White House Operatives Ask CIA for “LSD-Type Drug”
E. Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, who in three months would become famous as the leaders of the Watergate Burglary, met with a retired Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) physician on this day and asked if he could supply them with an “LSD-type drug” that would cause a person to “behave peculiarly in a public situation.” The ex-CIA physician said no.
Hunt and Liddy wanted the drug as part of their secret and illegal activities for President Richard Nixon’s administration. Liddy had presented his GEMSTONE plan, on January 27, 1972, which included kidnapping and drugging anti-war activists, to Attorney General John Mitchell. And on June 17, 1972, Hunt and Liddy masterminded the break-in of Democratic Party Headquarters at the Watergate office complex.
The Watergate burglary on June 17, 1972 touched off a national scandal that gripped the nation for 15 months from the day of the original Watergate burglary to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. The burglary set in motions investigations that uncovered other abuses of power by President Nixon and several members of his administration. These included the famous “enemies” list of critics of the administration who were targeted for retaliation (August 16, 1971), and the White House “Plumbers” unit that burglarized the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist on September 9, 1971. Nixon was impeached by the House of Representatives in August 1974, and he resigned in disgrace on August 9, 1974. President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon on September 8, 1974, for any crimes he may have committed while president.
Learn more: Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD, the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond (1992)
Read President Ford’s ban in experimentation on human subjects: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=59348
Read more: Gordon Thomas, Journey into Madness: The True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse (1989)
Learn more: Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1990)
Read the Senate Church Committee report on this and other FBI abuses: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports_book3.htm