From mind control to murder: how the CIA tested drugs and poisons on Americans

The CIA has been testing drugs and poisons on Americans for decades. Information about this was destroyed, but the relatives of the victims managed to come closer to the truth after decades. The means by which the American intelligence services achieved control over consciousness and what happened to the participants in the secret program The gardian

Фото: Depositphotos

On a November 1953 night, over Manhattan Seventh Avenue, the sound of broken glass was heard. After a few seconds, a half-naked man fell onto the pavement in front of the Statler Hotel. Climbing to the room on the tenth floor, the police found Robert Lashbrook, a senior CIA officer, who said that his colleague jumped out the window in the middle of the night. The deceased's name was Frank Olson, he worked for the US government for many years and was a leading specialist in the field of pesticides. After his death, the 22 special services pretended that they had nothing to do with the incident, and when they nevertheless admitted their responsibility, they seemed to tell far from the whole truth.

Toxic relationship

Olson was one of the first scientists to be identified to work in the secret laboratories of the CIA. During World War II, they developed biological weapons: deadly aerosols that could be used both in large clouds - against enemy clusters, and for secret single killings.

Under the leadership of Olson, the special unit of scientists succeeded in creating a wide variety of poisons, as well as containers for their use. Poisoning agents were disguised as shaving foam, mosquito repellent, asthma drug spray ... Scientists have even developed a lighter stuffed with instant killing poison gas, and lipstick that causes death by contact with skin. All this was tested not only on rats and mice, but also on higher primates.

Фото: Depositphotos

In secret prisons of special services abroad (in particular, in Germany), people regularly fell into the hands of scientists. As a rule, these were scouts suspected of espionage or foreign spies. Olson witnessed experimental torture methods (using hypnosis, electroshock, and drugs) and gradually exhausted him and encouraged him to quit his job.

Gloomy fortress

Although the CIA’s secret objects are scattered all over the world, the main place of work for this group of chemists was in the heart of the United States - in the military Fort Detrick, less than 100 kilometers from the city of Washington. One of the leading bio-laboratories is still located there, where scientists are struggling with diseases - from ailments affecting corn crops to the Ebola virus. Now this place is surrounded by a prosperous residential suburb. But then, at the end of World War II, he was chosen for the headquarters of a new top-secret project because of the remoteness - there was a wasteland around the fort.

What was happening in Fort Detrick was clearly worth hiding from prying eyes. Experiments on people were carried out there by those who were not the first time — the team was attended by German scientists exported to the United States with experience gained in laboratories at concentration camps. Their developments were reportedly later helped to improve the drugs. And their war crimes turned a blind eye both in the United States and around the world: the States were not the only country that used the achievements of Nazi researchers.

Then, in the 1953 year, American intelligence officers were not only concerned about chemical and biological weapons (after the effective use of the atomic bomb, it receded into the background). The cold flame of confrontation with the Soviet Union flared up. And the Communists, as intelligence reported, seemed to have a secret trump card in development, the key to world domination: technology for controlling the human mind. Later, belief in this would be called "collective paranoia," but then they thought about it differently.

Allen Dulles - the one whose sinister plan explained the collapse of the USSR - then headed the CIA. To lead the study, which was supposed to bring the United States direct control over the minds of people, he put Sydney Gottlieb. Ironically, the 33-year-old chemist from a family of Jewish immigrants was led by former Nazi scholars. Over the following years, Gottlieb became known as the “black sorcerer” and “dirty dodger” - and these nicknames stuck to him for a reason.

Mental warfare

For the purposes of MK-Ultra, as the program was called, a whole range of effects on the human mind was listed. Scouts wanted to be able to strengthen or weaken a person’s perception and thinking, deprive him of his memory at the time they needed, leave him without normal vision, hearing or ability to move, or, conversely, strengthen his ability to resist torture and intimidation. They wanted to be able to intervene in the structure of the human person, change it, weakening the person, subordinating him to someone else's will and even making him dependent on another person.

Over the following years, the Gottlieb group, with government permission, conducted and authorized literally hundreds of thousands of human experiments. Very often, unsuspecting patients in psychiatric clinics became experimental. Those who volunteered were not always told what awaited them. At least 44 college and university, 15 laboratories and pharmaceutical companies, 12 hospitals and clinics, and 3 prison facilities have funded research grants.

Фото: Depositphotos

In attempts to gain control over the mind, experts used hypnosis, electroshock, sensory deprivation, various types of torture and psychological pressure, as well as a variety of chemicals that affect the psyche. They were particularly interested in the d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) discovered in 1938, a potent hallucinogen-psychedelic.

In acid, but no offense

The video made about 1958 of the year shows another experiment of this program - scientists wondered how LSD affects the ability of soldiers to walk in formation. When a substance takes effect, it becomes difficult for military volunteers to keep up, turn in the right direction, and even maintain seriousness - they laugh, talk and generally look bewildered.

This harmless experience was unlikely to end badly for any of the experimental subjects - most likely, some time after the end of the LSD, they returned to normal and continued to serve. Many others were less fortunate. “I was plunged into hallucinations. The room changed shape. For hours I felt paranoia and thirst for violence, I experienced nightmares in reality, blood oozed from the walls, people around turned into skeletons. It seemed to me that I was losing my mind, ”Whitey Bulger, the mafioso, told about his experience, who agreed to repeatedly experience psychedelics during his imprisonment in 1957.

