The CIA Doctors

by Colin A. Ross, M. D.

  Since the Second International Conference on the Use of LSD in Psychotherapy was held, in May 1965, there has been a flood of highly emotional and often ill-considered discussion of LSD and the possible dangers inherent in its use. The article on LSD in the March 25, 1966, issue of Life is probably the most widely noted example.

  Certain university health officials have been troubled by the extremes to which “far out” groups of students are likely to go in personal experimentation, and have been aroused to action by the understandable concern of parents who feared for their children. Such officials have issued grave warnings about LSD that have caused serious alarm. One would wish that these officials would be equally diligent in trying to eradicate the genuinely harmful use of alcohol and cigarettes.

  Most statements which have appeared in the press are based principally upon the undesirable experiences of a limited number of people who have bought LSD on the black market and administered it to themselves without medical supervision. The unfortunate publicity which ensued has resulted in violent attacks against LSD itself, even when used by physicians, in careful studies carried out in psychotherapeutically oriented medical research and treatment. The federal government, in response to this ill-advised criticism on the part of unqualified individuals, has placed severe restrictions upon the availability of LSD to the medical profession. In some instances, these regulations have halted research on the value of LSD in the treatment of severe neurotic behavior patterns being conducted by precisely those physicians with the most extensive experience in the clinical and experimental use of LSD, leaving LSD research to the hostile and the ignorant.

  On December 22, 1965, The New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most respected medical publications in the country, published an editorial under the title, “LSD - A Dangerous Drug.” This editorial ignored the entire body of published data, including the report published by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation on the First International Conference on LSD, “The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy,” in stating “… today. There is no published evidence that further experimentation is likely to yield invaluable data.” (Emphasis mine). Such unwarranted denigration is almost the ultimate expression of an anti-scientific attitude.

  The network of LSD experimentalists regarded the criminalization of LSD as “hostile, ignorant and anti-scientific.” There are only two possibilities; 1) LSD is a safe and effective adjunct to psychotherapy, and 2) LSD is a dangerous drug. If the first proposition is correct, current psychiatrists who regard LSD as a dangerous drug are hostile, ignorant and anti-scientific. If the second proposition is correct, then psychiatrists like Lauretta Bender did a great deal of harm to research subjects.

  The 1960’s slogan of better living through chemistry158 was a guiding premise of the LSD psychotherapists, a group which included academic psychiatrists and CIA mind control contractors. The premise was shared by flower children who were fans of the rock group, The Animals; in the 1960’s, The Animals produced a song about LSD entitled, “A Girl Named Sandoz.” Current attitudes towards LSD of psychiatrists specializing in substance abuse are diametrically opposed to the teachings of the previous generation of specialists in LSD. Many leading psychiatrists in the 1960’s dated the girl named Sandoz.

  The shift from LSD as prescribed medication to LSD as substance of abuse is part of the history of CIA mind control and its effects on society at large. The medical professionals who consider LSD to be a dangerous drug in the 1990’s are separated by one generation from the psychiatrists who introduced LSD into North America, took it recreationally under cover of supervised medical usage, distributed it in North America, and endorsed it as an aid to better psychological adjustment.

  Like the Tuskeege Syphilis Study and the radiation experiments, the LSD research violated the requirements for informed consent that had been in place since the Nuremberg trials. At Nuremberg, Nazi doctors who experimented with mescaline in the death camps were regarded as war criminals. A decade later, such research was conducted by the leading figures in academic psychiatry in North America, and published in the leading medical journals.

  8

  BRAIN ELECTRODE IMPLANTS

  Dr. Harold Wolff, a Professor of Medicine at Cornell, was a Director of the CIA cutout, The Human Ecology Foundation, and the investigator on MKULTRA Subproject 61. He treated the son of CIA Director, Allen Dulles for a combat-acquired head injury received during the Korean War. His published research includes a paper on Hungarian refugees coauthored with Human Ecology Foundation Director, Lawrence Hinkle127. Hungarian refugees were also studied under MKULTRA Subproject 89. In a footnote to his paper on Hungarian refugees, Dr. Wolff states that, “Among those who participated in these studies were Eva Bene, Ph.D., Sandor Borsiczy, M.D., George Devereux, Ph.D., William J. Grace, M.D., Ari Kiev, Maria H. Nagy, Ph.D., Thomas J. O’Grady, Jay Schulman, M.A., Richard M. Stephenson, Ph.D., and William N. Thetford, Ph.D.

  William Thetford was the contractor on MKULTRA Subproject 130 with TOP SECRET clearance; Stephenson and Schulman were the contractors on MKULTRA Subproject 69 (their security status is not stated in the documents); and George Devereux’s Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review at McGill received money from the Human Ecology Foundation (see Chapter 12).

  Another publication on LSD and mescaline34 demonstrates the overlap between hallucinogen experiments and other aspects of mind control. Another paper by Wolff includes Dr. John Gittinger, the lead psychologist for MKULTRA, as a coauthor along with William Thetford and Lawrence Hinkle228.

