Did the CIA Test LSD in the NYC Subway?
This has go to be the worst place on Earth to take a “trip,” via Gothamist:
The author of a new book about the CIA’s hallucinogenic drug tests during the Cold War says there’s evidence the agency used NYC commuters as their experimental subjects. He found documentation of the subway tests — which allegedly occurred in 1950 — while researching his nonfiction account. “The experiment was pretty shocking — shocking that the CIA and the Army would release LSD like that, among innocent unwitting folks,” H.P. Albarelli told the Post.
One piece of evidence cited in A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments is a declassified FBI report from Aug. 25, 1950. “The BW [biological weapon] experiments to be conducted by representatives of the Department of the Army in the New York Subway System in September 1950, have been indefinitely postponed,” it says. Dr. Henry Eigelsbach, a former CIA research scientist, says that the aerosol LSD tests did in fact happen, though little is known about their scale and results.
