Did the CIA test LSD in the New York City subway system?

[babsbunny]

Did the CIA test LSD in the New York City subway system?

By PHILIP MESSING

http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/system_the_cia_test_lsd_subway_the_FCxMaMKrJgtH42RZ0lY6oN

Last Updated: 5:05 AM, March 14, 2010

Posted: 1:28 AM, March 14, 2010

On Nov. 28, 1953, Frank Olson, a bland, seemingly innocuous 42-year-old government scientist, plunged to his death from room 1018A in New York’s Statler Hotel, landing on a Seventh Avenue sidewalk just opposite Penn Station.

Olson’s ignominious end was written off as an unremarkable suicide of a depressed government bureaucrat who came to New York City seeking psychiatric treatment, so it attracted scant attention at the time.

But 22 years later, the Rockefeller Commission report was released, detailing a litany of domestic abuses committed by the CIA. The ugly truth emerged: Olson’s death was the result of his having been surreptitiously dosed with LSD days earlier by his colleagues.

The shocking disclosure led to President Gerald Ford’s apology to Olson’s widow and his three children, who accepted a $750,000 civil payment for his wrongful death.

[Bluebear]

1. My god.

[annabanana]

2. No one should take that stuff unawares...

Like any trip, it requires planning, a safe place and pleasant company.

[mdmc]

4. How awful to be dosed - and not know it - on a subway in a strage city

while tryin to hook up with a shrink..
the horror
the horror

[monmouth]

3. This is just one example of why I have no doubt the CIA had a large

hand in the death of President Kennedy. Lone shooter my a$$....

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. Awesome story

Love it.

[marmar]

6. I swear they're still doing it....

..... I saw a rat the size of a beagle waiting on the No. 7 under Grand Central.

[MisterP]

11. whoa, just had a Stanislaw Lem moment reading that post

[intheflow]

14. LSD makes rats grow bigger?

:shrug:

[dipsydoodle]

7. That's an oldie

I've even seen a documentary on the subject of MK ULTRA on tv here in the UK. What has brought it back to prominence now ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Probably that the CIA officially copped to the France episode, like, last week

It was all over the news.

[dipsydoodle]

10. What/which France episode ?

:shrug:

[intheflow]

15. This one:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7897580

[dipsydoodle]

16. Thanks

Yes I do recall it now. I thought it must've refered to a TV series whatever.....lol.

[Skidmore]

8. The CIA is an insidious evil. Although they no doubt consider themselves

to be essential to national security, I frankly believe they creat as much of the danger to the nation as they purport to defend from.

[anigbrowl]

12. Rather poor report

Albarelli spent more than a decade sifting through more than 100,000 pages of government documents and his most startling chestnut might be his claim that the intelligence community conducted aerosol tests of LSD inside the New York City subway system.

“The experiment was pretty shocking — shocking that the CIA and the Army would release LSD like that, among innocent unwitting folks,” Albarelli told The Post.

A declassified FBI report from the Baltimore field office dated Aug. 25, 1950 provides some tantalizing support for the claim. “The BW experiments to be conducted by representatives of the Department of the Army in the New York Subway System in September 1950, have been indefinitely postponed,” states the memo, a copy of which the author provided to The Post.

I cannot help but notice that the Department of the Army and the CIA are two different entities, and that LSD would constitute a chemical weapon, not a biological one. Then again, the New York post is not exactly a reliable guide to science, or indeed anything else. A biological weapon would be something like a cold or flu virus.

An Olson colleague, Dr. Henry Eigelsbach, confirmed to Albarelli that the LSD subway test did, in fact, occur in November 1950, albeit on a smaller scale than first planned. Little, however, is known about the test — what line, how many people and what happened.

This might be true, and I can't form an opinion until I've read the book. However, despite a long-time interest in LSD and its history, I'm not aware of any outbreaks of hallucinations in that time and place.

One might also note that the claims about LSD being deployed in a French village describe a well-known incident, but that such incidents were known since medieval times, when the phenomenon was referred to as 'st. Anthony's fire'. Ergot poisoning of grain was relatively common as ergot is a natural fungus which grows on wheat and other grains in humid conditions (such as a poorly ventilated warehouse). The evidence does not contradict the claim, but it's circumstantial rather than direct evidence so I'd be wary of taking it at face value.

[MagickMuffin]

17. Years ago I had read that the subway experiment wasn't effective as an aerosol

I have done research on LSD, as well.


There has been speculation that ergot poisoning was probably responsible for the Witch hunts of years gone by.

[Edweird]

13. If they did, would any one notice?

[Echo In Light]

18. Keeping it kicked for Crusading Conspiracy Deniers!