CIA. LSD. 5 DEAD. 100's HOSPITALISED. French Goverment queries USA over 1950's experiment

Hi ATS. This is my first thread, so go easy on me guys 'n' galz.

I've just read a review of a new book in this months FOTEAN TIMES magazine. The book is called A TERRIBLE MISTAKE: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments, by investigative journalist H.P. Albarelli Jr.
It documents that the Pont-St.-Esprit outbreak in 1951 was the result of a covert '___' aerosol experiment directed by the US Army’s top-secret Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The contents sound explosive, and after a quick search on ATS I couldn't find any information about this incident so I thought I'd better start a thread and let others know about this.

I found this webpage which mentions the book and some connected information:
www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk...

Here is a sample of what this is all about. it's dated feb 09 2010 so I guess this all quite fresh.

"A major diplomatic and political scandal is erupting that could have significant import for French-American relations. It involves new research into the mysterious outbreak of “mass insanity” in a village in southern France that affected some 500 people and resulted in five deaths.

According to reliable US sources, the US State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research has been given a confidential inquiry from the office of Erard Corbin de Mangoux, head of the French intelligence agency DSGE (Directorate General for External Security). According to the report the inquiry regards a recently-published account of U.S. government complicity in a mysterious 1951 incident of mass insanity in France in the village of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France.

The strange outbreak severely affected nearly five hundred people, causing the deaths of at least five, two by suicide. For nearly 60 years the Pont-St.-Esprit incident has been attributed either to ergot poisoning, meaning that villagers consumed bread infected with a psychedelic mold or to organic mercury poisoning.

Scientists with the highly respected British Medical Journal were quickly drawn in September 1951 to what it dubbed the “outbreak of poisoning.” After initial thoughts that the cause was bread infection, they concluded that mold could not explain the event or the afflictions that struck hundreds of people in the village.

Scientists dispatched to the scene from the Sandoz Chemical company in nearby Basle, Switzerland also stated that the mold was the cause, but many other experts disagreed with them.

Over time the mystery of the outbreak only deepened and no answers were found to be satisfactory. A 2008 book about the history of bread published in France by Professor Steven Kaplan emphasizes that the “mystery remains unsolved” and at the time, still continued to perplex scientists.

New revelations

A book just released in the United States, detailing exhaustive interviews with now-retired US intelligence personnel who had direct knowledge of the 1951 French events, charges that the until-now unexplained “mass insanity” in the remote village were, rather, a top-secret CIA experiment conducted under the code-name Operation Span. Operation Span was a part of Project MK/NAOMI, itself an adjunct project to the more notorious Project MK/ULTRA, as in “ultra-top secret.”

A French newspaper at the time wrote, “It is neither Shakespeare nor Edgar Poe. It is, alas, the sad reality all around Pont-St.-Esprit and its environs, where terrifying scenes of hallucinations are taking place. They are scenes straight out of the Middle Ages, scenes of horror and pathos, full of sinister shadows.”

Sounds incredibly fascinating and terrifying in equal measure. I hope this piqued your inetrest as much as it did mine.

[edit on 6-3-2010 by manmental]

[edit on 6-3-2010 by manmental]

Nice post.

Albarelli's book is indeed one of the most remarkable and best available on the subject. It's sure a good starting point for delving into this rabbit hole...

I can only recommend it.

There is an existing thread on the french angle to this story though yet I was unable to find it... ANyways.. NOthing wrong with discussing this again...

A very nice first post !

I have been reading a lot lately on the Army's bio warfare program at Ft. Detrick. I am currently doing a thread on Frank Olson and what happened to him, I should have it up in a week or so.
The more I read into it the more information I find..Its also weird how so many things connect to one another. What happened to Frank Olson was horrible and shouldnt have happened to him or anyone else that was a part of their insane experiments. The MK-Ultra program and all the sub programs that came before or after it are my favorite subjects to read about besides UFOs and Aliens. They did some crazy stuff! I have only loosely heard of the incident in France. I will look into it some more when I have a chance. I wouldnt be surprised if it was part of some sick experiment with '___' or another drug.

S&F

reply to post by mblahnikluver


ALabrelli's book leaves almost no doubt in establishing a CIA-connection to the french mass hysteria.

He did some careful research and was able to pinpoit who, when, how.

Sorry for hyping the book so much I have no conflict of interest I just love trineday books (the best publisher I've found so far) and this is one of their very best titles.

reply to post by NichirasuKenshin


Yeah I was just looking online for a PDF form of it but no luck. I will go to Barnes and Noble before work and order it. I want to read it! I would order it online but I am not too fond of people having a data base of all the books I have ordered...some are very out there..lol

I will definitely read the book and keep and eye on this thread.

reply to post by mblahnikluver


Ha ha.. Don't make me paranoid... I own about 800 books and I have ordered about 75% of them online :-) I never found the ones I was really interested in physical stores.

I used to have facebook and in my profile I listed every bookd I had ever read. Then I realized that that was a very stupid thing to do for someone as paranoid as I am. Then I deleted my facebook account.

Now you come and make me think of the fact that every single book I've ordered is still saved on some central system @ the company I ordered them from.

Should I mention that sometimes the books I order don't arrive at all?

Spooky. LOL. You've made me ultra paranoid. LOL... hehe

reply to post by NichirasuKenshin


LOL yeah they look at me funny sometimes when I go in and order books. I asked for books on aliens and she went to fiction and I said no I want books on actual alien encounters...She looked at me and said they arent real and well I just smiled and said yeah keep thinking that! lol

I would love to see the list of books you have read, 800 is a lot!

I did order documents thru the FOIA the other day on MKUltra and other topics of interest. I dont really get paranoid about that kind of stuff, although I do wonder sometimes lol I read a lot of varying topics

What other books do you recommend on the OPs topic in regards to what happened in France?

reply to post by mblahnikluver


I don't have any books about the incident of France per se. I have some news-clippings from back then and I have some french sources on it. But only Albarelli has made a thorough documentation of said incident so far that I know of.

If you mean books on the subject of MK-Ultra(CHATTER,BLUEBIRD,MKNAOMI,ARTICHOKE), I guess I could give you a longer list if you wish ... Most of the declassified documents on MK-Ultra are available on the net though. But reading 30,000+ pages of copies of type-written documents can be rather annoying, as 90% of them are boring or irrelevant anyway :-) ... So books that kind of mash all those docs together are kind of a necessity. Unless you're a millionaires kid who loves reading and has nothing else to do ;-)


Edit to add: THinking of it, I think Jaques Vallée has written about the subject. But from a UFO-point of view, which I don't believe makes much sense in this case. But I'll try to find the individual book that contains the section dealing with it.


[edit on 6-3-2010 by NichirasuKenshin]

Good to see the story getting mainstream press:

"French bread spiked with '___' in CIA experiment"

www.telegraph.co.uk...'___'-in-CIA-experiment.html

Hey all,

This just hit the BBC too:

BBC Source

The use of '___' appears synonymous with MKULTRA!

Very interesting indeed.