Read Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD Online
Authors: Martin A. Lee,Bruce Shlain
Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD (66 page)
Summa Corporation,
245
n
Summer of Love,
xix
,
179
,
186
,
187
,
188
,
191
,
194
,
196
,
217
,
241
Swallow, Steve,
102
Swinburne, Algernon Charles,
67
Swiss Archives of Neurology,
13
Syndicate.
See
organized crime
tachrin,
188
n
Tate, Sharon,
257
Taylor, Julie,
288
Teledyne,
53
Temptations,
210
teonancatl,
72
Tet offensive,
211
THC (synthetic marijuana),
187
Thelin, Jay,
148
thiamine,
7
This Week
magazine,
37
Thompson, Hunter,
125
,
126
,
128
,
163
,
220
,
261
,
287
thorn apple,
66
Tibetan Book of the Dead,
108
,
110
,
113
,
115
,
124
,
181
,
183
Time-Life, Inc.,
71
Tors, Ivan,
62
Townshend, Peter,
253
Trips Festival,
143
–44
Trocchi, Alexander,
115
Truman, Harry S.,
45
“truth drug,” 4–5,
10
–11,
14
–15,
32
,
60
,
130
,
223
–24,
232
Tuesday’s Child
newspaper,
257
2,
4
pyrolo,
188
n
Unger, Sanford,
69
US Army,
35
–43,
48
n,
53
–54,
103
,
156
,
198
,
224
,
235
–36,
289
,
291
.
See also
US Army Chemical Corps
US Army Chemical Corps.,
31
,
36
–43,
69
,
94
n,
154
–55,
187
,
188
,
296
Vatican,
51
Vervey, Wil,
235
Vesco, Robert,
244
n
Vietnam War,
40
n,
43
,
102
,
132
,
133
–34,
151
,
153
,
154
,
162
,
164
,
179
,
197
,
201
,
203
,
211
,
214
,
227
,
234
–36,
261
,
284
Village Voice,
278
Viva,
102
von Braun, Wernher,
6
Walker Commission,
220
Wargasm conference.
See
National War Council
Warhol, Andy,
102
Warren Commission,
34
Wasson, Valentina,
72
Watts riots,
132
We Are Everywhere
(Rubin),
255
Weather Underground,
136
,
230
–34,
252
,
253
,
255
,
257
–58,
260
,
264
–65,
267
,
272
–73,
280
Webster, Ben,
62
n
Wenner, Jann,
253
West, Louis Joylon,
22
,
25
,
48
n,
189
–90
White, George Hunter,
32
–33,
34
–35,
189
White Panther party,
217
,
218
,
225
,
231
,
252
,
255
White Wing (army operation),
235
Who,
253
Wicker, Tom,
222
Wiener, Anthony, 197n
Wilson, Bill,
49
Wolfe, Tom,
123
women’s liberation movement,
229
Woodstock Nation
(Hoffman),
254
World Psychedelic Center,
115
,
180
Worth, Mary Jo,
278
Yardbirds,
180
Yasgur, Max,
251
Yippies (Youth International party),
102
,
159
,
206
–24
passim,
228
,
231
,
251
,
253
,
254
–55
Yolles, Stanley,
153
Young Lords,
229
Zabbathi Zvi,
276
Zappa, Frank,
195
*
This was a rather mild and playful assessment of the effects of marijuana compared to the public rantings of Harry Anslinger, the narcotics chief who orchestrated an unrelenting media compaign against “the killer weed.”
*
Strughold’s subordinates injected Dachau inmates with gasoline, crushed them to death in high-altitude pressure chambers, shot them so that potential blood coagulants could be tested on their wounds, forced them to stand naked in subfreezing temperatures or immersed them in tubs of ice water to see how long it would take before they died. As Charles R. Allen, Jr., author of
From Hitler to Uncle Sam: How American Intelligence Used Nazi War Criminals
, stated in an article on Strughold, “There was a clear pattern to the various experiments with poison, gas, deliberate infestation of victims with malaria, typhus and other virulencies causing instant or prolonged anguishing to death. Whether the tests concerned high-altitude, freezing or the potability of sea water; or the shooting of ‘volunteers’ with gas bullets—the patent purpose of the entire body of tests conducted at Dachau was to enhance the effectiveness of Hitler’s criminal warfare against humanity.”
After the war an Allied tribunal convened at Nuremberg sentenced a number of Nazi doctors to death for their role in medical atrocities at Dachau and other concentration camps. The judges at Nuremberg subsequently put forward a code of ethics for scientific research, which stipulated that full voluntary consent must be obtained from all research subjects and experiments should yield positive results for the benefit of society that could not be obtained in any other way.
Although Dr. Strughold escaped prosecution, his name later appeared on a master list of “Reported Nazi War Criminals Residing in the United States” compiled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He currently lives in San Antonio, Texas.
