(The following notes for a study I did on the origins and history of US intelligence organizations.)

Within this cult of secrecy weapons research and testing on unconventional weapons was accelerated, and Fort Deitrick, Maryland specialized in bacteriological warfare. (B.W.) In l900, during the U.S. military occupation of Havana, a vicious scourge of yellow fever raged through the cities barrios like a river of death killing and terrifying 14. thousands. Yellow fever is a frightful virus that begins with the sudden onset of fever usually accompanied by a chill and severe pain in the head, back, and limbs. The body temperature spikes swiftly until it reaches a maximum of 103- 105 degrees. Other symptoms include excruciating abdominal cramps, diarrhea, and jaundice. This stage may last from a few hours to several days. In it’s secondary stage the fever flares back to its original elevation, the skin turns yellow, and repeated vomiting occurs, spewing dark blood, usually followed by death. U.S. army doctors led by Walter Reed helped discover that yellow fever is a virus transmitted by mosquito bites and Havana was cleansed of breeding areas.

Sixty years after Dr. Reed’s death many residents of a small north Florida town began to experience symptoms of yellow fever and dengue. Carver Village, whose residents in l960 were exclusively black, reported the mysterious appearance of fevers, bronchitis, typhoid, encephalitis, stillbirths, and deaths. (cockburn) Collaborating under cover of top secret classification, United States Army B.W. researchers at Fort Detrick, had among other things, developed the ability of breeding one hundred and thirty million mosquitoes a month. The Army, in a biological warfare test, released these insects over Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida but Carver Village was selected to determine the productivity of targeted transmission of yellow fever and dengue by mosquito’s. (Cockburn New Statesmen 28-1-94 p22)

 Fort Deitrick, fifty miles from Washington D.C., was 15. designated, by presidential directive in l942, as the United State’s principle biological and chemical warfare research center. (Leonard A. Cole,Totowa, N.J., Rowman and Littlefield, l988) Fort Deitrick, a l983 army brochure reported, studies “some of the most virulent and pathogenic microorganisms which are threats to U.S. military forces.” ibid. The sixteen page document goes on to list some of the organism’s and agents studied including ” the Lassa fever virus, Ebola virus, various hemorrhagic fever viruses, botulism and anthrax toxins, T-2 and other mycotoxins, equine encephalomyelitis, Q fever, tularemia, yellow fever, and Rift valley fever”. ibid 36

In l947 the World War Two Allies began the prosecution of twenty three German physicians, at Nuremberg, accused of committing crimes against humanity including human medical experimentation. U.S. Brigadier General Telford Taylor charged, in his opening remarks, that the defendants included “leaders of German scientific medicine with excellent international reputations” and that “all of them have in common a callous lack of consideration and human regard for, and an unprincipled willingness to abuse their power, over the poor, unfortunate, defenseless creatures who had been deprived of their rights by a ruthless and criminal government.” (Psychiatry and the CIA: Victims of Mind Control p214 American Psychiatric Press London , l990) He added, the self-evident, that all of them had violated their Hippocratic oaths. 16.

Among the defense arguments was that human experimentation for which no consent was given had been conducted routinely throughout the world. The defense cited ll,000 example’s appearing in medical literature. Dr. Andrew Ivy, an American, testified for the prosecution that he was unaware of any deaths occurring in the cases cited and that informed consent was the ethical cornerstone of human experimentation. ibid. Emerging from these proceedings were a set of ten principles known as the Nuremberg Code of Medical Ethics. The first principle begins with “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential”.

In l953, the United States Defense Department adopted the Nuremberg Code, however, it was given a secret classification that limited access to senior defense officials. (Limited access is also called a “bigot list” in the jargon.)( Gary Lee, Washington Post, 5-19-94 p9) The Code, unsurprisingly, was not distributed to those U.S. government personnel then energetically pursuing what General Taylor described to the Nuremberg judges as “an unprincipled willingness to abuse their power,” with a ” callous lack of consideration and human regard.” The Nazi physicians were convicted, as charged.

