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Army doctors gave soldier volunteers synthetic marijuana, LSD and two dozen other psychoactive drugs during experiments aimed at developing chemical weapons that could incapacitate enemy soldiers, a psychiatrist who performed the research says in a new memoir.
The program, which ran at the Army's Edgewood, Md., arsenal from 1955 until about 1972, concluded that counterculture staples such as acid and pot were either too unpredictable or too mellow to be useful as weapons, psychiatrist James Ketchum said in an interview.
The program did yield one hallucinogenic weapon: softball-size artillery rounds that were filled with powdered quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, a deliriant of the belladonnoid family that had placed some research subjects in a sleeplike state and left them impaired for days.
Ketchum says the BZ bombs were stockpiled at an Army arsenal in Arkansas but never deployed. They were later destroyed.
The Army acknowledged the program's existence in 1975. Follow-up studies by the Army in 1978 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1981 found that volunteers suffered no long-term effects.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Army | LSD
Insider's account
Ketchum's book, Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten, appears to be the first insider's account of experiments performed on about 2,000 soldier volunteers, says Steven Aftergood, a government-secrecy expert for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C. Ketchum self-published the book, which he sells on his website.
In an interview, Ketchum, 75, said he wrote the book to trigger a debate about the potential uses of non-lethal chemicals to incapacitate terrorists who take hostages or use human shields. "Incapacitating agents are designed to save lives," he said. "Isn't it at least something we should be thinking about?"
Such research, says chemical weapons opponent Edward Hammond, would not only be illegal under current international law but probably never should have been performed.
"There are things that have taken place in the past that should probably stay there," says Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project, an Austin group that opposes biological warfare.
Ketchum's memoir draws from previously classified files, including filmed experiments, and notes of tests given subjects before, during and after they were fed, sprayed or injected with mind-altering chemicals.
He says:
•LSD was rejected for weapons use because even soldiers on prolonged trips could carry out violent acts.
•Even especially powerful marijuana lacked "knockdown effect." It was rejected because its effects could be overcome simply by lying down and resting.
•Soldier volunteers were willing participants who knew the program's potential risks. Drugs given to soldiers were described in general terms but not named though "many seemed to find out through the grapevine."
•Intelligence reports of the time showed that Soviet researchers were planning a large-scale LSD program.
•The CIA ran a parallel program that sometimes gave hallucinogens secretly to unwitting citizens. The agency persuaded two Army doctors to carry out experiments for the CIA that the Army would not have authorized.
Ketchum says the Army phased out the hallucinogen project in about 1972, in part because disclosure of such research would have caused a "public relations problem."
Ketchum's notes suggest the Army's fears were not imaginary. They describe soldiers on "red oil," an especially powerful form of marijuana, who smirked for hours and found even routine spatial reasoning tests to be hilarious.
Soldiers under the influence of hallucinogens ate imaginary chickens, took showers in full uniform while smoking cigars and chatted with invisible people for two to three days at a time. One attempted to ride off on an imaginary horse while another played with kittens only he could see. Another described an order of toast as smelling "like a French whore."
Some of the researchers also took LSD "as a matter of curiosity," Ketchum says.
His lone trip, he adds, was "something of an anti-climax." Colors seemed more vivid and music more compelling, he remembers, but "there were no breakthroughs in consciousness, no Timothy Leary stuff."
At least two soldiers who received LSD in the 1950s later sued the Army, alleging that the drug later caused them to suffer memory loss, hallucinations and occasional outbursts of violence. The claims were denied.
After leaving the Army, Ketchum saw patients in a private psychiatric practice.
The experiments on human subjects ended in 1975, according to Jeff Smart, historian for the Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.
The United States signed a United Nations-sponsored chemical weapons ban in 1993 that outlawed incapacitating agents.
Calmative agents
Even so, the U.S. military has remained interested in researching non-lethal chemicals.
In 2000, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, a Quantico, Va., group run by all four major military branches, commissioned a study of the possible military uses of "calmative" pharmaceuticals such as anesthetics and serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
The Sunshine Project's Hammond, who obtained the study through the Freedom of Information Act, says using calmatives as weapons would also be outlawed by the 1993 chemical weapons ban. Ketchum says that is not clear.
