LSD AND THE CIA :: essays research papers

LSD was invented in Switzerland by Albert Hofmann, a searcher for Sandoz pharmaceuticals. It did not spontaneously appear among the younker 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 superpower 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 play course and then claimed he had enjoyed a little chat with God. plot 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 afterward becoming an unwitting subject of a CIA LSD test, crashing finished a highstory plate-glass window in a New York hotel as his Agency shielder watched. (Or perhaps the guardian did more than watch. In June 1994 the victims family had his thirty-year-old ashes exhumed to check for signs that he may have been thrown out that window.) many others lost their grip on reality.MK-ULTRA was the code stir the CIA used for its platform directed at gaining control over human behavior through covert use of chemical and biological materials, as proposed by Richard Helms. The name itself was a variation on ULTRA, the U.S. intelligence chopine behind Nazi lines in World War 11, of which the CIAs veteran spies were justly proud.Helms later became CIA managing director and gained a measure of notoriety for his Watergate "lying to Congress" conviction and a touch of immortality in Thomas Powerss aptly named biography, The Man Who Kept the Secrets. Helms founded the MK-ULTRA program and justified its notably unethical aspects with the rationale, 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 belike right-Timothy Leary spoke in similar terms, though he saw untrammeled potential for self-improvement in this reprogramming.