Components of the vast U.S. national security apparatus have utilized American citizens as experimental object’s, in many instances without informed consent, in a wide variety of bacteriological, chemical, and radioactive experimentation since the end of World War Two. In l955, the CIA secretly 17. disseminated a whooping cough virus in Palmetto, Florida that infected hundreds of children, killing at least twelve. ( Cockburn Newstatesman) The United States Army in l951, using a bacteria believed to be more potent on blacks than whites, contaminated the Norfolk Naval Supply Center and a ship. (ibid)

Beginning in l949 the Army, in conjunction with the Atomic Energy Commission, began a chilling series of experiments on poor unknowing African American patients in three Virginia hospitals. Dooley, a charitable hospital for black children, St. Phillip, a hospital for black adults and the Medical College of Virginia had special burn units set up with Army funds. (Cliff Honicker, Was.Post 6-19-94 c p1 The patients, ranging in age from six months to ninety years old, were severely burned in accidents and became unwitting objects of life threatening research. Approximately one hundred patients a year were subjected to experimental burn and radiation tests described by the director, Dr. Everrett Idris Evans, in a letter to the AEC as “purely investigational with no therapeutic benefit”. opcit.

In one set of experiments, dogs were matched to burn victims, replicating the severity of burn on the patient by inflicting a similar level on the animal. The dogs and people than received similar treatments except the dogs were subjected to irradiation. Dr. Evans discovered that the irradiated dogs had a death rate five times higher than 18. unradiated control dogs. Then, in a scene out of Buchenwald, Dr. Evans injected patients at the three hospitals with radioactive isotopes which could have contributed to the destruction of the red blood cells in critically burned and frightened people fighting for survival. opcit The goal of these experiments was to learn the best treatment for casualties of a nuclear war.

The subjects were poor, black, and perilously vulnerable. These people believed they were being helped, the “treatment” they received had little to do with their injury’s. This incident was a graphic illustration of the arrogance of power, institutionalized racism, and endemic corruption of elements of the U.S. state security apparatus, where crimes against humanity were perpetrated with morbid impunity. Presumably, Japanese medical authorities have conducted comprehensive studies of the effects of nuclear attack’s on civilian targets and published much of their findings in the literature.

Between l953 and l958, African American patients of the Federal Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Kentucky, were given LSD (cockburn ibid) in an experiment which reported, in part, “the degree of rapport attained so far is not as great as we would expect with white subjects.” Code named MK-ULTURA, this CIA funded experiment was launched to determine if LSD could be used in brainwashing, interrogations, or as a “truth serum”. L.S.D. (lysergic sauer diethylamide) is a 19. hallucinogenic psychotomemetic substance which can have the effect of mimicking the symptoms of full blown psychosis. Many people experience illusions, hallucinations, acute anxiety, and have been known to become suicidal.* (US Dept. Of Justice Drugs,Crime and the Justice System.) Most of the subject’s were heroin addicts incarcerated at Lexington for treatment of their narcotic habits. They were given double, triple, and quadruple doses for more than seventy five consecutive days. Their cooperation was encouraged with payment’s of heroin and morphine. (cockburn)

MK-ULTURA expanded it’s scope to include safe houses in New York’s Greenwich Village and San Francisco. Equipped with two way mirrors and surveillance equipment, these lair’s were used to drug and scrutinize unsuspecting people. In San Francisco the operation assumed the code name “Midnight Climax” when prostitutes were hired to lure men from local bars who were then drugged and photographed during sex act’s. ibid.

MK-ULTRA ( ‘Midnight Climax”) financed medical experimentation at Montreal’s McGill University where an L.S.D. assisted brainwashing technique was tested under the subterfuge of a treatment for schizophrenia. Fifty three psychiatric patients were sedated for months at a time then “depatterned with massive electroshock treatment’s and frequent doses of L.S.D.; finally, they listened to tape- recorded messages, repeated up to a quarter million times, during further periods of heavy sedation.” (acid dreams) 20.

