Poisoner in Chief

by Stephen Kinzer

  “Our principal goal,” says a third directive, “remains the same as it was in the beginning: the investigation of drug effects on ego control and volitional activities, i.e., can willfully suppressed information be elicited through drugs affecting higher nervous systems? If so, which agents are better for this purpose?” A fourth memo reported that “drugs are already on hand (and new ones are being produced) that can destroy integrity and make indiscreet the most dependable individual.”

  CIA officers and their partners in the army’s Special Operations Division were already testing a variety of drugs on prisoners in Germany and Japan. Beginning in 1951 they also carried out an extended series of experiments at a “black site” inside Fort Clayton, in the Panama Canal Zone. The first subject was a prisoner called Kelly, who in reality was a young Bulgarian politician named Dmitri Dimitrov. He had shared information with the CIA, but his CIA handlers came to suspect that he was considering shifting his loyalty to the French intelligence service. To prevent that, they arranged to have him kidnapped and thrown into a Greek prison—the kind of operation that would later be called “extraordinary rendition.” After torturing him for six months, his Greek interrogators concluded that he knew no secrets. They returned him to the CIA, which shipped him to Fort Clayton. In 1952 a CIA officer monitoring his case reported that “because of his confinement in a Greek prison and in a military hospital, Kelly has become very hostile toward the United States, and our intelligence operations in particular.” He recommended “an ‘Artichoke’ approach to Kelly to see if it would be possible to re-orient Kelly toward us.” Kelly was held at Fort Clayton for three years. No known documents trace the course of his treatment. Years later, in the United States, he tried to interest Parade magazine in his story, but the CIA scuttled the article by telling editors he was “an imposter” who was “disreputable, unreliable, and full of wild stories about the CIA.”

  The experiments performed on Kelly, like those performed on “expendables” in Germany and Japan, produced no worthwhile results and brought the CIA no closer to any of the discoveries it hoped to make. That did not discourage Dulles. He had convinced himself not only that mind control techniques exist but that Communists had discovered them, and that this posed a mortal threat to the rest of the world. Artichoke was his answer.

  * * *

  FEAR OF ENEMIES spread far beyond the national security establishment in Washington. In the early 1950s, as Americans were being warned that Communists were infiltrating their government, they were also told that those same Communists had found ways of controlling people’s minds. Thanks to the work of an imaginative propagandist named Edward Hunter, Americans learned a new word: brainwashing.

  Hunter had been a militantly anti-Communist journalist in Europe and Asia during the 1920s and ’30s, and during World War II he worked as what he called a “propaganda specialist” for the Office of Strategic Services. Later he joined the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, home of Operation Mockingbird, through which the Agency shaped coverage of world news in the American press.

  On September 20, 1950, Hunter published an article in the Miami News headlined “BRAIN-WASHING” TACTICS FORCE CHINESE INTO RANKS OF COMMUNIST PARTY. Citing interviews he had conducted with a graduate of North China People’s Revolutionary University, Hunter claimed to have discovered a secret program by which Chinese Communists were controlling their people’s minds. The name he gave it, he said, came from the Chinese characters hsi nao, literally meaning “wash brain.”

  Popular imagination seized on the concept. “Brainwashing” was a simple way to explain any aberrant behavior, from anti-Americanism abroad to unorthodox political views at home. Hunter expanded his reporting in a longer article for the New Leader, which had close ties to the CIA, and then in a book called Brain-Washing in Red China, in which he urged Americans to prepare for “psychological warfare on a scale incalculably more immense than any militarist of the past has ever imagined.” He became a minor celebrity, giving interviews and testifying before congressional committees. “The Reds have specialists available on their brainwashing panels,” he told the House Committee on Un-American Activities. These specialists, he asserted, were preparing psychic attacks aimed at subjugating “the people and the soil and the resources of the United States” and turning Americans into “subjects of a ‘new world order’ for the benefit of a mad little knot of despots in the Kremlin.”

  Few scientists took Hunter’s rants seriously, but they fit the tenor of the times. The Soviets had successfully tested their first nuclear weapon. Americans were being told that their country could be attacked at any moment. The threat of “brainwashing” seemed even more horrific because it was so unfathomable.

  As the CIA promoted the belief that Communists had mastered “brainwashing” techniques, the Agency fell under the spell of its own propaganda. Allen Dulles and other senior officers were seized by the fear that they were losing a decisive race. That led them not only to justify extreme drug experiments, but to convince themselves that America’s national security demanded them.

  “There was deep concern over the issue of brainwashing,” Richard Helms explained years later. “We felt that it was our responsibility not to lag behind the Russians or the Chinese in this field, and the only way to find out what the risks were was to test things such as LSD and other drugs that could be used to control human behavior.”

  Much of what the CIA called “Artichoke work” qualifies as medical torture. Dosing unwilling patients with potent drugs, subjecting them to extremes of temperature and sound, strapping them to electroshock machines, and other forms of abuse were not, however, the only things these imaginative scientists did. A CIA memo written soon after Artichoke was launched hints at its breadth.

