Roots of Rendition (Albarelli & Kaye)

[Chris Bowen]

fascinating posts - thanks
I was actually googling William Sargent - the British spychiatrist - as some sources claim he influenced / preceded Cameron & came across this : interesting on chronology
( hopefully not corn )

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Hist...ring04.htm

"TRUTH" DRUGS IN INTERROGATION

The search for effective aids to interrogation is probably as old as man's need to obtain information from an uncooperative source and as persistent as his impatience to shortcut any tortuous path. In the annals of police investigation, physical coercion has at times been substituted for painstaking and time-consuming inquiry in the belief that direct methods produce quick results. Sir James Stephens, writing in 1883, rationalizes a grisly example of "third degree" practices by the police of India: "It is far pleasanter to sit comfortably in the shade rubbing red pepper in a poor devil's eyes than to go about in the sun hunting up evidence."

More recently, police officials in some countries have turned to drugs for assistance in extracting confessions from accused persons, drugs which are presumed to relax the individual's defenses to the point that he unknowingly reveals truths he has been trying to conceal. This investigative technique, however humanitarian as an alternative to physical torture, still raises serious questions of individual rights and liberties. In this country, where drugs have gained only marginal acceptance in police work, their use has provoked cries of "psychological third degree" and has precipitated medico-legal controversies that after a quarter of a century still occasionally flare into the open.

The use of so-called "truth" drugs in police work is similar to the accepted psychiatric practice of narco-analysis; the difference in the two procedures lies in their different objectives. The police investigator is concerned with empirical truth that may be used against the suspect, and therefore almost solely with probative truth: the usefulness of the suspect's revelations depends ultimately on their acceptance in evidence by a court of law. The psychiatrist, on the other hand, using the same "truth" drugs in diagnosis and treatment of the mentally ill, is primarily concerned with psychological truth or psychological reality rather than empirical fact. A patient's aberrations are reality for him at the time they occur, and an accurate account of these fantasies and delusions, rather than reliable recollection of past events, can be the key to recovery.

The notion of drugs capable of illuminating hidden recesses of the mind, helping to heal the mentally ill and preventing or reversing the miscarriage of justice, has provided an exceedingly durable theme for the press and popular literature. While acknowledging that "truth serum" is a misnomer twice over -- the drugs are not sera and they do not necessarily bring forth probative truth -- journalistic accounts continue to exploit the appeal of the term. The formula is to play up a few spectacular "truth" drug successes and to imply that the drugs are more maligned than need be and more widely employed in criminal investigation than can officially be admitted.

Any technique that promises an increment of success in extracting information from an uncompliant source is ipso facto of interest in intelligence operations. If the ethical considerations which in Western countries inhibit the use of narco-interrogation in police work are felt also in intelligence, the Western services must at least be prepared against its possible employment by the adversary. An understanding of "truth" drugs, their characteristic actions, and their potentialities, positive and negative, for eliciting useful information is fundamental to an adequate defense against them.

This discussion, meant to help toward such an understanding, draws primarily upon openly published materials. It has the limitations of projecting from criminal investigative practices and from the permissive atmosphere of drug psychotherapy.


SCOPOLAMINE AS "TRUTH SERUM"

Early in this century physicians began to employ scopolamine, along with morphine and chloroform, to induce a state of "twilight sleep" during childbirth. A constituent of henbane, scopolamine was known to produce sedation and drowsiness, confusion and disorientation, incoordination, and amnesia for events experienced during intoxication. Yet physicians noted that women in twilight sleep answered questions accurately and often volunteered exceedingly candid remarks.

In 1922 it occurred to Robert House, a Dallas, Texas obstetrician, that a similar technique might be employed in the interrogation of suspected criminals, and he arranged to interview under scopolamine two prisoners in the Dallas county jail whose guilt seemed clearly confirmed. Under the drug, both men denied the charges on which they were held; and both, upon trial, were found not guilty. Enthusiastic at this success, House concluded that a patient under the influence of scopolamine "cannot create a lie... and there is no power to think or reason." [14] His experiment and this conclusion attracted wide attention, and the idea of a "truth" drug was thus launched upon the public consciousness.

The phrase "truth serum" is believed to have appeared first in a news report of House's experiment in the Los Angeles Record, sometime in 1922. House resisted the term for a while but eventually came to employ it regularly himself. He published some eleven articles on scopolamine in the years 1921-1929, with a noticeable increase in polemical zeal as time when on. What had begun as something of a scientific statement turned finally into a dedicated crusade by the "father of truth serum" on behalf of his offspring, wherein he was "grossly indulgent of its wayward behavior and stubbornly proud of its minor achievements." [11]
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Only a handful of cases in which scopolamine was used for police interrogation came to public notice, though there is evidence suggesting that some police forces may have used it extensively. [2,16] One police writer claims that the threat of scopolamine interrogation has been effective in extracting confessions from criminal suspects, who are told they will first be rendered unconscious by chloral hydrate placed covertly in their coffee or drinking water. [16]

Because of a number of undesirable side effects, scopolamine was shortly disqualified as a "truth" drug. Among the most disabling of the side effects are hallucinations, disturbed perception, somnolence, and physiological phenomena such as headache, rapid heart, and blurred vision, which distract the subject from the central purpose of the interview. Furthermore, the physical action is long, far outlasting the psychological effects. Scopolamine continues, in some cases, to make anesthesia and surgery safer by drying the mouth and throat and reducing secretions that might obstruct the air passages. But the fantastically, almost painfully, dry "desert" mouth brought on by the drug is hardly conducive to free talking, even in a tractable subject.


THE BARBITURATES

The first suggestion that drugs might facilitate communication with emotionally disturbed patients came quite by accident in 1916. Arthur S. Lovenhart and his associates at the University of Wisconsin, experimenting with respiratory stimulants, were surprised when, after an injection of sodium cyanide, a catatonic patient who had long been mute and rigid suddenly relaxed, opened his eyes, and even answered a few questions. By the early 1930's a number of psychiatrists were experimenting with drugs as an adjunct to established methods of therapy.

At about this time police officials, still attracted by the possibility that drugs might help in the interrogation of suspects and witnesses, turned to a class of depressant drugs known as the barbiturates. By 1935 Clarence W. Muehlberger, head of the Michigan Crime Detection Laboratory at East Lansing, was using barbiturates on reluctant suspects, though police work continued to be hampered by the courts' rejection of drug-induced confessions except in a few carefully circumscribed instances.

The barbiturates, first synthesized in 1903, are among the oldest of modern drugs and the most versatile of all depressants. In this half-century some 2,500 have been prepared, and about two dozen of these have won an important place in medicine. An estimated three to four billion doses of barbiturates are prescribed by physicians in the United States each year, and they have come to be known by a variety of commercial names and colorful slang expressions: "goofballs," Luminal, Nembutal, "red devils," "yellow jackets," "pink ladies," etc. Three of them which are used in narcoanalysis and have seen service as "truth" drugs are sodium amytal (anobarbital), pentothal sodium (thiopental), and to a lesser extent seconal (seconbarbital).

