nsider several such schemes in its pursuit of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who they wanted to send into a drug-induced stupor or tirade during a public or live radio speech.) LSD was also viewed as a way to loosen tongues in CIA interrogations.In his thorough book on MKULTRAand similar projects, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, John Marks reports that most of the CIA researchers tried LSD themselves. In fact, an early phase of the experiments was probably the setting for the first acid trip in the United States experienced by a courageous CIA man no less!The fact that these experiments took place is remarkable in and of itself, but the story of the CIAs LSD trips approaches the unbelievably bizarre when the cast of characters is considered. In his recent history of the early exploits of the CIA, The Very Best Men, Evan Thomas describes Sidney Gottlieb, the Stranglovian scientist who ran the MKULTRA project: Born with a clubfoot and a stutter, he compensated by becoming an expert folk dancer and obtaining a Ph.D. from Cal Tech. A pleasant man who lived on a farm with his wife, Gottlieb drank only goats milk and grew Christmas trees, which he sold at a roadside stand.When he wasnt busy on the farm, Dr. Gottlieb was dosing subjects with LSD-laced drinks, scrutinizing their reactions, and searching for qualities of the drug that would benefit CIA covert actions.The CIAs LSD experiments were conducted on many unwitting subjects, most often prisoners or patrons of brothels set up and run by the Agency, which had installed two-way mirrors in the establishments to allow for observations of the drugs effects (these studies were referred to as Operation Midnight Climax). Some of the MKULTRA subjects who were informed faced even more inhumane treatment: during one experiment in Kentucky, seven volunteers were given LSD for 77 days straight.One of the experiments probably proved fatal. On November 19, 1953, an Army scientist and germ w...
