10 Ken Kesey
Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
and a source of inspiration in the counterculture movement, was first
exposed to LSD and other psychedelic drugs as a part of the MKULTRA
project while still a graduate student at Stanford University. He came
to be involved in the study almost by accident, as a
neighbor of
Kesey’s—a psychologist—signed up for the project but had to back out at
the last minute. An outstanding athlete and a straitlaced individual up
to that point, Kesey had never done any sort of drug and had never even
tasted alcohol. At the time of the experiments, Kesey was in training for the 1960 Olympics, as he had earned a place on the wrestling team as an alternate.
Despite
Allen Ginsberg’s insistence, Kesey did not believe that the project was
sponsored by the CIA, and not until decades later did Kesey discover
the program’s true intent: “[The testing] wasn’t being done to try to
cure insane people, which is what we thought. It was being done to try
to make people insane—to weaken people, and to be able to put them under
the control of interrogators.”
Of course, the resulting effect
of the LSD did not weaken Kesey, as psychedelics came to be a tool of
enlightenment for the author and cultural icon. Kesey noted that the CIA
experimentation helped in evoking the kind of epiphanies that
ultimately served as the foundation for the counterculture movement that
would soon follow: “We suddenly realized that there’s a lot more to
this world than we previously thought . . . One of the things that I
think came out of it is this, is that there’s room. We don’t all have to
be the same. We don’t have to have Baptists coast to coast. We can
throw in some Buddhists and some Christians, and people who are just
thinking these totally strange thoughts about the Irish leprechauns—that
there is room, spiritually, for everybody in this universe.”
While
still undergoing the CIA testing, Kesey took a job at the project
facility, noting that his status as an employee gave him access to
several experimental drugs. While Kesey’s friends and many others were
able to make LSD on their own after the testing, Kesey acknowledged that
the government had the best LSD around, saying, “[The homemade LSD]
never was anywhere as good as that good government stuff. That’s the
government—the CIA always has the best stuff.”
9 Whitey Bulger
Photo credit: US Marshals Service
An
infamous gangster who evaded capture for decades before finally being
arrested in 2011, Bulger was exposed to LSD testing while in a federal
prison in Atlanta in exchange for a lighter sentence. For 18 months,
Bulger and other inmates were subjected to drug testing, which Bulger
described in his notebook as “horrible LSD experiences followed by
thoughts of suicide and deep depression.” He was so deeply and
negatively affected by the project that Bulger compared the program’s doctor to Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor responsible for the horrific human experimentation conducted at concentration camps.
Bulger’s
anxiety was compounded by his inability to ask for help or disclose
what he was experiencing, as he feared that telling anyone of his visual
and auditory hallucinations would lead to lifelong commitment in an
insane asylum. The effects of the LSD on Bulger were such that the
mobster reflected on the irony of his situation in his notebook,
writing, “I was in prison for committing a crime and feel they committed
a worse crime on me.”
The gangster was apparently so enraged
after learning of the program’s intent and the effects it had on other
that he strongly considered tracking down Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, the
pharmacologist who oversaw the program, with the goal of assassination.
8 Robert Hunter
Photo credit: Brian Gatens
Robert
Hunter, a lyricist and longtime collaborator with the Grateful Dead’s
Jerry Garcia, was exposed to the same testing as Kesey, though he had no
idea that it was a part of the MKULTRA project until many years later.
Hunter had a very different experience from Bulger, saying the following
in an interview with Reuters in 2013:
I couldn’t figure out
why they were paying me to take these psychedelics. What they wanted to
do was to check if I was more hypnotizable when I was on them. It was
hard to pay attention to what the hell they were talking about, much
less be hypnotized. It was the first time I had had any of this stuff,
and the drugs in themselves were rather spectacular. Nobody had had my
experiences, and it was at least two years before those drugs started
getting out on the street. It was like a secret club of one.
As
a songwriter, Hunter is responsible for some of the most cherished
songs in the Dead’s expansive catalog, including “Ripple,” “Uncle John’s
Band,” “Dark Star,” and “Box of Rain,” and his talents will be honored
in the summer of 2015 when he is scheduled for enshrinement into the
Songwriters Hall of Fame, joining the likes of Bob Dylan and Woody
Guthrie. Through the CIA testing, Hunter was the first of his social
circle to try LSD by a few years, so when Garcia took LSD for the first
time, it was Hunter who advised him, “Go home, put on a Ravi Shankar
record, just listen to the music.”
7 Harold Blauer
Harold
Blauer was a professional tennis player who competed against the likes
of Bill Tilden, widely considered one of the greatest tennis players of
all time. Following a bout with depression that was at least partially
caused by his recent divorce, Blauer checked himself into the New York
State Psychiatric Institute, where he was diagnosed as a
“pseudo-neurotic schizophrenic.” He checked in during early December
1952, and he would be dead just over a month later.