As one pharmacologist explains it, a subject coming under the influence of a barbiturate injected intravenously goes through all the stages of progressive drunkenness, but the time scale is on the order of minutes instead of hours. Outwardly the sedation effect is dramatic, especially if the subject is a psychiatric patient in tension. His features slacken, his body relaxes. Some people are momentarily excited; a few become silly and giggly. This usually passes, and most subjects fall asleep, emerging later in disoriented semi-wakefulness.

The descent into narcosis and beyond with progressively larger doses can be divided as follows:

I. Sedative stage.

II. Unconsciousness, with exaggerated reflexes (hyperactive stage).

III. Unconsciousness, without reflex even to painful stimuli.

IV. Death.

Whether all these stages can be distinguished in any given subject depends largely on the dose and the rapidity with which the drug is induced. In anesthesia, stages I and II may last only two or three seconds.

The first or sedative stage can be further divided:

Plane 1. No evident effect, or slightly sedative effect.

Plane 2. Cloudiness, calmness, amnesia. (Upon recovery, the subject will not remember what happened at this or "lower" planes or stages.)

Plane 3. Slurred speech, old thought patterns disrupted, inability to integrate or learn new patterns. Poor coordination. Subject becomes unaware of painful stimuli.



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Plane 3 is the psychiatric "work" stage. It may last only a few minutes, but it can be extended by further slow injection of drug. The usual practice is to back into the sedative stage on the way to full consciousness.


CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES

The general abhorrence in Western countries for the use of chemical agents "to make people do things against their will" has precluded serious systematic study (at least as published openly) of the potentialities of drugs for interrogation. Louis A. Gottschalk, surveying their use in information-seeking interviews, [13] cites 136 references; but only two touch upon the extraction of intelligence information, and one of these concludes merely that Russian techniques in interrogation and indoctrination are derived from age-old police methods and do not depend on the use of drugs. On the validity of confessions obtained with drugs, Gottschalk found only three published experimental studies that he deemed worth reporting.

One of these reported experiments by D.P. Morris in which intravenous sodium amytal was helpful in detecting malingerers. [12] The subjects, soldiers, were at first sullen, negativistic, and non-productive under amytal, but as the interview proceeded they revealed the fact of and causes for their malingering. Usually the interviews turned up a neurotic or psychotic basis for the deception.

The other two confession studies, being more relevant to the highly specialized, untouched area of drugs in intelligence interrogation, deserve more detailed review.

Gerson and Victoroff [12] conducted amytal interviews with 17 neuropsychiatric patients, soldiers who had charges against them, at Tilton General Hospital, Fort Dix. First they were interviewed without amytal by a psychiatrist, who, neither ignoring nor stressing their situation as prisoners or suspects under scrutiny, urged each of them to discuss his social and family background, his army career, and his version of the charges pending against him.

The patients were told only a few minutes in advance that narcoanalysis would be performed. The doctor was considerate, but positive and forthright. He indicated that they had no choice but to submit to the procedure. Their attitudes varied from unquestioning to downright refusal.

Each patient was brought to complete narcosis and permitted to sleep. As he became semiconscious and could be stimulated to speak, he was held in this stage with additional amytal while the questioning proceeded. He was questioned first about innocuous matters from his background that he had discussed before receiving the drug. Whenever possible, he was manipulated into bringing up himself the charges pending against him before being questioned about them. If he did this in a too fully conscious state, it proved more effective to ask him to "talk about that later" and to interpose a topic that would diminish suspicion, delaying the interrogation on his criminal activity until he was back in the proper stage of narcosis.

The procedure differed from therapeutic narcoanalysis in several ways: the setting, the type of patients, and the kind of "truth" sought. Also, the subjects were kept in twilight consciousness longer than usual. This state proved richest in yield of admissions prejudicial to the subject. In it his speech was thick, mumbling, and disconnected, but his discretion was markedly reduced. This valuable interrogation period, lasting only five to ten minutes at a time, could be reinduced by injecting more amytal and putting the patient back to sleep.

The interrogation technique varied from case to case according to the background information about the patient, the seriousness of the charges, the patient's attitude under narcosis, and his rapport with the doctor. Sometimes it was useful to pretend, as the patient grew more fully conscious, that he had already confessed during the amnestic period of the interrogation, and to urge him, while his memory and sense of self-protection were still limited, to continue to elaborate the details of what he had "already described." When it was obvious that a subject was withholding the truth, his denials were quickly passed over and ignored, and the key questions would be rewarded in a new approach.

Several patients revealed fantasies, fears, and delusions approaching delirium, much of which could readily be distinguished from reality. But sometimes there was no way for the examiner to distinguish truth from fantasy except by reference to other sources. One subject claimed to have a child that did not exist,



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another threatened to kill on sight a stepfather who had been dead a year, and yet another confessed to participating in a robbery when in fact he had only purchased goods from the participants. Testimony concerning dates and specific places was untrustworthy and often contradictory because of the patient's loss of time-sense. His veracity in citing names and events proved questionable. Because of his confusion about actual events and what he thought or feared had happened, the patient at times managed to conceal the truth unintentionally.

As the subject revived, he would become aware that he was being questioned about his secrets and, depending upon his personality, his fear of discovery, or the degree of his disillusionment with the doctor, grow negativistic, hostile, or physically aggressive. Occasionally patients had to be forcibly restrained during this period to prevent injury to themselves or others as the doctor continued to interrogate. Some patients, moved by fierce and diffuse anger, the assumption that they had already been tricked into confessing, and a still limited sense of discretion, defiantly acknowledged their guilt and challenged the observer to "do something about it." As the excitement passed, some fell back on their original stories and others verified the confessed material. During the follow-up interview nine of the 17 admitted the validity of their confessions; eight repudiated their confessions and reaffirmed their earlier accounts.

With respect to the reliability of the results of such interrogation, Gerson and Victoroff conclude that persistent, careful questioning can reduce ambiguities in drug interrogation, but cannot eliminate them altogether.

At least one experiment has shown that subjects are capable of maintaining a lie while under the influence of a barbiturate. Redlich and his associates at Yale [25] administered sodium amytal to nine volunteers, students and professionals, who had previously, for purposes of the experiment, revealed shameful and guilt-producing episodes of their past and then invented false self-protective stories to cover them. In nearly every case the cover story retained some elements of the guilt inherent in the true story.

Under the influence of the drug, the subjects were crossexamined on their cover stories by a second investigator. The results, though not definitive, showed that normal individuals who had good defenses and no overt pathological traits could stick to their invented stories and refuse confession. Neurotic individuals with strong unconscious self-punitive tendencies, on the other hand, both confessed more easily and were inclined to substitute fantasy for the truth, confessing to offenses never actually committed.

