"MIND STALKERS" In Lexington, KY -Part I

In the 50's,only a handful of scientists in the United States were carrying out research with LSD. At this time, the field of experimental psychiatry had little funding agencies that were funding their research. The CIA looked upon this as a marvelous opportunity to enhance LSD research. There had not been, at this time, any systematic research on LSD, and with the CIA's virtually unlimited resources, a whole new series of grants arose through CIA-lined conduits. Since the CIA was funding these research grants, they could now more readily keep track of all
research that was being carried out with LSD.
Many of the research programs carried out would be illegal today and many of the activities being carried out were illegal even at that time.

In a scientific study starting in 1954 as Operation MKPILOT, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb oversaw experiments which were sponsored by the National Institute of Health at the Addiction Research Center of Lexington Narcotics Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. The Addiction Research Center in Lexington, was ran by Dr. Harris Isbell.

This institution was a place where heroin addicts would go to break their habit. The patients had no way of knowing that this hospital was an arm of the CIA and that they were being used in the development of mind control drugs. Whenever the CIA came across new drugs, they were funneled into institutions such as this one, to test the drugs.

Over eight hundred compounds, including LSD was tested there. When drug users were in need of a fix, mostly black heroin addicts, they could go to Lexington and volunteer to be guinea pigs. In payment for their service they were given morphine and heroin for their participation in the experiment.The subjects have long since scattered, and no one apparently has measured the aftereffects of the more extreme experiments on them.

Perhaps the most infamous experiment came when Isbell gave LSD to seven black men for seventy-seven straight days. Isbell's research notes indicates that he gave the men "quadruple" the "normal" dosages. The doctor marveled at the men's apparent tolerance to these remarkable amounts of LSD. Isbell wrote in his notes that "this type of behavior is to be expected in patients of this type."

Watch for Part II-"MIND STALKERS" In Lexington, KY