French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experimentThe Telegraph: In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously stuck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.
For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind control experiment at the height of the Cold War...
On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire. One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: 'I am a plane,' before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs... Another saw his heart escaping through his feet... Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets...
H P Abarelli Jr, an investigative journalist, claims the outbreak resulted from a covert experiment directed by the CIA and the US Army's top-secred Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The scientists... worked for the Swiss-based Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company, which was then secretly supplying both the Army and CIA with LSD...
After the Korean War the Americans launched a vast research programme into the mental manipulation of prisoners and enemy troops. Scientists at Fort Detrick told him that agents had sprayed LSD into the air and also contaminated 'local food products.'...
The real 'smoking gun' was a White House document sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission formed in 1975 to investigate CIA abuses. It contained the names of a number of French nationals who had been secretly employed by the CIA and made direct reference to the 'Pont St. Esprit incident,' In its quest to research LSD as an offensive weapon... the Army also drugged over 5,700 unwitting American servicemen between 1953 and 1965.
Locals in Pont-Saint-Esprit still want to know why they were hit by such apocalyptic scenes. 'At the time people brought up the theory of an experiment aimed at controlling a popular revolt,' said Charles Granjoh, 71. 'I almost kicked the bucket,' he told the weekly French magazine Les Inrockuptibles. 'I'd like to know why.'
