WHAT DID THE C.I.A. DO TO HIS FATHER?

Michael Ignatieff (April1) describes Harold Abramson, a medical consultant
used by the C.I.A., as an allergist, thereby casting doubt on the C.I.A.'s
assertion that it sought psychiatric advice for Frank Olson. Although Dr.
Abramson specialized in the treatment of patients with allergies, he was
indeed a psychiatrist. In his extensive research on LSD (in which he used
informed volunteers), he studied chemical inhibitors in the hope that they
might be useful in the treatment of psychoses, and he tested LSD as an
adjunct to psychotherapy and explored its possible military use through
aerosols. His subjects were often treated afterward to cocktails because he
uniquely believed that alcohol was an antidote for LSD. Thus, the bourbon
that he prescribed for Olson may have been intended for more than sleep.

In 1953, during the early years of LSD research, few may have had a chance
to observe a "bad trip" with long-term sequelae, but it requires no special
experience to anticipate the devastating emotional effects that may be
produced when the hallucinating subject, whose thought processes are
otherwise intact, may believe that he is going insane.

BERNARD WEISS, M.D. Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

Emory University School of Medicine Atlanta