The McGill experiment was conducted by Dr. Ewen Cameron, past president of the Canadian, American and World Psychiatric Associations. Ironically, Cameron was a consultant to the prosecution at Nuremberg where he condemned the German medical atrocities and wrote ” It is not simply against future conspiracies of evil men which we have to guard ourselves but it is against ourselves, against weaknesses and faults in our own social order, in our own ways of living against which we have to be on continual guard.” (Weinstein p94 ( Add weinstein suit and settlement)

Most of the early research of L.S.D. was financed by the CIA and a majority of the psychiatrists involved were either C.I.A. contract employees or recipients of C.I.A. funds. The CIA diverted MK-ULTRA funds for experimentation to other distinguished universities including Baylor, Columbia, and M.I.T. Several subjects committed suicide during the C.I.A. research including one patient at the Massachusetts Health Care Center. This women had just completed a successful psychiatric treatment and was scheduled for discharge when, without her knowledge or consent, she was given a glass of water laced with LSD. She was found hanging later that day in a bathroom.* ( cockburn newstatesmen)

 The Atomic Energy Commission, (now the Department of Energy) conducted intensive irradiation of the testicles of 130 prisoners in the states of Oregon and Washington. This experiment was designed to measure the amount of radiation needed to sterilize a man temporarily. These men were told the purpose of the experiment and volunteered as subjects after being paid $200. (cockburn) They were not, however, told that genetic damage from the radiation might cause testicular cancer or birth deformities. The prisoners were to undergo vasectomies after the experiment although six did not, and there has been no follow up studies regarding longer term impacts. ibid. It was revealed at Nuremberg that convicted war criminal Heinrich Himmler had ordered experiments to find means of mass sterilization to deal with the Misblinge (offspring of Jewish-Christian marriages.) One proposal was a “scheme to hide an X-ray machine beneath a counter where Misblinge would be required to report.” (Robert Conot, Harper Row n.y.l983 p289) The victims would then be sterilized, completely unaware.

Between l945 and l947 the AEC’s Argonne National Laboratory, near Chicago, undertook experiments in which plutonium was injected into people without their knowledge. Some of the eighteen people injected were thought to be terminally ill although at least one lived for another forty years. The AEC conducted an experiment for NASA in the early 70’s where radioactive cobalt and cesium bars were placed in the walls of bedrooms of cancer patients. This experiment 22. was abandoned in l974 when the AEC concluded “that it was doing little good to the patients”. (The Economist 1-8-94 p77)

During the l950’s the AEC funded an experiment, directed by Harvard and MIT researchers, where porridge laced with radioactive milk was fed to retarded children at the Fernald school in Massachusetts. (wp 4-17-94) The children, deceived into believing they were members of a “science club”, were also given radioactive injections of calcium and iron to determine how their metabolism worked. In a letter to parents, the school superintendent asked for consent to the experiments saying only that ” the children would receive a special diet in an effort to study how the body absorbed cereals, iron and vitamins”. Radioactivity was never mentioned. (NYTimes12-31-93 A 18bid.and ( cockburn newstatesman) A Massachusetts state Task Force on Human Subject Research examined the Fernald experiments in l994 and determined that the Harvard and M.I.T. researcher’s who conducted this thirty year experiment had done so “in violation of fundamental human rights” and had violated the human rights of the students. W.P. 4-17-94 p14

The above incidents some of which have been officially characterized as actions ranging from crimes against humanity on the one extreme to unethical human medical experimentation (without informed consent) on the other are an incomplete record. Officials of the Central Intelligence Agency when questioned by the Rockefeller Commission on some of these matters in l974, testified that the documentary history of these activities had been destroyed, and that they were unable to locate anyone who had any recollection of the experiments. Portions of the CIA testimony before the commission, established by President Gerald Ford to investigate intelligence abuses, is known to have been, in part, perjurious; the Commission was told that L.S.D. was only used on CIA employees, “sometimes without the employees knowledge”. (The CIA Stephen Goode, nw york Franklin Watts l982) The testimony made no mention of MK_ULTRA or the perverse activities during “Midnight Climax”.

One of these unsuspecting employees, CIA researcher Frank Olsen, died in l954 after falling from a tenth story window of the Statler Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan. ibid. His wife and family asserted that he was unaware of the LSD testing performed on him and there had been a dramatic deterioration in his personality prior to his death. When this incident became public in l974, President Gerald Ford issued a public apology to the Olsen family. It was reported in the Washington Post, on July 12, l994 that the Olsson family recently had the body exhumed and a forensic pathologist disclosed findings that controvert suicide as the cause of death. The family is suggesting that Olsens top secret B.W. knowledge was of concern to the CIA.

