The Problem With Drugs

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Do drugs of any kind, you know, do they really release what's actually accurately in there or people just blur out stuff they would never say? I don't know what the answer it is to that, but it's the problem. One of these other techniques that's pretty similar that Martin Orne discusses in this kind of CIA manual is called the magic room technique. So you don't actually have to hypnotize someone, you just have to make them think they're under hypnosis. But then you place a heater under the desk and you turn it on. And their hands actually do get warm. While they're thinking to themselves, I'm not hypnotized, they can't deny

In the summer of 1942, Stanley Lovell, a renowned industrial chemist, received a mysterious order to report to an unfamiliar building in Washington, D.C. When he arrived, he was led to a barren room where he waited to meet the man who had summoned him.

Lovell became the head of a secret group of scientists who developed dirty tricks for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. Their inventions included bat bombs, suicide pills, fighting knives, silent pistols, and camouflaged explosives. Moreover, they forged documents for undercover agents, plotted the assassination of foreign leaders, and performed truth drug experiments on unsuspecting subjects.

Shermer and Lisle discuss: • why countries have spy agencies • from COI to OSS to CIA • Wild Bill Donavan • Stanley Lovell as Professor Moriarty • Vannevar Bush • Division 19 • George Kistiakowsky and the Aunt Jemima explosive weapon • cat bombs, bat bombs, rat bomb, suicide pills, fighting knives, silent pistols, camouflaged explosives, A-pills, B-pills, E-pills, L-pills • psychological warfare • heavy water and nuclear weapons • Werner Heisenberg, Moe Berg, and Carl Eifler • biological and chemical warfare • Operation Paperclip • truth drugs • Sidney Gottlieb, LSD, and MKULTRA (Bluebird, Artichoke).

John Lisle is a historian of science and the American intelligence community. He earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas and has taught courses on U.S. history, cyberspace, and information warfare at the University of Texas, Louisiana Tech University, and Austin Community College. His writing has appeared in Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, Skeptic, The Journal of Intelligence History, and Physics in Perspective. The Dirty Tricks Department is his first book. In Vol. 25, No. 2 of Skeptic he wrote about MKULTRA, the CIA program in search of mind control technology.