In ‘Operation Paperclip,’ Annie Jacobsen says Cold War interrogation program using LSD enjoyed help from Third Reich doctors
The United States used former Nazi doctors to develop interrogation techniques — including some that used hallucinogens like LSD — during the Cold War, according to a new book by investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen.
“Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America,” published Tuesday, documents a top secret intelligence and military program run with the help of prominent Nazi scientists and doctors, including Nazi Germany’s surgeon general.
“The CIA teamed up with Army, Air Force and
Naval Intelligence to run one of the most nefarious, classified,
enhanced interrogation programs of the Cold War,” Jacobsen wrote, in an excerpt posted on the Daily Beast.
“The work took place inside a clandestine facility in the American zone
of occupied Germany, called Camp King. The facility’s chief medical
doctor was Operation Paperclip’s Dr. Walter Schreiber, the former
Surgeon General of the Third Reich… The activities that went on at Camp
King between 1946 and the late 1950s have never been fully accounted for
by either the Department of Defense or the CIA.”
According to Jacobsen, the US was concerned
that the Soviets would use unconventional interrogation techniques if
they captured a soldier or airman, and developed an initially defensive
program against Soviet methods that soon developed into a covert project
designed to force Soviet spies to talk, then forget that they ever did
so.
“We felt that it was our responsibility not to
lag behind the Russians or the Chinese in this field, and the only way
to find out what the risks were was to test things such as LSD and other
drugs that could be used to control human behavior,” program
administrator and future CIA director Richard Helms said in a 1978
interview.
Other US intelligence agencies were brought on
board, and introduced ex-Nazi scientists to the program. Trials were
conducted at Camp King. In 1952, two Soviet spies captured by CIA-run
ex-Nazi operatives were interrogated using the new methods.
“In the first case, light dosages of drugs
coupled with hypnosis were used to induce a complete hypnotic trance,” a
CIA memorandum revealed. “This trance was held for approximately one
hour and forty minutes of interrogation with a subsequent total amnesia
produced.”
The program, wrote Jacobsen, evolved into
Project MKUltra, a secret US program studying mind and behavior control
techniques, complete with experiments on human subjects. MKUltra also
enjoyed the help of ex-Nazi scientists.
“Operation: Paperclip” is the Princeton
graduate’s third book. Her second, “Area 51,” was a well-received
investigative report into the storied military installation, purported
by some to be the home of a UFO cover-up. It was a fairly
straightforward, well-researched look into military aircraft research
and development at the site. But the end of the book took an unexpected
turn.
“Relying on
the testimony of a single unnamed source,” read a critical review in
Popular Mechanics, “Jacobsen’s book repeats the claim that some sort of
UFO crashed at Roswell. But in her telling, the craft wasn’t of alien
origin. Instead, it was a saucer built by the Soviets using technology
they’d obtained from German engineers at the end of World War II. And
there’s more. According to her unnamed source, the craft was manned by
human teenagers who had been medically altered to look like aliens, with
giant heads and eyes like wraparound Oakleys.”
“Who would do such a thing to children? Why,
notorious Nazi death camp doctor Josef Mengele, Jacobsen writes, quoting
her source quoting another source or sources, also unnamed. Seems that
Mengele was working for Soviet boss Josef Stalin, who needed the mutants
for a special project: scaring the daylights out of America with a fake
alien visitation.”
Source: The Times Of Israel
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