Albion Dreaming (12 page)

Though the British public were largely unaware of the truth about LSD experiments at Porton Down until the early years of the new millennium, strong hints had appeared in the media that the drug was being used there. In May 1964,
The Times
’ defence correspondent reported that Porton was testing a wide range of substances including LSD “... the lysergic acid derivative having the property of removing the will to fight or even to offer defence against attack.”
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This reference, however, would have meant little
to readers as LSD was virtually unheard of in the British media before 1966.

At that time, no servicemen had yet come forward to relate their personal stories to the media. But they were beginning to reveal their often-harrowing experiences to those they felt able to trust, such as members of the clergy. For instance, in October 1968, the Reverend McNichol publicly criticised the Porton scientists for administering LSD to volunteers without their knowledge, commenting: “This is entirely the wrong thing to do. This attitude is dangerously similar to that of the Japanese in the last war.” An MOD spokesperson quickly, if blandly, retorted, claiming experiments had taken place into how troops and civilians would react to the drug if a war took place.
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In the summer of 1969, at a week-long series of public, “nothing to hide”, open days, Neville Gadsby, Porton’s director, was quite open about the LSD experiments that had taken place. Film of the 1964 Operation Moneybags LSD trial was shown to the public for the first time, Gadsby pointing out the problems of administering the drug to troops in the field. Though this was widely covered in the media, the story faded away within a week because there was no accompanying editorial outcry against testing chemicals on troops.

Perhaps because of the authoritarian and secret nature of the armed forces, military personnel have often felt unable to challenge the testing of chemical weapons. This situation changed in 1991, when troops returning from the first Gulf War began to complain of symptoms they believed were brought on by the chemicals they had come into contact with. The media became interested and the effects of chemicals on service personnel became a frequent and hotly debated topic in the newspapers and on television. Some individuals who had been chemical test volunteers at Porton were now starting to review what had happened to them and in July 1999, following a complaint by a former military volunteer, Wiltshire Constabulary began Operation Antler, an investigation into allegations of malfeasance at Porton Down.
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Antler was funded by a £900,000 government grant and covered a wide range of allegations from the period 1939 to 1989. The
investigation was a huge undertaking, with staff interviewing over 700 of the 20,000 military personnel who had participated in tests at Porton Down. Those involved in LSD tests comprised a small minority of the volunteers, but the Antler staff were very interested in the MI6 LSD tests of the early Fifties and went to considerable lengths to unearth new evidence.

Detectives working on Operation Antler were keen to get to the bottom of whether those who volunteered for the LSD trials in the Fifties had been duped into thinking they would be helping to find a cure for the common cold. Newspapers ran appeals for a copy of the original poster, or the newspaper advertisement. However, although several people came forward to say they remembered seeing the poster, no one could provide a copy and nor could one be found in government archives.

After several years’ investigation, the Operation Antler team submitted eight cases to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), none of them related to the LSD tests. In July 2003, the hopes of the Porton Veterans Group were dashed when the CPS advised that nobody would face criminal charges arising from the experiments carried out on human volunteers at Porton Down.

In 2005, the UK government were forced to reveal that LSD tests had taken place in the 1950s when Liberal Democrat MP, Matthew Taylor posed a Parliamentary Question. Secretary of State for Defence, Jack Straw responded: “In 1953 and 1954 the Secret Intelligence Service commissioned Porton Down to conduct tests on military service volunteers, and also on Porton scientists themselves, to examine their reactions to LSD. The Government’s defence interest in LSD began in the early 1950s because of its perceived potential as an incapacitant and/or interrogation aid. The 1953–54 LSD tests were but a small part of the continuing Porton Down volunteer test programme. The conclusion of the tests was that LSD has no demonstrable value for intelligence purposes.”
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This was the first official acknowledgement that the SIS tests had taken place in 1953 and 1954 and that LSD was the drug used. Several of the Porton Down veterans who had been involved in the Fifties LSD tests now instructed solicitors to seek compensation for injuries sustained because of the experiments. Eric Gow, chair
of the Porton veterans group commented: “What was done to us all was totally unforgiveable. However, recognition of this through the resolution of these claims will go some way towards righting this historic wrong.”
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When Gow approached the MOD he was told “... much of the information concerning LSD involves research conducted at the behest of the Secret Intelligence Service ... We are more than happy to speak to them on your behalf and will pursue the question of downgrading the security classification of certain documents to allow us to disclose them to you.”
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Gow’s solicitor, Alan Care commented: “Clearly these men were duped and subjected to unethical LSD thought control experiments. MI6 should release all its documents about these trials – national secrecy will not be compromised.”
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Gow’s fight to uncover just what had happened to him on that January day in 1954 typified the British government’s attitude both to its subjects and to secrecy. Initially Gow was told that there had been no LSD tests in the Fifties, despite evidence to the contrary in Peter Wright’s 1985 MI5 memoir. The government were forced to change their mind in January 2002 when Wiltshire detectives working on Operation Antler unearthed fresh evidence. This led Junior Defence Minister, Lewis Moonie to concede that “... there was, in fact, research being carried out at Porton Down involving LSD, as early as 1953.”
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Eric Gow and his two colleagues’ lawsuit against the MOD concluded in February 2006 when they were offered an out of court settlement, thought to be £10,000 between them. However, it seems that this settlement was only agreed because MI6 feared that a court case might have forced them to reveal more of their closely guarded secrets about the chemical and biological warfare experiments they were involved in. In a typically convoluted statement a spokesman for the Foreign Office, acting on behalf of MI6, commented: “The settlement offers were made to the government on behalf of the three claimants which, on legal advice, and in the particular circumstances of these cases, the government thinks it appropriate to accept.”
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One of the beneficiaries of the compensation, Don Webb, thought
MI6’s offer too little, too late: “They stick to the old maxim: never apologise, never explain. But in this case they have decided to pay some money. I think that is as near to an apology or an explanation I’ll get.”
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Not everyone, though, who took part in the government’s LSD trials was interested in compensation. George Logan Marr was an RAF radar operator in the Fifties and a volunteer at Porton Down, where he was given three glasses of water containing LSD and asked to record the effects it had on him: “It made me laugh uncontrollably and I had a curious tingling in my joints. I can’t say it was particularly unpleasant.” Asked if he was going to pursue a claim for compensation Marr said he wasn’t because: “I was a volunteer. I signed up for it. No one told me what I was taking and I didn’t ask. I wasn’t under orders. I did it because I got extra pay and a few days extra leave.”
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Another serviceman who chose not to claim compensation was Derek Channon, who had taken part in the 1953 trials. Channon remarked of his experience, “Rightly or wrongly, I was a volunteer. I was paid extra money and I was given weekend leave. If you volunteer for something, you take your money and take your chance.”
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These attitudes are admirable support for the armed forces and a testament to how well discipline and professionalism was instilled in service personnel. Nonetheless, even a volunteer has the right to know what they are volunteering for.