In recent years drug therapy has made some use of stimulants, most notably amphetamine (Benzedrine) and its relative methamphetamine (Methadrine). These drugs, used either alone or following intravenous barbiturates, produce an outpouring of ideas, emotions, and memories which has been of help in diagnosing mental disorders. The potential of stimulants in interrogation has received little attention, unless in unpublished work. In one study of their psychiatric use Brussel et al. [7] maintain that methedrine gives the liar no time to think or to organize his deceptions. Once the drug takes hold, they say, an insurmountable urge to pour out speech traps the malingerer. Gottschalk, on the other hand, says that this claim is extravagant, asserting without elaboration that the study lacked proper controls. [13] It is evident that the combined use of barbiturates and stimulants, perhaps along with ataraxics (tranquilizers), should be further explored.


OBSERVATIONS FROM PRACTICE

J.M. MacDonald, who as a psychiatrist for the District Courts of Denver has had extensive experience with narcoanalysis, says that drug interrogation is of doubtful value in obtaining confessions to crimes. Criminal suspects under the influence of barbiturates may deliberately withhold information, persist in giving untruthful answers, or falsely confess to crimes they did not commit. The psychopathic personality, in particular, appears to resist successfully the influence of drugs.

MacDonald tells of a criminal psychopath who, having agreed to narco-interrogation, received 1.5 grams of sodium amytal over a period of five hours. This man feigned amnesia and gave a false account of a murder. "He displayed little or no remorse as he (falsely) described the crime, including burial of the body. Indeed he was very self-possessed and he appeared almost to enjoy the examination. From time to time he would request that more amytal be injected." [21]

MacDonald concludes that a person who gives false information prior to re-



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ceiving drugs is likely to give false information also under narcosis, that the drugs are of little value for revealing deceptions, and that they are more effective in releasing unconsciously repressed material than in evoking consciously suppressed information.

Another psychiatrist known for his work with criminals, L.Z. Freedman, gave sodium amytal to men accused of various civil and military antisocial acts. The subjects were mentally unstable, their conditions ranging from character disorders to neuroses and psychoses. The drug interviews proved psychiatrically beneficial to the patients, but Freedman found that his view of objective reality was seldom improved by their revelations. He was unable to say on the basis of the narco-interrogation whether a given act had or had not occurred. Like MacDonald, he found that psychopathic individuals can deny to the point of unconsciousness crimes that every objective sign indicates they have committed. [10]

F.G. Inbau, Professor of Law at Northwestern University, who has had considerable experience observing and participating in "truth" drug tests, claims that they are occasionally effective on persons who would have disclosed the truth anyway had they been properly interrogated, but that a person determined to lie will usually be able to continue the deception under drugs.

The two military psychiatrists who made the most extensive use of narcoanalysis during the war years. Roy R. Grinker and John C. Spiegel, concluded that in almost all cases they could obtain from their patients essentially the same material and give them the same emotional release by therapy without the use of drugs, provided they had sufficient time.

The essence of these comments from professionals of long experience is that drugs provide rapid access to information that is psychiatrically useful but of doubtful validity as empirical truth. The same psychological information and a less adulterated empirical truth can be obtained from fully conscious subjects through non-drug psychotherapy and skillful police interrogation.


APPLICATION TO CI INTERROGATION

The almost total absence of controlled experimental studies of "truth" drugs and the spotty and anecdotal nature of psychiatric and police evidence require that extrapolations to intelligence operations be made with care. Still, enough is known about the drugs' actions to suggest certain considerations affecting the possibilities for their use in interrogation.

It should be clear from the foregoing that at best a drug can only serve as an aid to an interrogator who has a sure understanding of the psychology and techniques of normal interrogation. In some respects, indeed, the demands on his skill will be increased by the baffling mixture of truth and fantasy in drug-induced output. And the tendency against which he must guard in the interrogate to give the responses that seem to be wanted without regard for facts will be heightened by drugs: the literature abounds with warnings that a subject in narcosis is extremely suggestible.

It seems possible that this suggestibility and the lowered guard of the narcotic state might be put to advantage in the case of a subject feigning ignorance of a language or some other skill that had become automatic with him. Lipton [20] found sodium amytal helpful in determining whether a foreign subject was merely pretending not to understand English. By extension, one can guess that a drugged interrogatee might have difficulty maintaining the pretense that he did not comprehend the idiom of a profession he was trying to hide.

There is the further problem of hostility in the interrogator's relationship to a resistance source. The accumulated knowledge about "truth" drug reaction has come largely from patient-physician relationships of trust and confidence. The subject in narcoanalysis is usually motivated a priori to cooperate with the psychiatrist, either to obtain relief from mental suffering or to contribute to a scientific study. Even in police work, where an atmosphere of anxiety and threat may be dominant, a relationship of trust frequently asserts itself: the drug is administered by a medical man bound by a strict code of ethics; the suspect agreeing to undergo narcoanalysis in a desperate bid for corroboration of his testimony trusts both drug and psychiatrist, however apprehensively; and finally, as Freedman and MacDonald have indicated, the police psychiatrist frequently deals with a "sick" criminal, and some order of patient-physician relationship necessarily evolves.



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Rarely has a drug interrogation involved "normal" individuals in a hostile or genuinely threatening milieu. It was from a non-threatening experimental setting that Eric Lindemann could say that his "normal" subjects "reported a general sense of euphoria, ease and confidence, and they exhibited a marked increase in talkativeness and communicability." [18] Gerson and Victoroff list poor doctor-patient rapport as one factor interfering with the completeness and authenticity of confessions by the Fort Dix soldiers, caught as they were in a command performance and told they had no choice but to submit to narco-interrogation.

From all indications, subject-interrogation rapport is usually crucial to obtaining the psychological release which may lead to unguarded disclosures. Role-playing on the part of the interrogator might be a possible solution to the problem of establishing rapport with a drugged subject. In therapy, the British narco-analyst William Sargent recommends that the therapist deliberately distort the facts of the patient's life-experience to achieve heightened emotional response and abreaction. [27] In the drunken state of narcoanalysis patients are prone to accept the therapist's false constructions. There is reason to expect that a drugged subject would communicate freely with an interrogator playing the role of relative, colleague, physician, immediate superior, or any other person to whom his background indicated he would be responsive.

Even when rapport is poor, however, there remains one facet of drug action eminently exploitable in interrogation -- the fact that subjects emerge from narcosis feeling they have revealed a great deal, even when they have not. As Gerson and Victoroff demonstrated at Fort Dix, this psychological set provides a major opening for obtaining genuine confessions.


POSSIBLE VARIATIONS

In studies by Beecher and his associates, [3-6] one-third to one-half the individuals tested proved to be placebo reactors, subjects who respond with symptomatic relief to the administration of any syringe, pill, or capsule, regardless of what it contains. Although no studies are known to have been made of the placebo phenomenon as applied to narco-interrogation, it seems reasonable that when a subject's sense of guilt interferes with productive interrogation, a placebo for pseudo-narcosis could have the effect of absolving him of the responsibility for his acts and thus clear the way for free communication. It is notable that placebos are most likely to be effective in situations of stress. The individuals most likely to react to placebos are the more anxious, more self-centered, more dependent on outside stimulation, those who express their needs more freely socially, talkers who drain off anxiety by conversing with others. The non-reactors are those clinically more rigid and with better than average emotional control. No sex or I.Q. differences between reactors and non-reactors have been found.

