In an attempt to keep tabs on their colleagues in the Technical Services Staff, the CIA's Office of Security issued this June 1954 memo, indicating the reckless abandon with which members of the TSS pursued their drug tests.
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"Sometime during the fall of 1953, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb made a tour of
the [text deleted] ... undoubtedly in connection with offical business of TSS....
Gottlieb gave out samples of some psycho-genic chemical.... It is not
definitely certain that it was LSD... but it appears to be the likely
chemical. Gottlieb also is reported to have given some of the
chemical to one of our staff officers with the idea that the
staff officer would place the chemical in drinking water to be used
by a speaker at a political rally.... There is some reason to believe that Gottlieb was present at the experiment which resulted in the death of an Army officer by suicide sometime around Thanksgiving Day in New York City. This Army officer allegedly jumped out a window to his death after taking LSD..." (At a three day retreat for a group of CIA and Army technicians in the secluded backwoods of Maryland, Dr. Gottlieb spiked the after-dinner cocktails with LSD. Dr. Frank Olson, an army scientist, had never taken the drug before and slipped into a deep state of depression and paranoia in the weeks following. His transfer to a sanitarium was arranged, and on his last night in New York Olson was checked into the Statler Hilton with a CIA agent assigned to monitor him. In the early hours of the morning, the troubled scientist plunged headlong through a closed window to his death ten floors below) |