Though the government had admitted servicemen had been used as LSD guinea pigs, the culture of secrecy continued even after the court case was over. A request that documents relating to Gow and his colleagues’ legal action be placed in the public domain was denied. This means that the out of court settlement effectively meant the intelligence services were off the hook. Had solicitors pursued the case, perhaps the government would have had to reveal the full extent of its files pertaining to LSD and other biological and chemical weapons. As it stands the full extent of experiments sponsored by the intelligence services in the early Fifties remains cloaked in mystery.

Despite the government finally admitting they used LSD on volunteers without their permission, and despite the information
that Gow and his colleagues forced out of the government, questions about the intelligence services’ involvement with LSD remain. To what degree were the American military and intelligence services involved? Were tests carried out on the public? From where did Porton obtain its LSD in the Fifties? What was Joel Elkes’ role? To what extent was Netley Hospital used for casualties of the LSD trials? These and other questions will remain unanswered as long as Britain’s archaic secrecy laws are allowed to override public interest.

In the end, the LSD experiments at Porton Down were futile. Fifteen years of on-off tests on human volunteers had proved nothing and had brought the Porton scientists no closer to their goal of harnessing LSD, either as an aid to interrogation or as a battlefield incapacitant. They had been looking for a chemical that would make people tell the truth or would render them incapable of fighting. What they found was a drug whose effects seemed inconsistent and uncontrollable, qualities that did not sit well with the regimented mindset of the intelligence services and the MOD. If the Porton scientists had understood the subtle power of LSD and its potential to affect the delicate mechanism of the brain, rather than desiring to use it as a blunt instrument, the story of LSD as a weapon might have been completely different.

In retrospect, it is perhaps a positive outcome that Porton failed to bend LSD to its will. The idea of any government being able to use a drug to control the minds of its enemies, and by extension its own subjects, is a sinister one. Though the use of LSD in the counter culture might have caused problems for some individuals, they were at least taking the drug from a position of informed choice. For men such as Derek Channon, Eric Gow and the other LSD volunteers, there was no choice. Tricked into taking LSD, they were expected to hallucinate for Queen and country, unwitting guinea pigs in the search for a weapon that could be used in the imposition of one ideology over another. Ironically, this was exactly what the intellectuals of the LSD counter culture wanted to do; but instead of fighting enemies abroad, they were fighting their own society from the inside.

He not busy being born, is busy dying.

Bob Dylan
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O
nce LSD became available in Britain, outside the military or psychiatric contexts, it was quickly adopted by a generation of young people as their recreational drug of choice. It is clear from accounts of these early British LSD adventurers that the drug arrived already freighted with concepts about its effects and purpose. These concepts informed and shaped the drug’s course through British society in the Sixties and still resonate within LSD use to the present day.

Central to these concepts are the insights frequently experienced by LSD users: heightened awareness, experience of the transcendental and the numinous, a reverence for all sentient beings and the vision of a lifestyle antithetical to the rampant consumerism of the twentieth century.

These insights appear not to have been inherent in the drug itself. If they were an automatic consequence of taking LSD, then everyone who used the drug would have them. For instance, we would expect there to be evidence from the MOD’s LSD trials at Porton Down that soldiers had undergone religious experiences.
No such experiences were reported and nor did any of the Porton Down veterans later refer to any such effects in their statements to the Operation Antler investigation. Neither is there any indication from the literature of LSD psychotherapy that patients had similar experiences to those typically enjoyed by the emerging counter culture.

Set and setting, the mind set prior to taking LSD and the physical setting in which the experience takes place, seem to be the defining factors in how people interpret the LSD experience. The mind set and philosophy at the root of the first wave of serious LSD users in Britain can be traced to the experiences of a few key figures in the early American LSD movement. This group of people comprised a pair of British philosophers, together with a smattering of Americans, all of whom discovered LSD in the Fifties and early Sixties.