Another possibility might be the combined use of drugs with hypnotic trance and post-hypnotic suggestion: hypnosis could presumably prevent any recollection of the drug experience. Whether a subject can be brought to trance against his will or unaware, however, is a matter of some disagreement. Orne, in a survey of the potential uses of hypnosis in interrogation, [23] asserts that it is doubtful, despite many apparent indications to the contrary, that trance can be induced in resistant subjects. It may be possible, he adds, to hypnotize a subject unaware, but this would require a positive relationship with the hypnotist not likely to be found in the interrogation setting.

In medical hypnosis, pentothal sodium is sometimes employed when only light trance has been induced and deeper narcosis is desired. This procedure is a possibility for interrogation, but if a satisfactory level of narcosis could be achieved through hypnotic trance there would appear to be no need for drugs.

DEFENSIVE MEASURES

There is no known way of building tolerance for a "truth" drug without creating a disabling addiction, or of arresting the action of a barbiturate once induced. The only full safeguard against narco-interrogation is to prevent the administration of the drug. Short of this, the best defense is to make use of the same knowledge that suggests drugs for offensive operations: if a subject knows that on emerging from narcosis he will have an exaggerated notion of how much he has revealed he can better resolve to deny he has said anything.



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The disadvantages and shortcomings of drugs in offensive operations become positive features of the defensive posture. A subject in narco-interrogation is garbled and irrational, the amount of output drastically diminished. Drugs disrupt established thought patterns, including the will to resist, but they do so indiscriminately and thus also interfere with the patterns of substantive information the interrogator seeks. Even under the conditions most favorable for the interrogator, output will be contaminated by fantasy, distortion, and untruth.

Possibly the most effective way to arm oneself against narco-interrogation would be to undergo a "dry run." A trial drug interrogation with output taped for playback would familiarize an individual with his own reactions to "truth" drugs, and this familiarity would help to reduce the effects of harassment by the interrogator before and after the drug has been administered. From the viewpoint of the intelligence service, the trial exposure of a particular operative to drugs might provide a rough benchmark for assessing the kind and amount of information he would divulge in narcosis.

There may be concern over the possibility of drug addiction intentionally or accidentally induced by an adversary service. Most drugs will cause addiction with prolonged use, and the barbiturates are no exception. In recent studies at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital for addicts in Lexington, Ky., subjects received large doses of barbiturates over a period of months. Upon removal of the drug, they experienced acute withdrawal symptoms and behaved in every respect like chronic alcoholics.

Because their action is extremely short, however, and because there is little likelihood that they would be administered regularly over a prolonged period, barbiturate "truth" drugs present slight risk of operational addiction. If the adversary service were intent on creating addiction in order to exploit withdrawal, it would have other, more rapid means of producing states as unpleasant as withdrawal symptoms.

The hallucinatory and psychotomimetic drugs such as mescaline, marihuana, LSD-25, and microtine are sometimes mistakenly associated with narcoanalytic interrogation. These drugs distort the perception and interpretation of the sensory input to the central nervous system and affect vision, audition, smell, the sensation of the size of body parts and their position in space, etc. Mescaline and LSD-25 have been used to create experimental "psychotic states," and in a minor way as aids in psychotherapy.

Since information obtained from a person in a psychotic drug state would be unrealistic, bizarre, and extremely difficult to assess, the self-administration of LSD-25, which is effective in minute dosages, might in special circumstances offer an operative temporary protection against interrogation. Conceivably, on the other hand, an adversary service could use such drugs to produce anxiety or terror in medically unsophisticated subjects unable to distinguish drug-induced psychosis from actual insanity. An enlightened operative could not be thus frightened, however, knowing that the effect of these hallucinogenic agents is transient in normal individuals.

Most broadly, there is evidence that drugs have least effect on well-adjusted individuals with good defenses and good emotional control, and that anyone who can withstand the stress of competent interrogation in the waking state can do so in narcosis. The essential resources for resistance thus appear to lie within the individual.


CONCLUSIONS

The salient points that emerge from this discussion are the following. No such magic brew as the popular notion of truth serum exists. The barbiturates, by disrupting defensive patterns, may sometimes be helpful in interrogation, but even under the best conditions they will elicit an output contaminated by deception, fantasy, garbled speech, etc. A major vulnerability they produce in the subject is a tendency to believe he has revealed more than he has. It is possible, however, for both normal individuals and psychopaths to resist drug interrogation; it seems likely that any individual who can withstand ordinary intensive interrogation can hold out in narcosis. The best aid to a defense against narco-interrogation is foreknowledge of the process and its limitations. There is an acute need for controlled experimental studies of drug reaction, not only to depressants but also to stimulants and to combinations of depressants, stimulants, and ataraxics.



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REFERENCES

1. Adams, E. Barbiturates. Sci. Am., Jan. 1958, 198 (1), 60-64

2. Barkham, J. Truth Drugs: The new crime solver. Coronet, Jan. 1951, 29, 72-76.

3. Beecher, H. K. Anesthesia. Sci. Am., Jan. 1957, 198, p. 70.

4. -----. Appraisal of drugs intended to alter subjective responses, symptoms. J. Amer. Med. Assn., 1955, 158, 399-401.

5. -----. Evidence for increased effectiveness of placebos with increased stress. Amer. J. Physiol., 1956, 187, 163-169.

6. -----. Experimental pharmacology and measurement of the subjective response. Science, 1953, 116. 157-162.

7. Brussel, J. A., Wilson, D. C., Jr., & Shankel, L. W. The use of methedrine in psychiatric practice. Psychiat. Quart., 1954, 28, 381-394.

8. Delay, J. Pharmacologic explorations of the personality: narcoanalysis and "methedrine" shock. Proc. Roy. Soc. Med., 1949, 42, 492-496.

9. deRopp, R. S. Drugs and the Mind. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1960.

10. Freedman, L. Z. "Truth" drugs. Sci. Am., March 1960. 145-154.

11. Geis, G. In scopolamine veritas. The early history of drug-induced statements. J. of Crim. Law., Criminal, & Pol. Sci., Nov.-Dec. 1959, 50 (4), 347-358.

12. Gerson, M. J. & Victoroff, V. Experimental investigation into the validity of confessions obtained under sodium amytal narcosis. J. Clin. and Exp. Psychopath., 1948, 9, 359-375.

13. Gottschalk, L. A. The use of drugs in information-seeking interviews. Technical report #2, ARDC Study SR 177-D Contract AF 18 (600) 1797. Dec. 1958. Bureau of Social Science Research, Inc.

