MI6 Ordered LSD Tests On Servicemen

After many years of denial, the UK Ministry of Defence have finally admitted that '___' experiments were conducted on UK Servicemen at Porton Down during the mid 1950s. These are a completely separate series of '___' experiments to those done at Porton Down 10 years later.

Surprisingly, the MOD have confirmed that the experiments were conducted on behalf of the UK Secret Intelligence Service (commonly known as MI6) in order to investigate whether '___' could be used as an interrogation technique. This new admission came in reponse to a Freedom of Information request made by one of the experimentees. Lawyers for the experimentees are now making formal FOI requests to MI6 for the release of all documents relating to these experiments.

MI6 ordered '___' tests on servicemen

Volunteers fed hallucinogen in mind control experiments

Rob Evans
Saturday January 22, 2005
The Guardian

Fifty years ago, Eric Gow had a baffling and unexplained experience. As a 19-year-old sailor, he remembers going to a clandestine military establishment, where he was given something to drink in a sherry glass and experienced vivid hallucinations.
Other servicemen also remember tripping: one thought he was seeing tigers jumping out of a wall, while another recalls faces "with eyes running down their cheeks, Salvador Dalí-style".

Mr Gow and another serviceman had volunteered to take part in what they thought was research to find a cure for the common cold.

Mr Gow felt that the government had never explained what happened to him. But now he has received an official admission for the first time, confirmed last night, that the intelligence agency MI6 tested '___' on servicemen.

The Guardian has spoken to three servicemen who say that they were not warned that they were being fed a hallucinogen during experiments.

One of the scientists involved at the time suggested that the experiments were stopped because it was feared that the acid could produce "suicidal tendencies".

MI6, known formally as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and responsible for spying operations abroad, carried out the tests in the cold war in an attempt to uncover a "truth drug" which would make prisoners talk against their will in interrogations.

It appears that MI6 feared that the Russians had discovered their own "brainwashing" chemical to control the minds of their enemies, fears triggered by pictures of American servicemen who had been captured during the Korean war confessing to their "crimes" and calling for a US surrender.

In 1949, a Hungarian dissident had also "confessed" robotically in a show trial without, it seemed, being in control of himself.

In parallel experiments, the CIA infamously tested '___' and other drugs on unwitting human subjects in a 20-year search to uncover mind-manipulation techniques. The trials were widely criticised when they came to light in the 1970s.

Mr Gow and another man say that while serving in the military they volunteered to take part in research. They were told to go to the Porton Down chemical warfare establishment in Wiltshire, where servicemen were regularly tested in experiments.

Mr Gow, then a radio operator in the Royal Navy, says that scientists gave him the liquid to drink in 1954, a decade before the effects of '___' were popularised by hippies.

Soon he could not add up three figures. The radiator started to go in and out "like a squeezebox", while shoe marks on the floor spun like a catherine wheel. He says he still seemed to be tripping that evening, when he and a colleague went dancing in nearby Salisbury, with wellies on. "I don't think we got a date that night," he said yesterday.

He added that the scientists had been "irresponsible", particularly as they had not kept the men under close supervision. Now a magistrate, he submitted an open government request to the Ministry of Defence seeking more details of the experiments.

The MoD replied that "much of the information concerning '___' involves research conducted at the behest of the Secret Intelligence Service ... We are more than happy to speak to them [SIS] on your behalf and will pursue the question of downgrading the security classification of certain documents to allow us to disclose them to you".

Last night, a Foreign Office spokesman confirmed that in 1953 and 1954 Porton Down carried out SIS-commissioned tests of '___' on service personnel.

www.guardian.co.uk...

'It was frightening. I will never forget it'

This is quite a surprising admission from the Ministry of Defence. For the last 10-15 years they have constantly refused to comment on the early Porton Down (1950s) '___' experiments. Researchers have always suspected that Porton Down had carried out similar '___' interrogation investigations as to those conducted by the CIA during MKULTRA, but the MOD have always refused to comment.


zero lift

WoW. free drugs

i can see why this would be a problem to the people that these experiments were tried on. i wonder if they concented to these 'scientific' tests?

It makes you wonder..... that if the govenment would stood so low as to experiment without concent on law abiding citizens then what other experiments have they done? on long serving military personel or the general public.

[edit on 22/1/2005 by wyatt43]

I think I recall hearing stories about the U.S. gov't doing somekind of drug testing on servicemen in Vietnam. I haven't researched this or anything recently, just wanted to post a quick comment about it. In my military history class I think is where I heard this. Something like, A platoon or a smaller unit of men were given these drugs ('___', or some other narcotic) to see what effects it would have during combat. At anyrate, one U.S. unit came across another U.S. unit and they basically blew eachother apart. If anyone knows anything about what I'm talking about and could provide a link to a post or website, I'd appreciate it. This kind of peaks my interest. It makes you wonder what sorts of experiments are being performed on our boys in Iraq as we speak.

Thanks

IronMan