a Swiss pharmaceutical company developed LSD[Sandoz]...

And Dr. Hoffman there was the man who developed it. The C.I.A. bought substantial doses, and they conducted experiments. One of the most notorious experiments was that Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, inside the agency, spiked the drinks of his co-workers, and one of those co-workers suffered a breakdown, Dr. Frank Olson, and he either was -- I don't know whether he was pushed or jumped from a hotel here in New York City --....his son Eric Olson insists that his father was murdered by the C.I.A. Eric Olson believes that his father did a tour of Europe, and he visited the ultimate Anglo-American test site, black site near Frankfurt, where they were doing lethal experiments, fatal experiments, on double agents and suspected double agents, and that his father returned enormously upset by the discovery that this research was actually killing people, and that, therefore, Eric Olson argues his father was killed by the C.I.A., that he was pushed.

They [the CIA]had two kind of party houses. They had one in the San Francisco Bay Area, another in New York City. And what they did in San Francisco was they had prostitutes who go out to the streets, get individuals, bring them back, give them a drink, and there would be a two-way mirror, and the C.I.A. would photograph these people....They were running the brothel....

There were [also involved] some [people] in prisons in the United States and also the Drug Treatment Center in Lexington, Kentucky. The Federal Drug Treatment Center in Lexington, Kentucky, had this. All of this research, all this very elaborate research....

What they found time and time again is that electroshock didn't work, and sodium pentathol didn't work, LSD certainly didn't work. You scramble the brain. You got unreliable information. But what did work was the combination of these two rather boring, rather mundane behavioral techniques: sensory disorientation and self-inflicted pain.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarti...40&ItemID=9749

Reputation Comments on this post:

Nice! I've always wondered about the CIA and LSD! GREAT!

[Nagognog2]

Once the CIA had discerned that LSD25 wasn't useful as a "truth serum" they didn't abandon the molecule. They attempted to make use of it to injure people with. Case in point: Fidel Castro.

The CIA hatched more plots against Fidel than most American high school graduates can count. One included the aerial spraying of LSD25 around the radio station in Havana, where Fidel was scheduled to speak out about the failed "Bay of Pigs" invasion. The concept was Fidel would go insane on live radio - and the Cuban people would rise up and overthrow him, thus welcoming back the Cuban Mafia and their beloved dictator Fulgencio Batista. Oh yeah! For some reason, they scrapped this plan and went back to trying to poison his cigars...and his milkshakes....and his beard.....and.....

The Nixon administration also was known to have tinkered with possibly using LSD. Jack Anderson, an extremely articulate journalist, and critic of Nixon during the Watergate investigation, was targeted for an attack using LSD. Their plot involved dissolving LSD in DMSO (dimethylsulfoxide) and applying the resulting solution to the steering wheel of Mr. Anderson's car. DMSO is a well-known skin penetrant. If one applies a solution of saccharin in DMSO to the wrist - one will taste the saccharin in your mouth in 30 seconds. So the hope of Nixon & Company was that Jack Anderson would go flying down the road on acid and crash and burn. This could then be blamed on Mr. Anderson being a drug addict. OooooooEeeeeeOoooooo.....

It has been discovered, by review of the CIA budget and expenses (limited amounts of this information is available to the Senate - but even they are not allowed to view all of it), that the CIA purchased 1 kilogram of LSD25 from Sandoz in the late 1950's.

One can only speculate where the bulk of this currently resides. But this much is known about the CIA's chemistry set: When a group of researchers wished to investigate Red Tide - a toxic bloom that occurs along sea coasts involving shellfish - and the cause of the fatal poisoning that results in people who eat the shellfish affected, they needed a source of the isolated poison: Saxotoxin. There was, they discovered, only one stockpile of this molecule. Did you guess where? That's right! Give yourself one of Fidel's cigars. They had to go begging some from the CIA.

[Jatelka]

If you're interested in this area of the CIA's dubiousness then SWIM can highly recommend "Acid Dreams: The complete social history of LSD, the CIA, the Sixties and Beyond" by Martin A Lee and Bruce Shlain.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Excellent post on LSD/CIA. Thanks, I'm buying the book!!

