Vets feel abandoned after secret drug experiments
By David S. Martin, CNN March 1, 2012
….From 1955 to 1975, military researchers at Edgewood were using not only animals but human subjects to test a witches’ brew of drugs and chemicals. They ranged from potentially lethal nerve gases like VX and sarin to incapacitating agents like BZ
….The military also tested tear gas, barbiturates, tranquilizers, narcotics and hallucinogens like LSD
….This top secret Cold War research program initially looked for ways to defend against a chemical or biological attack by the Soviet Union, thought to be far ahead of the United States in “psycho-chemical” warfare. But the research expanded into offensive chemical weapons, including one that could, according to one Army film obtained by CNN, deliver a “veritable chemical ambush” against an enemy.http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/01/health/human-test-subjects/index.html
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
OAKLAND DIVISION VIETNAM VETERANS OF AMERICA, a Non-Profit Corporation;
SWORDS TO PLOWSHARES: VETERANS RIGHTS ORGANIZATION, a California Non-Profit Corporation; BRUCE PRICE;
FRANKLIN D. ROCHELLE; LARRY MEIROW; ERIC P. MUTH; DAVID C. DUFRANE; TIM MICHAEL JOSEPHS; and WILLIAM BLAZINSKI, individually, on behalf of
themselves and all others similarly situated,
Plaintiffs,
v.
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY; LEON PANETTA, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency;
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF
DEFENSE; DR. ROBERT M. GATES, Secretary of Defense;
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY; PETE GEREN, United States Secretary of the
Army; UNITED STATE S OF AMERICA; ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., Attorney General of the United States;
Case No. CV 09-0037-CW THIRD AMENDED
COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF UNDER UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION AND FEDERAL STATUTES AND REGULATIONS (Class Action) UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS
AFFAIRS; and ERIC K. SHINSEKI, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF VETERANS AFFAIRS, Defendants.
excerpts:
This action chronicles a chilling tale of human experimentation, covert military operations, and heretofore unchecked abuses of power by our own government. Ironically, one of the main facilitating events for this debacle was action by a court. In 1950, during the height of the Cold War, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135 (1950) (hereafter, “Feres”), which in effect ruled that the government is immune from damages claims brought by Armed Forces personnel arising from DEFENDANTS’ own torts.
The Supreme Court’s decision to absolve DEFENDANTS of legal responsibility for damages caused by the tortious acts committed by the government upon our nation’s military personnel quickly led DEFENDANTS to undertake an expansive, multi-faceted program of secret experimentation on human subjects, diverting our own troops from military assignments for use as test subjects. In virtually all cases, troops served in the same capacity as laboratory rats or guinea pigs.
DEFENDANTS were able to capitalize on the inherently coercive relationship of a soldier’s commanding officers to their soldiers, as military orders can be enforced by a strong set of formal and informal sanctions or punishment.
In 1942, the War Department — the present day Department of Defense (“DOD”) — authorized the first experiment on military personnel which used mustard gas, and various additional experiments were conducted during and following World War II. Beginning in the early 1950s, the human experiment program was greatly expanded, as the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”) and United States Army planned, organized and executed an extensive series of experiments involving potential chemical and biological weapons.
The CIA also sponsored human drug experimentation by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (“FBN”), now the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”). This vast program of human experimentation — shrouded in secrecy — was centered at the Army’s compounds at Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick, Maryland. The human experimentation was conducted without the informed consent of
its subjects and in direct contravention of applicable legal standards and principles of international law.
Representatives of DEFENDANTS had also, on many occasions, promised the test participants (“volunteers”) that they would receive medals for volunteering, as well as health care, but they instead abandoned Plaintiffs and the other participants, hiding behind the insulating walls of government bureaucracies and security classifications. Indeed, DEFENDANTS actively concealed the existence of the human experimentation tests and the test results from the outside world, and destroyed most of the documentation of the tests once their existence began to leak….
DEFENDANTS used at least 7,800 armed services personnel in the experimentation program at the Edgewood Arsenal alone….
The experiments involving human subjects were one of the key beneficiaries of the recruitment of over 1,500 scientists and technicians from Nazi Germany in “Project Paperclip,” some of whom played a pivotal role in, e.g., the testing of psychochemicals and development of a new truth serum. Over half of these recruits had been members of the SS or Nazi Party. The “Paperclip” name was chosen because so many of the employment applications were clipped to immigration papers….
That study identified numerous contracts from 1958 to 1965 between DEFENDANTS and outside research institutions, including multiple contracts (for tens of thousands of dollars) with the University of California, the Regents of the University of California, and with Stanford Research Institute, which was founded in 1946 by the trustees of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California….