Though
he was improving and was scheduled for release from the institute,
doctors began “treating” Blauer with a series of injections that, as it
turned out, were a derivative of mescaline. These injections were
administered though some of the doctors had no idea what they were
injecting, with Dr. James Cattell later telling investigators, “We
didn’t know whether it was dog piss or what it was we were giving him.”
Dr.
Cattell was acting on a classified agreement between the institute and
the Army Chemical Corps to test various chemicals for potential use in
warfare, and one of the injections given to Blauer ultimately killed
him. There was an extensive cover-up, and not until 1975 did the
government finally admit to Blauer’s family that it had injected him
with the mescaline derivative that caused his death. In 1987, the family
sued the government for its involvement and the subsequent cover-up,
winning a $700,000 judgment.
While Blauer was tested as part of
an agreement made with the Army Chemical Corps, the principal researcher
at the New York State Psychiatric Institute was Dr. Paul Hoch,
a CIA consultant on the MKULTRA project. Though the Army technically
funded the experimentation conducted by the institute, Blauer’s death is
often considered one of the casualties of MKULTRA due to the
involvement of Dr. Hoch, a driving force behind the project who
eventually rose to the position of commissioner of mental hygiene for
the state of New York.
6 James Stanley
James
Stanley seemed to have a very promising military career in front of him
before he volunteered for an experiment that involved testing gas masks
and protective clothing. He enlisted at the age of 15 and became a
master sergeant at just 20 years old, making him one of the youngest in
the military to hold such a rank.
His career took a turn after he
volunteered to test the gas masks, and Stanley claims that his rapid
decline was the result of being exposed to LSD that had been put in the subjects’ drinking water.
He did not learn that he was exposed to LSD until 1975, when the Army
followed up the experiment by contacting him. He then realized that his
odd behavior and feelings of confusion were the result of chemical
testing that he had not agreed to.
He sued the Army for the
testing but initially lost his case for troubling reasons. According to
the Supreme Court, it didn’t matter whether his allegations were true.
He lacked standing to sue because military personnel can’t sue the
government or their superiors for damages, no matter how severe or even
unconstitutional they may be.
This rationale irked Supreme Court
Justice William J. Brennan greatly, and his dissent ultimately led
Congress to pass a bill ensuring that Stanley could be compensated. In
1996—18 years after he initially filed suit and nine years after the
Supreme Court’s ruling, Stanley was finally awarded $400,577, the maximum amount allowed under the Congressional bill.
5 Wayne Ritchie
Photo credit: USMS
A
deputy US marshal and a veteran of the Marine Corps, Wayne Ritchie
claims that he was unknowingly dosed while at a holiday party with other
federal officers in December 1957. In a sworn deposition given as part
of the lawsuit Ritchie later filed, Ira Feldman, a CIA agent involved in
the MKULTRA program, explained the manner in which he observed the
unknowing citizens he had drugged with LSD: “You just sit back away and
let them worry, like this nitwit, Ritchie,” he said, before going on to
acknowledge that Ritchie’s dosage was “a full head” and that Ritchie was
targeted because he “deserved to suffer.”
The
evening he was exposed to LSD, Ritchie began to act erratically and
felt an overwhelming sense of anxiety and worthlessness. After having an
argument with his girlfriend in which she said she wanted to move away
from San Francisco, Ritchie armed himself with his government-issued
service revolvers and tried to get the money for a plane ticket by robbing a bar
in the Fillmore District. During the robbery attempt, someone at the
bar knocked Ritchie out, and by the time he regained consciousness,
police officers were already there to arrest him.
Though he
pleaded guilty to attempted armed robbery, Ritchie was sentenced to just
five years of probation and a fine of $500. He was also forced to
resign from the US Marshals, and he went on to paint houses as his
primary source of income. More than 40 years after the incident, Ritchie
learned of the CIA’s program and that it had tested LSD and other drugs
on unwitting citizens in the San Francisco area. He filed suit, and
while it was dismissed, the court acknowledged that it was “quite
possible” that Ritchie was drugged by the CIA, but his behavior was more
likely the result of “some undiagnosed organic condition” that was
probably exacerbated by his consumption of alcohol.
As for the
seemingly damning testimony of Feldman, the court held that Ritchie’s
lawyer should have worked to elicit a more precise response, noting in
its ruling, “Although Feldman made several comments in his depositions
suggesting that he was involved in drugging Ritchie, the district
court’s determination that Ritchie did not prove Feldman’s involvement
is not clearly erroneous. Feldman may have been lying to provoke defense
counsel, trying to be funny,
or simply speaking imprecisely when he made the purported admissions.
Ritchie’s lawyer asked no follow-up questions that might have elicited
more detail about Feldman’s vague assertions.”
4 Ruth Kelley
A
singer and a waitress at a San Francisco bar, Ruth Kelley was
unknowingly given LSD before performing on stage. George H. White, a
veteran of the US Bureau of Narcotics who headed up a part of the
MKULTRA program called Operation Midnight Climax, found Kelley
attractive but resistant to his advances, so either he or one of his men dosed her with LSD before her performance.
