May 18, 2012
Tripping Through the Cold War: Drug Warfare in the Retrofuture
People tripping out in the February 28, 1960 edition of Closer Than We Think
Chemical warfare is nothing new. As early as 428 BC the Spartans were burning wood soaked in resin and sulfur for use against their enemies. And the First World War is often remembered for its horrific deaths due to mustard gas. But the mid-20th century ushered in a new futuristic chemical weapon: LSD.
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), mescaline (peyote), and psilocybin (psychedelic mushrooms) were all seen as possible contenders for non-lethal weapons of the future; sprayed on an unsuspecting army or civilian population and making them vulnerable to invasion.
An Associated Press story from the September 6, 1959 Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa warned that the nuclear stalemate with the Soviet Union might prompt the Russians to develop chemicals that could be used against the United States. Americans scientists were said to have developed their own weapons to counter-attack.
Working in deep secrecy, U.S. scientists almost overnight have developed an arsenal of fantastic new weapons, variously known as psycho-chemicals and “madness” gases, which could virtually paralyze an enemy nation without firing a shot.
Interestingly, the article doesn’t name the chemicals, instead calling them “madness gases” or surgical anesthetics:
By way of definition, chemical warfare embraces the use of such compounds as the psycho-chemicals to create hallucinations in the enemy’s mind or the deadly nerve gases and other toxic substances to kill.
Some of the new chemicals act much faster than ether, the anesthetic used to put surgical patients to sleep, and have an effect lasting 24 to 48 hours. One means of dispersal is a newly developed “smoke ginny” with which 2 men can lay a blanket of chemical fog over an area 5 miles long and 200 yards wide.
The February 28, 1960 edition of the Sunday comic strip “Closer Than We Think” by Arthur Radebaugh pulled this idea from the headlines and illustrated it in the picture above. The strip quotes Lt. Gen Arthur Trudeau from the U.S. Army as warning that the Soviets are developing weaponized versions of “psycho-chemicals” and that the U.S. should follow suit:
New nerve drugs may be used to immobilize whole cities or battle areas in tomorrow’s warfare. The Chemical Corps knows about a complete arsenal of “nerve gases” that can make fighting men and embattled citizenry as happy and peaceable as kids playing tag.
Lt. Gen. Arthur Trudeau, chief of Army research and development, is worried about possible attacks with these drugs. He fears the United States might become a victim. “The Soviet [Union] has 15% of its munitions in chemicals,” he said. “I think psycho-chemicals are the coming weapon — we are missing out if we don’t capitalize on them.”
1981 vision of future chemical warfare, causing soldiers to hallucinate
The 1981 children’s book World of Tomorrow: War and Weapons by Neil Ardley also illustrated what a psycho-chemical attack might look like, with soldiers believing they’re being hunted by giant flying pterodactyl-like creatures:
This isn’t a scene from a science fiction story in which flying monsters take over the world. It is a view of a future battle as seen through the eyes of a defending soldier. He and his fellow troops reel back as invading aircraft fire shells containing chemicals. The chemicals are drugs that produce dream-like reactions or hallucinations in people. The soldiers see the aircraft turning into flying monsters and the buildings bend over, and they flee in terror. Invading forces protected from the effects of the drugs will soon arrive easily take over the city.
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didn’t Aldiss write a quintessential novel about lsd in the water supply in the sixties?
Nice little spin on this subject.
The author is either naive or…what?
Worthy of mention here would be MK Ultra…as well as R. Gordon Wasson and his CIA ties.
But then again, that would go way to deep for this “science” publication.
@jason I’m not an expert in this area, so please explain how I’m “naive or… what?”
A bunch of crap.
You fail.
Do just a little research into the person and the program mentioned.
You don’t need me to do that.
@jason I don’t claim to be an expert on everything, so please explain to me where I’ve made a factual error. You don’t get to simply claim that an error has been made without stating your case. “Do a little research” isn’t an acceptable argument. I sincerely want to hear your issue with the post.
@Matt…I’m not disputing your facts in your article. It’s what is left out.
You left out MK Ultra. And I gave you a name: R. Gordon Wasson.
And by the way Matt, I’m no expert either, but the subject you write about warrants mention of the CIA’s obsession with mind control during this period…specifically involving psychedelics.
@jason I understand that you keep giving me names for projects and people, but you’re still not giving me context. I’d love to hear what you think what was missing from this piece. Because past visions of the future covers so many different areas of expertise I realize that I can’t be an expert in everything, therefore I really need you to explain what you’re talking about. “But why didn’t you mention xyz?” can literally be said about every blog post on the internet. I honestly want to hear your opinion on this topic.
Okay Matt, I think my info submitted is relevent to your story in that it involves our own use (meaning our CIA’s) of these potential weapons (including LSD) on unwilling “subjects” during the period that the CIA program MK Ultra is officially acknowledged.