Around the same time, a prison doctor in Kentucky put seven black inmates in jails and fed them “double, triple and quadruple” doses of LSD for 77 days in a row - he wanted to check from the authorities if this substance could completely destroy the human psyche. Information about the fate of these seven, as well as many others, was not disclosed.

And those who got their dose of substance “expanding consciousness” with the light hand of Sidney Gottlieb (the word “psychedelic” is deciphered in this way) were really many - they were distributed, offered and secretly mixed into public servants, military, intelligence officers, ordinary people and doctors.

One of those who agreed to the tests was Stanford student Ken Kesey, who worked part-time in a hospital. In 1959, he survived the LSD trip under the supervision of psychiatrists - and this experience led him to create the book “Flying Over the Cuckoo's Nest.” Kesey loved this substance so much that he and his friends organized the nomadic hippie commune, Funny Pranksters, who traveled around the United States and handed out stamps with hallucinogen to everyone.

He became the voice of his protest generation, who fought for freedom and justice. It is believed that the CIA unwittingly contributed to the American "psychedelic revolution" - the spread of LSD, among other factors, led to a massive revolt against the war, the state and established social norms.

The fate of the poisoner

The hostility towards the CIA, its own work - perhaps this is what made Frank Olson a victim of his colleagues. In 1953, even at the start of MK-Ultra, he told his wife that he was disappointed in the work of his life and felt psychological pressure from what he was doing. Relatives reported that he was depressed and depressed.

Nine days before his death, Olson received an invitation to the party: Gottlieb called him and eight other scientists from the CIA and the army to a country house near Lake Deep Creek. This was the team’s usual resting place. But this time the weekend in nature turned out to be new workdays - and the scientists in them appeared in the role of experimental subjects, unusual for themselves.

Their boss added a large dose of psychedelics to the Cointreau liquor, which the guests drank, and notified them only after drinking the drink. Specialists were extremely unhappy with this surprise, but could no longer do anything about it and fell into a strong hallucinatory state. All of them came to their senses in a couple of days - except for Olson, whose depression worsened. Over the course of several days, he repeatedly appealed to colleagues and superiors in alarm about his possible resignation.

Olson could not come to his senses - he demanded dismissal, then he agreed to stay, then he was going to go home to his family, then he was afraid that he was too unstable. The chemist tried to hide from colleagues and even wanted to surrender to the police - for some reason he thought they were looking for him. All this ended with a “jump” from the window of a New York hotel at three in the morning.

In order to hush up the circumstances of his death, the CIA had to put pressure on the police. They did not investigate the death of a scientist who knew about what was happening in Fort Detrick and about overseas prisons in the United States, and possibly had access to evidence of Americans using biological weapons during the Korean War. Olson was buried in a closed coffin. The family of the deceased became aware of the unsuccessful LSD trip only two decades later - and the whole family did not receive the whole truth.

Sincere apologies

In 1975, The Washington Post told the story of Olson. She could not help attracting the Americans: a CIA scientist who had access to classified information was taking his own life after taking the drug in the presence of another intelligence officer. Olson's wife and children demanded that a new investigation be opened and were about to sue the CIA.

Dick Cheney entered the case - the future vice president was then deputy head of the presidential administration. It was thanks to his initiative that President Gerald Ford realized that if the matter were to be turned on, intelligence would have to disclose strictly classified information. Cheney recommended that the head of state "publicly express regret and offer Mrs. Olson and her children a personal meeting."

Frame: Transformer TV / YouTube

Ford did just that - he invited the family to the Oval Office and apologized. Then the Olsons met with the head of the CIA, William Colby. “At that time, some of our people got out of control and went too far. There was a lack of supervision and management, ”he told them. The White House offered the 750 family thousands of dollars for refusing litigation. All of them signed the corresponding paper.

After almost 20 years, in 1994, the son of Frank Olson Eric suspected something was wrong and achieved the exhumation of the body. A forensic expert confirmed his suspicions: although his father’s body fell on his back, there was a crack in his skull on his forehead, over his left eye. Apparently, the doctor concluded that he was thrown out of the window in an unconscious state, and before that he was hit on the head with something.

Olson's descendants cannot sue the state - they signed the corresponding paper. But at least they know what happened to their father. The bulk of the data on the MK-Ultra program, which brought together more than one and a half hundred different projects, was not just locked somewhere: in 1972, the "black sorcerer" Sidney Gottlieb, anticipating the dismissal, ordered the destruction of most of the records. This, perhaps, provided him with a calm old age - he spent the last years on a farm in Virginia, taking care of goats.

Investigations based on accidentally rescued data, nevertheless, had the result: some victims were compensated. In addition, strict rules on human trials have now appeared in American law - experimental subjects must give informed consent.

Today it is difficult to understand why the CIA was so inhumanly treating fellow citizens, why it was trying to get into people's minds and change the human mind, why it killed its own employee. But the harsh realities of the Cold War - wars in the full sense of the word, with secret soldiers, information fronts and ideological conquests - sometimes required tough measures. And from the point of view of scouts, Olson was a real alarmist who betrayed the common cause and could not cope with the high responsibilities assigned to him to protect the homeland and the entire free world from communism. We can say that Olson, in which human feelings awoke, was another victim of the Cold War, who did not need heroes - she needed soldiers.

The translation of the material was prepared by the publication “Lenta.ru report«

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