Quote:Stepping backward for a moment to the time before I discovered the true cause of the southern France outbreak, perhaps the very first solid clue I had that something was amiss about the incident was a CIA confidential informer's report I had been given in 1999. That report, dated December 1953, concerned a meeting the unidentified informer had with an official with the Sandoz Chemical Company in New York City. The informer wrote that after "having several drinks" the Sandoz official blurted out, "The Pont Saint Esprit secret' was that it was not the bread at all." Continued the Sandoz official, "For weeks the French tied up our laboratories with analyses of bread. It was not the grain ergot, it was a diethylamide-like compound." By this, of course, the official meant a man-made drug had provoked the Pont St. Esprit outbreak.

The CIA informer then asked, according to his report, "If the material wasn't in the bread then how did it get into the people?"
To this, the official responded, "An experiment." Now concerned, the informer asked, "An experiment?" To which the Sandoz official coyly responded, "Maybe by the French government," knowing that most likely the American informer well knew the identities of the actual perpetrators of the experiment. It was all an act of high political drama and subterfuge that concluded with the Sandoz official saying, "One small reason I'm here in the U.S. is to dispose of our LSD. If war breaks out our LSD will disappear."

Quote:When I discussed the FBI memoranda with former Fort Detrick biochemists they confidentially informed me that the New York City experiments "were delayed until after the experiment was conducted in France." Said one former Special Operations Division scientist, "The overall results of the experiment in southern France were good, but there was also an adverse effect or what would now be called a black swan' reaction. That several people died was unexpected, completely unexpected. It wasn't supposed to turn out that way, so it was back to the drawing boards."

Quote:Earlier in the article, I wrote that I found the Pont St. Esprit experiment initially shocking. In many ways, I still do. But perhaps not for all those reasons many readers would imagine. Firstly, I find it shocking when I read Internet reactions to it, as contained in my book, over the past month like, "So what, at least they didn't do it in a small town in America", or worse yet, "Why didn't they pick a town in Mexico; it's closer by?" I'm saddened to find that some Americans have become both numb and immune to the arrogant and horrible past actions of the CIA.

Adele Edisen Wrote:Remember the CIA plan to project a huge holographic image of Jesus Christ on the horizon so the Cubans, most being religious, might think Jesus was coming to earth and to them?
Adele

Peter Lemkin Wrote:Jan, you seem to be searching for some reasonable answer to why France, why that small town, etc. There may be no 'reasonable' reason. Or, the 'reason' may only become apparent if we were to interview a participant in the planning or see the secret documents on it.

Christer Forslund Wrote:From CIA: What Really Happened in the quiet French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit by Hank P. Albarelli Jr. (16 March 2010)

Quote:Earlier in the article, I wrote that I found the Pont St. Esprit experiment initially shocking. In many ways, I still do. But perhaps not for all those reasons many readers would imagine. Firstly, I find it shocking when I read Internet reactions to it, as contained in my book, over the past month like, "So what, at least they didn't do it in a small town in America", or worse yet, "Why didn't they pick a town in Mexico; it's closer by?" I'm saddened to find that some Americans have become both numb and immune to the arrogant and horrible past actions of the CIA.

Quote:Let me be more explicit about the Pont St Esprit incident. I absolutely believe it could have happened as Hank Albarelli describes, but my reservations are at two levels:
i) technical details such as mode of delivery;
ii) purpose of such human experimentation.

Quote:Adele, Peter - you both have scientific training.
Please explain where you consider the reservations about Pont St Esprit that I have articulated in this thread to be unscientific.

Adele Edisen Wrote:Jan, you said in your post #71:

Quote:Let me be more explicit about the Pont St Esprit incident. I absolutely believe it could have happened as Hank Albarelli describes, but my reservations are at two levels:
i) technical details such as mode of delivery;
ii) purpose of such human experimentation.

Quote:Adele, Peter - you both have scientific training.
Please explain where you consider the reservations about Pont St Esprit that I have articulated in this thread to be unscientific.

Peter will have to answer for himself, but I don't think I have stated anywhere that I consider your statements or reservations about the Pont-St.-Esprit event, or about Hank Albarelli's works, to be "unscientific." Or, untruthful, if that is what you think I think. So, I really don't understand your question here.

Adele Edisen Wrote:As for the purpose of the human experimentation, there doesn't seem to be any, other than to see what would happen. Just like the Nazi experiments, such as puttling prisoners in ice cold water to see how long they would survive.

Quote:Strughold first coined the term "space medicine" in 1948 and was the first and only Professor of Space Medicine at the School of Aviation Medicine (SAM) at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas. In 1949 Strughold was made director of the Department of Space Medicine at the SAM (which is now the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine (USAFSAM) at Brooks Air Force Base, Texas). He played an important role in developing the pressure suit worn by early American astronauts. He was a co-founder of the Space Medicine Branch of the Aerospace Medical Association in 1950. He was named Chief Scientist, Aerospace Medical Division in 1961. The aeromedical library at Brooks AFB was named after him in 1977

Quote:in October 1954, that Eli Lilly & Company had succeeded in synthesizing the drug in its laboratories. This was the breakthrough the agency had been awaiting for three years; now it had access to all the LSD money could buy.

