MISSION: MIND CONTROL

e [Music] [Music] this is the story of a 30-year search by us intelligence agencies to perfect mind control some of those engaged in that search have agreed to talk about it for the first time one said I think every last one of us felt sorry to attempt this kind of thing we knew we were crossing the line the search would be endless from brothel an agent says we learned a lot about human nature in the bedroom to the mystical rights of a magical mushroom ceremony performed by an Indian Shaman to a Spanish Bullring the bull has had electrodes implanted in the brain and is controlled by a scientist there would be victims one intelligence agency tried to peel this man's mind back to reveal its deepest Secrets I live through it I live through it this man worked on some of these programs he would write of his work it was fun fun fun this is the story of the search for mind control ABC News closeup Mission mind control with ABC News correspondant Paul altm we are not professing to tell you the complete story of these activities we are professing to tell you the complete story that we know but these records that we've uncovered don't tell the story they tell pieces of it this is a story that has been told in bits and pieces the this is an attempt to pull most of it together we know we don't have the full story we do however have some striking New Revelations and insights The Story begins here just off the nation's front yard the mall the buildings behind me were the headquarters for the World War II office of strategic Services it was here that the first halting steps toward mind control began the shaper and molder of OSS was General Wild Bill Donovan he said of his group's work we may have made mistakes but we were not afraid to try things that were never done before in this anything goes atmosphere Donovan appointed this man Stanley Lovel a Boston industrialist to break new ground in many scientific and Technical Fields Donovan Co LEL his Dr Mor arti after the fish professor in Sherlock Holmes LEL liked the name and posed for this Saturday evening Post photo he later wrote of his OSS job that it was quote to stimulate the PEC bad boy beneath the surface of every American scientist and to say to him throw all of your normal law-abiding Concepts out of the window here's a chance to raise merry hell it was in this atmosphere that the search for mind control began this bizarre man would be an active participant in that search over the next two decades his name is George White an OSS Captain who had formerly been with the Bureau of Narcotics in his diary seen here publicly for the first time white left a legacy of the darker side of American intelligence work he received his early OSS training at the British run school at oshaa Canada the same school where Ian Fleming the creator of James Bond was trained white referred to the school in his Diaries as the oshaa school of Mayhem and murder Mike Burke former OSS colleague of whites and now president of Madison Square Garden Center very compelling fell uh mysterious fell almost mystical fell he was fascinating because you didn't you know something about him but not all not enough about him to really get a fix on him uh he also knew a great deal about the swifter elements of society the gamier side of life and U and he was very impressive in his technical knowledge of of the underworld so to speak he said one of one of our men gets beat up he says you have to act real fast and teach these guys a lesson Charles Siragusa a former narcotics officer and friend of whites he all come around he says I'm break your KNE caps and with that one guy laughed and George would always had a little little Billy with him and this one guy sort a sned George White turned around and wipped him across the neck with it then he picked up a pool steak and start beating everybody up he made his point and he made his point George White was not a man of understatement or subtleties his boss at OSS Stanley level referred to him as deadly and dedicated in this note from White's Diaries it says Cole LEL regarding TD TD was a rather transparent cover for truth drug George White worked with the truth drug committee here at St Elizabeth's Hospital in the nation's capital they experimented with mesculin scapel and marijuana on Unwin victims the committee soon learned there was no easy Panacea no truth drug at this stage but white and later colleagues would not stop trying the goal remained the same as this 1952 CIA memo says the aim is controlling an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation but it was a discovery here here in basil Switzerland at Sando Laboratories by Dr Albert Hoffman that led the intelligence agencies of America to believe that they had found the Panacea the discovery was lysergic acid dialami LSD the film that you see is considered by many experts to be the closest illustration of the effects of a hallucinogenic it was one of the first times that anybody had run into a powerful drug that was different the anything else that they knew anything about John Ginger recently retired Chief psychologist for the CIA this is the first time gettinger has been interviewed publicly you could disable a whole city by putting a very small amount in a water supply after all of these years of us those of us who involved in looking for this secret drug ug uh this was the only thing that began to look for the first time like it might be something like [Music] that cia's interest in LSD was intense the worry was that the Russians would get hold of it were the Soviets into LSD I going to have to say well I'm sure they were but if you ask me to prove it I I've never seen any direct proof of it but at one Point intelligence information received from Switzerland said that s's Laboratories was about to put 100 million doses of LSD on the open market and it caused enough concern within the agency that the United States was prepared to buy the entire Supply however a slight mistake had been made the mistake is made public for the first time I just found out on a new CIA document that there were no such um large quantities of LSD on the market Joan mark has filed numerous Freedom of Information suits against the CIA and has Unearthed much new material he is the author of the search for the mansurian candidate a history of intelligence agency work with mind control he is a consultant for this report what happened is that there was a military atache in Switzerland an American officer who got milligrams and kilograms mixed up in other words he made a mistake of thinking 1 1000th of a gram was the same as 1,000 G which is a mistake of a million times so when the CIA got the intelligence that there were 100 million doses on the market in fact there were 100 doses The Man Who Would oversee the cia's research into drugs and most of the agency's behavior programs is this man Dr Sydney gutle a chemist Dr gutle declined ABC News request for an interview in their NeverEnding search for the miracle weapon CIA operative searched here in the remote Mountain areas of southern Mexico for what up to then had been considered a myth magic mushrooms they used this man a part-time chemist for the CIA to dup this man a vice president of a bank and an amateur myologist or mushroom expert to try to get to the magic mushrooms and turn them into a drug but it would be the amateur R Gordon wson and his colleagues who would win the race and develop the drug sosyan from the magic mushrooms we went into the maitech area far from the highways remote from Mexico City there we found that rotten Bas as it's called baso covered with mushrooms these mushrooms I didn't know didn't never had never seen they were the sacred mushrooms wson would also discover and record the ancient mystical rights of the mushrooms from a local Shaman or magical Priestess Maria Sabina and we we're seeing incredible sights they would go slowly or they would go fast as I ordained all your senses are rendered acute we say that you see Visions you see hallucinations but that doesn't begin to tell the story The hallucinations are only part of it you hear sounds you smell things the the the night was thrilling word of wasson's Discovery reached the CIA quickly Dr James Moore a University of Delaware chemist secretly served the CIA preparing deadly chemicals on short notice Moore was instructed to get close to Wasson and accompany him on another trip to Mexico to get the magic mushrooms internal documents show the CIA felt a drug derived from the mushrooms could remain an agency secret what in the world were they looking for with the magic mushrooms I think the best answer that is that they were looking for fundamental information on compounds that were would be capable of causing changes in in Behavior changes in mental attitude did you ever consider what would have happened if any of these substances were given to say unwitting people oh I don't remember having considered that specifically I what if you I I trust perhaps you've thought about it well I haven't worried about it uh I you your question again what would I have thought had I known that the any of these substances were being would have been given to unwitting persons uh you mean a a hostile agent in of another government think that was probably one of I me testing and out on American citizen I I guess I must seem very very coldblooded about this but I don't recall ever having been very much preoccupied with that with that issue but many drugs were tested in this way a decision was made at the highest levels of the CIA to do testing on unwitting Americans as one CIA document says such testing would be operationally realistic a former CIA official who worked on these programs describes for the first time how the decision was made he did not wish to be filmed or recorded thus his remarks are read by someone else I think every last one of us felt sorry to attempt this kind of thing we knew we were crossing a line every decent kid knows he shouldn't steal but he does it sometimes we knew damn well we didn't want anyone else to know what we were doing the decision was made to do testing on unwitting victims it was decided they should be on the fringes of society because they were most vulnerable it was the borderline underworld prostitutes drug addicts and other small timers who would be powerless to seek any kind of Revenge in case they found out and as their predecessors had a decade earlier the CIA turned to George White for help white was now a high-ranking Narcotics official and by this time the stories about George White were legendary so the wait says you may help you m and George White was busy talking with me paid no attention to wait so the wait tapped him on his shoulders I help you uh mure George might turned around with R his gun out and stuck it in the guy's face like this in his crowded restaurant George White did not mind bending the law