Please read this excellent article by Russ Baker on the CIA MK-ULTRA program and LSD. Originally commissioned by the New York Times Magazine, the editorial board changed their minds at the last minute. It was however published by The Observer in Britain and by Spiegel in Germany and many others around the world. The article tells the story of an American citizen named Stanley Glickman who went studying in Paris in the ’50s. One night a stranger discretely put a LSD dose in his drink, as part of a series of early experiments with what was at the time a new drug. Developed by the Sandoz company, originally part of the I.G. Farben cartel that was instrumental in the rise of Nazi Germany and that was broken into several smaller companies at the end of the war (including BASF, Bayer and Hoechst, counting for 95% of the total business) LSD was the subject of intense research until psychologist Timothy Leary began sharing the « experience » with a larger public in San Francisco and around Boston in the late ’60s, which led LSD to be declared illegal and Leary to be arrested at the border of Mexico in the ’70s. For more details, please read his excellent autobiography, Flashbacks. The CIA probably wanted to create the perfect drug with which to control the minds of the population. Instead, they created one that expends the power of the human mind, thus achieving the exact opposite of what they wanted to do. Isn’t that such an irony? Here is a short video about Leary.