How We Sold Our Soul–What Do The CIA, LSD and A French Town have in Common?

photorandy2023

8 months ago

The Articles in the Category cover a vast range of history not only in our country but in the world as well. The category is entitled “How We Sold Our Soul”. In many cases our history has hinged on compromises being made by the powers at be. They say hind-sight is 20/20, which is why I am discussing these land mark decisions in this manner. The people that made these decisions in many cases thought they were doing the right thing. However in some instances they were made for expediency and little thought was given to the moral ramifications and the fallout that would result from them. I hope you enjoy these articles. The initial plan is to discuss 10 compromises, but as time progresses I am sure that number will increase.

1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning

The 1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning, also known as Le Pain Maudit, was a mass poisoning on 15 August 1951, in the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France. More than 250 people were involved, including 50 people interned in asylums and 7 deaths. A foodborne illness was suspected, and among these it was originally believed to be a case of “cursed bread” (pain maudit).

A majority of academic sources accept naturally occurring ergot poisoning as the cause of the epidemic, while a few theorize other causes such as poisoning by mercury, mycotoxins, or nitrogen trichloride.

Background

During the Vichy government, the supply of grains from field to mill to bakery was directed by the government’s grain control board, the Office National Interprofessionnel des Céréales (ONIC), and later the Union Meuniere. Essentially, this created a government monopoly on the sale of flour, allowing the government a measure of control over wartime supply shortages. This also meant that flour would be purchased directly from ONIC, and delivered to the baker for a set price, without the baker being able to have any control on quality. Following the end of the second world war, this system was relaxed, allowing for bakers to have some choice over their flour supply. ONIC retained its monopoly on inter-departmental exportation and importation. By this system, millers in departments with more supply than demand could sell the excess to ONIC. In practice, this meant that the higher-quality flour would be delivered to local bakers and lower-quality flour would be exported to other departments. Thus, departments with net flour deficits, like the Gard department in which Pont-Saint-Esprit was located, would be supplied with lower-quality flour from other departments via ONIC, with the bakers having virtually no choice of the provenance or quality of their flour.

Previous sanitary events

In the weeks preceding the outbreak, several villages near Pont-Saint-Esprit reported outbreaks of food poisoning via bread. These outbreaks were all linked to bakeries that made their bread with most if not all of their flour supplied by the mill of Maurice Maillet, in Saint-Martin-la-Riviere. The symptoms reported were milder than those reported in Pont-Saint-Esprit.

At Issirac, at least 20 people reported cutaneous eruptions, diarrhea, vomiting and headaches. Similar symptoms were reported in Laval-Saint-Roman. Multiple families were reported sick in Goudargues and Lamotte-du-Rhone.

In Connaux, the town’s baker received reports from his clients that they believed his bread was causing violent diarrhea. He reported that his family, as well as himself, were all suffering from the same afflictions. The baker was quick to blame his flour, which he described as “bad, forming a sticky dough with acid fermentation” and which made gray and sticky bread.

In Saint-Genies-de-Comolas, the town’s mayor was alerted by one of the town’s two bakers that he received flour that was gray and full of worms. The mayor banned making bread with that flour, and referred the situation to the region’s prefect, as well as to the driver that delivered the flour.

The delivery driver, Jean Bousquet, sent the prefect a copy of a remark made to his employer, the miller’s union in Nimes, on 9 August. The note said that “almost every baker of Centre de Bagnols/Cèze has complained of the quality of the flour provided by Mr. Maillet”. Following the incident at Connaux, Bousquet requested immediate written instructions from his employer regarding the situation. On the 13th of August, he requested that samples be taken to determine if the flour was contaminated. During this period, 42 bakers complained of the flour delivered by Bousquet.