and he knew the street well he was the ideal choice for what the CIA had in mind we were ivy league white middle class we were naive totally naive about this and he felt pretty expert he knew the [ __ ] The Pimps the people who brought in the drugs white set up so-called safe houses for the CIA in New York here in Greenwich Village and later in San Francisco in this hotel and in an apartment a top Telegraph Hill with a commanding view of San Francisco Bay while the existence of these safe houses was disclosed last year details of what took place within them has not been told a former CIA official who worked in the safe houses reveals that they were used not only for drug testing but to study sexual behavior and how it could be used to manipulate people we did quite a study of prostitutes and their behavior how do you take a woman who is willing to use her body to get money out of a guy to get him to talk about things which are much more important like State [Music] secrets we learned a lot about human nature in the bedroom we started to pick up knowledge that could be used in operations there would be victims in all of this but as the agency knew they couldn't fight back some entries from George White's Diaries Clarice gets Horrors Janet Sky High as one agency memo says we have no answer to the moral question the safe houses were not the only testing grounds millions of dollars would be spent on LSD research at universities throughout the country and word would begin to spread on campus about this so-called mindblowing drug and suddenly there was the counterculture of the 6 I give the CIA a total credit for sponsoring and initiating the entire Consciousness movement counterculture events of the 1960s Dr Timothy liry the 1960s Johnny apple seed of LSD the CIA funded and supported and uh encouraged hundreds of young psychiatrist to experiment with this drug The Fallout from that was that the young psychologists began taking it themselves discovering that was an intelligence enhancing Consciousness raising experience I know that some of the studies in which the CIA had uh supported used as subjects people who later became strong prizers of LSD so in know in that sense yes I think it did sustain the uh the uh perpetuation of the of the use of the drug and it's rather ironic isn't it the counter case that I would make in relation ship to that is to remember that the people who were doing the research were people who would be doing the research regardless of who uh uh was the sponsor I I don't think anybody working in that time and the remotest ever thought that it would blow up into the kind of thing that it [Music] did history will judge the role of the CIA and other intelligence agencies in unwittingly contributing to the counterculture of the 60s through their intense interest in LSD and other hallucinogenics but for the moment at least the argument can be made that the CIA helped usher in the age of Aquarius covering a span of History such as we are in this report one can get sidetracked by the so-called Glamour and mystery of Espionage work or by the Exotic qualities of some drugs but what you can't lose sight of is what all of this would mean in terms of individual human beings there would be deaths there would be long-lasting and harmful effects the best known case is that of this man Frank Olen a chemist employed by the Army chemical Corps who in 1953 was slipped LSD unknowingly at a meeting with c CIA officials shortly after that Olsen went into severe depression he ended his life at this New York hotel by diving through a shaded closed window in his 10th floor room Frank Olen was the first known fatality in the cia's LSD program olssen left behind a widow Alice and three children but it would be years before they learned the real story of his death shortly after his suicide Alice olssen was visited by Dr cydney gutle the man who had administered the drug and by Robert Lashbrook his Deputy who was the last person with Frank Olsen the night of his death it was probably to check me out and see uh whether I was handling myself and handling the situation whether I was hysterical and I'm sure they left the house feeling ever so much better because I had been uh gracious and hospitable to them so that I must have played right into their hand and made them feel fine 23 years later did you how did you feel about that meeting my anger was unbelievable at how I had been duped for this length of time and the anguish which was unnecessary anyone who knew during all of those years never told Alice olssen the real story of her husband's death she would discover it by accident more than two decades later in essence it was a 22-year long cover up Lyman Kirk Pat was Inspector General of the CIA at the time of Frank Olsen's death but had not the olssen case occurred within the secret confines of the CIA would not this case have been a prosecutable case perhaps I would think very definitely prosecutable and certainly from the point of view of the uh of Mr Olsen why it should probably have been actionable Frank Olson suicide slowed down the cia's testing of LSD and Other Drugs but only momentarily the CIA was not the only government agency interested in the possibilities LSD and Other Drugs presented for mind control the Army chemical Corps first started working with the CIA and then branched off on its own it two tested drugs on Unwin victims and a death would result the case of this man Harold blauer a