14. House, R. E. The use of scopolamine in criminology. Texas St. J. of Med., 1922, 18, 259.

15. Houston, F. A preliminary investigation into abreaction comparing methedrine and sodium amytal with other methods. J. Ment. Sci., 1952, 98, 707-710.

16. Inbau, F. G. Self-incrimination. Springfield: C. C. Thomas, 1950.

17. Kidd, W. R. Police interrogation. 1940.

18. Legal dose of truth. Newsweek, Feb. 23, 1959, 28.

19. Lindemann, E. Psychological changes in normal and abnormal individuals under the influence of sodium amytal. Amer. J. Psychiat., 1932, 11, 1083-1091.

20. Lipton, E. L. The amytal interview. A review. Amer. Practit. Digest Treatm., 1950, 1, 148-163.

21. MacDonald, J. M. Narcoanalysis and criminal law. Amer. J. Psychiat., 1954, 111, 283-288.

22. Morris, D. P. Intravenous barbiturates: an aid in the diagnosis and treatment of conversion hysteria and malingering. Mil. Surg., 1945, 96, 509-513.

23. Orne, M. T. The potential uses of hypnosis in interrogation. An evaluation. ARDC Study SR 177-D Contract AF 18 (600) 1797, Dec. 1958. Bureau of Social Science Research, Inc.

24. Pelikan, E. W., & Kensler, C. J. Sedatives: Their pharmacalogy and uses. Reprint from The Medical Clinics of North America. W. B. Saunders Company, Sept. 1958.

25. Redlich, F. C., Ravitz, L. J., & Dression, G. H. Narcoanalysis and truth. Amer. J. Psychiat., 1951, 107, 586-593.

26. Rolin, J. Police Drugs. Translated by L. J. Bendit. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956.

27. Sargant, W., & Slater, E. Physical methods of treatment in psychiatry. (3rd. ed.) Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1954.

28. Snider, R. S. Cerebellum. Sci. Am., Aug. 1958, 84.

29. Uhr, L., & Miller, L. G. (eds.). Drugs and Behavior. New York-London: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1960.

[Austin Kelley]

Chris, I think you are right about William Sargant- he is a very significant figure in all this, and he was certainly part of a British military psychology initiative that was very active during WW2. Many of his associates had history with studies of shell-shocked soldiers before the War, too. As far as the early Cold War alliance that included Britain, the United States and Canada in a secret quest to develop mind control techniques, Cameron and Sargant both loom large.

As to the MKULTRA document on truth drugs, like most of what came out of those hearings in the 70's, it conceals as much as it reveals. While I do think it catalogues some drugs of operational interest, it creates a misleading standard of a instantaneous and completely effective "truth serum" and then concludes that there is no such perfect nostrum for instant and total truth in interrogation. End of story?

In reality, what these people succeeded in developing are sophisticated combinations of techniques for varied and nuanced goals. "Hypnosis" or "narco-hypnosis" can be considered as code-words for an array of techniques centered on programming in all the possible senses which that can be applied to the human mind, albeit programming that occurs during an especially dissociated and suggestible state.

Cameron's notorious "psychic-driving" experiments point us in this direction but no doubt there is much more to the story as practiced by Orne, West, Bryan, Roquet and the many, many others of that ilk. Related technologies have also increased exponentially in the years since that early Cold War era as well, notably in the realms of psychopharmacology and virtual reality.

So what are the actual techniques of today's mind controllers?

It's difficult to know for sure, but certainly fear, trauma, physical pain, dread, drugs, mileu control, sensory deprivation, selective award of favors, "hypnosis", etc., etc., etc., all have their place. NLP, Ericksonian Hypnosis, DDD (Dependence, Debility, Dread), Learned Helplessness Theory and the more secretive methodologies all have their place in guiding the use of these techniques but this must be only the tip of the proverbial iceberg...

[Keith Millea]

So what are the actual techniques of today's mind controllers?

I can't answer that question,but I have another.Why is it that drugs such as ketamine are readily available to the masses today?I've read that ketamine(aka Keyhole)is gaining much popularity amongst the subculture,and especially at gatherings like "Raves".Ketamine (dissociative) is a terrible drug,and highly addictive.Dr.John Lilly(MK-Ultra)even became addicted to it.


From my readings,it seems that the CIA tried to manipulate and control the counter culture of the sixties with the widespread dissemination of drugs like LSD in order to destroy it.It really didn't work.Many people found LSD to be a life altering experience,and for the better.Many even having intense (real) spiritual awakenings.This matter of the spirituallity of some substances is probably a subject for another thread.


So what I'm getting at here,is maybe the same kinds of operations are ongoing today.Although with the use of dissociatives instead of psychedelics.Sort of a lessons learned evolution for those who would use any means possible to destroy any rebellious sub-culture.

[Austin Kelley]

Hi Keith-

My perspective is that all types of illegal drugs trafficked in the U.S. have flourished in part through selective enforcement, and indeed through outright collaboration between traffickers and enforcement/military/intel agencies. This includes psychedelics like LSD, and quite possibly Ketamine also- not just white powders by any means.

Assuming this is so, one inevitably arrives at questions concerning social engineering, human experimentation, profiteering and etc. as possible motivation.

Maybe your friendly neighborhood rave is ground zero for some kind of experiments involving Ketamine- not sure. I do remember that "Dr. Death" and his associates in the South African chemical/biological warfare underground made a huge amount of now-unaccounted-for Mandrax and MDMA, ostensibly for "crowd control". Did some of it wind up in local- or international- discos and house parties?


Austin

[Jan Klimkowski]

I often use "MK-ULTRA" as an umbrella term to apply to the various attempts, conducted by various covert agencies, to control human minds.

There's plenty of material in the thread linked below, which includes a sketch of my sense, based on decades of research and numerous interviews with people who believe they were the subjects of mind control experimentation, of the scientific and logistical framework in which these events took place:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/....php?t=223

I am 100% certain that there were British "MK-ULTRA" programmes. I am also certain that the merest glimpses of those programmes have become visible.

However, William Sargant (note spelling) is clearly implicated as a military doctor engaged in entirely unethical and apparently unconstrained "mind control" research on human subjects.

Magda - good find, thank you for posting.

There are a couple of interesting footsteps in the snow, blizzard-swept tracks, of the secret British "MK-ULTRA" programme in the article above.

Ultimately though, no real attempt is made to pursue them, to follow those traces to their source.

In addition, no mention is made of Prof Major Kennedy's likely military and Maudsley Hospital colleague, Dr William Sargant.

