LSD AND THE CIA :: essays research papers

LSD was invented in Switzerland by Albert Hofmann, a researcher for Sandoz pharmaceuticals. It did not spontaneously appear among the youth of the Western world as a gift from the God of Gettin’ High. The CIA was on to acid long before the flower children. So, for that matter, were upstanding citizens like Time-Life magnate Henry Luce and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, who openly sang the praises of their magical mystery tours during the early sixties. Henry, a staunch conservative with close connections to the CIA, once dropped acid on the golf course and then claimed he had enjoyed a little chat with God. While the cognoscenti had the benefit of tuned-in physicians, other psychedelic pioneers took their first trips as part of CIA-controlled research studies. At least one person committed suicide after becoming an unwitting subject of a CIA LSD test, crashing through a highstory plate-glass window in a New York hotel as his Agency guardian watched. (Or perhaps the guardian did more than watch. In June 1994 the victim’s family had his thirty-year-old corpse exhumed to check for signs that he may have been thrown out that window.) Numerous others lost their grip on reality. MK-ULTRA was the code name the CIA used for its program directed at gaining control over human behavior through â€Å"covert use of chemical and biological materials,† as proposed by Richard Helms. The name itself was a variation on ULTRA, the U.S. intelligence program behind Nazi lines in World War 11, of which the CIA's veteran spies were justly proud. Helms later became CIA director and gained a measure of notoriety for his 'Watergate "lying to Congress" conviction and a touch of immortality in Thomas Powers's aptly named biography, The Man Who Kept the Secrets. Helms founded the MK-ULTRA program and justified its notably unethical aspects with the rationale, â€Å"We are not Boy Scouts.† At the time, the spook scientists suspected that LSD had the potential to reprogram the human personality. In retrospect, they were probably right-Timothy Leary spoke in similar terms, though he saw unlimited potential for self-improvement in this â€Å"reprogramming.