The CIA's 5 Most Mind Blowing Experiments With LSD
LSD has long been a staple of overweight, furry men with ponytails who list their occupation as 'Earth Shaman' on tax forms. The CIA is more typically known for their starched suits than their mind exploring orgies. So if we told you that the CIA was trippin' balls before Hunter S. Thompson even knew that balls existed, you'd probably call us liars. Well, prepare to have your mind, like, blown man. Here are the five strangest things you didn't know about the CIA, and how LSD really came to be.
The CIA Discovers Acid, Experiments Like A (Evil) Teenager
It all started in the early 1950s, when a double agent named Jozef Cardinal Mindszenty was tried for treason in Russia. During the trial, American agents happened to notice that Josef was, to put it modestly, high as a fucking kite. Rather than just chalking it up to Jozef being the spy version of that kid who got high before high school, the US agents figured pretty quickly that he had been doped into testifying by the Russians. Fearing a "larger scale drug attack" (like some sort of like, weed...bazooka, man?) the CIA launched an extensive, decades long research program focused on LSD. The chief goal? Fucking mind control. No really, here's an actual line taken from an interdepartmental memo revealed to Congress: "Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self preservation?" Rough translation: "Can we get someone so high that they'll kill themselves if we ask nicely enough?" Christ! That statement is so ominous it had to be written with one hand while the other ominously stroked a white cat. This program, named Project MK-ULTRA, (which sounds more like something Godzilla would fight than a top-secret government initiative) was an umbrella program, meaning it encompassed a number of sub-projects, most of them seemingly conceived by a Hollywood screenwriter. One experiment involved trying to drug CIA agents with enough LSD to completely wipe their memories upon retirement, thus erasing all traces of potentially classified knowledge--hey, just like"Ha ha! Cha cha! Na na! Givin' you psychoses, Big Willy style!"
Related: The CIA Live-Tweeted The Oscars To Debunk 'Black Panther'
CIA Field Agents Drug Each Other for Fun
Of course, it wasn't all supervillainy and mad science; the CIA had a sense of humor, too... as plainly evidenced by the 60s field agent's favorite wacky prank: Secretly dosing each other with LSD. At one point the practice was so prevalent that the CIA even hired stage magicians to train agents in sleight of hand techniques for use in their mickey-slipping."Okay, Frank. Are you absolutely, completely, 100 percent positive you didn't dose my coffee this morning? 'Cause I'm pretty sure just I took an offramp into the Metaverse here. I'm just sayin'..."
So at one point, there was a Master Magician in charge of drugging employed to the CIA. Sure, it's a little terrifying to consider that the severe young government operative holding a gun to your head probably thinks you have a cow-face, and is detaining you for trying to disentangle his soul with your negative energy. But you have to admit - "CIA Drug Magician" is a pretty sweet job title.Related: 6 Stories That Prove U.S. Drug Enforcement Agents Are Insane
CIA-Run Brothels and Drughouses
But you know what an even sweeter job title is? Official CIA Drugwhore. That was a real position (probably several, actually). Another iteration of"Did you finish your drink, baby? Do you want to fuck me now? Do you still want to be inside of me, Larry?"
Oh, and in case you think the CIA was being at all responsible with their unfettered access to acid, whores and one-way mirrors, allow George White; the man in charge of the entire project, to describe his career, in his own words, as taken from this memo sent to his superior at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics: "I was a very minor missionary, actually a heretic, but I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?" And that is officially the scariest violence-fueled drug rant ever. He sounds like Hunter S. Thompson crossed with Conan the Barbarian. Surely he's... joking or something, right? Let's double-check this with an outside source like, say a fellow agent in Operation Midnight Climax, one Lt. Ira Feldman:Related: Players Operate A Casino and Brothel In 'Final Fantasy 14'
The Nazi Involvement
This is all starting to sound like the plot to an Orwellian science fiction movie isn't it? Evil government forces using sexuality, drugs and mad science to erase the minds and personalities of innocent civilians--you throw some Nazis in there and you've got a Michael Bay movie on your hands. Oh wait... that actually happened! The precursor to project MK-ULTRA, the innocuously named"Don't worry, sir, we'll technically obey your every word! Why am I stressing the word 'technically'? Was, I? Why, no reason..."
Related: The Nazi Outpost In Canada That No One Noticed
The CIA: Mother of Hippy Culture?
Listen, we're pretty forgiving people here at Cracked. We don't like to hold grudges. We like to give the benefit of the doubt to anybody--even those sexy ladies on the corner of 24Your tax dollars hard at work.
Author Ken Kesey, widely credited with kickstarting the entire hippy movement in the early 60s, was himself a subject of MK-ULTRA's experiments. It was unknown to Kesey at the time exactly what the experiments were for, or by whom--as it's doubtful he would've been quite as stoked to join up if he'd known the government was attempting to erase his personality using Nazi science--but his participation in the MK-ULTRA drug studies was what eventually led him to start the Merry Pranksters, who first widely advocated the "mind-expanding" properties of LSD and eventually gave rise to the modern hippy. Kesey himself, of course, was a genius and a visionary, but regardless of hisFind more from Robert on Twitter, Facebook or his own site, I Fight Robots, where you can, to quote Quato, "open your miiiiind."