I wrote the following about Sargent here:

Many soldiers whose psyches had been fragmented by the experience of terrible events, and were suffering from what we now term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, effectively became experimental subjects. Whilst many of the shellshock doctors had the best of intentions, others were directly involved in the mind control programmes. For instance, perhaps the most famous of all the British shellshock doctors, William Sargant, collaborated extensively with Ewen Cameron and Sidney Gottlieb of MK-ULTRA notoriety. Sargant even betrayed CIA doctor Frank Olson to Gottlieb when Olson described his horror at witnessing terminal mind control experiments in 1953, probably either in Britain or in former IG Farben buildings in Frankfurt which were by then occupied by the CIA. Olson's son, Eric, has good evidence that his father was subsequently murdered by CIA elements

The top level glimpse into Prof Major Kennedy's CV, and the fact that he spoke about British use of brainwashing techniques, requiring a rebuttal from the Prime Minister no less, suggests that this military shrink was a British version of America's Naval Lt Cmdr Dr Narut, with his confession of constructed assassins.

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...stcount=10

Some wiki material about Sargant. It contains some errors of interpretation, in my judgement:

William Walters Sargant (24 April 1907 - 27 August 1988), was a British psychiatrist who is now famous for his work with shell-shocked servicemen during World War Two, and later for his book entitled Battle for the Mind in which he discusses the nature of the process by which our minds are subject to influence by others. Sargant was also heavily involved to the end of his career with the Intelligence Services, including the CIA Project MKULTRA.

Trained at the Maudsley Hospital, South London. Sargant established a unit at Belmont Hospital during World War Two for the treatment of shell-shocked servicemen. There, along with Eliot Slater, he was a pioneer and advocate of physical methods of treatment in psychiatry such as ECT, continuous narcosis, insulin coma therapy and psychosurgery. His enthusiasm for such methods grew partly out of contempt for psychoanalysis, which was hugely popular among British psychiatrists between the wars. As an exponent of biological psychiatry, he regarded psychoanalysis as worse than useless in treating severe mental illness.

Founder and Director of the Department of Psychological Medicine at St Thomas' Hospital in London, where he promoted physical treatments in psychiatry, and had his in-patients referred by consultants from all over the UK at the adjacent Royal Waterloo Hospital. He was also a consultant to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI5/MI6). In 1953 he associated with Frank Olson, Deputy Acting Head of Special Operations for the CIA, investigating the use of mind-bending drugs at the Biological Warfare Centre at Porton Down.[1]

In 1944 he collaborated with Slater in writing An Introduction to Physical Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry, a textbook on biological psychiatry that included lobotomy and shock therapy and remained in print for three decades.

In 1957 William Sargant published one of the first books on the psychology of brainwashing, Battle for the Mind. While this book is often referred to as a work on 'brainwashing', and indeed it is subtitled a Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing, Sargant emphasises that his aim is to elucidate the processes involved rather than advocate uses. In the book he refers particularly to religious phenomena and in particular Christian methodism, emphasising the apparent need for those who would change people's minds to first excite them, as did the founder of Methodism, John Wesley.

Sargant connected Pavlov’s findings to the ways people learned and internalized belief systems. Conditioned behavior patterns could be changed by stimulated stresses beyond a dog’s capacity for response, in essence causing a breakdown. This could also be caused by intense signals, longer than normal waiting periods, rotating positive and negative signals and changing a dog’s physical condition, as through illness. Depending on the dog’s initial personality, this could possibly cause a new belief system to be held tenaciously. Sargant also connected Pavlov’s findings to the mechanisms of brain-washing in religion and politics.[2]

William Sargant was a pioneer in methods of placing false memories into patients. He attested at the 1977 U.S. Senate hearing, "that the therapist should deliberately distort the facts of the patient's life-experience to achieve heightened emotional response and abreaction. In the drunken state of narcoanalysis patients are prone to accept the therapist's false constructions."

[edit] Mind Control
[edit] Sargant, Ewen Cameron and MKULTRA
Sargant and Dr Ewen Cameron of Project MKULTRA notoriety, were friends and colleagues who shared and exchanged views and information on brainwashing and de-patterning techniques and their mutual researches in this area. Both men had extensive CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service connections.[3]

The aim of Cameron, Sargant and the CIA’s researches was to find a way to obliterate the memories of an allied spy ('de-patterning') and implant false memories at a deep level so that if that spy was captured in his adoptive country, he would be incapable under duress or even torture of revealing his true American/British allegiance. He would only be able to reveal the falsely implanted memories that supported his assumed persona. This concept became termed 'The Manchurian Candidate' after the novel. The extensive use of 'heroic' doses of ECT combined with Deep Sleep Treatment (narcosis), anti-depressants, tape-loops, insulin coma therapy, and other drugs in this context, was designed to induce catastrophic memory loss which would then supposedly be replaced with false memories and ideas (via tape loops, hypnosis, LSD or conversations while the person was drugged).

The CIA eventually became disillusioned with the research, saying it produced only 'amnesiacs and vegetables', but not until Cameron and Sargant between them had destroyed the health, memories and lives of countless patients.[4]

The author and psychiatrist Harvey Weinstein has established a direct link between Sargant's research on brainwashing and political conversion, and the research aspect of Cameron's work for MKULTRA. Cameron wrote in a paper on 'The Transition Neurosis': 'Sargant has described what little we know of the dynamics of these political and religious conversions and has attempted to duplicate them but from what we gather, with somewhat limited success. He used depleting emetics. We have explored this procedure in one case, using sleeplessness, disinhibiting agents, and hypnosis.'[5] Cameron often sought Sargant's advice and on one occasion Sargant sent Cameron a note saying 'Whatever you manage in this field, I thought of it first.' [6]

In addition to LSD, Cameron also experimented with various paralytic drugs, as well as electroconvulsive therapy at 30 to 40 times the normal power. His "driving" experiments consisted of putting subjects into drug-induced coma for months on end (up to three in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements. His experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and post-partum depression, many of whom suffered permanently from his actions.

[edit] Sargant's Covert Research at St. Thomas'
In St. Thomas' Hospital Sargant had a 'Sleep Room' modelled on the one Cameron had created at the Allan Memorial Institute for the MKULTRA programme. Here he treated many British citizens – mainly women - over the years, experimenting usually without their consent (see below) using ECT combined with Deep Sleep Treatment (narcosis), drugs, insulin coma therapy and tape loops – the same techniques as Cameron employed in Canada.[7]

Scores of English patients were involved in illegal, unethical and dangerous experiments for which they almost certainly never gave their consent. Sargant was one of the dominant figures in psychiatry in his day, the 1970s. No one would dare to challenge him. Patients were'incarcerated in the 'Sleep Room' and subjected to horrendous experimental treatments for which no consent forms were signed. Patients were kept in a drug-induced sleep. This was part of what Sargant called 'depatterning'. They were only briefly awoken to receive electroshocks. Sargant would wheel into the 'Sleep Room' a portable electroshock machine. The normal procedure would have been to deliver a single 110 volt shock. Sargant used shocks 20 to 40 times more intense, two or three times daily, with the power turned up to 150 volts. Some patients received multiple electro shocks over a period of 65 days. Patients were put to sleep for long periods and received all kinds of drugs. They were in no condition to question him.

