A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on Our Children and Other Innocent People (31 page)

A declassified document from 1957 talks about the difficulty they have had in obtaining expert services and facilities to conduct their tests and experiments. It says, “Some of the activities are considered to be professionally unethical and in some instances border on the illegal. These difficulties have not been entirely surmounted but good progress is being made.”
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They go on to say the best results have been obtained from mental institutions.

Experiments with soldiers under the influence of LSD were conducted to see if they could be forced to give information when being interrogated. The Medical Research Laboratories at Edgewood initiated LSD (EA 1720) drug studies in late 1956. Soldiers were approached and told that the official classified project would make mental and physical demands upon him. Care was taken not to mention the exact properties of the material and the soldiers were made to sign a security statement declaring that he would protect the classification of the project. Thus, men who later would suspect health problems from the tests they participated in were forced to keep from getting treatment, because they could not discuss the project without breaking their security declaration.

These men were given drinks laced with LSD and then interrogated. Between August 1958 and May 1960, these tests were expanded to include Polygraph/Interrogation Tests and Isolation/Sensory Deprivation Tests, all under the influence of LSD.
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There were no records found for the majority of the Intelligence Corps so-called volunteers. In fact, the few that were found were incomplete and totally inadequate to determine even the most basic information about the test.
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James B. Stanley was a master sergeant when he was secretly administered LSD at the Aberdeen proving Grounds in Maryland in 1958. Twenty-seven years later the Army sent Stanley a letter soliciting his cooperation in a study of the long-term effects of LSD on “volunteers who participated” in the 1958 tests. Stanley filed suit after the Army denied an administrative claim for compensation.
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He claimed to have suffered from hallucinations and periods of incoherence and memory loss, was impaired in his military performance, and would on occasion “awake from sleep at night and, without reason, violently beat his wife and children, later being unable to recall the entire incident.” Stanley’s claim was barred under a legal doctrine known as the Feres doctrine. Feres insulates the government from liability for injuries to servicemen resulting from activity “incident to service.” Stanley alleged that he was one of 1,000 soldiers who were covertly administered LSD between 1955 and 1958.

Many of these tests were conducted under the MKULTRA program, established to counter perceived Soviet and Chinese advances in brainwashing techniques. One test subject was Lloyd B. Gamble who enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1950. In 1957, he volunteered for a special
program to test new military protective clothing. He was offered various incentives to participate in the program, including a liberal leave policy, family visitations, and superior living and recreational facilities. However, the greatest incentive to Mr. Gamble was the official recognition he would receive as a career-oriented noncommissioned officer, through letters of commendation and certification of participation in the program. During the 3 weeks of testing new clothing, he was given two or three water-size glasses of a liquid containing LSD to drink. Thereafter, Mr. Gamble developed erratic behavior and even attempted suicide. He did not learn that he had received LSD as a human subject until 18 years later, as a result of congressional hearings in 1975.
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Even then, the Department of the Army initially denied that he had participated in the experiments, although an official DOD publicity photograph showed him as one of the valiant servicemen volunteering for “a program that was in the highest national security interest.”
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Other Field Testing LSD Programs:

In a macabre twist a group of ten Norwegian survivors have filed a lawsuit accusing the Central Intelligence Agency, the Norwegian army and pharmaceutical companies of using 10 war children as guinea pigs in the 1950s and 1960s in experiments with drugs such as LSD and mescaline. Their attorney, Randi Hagen Spydevold claims to have evidence that three or four children died during the tests.
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The aim of the experiments was surmised to be a way to find control of people’s brain.

Biological Weapons and Testing

During the 1950s the biological warfare program was one of the most highly classified programs, owing to its nature and the ongoing Cold War. Many of the details of the program have never been declassified. The corps concentrated on standardizing the agents investigated during World War II and weaponized them at Fort Detrick, the Chemical Corps biological warfare center.

Operation Whitecoat originally started out with volunteer enlisted men. However, after the enlisted men staged a sit down strike to obtain more information about the dangers of the biological tests, Seventh-Day Adventists who were conscientious objectors were recruited for the studies.
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Because these individuals did not believe in engaging in actual combat, they instead volunteered to be human subjects in military research projects that tested various infectious agents. At least 2,200 military personnel who were Seventh-Day Adventists volunteered for biological testing during the 1950’s through the 1970’s.

