CIA releases Pentagon docs on MK-ULTRA origins, secret LSD tests

Over at Wired Danger Room, the contents of a newly-released Pentagon report detailing the origins of MK-ULTRA, the notorious CIA program that dosed thousands of unwitting participants with LSD and other drugs.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: war

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Anonymous

Crack is the drug of choice for all military personnel now…or at least their behaviour makes it appear as though they are all on crack.
Anonymous

Hopefully, this will spawn another movie like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I’d watch it.
invictus

Just admit it, folks: You wish you were in on the LSD experience.
- Anonymous
  
  @invictus
  
  To anyone who wishes they were in on the experience: just do it. If you want to know what it’s like, go get some LSD and take it.
  
  It’s not that hard to find. Just search on the internet for an idea of where to look then ask around.
eaphelps

This is what happens when government hacks try to do science.
Anonymous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdLg2WlKZJc
- Cowicide
  
  To save udders time, anons link is a:
  bubblegum style music video from exit clov for their song, “mk ultra”
NDanger

Man, oh man – I remember when the government gave me LSD. I was tripping and laughing for hours. Or…wait, I’m sorry, actually that was my friend Paul who gave me that LSD, not the government.
snoproblem

So – a little ‘gravy for the brain’?
Anonymous

i have an id here but going anon for this one.

I wonder how widespread it really was in psychiatric therpy during the behavioralism movement of the 50′s & 60′s, when a relative of mine was supposedly given treatments of Delysid (USP grade LSD), which failed to treat the disorder

its not something i hear about much outside my own family. anyone here know anybody who else who was given LSD by “the administration”?
Anonymous

Read Sasha’s books. LSD is physically safe. If you are mentally immature, you probably cannot handle LSD. Kids & idiots need not apply. For the rest of us, LSD has been an incredible exploration. I have tripped MANY times, some good, some not-so good. The experience is much improved if you are well-nourished prior to tripping, stay well-hydrated. Avoid confrontational music or events. Tripping around water (a river-float, the beach or a pool) is really nice. I keep hoping for those dang “flashbacks”, but they have never appeared…
Anonymous

I love ALL of these previous statements. A veteran of a 1000 psychic wars can easily identify who amongst the statements can be characterized as reviving and disseminating armchair theory. Then there are those who know the wide-eyed truth. The explanation of LSD is quite a simple statement; LSD is not inexplicable. LSD is VERY, VERY much like describing sight to a person who has been blind since birth.
billstewart

Tim Leary or whoever said the quality of the LSD experience depends on set and setting, and face it, there are much more fun places to be tripping than a war zone or VA hospital. Personally, I recommend Golden Gate Park, but a brightly lit mall will do :-)

LSD is still out there, though it’s harder to find good stuff than it used to be, and mushrooms are probably easier to get now.
TEKNA2007

I wonder how widespread it really was in psychiatric therapy

Yeah especially since (I’ve read that) LSD is all fun and games until someone takes it with a pre-existing underlying psychiatric issue.

Personally, I recommend Golden Gate Park, but a brightly lit mall will do :-)

Airport!

take note. somebody claiming this was happening, back when it was, would have largely been dismissed

I think you make a great point. It’s hard to overstate the ability of men in power to act like complete bastards.
querent

those of you who knee-jerk dismiss “conspiracy theorists,” take note. somebody claiming this was happening, back when it was, would have largely been dismissed in such a way.

sasha (pikhal) says they approached him about the possibility of “non-locally influencing a persons thoughts or decisions” or some such thing.
- Pantograph
  
  That’s “Dr.Shulgin” to mere mortals like you and me.
- loonquawl
  
  “those of you who knee-jerk dismiss “conspiracy theorists,” take note.”
  –
  I’m taking note of: A section of the CIA did a bona fide conspiracy, details still being available after the Director of the CIA himself tried to cover it up. Junk Science being recognized as Junk science after fallaciously testing it on humans, main claims of the whistleblowers judged true by a presidential commision 22 years after the deed. What exactly does that tell us about conspiracies involving huge bureaucracies? They fuck up.
  —
  Tell me about a some man being given drugs for no apparent reason, and weird circumstances, and i take note;
  Tell me about some technology that does not, by far, have known precursors, is wielded by a government agency with impunity to great public impact, and i commend you about your MIB4 script.
  —
  What would really get to me, as one of the ‘knee-jerkers’, would be a conspiracy like the latter being uncovered (at some point, such a conspiracy has to fold, run the end of it’s usefulness, or just plain trip) – main points: secret, tech-gap, government agency, public impact before folding. One of those would convince me that there indeed can be such a thing, and you would have convinced me to keep ky knee down in the face of further theories. Can you notify me of such?
  - Pantograph
    
    Well that one guy lost his iPod G4… Nevermind.
Anonymous

It is really really bad for you. Don’t do it. If you are one of the unlucky few it will do a lot of permanent damage. I know many people who have tripped without any major problems, but I also know people that wound up in a mental hospital and were never the same again.
- Anonymous
  
  Yes, hold out for mushrooms!
Anonymous

didn’t this backfire on them when they gave it to Jerry Garcia, Ken Kesey and Robert hunter in Palo Alto experiments? That really lit the world on fire!! Do the research!
Anonymous

I read a great book called Acid Dreams a few years ago.
http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623/

Highly recommended for all those would-be trippers who, like me, are now too old and too impaled on those grim meat-hook realities of modern life to actually take the stuff.