
The Sinister Scientist Behind the CIA’s Mind-Control Mayhem - anarbadalov
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-sinister-scientist-behind-the-cias-mind-control-mayhem
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rdtsc
> when “Artichoke scientists came up with a new drug or other technique they
> wished to test… they asked the CIA station in South Korea to supply a batch
> [of] ‘expendable’ subjects...

While I’d like to believe the CIA has since found its moral compass and
abandoned these kinds of experiments, I have a suspicion that it might still
be going on and they just found ways to hide it better.

There had to be other technology since then that they looked at and said “we
should try this thing on humans”.

> One of Pfeiffer’s subjects was James “Whitey” Bulger, who later became a
> notorious Boston gangland killer. Bulger said that as a young inmate, he was
> given LSD daily for more than a year.

That is bizarre. Wasn’t another killer, the unabomber also tied to some
psychological experiments when he was in college...

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TurkishPoptart
The CIA were just _obsessed_ with LSD for all sorts of HUMINT purposes. Part
of this was that they were operating under the faulty assumption that the USSR
and other Cold War powers were ordering massive amounts of the stuff, so the
whole "Russians are gonna do it faster, stronger, and better than us UNLESS we
prepare" complex kicked in.

There was, of course, a strong incentive to test anti-interrogation
techniques, should enemy intelligence use LSD against captured spies/our guys.
From my own teenage experimentation, I can posit that, in the right set and
setting, it'd be damn hard for me to keep any sort of secret. But it would
probably be the combined fear from being tortured/interrogated while
definitely having a bad trip that would give me up.