In 1953, Major General Bullene, Chief Chemical Officer gave an over riding priority to the development of anthrax spores. In 1954 the bacteria Brucella suis became the first agent weaponized by the United States at Pine Bluff Arsenal. The United States also worked with Plague (Y. pestis) as a potential biowarfare agent, developing an effective method of aerosolizing the organism. The contagious nature of pneumonic plague makes it particularly dangerous as a biological weapon. This Plague normally appears in three forms in man: bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic. Deer fly fever (Francisella tularensis) was also weaponized by the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. SEB is the second most common source of outbreaks of food poisoning. Often these outbreaks occur in a setting such as a church picnic or other community event, due to common source exposure in which contaminated food is consumed.

The most important route of exposure to biological agents is through inhalation. Aerosol delivery systems for biological warfare agents most commonly generate invisible clouds of particles or droplets that can remain suspended for extensive periods. The major risk is pulmonary retention of the inhaled particles. To a much lesser extent, particles may adhere to an individual or his clothing. These toxins may cause direct pulmonary toxicity or be absorbed and cause systemic toxicity. Toxins are frequently as potent or more potent by inhalation, than by any other route.
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One of the more interesting developments was the standardization in 1959 of the yellow fever virus for use with a mosquito as vector. The virus came from an individual in Trinidad who had been infected with the disease during an epidemic in 1954. Scientists inoculated rhesus monkeys with the serum to propagate the virus. In tests conducted in Savannah, Georgia, and at the Avon Park Bombing Range, Florida, uninfected mosquitoes were released by airplane or helicopter. Within a day, the mosquitoes had spread over several square miles and had bitten many people, demonstrating the feasibility of such an attack. Fort Detrick’s laboratory was capable of producing half a million mosquitoes per month and had plans for a plant that
could produce 130 million per month. Since Fort Detrick was limited in its production capability, Pine Bluff Arsenal was selected to be the site of the new biological agent. This plant could produce most of the agents standardized by the Chemical Corps and could fill bombs within 4 days after receipt of an order.

In a declassified document from a meeting in June 1958 in the Army Chemical Center in Maryland, the experiments with mosquitoes as a carrier is discussed by Dr. Housewright. The report says, “It was brought out that the literature contains many references to volunteer work performed using infected mosquitoes with a wide variety of agents (the work on malaria, for example). This information may be of importance in obtaining authorization to conduct future volunteer tests with certain agents.”

In 1956-1958, in Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida, the Army carried out field tests in which mosquitoes were released into residential neighborhoods from both ground level and from aircraft. Many people were swarmed by mosquitoes and fell ill, some even died. After each test U.S. Army personnel, posing as public health officials, photographed and tested the victims. It is theorized that the mosquitoes were infected with a strain of Yellow Fever. However, details of the testing remain classified.

The antianimal program started off strong in 1952 when the Chemical Corps activated Fort Terry, on Plum Island, New York to study animal diseases. In 1954 however, the army terminated all antianimal agent work with exception of rinderpest and the completion of the foot-and-mouth disease research facility. The Department of Agriculture then took over the defensive aspects of the antianimal pro-gram, including Fort Terry the same year.

The antiplant program made some progress, when in 1955 wheat stem rust became the first antiplant pathogen standardized by the Chemical Corps for use primarily against cereal crops. Additional antiplant agents were standardized shortly thereafter. In 1957, however, the army ordered the corps to stop all antiplant research and development since the air force primarily would be delivering the agent. This was accomplished by 1958 with the termination of the program. Then the decision was reversed the next year after additional funding was found.

The antiplant program was resumed for the U.S. Air Force in 1962. Agent production was conducted at Pine Bluff Arsenal. Field tests of wheat stem rust and rice blast disease were conducted at several sites in the Midwestern and Southern United States and on Okinawa.
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Fort Detrick also began to concentrate more on the chemical defoliants, conducting the first large-scale military defoliation effort at Fort Drum, New York using the butyl esters of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, later designated Agent Purple.
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Open Air Testing

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hotograph: Chemical and Biological Defense
Command