  In his obituary in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease244 Dr. Wolff’s accomplishments are listed at length. They include being President of the American Neurological Association in 1960-61 and editor of the Archives of Neurology. He was a consultant for the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration.

  In one of the MKULTRA Subproject 61 documents, Dr. Wolff defines the historical context for the CIA’s interest in mind control in general, which is also the context and motive for military funding of brain electrode implant experiments:

  The investigations of the highest integrative functions are fundamentally aimed at increasing our understanding of the functions of the human cerebral hemispheres in overall adaptive behavior. They arose out of our laboratory and clinical experience during the past twenty years, and especially out of our interest in the phenomena exhibited by men exposed to extremely threatening life situations; and they were initiated during the period when we were investigating the untoward effects of Communist police procedures.

  When Dr. Wolff 126 refers to “communist police procedures,” he means the brainwashing of American POWs during the Korean War (see Chapter 4), which probably included the creation of Manchurian Candidates. Another MKULTRA Subproject related to the goal of “increasing our understanding of the human cerebral hemispheres” was Subproject 129, which was entitled, “Computer Analysis of Bioelectric Response Patterns.” This was a TOP SECRET cleared project conducted at George Washington University and Leler University of Georgia.

  MKULTRA Subproject 94 involved placing electrodes into the brains of animals in order to control their behavior. By using a remote transmitter, the doctors could control the animals’ movements and use them for delivery of bombs and biological and chemical weapons. A CIA MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD dated 18 October 1960 describes the research:

  The purpose of this Subproject is to provide for a continuation of investigations on the remote directional control of activities in selected species of animals. Miniaturized stimulating electrode implants in specific brain center areas will be utilized … The ultimate objective of this research is to provide an understanding of the mechanisms involved in the directional control of animals and to provide practical systems for [whited out] application.

  The document describes Subproject 94 as a fine-tuning of extensive prior successful research.

  A CIA memorandum for MKULTRA Subproject 142 is included in Appendix C. It describes the use of animals for delivery of
biological and chemical weapons, and the control of animals through stimulation of brain electrodes. Various aspects of the overall research program were parceled out via different Subprojects and under other cryptonyms besides MKULTRA, but the overall goal was clear; to control the mind and behavior and to create dissociation, through a combination of drugs, sensory isolation, hypnosis, brain electrode implants, electric shock and beaming different kinds of energy at the brain. The ability to create limited, controlled amnesia through a variety of methods was a primary goal of the mind control programs.

  A MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD for MKULTRA Subproject 142 dated 22 May 1962 states:

  The reason for separating this work financially from the other efforts of [whited out] in the Agency’s behalf is to allow him to engage in some very practical experiments at some point in the work which would present security problems if this effort were handled in the usual way. Some of the uses proposed for these particular animals would involve possible delivery systems for BW/CW agents or for direct executive action type operations as distinguished from the eavesdropping application of [whited out].

  “Executive action type operations” means human assassination. Brain electrode experiments were also conducted in humans, but there is no declassified documentation of the use of the human subjects in field-testing or in actual operations.

  Dr. Jose Delgado, a neurosurgeon and professor at Yale, received funding from the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force 657 1st Aeromedical Research Laboratory (Grant Number F29600-67-C-0058) and the Public Health Service for brain electrode research on children and adults69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 261.

  Dr. Delgado’s research grants from the Office of Naval Research included:

  Year Amount Subject

  1954 $7,950.00 Neurological mechanisms in epilepsy

  1955 $9,610.00 Neurological behavior in epilepsy and

  in group behavior

  1956 $9,610.00 Neurological behavior in epilepsy and

  in group behavior

  1960 $10,000.00 Neurological mechanisms in epilepsy and behavior

  Mark and Ervin 183 describe one of their brain electrode patients at Massachusetts General Hospital:

  G.C. This 14-year old Negro girl was brought up in a foster home and was of borderline intelligence. On two separate occasions her violent behavior resulted in the death of a young foster sibling, and she subsequently assaulted a 7-year old child at the state hospital where she was confined … Depth electrodes were placed in each amygdala through the posterior approach.

  Dr. Delgado did similar research in monkeys and cats and in one paper describes the cats as “mechanical toys.” He was able to control the movements of his animal and human subjects by pushing buttons on a remote transmitter box. Another case involved an 11-year old boy who under went a partial change of identity upon remote stimulation of his brain electrode67:

  In the same patient electrical stimulation of the superior temporal convolution induced the appearance of feminine striving and confusion about his own sexual identity. These effects were specific, reliable, and statistically significant. For example, the patient, who was an 11-year old boy, said, “I was thinking whether I was a boy or a girl, which one I’d like to be,” and “I’d like to be a girl.” After one of the stimulations the patient suddenly began to discuss his desire to get married, expressing then a wish to marry the male interviewer. In two adult female patients stimulation of the same region was also followed by discussion of marriage and expression of a wish to marry the therapist. Temporal-lobe stimulation produced in another patient open manifestations and declarations of pleasure, accompanied by giggles and joking with the therapist.