*
Obtaining information was only one aspect of the interrogation process. Even when CIA officers were able to loosen a subject’s tongue, other problems remained, such as how to insure that he would not remember the events that transpired during his stint in the twilight zone. “If by some means we could create a perfect and thoroughly controlled amnesia,” a CIA agent declared, “the matter would be simplified, but amnesia is not certain and cannot be guaranteed.”
Certain drugs were known to produce amnesia for a matter of hours or days, but this was not sufficient. The CIA also had access to chemicals capable of causing permanent brain damage, but long-term amnesia drugs that would be completely reversible over a twelve-to-eighteen-month period were not available.
This was quite an inconvenience as far as the national security experts were concerned. The question of what to do with subjects of special interrogation sessions—the “disposal problem”—provoked a heated debate inside the Company. The immediate objective was to find a way of holding them “in maximum custody until either operations have progressed to the point where their knowledge is no longer highly sensitive, or the knowledge they possess in general will be of no use to the enemy.”
One possibility suggested in CIA documents was to render a person incoherent through psychological and/or pharmacological attack and then have him placed in a mental institution. An unspecified number of subjects were committed involuntarily to insane asylums, including some who were described in CIA memoranda as mentally sound. (This practice, which began in the early 1950s and continued at least until the mid-1960s, invites obvious comparisons to the incarceration of Russian dissidents in psychiatric hospitals because of their political views.) Another option involved “termination with extreme prejudice” (CIA lingo for assassination), but this was hardly an ideal solution in all situations.
In one CIA document the question of disposal was discussed under the heading “LOBOTOMY and Related Operations.” A number of individuals who were fully cognizant of the disposal problem suggested that lobotomy “might be the answer or at least a partial solution.” They argued that “lobotomy would create a person ‘who no longer cared,’ who had lost all initiative and drive, whose allegiance to ideal or motivating factors no longer existed, and who would probably have, if not complete amnesia, at least a fuzzy or spotty memory for recent and past events.” They also pointed out “that certain lobotomy types of operations were simple, quickly performed and not too dangerous.”
Along this line a group of CIA scientists entertained the possibility of using an “icepick” lobotomy to render an individual harmless “from a security point of view.” A memo dated February 7, 1952, notes that on numerous occasions after using electroshock to produce anesthesia, an unidentified surgeon in the Washington, DC, area performed an operation that involved destroying brain tissue by piercing the skull just above the eye with a fine surgical icepick. This type of psychosurgery had certain advantages, in that it resulted in “nervous confusional and amnesia effects” without leaving a “tell-tale scar.” The CIA also experimented with brain surgery via UHF sound waves and at one point during the early 1950s attempted to create a microwave “amnesia beam” that would destroy memory neurons.
Not all CIA officials, however, favored using lobotomy as a disposal technique. Potential drawbacks were cited: surgical risk was great, brain damage could be extensive, and such an operation, if faulty, could produce a “vegetable.” Moreover, if the enemy discovered that the CIA was mutilating people’s brains for the sake of national security, this information could be exploited as a propaganda weapon.
Other CIA officials opposed lobotomy because it was blatantly inhumane and violated “all concepts of ‘fair-play’ and the American way of life and [thus] it could never be
officially
[emphasis added] sanctioned or supported.” A CIA document dated March 3, 1952, states that while “the USSR and its satellites are capable of any conceivable atrocity against human beings to attain what they think are their ends, we should not—with our high regard for human life—use these techniques unless by using them we save the lives of our own people and the situation is highly critical to the nation’s safety.”
In the early 1950s, at least $100,000 was designated for a proposed research project geared toward developing “neuro-surgical techniques for Agency interest.” It is not known whether this research was ever carried out.
*
In 1951 hundreds of respectable citizens in Pont-Saint-Esprit, a small French village, went completely berserk one evening. Some of the town’s leading citizens jumped from windows into the Rhone. Others ran through the streets screaming about being chased by lions, tigers, and “bandits with donkey ears.” Many died, and those who survived suffered strange aftereffects for weeks. In his book
The Day of St. Anthony’s Fire
, John C. Fuller attributes this bizarre outbreak to rye flour contaminated with ergot.
*
Internal CIA memoranda dispute the oft-repeated allegation that the Soviet Union and her satellites, including Red China, were engaged in unorthodox methods of altering human behavior. According to a CIA document dated January 14, 1953, “Apparently their major emphasis is on the development of specially-trained teams for obtaining information
without
the use of narcotics, hypnosis, or special mechanical devices [emphasis added].” A memo issued the next day by the Ad Hoc Medical Study Group admitted that “the present state of knowledge indicates little, if any, threat to National Security through ‘special interrogation’ techniques or agents.”
*
At the very least, one suspects that a firsthand encounter with LSD would have made the clandestine mentality more receptive to the possibility of ESP, subliminal perception, and other phenomena associated with altered states. The CIA’s interest in parapsychology dates back to the late 1940s. A handwritten memo of the period suggests that “hypnotists and telepathists” be contacted as professional consultants on an exploratory basis, but this proposal was initially rejected. It was not until 1952, after the CIA got heavily involved with LSD, that the Agency began funding ESP research.