I
OPINION
Monday, April 13, 1987
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Page 4
The Michigan Doily
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U1Iie Sirbi3an 1auI
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
CIA did acid experiments
Vol. XCVII, No. 132
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board. All other
cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion
of the Daily.
A bid for science
TIH STATE OF MICHIGAN should
actively lobby for the proposed
Department of Energy "super
collider," but not without cautious
consideration of the adverse effects
of such a major project.
The purpose of the super collider
is to provide physicists with a tool
"powerful enough to advance
scientific understanding of the
building blocks of matter. This in
itself is worthwhile.
The "super collider" would also
provide a much needed boost to
state employment as at least 2500
permanent jobs and many
temporary construction positions
would accompany the $4.4 billion
project. Countless other jobs
would arise from the influx of
tourists and scholars who would
visit the site. An annual budget of
$270 million would serve as a
constant infusion to the local
economy.
Aside from the positive
economic effect of this
undertaking, the state's universities
could also benefit greatly from their
proximity to such advanced
scientific resources. Michigan's
universities would inevitably draw
scientists both as guest lecturers
and as permanent faculty because
of the super collider..
Such economic and scientific ad -
vantages compel the state to cam -
paign for this facility. Nonetheless,
legislators must uphold their obli -
gations to citizens' rights. At least
1800 citizens of Monroe County,
which along with Lenawee County
contains the proposed site of the
facility, have signed a petition
against the collider. If the state
cannot persuade a majority of the
residents of Monroe of the safety
and advantages of the project, it
should find another place where
citizens do support the collider.
Along these lines, residents'
fears may subside upon learning of
the uneventful operation of Illinois'
Fermi National Acceleration
Laboratory for the last twenty
years.
The 150 some odd residents of
Monroe and Lenawee Counties
directly affected by this project
deserve full compensation if forced
to relocate.
The issue of displacement also
applies to the ancient Indian burial
grounds in the proposed area. It
seems that Michigan should be
able to find a way of building
around the Indian burial ground.
While the $4.4 billion already
appropriated for the project cannot
be reallocated now, energy officials
in the future should explore
alternative uses for such funds.
Basic scientific research is
necessary, but more funding
should go to studies of energy
sources, such as solar and wind
power, which will reduce the
world's dependence on fossil
fuels.
The $4.4 billion could also find
use in many other areas with more
immediate practical applications -
housing, nutrition and education
for example. Socialist critics are
right to believe that the $4.4 billion
will go to corporate contractors and
an elite of scientific employees.
Furthermore, the pay-off to society
as a whole for the advanced
research is both uncertain and in -
tangible compared with schools,
roads or health care. Unfortunately
though, this criticism applies to
many projects undertaken in this
capitalist society - SDI for
example - and projects such as
the super collider are fairly benign
in comparison.
Michigan has an excellent oppor -
tunity to advance both its economy
and educational stature by seeking
the Department of Energy "super
collider," but it must minimize the
possibly detrimentalimpact of this
project at the same time.
Construction and tourism
associated with the project would
buoy the state economy. World
renowned scientists would
certainly enhance the prestige and
educational resources of the state's
universities.
No gains are without costs, and
the proposed collider would
adversely affect the lives of those
residents displaced by the con -
struction. Consequently, every
effort possible should be made to
minimize displacement and to
compensate any affected home -
owners.
By Michael D. Shapiro
Investigative journalists Martin Lee and
Bruce Shlain have written an altogether
remarkable book, Acid Dreams. Starting
with declassified CIA documents and
working from open literature and accounts
and interviews with participants, they have
put together a social history of LSD.
The subject is fascinating, and one which
reaches far beyond our cultural memories
of the hippie movement. By its nature,
much of this history has been hidden,
and it's quite remarkable that they have
been able to ferret out as much of it as they
have. This is some of what they tell:
The story starts in 1942 with the OSS,
the forerunner of the CIA, embarking on a
program to develop a "truth drug" for use
in interrogation. This quest continued in
the CIA at least into the early sixties.
During this period they did crazy and evil
things. They used uninformed human
subjects - some from the military, some
from prisons and insane asylums, some
people from off the street. They spiked
each other's drinks without warning. (This
seemed to be the thing to do during one
period.)
Many of the "experiments" amounted to
nothing less than psychological torture.
People were brutally interrogated while
under the influence of massive doses of
LSD. In one method of drug based
interrogation, the victim was strapped into
a chair with an intravenous in each arm,
one for uppers and one for downers. The
interrogator would then give alternate
Sdoses.People were kept tripping for over
70 days at a time. Others were kept asleep
for months and then kept tripping, half
asleep with loudspeakers under the pillow
to reprogram them. In one experiment,
people were given LSD, then
lobotomized, then given LSD again to see
if there was any difference.