[Richard_smoker]

HOLY SHIT! They bought a KILOGRAM!!!??? WOW!

This is not a trivial amount! and there's NO WAY in HELL that they could possibly use this up in the course of either research OR in using it as a bioterrorist agent against rival governments (i.e. Castro).

You know, I've heard many history students say that the primary fear of LSD that the US gov. had was its potential effectiveness as a tool of mass control by way of 'sprinkling' into public water supplies... funny that the CIA has a damn kilogram that we KNOW of!

Thanks Jatelka, I'm going to buy this book as well as the other one recommended. I've always wondered what the truth was concerning this subject, and I'll have to stop by the drug store and pick up a few rolls of Tums in order to even read these books!

What a fucked-up government we have!

[Nagognog2]

The government of South Africa, before the fall of apartheid and Nelson Mandela being freed, invested in large quantities of both 2-CB and MDMA to covertly release to the people. The idea being to turn them all into peaceful hippies in the event of wide-spread open revolt/revolution. They never got to that point. The source of the material is reported to be from labs in Isreal - Isreal is well known to have supplied the apartheid government of South Africa with many advanced weapons over the years. Apparently, in part, as an exchange for allowing Isreal to test-fire a nuclear bomb over South African waters in the southern Indian Ocean.

Shortly there after apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela become the Prime Minister. The 2-CB and MDMA were then sold in the international underground drug market. One used to be able to purchase 2-CB from a company directly from South Africa. It was sold in 5mg purple tablets for use as a sexual stimulant. When this got too hot, the material was moved to the Turks and Caicos Islands for sale in the same form. The packaging stated that taking 20mg or more could result in a "Shamanic type of experience."

Don't bother looking. That was a long time back!

[Richard_smoker]

Hahahahaa---"don't bother looking"

That's hilarious! How did you know exactly what the fuck I was thinking!!??

Nagog, I was so caught up in reading your post for its great intellectual/historical/conversation-piece value, that my conscious brain almost didn't even notice while my evil right hand (with a mind of its own--after all, as any homophobic youth, I detached it years ago as a defense mechanism, to allow for masturbation without the continuous guilt that I regularly pulled-off a guy--an anti-Christian practice, for sure) began sneakily crawling up for the mouse, carefully poised to copy-and-paste your description... with the secret intention being, of course, to insert those wonderful keywords straight into google and track down those little african-israeli sexual stimulants!!

ahhh... what a tease, what a tease... BTW, as I'm typing this, my right hand is crawling out the room, headed for my girlfriend's medicine cabinet, I guess... I think he has ADHD!

[nanobrain]

Storming Heaven - LSD and the American Dream is another good one.

now, estimates vary as to the Soviets and Chinese LSD production - i have heard rumours of hundreds of kilograms, but suffice to say experiments were conducted on a wiiide scale.

[Richard_smoker]

Sorry if this is post-whoreish. Just call me a whore.

I just wanted to follow-up by saying that I purchased jatelka's recommended reading, "Acid Dreams" and it is excellent! Thanks for the recommendation. I'm surprised at how well-written the book is. I'm taking my time reading it because I actually relish the writing style! I find it even more interesting to read than a novel. (Usually I just flip through nonfiction, looking for stuff I'm interested in.) So, for anyone interested in CIA/LSD history who doesn't usually enjoy nonfiction, this book might be right up your ally.

And Nano, I think you must have ESP! And I must have picked up your ESP thought waves before you even posted that suggestion! Either that, or at a very minimum you can say that you're as smart as Amazon's Artificial Intelligence, lol.

I say that 'cause I actually bought "Storming Heaven" in the exact same purchase! When I put the other book into my shopping cart, Amazon's AI recommended Storming Heaven, so I picked it up as well... I guess it's not all that weird... how many books could there possibly be that are centered around LSD's infamous history in U.S. "Intelligence? " BTW nano, I haven't gotten a chance to read much, but it looks pretty comprehensive as well. Thanks guys.