In direct parallel with Cameron's techniques, Sargant used tape loops played through a recorder placed under the patient’s pillow to implant false memories or ideas. Leonard Rubenstein, a technician who had created the tape loops for Cameron was flown to England to advise Sargant on how the tape loops were made.[7]

Possibly going even further than Cameron, both at Belmont Hospital in Surrey and St.Thomas' in London, Sargant subjected patients to up to three months' combined ECT, deep sleep treatment, insulin coma therapy and drugs. He said in a talk delivered in Leeds: 'For several years past we have been treating severe resistant depression with long periods of sleep treatment. We can now keep patients asleep or very drowsy for up to 3 months if necessary. During sleep treatment we also give them ECT and anti-depressant drugs'.[8]

Sargant routinely advocated and practised ways of circumventing the whole issue of consent to treatment, in direct violation of the Nuremberg Code. Drawn up after World War II in an attempt to prevent any repetition of the kind of terrible experimentation performed by Nazi doctors on various ethnic groupings, prisoners of war or disabled people they deemed worthless, the Nuremberg Code protects the rights of those subject to medical experiments. The most important point is voluntary consent, without any element of 'force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion'. There should be made known 'the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment. The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment.' Every effort should be made to protect the participant against 'even remote possibilities of injury, disability or death,' and '…the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems…impossible.'[9]

Sargent, by contrast, used enforced narcosis (sleep treatment) to obliterate a patient’s ability to refuse ECT. He wrote in his standard textbook An Introduction to Physical Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry: 'Many patients unable to tolerate a long course of ECT, can do so when anxiety is relieved by narcosis ... What is so valuable is that they generally have no memory about the actual length of the treatment or the numbers of ECT used ... After 3 or 4 treatments they may ask for ECT to be discontinued because of an increasing dread of further treatments. Combining sleep with ECT avoids this ...'. Sargant also advocated increasing the frequency of ECT sessions for those he describes as 'resistant, obsessional patients' in order to produce 'therapeutic confusion' and so remove their power of refusal. In addition he states: 'All sorts of treatment can be given while the patient is kept sleeping, including a variety of drugs and ECT [which] together generally induce considerable memory loss for the period under narcosis. As a rule the patient does not know how long he has been asleep, or what treatment, even including ECT, he has been given. Under sleep ... one can now give many kinds of physical treatment, necessary, but often not easily tolerated. We may be seeing here a new exciting beginning in psychiatry and the possibility of a treatment era such as followed the introduction of anaesthesia in surgery'.[10] Sargant's methods inspired Australian doctor Harry Bailey who employed Deep Sleep treatment at Chelmsford Private Hospital, eventually leading to the death of 26 patients. Bailey and Sargant were in close contact and apparently competed to see which of them could keep a patient in the depest coma.[11]

Sargant constantly underplayed in public the very damaging effects of these treatments on his patients' memories. However John Marks found that Cameron himself detailed the stages of memory loss resulting from such 'de-patterning' techniques, saying that 'his typical de-patterning patient – usually a woman – moved through three distinct stages. In the first, the subject lost much of her memory. Yet she still knew where she was, why she was there, and who the people were who treated her. In the second phase, she lost her 'space-time image,' but still wanted to remember. In fact not being able to answer questions like, 'Where am I?' and 'How did I get here?' caused her considerable anxiety. In the third stage, all that anxiety disappeared. Cameron described the state as 'an extremely interesting constriction of the range of recollections which one ordinarily brings in to modify and enrich one’s statements. Hence, what the patient talks about are only his sensationsof the moment and he talks about them almost exclusively in highly concrete terms. His remarks are entirely uninfluenced by previous recollections – nor are they governed in any way by his forward anticipations. He lives in the immediate present. All schizophrenic symptoms have disappeared . There is complete amnesia for all events in his life.'[12]

When Sargant left St.Thomas' Hospital he, like Cameron when he left the Allen Memorial Institute, took with him all the case notes of those who had received this intensive treatment. Again like Cameron, on enquiry the notes were subsequently found to have disappeared after his death.[13]

[edit] BBC Radio Documentary
On 1 April 2009, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a programme researched and introduced by James Maw entitled Revealing the Mind Bender General dealing with Sargant's activities and concentrating on his Sleep Room treatments at St Thomas's Hospital. Among the interviewees were his one-time registrar Dr David Owen (better known as a leading Labour and SDP politician) and a number of patients from St Thomas's as well as a survivor of the Porton Down experiments, who testified that their lives had been shattered by Sargant's treatments. Among the points that were brought out were the routine violation of patients' rights as regards giving consent for treatment, the fact that Sargant admitted in correspondence with an Australian lawyer that patients had died under his Deep Sleep regime, and that all patient records at St Thomas's and the related health authorities relating to Sargant's activities have been destroyed, making it difficult if not impossible for patients to seek redress through the courts.

[edit] Quotes
"...Jesus Christ might simply have returned to his carpentry following the use of modern [psychiatric] treatments." - William Sargant

"Though men are not dogs, they should humbly try to remember how much they resemble dogs in their brain functions, and not boast themselves as demigods. They are gifted with religious and social apprehensions, and they are gifted with the power of reason; but all these faculties are physiologically entailed to the brain. Therefore the brain should not be abused by having forced upon it any religious or political mystique that stunts the reason, or any form of crude rationalism that stunts the religious sense." (p. 274)[2]

[edit] Books written by William Sargant
Battle for the Mind: The Mechanics of Indoctrination, Brainwashing & Thought Control by William Sargant, Pan Books, 1957
Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing , by William Sargant, Malor Books, 1997, ISBN 1-883536-06-5
Mind Possessed, The : A Physiology of Possession, Mysticism, and Faith Healing, 1975, ISBN 0-14-004034-X
The Unquiet Mind - an autobiography, by William Sargant 1967 Heinemann ISBN 0-434-67150-9
An Introduction to Somatic Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry, by William Sargant and Eliot Slater, Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1946
An Introduction to Physical Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry, by William Sargant and Eliot Slater, Edinburgh : E&S Livingstone, 1944 [1st ed.]
An Introduction to Physical Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry, by William Sargant, Eliot Slater and Desmond Kelly, Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1972 5th edn ISBN 0-443-00868-X

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sargant

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...#post13575

[Keith Millea]

Therefore the brain should not be abused by having forced upon it any religious or political mystique that stunts the reason, or any form of crude rationalism that stunts the religious sense."

So,Dr.Sargant who "cracked the brains"of who knows how many innocent humans really says this!

"Though men are not dogs, they should humbly try to remember how much they resemble dogs in their brain functions, and not boast themselves as demigods.

I submit that Dr. Sargant was not only some kind of demigod,but humbly forgot to remind himself that he was truly a DOG!

[Jan Klimkowski]

"Though men are not dogs, they should humbly try to remember how much they resemble dogs in their brain functions, and not boast themselves as demigods.

I submit that Dr. Sargant was not only some kind of demigod,but humbly forgot to remind himself that he was truly a DOG!

Pavlov influenced an entire generation of "scientists", and his legacy in the deep black world is malign.

