Veterans used in "classified experiments"

I have been categorized as a "crusader" by elected officials and veteran service organizations, which has hurt my ability to have my "message heard" that using military veterans in chemical weapons, biological weapons and pharmacuetical experiments from 1946 (Navy blister agents) then the 1953 Wilson Memorandum that approved "human experimentation" by Department of Defense agencies. Somewhere along the line the Central Intelligence Agency got involved thru Doctor Sidney Gottlieb

Joseph Scheider (Sidney Gottlieb) was born in 1918. He studied chemistry at the California Institute of Technology and after he finished his Ph.D. he joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He worked as a member of the Technical Services Staff (TSS) and eventually became head of the Chemical Division.

Richard Bissell, head of the Directorate for Plans, an organization instructed to conduct covert anti-Communist operations around the world, made full use of Gottlieb's abilities. The Directorate for Plans was responsible for what became known as the CIA's Black Operations. This involved a policy that was later to become known as Executive Action (a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power).

In March I960, President Dwight Eisenhower of the United States approved a CIA plan to overthrow Fidel Castro. Gottlieb was asked to come up with proposals that would undermine Castro's popularity with the Cuban people. Plans included a scheme to spray a television studio in which he was about to appear with an hallucinogenic drug (LSD) and contaminating his shoes with thallium which they believed would cause the hair in his beard to fall out.

Richard Bissell eventually decided to organize a CIA plot to kill Castro. Gottlieb came up with several ideas on how to do this including the insertion of poison into cigars Castro was known to smoke. Another scheme involved a conch shell that would be programmed to explode when Castro was swimming underwater. Gottlieb also came up with the idea of planting a poisoned handkerchief in his suit pocket. This was unsuccessfully used against General Abd al-Karim Kassem of Iraq.

Gottlieb was also assigned the task of planning the assassination of Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. This included the idea of a lethal biological agent that would be added to a tube of toothpaste. Attempts were made to develop a biological agent that would cause tularemia, brucelloisis, anthrax, smallpox, tuberculosis and equine encephalis. These experiments ended in failure and eventually Lumumba was murdered by soldiers loyal to Moise Tshombe.

By 1967 Gottlieb became head of the Technical Services Staff and held the post until his retirement in 1972. Before he left he destroyed some 80 percent of the CIA's most damaging files. Most of these had something to do with programs run by Gottlieb.

In 1975 Frank Church and his Select Committee on Intelligence Activities began investigating the work of the Central Intelligence Agency. They discovered the existence of Executive Action. The disclosure of Gottlieb's work resulted in some of his victims taking legal action against the CIA.


Sidney Gottlieb died on 10th March, 1999.

Nice Guy!!!!!!!

This article from 2004 is about the Detroit Free Press series where David Zeman showed where the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration had ignored the WW2 veterans used in chemical weapon experiments from 1942 thru 1945. VA to contact veterans exposed to dangerous chemicals in WW II this article was dated December 17, 2004

VA Secretary Anthony Principi, who has announced he is leaving the department, declined comment this week, although Church said he personally approved a renewed search for chemical test subjects.

The Free Press series chronicled the experiences of the 1st Chemical Casual Company -- 100 soldiers exposed to mustard gas, lewisite and other poisons in the test chambers of Maryland's Edgewood Arsenal in 1943. Mostly young recruits plucked from boot camp, the men of 1st Chemical were among at least 4,000 soldiers and sailors used in secret wartime experiments to help scientists study ways to protect combat troops from a feared chemical attack.

The military misled volunteers about the danger and threatened the men with court-martial if they revealed the tests to anyone. The government made no effort to monitor the men's health, even though it knew the chemicals could pose a long-term health risk.

Many later developed cancers and lung, eye or respiratory diseases linked to the toxins.

Then there is this article from Lisa Friedman of the Los Angeles News Group published in April 2004 titled VA: Foot-dragging seen

House Veterans Affairs Committee aide Len Sistek said that's the goal of notifying veterans. The new list his staff provided to the government includes the names of military personnel who underwent testing at Fort Detrick; Edgewood Arsenal, now known as Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland; and Dougway Proving Ground in Utah.

"There's been a sea change in how America perceives this stuff," he said. "Whoever allowed the bad guy to get ahead of them with chemical or biological weaponry was at a huge disadvantage on the battlefield. It was part of the war effort."

Still, he and others argued, the government has a responsibility to provide benefits to those who did experience health problems.

"When you sign on the dotted line, you sign up for a broad spectrum of risks. But just because you were a volunteer does not mean America doesn't have a duty to you."

VA concerned

Leaders at the Department of Veterans Affairs said they agree.

"Obviously we're concerned, and we want to provide outreach to anyone who may have been harmed by toxic chemical tests," said Thomas Pamperin, VA assistant director for policy.

He and Kim Tibbitts, the agency's assistant director for procedures for compensation and pension services, said they first have to determine who the servicemen are and what agents they were exposed to. Many names on the list, Tibbitts said, include only a name but no Social Security number, and identify chemicals by codes that must be tracked down with the Department of Defense.