Much of this work was done by respected
academics. During the fifties, the CIA
ran a whorehouse in San Francisco where
drug addicted prostitutes were paid to get
the customers stoned while the CIA's man
in charge sat behind a mirror sipping
martinis, watching. By day he worked for
the narc squad busting pushers. He later
said, "...I toiled whole heartedly in the
vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun.
Where else could a red blooded American
boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and
pillage, and all with the sanction and
blessing of the All Highest?" In charge
of much of this was Richard Helms, who
admitted he had "no answer to the moral
issue," but thought it all necessary to
"keep up with Soviet advances.''
LSD also had a fairly wide currency in
therapeutic circles. The authors say there
were over a thousand scholarly articles on
this, and people seemed to be getting
results. Among other things there seemed
to be results in treating alcoholism, and in
treating terminal patients. Leary came to
acid through this academic route, and had
success preventing recidivism in prison
Michael D. Shapiro is a graduate
student in mathematics.
inmates before he went public.
But another strange thing was also going
on. A former OSS super spy by the
name of Captain Hubbard had turned on
to acid through his CIA contacts. He
seems to have been the first person in that
milieu who looked on the acid trip as
a spiritual experience. (He claimed to
have witnessed his own conception and
participated in it during his first trip.) He
embraced acid with a messianic zeal. And
he had access to the highest levels of
government and industry. During the
fifties and sixties, he turned on thousands
of people.
People like Hubbard and his disciples were
convinced that LSD was spiritual dynamite
capable of waking people up out of their
life-long sleep, and thought that the best
way to use it was to turn on the elite.
So it became a thing of artists,
psychiatrists, churchmen, corporate
executives and the highest level of
government (prime ministers are hinted at)
at a time when the rest of us had never
heard of it. For example, at the height of
the cold war, Henry and Clare Booth Luce
were tripping with their friends regularly.
During this same period, a Catholic priest
wrote in a letter to the faithful, "We
humbly ask Our Heavenly Mother the
Virgin Mary, help of all who call upon
her to aid us to know and understand
the true qualities -of these psychedelics,
the full capacities of man's noblest
faculties and according to God's laws to
use them for the benefit of mankind here
and in eternity."
Eventually it was people like Leary on
the East Coast and Kesey on the West
who brought acid to the attention of the
world at large. Interestingly, it seems to
have been Allen Ginsberg who was the
first to have suggested that this experience
of God in a chemical shouldn't be kept
among an elite, but should be given to
everybody. It was a bold and simple idea.
After all, why should a few have God as
their private preserve?
When Leary's circle started going public,
things started to move fast. After various
attempts to get things hushed up, Leary
and Alpert were thrown out of Harvard, the
first time this had happened to faculty
members in the twentieth century.
Selected academic opinion was rallied
towards the view that LSD should be a
controlled drug, and the FDA quickly
moved to classify it. The experts who
lined up behind this opinion were almost
exclusively people with close contacts to
the CIA, and the FDA and CIA were
very close. Though the authors can't
prove it, it seems fairly clear that this
was orchestrated by the CIA. Researchers
who had been working with LSD for a
long time suddenly found themselves
frozen out.
Leary and Alpert moved on to their
famous Milbrook scene and things began
to heat up. Congressional hearings were
held and Leary, Ginsberg and Kleps were
among those to testify. (Kleps had been at
Millbrook, but was of a different mind than
Leary). Leary testified that acid was a
wonderful thing and would usher in an
earthly paradise and shouldn't be banned.
Ginsberg testified that acid was a very
useful tool for exploring and healing the
mind, that the medical dangers had been
exaggerated, and that it shouldn't ,be
banned. Kleps testified that acid was,
powerful and amazing stuff, and that.if
they banned it, they were going to faceA
massive cultural and political rebellion
throughout the entire land of a kind and
scale that had never been seen before.
The authors go on to chronicle that
rebellion as best they can. The heyday
of the Haight, its collapse under the
pressure of massive media fed immigration.
the perennial tensions between the hippie
types and the political types, and the police
infiltration and subversion of the
movement. There's fascinating
information here about the intrigues and
social history of the supply system,
Those times are very hard to write about.
Those times were more diverse than the
earlier periods, if only because their wr
so many more people involved. There
was a feeling of incredible ferment and
reassessment, and along with it, a
tremendous sense of ambiguity. And the
involvement of the media makes it very
hard to separate the experience from the
hype. In many ways, ultimately it's- a
tragedy.
