I Have America Surrounded. John Higgs

Чтение книги онлайн.

       CHAPTER 4 Then He Licked the Spoon

      The story of LSD starts with a hunch: on 16 April 1943, the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann responded to a ‘strange feeling’¹ that he should revisit a certain ergot derivative that he had synthesised five years earlier. Ergot is a rye fungus that is rich in alkaloids, and Hofmann, in his role as a research chemist at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland, was attempting to find a circulatory stimulant more efficient than aspirin.

      This particular compound was the twenty-fifth that he created in a series of lysergic acids. Initial tests had proven unpromising, and he had left it to gather dust since 1938. But on this day some unexplained urge persuaded him to mix up a new batch of this substance, lysergic acid diethylamide-25. He would later claim that he believed that ‘something more than chance’² was behind this decision. A minute amount was absorbed through his skin and, following a three-hour ‘remarkable but not unpleasant state of intoxication’, he realised that he had something interesting on his hands. After thinking it over during the weekend, he returned to work on the following Monday and swallowed the first deliberate dose of LSD. He took a mere 250 micrograms, a millionth of an ounce, convinced that the effect of such a tiny dose would be negligible. This was not the case, and his journey home from work that day has gone down in history as perhaps the most memorable and harrowing bicycle ride ever.³

      Hofmann’s creation was noticed by the CIA, which at the time was trying to discover an odourless, colourless truth drug. They would ultimately spend many millions of dollars researching LSD, which they described in 1954 as a potential new agent in ‘unconventional warfare’. But during that time they never managed to pin down just exactly what it was that the drug did. Initial reports, greeted with much excitement, claimed that it not only acted as a truth drug, but it also caused prisoners to forget what they had told their interrogators after it had worn off. Later reports declared that it was utterly useless as a truth drug, and went as far as recommending that agents be equipped with a dose that they could self-administer if they were captured and interrogated.

      This would prevent them from being able to reveal secrets, or, indeed, say anything coherent at all.

      It was then decided that LSD was a psychotomimetic, a drug that re-created the symptoms of schizophrenia or other mental illnesses, and was therefore a useful tool for the study of these conditions in laboratory conditions. The drug could also be secretly administered to enemy leaders to discredit them, and it showed great promise for use in psychological torture. Work continued along these lines for a while, but eventually it was admitted that the effects were really nothing at all like the symptoms of any known mental illnesses. It was almost as if the drug were mocking all attempts to understand it, giving hints and suggestions but always remaining one step ahead of researchers. The CIA would not be the only people working with the drug who would fall prey to its innate trickster qualities.

      Despite not knowing what LSD really did, there is no doubt that there was much enthusiasm for it at the Agency. Alarmed by the idea that enemy agents might spike CIA operatives with the drug, the Americans started administering it to their own agents in order to train them to recognise the effects. Initially this was done in controlled circumstances, but eventually it was felt that it would be more valuable to spike operatives without their knowledge. Clearly on a roll now, this scheme was broadened so that it covered not just the unit involved in the research, but the entire Agency, and for a while surprise hallucinations and incapacity became something of an occupational hazard. The scheme was eventually stopped after a plan to spike the punch bowl at the CIA office party was discovered, amid general concern that the whole thing had got blatantly out of hand.⁴ Hundreds of Agency staff took LSD during this period, some on numerous occasions. There has been speculation that this might have been linked to some of the more bizarre CIA programmes that emerged at this time, such as research into Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP), or the idea of dusting Fidel Castro’s shoes with a chemical that would make his beard fall out.

      The military was also investigating the drug, and it was US army scientists who coined the word ‘trip’ to describe the period of its effects. It was clear that LSD could have a profound effect on the battlefield, and over the course of research it was administered to nearly 1500 military personnel. The British army also experimented with the drug, and a unit was filmed attempting to undergo manoeuvres in a wood whilst under its influence. Unable to understand their maps, radio equipment and rocket launchers, the soldiers became increasingly hysterical and eventually gave up, at which point one man climbed a tree in an effort to feed the birds. Much to the surprise of the authorities, American soldiers began stealing this horrific, madness-inducing weapon, and began using it at parties.