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Long, strange trip (Did the CIA test LSD in the New York City subway system?)
New York Post ^ | Philip Messing

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; US: New York
KEYWORDS: cia; drugs; fbi; lsd; mindcontrol; nyc; subway; usarmy
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To: nickcarraway

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


21 posted on 03/14/2010 6:57:53 AM PDT by wildbill (You're just jealous because the Voices talk only to me.)
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To: dennisw
" I doubt anyone would breath in enough to get high."

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

22 posted on 03/14/2010 8:35:34 AM PDT by Slump Tester (What if I'm pregnant Teddy? Errr-ahh -Calm down Mary Jo, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it)
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To: Slump Tester
That's crazy I've never heard of that before!


Pelosi's broken promises exposed...
23 posted on 03/14/2010 8:38:22 AM PDT by ConservativeMan55
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To: nickcarraway

The first five paragraphs of the article were plucked verbatim from this wikipedia listing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont-Saint-Esprit


24 posted on 03/14/2010 8:48:20 AM PDT by Rebelbase
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To: Rebelbase

Or was the wiki article taken from this NYPost article?


25 posted on 03/14/2010 8:50:32 AM PDT by Rebelbase
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To: nickcarraway

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


26 posted on 03/14/2010 8:51:22 AM PDT by wardaddy (women are crazy...girls too)
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To: ConservativeMan55

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!


27 posted on 03/14/2010 8:56:24 AM PDT by Slump Tester (What if I'm pregnant Teddy? Errr-ahh -Calm down Mary Jo, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it)
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To: Slump Tester

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/12/MNGK0QV7HS1.DTL&hw=owsley&sn=001&sc=1000


28 posted on 03/14/2010 9:08:13 AM PDT by dennisw (It all comes 'round again --Fairport)
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To: nickcarraway

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.


29 posted on 03/14/2010 10:17:30 AM PDT by GVnana ("Obama is incredibly naive and grossly egotistical." Sarkozy)
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To: nickcarraway

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.


30 posted on 03/14/2010 10:19:47 AM PDT by Yollopoliuhqui (consciousness is a heads up display)
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To: Yollopoliuhqui
“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.

31 posted on 03/14/2010 11:41:17 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (I am in America but not of America (per bible: am in the world but not of it))
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To: gortklattu; central scrutinizer; uglybiker; Feckless; Colosis; Eric in the Ozarks; CholeraJoe; ...
PING!

It's not actually a thread about Zappa, but there's a link to an interesting story about Owsley.

Thanks Dennisw!

32 posted on 03/14/2010 12:17:20 PM PDT by Slump Tester (What if I'm pregnant Teddy? Errr-ahh -Calm down Mary Jo, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it)
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To: dennisw

Thanks!


33 posted on 03/14/2010 12:18:58 PM PDT by Slump Tester (What if I'm pregnant Teddy? Errr-ahh -Calm down Mary Jo, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it)
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To: nickcarraway

How do they know it was just the once?


34 posted on 03/14/2010 12:21:17 PM PDT by RichInOC (No! BAD Rich! (What'd I say?))
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To: AnotherUnixGeek; HiTech RedNeck
Nutty claims about the CIA are still selling books, apparently.

Oh sure...

Our government always looks out for our best interest.


35 posted on 03/14/2010 12:26:46 PM PDT by dragnet2
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To: nickcarraway

Oral LSD Dosages
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

36 posted on 03/14/2010 1:02:02 PM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: Slump Tester
Thanks for the Zappa ping!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MsO1FLYee8(nsfw)...

37 posted on 03/14/2010 1:02:48 PM PDT by real saxophonist (The fact that you play tuba doesn't make you any less lethal. -USMC bandsman in Iraq)
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To: Slump Tester

Quite a character!


38 posted on 03/14/2010 1:16:53 PM PDT by dennisw (It all comes 'round again --Fairport)
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To: Chode
> Normal After Effects : up to 24 hours

Plus the occasional freebie flashback up to 10 years later, typically while giving a Marketing presentation in front of an important customer... :)

39 posted on 03/14/2010 2:04:46 PM PDT by dayglored (Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)
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To: nickcarraway

I think the CIA was up to its old tricks on 4 November, 2008.


40 posted on 03/14/2010 2:37:51 PM PDT by Erasmus (Lying fallow in preparation for planting season)
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