"Dr. Mary's Monkey"

[Peter Lemkin]

Jan, thay had truckloads full of exacting information on subjects under all kinds of conditions, knowing age, health status, means of administration, naive or not to what to expect, mixes of drugs, dosages, etc.

There's no evidence that the "MK-ULTRA" nexus had "truckloads" of information on the effects of LSD on humans in 1951, when the Pont St Esprit incident happened.

Well, maybe less than they had by the late 60s, granted, but they likely had the Swiss and Nazi 'experimenters' information. It was not known to the pulic then, but it was know in a small circle. Enough to try to use it as an incapacitant at the very least. Hoffman had tripped on it 13 years earlier and had dabbled and experimented with it [as had others] since.

------------------From Acid Dreams-----------------------------
From the outset the ClA's mind control program had an explicit domestic angle. A
memo dated July 13, 1951, described the Agency's mind-bending efforts as "broad
and comprehensive, involving both domestic and overseas activities, and taking into
consideration the programs and objectives of other departments, principally the
military services." BLUEBIRD activities were designed to create an "exploitable
alteration of personality" in selected individuals; specific targets included "potential
agents, defectors, refugees, POWs," and a vague category of "others." A number of
units within the CIA participated in this endeavor, including the Inspection and
Security Staff (the forerunner of the Office of Security), which assumed overall
responsibility for running the program and dispatching the special interrogation
teams. Colonel Sheffield Edwards, the chairman of the BLUEBIRD steering
committee, consistently pushed for a more reliable speech-inducing substance. By
the time BLUEBIRD evolved into Operation ARTICHOKE (the formal change in code
names occurred in August 1951)
........
It was with the hope of finding the long-sought miracle drug that CIA investigators
first began to dabble with LSD-25 in the early 1950s. At the time very little was
known about the hallucinogen, even in scientific circles. Dr. Wemer Stoll, the son of
Sandoz president Arthur Stoll and a colleague of Albert Hermann's, was the first
person to investigate the psychological properties of LSD. The resuits of his study
were presented in the Swiss Archives of Neurology in 1947. Stoll reported that LSD
produced disturbances in perception, hallucinations, and acceleration in thinking;
moreover, the drug was found to blunt the usual suspiciousness of schizophrenic
patients. No unfavorable aftereffects were described. Two years later in the same
journal Stoll contributed a second report entitled "A New Hallucinatory Agent, Active
in Very Small Amounts."
The fact that LSD caused hallucinations should not have been a total surprise to the
scientific community. Sandoz first became interested in ergot, the natural source of
lysergic acid, because of numerous stories passed down through the ages. The rye
fungus had a mysterious and contradictory reputation. In China and parts of the
Mideast it was thought to possess medicinal qualities, and certain scholars believe
that it may have been used in sacred rites in ancient Greece. In other parts of
Europe, however, the same fungus was associated with the horrible malady known
as St. Anthony's Fire, which struck periodically like the plague. Medieval chronicles
tell of villages and towns where nearly everyone went mad for a few days after
ergot-diseased rye was unknowingly milled into flour and baked as bread. Men were
afflicted with gangrenous limbs that looked like blackened stumps, and pregnant
women miscarried. Even in modem times there have been reports of ergot-related
epidemics.*
The CIA inherited this ambiguous legacy when it embraced LSD as a mind control
drug. An ARTICHOKE document dated October 21, 1951, indicates that acid was
tested initially as part of a pilot study of the effects of various chemicals "on the
conscious suppression of experimental or non-threat secrets." In addition to lysergic
acid this particular survey covered a wide range of substances, including morphine,
ether, Benzedrine, ethyl alcohol, and mescaline. "There is no question," noted the
author of this report, "that drugs are already on hand (and new ones are being
produced) that can destroy integrity and make indiscreet the most dependable
individual." The report concluded by recommending that LSD be critically tested
"under threat conditions beyond the scope of civilian experimentation." POWs,
federal prisoners, and Security officers were mentioned as possible candidates for
these field experiments.
* In 1951 hundreds of respectable citizens in Pont-Saint-Esprit, a small French village, went completely
berserk one evening. Some of the town's leading citizens jumped from windows into the Rhone. Others
ran through the streets screaming about being chased by lions, tigers, and "bandits with donkey ears."
Many died, and those who survived suffered strange aftereffects for weeks.