According
to a deposition by a CIA investigator, “The LSD definitely took some
effect during her act.” She was able to finish her set but rushed off to
the hospital immediately afterward. Kelley was released when the
effects of the LSD eventually wore off.
Liz Evans, a San
Francisco prostitute who worked with White as a part of Operation
Climax, corroborated the story, saying that White drugged “a really
pretty, blond-haired waitress at the Black Sheep Bar. Her name was Ruth,
and George wanted her to take part in things, but she had no interest.”
Those
things Evans referred to included the use of prostitutes to lure johns
into a CIA safe house on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. Once there,
the prostitutes dosed their clients, while CIA agents observed the
effects of the drug through a two-way mirror. The house was recently
renovated, and construction crews found microphones hidden in the walls
and other recording equipment that had been disguised as electrical
outlets.
3 Dr. Robert Hyde
Though
Dr. Albert Hoffman first discovered LSD in 1943, it did not arrive in
the United States from Switzerland until 1949. It was at this time that
Robert Hyde, one of the top psychiatrists at Boston Psychopathic
Hospital, was convinced to become perhaps the first American subjected
to LSD testing. This was after a visit from Otto Kauders, a Viennese
doctor who had lectured on LSD’s use at inducing psychosis. After
meeting with Kauders, the doctors at Boston Psychopathic believed that
if LSD could indeed induce a psychosis similar to schizophrenia, there
was a strong possibility of finding an antidote to the condition as well.
Hyde’s
experience with LSD did not yield much in the way of clear psychosis,
but the doctors at the hospital noticed that their colleague was acting
strangely after taking 100 micrograms of the substance. During his
rounds, he became “quite paranoiac, saying that we had not given him
anything. He also berated us and said the company had cheated us, given
us plain water. That was not Dr. Hyde’s normal behavior; he is a very
pleasant man.”
While Hyde’s LSD encounter was hardly of note
aside from his possible status as the first test subject, the doctor
ultimately went on to accept government funding through the CIA to test
LSD on patients. Whether Dr. Hyde was aware of the CIA’s intent with
regard to the testing is a matter for debate, but he was receiving
annual funds of $40,000 to test the effects of LSD on patients at the various facilities with which he was associated.
2 Technical Services Staff (TSS) Agents
The
CIA had multiple units working on MKULTRA-related testing, including
the Office of Security and the Technical Services Staff (TSS). These
units worked under the direction of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the chemist who
approved clandestine LSD testing on unwitting citizens. Gottlieb was
interested in the effects of LSD as it related to interrogation, but he
also believed that dosing public figures without their knowledge could
serve several purposes, including discrediting someone in a position of power by making them appear foolish in a very public setting.
Before
subjecting the public to these tests, TSS agents first tested LSD
in-house, experimenting on themselves in controlled settings to observe
the effects of the drug. Gottlieb recognized, however, that a controlled
setting was not the same as a public setting, so he allowed agents in
the TSS to begin dosing each other at the office. The targeted agent
would have no prior knowledge, though they would be informed after the
dose had been successfully administered so agents could prepare for the
effects that were about to set in.
This sort of testing quickly
expanded. Other agents at the CIA were dosed by their fellow agents, and
the surreptitious dosing was ultimately considered an occupational
hazard among operatives. Security personnel became concerned that agents
in TSS were becoming unhinged due to their frequent LSD use, and
matters came to a head when a plot to spike the punch bowl at the annual
CIA Christmas party was revealed. In a memo, officials made it clear
that LSD could very well “produce serious insanity for periods of 8 to
18 hours and possibly for longer” and that CIA officials strongly
opposed any sort of LSD “testing in the Christmas punch bowls usually
present at the Christmas office parties.”
1 George H. White
The
TSS agents were not the only CIA operatives to get carried away with
the use of LSD, as George H. White, the aforementioned head of Operation
Midnight Climax and an agent with the US Bureau of Narcotics, did far
more than just experiment with the LSD and other drugs he had at his
disposal. Though White was a “real hard head”
whose subordinates “were pretty much afraid to do anything without his
full approval,” White got pretty loose during his time operating the CIA
safe house in San Francisco.
Neighbors frequently complained
about the activities that were going on at the safe house, as there were
frequent scenes in which “men with guns in shoulder straps [were] chasing after women
in various states of undress.” White acknowledged that his use of LSD
had an effect on his ability to conduct himself in a professional
manner, saying, ” ‘clear thinking’ was nonexistent while under the
influence of any of these drugs. I did feel at times like I was having a
‘mind-expanding experience,’ but this vanished like a dream immediately
after the session.”
White later made his appalling intentions
clear with regard to Operation Midnight Climax and his other
professional pursuits in a letter to Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, saying, “I was
a very minor missionary, actually a heretic, but I toiled
wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun.
Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal,
rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?”
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