Mass poisoning

On 16 August 1951, the local offices of the town’s two doctors filled with patients reporting similar food poisoning symptoms; nausea, vomiting, cold chills, heat waves. These symptoms eventually worsened, with added hallucinatory crises and convulsions. The situation in the town deteriorated in the following days. On the night of 24 August, a man believed himself to be an aeroplane and died by jumping from a second-story window, and an 11-year-old boy tried to strangle his mother. One of the town’s two doctors would name the night nuit d’apocalypse; apocalyptic night.

Epidemiological investigation

Doctors Vieu and Gabbai investigated the epidemiology of the disease. On 19 August, they came to the conclusion that bread was to blame; all patients interrogated had purchased their bread at the Briand bakery in Pont-Saint-Esprit. In a family from a neighboring village four of whose nine members fell ill, all members who ate bread from the Briand bakery fell ill, whereas none of the others who ate bread from another bakery did. Another family shared a loaf of Briand’s bread among five of its seven members, the others preferring biscottes, with only the five falling ill.

On the morning of the 20th, the health service, the prefecture, the prosecutor of the Republic and the police were notified. Roch Briand was interrogated, and the sickness in the town was blamed on his bread.

Criminal investigation

The police investigation would eventually center on the second of three batches of bread made at Briand’s bakery on the day of 16 August. The flour composition of each batch varied, as having run out of flour during the preparation of the second batch, Briand had borrowed flour from two other local bakers, Jaussent and Fallavet. Briand’s assistant stated that when he picked up flour from Jaussent, the baker was out ill, and that he took the flour from his assistant instead.

Both Briand and his assistant agreed that the first batch was constituted of the previous day’s flour mixed with flour borrowed from Jaussent. They disagreed on the second and third batches. Whereas Briand stated that the second was made with Jaussent’s flour and the third with Fallavet’s flour, the assistant stated that both latter batches were made with a mix of the two.

The investigation led police to interrogate many of the town’s residents, who gave inconsistent ratings of Briand’s tainted batch. Some reported that the taste was perfectly normal, while others reported chemical smells (one described an odor of gasoline, another of bleach). Some reported that the bread looked normal, while others stated that its appearance was grayish.

Inquiry

On the 23rd of August, a judge of inquiry opened a formal investigation, and tasked commissaire Georges Sigaud with finding the cause of the mass poisoning event.

The tainted bread made by Briand was made with only four ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt. All of the ingredients but the flour could be easily discounted as sources of the illness. The water used to make the bread was from a municipal source, the same that also supplied the rest of the village. Both the salt and the yeast used by Briand were sourced from the same suppliers as all other bakers in the region, and subsequent testing of the supplies found no toxicity.

The investigation of the provenance of the flour led Sigaud to the UM-Gard flour distribution centre, in Bagnols-sur-Cèze. The chief of the distribution network, Jean Bousquet, stated that since the end of July, the vast majority of the flour supplying the region was from two mills; one in Châtillon-sur-Indre, and the other being the mill of Maurice Maillet in Saint-Martin-la-Rivière, the latter of which was the subject of numerous complaints about the quality of its flour.

Maurice Maillet

In an interrogation that lasted multiple hours, Maurice Maillet denied mixing rye (which is highly susceptible to ergot) into his flour, opting instead to cut his product with 2% of bean flour. This was unusual, given that owing to a shortage of wheat, ONIC had mandated that rye flour be mixed in. However, in the Vienne department, rye of good quality was often more expensive than wheat, and accordingly, bean flour was authorized by ONIC as a replacement.

Despite this, it came to light that the supply of grains to be milled for export was sometimes mixed with grains milled in an informal agreement called échangisme. Under this type of agreement, often practiced at the time, a farmer would bring a baker grain he grew himself in exchange for bread that would later be made with his grain. The baker would bring the grain to the miller, who would mill it. The miller and baker would each take a cut for sale.