In October 2002, Russian special forces used a calmative agent to subdue Islamist Chechen terrorists who were holding about 850 hostages in a Moscow theater. More than 120 hostages died from the drug's effects.
The program, which ran at the Army's Edgewood, Md., arsenal from 1955 until about 1972, concluded that counterculture staples such as acid and pot were either too unpredictable or too mellow to be useful as weapons, psychiatrist James Ketchum said in an interview.
The program did yield one hallucinogenic weapon: softball-size artillery rounds that were filled with powdered quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, a deliriant of the belladonnoid family that had placed some research subjects in a sleeplike state and left them impaired for days.
Ketchum says the BZ bombs were stockpiled at an Army arsenal in Arkansas but never deployed. They were later destroyed.
The Army acknowledged the program's existence in 1975. Follow-up studies by the Army in 1978 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1981 found that volunteers suffered no long-term effects.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Army | LSD
Insider's account
Ketchum's book, Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten, appears to be the first insider's account of experiments performed on about 2,000 soldier volunteers, says Steven Aftergood, a government-secrecy expert for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C. Ketchum self-published the book, which he sells on his website.
In an interview, Ketchum, 75, said he wrote the book to trigger a debate about the potential uses of non-lethal chemicals to incapacitate terrorists who take hostages or use human shields. "Incapacitating agents are designed to save lives," he said. "Isn't it at least something we should be thinking about?"
Such research, says chemical weapons opponent Edward Hammond, would not only be illegal under current international law but probably never should have been performed.
"There are things that have taken place in the past that should probably stay there," says Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project, an Austin group that opposes biological warfare.
Ketchum's memoir draws from previously classified files, including filmed experiments, and notes of tests given subjects before, during and after they were fed, sprayed or injected with mind-altering chemicals.
He says:
•LSD was rejected for weapons use because even soldiers on prolonged trips could carry out violent acts.
•Even especially powerful marijuana lacked "knockdown effect." It was rejected because its effects could be overcome simply by lying down and resting.
•Soldier volunteers were willing participants who knew the program's potential risks. Drugs given to soldiers were described in general terms but not named though "many seemed to find out through the grapevine."
•Intelligence reports of the time showed that Soviet researchers were planning a large-scale LSD program.
•The CIA ran a parallel program that sometimes gave hallucinogens secretly to unwitting citizens. The agency persuaded two Army doctors to carry out experiments for the CIA that the Army would not have authorized.
Ketchum says the Army phased out the hallucinogen project in about 1972, in part because disclosure of such research would have caused a "public relations problem."
Ketchum's notes suggest the Army's fears were not imaginary. They describe soldiers on "red oil," an especially powerful form of marijuana, who smirked for hours and found even routine spatial reasoning tests to be hilarious.
Soldiers under the influence of hallucinogens ate imaginary chickens, took showers in full uniform while smoking cigars and chatted with invisible people for two to three days at a time. One attempted to ride off on an imaginary horse while another played with kittens only he could see. Another described an order of toast as smelling "like a French whore."
Some of the researchers also took LSD "as a matter of curiosity," Ketchum says.
His lone trip, he adds, was "something of an anti-climax." Colors seemed more vivid and music more compelling, he remembers, but "there were no breakthroughs in consciousness, no Timothy Leary stuff."
At least two soldiers who received LSD in the 1950s later sued the Army, alleging that the drug later caused them to suffer memory loss, hallucinations and occasional outbursts of violence. The claims were denied.
After leaving the Army, Ketchum saw patients in a private psychiatric practice.
The experiments on human subjects ended in 1975, according to Jeff Smart, historian for the Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.
The United States signed a United Nations-sponsored chemical weapons ban in 1993 that outlawed incapacitating agents.
Calmative agents
Even so, the U.S. military has remained interested in researching non-lethal chemicals.
In 2000, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, a Quantico, Va., group run by all four major military branches, commissioned a study of the possible military uses of "calmative" pharmaceuticals such as anesthetics and serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
The Sunshine Project's Hammond, who obtained the study through the Freedom of Information Act, says using calmatives as weapons would also be outlawed by the 1993 chemical weapons ban. Ketchum says that is not clear.
In October 2002, Russian special forces used a calmative agent to subdue Islamist Chechen terrorists who were holding about 850 hostages in a Moscow theater. More than 120 hostages died from the drug's effects.