  Dr. Delgado75 wrote a book entitled Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society. In it he described his vision of evolution. Delgado believed that control of the human brain through remote stimulation of implanted electrodes offered man another step up the evolutionary ladder. With this technology, man could directly control his own mind, mood and behavior.

  Brain electrode research was also conducted independently at Harvard by Dr. Delgado’s coauthors, Drs. Vernon Mark, Frank Ervin and William Sweet (see Chapter 3 for Radiation Committee testimony of Dr. Sweet). Dr. Delgado supplied brain electrodes to the Harvard team through an Office of Naval Research contract. Frank Ervin, the psychiatrist on the team, was trained at Tulane by brain electrode specialist, Dr. Robert Heath. He was later recruited by Dr. Louis Jolyon West to join the UCLA Violence Center (see Chapter 10). One of the plans for the Center was to control criminals through brain electrode implants. The Harvard work was described in Mark and Ervin’s183 book Violence and the Brain; in that book, the authors describe the potential use of brain electrodes for controlling urban violence. They suggest that this technology might have been useful in controlling black riots in Watts, California during the 1960’s.

  Mark and Ervin183 describe implanting brain electrodes in a large number of patients at Harvard hospitals including a 25-year old man named Fred who had received a head injury while in the Navy. According to their description, Fred appeared to suffer from organic seizures, however, he also had a dissociative disorder which they did not recognize (p. 129):

  On one occasion when he was driving a large trailer truck, Fred blacked out in the middle of Los Angeles and did not come to until he was on the outskirts of Reno. He had a similar experience while riding a motorcycle. Although nothing untoward happened during either of these two episodes, another time he did kill someone in a head-on collision.

  It is impossible to drive a truck from Los Angeles to Reno, a distance of 470 miles, while having a seizure. With absolute certainty this was an episode of dissociative amnesia. Instead of providing psychotherapy for their patient’s dissociative disorder, Drs. Mark and Ervin attributed his amnesia to epilepsy and treated it with electrical stimulation of implanted brain electrodes.

  Another patient named Jennie was 14 years old when Drs. Mark and Ervin183 put electrodes in her brain. She appears to be the same patient described in Delgado, Mark, Sweet, Ervin, Weiss, Bach-y-Rita and Hagiwara76; one of the other four patients described in that paper appears to be the patient, Fred from Violence and the Brain.

  Mark and Ervin183 observed that “a baby’s cry was a able to provoke an extreme behavioral change in Jennie.” They played a tape of a baby crying while taking EEG readings from Jennie’s brain electrodes. She was then transferred to a state hospital and Mark and Ervin were unable to “keep on with what we believed was necessary medical treatment.” According to Mark and Ervin, it was epileptic discharges in her brain that caused Jennie to murder her two younger stepsisters. An alternative theory of the case based on chronic, severe psychological trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder and dissociative symptoms in Jennie, would lead to a psychotherapeutic treatment plan. The mind control doctors saw their patients as biological machines, a view which made them sub-human and therefore easier to abuse in mind control experiments.

  Another patient in Violence and the Brain, 18-year old Julia, may also have had an undiagnosed, psychologically-based dissociative disorder. Photographs in the book show her smiling, angry, or pounding the wall depending on which button is being pushed on the transmitter box sending signals to her brain electrodes.

  Theresa L., a 38-year old patient of Drs. Mark and Ervin, was regarded as a candidate for brain electrode implants because she masturbated compulsively 18 to 20 times per day, had sex with female prostitutes, had sex with more than one man at a time, was abusive and assaultive towards other patients, and had attempted to castrate her husband with a broken bottle. There is no mention of whether she was sexually abused as a child or physically abused by her husband. Theresa L. was given the anticonvulsant, phenytoin, which decreased her sex drive, but she would not take it regularly and did not receive further treatment.

  Mark and Ervin describe psychosurgery being conducted for violent behavior in Japan, India, Mexico, France and Denmark. They mention a 1965 paper from Ja
pan by a Dr. Narabyashi in which the amygdala was destroyed in 98 “mentally defective” patients, of whom 85 were children. Screening of these psychosurgery patients for childhood trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder and dissociative disorders was non-existent. The percentage of patients who were candidates for psychotherapy is unknown, but unlikely to be zero.

  Dr. Ervin’s residency supervisor, Dr. Robert G. Heath, was Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Tulane University in New Orleans from 1949 to 1980. He became the President of the Society for Biological Psychiatry at its 23rd annual convention on June 16, 1968. Born in Pittsburgh on May 9, 1915, Dr. Heath received his M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1938 and his Board certification in Psychiatry and Neurology in 1946. His curriculum vitae list 13 different awards, and 49 teaching, hospital and professional appointments. Dr. Heath’s military and government service included being assigned to the Navy as a P.A. Surgeon; working at the Merchant Marine Rest Center, Long Island, New York; Chief Psychiatrist, U.S. Marine Hospital, New York; and Chief Psychiatrist, U.S. Penitentiary, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.