Ah, to return to the America that John Boehner grew up in:
The CIA is notorious for its Cold War-era experiments with LSD and other chemicals on unwitting citizens and soldiers. Details have emerged in books and articles beginning more than 30 years ago.
But if military veterans have their way in a California law suit, the spy agency’s quest to turn humans into robot-like assassins via electrodes planted in their brains will get far more exposure than the drugs the CIA tested on subjects ranging from soldiers to unwitting bar patrons and the clients of prostitutes [...]
In 1961, a top CIA scientist reported in an internal memo that "the feasibility of remote control of activities in several species of animals has been demonstrated . . . Special investigations and evaluations will be conducted toward the application of selected elements of these techniques to man," according to “The CIA and the Search for the Manchurian Candidate,” a 1979 book by former State Department intelligence officer John Marks.
“[T]his cold-blooded project,” Marks wrote, “was designed for the delivery of chemical and biological agents or for ‘executive action-type operations,’ according to a document. ‘Executive action’ was the CIA's euphemism for assassination.”
The CIA pursued such experiments because it was convinced the Soviets were doing the same.
Now, some of this stuff---the LSD and other drug experiments conducted under the MK-ULTRA program, for example---are fairly old news. What's still shocking, however, is the apparent fact that neither the CIA nor the Pentagon has ever made a concerted effort to contact and/or compensate the thousands of "volunteers" (most of whom were Army recruits who simply signed a consent form after being offered various inducements but who were never informed about the nature of the experiments, nor about the specific drugs to be administered to them), aside from settling some individual lawsuits. Hopefully, this is about to change.
Either way, the plaintiffs' complaint is well worth reading in full, simply to remind us of the kind of shit that was being done in our name, and with our tax dollars, during the Cold War, and of the terror that our government inflicted on its own citizens to keep us free from the clutches of Soviet tyranny:
Plaintiff Bruce Price (“Bruce”) joined the U.S. Army in May 1965. Bruce was assigned to duty at Edgewood Arsenal for approximately two months in 1966---from February 27, 1966, to April 28, 1966. Before being assigned to Edgewood Arsenal, Bruce was stationed at Ft. George G. Meade and that was where he returned until he was discharged in May 1967. Bruce was trained as a helicopter crew chief, and also had other assignments, such as a door gunner.
Bruce first went through a battery of physical and mental evaluations at Edgewood before being used as a test subject. Bruce and three other volunteers were taken into a room where four doctors were present. Two of the doctors were dressed in civilian garb and two were military doctors, including a colonel. The colonel, who seemed to be in charge, described the program and in substance said: “We know you have heard rumors we use drugs here. Well I am here to tell you that is true. We cannot tell you what they are. We do not know if the drugs will have any harmful effects on you. But we have the finest medical facilities. Now, we can’t force you to take these drugs, but if you do not, you will be sent back to your home unit with a bad recommendation and it will be put in your DD Form 201 file and follow you for the rest of your life.”
At some point, Bruce was asked to sign a general consent form that did not state any information about the drugs to be given. When he started to read the forms, Bruce was berated and told to hurry up and sign them. Bruce never received a Volunteer Booklet explaining the details of the Edgewood assignment.
Bruce participated in several different experiments involving unknown substances. Many decades later, he heard that some of the substances he was administered included BZ, LSD, sarin, and ethanol. He is still not sure what he was given or in what doses. One of the drugs that was administered to Bruce was given on a Monday, and Bruce did not begin to recover from the drug’s effect until Friday. He thought it was still Monday.
At one point, Bruce was ordered to visit a building with a chain link fence that housed test animals, including dogs, cats, guinea pigs and monkeys. After reporting, Bruce was strapped across his chest, his wrists, and his ankles to a gurney. Bruce occasionally would regain consciousness for brief moments. On one such instance, he remembers being covered with a great deal of blood, and assumed it was his own, but did not really know the source. Also portions of his arms and the backs of his hand were blue. His wrist and ankles were bruised and sore at the points where he had been strapped to the gurney. Bruce believes that this is the time period during which a septal implant was placed in his brain.
Defendants placed some sort of an implant in Bruce’s right ethmoid sinus near the frontal lobe of his brain. The implant appears on CT scans as a “foreign body” of undetermined composition (perhaps plastic or some composite material) in Bruce’s right ethmoid, as confirmed in a radiology report dated June 30, 2004.
Upon leaving Edgewood Arsenal, Bruce was debriefed by government personnel. Bruce was told to never talk about his experiences at Edgewood, and to forget about everything that he ever did, said or heard at Edgewood.
Within days or weeks of returning to Ft. George G. Meade, Bruce began to have trouble with his memory. For example, things as simple as filling out a maintenance report on his chopper and how to spell certain words suddenly became troublesome.
After being discharged from the service with an honorable discharge, Bruce returned home to rural Tennessee. Within a few days Bruce suddenly left for the mountains with a gun with intentions of killing himself. Bruce’s brother finally found him, and talked Bruce into returning home.
Before Bruce revealed his experiences at Edgewood Arsenal, his family did not know why he acted so strangely at certain times. Bruce finally told his wife about Edgewood, and the fact that he would have flashbacks or visions where the road suddenly changed colors and how he would get lost while trying to go to work. Bruce disclosed to his wife that he gets lost easily, and did not remember places he had been to hundreds of times previously. Bruce’s wife suggested that he avoid being close to radio waves, and when he did so, his symptoms seemed to improve. Bruce’s wife also helped him to find out more about what was going on at Edgewood Arsenal. A VA medical diagnostics test ruled out the possibility of Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia.
In addition to memory problems, Bruce also suffers from PTSD, and at times is suicidal. He has experienced uncontrolled fits of anger and loss of control, as well as flashbacks. Although Bruce worked intermittently after Edgewood Arsenal, his entire life has been ruined.
Bruce has been completely disabled for many years, and received social security disability payments from the age of 62 until he turned 66 in June, 2009, when he qualified for full social security benefits. Bruce has been rated by the VA as 100% service-connected for PTSD related to his service at Edgewood since 2005. He depends on his wife for much of his day-to-day care, and his social security and VA compensation are his only means of financial support.
I guess we should not be too terribly surprised by any of this, considering that:
The experiments involving human subjects were one of the key beneficiaries of the recruitment of over 1,500 scientists and technicians from Nazi Germany in “Project Paperclip,” some of whom played a pivotal role in, e.g., the testing of psychochemicals and development of a new truth serum. Over half of these recruits had been members of the SS or Nazi Party. The “Paperclip” name was chosen because so many of the employment applications were clipped to immigration papers.
The Church Committee hearings helped uncover a great number of these atrocities back in the 1970s, but some of its findings still remain classified after 35 years. It sure seems to me that we could still benefit from the appointment of a Select Truth & Reconciliation Commission, and one that's given the authority to cover a great deal more historical ground than merely what happened at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Since we'll never see a GOP-led Congress call for such hearings, now would be an ideal time for the Obama administration to make good on its promise of "transparency in government," don't you think?
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