Researchers tested pot, LSD on Army volunteers

Book site:http://www.forgottensecrets.net/

And interview with author by RU Sirius: http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/01/10/hallucinogenic-weapons-the-other-chemical-warfare/--------http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-05-army-experiments_N.htm?csp=34

Researchers tested pot, LSD on Army volunteers

By Richard Willing
USA TODAY
April 6, 2007

Army doctors gave soldier volunteers synthetic marijuana, LSD and twodozen other psychoactive drugs during experiments aimed at developingchemical weapons that could incapacitate enemy soldiers, a psychiatristwho performed the research says in a new memoir.The program, which ran at the Army's Edgewood, Md., arsenal from 1955until about 1972, concluded that counterculture staples such as acid andpot were either too unpredictable or too mellow to be useful as weapons,psychiatrist James Ketchum said in an interview.The program did yield one hallucinogenic weapon: softball-size artilleryrounds that were filled with powdered quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, adeliriant of the belladonnoid family that had placed some researchsubjects in a sleeplike state and left them impaired for days.Ketchum says the BZ bombs were stockpiled at an Army arsenal in Arkansasbut never deployed. They were later destroyed.The Army acknowledged the program's existence in 1975. Follow-up studiesby the Army in 1978 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1981 foundthat volunteers suffered no long-term effects.Insider's accountKetchum's book, Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten, appears tobe the first insider's account of experiments performed on about 2,000soldier volunteers, says Steven Aftergood, a government-secrecy expertfor the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C. Ketchumself-published the book, which he sells on his website.In an interview, Ketchum, 75, said he wrote the book to trigger a debateabout the potential uses of non-lethal chemicals to incapacitateterrorists who take hostages or use human shields. "Incapacitatingagents are designed to save lives," he said. "Isn't it at leastsomething we should be thinking about?"Such research, says chemical weapons opponent Edward Hammond, would notonly be illegal under current international law but probably nevershould have been performed."There are things that have taken place in the past that should probablystay there," says Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project, an Austingroup that opposes biological warfare.Ketchum's memoir draws from previously classified files, includingfilmed experiments, and notes of tests given subjects before, during andafter they were fed, sprayed or injected with mind-altering chemicals.He says:*LSD was rejected for weapons use because even soldiers on prolongedtrips could carry out violent acts.*Even especially powerful marijuana lacked "knockdown effect." It wasrejected because its effects could be overcome simply by lying down andresting.*Soldier volunteers were willing participants who knew the program'spotential risks. Drugs given to soldiers were described in general termsbut not named though "many seemed to find out through the grapevine."*Intelligence reports of the time showed that Soviet researchers wereplanning a large-scale LSD program.*The CIA ran a parallel program that sometimes gave hallucinogenssecretly to unwitting citizens. The agency persuaded two Army doctors tocarry out experiments for the CIA that the Army would not haveauthorized.Ketchum says the Army phased out the hallucinogen project in about 1972,in part because disclosure of such research would have caused a "publicrelations problem."Ketchum's notes suggest the Army's fears were not imaginary. Theydescribe soldiers on "red oil," an especially powerful form ofmarijuana, who smirked for hours and found even routine spatialreasoning tests to be hilarious.Soldiers under the influence of hallucinogens ate imaginary chickens,took showers in full uniform while smoking cigars and chatted withinvisible people for two to three days at a time. One attempted to rideoff on an imaginary horse while another played with kittens only hecould see. Another described an order of toast as smelling "like aFrench whore."Some of the researchers also took LSD "as a matter of curiosity,"Ketchum says.His lone trip, he adds, was "something of an anti-climax." Colors seemedmore vivid and music more compelling, he remembers, but "there were nobreakthroughs in consciousness, no Timothy Leary stuff."At least two soldiers who received LSD in the 1950s later sued the Army,alleging that the drug later caused them to suffer memory loss,hallucinations and occasional outbursts of violence. The claims weredenied.After leaving the Army, Ketchum saw patients in a private psychiatricpractice.The experiments on human subjects ended in 1975, according to JeffSmart, historian for the Army's Research, Development and EngineeringCommand at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.The United States signed a United Nations-sponsored chemical weapons banin 1993 that outlawed incapacitating agents.Calmative agentsEven so, the U.S. military has remained interested in researchingnon-lethal chemicals.In 2000, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, a Quantico, Va.,group run by all four major military branches, commissioned a study ofthe possible military uses of "calmative" pharmaceuticals such asanesthetics and serotonin reuptake inhibitors.The Sunshine Project's Hammond, who obtained the study through theFreedom of Information Act, says using calmatives as weapons would alsobe outlawed by the 1993 chemical weapons ban. Ketchum says that is notclear.In October 2002, Russian special forces used a calmative agent to subdueIslamist Chechen terrorists who were holding about 850 hostages in aMoscow theater. More than 120 hostages died from the drug's effects.