From there, he said, the agency plans to use personnel records and address locating services to determine if the serviceman is still living, or has surviving relatives.

In the notification letters, Pamperin said, veterans will be told the chemical they were exposed to and the dosage, and be encouraged to seek hospital tests to determine if they suffered related injuries.

"If and, hopefully, none of them have been harmed they will receive the kind of compensation they're entitled to," Pamperin said.

Rick Weidman of the Vietnam Veterans of America accused the VA of dragging its feet.

All I can say to Mr. Pamperin is that of the 7120 men used at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland from 1955 thru 1975 is that a March 2003 Institute of Medicine (IOM) Report compiled by Doctor William Page P.H.D. showed that 40% of the men were presumed deceased in FY2000 when the data was gathered, and that of the 4022 survivors located another 54% of the veterans were disabled, which combines for a 75% death and disability rate, (I am not a scientist nor a doctor, but this rate seems excessively high) for a group of men aged 45-65. The report can be read here it is a pdf file.

In the spring and summer of 2006 I worked with a group of journalists that researched the human experiments of Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick, the group is known as E Pluribus Media, and their work is very thorough and respected. The article written by retired Navy Commander Jeff Huber was researched by himself and many of the other E Pluribus Media volunteers.

Time Passed
In 2001, President Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen awarded yet another contract to the IOM to locate the Edgewood veterans and other subjects of DoD chemical testing. In a 2003 article published in Military Medicine , the IOM reported that it had conducted a survey of 4,002 Edgewood veterans. But this report focused on subjects of Sarin and other chemical weapon experiments, not specifically on the MK-ULTRA mind control program subjects.
Further confusing the issue was a 2004 Government Accounting Office (GAO) report titled Chemical and Biological Defense: DOD Needs to Continue to Collect and Provide Information on Tests and Potentially Exposed Personnel. The report covered veteran test subjects in a chemical and biological test program known as "Project 112," but also addressed a Department of Defense mandate to investigate all other human test projects conducted since World War II. The report stated that Army documents identified over seven thousand Army and Air Force personnel who participated in these "other tests" conducted at Edgewood and elsewhere, but didn't specifically break out which of these test veterans were involved in Gottlieb's mind control experiments. It also said the GAO had concluded that, "the scope and the magnitude of tests involving human subjects was not available, and the exact number of human subjects might never be known." *
The report also said, "DOD anticipates that it might take up to 5 years to complete the investigation of tests outside Project 112." * That means it will be 2009 at best before the DOD can determine which Edgewood veterans were involved in Gottlieb's mind control experiments, what damage they suffered as a result of their participation in those tests, and what veterans' benefits they're entitled to.
News of mind control experiments on the troops is the kind of news that military recruiters, under pressure to fill uniforms during a time of an unpopular and seemingly unending war, don't likely want their potential enlistees to hear about.
1 DAV Magazine, "Two Decades of Deception," October, 1991, pp 8-13.

2 William F. Page, "Long Term Health Effects of Exposure to Sarin and other Anticholinesterase Chemical Warfare Agents," Military Medicine, 168, 3:239, 2003, pp. 239-245.

I am NOT a crusader, I am a honorably discharged Army veteran who had the misfortune to get involved with the Edgewood Arsenal experiments, because I trusted the Officers who was doing the recruiting for "volunteers" in May 1974 at Fort Lewis, Washington, it was they who lied to the enlisted men to get us to "volunteer" for this safe program to test "battlefield equipment of the future" which turned out to be false, the purpose of Edgewood Arsenal was to conduct human experimentation involving chemical weapons and drugs, legal and illegal.

In 1987's Supreme Court case MSG Stanley versus the army, the decision was a 5-4 loss, in one of the dissents, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote this:

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in a separate dissent, said that the Government and its officials should be protected from lawsuits by military personnel, but said that ''conduct of the type alleged in this case is so far beyond the bounds of human decency'' that ''it simply cannot be considered a part of military discipline.''

Mr. Stanley's suit grew out of secret Army experiments at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, using enlisted men who had volunteered for what they had been told would be chemical warfare tests with gas masks and protective clothing.

The Army's human experimentation with LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, was part of a broader Government program in which the Central Intelligence Agency also participated.

Mr. Stanley did not know that he had actually been given LSD until 1975, when the Army solicited his participation in a follow-up study. He filed his suit, which has had a tortuous procedural history but has not yet gone to trial, in 1979. Now 53 years old, he has a desk job in the County Sheriff's office in Palm Beach, Fla. No Statutory Remedy

New York Times article from 1987

After the decades and denials of liability of the federal government, it is time for the games to end, the bill HR 5954 for the SHAD/112 veterans is a good start but that is all it is, a start, Congress for once and for all take care of this problem created more than 50 years ago and was stopped in 1975 and care for the veterans and their families that may have been harmed as a part of these experiments. If there is any doubt as to what medical problems are related to the experiments and to later times in the veterans life, reasonable doubt should be given to the veterans or their widows and families.

Sphere: Related Content