During the interrogation, Maillet admitted that he had made a deal with a baker, Guy Bruère, who had brought in bags to be milled. Since this was near the end of the season, the bags were filled with leftover grain that sometimes contained a high proportion of rye. The rye was not the only problem with the flour, as the miller also noted the presence of weevils, mites and dust. The baker was concerned that he would lose business should he refuse the grain on the basis of quality. Despite the miller having noticed the low quality of the grains, he agreed to exchange the grain for a lower quantity of flour already milled from grain marked for export. Given that the quantity of lower-quality grain was much lower than that of the grain for export, the miller thought that it would be possible to mix it all without reducing the overall quality of the flour.

Arrests and trial

On August 31, around 14:30, Sigaud addressed the media, announcing the arrests of Maillet and Bruère for involuntary manslaughter and involuntary injuries arising from their negligence in trading improper flour. Further arrests were made in the following days: an employee of Maillet, André Bertrand, was arrested, but released on bail as he was the head of a family of nine whose wife was about to give birth. The owners of the bakery at which Bruère was employed, Clothaire and Denise Audidier, were also arrested for infractions of fiscal legislation and of legislation governing wheat and flour.

Scientific publishing

Shortly after the incident, in September 1951, Dr. Gabbai and colleagues published a paper in the British Medical Journal declaring that “the outbreak of poisoning” was produced by ergot fungus. The victims appeared to have one common connection. They had eaten bread from the bakery of Roch Briand, who was subsequently blamed for having used flour made from contaminated rye. Animals who had eaten the bread were also found to have perished. According to reports at the time, the flour had been contaminated by the fungus Claviceps purpurea (ergot), which produces alkaloids that are structurally similar to the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).

Other theories

Later investigations suggested mercury poisoning due to the use of Panogen or other fungicides to treat grain and seeds.

This type of contamination was considered owing to the presence of fluorescent stains on the outside of some used empty flour bags returned to the distributor. Panogen was sold containing a red colorant as a safety measure, to ensure that seeds coated with it would be used only for planting. Subsequent scientific tests showed that this coloring would not penetrate flour bags but that the active ingredient could do so. This would allow contamination of the flour, but it would appear to be limited to the bags. Further testing showed that if bread were to be baked using Panogen-contaminated flour, the rising of the bread could be partially or totally inhibited, depending on the concentration. This hypothesis was considered thoroughly in a French civil trial arising from the accident, with the contamination mechanism being a train wagon carrying flour that could have previously carried concentrated cylinders of Panogen intended for agricultural uses. It was later discovered that pre-treating the seeds in Panogen could lead to mercury accumulation in the plants growing from those seeds. For this reason, Panogen, made by a Swedish company, was banned in Sweden in 1966. A revised version of the ban, in 1970, would prohibit the exportation of Panogen, leading to its removal from the market.

In 1982, a French researcher suggested Aspergillus fumigatus, a toxic fungus produced in grain silos, as a potential culprit.

Historian Steven Kaplan‘s 2008 book, Le Pain Maudit states that the poisoning might have been caused by nitrogen trichloride used to artificially (and illegally) bleach flour.

In his 2009 book, A Terrible Mistake, author and investigative journalist Hank P. Albarelli Jr claims that the Special Operations Division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tested the use of LSD on the population of Pont-Saint-Esprit as part of its MKNAOMI biological warfare program, in a field test called “Project SPAN”. According to Albarelli, this is based on CIA documents held in the US National Archives and a document supplied to the 1975 Rockefeller Commission that investigated CIA activities. Albarelli’s view was reported widely after the book’s publication, including by The Daily Telegraph, France 24 and BBC News. The attribution of the poisoning to the CIA in Albarelli’s book has been roundly criticized. Historian Steven Kaplan, author of an earlier book about the events, said that this would be “clinically incoherent: LSD takes effects in just a few hours, whereas the inhabitants showed symptoms only after 36 hours or more. Furthermore, LSD does not cause the digestive ailments or the vegetative effects described by the townspeople.”

Did the CIA Really Dose a French Village With LSD?