There's the tragedy of an entire social
movement unable to fulfil its own
potential, partly because of the
overwhelming hostility of a narrow,
rigid, threatened . society, and partly
because-of its own inability to grapple
with its own weakness. LSD's
loosening of the mental bounds seems to
invite a certain kind of over reaching and
loss of balance. Part of the tragedy, and
this will be very hard to overcome, is the
fact that LSD was used to do wonderfdl
things - before we were all told whAi
to think of it as. It's hard to imagine
people will ever again be able t
encounter it directly for what it can bd
Our own hype and history have given it
too much baggage.
So was it a dead loss? One begins tp
get that feeling towards the end of tile
book watching everything unravel,
People betray each other, send each other t
jail. People have turned to vicious
violence, some of it political, some of it
mindless, some of it both. The drug scen4
has turned to hard drugs, some of it thi
heroin that the CIA was smuggling in fdi
years inside the bodies of dead GI,
Things got very ugly. But I don't thins
it was a total loss, and I'll give you on'e
reason why. The drug movement and the
anti-war movement were very closely
intertwined. In spite of the tension~
between them, theyfueled each othef
Both of these movements becamo
frustrated by their apparent impotence
But during the entire summer of 1969
Richard Nixon kept the Strategic Ai3
Command on full nuclear alert to
bomb Hanoi. According to Henry
Kissinger, the only thing that stopped
themwas what he called, "the hammer
anti-war pressure."
LETTERS
City should have stopped Nazi march)
Military research at the University:
Who pays for it?
THE END USE CLAUSE PREVENTS
some research with lethal purposes
from taking place at the University.
Whether or not the it takes place on
campus, everyone's taxes and tui -
tion fund the research projects.
Because of limitations placed on
the end use clause and the con -
servative make up of the research
policies committee, some weapons
research occurs on campus. Tuition
contributes both directly and in -
directly to this by providing
support facilities and salaries for
researchers at the University who
participate in life endangering
research. Additionally, state taxes
fund many aspects of the Uni -
versity such as new research
multimillion dollar research pro -
jects. The federal budget already
puts weapons research above
general education. Universities that
recruit weapons research projects
take on these skewed priorities
when money is spent on weapons
research facilities rather than on
teaching or life improving research.
In 1983, the New York Supreme
Court ruled taxation comes before
religious or moral convictions. An
Amish person refused to pay taxes
for his workers because the money
would end up in the military
budget. The court overruled his
religious beliefs and forced him to
pay for military development.
There is no legal way to avoid
To the Daily:
On Sunday, March 22,
1987, I became enraged as I sat
down to read the Ann Arbor
News. Ms. Amy Smith's ar -
ticle describing the Neo-Nazi
demonstration the previous day
compelled me to question fur -
ther the morality by which
Ann Arbor's City Council is
driven by. I wonder whether
the city's leaders appreciate
both the seriousness and the
far-reaching consequences of
the current racist uproar. And
more importantly, I'm skep -
tical about the sincerity with
which city officials speak when
they denouce such actions, and
promise a solution.
It is inexcusable that police
action was not taken Saturday.
According to Ms. Smith, the
demonstrators arrived unan -
nounced, shouting White pow -
er slogans and inciting violence
without a parade permit. In
their alnnual s4nrinv marches-
propriate at this time. With
the recent outset of racism and
claims of discrimination on
campus, Ann Arbor Blacks
(including University students)
have been justifiably up in
arms. The presence of Nazis
could have obviously antag -
onized th already unstable sit-
uation and elicited possibly un -
controllable danger. The Nazis
also pose a threat to the many
Jewish and Homosexual mem -
bers of society and would no
doubt complicate matters tre -
mendously. As a minority
faction, the Neo-Nazis are pro -
tected under the Constitution,
Blasphemy!
To the Daily:
I have a hard time believing
that any newspaper would print
the trash contained in the
article "God is Dead," (Daily,
however, the government can
limit or curtail those rights, by
law, for the public good. Pre -
venting a Nazi march in Ann
Arbor in the heart of racist
paranoia is most certainly for
the public good.
On the political side of the
issue, such a stand against a
major racist faction could only
boost the morale of the people
and prove that the City Coun -
cil's equalitarian concerns are
sincere. The City Council has
echoed University of Michigan
president Harold Shapiro's
sentiments disdaining the rac -
ism on campus, yet allowing,;
Nazis to roam the streets o
Ann Arbor freely, generating
still more anti-Black prejudice
just serves to irritate the people
to a possible revolutionary:
state. Most distressing how -
ever, is not even the lie that
our leaders are trying to slip by
us, but that this disgusiting
and only harmful spectacle can
take precedence over justice,
public safety, and their sup
posed motives for racial
equality.
-Steve Hochman;
March 29
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