Recently-uncovered documents show the CIA may have sprayed LSD through the New York City subway system during the 1950′s as part of a series of Cold-War era tests looking into the effects of biological weapons.
Author H.P Albarelli writes in his new book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments, about a declassified FBI report from August 25, 1950 that reads, “The BW [biological weapon] experiments to be conducted by representatives of the Department of the Army in the New York Subway System in September 1950, have been indefinitely postponed.”
Although the FBI document does not say the tests actually occurred, former CIA research scientist Dr. Henry Eigelsbach told Albarelli the aerosol LSD tests did in fact happen.
“The experiment was pretty shocking — shocking that the CIA and the Army would release LSD like that, among innocent unwitting folks,” H.P. Albarelli told The New York Post.
The timing of the LSD test interestingly coincides with a case of mass hysteria that occurred a year later in the small French town of Pont St. Esprit. Over a two-day period, 250 residents were hospitalized for mass hysteria and hallucinations; 32 were sent to insane asylums and 4 people died during the outbreak.
The outbreak was blamed on Mercury poisoning or ergot, a fungus of rye bread, which is also a key element of LSD.
Dr. Eigelsbach claims a smaller, second test was also executed in the New York City subway system in 1952, but documentation of both test results were destroyed in 1973.
All three incidents involve one man, CIA agent Frank Olsen, who later plunged to his death from a New York City hi-rise. Initially thought of as a suicide, it was revealed 22 years later that Olsen was himself the victim of LSD poisoning. The Rockerfeller Administration apologized and payed US $750,000 to his widow and family in a wrongful death settlement.
“For me, in countless ways the Olson story is a New York City story,” said Albarelli. “The CIA itself was created and initially composed of wealthy men who came from Wall Street and New York City law firms.”
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So, what’s new? Newsguy, what the hell does this have to do with anything, except maybe trying to promote this guy’s book.
When I went to Fort Sam Houston Texas to get trained as a combat medic ,after army basic training, one day before medic school started some officer from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in DC addressed our training company looking for volunteers to spend the rest of their enlistment in the army at Walter Reed as guinea pigs for testing different drugs. A few knuckleheads actually raised their hands.
Of course there is an obvious difference in implementation of the test and how they got their test subjects. But whats the point here Newsguy, other than a conspiracy theory, and violation of civil liberties?
Perhaps that IS the point Sam..Thing like this NEED to be brought out into the open. It’s no surprise to me either…I once thought-with great ignorance-that America was somehow “above” many of the things that I have found out recently that she(politicians) are not. NOT what was done at Guantanamo Bay..That’s the way one gets information from those ho seek to KILL YOU. & your children..War is Hell…Obama’s “unclenched Muslim fist” sure hasn’t been successful except in making him appear to be even more foolish than he is..I am not so foolish as to think he works alone either. Nor did these who did this. I think sucks ducks eggs? But it sure was not anywhere near what Saddam Hussein did as an “experiment” on his own people. I was a walking zombie for a long time…BUT I’M AWAKE NOW.