The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (55 page)

In Lake Charles, Louisiana, it is illegal to let a rain puddle remain in your front yard for more than twelve hours.

NAZI HALLUCINOGENICS

During World War II, Nazi scientists tested hallucinogenic drugs (such as mescaline) on inmates at the Dachau concentration camp. The Nazis were ostensibly trying to find a new “aviation medicine,” but what they were really looking for was the secret to mind control.

After dosing inmates for years, the Nazi scientists concluded that mind control was impossible, even when strong doses of the hallucinogens had been given to their patients. But they did find that they could extract the
most intimate of secrets from subjects under a drug's influence.

THE CIA TAKES OVER THE TRIP, MAN

After the war, U.S. military intelligence found out about the Nazi experiments and wondered if hallucinogenic drugs might be used for espionage. Could such drugs be sprayed over enemy armies to disable them? Could they be used to confuse or discredit leaders in hostile countries? The possibilities seemed endless, and in 1950, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) took over where the Nazis had left off.

In 1953, the CIA initiated a full-scale mind-control program called Operation MK-ULTRA. Its experiments studied the potential effects of hypnosis, electroshocks, extrasensory perception (ESP), lobotomy, and drugs. The operation is said to have lasted twenty years and cost $25 million.

According to the book
Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion
by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shalin, “Nearly every drug that appeared on the black market during the 1960's—marijuana, cocaine, PCP, DMT, speed, and many others—had previously been scrutinized, tested, and in some cases refined by the CIA and army scientists. But . . . none received as much
attention or was embraced with such enthusiasm as LSD-25 [lysergic acid diethylamide]. For a time, CIA personnel were completely infatuated with the hallucinogen. Those who first tested LSD in the early 1950s were convinced that it would revolutionize the cloak-and-dagger trade.”

In order to find out if the drug was effective as a secret weapon, the CIA first had to test it—on people.

THE SECRET LSD TESTS

In 1973, the CIA destroyed most of its files on the MK-ULTRA project, but some files escaped destruction. From these files, Congress and the public learned, for the first time, that for years the CIA had been experimenting with drugs.

To test LSD, the CIA had set up both secret operations and academic fronts. For instance, it established a “Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology,” at the Cornell University medical school, which dispensed “grants” to institutions in the U.S. and Canada to conduct experiments with LSD.

The LSD project was actually administered by the CIA's technical services staff. A freewheeling atmosphere developed in which anyone was likely to be dosed without warning in the name of research. Before the
program concluded, thousands of people had been involuntarily dosed.

In a San Francisco operation code-named Midnight Climax, prostitutes brought men to bordellos that were actually CIA safe houses. They would spike the men's drinks once inside the bordellos, and when they were properly affected, CIA operatives would observe, photograph, and record the action that ensued.

In another experiment, black inmates at the Lexington Narcotics Hospital were given LSD for seventy-five consecutive days in gradually decreasing doses.

The U.S. Army was also involved in LSD experiments.
Acid Dreams
reports that in the 1950s “nearly fifteen hundred military personnel had served as human guinea pigs in LSD experiments conducted by the US Army Chemical Corps.” The army even made a film of troops trying to drill while tripping on acid.

Eventually, the government had no choice but to admit it had given LSD to about one thousand unsuspecting people from 1955 to 1958 and has paid millions of dollars to settle lawsuits that were filed when subjects given drugs became permanently incapacitated or committed suicide.

For example, one lawsuit involved a civilian who, while working for the army in 1953, was slipped LSD at
a CIA party. He then jumped to his death from a tenthstory window. His was originally ruled a suicide, but in 1975 the government finally revealed that he had been intentionally drugged the night he died. The CIA apologized, and Congress awarded his family $750,000.

Another case described how a CIA-funded psychiatrist in Canada dosed patients with LSD and used other mind-control techniques, in an attempt to “reprogram” them. Nine of the patients later sued the CIA for damages. The case was settled out of court in 1988.

THE OSWALD CONNECTION

Was Lee Harvey Oswald one of those given LSD by the CIA? As a seventeen-year-old marine, Oswald was assigned to the U.S. naval air base in Atsugi, Japan, in 1957. It has been said that this base was one of two overseas stations where the CIA conducted LSD testing.

FACES ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE