Anonymous Report This Comment Date: May 08, 2005 06:59AM
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ACID DREAMS, THE COMPLETE SOCIAL HISTORY OF LSD: THE CIA, THE SIXTIES, AND
BEYOND
In The Beginning There Was Madness
Enter LSD
It was with the hope of finding the long-sought miracle drug that CIA
investigators first began to dabble with LSD-25 in the early 1950s. At the time
very little was known about the hallucinogen, even in scientific circles. Dr.
Werner Stoll, the son of Sandoz president Arthur Stoll and a colleague of Albert
Hofmann's, was the first person to investigate the psychological properties of
LSD. The results of his study were presented in the Swiss Archives of Neurology
in 1947. Stoll reported that LSD produced disturbances in perception,
hallucinations, and acceleration in thinking; moreover, the drug was found to
blunt the usual suspiciousness of schizophrenic patients. No unfavorable
aftereffects were described. Two years later in the same journal Stoll
contributed a second report entitled "A New Hallucinatory Agent, Active in
Very Small Amounts."
The fact that LSD caused hallucinations should not have been a total surprise to
the scientific community. Sandoz first became interested in ergot, the natural
source of lysergic acid, because of numerous stories passed down through the
ages. The rye fungus had a mysterious and contradictory reputation. In China and
parts of the Mideast it was thought to possess medicinal qualities, and certain
scholars believe that it may have been used in sacred rites in ancient Greece.
In other parts of Europe, however, the same fungus was associated with the
horrible malady known as St. Anthony's Fire, which struck periodically like the
plague. Medieval chronicles tell of villages and towns where nearly everyone
went mad for a few days after ergot-diseased rye was unknowingly milled into
flour and baked as bread. Men were afflicted with gangrenous limbs that looked
like blackened stumps, and pregnant women miscarried. Even in modern times there
have been reports of ergot-related epidemics.*
The CIA inherited this ambiguous legacy when it embraced LSD as a mind control
drug. An ARTICHOKE document dated October 21, 1951, indicates that acid was
tested initially as part of a pilot study of the effects of various chemicals
"on the conscious suppression of experimental or non-threat secrets."
In addition to lysergic acid this particular survey covered a wide range of
substances, including morphine, ether, Benzedrine, ethyl alcohol, and mescaline.
"There is no question," noted the author of this report, "that
drugs are already on hand (and new ones are being produced) that can destroy
integrity and make indiscreet the most dependable individual." The report
concluded by recommending that LSD be critically tested "under threat
conditions beyond the scope of civilian experimentation." POWs, federal
prisoners, and Security officers were mentioned as possible candidates for these
field experiments.
In another study designed to ascertain optimal dosage levels for interrogation
sessions, a CIA psychiatrist administered LSD to "at least twelve human
subjects of not too high mentality." At the outset the subjects were
"told only that a new drug was being tested and promised that nothing
serious or dangerous would happen to them ... During the intoxication they
realized something was happening, but were never told exactly what." A
dosage range of 100 to 150 micrograms was finally selected, and the Agency
proceeded to test the drug in mock interrogation trials.
Initial reports seemed promising. In one instance LSD was given to an officer
who had been instructed not to reveal "a significant military secret."
When questioned, however, "he gave all the details of the secret .. and
after the effects of the LSD had worn off, the officer had no knowledge of
revealing the information (complete amnesia)." Favorable reports kept
coming in, and when this phase of experimentation was completed, the CIA's
Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) prepared a lengthy memorandum entitled
"Potential New Agent for Unconventional Warfare." LSD was said to be
useful "for eliciting true and accurate statements from subjects under its
influence during interrogation." Moreover, the data on hand suggested that
LSD might help in reviving memories of past experiences.
It almost seemed too good to be true -- a drug that unearthed secrets buried
deep in the unconscious mind but also caused amnesia during the effective
period. The implications were downright astounding. Soon the entire CIA
hierarchy was head over heels as news of what appeared to be a major
breakthrough sent shock waves rippling through headquarters. (C. P. Snow once
said, "The euphoria of secrecy goes to the head."
For years they had searched, and now they were
on the verge of finding the Holy Grail of the cloak-and- dagger trade. As one
CIA officer recalled, "We had thought at first that this was the secret
that was going to unlock the universe."
But the sense of elation did not last long. As the secret research progressed,
the CIA ran into problems. Eventually they came to recognize that LSD was not
really a truth serum in the classical sense. Accurate information could not
always be obtained from people under the influence of LSD because it induced a
"marked anxiety and loss of reality contact." Those who received
unwitting doses experienced an intense distortion of time, place, and body
image, frequently culminating in full-blown paranoid reactions. The bizarre
hallucinations caused by the drug often proved more of a hindrance than an aid
to the interrogation process. There was always the risk, for example, that an
enemy spy who started to trip out would realize he'd been drugged. This could
make him overly suspicious and taciturn to the point of clamming up
entirely.
There were other pitfalls that made the situation even more precarious from an
interrogation standpoint. While anxiety was the predominant characteristic
displayed during LSD sessions, some people experienced delusions of grandeur and
omnipotence. An entire operation might backfire if someone had an ecstatic or
transcendental experience and became convinced that he could defy his
interrogators indefinitely. And then there was the question of amnesia, which
was not as cut-and-dried as first supposed. Everyone agreed that a person would
probably have a difficult time recalling exactly what happened while he was high
on LSD, but that didn't mean his mind would be completely blank. While the drug
might distort memory to some degree, it did not destroy it.
When CIA scientists tested a drug for speech-inducing purposes and found that it
didn't work, they usually put it aside and tried something else. But such was
not the case with LSD. Although early reports proved overoptimistic, the Agency
was not about to discard such a powerful and unusual substance simply because it
did not live up to its original expectations. They had to shift gears. A
reassessment of the strategic implications of LSD was necessary. If, strictly
speaking, LSD was not a reliable truth drug, then how else could it be used?
CIA researchers were intrigued by this new chemical, but they didn't quite know
what to make of it. LSD was significantly different from anything else they knew
about. "The most fascinating thing about it," a CIA psychologist
recalled, "was that such minute quantities had such a terrific
effect." Mere micrograms could create "serious mental confusion ...
and render the mind temporarily susceptible to suggestion." Moreover, the
drug was colorless, odorless, and tasteless, and therefore easily concealed in
food and beverage. But it was hard to predict the response to LSD. On certain
occasions acid seemed to cause an uninhibited disclosure of information, but
oftentimes the overwhelming anxiety experienced by the subject obstructed the
interrogation process. And there were unexplainable mood swings -- from total
panic to boundless bliss-out. How could one drug produce such extreme and
contradictory reactions? It didn't make sense.
As research continued, the situation became even more perplexing. At one point a
group of Security officers did an about-face and suggested that acid might best
be employed as an anti-interrogation substance: "Since information obtained
from a person in a psychotic state would be unrealistic, bizarre, and extremely
difficult to assess, the self-administration of LSD-25, which is effective in
minute doses, might in special circumstances offer an operative temporary
protection against interrogation [emphasis added]."
This proposal was somewhat akin to a suicide pill scenario. Secret agents would
be equipped with micro-pellets of LSD to take on dangerous assignments. If they
fell into enemy hands and were about to be interrogated, they could pop a tab of
acid as a preventive measure and babble gibberish. Obviously this idea was
impractical, but it showed just how confused the CIA's top scientists were about
LSD. First they thought it was a truth serum, then a lie serum, and for a while
they didn't know what to think.
To make matters worse, there was a great deal of concern within the Agency that
the Soviets and the Red Chinese might also have designs on LSD as an espionage
weapon. A survey conducted by the Office of Scientific Intelligence noted that
ergot was a commercial product in numerous Eastern Bloc countries. The enigmatic
fungus also flourished in the Soviet Union, but Russian ergot had not yet
appeared in foreign markets. Could this mean the Soviets were hoarding their
supplies? Since information on the chemical structure of LSD was available in
scientific journals as early as 1947, the Russians might have been stockpiling
raw ergot in order to convert it into a mind control weapon. "Although no
Soviet data are available on LSD-25," the OSI study concluded, "it
must be assumed that the scientists of the USSR are thoroughly cognizant of the
strategic importance of this powerful new drug and are capable of producing it
at any time."