  Specific research should be undertaken to develop new chemicals or drugs, or to improve known elements for use in Artichoke work.

  An exhaustive study should be made of various gases and aerosols … Gas guns, jets, or sprays, both concealed [and] open, should be studied. In addition, the problem of permanent brain injury and amnesia following lack of oxygen or exposure to other gases should be studied.

  The effects of high and low pressures on individuals should be examined.

  A considerable amount of research could profitably be expended in the field of sound. This research would include the effect on human beings of various types of vibrations, monotonous sounds, concussion, ultra-high frequency, ultra-sonics, the effect of constantly repeated words, sounds, continuous suggestion, non-rhythmic sounds, whispering, etc.

  Bacteria, plant cultures, fungi, poisons of various types … are capable of producing illnesses which in turn would produce high fevers, delirium, etc.

  The removal of certain basic food elements such as sugar, starch, calcium, vitamins, proteins, etc. from the food of an individual over a certain period of time will produce psychological and physical reactions in an individual. A study should be made to determine whether or not the removal of certain food elements from the diet of prisoners over a given period of time will materially condition them for Artichoke work.

  Whether an individual will reveal information as a result of electroshock, or while in an electroshock coma, has not yet been demonstrated … Whether electroshock can produce controlled amnesias does not appear to be established.

  If an electronically induced sleep could be obtained, and that sleep is used as a means for gaining hypnotic control of an individual, this apparatus might be of extreme value to the Artichoke work.

  The Agency under no circumstances would consider [lobotomy and brain surgery] as an operative measure. However, it is felt that the subject could be examined.

  Special research should be conducted to determine the effect of long and continuous exposure of individuals to infra-red and ultra-violet light.

  There are a great many psychological techniques that could be used in connection with the Artichoke work [including] moving or vibrating rooms; distorted rooms; the del
iberate creation on an anxiety condition; the creation of panic, fear, or the exploitation of established phobias, etc.; the effect of heat and cold; the effect of dampness, dryness or saturated or dry air; the general problem of disorientation; [and] completely soundproof areas.

  It would be a great advantage if a small, effective hypo-spray device should be designed along the lines of a fountain pen. This, of course, would necessarily have to include some effective chemical or drug that could be used in this connection. This would be a very valuable weapon.

  Artichoke interrogators thought of themselves as more sophisticated than the “rough boys” at Camp King, but by clinical standards they were spectacularly unqualified. Few had any training in psychology or knew a foreign language. They staggered blindly through dark territory, not knowing what techniques might work but determined to try whatever they could imagine.

  Each Artichoke team included a “research specialist,” a “medical officer,” and a “security technician.” By early 1952 four teams were active, one each in West Germany, France, Japan, and South Korea. Several more were added later. “As a rule,” according to one memo, “individuals subjected to Artichoke techniques will be entirely cooperative, passive, and lethargic.”

  Sometimes an Artichoke team would be dispatched at the request of army or CIA interrogators who faced “particularly stubborn” prisoners. A cable sent to Washington in early 1952, for example, reads: “Request permission give Artichoke to [redacted] while team in France. [Redacted] have failed to break subject though convinced he [redacted].” At other times, Artichoke scientists came up with a new drug or other technique they wished to test, and sent out a call for “expendable” subjects. In mid-1952 they asked the CIA station in South Korea to supply a batch.

  Desire send Artichoke team from 18 August to 9 September to test important new technique. Desire minimum 10 subjects. Will brief senior officials types of subjects desired. Technique does not, not require disposal problems after application.

  The challenge of producing chemical compounds for use in “Artichoke work” fell to scientists at Camp Detrick. In 1950 they completed more than two years of work on an airtight spherical chamber in which controlled doses of toxins could be administered to animal or human subjects so their reactions could be studied. Officially it was the One-Million-Liter Test Sphere, but at Camp Detrick everyone called it the Eight Ball. Designed in part by Ira Baldwin, it stood more than four stories high and weighed 131 tons, making it the largest aerobiology chamber ever built. Around its “equator” were five airtight ports leading to chambers into which toxins could be sprayed on subjects strapped inside. Humidity and temperature levels inside each chamber could be regulated, allowing scientists to test the potency of various toxins under different conditions. This became America’s secret laboratory for what one official report called “aerobiological studies of agents highly pathogenic to man and animals.”

  Among the CIA men most active in Artichoke experiments was Morse Allen, a hard-charging security officer who had been the first director of Bluebird and was searching relentlessly for mind control techniques. Given free rein by Dulles, Allen enthusiastically promoted some of the most intense Bluebird and Artichoke projects. He pushed for wider use of polygraphs, which the CIA, unlike some other intelligence agencies, considered reliable and used extensively. In 1950 he fixated on an “electro-sleep” machine that was supposed to be able to lull subjects into a trance. He investigated the possibility that electroshock could be used to induce amnesia or reduce subjects to a “vegetable level.” In other experiments he tested the effects of radiation, temperature extremes, and ultrasonic noise. In 1952 he was part of a three-man team that traveled to Villa Schuster in West Germany to test what one report called “dangerous combinations of drugs such as Benzedrine and Pentathol-Natrium on Russian captives, under a research protocol specifying that ‘disposal of the body is not a problem.’”

