Posted on 03/14/2010 1:28:30 AM PST by nickcarraway
A declassified FBI report from the Baltimore field office dated Aug. 25, 1950 provides some tantalizing support for the claim. "The BW [biological weapon] 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.
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.
The purported experiment occurred nearly a year before a more infamous August 1951 incident in the small town of Pont St. Esprit, in the south of France, when the citizens were hit by a case of mass insanity.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I think it was tested in the Capital Building in D.C. early last year. Mass insanity ensued.
This guy Albarelli is also claiming the CIA dosed dozens of people in France with LSD. Nutty claims about the CIA are still selling books, apparently.
I’ve heard too much to simply dismiss such reports as nuttiness.
I think the Capital Building test has been continually verified by identical concurrent parallel testing at the White House since Jan’09.
Based on the money being printed I believe your first spelling is MORE correct, it is the “destruction of capital” building.
This could result from contamination of the local grain supply by ergot fungus which when consumed by humans results in bizarre behaviors. According to Wikipedia:
[Ergotism is the name for sometimes severe pathological syndromes affecting humans or animals that have ingested ergot alkaloid-containing plant material, such as ergot-contaminated grains. . .Ergot contains ergotamine, which is used to synthesize lysergic acid, an analog of and precursor for synthesis of LSD. . .]
Ergotism was blamed by one historian for the Salem Witch trials but this is a stretch.
If LSD was used as a weapon by the military it likely would be referenced as a “chemical” weapon—a debilitating agent—rather than “biological.”
Thanks. I was thinking the same thing, but referenced the previous post thinking I was mistaken, resulting in my mistaken thinking.
An LSD aerosol in the subways... I doubt anyone would breath in enough to get high
A threshold dose of LSD can be as little as 20 micrograms. That's micrograms, not milligrams.
As to whether the CIA experimented on the US public or not, I have not seen hard evidence, but would not put it past them either. Lots of loose cannons there.
A threshold dose of LSD can be as little as 20 micrograms. That's micrograms, not milligrams.
As to whether the CIA experimented on the US public or not, I have not seen hard evidence, but would not put it past them either. Lots of loose cannons there.
Agreed. A microgram is an incredibilly small abount.
At the time, there was a legitimate red scare. If the Russians had aersolized LSD, you can rest assured they would certainly have tried it. I feel certain the CIA or its counterpart would have tried it also.
Now as far as another major expose and media frenzy on how bad the US was and how many lives it ruined, lawsuits etc. and blame for all the bad things that happened to people who rode the subway from that day on out, please spare me.
I remember reading in the US code several years back a provision allowing the US govt. to test BW on americans without their consent as long as certain local leaders were notified.
I am a ultra conservative. I have been on FR a long time. Trust me what the CIA and FBI did back in the day under “for the good of the country” would astound you.
This explains the beat poets.
...and 19 years before Woodstock, which strangely enough had an endless line of volunteers. Most of whom today don't remember a thing........
I'd bet they have a provision for anything and everything.
Back in my student days, when I was a Leftist, I believed the most outrageous things about the CIA. For example, there were rumored to be chambers deep beneath the Pentagon where they tortured student radicals, they dropped deadly chemicals on South American Indians to depopulate the area for (???) who knows why, or cares.
Now that I'm all grown up, I still can't dismiss what human nature can and will do with unchecked power. I do know that some Federal agency ran a brothel in South America, Peru I think, for 'information gathering purposes', LOL. Wish I had a nickel for every dollar wasted by our Federal overseers.
Long ago, in a different world, I knew a guy who was involved in the experiments of Leary and the other ahole, now Baba Ram Dass, on prisoners at MA's Concord State Prison. Took the Big "D" myself several times when it was still legal and hundreds of times when it was illegal.
Tough stuff for the uninformed and/or uninitiated.
i wish it only cost a nickel for fed. overseers. : )
Testing LSD on the subways would be an experiment with no purpose and no valid data.
Anyone who has ridden NYC subways knows that considering the normal behavior, there is no way you could tell that LSD had been introduced
BS! No one has to breath it, it's easily absorbed through the skin.
Back in the early days of acid (when it was legal), there was a chemist named Owsley who made it all the time. His pad was very popular place to crash, as the hippies would get off big time just on what they absorbed from sleeping on his floor.
...What's there to live for?
Who needs the peace corps?
Think I'll just DROP OUT
I'll go to Frisco
Buy a wig & sleep
On Owsley's floor ...
FZ 1967
The first five paragraphs of the article were plucked verbatim from this wikipedia listing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont-Saint-Esprit
Or was the wiki article taken from this NYPost article?
I know the free dope gang here will hate this notion but I grew up in it, I was there, I was a late Yippie even...yep...sad to say.
and I believe strongly that the counterculture was a consequence of the rise of LSD use...no doubt whatsoever in my mind
anyone else here who lived it and tripped in the 60s or early 70s feel free to challenge that notion
I can remember talk of hippies putting doses in squirt guns and shooting it on unwary passers by. Haight Ashbury was probably a pretty good place to avoid!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/12/MNGK0QV7HS1.DTL&hw=owsley&sn=001&sc=1000
This story has been around for a long, long time and is more or less an accepted fact among within the Bay Area counter-culture.
Check out the new movie “Men Who Stare at Goats” and wonder how we managed to get through the Cold War with these jokers guarding the citadel. Then read this:
Acid Dreams is the complete social history of LSD and the counterculture it helped to define in the sixties. Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain’s exhaustively researched and astonishing account-part of it gleaned from secret government files-tells how the CIA became obsessed with LSD as an espionage weapon during the early l950s and launched a massive covert research program, in which countless unwitting citizens were used as guinea pigs. Though the CIA was intent on keeping the drug to itself, it ultimately couldn’t prevent it from spreading into the popular culture; here LSD had a profound impact and helped spawn a political and social upheaval that changed the face of America. From the clandestine operations of the government to the escapades of Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, Allen Ginsberg, and many others, Acid Dreams provides an important and entertaining account that goes to the heart of a turbulent period in our history. “Engaging throughout . . . at once entertaining and disturbing.” - Andrew Weil, M.D., The Nation; “Marvelously detailed . . . loaded with startling revelations.” - Los Angeles Daily News; “An engrossing account of a period . . . when a tiny psychoactive molecule affected almost every aspect of Western life.” - William S. Burroughs; “An important historical synthesis of the spread and effects of a drug that served as a central metaphor for an era.” - John Sayles.
If only modern liberal madness would have ended when the vogue of acid trips ebbed. It didn't. Those LSD mad days were scarcely our most foolish ones.
It's not actually a thread about Zappa, but there's a link to an interesting story about Owsley.
Thanks Dennisw!
Thanks!
How do they know it was just the once?
Oh sure...
Our government always looks out for our best interest.
| Threshold | 20 ug |
| Light | 25 - 75 ug |
| Common | 50 - 150 ug |
| Strong | 150 - 400 ug |
| Heavy | 400 + ug |
| LD50 (Lethal Dose*) | 12,000 ug |
| Onset : 30 - 120 minutes (usually about 1 hr) Duration : 6 - 14 hours Normal After Effects : up to 24 hours |
Quite a character!
Plus the occasional freebie flashback up to 10 years later, typically while giving a Marketing presentation in front of an important customer... :)
I think the CIA was up to its old tricks on 4 November, 2008.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.