HOW THE CIA TUNED IN TO DRUGS

In Their Hedonistic Heyday, Hippies Said It Was The Drug That Would Save
The World. But The CIA Had More Chilling Plans For LSD.

FOR five years the little phial and the colourless liquid it contained lay
forgotten on the laboratory shelf, gathering dust. It had started life as
one of a number of chemical compounds researched by Swiss scientists
seeking a stimulant for blood circulation.

Then, on the afternoon of April 16, 1943, one of the scientists, Dr Albert
Hoffman, decided to reopen studies into the compound and began preparing a
fresh batch.

A tiny amount of the liquid was absorbed into Hoffman's blood stream
through his fingertips -- enough to incapacitate him for three hours while
he lay with eyes closed, brilliantly coloured shapes and images flashing
before his eyes.

Hoffman did not know it at the time, but he had just undergone the world's
first acid trip. Intrigued and puzzled by the experience, he tried again
three days later, but this time with a measured dose, one millionth of an
ounce.

As he cycled home through the streets of Basel, Hoffman's world began to
change: "My field of vision swayed and objects appeared distorted, like
images in curved mirrors."

As the effects became more pronounced, he began to fear he was losing his
mind and would never return from the bizarre interior landscape he was
exploring.

But survive he did, and the following morning Hoffman felt none the worse
for his experiment. Equally, he knew that what had happened to him had
implications far beyond anything connected with his research into blood
circulation.

Initially Hoffman's "problem child", as he came to call the drug, was used
by the scientific community to study the mind.

But by the early '50s it had come to the notice of the CIA, already engaged
in a 25-year clandestine study into methods of conquering and controlling
human consciousness.

Years before Harvard Professor Ralph Metzner described the drug as "a
turning point in human evolution", the CIA was paying people such as Ken
Kesey, the author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest who died ealier this
month, and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter to be guinea pigs in
controlled LSD experiments.

Neither the CIA, nor the willing subjects of their experiments, could have
known at the time that these sessions were a breeding ground for many of
the most creative (and rebellious) minds of the counter-culture of the mid-
and late '60s.

As the love generation's high priest Timothy Leary was to say: "The LSD
movement was started by the CIA."

Before long, the agency discovered easier, more entertaining methods of
research than paying people to be guinea pigs and watching their reactions
in laboratory conditions.

You could simply drag them in off the streets, invite them to a party in a
safe house, add a few interesting human ingredients such as a bunch of
prostitutes, dose the lot of them and stand back and watch.

In 1955, a former narcotics agent, George Hunter White, was seconded to the
CIA and entrusted with Operation Midnight Climax.

This consisted of White renting a San Francisco apartment and transforming
it into a safe house with two-way mirrors and surveillance equipment.

He then paid prostitutes $100 a night to pick up men in bars and bring them
back to the apartment where they were plied with LSD-laced drinks.

White sat on a portable toilet, sipping martinis behind the two-way mirror,
watching and filming the results.

T HE CIA knew the dosing of private citizens without their knowledge was
illegal and unethical, and concealed much of its activity.

But when the club-footed Sidney Gottlieb, head of the agency's mind-control
research program, was called before a senate committee, he readily admitted
to the existence of the safe house parties, the prostitutes and the
camera-toting agents.

At the time, the CIA was experimenting with other mind-control drugs that
turned people into programmed assassins; that used physical pain as a form
of control; that caused headache clusters, uncontrollable twitching or
drooling, or even a lobotomy-like stupor.

Most of the drugs that circulated illegally during the '60s -- marijuana,
cocaine, heroin, PCP, amyl nitrate, magic mushrooms, DMT, laughing gas and
amphetamines -- had already been tested, and often refined, during earlier
CIA experiments.

So the odd illicit acid party was nothing to be particularly concerned
about, even when addressing a senate committee.

The agency was looking for an effective aid for interrogation, a drug that
would make enemies of the state talk.

They were employing people such as former Nazi scientist Hubertus
Strughold, whose subordinates at the infamous Dachau concentration camp
conducted a number of history's most inhuman experiments.

These included injecting inmates with petrol, crushing the life out of them
in pressure chambers or immersing them in tubs of ice water to find out how
long it took them to freeze to death.

So a deep concern for human suffering was not a high priority for the CIA,
and explained why the agency indulged in experiments including the
simultaneous use of two drugs with precisely opposite effects.

A subject would be hooked up with a different needle in each arm, one
containing a barbiturate to knock out the patient, and the other a
stimulant to jolt him back into super-alert consciousness.

A CIA doctor would sit with a switch in each hand, alternately flicking his
subject from one state to another. Not surprisingly, casualties, in the
form of broken minds, were high.

But the agency did not confine its experiments to the general public -- it
regularly dosed government employees.

Almost 2000 members of the armed forces were injected, as well as animals
including cats and an elephant. Spiders laced with drugs were said to have
spun the most beautifully symmetrical webs. However, the elephant died.

A T the time, the agency was planning to dose Cuban leader Fidel Castro and
Egyptian President Gamal Nasser, and Dr Gottlieb was trotting around the
globe with a stash of LSD meant for diplomats and statesmen of Cold War foes.

Nothing, it seemed, was too ludicrous or bizarre for the agency's
contemplation. But even seasoned operatives must have wondered what was
going on with Dr Van Sim and the mattress.

Dr Sim was head of the research division of the Army Chemical Corps, which,
like the CIA, was conducting tests into mind-altering drugs. And he liked
to be the first to try a new chemical.

When BZ -- a drug which left the subject "completely out of touch" --
appeared on the scene, Dr Sim was eager to try it.

What he did not realise was that BZ left the subject incapacitated for
days, and that its effects could linger after six weeks.

One subject was observed, in full dress uniform, smoking a cigar while
lathering himself vigorously with soap in the shower.

After Dr Sim's trial with the drug, he reported: "It zonked me for three
days. I kept falling over, and the people at the lab assigned someone to
follow me around with a mattress. I woke up after three days without a bruise."

Dr Sim did not fall over in vain. He was later decorated for "exposing
himself to dangerous drugs at the risk of grave personal injury".

'Acid Dreams' by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain. Published by Pan
Macmillan. RRP $30.