  Allen, like some other CIA mind control researchers, was especially fascinated with hypnosis. He found “a famous stage hypnotist” in New York who told him that he often had sex with otherwise unwilling women after placing them in a “hypnotic trance.” After taking a four-day course from this evidently talented specialist, Allen returned to Washington to test what he had learned. He used secretaries from CIA offices as his subjects, and several times managed to place them in trances and induce them to do things they might not otherwise consider, like flirting with strangers or revealing office secrets.

  “If hypnotic control can be established over any participant in clandestine operations,” Allen concluded, “the operator will apparently have an extraordinary degree of influence, a control in order of magnitude beyond anything we have considered feasible.”

  * * *

  ARTICHOKE GREW FROM a conviction that became an article of faith at the CIA: there is a way to control the human mind, and if it can be found, the prize will be nothing less than global mastery. At times Sidney Gottlieb and his fellow seekers veered into areas like hypnosis and electroshock, but drugs fascinated them most. They were convinced that somewhere in the uncharted universe of psychopharmacology, the drug of their dreams was waiting to be discovered. It would be something miraculous: a “truth serum” that would loosen recalcitrant tongues, a potion that would open the mind to programming, an amnesiac that would allow the wiping away of memory.

  The first drug they hoped would work was the active ingredient in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol. Even before the CIA was founded, scientists from the OSS had refined this substance into a potent liquid that had no taste, color, or odor. So confident were they about its potential that they code-named it TD, for “truth drug.” For months they tested it on themselves, consuming varying doses mixed into candy, salad dressing, and mashed potatoes. Then they tried smoking it. This research led them to what now seem obvious conclusions: the active ingredient in marijuana brings on “a state of irresponsibility … appears to relax all inhibitions … and the sense of humor is accentuated to the point where any statement or situation can become extremely funny.” That was hardly enough to make it a useful tool in interrogation. Researchers moved on.

  Cocaine was the next candidate. The CIA sponsored experiments in which mental patients were given it in various forms, including injection. One early report said cocaine produced elation and talkativeness. Later experiments suggested that it could induce “free and spontaneous speech.” After a brief period of excitement, though, this drug was also found too unreliable for use in “special interrogation.”

  Disappointed with marijuana and cocaine, the researchers turned to heroin. Surviving CIA memos note that heroin was “frequently used by police and intelligence officers,” and that it and other addictive substances “can be useful in reverse because of the stresses they produce when they are withdrawn from those who are addicted to their use.” At the end of 1950 the U.S. Navy, under a secret project called Chatter, gave the chairman of the Psychology Department at the University of Rochester, G. Richard Wendt, a $300,000 grant to study heroin’s effects. Wendt established a mini-institute at which students were paid one dollar per hour to ingest measured doses while he observed their reactions. Heroin, though, proved to be no more of a wonder drug than cocaine. Wendt was forced to conclude that it has “slight value for interrogation.”

  Could mescaline, which in the early twentieth century became the first psychoactive drug to be synthesized in a laboratory, be the answer? This possibility gripped scientists at Camp Detrick. They spent many hours questioning German scientists about mescaline experiments that had been performed on prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp. Those experiments had mixed results, but Nazi doctors believed mescaline might have unexplored potential. That encouraged some of the physicians who worked with Bluebird. Ultimately, however, they realized that the effects of mescaline—like those of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin—are so unpredictable that it cannot be useful as a mind control agent.

  During his first months on the job,
Gottlieb read piles of reports on these experiments. They detailed the variety of means that had been tested as possible avenues into the human psyche, including hypnosis, sensory deprivation, electroshock, shifting combinations of stimulants and sedatives, and refined forms of marijuana, mescaline, cocaine, and heroin. As Gottlieb read, he was struck by a question: What happened to LSD?

  * * *

  BEING INSATIABLY CURIOUS, Gottlieb naturally wanted to try LSD himself. At the end of 1951, about six months after he was hired, he asked one of his new associates, Harold Abramson, to guide him through his first “trip.” Abramson was a physician who had been an officer in the Chemical Warfare Service during World War II. After the CIA was founded in 1947, he became one of its first medical collaborators. He helped design early mind control experiments. The MK-NAOMI project, under which CIA and Special Operations Division officers collaborated to produce toxins and devices to deliver them, was named after his secretary. He was one of the few scientists in the world who had used and administered LSD. That made him an ideal guide. Gottlieb found that first psychic voyage illuminating.

  I happened to experience an out-of-bodyness, a feeling as though I am in a kind of transparent sausage skin that covers my whole body and it is shimmering, and I have a sense of well-being and euphoria for most of the next hour or two hours, and then it gradually subsides.

  After this experience, Gottlieb accelerated the pace of his LSD experiments. His first subjects were volunteers, either CIA colleagues or scientists from the Special Operations Division at Camp Detrick. Some agreed to be dosed at specified moments in controlled environments. Others gave permission to be surprised, so different reactions might be observed. Later, Agency trainees were given LSD without forewarning.