Telegraph says the Agency caused madness, many say “rot”

On Thursday, the Telegraph ran an incredible story: back in the ’50s, an entire French village suddenly went mad. This was not, as previously thought, due to an ergot (fungus) contamination of the village baker’s bread, says investigative journalist H P Albarelli Jr., who published a book on the subject. Instead, it was part of the CIA’s secret mind-control experiments with LSD. In other words, the CIA put a French village on acid. The Telegraph story by Henry Samuel reported Albarelli’s argument.

Sound too fantastical for truth? It may be: some bloggers and one U.S. historian are crying foul, saying the Telegraph story was (a) slanted, (b) uncomfortably similar to other reports, and (c) bizarrely old–Albarelli’s book was published in 2008, so it’s hardly breaking news. What’s going on? Here’s the debate:

‘Harebrained’ France 24’s Christophe Josset runs the CIA idea by Cornell historian Steven Kaplan, who specializes in French bread history and has written his own book about the village insanity incident. “It’s clinically incoherent,” Kaplan responds.

LSD takes effects in just a few hours, whereas the inhabitants showed symptoms only after 36 hours or more. Furthermore, LSD does not cause the digestive ailments or the vegetative effects described by the townspeople. … As for pulverising it [for ingestion through the air], that technology was not even possible at that time. Most compellingly, why would they choose the town of Pont-Saint-Esprit to conduct these tests? It was half-destroyed by the US Army during fighting with the Germans in the Second World War. It makes no sense.

Plagiarized? Global Dashboard’s David Steven wonders why the Telegraph story didn’t even bother to cite Kaplan’s competing book on the subject. He also digs up what looks like some startling similarities: “parts of [the Telegraph article] bear an extremely suspicious resemblance” to a New York Times review of Kaplan’s book back in 2008, while another section almost looks like a direct translation of a French blog post from this past Monday. He lays the quotes side by side for comparison.
Chemically Laughable The Awl’s Alex Balk (whose primary reaction is “really?”) digs up a post by a chemist in the pharmaceutical industry, Derek Lowe. Lowe says the Telegraph story is hogwash. He’s particularly skeptical of a passage saying the village went crazy because of “diethylamide, the D in LSD.” Diethylamide “isn’t a separate compound,” and “LSD isn’t some sort of three-component mixture,” Lowe scoffs: “I’d like to hear this guy explain to me what the ‘S’ stands for.” Furthermore, diethylamides don’t provoke hallucination. It’s clear to him that “neither the author of this new book, nor the people at the Telegraph, nor the supposed scientific ‘source’ of this quote, know anything about chemistry.” He’s not dismissing this wild story out of hand, but he doesn’t think this particular narrative makes sense:

Now, there most certainly were secret LSD experiments during the 1950s and 1960s. (The book Storming Heaven has a good account of them, as well as of the history of LSD in general). But it’s rather hard to see why the CIA should decide to dose some village in the Auvergne, especially when the symptoms (burning sensations in the extremities as well as hallucinations) seem to match ergotism quite well.

Did CIA Experiment LSD on French Town?

Mystery illness hit French town in 1951, killing seven and making others crazy.

For centuries, picturesque Pont-Saint-Esprit was a charming little village in the south of France where not much would happen. Perched on the banks of the Rhone River, its villagers would go about their daily routine. The farmers would work in the fields while housewives would stroll around the traditional village market looking for local produce.

To some Americans, Pont-Saint-Esprit may be known as the birthplace of Michel Bouvier, a cabinetmaker, who was the great-grandfather of John Vernou Bouvier III, father of former U.S. first lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

But on the morning of Aug. 16, 1951, the tranquility of Pont Saint Esprit was dramatically disturbed. Madness invaded the town streets, as some of the inhabitants were struck by a mystery illness. Scenes of mass insanity and hallucinations followed for days.