Here are a few quick wiki quotes to get you started:
Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a covert, illegal CIA human experimentation program, run by the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence. This official U.S. government program began in the early 1950s, continued at least through the late 1960s, and used U.S. and Canadian citizens as its test subjects.[1][2][3][4]
The published evidence indicates that Project MKULTRA involved the use of many methodologies to manipulate people’s individual mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs and other chemicals, hypnosis,[5] sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture.
Project MKULTRA was first brought to wide public attention in 1975 by the U.S. Congress, through investigations by the Church Committee, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission. Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKULTRA files destroyed in 1973; the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the relatively small number of documents that survived Helms’ destruction order.[6]
This began a decade before Lt. Gen Arthur Trudeau is quoted warning that the Soviets are developing weaponized versions of “psycho-chemicals” and that the U.S. should follow suit.
My point, I guess, is that this research had already been happening most likely since right after WW2, and upon an unwilling populace.
Gen Trudeau was most likely very aware of this fact.
If you were genuinely unaware of these declassified facts, then my apologies for the sarcasm of earlier comments. But I stand by my statements that if you are going to write an article about this subject in this magazine, not mentioning this very acknowledged, albeit unpopular CIA program, does the readers a disservice.
@jason I was genuinely unaware of these declassified facts, and I’m still unclear how they pertain to this blog post, but I thank you for your contribution.
@Matt the MK ULTRA program ties in with this blog post in the sense that it was a covert CIA program designed to investigate the effects of psychoactive substances upon the human body and how they could be utilized in interrogating foreign nationals and persons of interest to the US government. As you correctly stated in the post there was a very real fear in the US intelligence community that the USSR had developed instruments capable of interfering with people’s thought processes and that the US, in order to better protect itself against this threat needed to instigate its own research program. MK ULTRA was such a program. MK ULTRA contravened many human rights in the sense that these substances, in many instances, were tested upon subjects without their prior knowledge. I believe that President Clinton officially apologized, on behalf of the US government, to the victims of this program in 1994.
@Merv.
Thank you for your input on this subject. This was precisely my point…I would also reiterate that it relates directly to the blog in that the program was well underway during the period that Matt is writing about.
I have the feeling that Matt is not very interested. Any readers who are interested should do their own research…there is quite a bit that has been written about MK Ultra. I don’t understand how someone who was unaware wouldn’t find it fascinating…or at the least interesting.
I hope Matt wasn’t discouraged from looking into it because of my initial scorn at what I saw as a shallow article about an important subject. Re-reading the article a couple of times, I saw it as a great lead into discussing the MK-Ultra program.
@Matt, no hard feelings…keep writing, and I hope you at least take a few minutes to read just the Wiki article about it. It’s not bad…at least as of last night lol.
Matt, Thanks for the article. Jason and Merv, thanks for the follow up. It’s welcome when things work this way and information is expanded. At this point I’d like to say something really profound, alas, profoundness has escaped me.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7415082/French-bread-spiked-with-LSD-in-CIA-experiment.html
The CIA seems to have made a massive experiment on the city of Pont St Esprit, in France, without any advert. There’s some individual stories in Paris too. Some very afraid people by the effects of LSD, thinking they became crazy. Some very durable effects too.
Matt, you should also know that the MK Ultra program is believed by many to be behind the murder of John Lennon. The C.I.A. was found guilty in France for using near lethal doses of LSD on artists and musicians who were deemed a threat to our interests, in one instance a man jumped to his death due to C.I.A. poisoning with LSD. The city in France where they intentionally dosed the water supply was then turned into a propaganda piece handed to Congress to justify funding of research and counter-weapons claiming that North Korea had developed a mass-manufacture facility for LSD and was planning attacks inside the United States. Our wacko government even went as far as to justify elimination of the right to bear firearms due to the perceived threat of a mass LSD outbreak caused by terrorist attack and the difficulty in controlling armed citizens on psychedelics. Our military creates a terrorist threat then lies about it and tries to muster support for Constitutional amendments based on their insanity under the pretense that if “we” can do it so can “they”…ooooooh…Contact Disinfo or Cryptome for more declassified information on this subject matter.
Holograms in the sky have a significant effect (project bluebeam)
Timothy Leary ties in the the subject a few commenters were pointing you towards (the LSD movement of the 60′s). The illustration at the top reminds me of some other similar artwork from the period involving mind control. I herd abot a scary plant extract called scopalomine,,,very scary, I heard they messed with that and many synthetic hallucinogens and amnesiacs. I know of someone who had a 3 day amnesiac event from a popularly-prescribed muscle relaxer. Chemicals being poured everywhere from spraying the skies to poisonous chemical-filled water and food also produce the effect of birth defects and cancers. I doubt the proliferation and contamination stops soon enough.
Excellent article, btw
The is Paleo-Future. The theme of the blog is “The future that never was.” It’s about the popular imagination of the past, regarding the future. If you go down the archive of this blog you may find photos and articles about flying cars with radar dishes, or floating cities for the year 1981 or some other year in the 20th century. We all know they did not happen or that other things more weighty vaguely connected to the topic actually did happen. So please, if you want to use the blog topic as a jumping off point to share that information don’t preface it by insulting the writer of this blog. Important as it may be what you have to share, remember, if it’s historically accurate then it’s already extraneous material.