The Department of Energy has been seemingly more forthcoming in releasing records although the DOE Secretary, Hazel O’Leary, admits she doesn’t know the extent or comprehensiveness of the documents thus far made public. It is doubtful that the public will ever know the extent or details of many clandestine operations undertaken by the state national security apparatus as these organization’s operate beneath an eerie layer of de facto immunity, virtually impervious to meaningful oversight or accountability. U.S state security organs include the Federal Bureau of Investigation, military intelligence agencies’, the Secret Service and, in some instance’s, criminal cabals working out of the White House under the National Security Council and President. (see watergate, Iran-Contra)

These entrenched bureaucracies and ad hoc White House claques, have performed covert initiatives and maintained secret files on elected officials, supreme court judges, journalists, and authors. ( The F.B.I. (J.Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. Curt Gentry, ww norton n.y. l991 p402) Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover imbued that agency with a Gestapo (Gentry) mentality and was able to bluster and influence many elected officials through use of such coercive methods as maintenance of a “sexual deviates file”. ibid. 402 (the CIA had a file containing the names of 300,000 persons arrested for homosexual acts) Morton H Halperin, Penguin Books, N Y l977p148 25). FBI agents conducted surveillance of former Illinois Governor and twice Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. Information concerning Stevenson’s alleged sexual orientation was leaked by the FBI to the Republican party and various newspapers in an attempt to influence a presidential election.

Not unlike the Nazi Schutztaffel, (S.S.) U.S. federal police power became political power (Karl Deitrich Bracker, Holt Rinehart and Winston, N.Y. l970p354) and the secret security apparatus wire tapped, intercepted mail and monitored politicians including President’s John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (New Yorker Magazine, 10-5-87 Policing America’ Writer’s, Herbert Mitgang.)

Former President Ronald Reagan’s name appeared in the FBI’s files where he was referred to as “confidential informant T-10″. Reagan’s career as an informant began, in l941, when he commenced spying on fellow members of the Screen Actors Guild. (ibid) It is not known if ” T-10″ was paid for his work.

A United States Senate Committee (Church committee) reported in l976 that the CIA was able to sway public opinion by secretly employing at least fifty American journalists who could be expected to publish reports consistent with agency goals. (Church Comm.) The New York Times (12-25-26-27-1977) reported that the C.I.A. owns outright over 200 newspapers, magazines, wire services, and 26 publishing houses that operate in countries throughout the world. (Parenti p60) Shortly after his appointment in l976 as Director of the CIA, George Bush attended a luncheon in his honor in the private dining room of William Paley, Chairman of C.B.S. Prescott Bush, George’s father, had been a director of the C.B.S. board and good friend of Paley. It was reported a week later that two CBS news reporters had been CIA assets, with Paley’s knowledge and cooperation. (Daniel Schorr, Clearing the Air, Boston, Houghton Mifflin l976, p274

 It was also alleged that Walter Chronkite worked for the CIA although Chronkite vehemently denied this. ibid. The Church committee also disclosed that the CIA was using at least “several hundred” American college administrators, faculty members, and graduate students to write and disseminate propaganda material. These academic collaborators were spread out over at least one hundred American college and university campuses and it was reported that, generally, no one on campus was aware of the arrangements. (church) In l951, the CIA set up the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led by senior scholars that included Walt Rostow, whose intelligence ties dated to WW ll in the OSS. In l953, Rostow wrote a book published by the M.I.T. which reinforced the then prevailing CIA analyzes of the Soviet Union.

Readers, students, and colleagues were not informed that the book had been financed 27. by the CIA. (Marchetti p 233-34) Rostow later became Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Johnson and it is not known if Johnson was aware of Rostows covert relationship. The committee also disclosed that the CIA had used at least 21 members of the American clergy in various covert or clandestine schemes. (Report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, S. Res. 21)

 At about the same time the United States House of Representatives established the House Select Committee on Intelligence chaired by New York Democrat, Congressman Otis Pike. Reflecting the intelligence and executive branch resistance to cooperating with this inquiry, the first section of Pikes report begins with this sentence ” If the Committee’s recent experience is any test, intelligence agencies that are to be controlled by Congressional law making are, today, beyond lawmaker’s scrutiny.” ( Village Voice 2-16-76 p70)