“People were starting to hit each other, people were insulting one another, people were screaming. It was very serious,” Paul Pages, who was 26 years old at the time, told ABC News. “There was a young guy who jumped out of a hospital window after screaming ‘Look, I’m a dragonfly’. He broke both of his legs,” Pages remembered. “The postman was also seen zigzagging on his bike. He eventually fell. He had lost his reason.”

Seven people died and several dozen were sent to psychiatric hospitals. Hundreds of others were also affected to varying degrees by this mystery illness.

All the victims had one thing in common: they had eaten bread sold in the boulangerie of Roch Briand who was considered the best baker in the village.

Briand was blamed for using contaminated rye flour. According to investigators, the flour had been contaminated by a fungus that was almost identical to the synthetic version of the hallucinogenic drug LSD.

This theory was later disproved. Investigators also ruled out mercury as a possible cause of the insanity that hit the town. After many inquiries and court cases, the obscure case was never fully explained. Roch Briand was cleared of any wrongdoing, but the baker ended his life penniless and disgraced.

Claims of a CIA Experiment With LSD Still Haunts French Village

Today, 59 years after the event, an American journalist thinks he can shed some light on this strange episode in the life of this charming little village. In his book “A Terrible Mistake,” Hank Albarelli claims it was the CIA which plunged Pont-Saint-Esprit into madness as the American agency secretly tested the effects of a hallucinogenic drug, possibly LSD, on its population.

The book, which came out in the U.S. three months ago, is a 12-year-long research by the author on the murder in 1953 of Frank Olson, an Army biochemist working on the CIA’s secret Cold War mind-control experiments.

“When researching my book, I came across numerous references to Pont-Saint-Esprit. There were references in CIA documents and even White House documents. And after thorough research, I discovered that the village was the target of a CIA experiment and that it was also part of the motive as to why Frank Olson was murdered,” Albarelli told ABC News.

“Olson wanted out, he wanted to sever his employment with the army and the CIA. And he started to open his mouth a bit too much. One of the experiments he talked about was Pont-Saint-Esprit and the fact that he had participated in the experiment,” he said.

“The CIA was trying to use hallucinogenic drugs and LSD as an offensive weapon at that time. There had been reports written by the Army in 1949 specifically recommending the use of LSD and recommending that field experiments be engaged as quickly as possible,” he said.

The Rockefeller Commission investigating the activities of the CIA and other intelligence agencies within the U.S. issued in June 1975 a report stating, “In the late 1940’s, the CIA began to study the properties of certain behavior-influencing drugs (such as LSD) and how such drugs might be put to intelligence use. This interest was prompted by reports that the Soviet Union was experimenting with such drugs and by speculation that the confessions introduced during trials in the Soviet Union and other Soviet Bloc countries during the late 1940’s might have been elicited by the use of drugs or hypnosis. Great concern over Soviet and North Korean techniques in ‘brainwashing’ continued to be manifested into the early 1950’s.”

According to Albarelli, the operation in Pont-Saint-Esprit was called Operation Span, “a vague allusion to ‘bridge,” he said. Pont in the French word for bridge.

The “Pain Maudit,” or Cursed Bread Incident

One of the declassified documents obtained by Albarelli mentioned a dinner conversation in New York between an agent of the CIA and a scientist of the Swiss Sandoz lab. Sandoz was where Albert Hoffman, a chemist who discovered the effect of LSD in the 1940s, worked.

“The two page document said that after dinner, the scientist started talking about Pont-Saint-Esprit. He knew it was not the ergot (that was the cause of the illness). He knew the real secret of Pont-Saint-Esprit and that it was an experiment,” Albarelli said.

“More troubling, immediately after the events in Pont-Saint-Esprit took place, the scientists that came to investigate the incident came from the Sandoz chemical company. They studied the situation for three or four weeks and they came up with the explanation that it was ergot poisoning, which would be later disproved. But what they did not tell anybody in 1951 was that the Sandoz chemical company was selling and providing the U.S. army and the CIA with LSD for its research purposes,” Albarelli said.