As an aside, in the late 90s, I was granted access to some classified medical research conducted under a Pentagon budget. It was in the field of trauma battlefield medicine, and was being conducted in a foundation-funded wing of a major US university medical school.

It involved killing dogs, bringing them back to life, observing their behaviour, then killing them again to perform histopathology.

Many of the junior scientists were young and bright, the brightest of the bright. When I talked with them, I found that, since joining the programme, several of them had bought puppies and would go home from a long day's work killing dogs and cutting up their brains, to play with their own special puppy.

It was a resonant observation.

:bandit:

[Austin Kelley]

I often use "MK-ULTRA" as an umbrella term to apply to the various attempts, conducted by various covert agencies, to control human minds.

There's plenty of material in the thread linked below, which includes a sketch of my sense, based on decades of research and numerous interviews with people who believe they were the subjects of mind control experimentation, of the scientific and logistical framework in which these events took place:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/....php?t=223

I am 100% certain that there were British "MK-ULTRA" programmes. I am also certain that the merest glimpses of those programmes have become visible.

However, William Sargant (note spelling) is clearly implicated as a military doctor engaged in entirely unethical and apparently unconstrained "mind control" research on human subjects.

I also use "MKULTRA" or sometimes "MK" as shorthand for extreme psychological manipulation that is tied to official (though usually secret) programs of various governments, including the USA and also its allies. In this research, I have personally been most focused on activities of the English-speaking nations: England, Canada, Australia and the United States, who do seem to have formed a strategic alliance on these matters since at least the early years of the Cold War.

As to similar programs run by China, the Former Soviet Union, Israel or other governments- there is much less verifiable information on these topics which I have been able to find in English. I believe there was and is an organized effort from such sectors and more should be written on these programs.

William Sargant was an very important figure in all this but I think it's important what schemata we use to understand his efforts. Jim Keith did important work on all this but he missed the boat by emphasizing a LaRouche/Far Right model which posited British agents at the root of all evil when the American spooks seem to have needed no outside inducement to violate human rights in furtherance of such goals.

That said, and in line with Keith's concerns, I do suspect the fact that an early member of the Grateful Dead inner circle, Alan Trist, was the son of a very important psychologist from the Tavistock Institute with ties to social engineering efforts- Eric Trist (who was on a visiting fellowship to Stanford at that time in the early '60's) is very, very significant somehow. Once again though, I strongly reject the LaRouchian thesis of an outside conspiracy led by Huxley, Hollingshead, Trist et al as somehow corrupting the "pure and noble" American Empire- my country was built on institutional corruption- it's as American as apple pie.

As to the theoretical framework behind it all, it seems that the place where Pavlov's concept of Transmarginal Inhibition meets Seligman's concept of Learned Helplessness and Sargant/Cameron's concept of Depatterning there you might find a place from which re-programming could occur...

[Peter Lemkin]

From my readings,it seems that the CIA tried to manipulate and control the counter culture of the sixties with the widespread dissemination of drugs like LSD in order to destroy it.It really didn't work.Many people found LSD to be a life altering experience,and for the better.Many even having intense (real) spiritual awakenings.This matter of the spirituallity of some substances is probably a subject for another thread.

So what I'm getting at here,is maybe the same kinds of operations are ongoing today.Although with the use of dissociatives instead of psychedelics.Sort of a lessons learned evolution for those who would use any means possible to destroy any rebellious sub-culture.

From my research and own been-there, done-that past I know that you are correct that the Borg was disseminating LSD, but not so much to cause harm with that drug alone [they knew very well what it was like]. What they would do is introduce it and then add adulterants of nasty chemicals/drugs to cause bad trips. Part of it was to cause general chaos in the alternative and politically active communities and part was 'testing'. You put X with the LSD in Detroit and Y with the LSD in San Diego, Z in San Francisco and then have your agents tell you about hospitalizations, suicides, freak-outs, bad-trips, violent reactions, etc. et al. Sometimes, after people had come to trust their sources and dealers, they not have any LSD in it at all, but something much nastier, but looking the same as the last LSD. Nice, Huh?!

As for less self-actualizing drugs like ketamine, one can only speculate that it might also be coming from the Borg and might also be [or soon to be] adulterated with other drugs in a similar manner.

[Jan Klimkowski]

From my readings,it seems that the CIA tried to manipulate and control the counter culture of the sixties with the widespread dissemination of drugs like LSD in order to destroy it.It really didn't work.Many people found LSD to be a life altering experience,and for the better.Many even having intense (real) spiritual awakenings.This matter of the spirituallity of some substances is probably a subject for another thread.

Keith - this is a core matter.

My own view, which is speculative, is rooted in the following observations:

Firstly, covert science is often inherently poor quality or junk science, precisely because of the lack of open peer review, controlled clinical trials and ethical oversight. In addition, many deep black scientists are arrogant, driven and resistant to criticism.

Secondly, "MK-ULTRA" is in reality a large number of competing programmes, run by competing organisations - alphabet letter intelligence agencies, military intelligence, naval intelligence, air force intelligence, agencies that don't officially exist, sub-contracts to plausibly deniable fronts such as cults, leaking of "technologies" to foreign militaries or groups. Etc.

Thirdly, this lack of information sharing coupled with the arrogant and obsessive-compulsive nature of those running the programmes led and leads to ghastly excrudescences. There may also be a malevolent metaphysical dimension to this, rooted perhaps in aspects of the human psyche and its responses to overwhelming trauma and horror.

So, to ask a question: if LSD can lead to spiritual enlightenment, why would intelligence agencies facilitate the mass distribution of acid to an entire generation in the sixties?

Peter is correct that some of it was probably contaminated for nefarious purposes.

It's also the case that many black operations have been funded primarily by the profits of the illegal narcotics trade.

However, when considered in the context of "MK-ULTRA", I believe there is a broader, more all-encompassing reason.

The deep black doctors were not interested in spiritual enlightenment. They were interested in how LSD could be used to channel and control behaviour.

So, there are previously classified comments from Louis Jolyon West that I have posted elsewhere on DPF which reveal his deep and early obsession with dissociation. Indeed, he states that he can create every textbook type of dissociation in the laboratory. By which he means that he'd managed to create it in his MK-ULTRA human guinea pigs.

Was West interested in the spiritual enlightenment of his test subjects? Hell no. He wanted to implant false memories, see if he could get them to do things their conscious self would never do - such as shoot another person - etc.

I'm sure everyone here has seen the grainy footage of soldiers trying to complete obstacle courses after being dosed with LSD or BZ. That also has nothing to do with spiritual enlightenment.

In fact, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that BZ was used as a battlefield munition in Vietnam, later in Iraq, and during the Balkan Wars.

The military rationale for using BZ has always been clear: it is an INCAPACITANT.

In other words, it fucks the enemy up without necessarily killing them.

Which seems to me to be a perfect rationale for intelligence agency use of LSD on the sixties counterculture: fucking the enemy up without killing them.