CHAOS, a CIA domestic investigation, is known to have operated from l966-l973 and records disclosed by Congressional Investigators (see congressional report leaked to Village Voice 2-16-76 p70, this report of a committee chaired by Congressman Otis Pike was never officially released to the public. Pike a popular Long Island Democrat, was defeated for re election that year after being smeared as by opponents as unamerican) indicate that, by l973, federal secret police surveiled over seven thousand U.S. citizens, and one thousand domestic organizations, while ( ibid 136) 28. intercepting over 28 million pieces of mail. ibid

Among the practices the committee uncovered was the fact that the CIA details agents and employees, overtly and covertly, throughout the executive branches of government. It was revealed that the CIA had placed a covert employee on the staff of the National Security Council. Another covert operative worked on the Interagency Classification Review Committee, an agency responsible for disemination of government documents and rules on Freedom of Information Act requests, many of which concern the CIA. CIA employees were employed in positions ranging from switchboard operators and secretaries to economist, chauffeurs, and stenographers. They worked as administrators, scientists, couriers, laborers and sky marshals.

It was disclosed that in addition to the White House, CIA personnel were detailed to other agency’s including “the Federal Executive Institute, Cabinet Committee on Price Stability, White House Joint Committee on Science, Office of Emergency Preparedness, the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (DEA) the FAA, the Vice Presidents office and the Commerce Department”. The investigations by these committees revealed that the intelligence branches of the Federal government had penetrated an extraordinary number of significant policy and opinion influencing institutions throughout the nation. Academia, think tanks, government, and media were infiltrated by overt and covert intelligence operatives whose allegiance and livelihood was dependent on the intelligence apparatus. 29.

In view of the class based dominance of this society and the preeminence of elite control, this spying of the federal police reflects a large degree of either insecurity or institutionalized paranoia. The totalitarian tactics employed is reflected by the scope, duration, and magnitude of the police investigations of Americans in all walks of life. Among the many citizens under varying degrees of scrutiny were Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter and William O. Douglas, former first lady Elanor Roosevelt, and distinguished authors including Pearl Buck, William Faulkner and Carl Sandberg. (Hoover) In addition to the FBI, information was also compiled by the CIA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the State Department, and the intelligence branches of the military services. ibid.

American citizen’s who exercised their first amendment rights and espoused ideologies unacceptable to the national security state and it’s political police became, as in the past, targets of investigation’s with code names such as COINTELPRO and MERRIMAC. (Pike) Using tactics that included burglary’s, illegal telephone taps, garbage covers and infiltration by, in many instances, agents provocateurs, such “enemies” of the state as the Women’s Strike for Peace and the N.A.A.C.P. became prey. (pike Committee) The FBI Manual of Instructions permits preliminary investigations to be commenced on groups espousing “extremist philosophies”. The manual directs that if after 90 days the 30. investigation fail to uncover reasonable likelihood of uncovering criminal violations, the investigation should be terminated. (village Voice p81)

The Socialist Workers Party was a group designated by the FBI as extremist and subjected to intensive investigation which continued beyond the ninety day FBI manual restriction. After thirty four years of burglaries, blackmail, and wiretapping no evidence of criminal violation’s were discovered. (Pike) The FBI is also responsible for enforcement of a wide variety of criminal law’s including bank and securities fraud and other frauds relating to federal funds. It is not known how many FBI man hours were invested in domestic security and counter espionage, but a glance at the record reflects that it was a massive nationwide commitment of time and resources. In order to better appreciate the class based ideology driving those efforts one might compare them with the zeal applied to two other areas under FBI jurisdiction. During the l980’s the United States experienced the collapse of several hundred federally insured Savings and Loan banks leading to a taxpayer bailout which was estimated to cost over $ 400 billion dollars.

Numerous reports of massive criminal fraud’s surrounding this scandal appeared in the media and during Congressional hearings.(U.S. House Banking Commt.) Considering the magnitude of the frauds the FBI had modest success in it’s investigations, although some convictions were achieved. There have been no reports that the FBI infiltrated any bank boards of directors, 31. managements, or examined the trash disposed by these criminal enterprises. The General Accounting Office of the United States Congress has periodically reported that it’s investigations of the U.S. medical industry discloses that up to ten percent of the nearly one trillion dollars spent annually on health care is the result of criminal fraud. These continuing larcenies have not, apparently, been diminished nor deterred by the FBI and although several well publicized indictments of medical personnel have occurred from time to time, there has been no indication that this industry has received a level of scrutiny received by “radical groups” in the past.