Today, Pont-Saint-Esprit continues to be haunted by the apocalyptic scenes of that August 1951. Despite the latest revelations, the absolute truth about the “pain maudit,” or cursed bread incident as it was called, may never be known for sure.

“The village elders like myself all agree to say that we will never know exactly what happened in August 1951 in Pont-Saint-Esprit. But it is disturbing if the CIA is involved,” Paul Pages concluded.

High History: How LSD Ended Up in A French Town’s Food Supply

In 1951, LSD ended up in a French town’s food supply. How? Was it a biological abnormality? Or was something more sinister at play?

Have you heard about that time LSD ended up in a French town’s food supply? As you can imagine, this type of tomfoolery ended in pandemonium, hysteria and a lot of upset people. Here’s what went down in this French town.

Don’t you hate it when someone sprinkles LSD in the local food supply? A small French village was not too happy about it either. In fact, they had no idea what the hell was going on. They just knew that hundreds of people woke up one day to frightening hallucinations and mass insanity.

The collective bad trip occurred in August of 1951 in the village of Pont-Saint-Esprit, located in Southeast France.

Villagers literally tripped out of their minds with horrific hallucinations of snakes, dragons, and fire. Several died, dozens ended up in mental hospitals and hundreds experienced psychotic symptoms for years later.

Time Magazine wrote at the time: “Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead.”

The dominant accepted explanation for this incident is that the local bread had been accidentally poisoned with psychedelic mold, ergot fungi, which grows on rye. Fun fact: a popular theory says that the same mold may have played a role in the Salem Witch Trials.

Because this event was so bizarre, a conspiracy theory was bound to pop up eventually.

Many years after the incident, one researcher posited that the CIA had contaminated the village’s food with LSD. The allegation was made five decades later by Hank Albarelli, who published a book in which he claimed that the incident was part of the CIA’s secret mind-control experiments.

Does this theory hold water?

As scientists learned about LSD in the early 1950s, the CIA began to use it as an interrogation aid. But did the CIA also test LSD on unsuspecting French villagers? Experts and historians say non.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Fascinating film footage recently emerged from 1958. It showed U.S. Army volunteers tripping on LSD as part of a government experiment. The goal? To see whether or not they could use hallucinogens as weapons of war.

And then, of course, there was Project MK ULTRA, a huge domestic surveillance program in which the CIA dosed a bunch of people in San Francisco with LSD.

And the government has continued experimenting with people’s health and minds

Vietnam Veterans of America filed a suit in San Francisco federal court in 2009. They claimed that at least 7,800 soldiers were, without their knowledge, given as many as 400 types of drugs and chemicals, including sarin, amphetamines, barbiturates, mustard gas and LSD by the Army and CIA. As of 2015, the case was still going on, according to the Military Times.

Final Hit: How LSD Ended Up in A French Town’s Food Supply

In 1951, LSD ended up in a French town’s food supply with disastrous results. Decades later, details of Project MKUltra were made public. Human rights activists have since condemned it, and artists have explored it through various media. But even after years of macabre stories, psychedelics are still around and, thanks to intelligent scientists, are now being properly tested and put to good use.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved the design of two Phase 3 clinical trials of MDMA for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This is significant in view of the epidemic levels of PTSD among our veterans, which have resulted in up to 22 PTSD-related veteran suicides per day.

So, if the U.S. government is going to mess around with hallucinogens, it would be great if they had something positive in mind like people’s health and wellbeing and not weapons of war.

CIA secrets exposed: Why ‘fiasco’ in France was covered up by agents

CIA secrets have fascinated many for decades – and the agency was accused of a cover-up when, nearly 70 years ago, a French town was poisoned with an unknown substance in a mystery that is yet to be explained to this day.

The Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning took place in the sleepy southern French town. More than 250 people were involved, 50 of them interned at mental asylums while seven people died after jumping from windows and balconies.