Yet, despite the CIA’s repeated representations over multiple decades that they could not find any living persons who participated in Edgewood experiments and others, the CIA had in fact secretly obtained a “large data base” from Edgewood Arsenal in 1974, which contained the names and personal information of all the “volunteers.” Currently, at a point in time 35 years later, the DOD claims to be still working to compile a registry of participants and does not expect to complete work until 2011….
The vast majority of Edgewood participants have never received any notice from DEFENDANTS and at most a small handful have ever received any health care or compensation from DEFENDANTS associated with their participation in the MKULTRA experiments….
On or around April 13, 1953, CIA Director Allen Dulles approved Helms’s proposal and a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program known as “MKULTRA” was created. (Memorandum from Allen Dulles, Dir. of Cent. Intelligence, to Deputy Dir. of Admin. (Apr. 13, 1953); see Exh. B at B-038-B-039; see also Exh. B at B-040.)
“Through the course of MKULTRA, CIA sponsored numerous experiments on unwitting humans.” (The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), Interim Report of ACHRE (Oct. 21, 1994) at App. E.) MKULTRA testing was conducted at Edgewood Arsenal together with other sites such as Fort McClellan, Alabama, Fort Benning, Georgia, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The CIA also contracted with Fort Detrick, which conducted a series of experiments using human subjects, one of which was known as “Project White Coat.”
116. The MKULTRA projects were under the control of the Chemical Division, within the Technical Services Division of the CIA. Beginning in 1951, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb became the director of the Chemical Division. During testimony he gave to Congress in 1977, Dr. Gottlieb claimed that the creation of MKULTRA was inspired by reports of mind-control work in the Soviet Union and China. He stated that the mission was “to investigate whether and how it was possible to modify an individual’s behavior by covert means.” (Human Drug Testing by the CIA, 1977: Hearings on S. 1893 Before the Subcomm. on Health and Scientific Research of the S. Comm. on Human Resources, 95th Cong. (1977) at 169.)….
MKULTRA, the “funding vehicle,” soon established over 149 subprojects that involved experiments using drugs on human behavior, lie detectors, hypnosis, and electric shock. The CIA also enlisted the cooperation of over 44 colleges and universities, 15 research foundations, 12 clinics or hospitals, and 3 prisons. The CIA established front organizations to channel funds to institutions conducting or assisting in the experiments using benign, descriptive names such as the “Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology.”….
The CIA also financed studies by Dr. D. Ewen Cameron at the Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, in the 1950s, which explored methods to erase memory and rewrite the psyche, using patients being treated for conditions such as post-partum depression, marital problems, and anxiety.
Dr. Cameron used a combination of intense electro-shocks, sensory deprivation, isolation, drugs such as LSD and insulin (to induce extended sleep). Eventually, the subjects regressed to a vegetative, pre-verbal or infantile state. Once this “depatterning” had occurred, Dr. Cameron forced patients to listen to repetitive pre-recorded messages that contained principles intended to guide future behavior such as, “You are a good mother,” which he referred to as “psychic driving.” Most of Dr. Cameron’s patients emerged
from his therapies with more serious symptoms and problems, including memory loss, hallucinations, intense anxiety, and loss of touch with reality….
The final step in the “research and development sequence” was to “deliver[] MKULTRA materials into the MKDELTA control system governing their employment in clandestine operations.” (Exh. B at B-015.) “The final stage of covert testing of materials on unwitting subjects is clearly the most sensitive aspect of MKULTRA.” (Exh. B at B-016.)
“Present practice is to maintain no records of the planning and approval of test programs.” (Exh. B at B-016.)….
Under MKULTRA and its progeny, at least 1,000 “volunteers” were given up to 20 doses of LSD to test the drug as an interrogation weapon, even though the tests were known by Edgewood scientists to result in serious physical and psychological problems….
Some of the experiments at Edgewood and other sites were designed to replicate some of those that were conducted by Nazi doctors in concentration camps. American psychiatrist Paul Hoch’s experiments on mental patients in New York, where he was working on Edgewood projects supervised by DEFENDANTS and as a CIA consultant, killed one patient
with a mescaline injection (Harold Blauer) and seriously injured another. As the federal judge concluded in a case brought by Mr. Blauer’s daughter, “the real reason Blauer died was not medical incompetence in the administration of a therapeutic or diagnostic drug, but the fact that he was used as a human guinea pig.” Barrett v. United States, 660 F. Supp. 1291, 1308 (S.D.N.Y. 1987). MKULTRA’s experiments also resulted in the death of Frank Olson, an Army scientist who mysteriously fell out of a hotel window after members of the CIA secretly slipped LSD into his drink….
Documents from the CIA’s “Family Jewels” declassified file establish that drugs that had been rejected by private manufacturers were tested on soldiers at Edgewood....