To Matt Novak..and as a follow-up to the postings of Jason..please look up the latest info regarding a very strange incident from 1951..in a French town of Point -Saint-Espirit. The residents went ‘mad ‘ and hallucinated wildly..and all was blamed on a local baker and bread-mould.
Now, more than 60 years later, it turns out it was a CIA experiment to find out how common villagers would react to LSD…and yes..this was an MK ULTRA -type exercise…and done in collaboration with Sandoz ..a Swiss chem firm.
But don’t take my [our] word for it..check with..let’s see..who do you journalists respect as sources…oh..how about the BBC? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-10996838
Who said it was OK to target unarmed civilians?
Whether it is dosing them w LSD, or other drugs, or bombing them w depleted uranium, who said it is an acceptable tactic of war to target unarmed women, children, old people and everyday normal working people living their lives, not hurting anyone, and trying to get by????
Who said they could get away with spraying anything on someone’s baby?
Why is that not an issue that anyone considers?
BTW, I always said they only targeted people of different races. If they were white, they targeted only brown people. But, they did it to white people in Dresden.
So, they really don’t care about any color of people they target. That means they hate all people, equally. Maybe they can be proud of that because they can pretend they are not racist, but only classist. War mongers are psychopaths. When they are running a war, they are joyous and happy at the countless death and destruction they cause, and call it patriotism.
Is it me or does that picture portray the twin towers being destoyed!!! Oh yes it does, two bending towers, one already hit and breaking in half and a trinagular plane flying in towards the one that is standing.
Good lord, the naivete of some posters who think they’re dropping knowledge is incredible. MKUltra is common knowledge, you’re not breaking any new ground there. Scopolamine (sp?) is a well known motion-sickness medication which has been used in interrogations for decades and you’re just now finding out about it? The fellow who jumped out of the window was, regrettably, a CIA employee. The CIA gave musicians “near lethal” doses of LSD??? Do you know what the LD-50 in humans of LSD is? That’s right, you don’t. You don’t even know what LD-50 is. The original article had a particular scope and was just fine. You wannabe experts are not helping.
katz: That’s probably why this hasn’t actually happened. The human rights violations backlash from poisoning innocent (albeit enemy) civilians would be gargantuan.
Who wants to take a bet that the U.S. government intentionally released LSD in the United States during the sixties to hippies hoping it would either make them mentally unstable, psychotic or at the very least hijack the peace movement turning it into an excuse to get high and party. By following the Grateful Dead and continuing to this very day the “movement” they have removed a potential threat to military spending and replaced it with the Drug War and endless jobs for Federal and State law enforcement. So it worked as planned.
To Mr. Hughes: Nigga puh-lease! You obviously do not care for the real scoop on this story being related… I would guess the VAST majority of Americans do not know what MK is or that it is currently being used against US citizens… though as a gateway to MK, this article is not bad… if a bit apologetic… I like el cid… Ken Kesey said in an interview it was one of the great cosmic jokes that the CIA was responsible for opening so many closed and ignorant minds by releasing it into the public (abuses aside, it has incredible abilities to cure alcoholism and other mental problems.) As for MK Ultra, the real methods require a lot more than psychodelics… they use a drug that prevents you from passing out, then they kill you by drowning, then they revive… eventually they split the personality and viola’…
YOU ALL need to get spiritual and realize a much bigger pic than some agency or other… Youtube: Douglas Duane Dietrich; Dannion Brinkley; and read Pistis Sophia, and Edgar Cacye’s pertaining to the Essenes and Christ… principalities, yo…
Matt for what it’s worth I actually enjoyed this piece precisely because it didn’t go for the more obvious MK ULTRA macro-level ‘secret’ history approach to this type of schtick.
In fact being all too aware of the mindbending military/industrial conspiratorial/counter-espionage I found your micro-level social history revelations slightly shocking.
I mean a 1959 edition of the Cedar Rapids Gazette warning about the use of “madness” gases is as startling in its own way as the little known local rag the Roswell Daily Record printing a 1947 story about the capture of a flying disk – especially since the Gazette’s story’s been vindicated many times over – whereas the Record’s…
Even the 1960 Closer Than We Think feature (which resembles something written by Grant Morrison in 2012!) becomes all the more startling when you realise it’s aimed at precisely the sort of kids who’d grow up to pursue researches in precisely these fields (as opposed to being positioned in a major national newsheet by way of influencing public opinion).
Matt. I think the lesson here is: have a point when you put up articles like this. Your article had a bunch of “facts” that are laid out with any cohesive thesis as to why they are being spun together in a story. Did you just want to seem hip and cool by mentioning drugs? YOU HAVE NO CONCLUSION. How did you get a job writing? I couldn’t agree more with the misgivings people have over your article.
I gotta go with the herd here.
Seems like someone found some cool retro-pics and rather than just running them, felt they had to cut and paste some of the words from where they originally ran.
More than half of this is from other stuff, and when you add in the pics, it’s more like 2/3.