Were the Russians really into acid? "I'm sure they were," asserted
John Gittlinger, one of the CIA's leading psychologists during the Cold War,
"but if you ask me to prove it, I've never seen any direct proof of
it."* While hard evidence of a Soviet LSD connection was lacking, the CIA
wasn't about to take any chances. What would happen, for example, if an American
spy was caught and dosed by the Commies? The CIA realized that an adversary
intelligence service could employ LSD "to produce anxiety or terror in
medically unsophisticated subjects unable to distinguish drug-induced psychosis
from actual insanity." The only way to be sure that an operative would not
freak out under such circumstances would be to give him a taste of LSD (a mind
control vaccine?) before he was sent on a sensitive overseas mission. Such a
person would know that the effects of the drug were transitory and would
therefore be in a better position to handle the experience. CIA documents
actually refer to agents who were familiar with LSD as "enlightened
operatives."
Along this line, Security officials proposed that LSD be administered to CIA
trainee volunteers. Such a procedure would clearly demonstrate to select
individuals the effects of hallucinogenic substances upon themselves and their
associates. Furthermore, it would provide an opportunity to screen Agency
personnel for "anxiety proneness"; those who couldn't pass the acid
test would be excluded from certain critical assignments. This suggestion was
well received by the ARTICHOKE steering committee, although the representative
from the CIA's Medical Office felt that the test should not be "confined
merely to male volunteer trainee personnel, but that it should be broadened to
include all components of the Agency." According to a CIA document dated
November 19, 1953, the Project Committee "verbally concurred in this
recommendation."
During the next few years numerous CIA agents tried LSD. Some used the drug on
repeated occasions. How did their firsthand experience with acid affect their
personalities? How did it affect their attitude toward their work --
particularly those who were directly involved in mind control research? What
impact did it have on the program as a whole?*
At the outset of the CIA's behavior control endeavors the main emphasis was on
speech-inducing drugs. But when acid entered the scene, the entire program
assumed a more aggressive posture. The CIA's turned-on strategists came to
believe that mind control techniques could be applied to a wide range of
operations above and beyond the strict category of "special
interrogation." It was almost as if LSD blew the Agency's collective
mind-set -- or was it mind-rut? With acid acting as a catalyst, the whole idea
of what could be done with a drug, or drugs in general, was suddenly
transformed. Soon a perfect compound was envisioned for every conceivable
circumstance: there would be smart shots, memory erasers,
"antivitamins," knock-out drops, "aphrodisiacs for operational
use," drugs that caused "headache clusters" or uncontrollable
twitching, drugs that could induce cancer, a stroke or a heart attack without
leaving a trace as to the source of the ailment. There were chemicals to make a
drunk man sober and a sober man as drunk as a fish. Even a "recruitment
pill" was contemplated. What's more, according to a document dated May 5,
1955, the CIA placed a high priority on the development of a drug "which
will produce 'pure euphoria' with no subsequent letdown."
This is not to suggest that the CIA had given up on LSD. On the contrary, after
grappling with the drug for a number of years, the Agency devised new methods of
interrogation based on the "far- out" possibilities of this
mind-altering substance. When employed as a third-degree tactic, acid enabled
the CIA to approach a hostile subject with a great deal of leverage. CIA
operatives realized that intense mental confusion could be produced by
deliberately attacking a person along psychological lines. Of all the chemicals
that caused mental derangement, none was as powerful as LSD. Acid not only made
people extremely anxious, it also broke down the character defenses for handling
anxiety. A skillful interrogator could exploit this vulnerability by threatening
to keep an unwitting subject in a tripped-out state indefinitely unless he
spilled the beans. This tactic often proved successful where others had failed.
CIA documents indicate that LSD was employed as an aid to interrogation on an
operational basis from the mid-1950s through the early 1960s.
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