DEFENDANTS changed the program name from MKULTRA to MKSEARCH after release of the CIA IG’s 1963 Report, which was highly critical of MKULTRA;
b. the OFTEN and CHICKWIT projects, jointly conducted by the Army and CIA at the Edgewood Arsenal, but also funded by the CIA, which involved the collection of information about foreign pharmaceuticals and experiments with human subjects;
c. the BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE projects, where DEFENDANTS researched hypnosis, drugs such as sodium pentothal, the stimulant Desoxyn (methamphetamine), and bulbocapnine (an alkaloid), which facilitate recovery of information under hypnosis, and other substances that might aid in the interrogation of prisoners of war and defectors;
d. the MKDELTA project, a mind control research and development program devised by DEFENDANTS that concentrated upon the use of biochemicals in clandestine operations;
e. the MKNAOMI project, a successor to MKDELTA, which focused on the research, testing, manufacture and means of diffusion or distribution of lethal and non-lethal biological agents and materials;
f. the CHATTER project, which focused on the development and use of truth serum and other interrogation drugs such as anabasis, aphylla, scopolamine, and mescaline; and g. a series of related or follow-on projects with code names including “PANDORA,” “SPELLBINDER,” “MONARCH,” “SLEEPING BEAUTY,” as well as others….
148. The MKULTRA and MKSEARCH project sponsors operated “safe houses” in New York City and San Francisco, where drugs were surreptitiously administered to human subjects lured to the site by prostitutes, and the effects were witnessed and/or recorded on film as part of Subprojects 3, 16, 42, 132, and 149….
DEFENDANTS formally launched Sub-Project 119 in 1960, the purpose of which was to research, study, and interpret “bioelectric signals from the human organism, and activation of human behavior by remote means.” (Memorandum for the Record re MKLUTRA Subproject 119 from Technical Servs. Div., Research Branch, CIA (Aug. 17, 1960).)….
150. Dr. Jose Delgado began to research the use of pain and pleasure for mind control during WWII. Later, as Director of Neuropsychiatry at Yale University Medical School, he refined the design of his “transdermal stimulator,” a computer controlled, remote neurologic transceiver and aversion stimulator.
Dr. Delgado was especially interested in Electronic Stimulation of the Brain. Dr. Delgado discovered that he could wield enormous power over his subject by implanting a small probe into the brain. Using a device he called the “stimoceiver,” which operated by FM radio waves, he was able to electrically orchestrate a wide range of human emotions, including rage, pleasant sensations, elation, deep thoughtful concentration, odd feelings, super relaxation (an essential precursor for deep hypnosis), colored visions or hallucinations, lust, fatigue and various other responses.
Dr. Delgado researched and perfected many of his devices under the auspices of MKULTRA Sub-Project 95, in which he was joined by
Dr. Louis Jolyon West, who had mastered a technology called “RHIC-EDOM.” RHIC means “Radio Hypnotic Intracerebral Control,” and EDOM means “Electronic Dissolution of Memory.”
These implants could be stimulated to induce a post-hypnotic state. EDOM involves the creation of “Missing Time” or the loss of memory….
From 1965 through to 1970, Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA), with up to 70-80% funding provided by the military, set in motion operation PANDORA to study the health and psychological effects of low intensity microwaves with regard to the so-called “Moscow signal.”….http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2012/images/02/15/complaint.pdf
SECRET Cq U. S. Army Chemical Research and Development Laboratories Technical Report….May 1964….EDGEWOOD ARSENAL, MD BZ study http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2012/images/02/15/bz.study.pdf
U. S. Army Iy Chemical Research and Development Laboratories Technical Report…Edgewood Arsenal GROUP
4….THE HUMAN ASSESSMENT OF EA 1729 AND EA 3528 BY THE INHALATION ROUTE (U)….A study of the inhalation effectiveness of agent EA 1729 (d-,kl agent EA 1729 (d-lysergic acid diethylamide) and its maleate salt was conducted in which retaineded in which retained doses ranging from 0. 3 to 7. 8 jg/kg were administered to 60 military volunts 60 military volunteers
….In a series of field trials in 1958, volunteers at Fort Bragg, N. C., were assigned a variety of team missions to be carried out after the ingescion of 150 jig/man of LSD25. These tasks included reporting of meteorological information, fire direction control, artillery control surveying, and antiaircraft tracking, In these cases, the dose given resulted in loss of effectiveness sufficient to constitute failure in the mission, as judged by XVIII Airborne Corps evaluation teams.
(C) In the 1961 report, summarizing the results of these and other clinical studies of the effectiveness of LSD25, the author concluded that incapacitation by the oral route could be achieved with doses as low as I ig/kg.http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2012/images/02/15/human.test.subjects.-.edgewood.ketchum.lsd.study.pdf