It was judged to be so important that a special memorandum on the subject was rushed to CIA director Dulles on October 26. The CIA clandestine services had immediately concluded that now LSD could be employed not only in testing but also in actual intelligence operations, for reasons given in the memo to Dulles: "Hitherto, LSD could not be considered seriously as a candidate Chemical Warfare agent for overt use. This was due to two factors: a) until recently only volatile liquids could be disseminated in a suitable fashion in bulk. LSD is a solid. LSD can now be produced in quantity and recent technical developments make it possible to disseminate solids in an effective manner."

At this point, the matter was considered so important that the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence prepared its bulky top-secret study, "Strategic Medical Significance of Lysergic Acid Diethylamidc (LSD-25)," which was circulated to only seven senior officials besides Dulles. The study offered the best rationale to date for tests on humans. The drug had important strategic advantages. It was assumed that Russian scientists were aware of it. National security might be at stake.

As far back as April 1953, for example, a special CIA committee running the secret drug program had requested a "large number of bodies" for testing mind-affecting compounds, expressing the belief that a great many American scientists would be willing and anxious to carry out the experiments. In 1955, the CIA concluded that tests in a controlled environment-at the agency and in hospitals and prisons-were no longer sufficient, and, to make sense, they had to be conducted in "normal social situations."

All along, Gottlieb had been trying to persuade his CIA superiors that experiments on unwitting subjects were necessary. He explained it thus: "One of the difficulties of determining explicitly the effect of the drug itself is that the subject and the observer are both conscious of the fact that an experiment is being performed. It is hoped in the next year that subjects... who are essentially normal from a psychiatric point of view will be given unwitting doses of the drug.... In this way more valuable experiments will probably be carried out in spite of hospital conditions. Attempts are being made at present to set up projects with collaborating organizations on the effect of LSD-25 on brain metabolism, on the metabolic activities of nerves and on enzyme reactions."

The CIA had learned a great deal about LSD during its first four years of experiments, but it was also aware of wide gaps in its knowledge. After reading the strategic study, therefore, CIA director Dulles said in a 1955 memo to the secretary of defense that "it would appear to be important that field trials be made to determine the effects on groups of people or on individuals engaged in group activities." This was the official green light for the CIA's indiscriminate testing of LSD on unsuspecting Americans, and from 1955 onward, there's evidence that more Such subjects were involved as the CIA kept expanding its quest for a dream drug without interference by agency directors or Presidents.

Peter Lemkin Wrote:Jan, I too have no critique on how you are trying to critique [using scientific methodology] the French Village incident - and/or logic of it. I'll have more to say on this in the morning...too tired now.

Peter Lemkin Wrote:But, I wanted to correct you. LSD was first synthesized by Albert Hofmann in 1938 from ergotamine, a chemical derived by Arthur Stoll from ergot, a grain fungus that typically grows on rye. It was later that the drug could be manufactured from its constituent organic groups - rather than a lesser transformation from a similar natural substance. There is a distinction. The end product, however, would be the same. So, timing is not an issue here. It existed and Hoffman made his famous bicycle trip before the War! The Swiss and the Germans tested it during the War.

Quote:that Eli Lilly & Company published the details of a new process they had developed for synthesizing lysergic acid (the parent molecule of the ergot alkaloids) cheaply and in bulk. The immediate effect of this breakthrough was to keep down the price of ergot alkaloids, which tip to then had been distributed only by Sandoz. But there were other unanticipated results as well. Vast quantities of lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, could now be produced with reasonable ease in any sophisticated chemistry laboratory

Quote:In 1953 the CIA provided Eli Lilly with funding to attempt synthesis of LSD for CIA use without the need for the expensive and scarce reagents required by Sandoz. A year later, Lilly chemists succeeded in their quest, and subsequent supplies were from Lilly[1,2].

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References:
1.CIA documents: Document #24, 16 November, 1953, Subject: ARTICHOKE Conference; Document #268, 23 October, 1953, Subject: Meeting in Director's Office at 1100 hours on 23 October with Mr. Wisner and [deleted]; Document # 316,6 January,1954, Subject: Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD-25); and Document #338, 26 October 1954, Subject: Potential Large Scale Availability of LSD through newly discovered synthesis by [deleted]; interviews with Sandoz and Lilly former executives; and Sidney Gottlieb's testimony before Kennedy subcommittee, 1977, p. 203.
2.Marks, John (1979). The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: CIA and Mind Control. W W Norton & Co Ltd, 264. ISBN 0393307948