At first, a food-borne illness was floated as the cause of the altered state of consciousness.

It was proposed that the bread from a local bakery that many people who had the mania had shopped at had become infected by an ergot fungus.

The fiasco soon became known as the case of the “cursed bread”.

Many, however, were unwilling to accept what they viewed as a chance happening.

They maintained that the bread had been intentionally poisoned, with further splits in opinion over who committed the act.

One of the main hypotheses followed that the CIA, on a covert operation, laced the bread with LSD in order to monitor the effects of the drug on the unknowing public.

It sounds far-fetched, but it would later be revealed that the CIA were carrying out similar experiments on US soldiers and members of the public at the same time.

In 1951, French investigators began to consider LSD as the cause of the mania.

They called upon Albert Hoffman, the chemist who first discovered and synthesised LSD at the Sandoz Laboratory in Switzerland.

The 2015 documentary “CIA Covert Experiments” explained how Mr Hoffman “on the spot” told the investigators that the poison in question was “no doubt” LSD.

On returning to Switzerland he backtracked, claiming he was mistaken.

After being pursued by French investigators, Mr Hoffman became “unreachable”.

A proponent of the LSD-CIA argument is Colin Ross, a psychiatrist and author of the book ‘The CIA Doctors’.

During “CIA Covert Experiments”, he claimed Mr Hoffman’s “disappearance” was likely due to the fact that his Sandoz laboratory was the only place where LSD came from and so wanted to avoid being held accountable.

He explained “I would think if Sandoz scientists are saying ‘it doesn’t seem to be LSD’ they’re just trying to cover-up the fact that it’s 100 percent for sure LSD that must have come from Sandoz.

“They were the only suppliers.

“It’s nothing more than a cover-up.”

French investigators chased so many faulty leads that, after a few months, they dropped the case.

Experiments with psychedelic drugs on members of the public and military continued in the US, making up large parts of the operations Project Artichoke, Project Bluebird, and the most notorious, MKUltra.

Officially opened in 1953, for 30 years, people, often unknowingly, were given psychoactive drugs, especially LSD, and electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, sexual abuse as well as other forms of torture under MKUltra.

LSD played a central role for researchers as the CIA believed it harnessed the potential to compromise a person’s will and manipulate them to tell secrets.

With the backdrop of the Cold War and fears over the Soviet Union advancing, the CIA moved to targeting members of the public.

This included mental health patients, prisoners, drug addicts, and sex workers.

In San Francisco, for example, the CIA set up in several brothels, dosing men with LSD and watching the effects of the drug through a one-way mirror.

These sessions were also filmed for later reviewing and study.

Many of those forced into experiments were left scarred or permanently mentally damaged.

Since the revelations of the operations were released in 1975, survivors have filed lawsuits and demanded compensation from the US government and CIA.

It seems that our government would finally learn their lesson, and not pull this kind of shit. They wonder why the US has such a bad reputation in the world. Just when I don’t think that I could find another way that we have sold our soul, something else crops up.

Resources

theatlantic.com, “Did the CIA Really Dose a French Village With LSD? Telegraph says the Agency caused madness, many say ‘rot’.” By Heather Horn; abcnews.go.com, “Did CIA Experiment LSD on French Town? Mystery illness hit French town in 1951, killing seven and making others crazy.” By Christophe Schpoliansky; hightimes.com, “High History: How LSD Ended Up in A French Town’s Food Supply: In 1951, LSD ended up in a French town’s food supply. How? Was it a biological abnormality? Or was something more sinister at play?” By Maureen Meehan; en.wikipedia.org, “1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning.” By Wikipedia Editors; express.co.uk, “CIA secrets exposed: Why ‘fiasco’ in France was covered up by agents: CIA secrets have fascinated many for decades – and the agency was accused of a cover-up when, nearly 70 years ago, a French town was poisoned with an unknown substance in a mystery that is yet to be explained to this day.” By JOEL DAY;