tennis pro seen here with his daughter Elizabeth is well known in 1953 blower was a private patient at the new York State psychiatric Institute he was given five injections of a mesculin derivative that was being tested secretly for the Army chemical Corps with the fifth injection Harold blower died as with the olssen case a 22-year coverup followed until finally the Army admitted the real details of blau's death since the initial news stories of Harold blau's death close to 5,000 documents previously classified have been released by the Army and obtained by ABC news they provide valuable insight into Army activities at the time of blau's death and where the Army went from there with their own drug testing program from a previously classified deposition of Dr James catel who administered the masculine derivative on the purpose of the drug testing to produce symptoms similar to those that you see in schizophrenia on how much the patient knew about all this we didn't delineate all the possibilities of what might happen because then you contaminate your experiment catel then relates that he never even knew what drug he had given Harold blauer because of the secrecy of the army experiments we didn't know whether it was dog piss this was secret this was a secret we weren't in on it we asked blau's daughter Elizabeth for her reaction what how can anybody react to that I mean that is so far from from what you'd expect from a human being never mind a doctor never mind a professional specialist who's supposed to care about people's minds it's it's unbelievable a suit filed by Elizabeth Barrett against the Army chemical Corps is now pending in federal court other Army experiments continued on metal patients around the country work done at the Tain Medical Center in New Orleans involves several drugs hallucinogenics and electrodes implanted in the bra the chief researcher was Dr Russell Monroe now head of the Psychiatry department at the University of Maryland these are various progress reports written by Dr Monroe and recently obtained by ABC news from one of the progress reports a report of a woman who had electrodes implanted in the brain and was then given LSD and Other Drugs she became agitated cried lapsed into a trans-like state [Applause] [Music] held as if she were about to have a convulsion experienced waves of Darkness and [Music] Light had bizarre Sensations in her neck and legs said somebody was trying to manipulate her body at this point Dr Monroe wrote that the woman was obviously having paranoid ideas as a as a lay person uh perhaps you can enlighten me what therapeutic effect would the type of experiment that I just described have on a patient well the therapeutic effect would be indirect was this patient aware that she was being given LSD yes I mean they they uh were told that they would be given some medication uh and they specifically LSD uh well we told them uh I don't think that they would have even known what LSD was then at the time they were told that they were going to give they would be given some medications which might make them feel worse Dr man what what do you think the Army chemical Corps was looking for in all of this testing they were looking for an incapacitating agent uh an agent that would not harm the person permanently but would incapacitate them temporarily that seemed like a a humanistic way to to wage a war if war is necessary when James thornwell was given LSD by Army intelligence in 1961 this time it was no experiment this time the expressed purpose was to peel back thornwell brain to Bear any secret within it this time the Army had gone operational thornwell as reported on ABC last January was an Army private stationed in oron France classified documents were missing from his unit thornwell became a suspect his 2 and a half month interrogation included administration of sodium penthol hypnosis isolation and deprivation of sleep Army documents obtained by ABC News refer to this interrogation as conventional despite this severe questioning Army intelligence was getting nowhere with thornwell and it was decided to SL LSD for 16 years thornwell never knew what had hit him tell me about the asset I'd rather not it's a bad trip a bad trip that was a bad trip the pain was so excruciate and felt like somebody was sticking me with a million pins you know just everywhere oh it just I don't you want to start I walked around want stop oh I can talk I live through it I live through it I live through it no charges were ever brought by the Army against thornwell he was discharged for psychological disorders but an army psychiatric evaluation of thornwell obtained by ABC News one which was done prior to thornwell having been given LSD says of him fairly Cooperative oriented alert and gave no evidence of psychosis or depression from the Army's point of view this type of LSD interrogation was a success other documents refer to the exploitability of interrogation subjects cracking them keeping them off balance mentally and providing an economical speedy and productive Aid to interrogation from James thornwell point of view it was no success thornwell still has serious problems he's run through two marriages he maintains he can't hold a job can't concentrate has nightmares and feels socially and emotionally isolated last fall thornwell filed suit against the government in federal court in a moment we will examine the closest experimentation to brainwashing that we have uncovered