CIA released LSD into the NY subway

Awesome article about newly released information regarding the CIA's MKULTRA experiments, including a story about a test on a New York City subway in which an unsuspecting subway car was dosed via aerosol cans containing LSD. Details from H.P. Albarelli's "A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments."

Albarelli also introduces us to George Hunter White -- a ne'er-do-well agent for the Bureau of Narcotics, a forerunner to the current Drug Enforcement Administration, he was on "special contract" with the CIA.

It was White, Olson's colleague Eigelsbach contends, who was behind the November 1950 New York City subway test -- as well as a second test two years later, Albarelli claims.

"George White in 1952 did release a small amount of aerosol LSD in a subway car. He was pleased with the results as indicated in his diary, but his reports on the incident were destroyed by the CIA in 1973," he says.

But with the CIA's most important records on such matters destroyed or cloaked in national security claims, it remains difficult to prove whether these purported subway tests occurred.

Still, Albarelli's portrait of White -- a gruff, chain-smoking, gin-swilling reprobate with an occasional fondness for opium, hookers and Mafiosi drug-dealers -- makes it apparent that if anyone could have tested LSD on an unsuspecting public, it would be him.

White had set up a CIA safe house at 81 Bedford Street, in Greenwich Village, comprised of two apartments conjoined with a hidden two-way mirror and doorway. Posing as a seaman or artist, he would regularly recruit strangers for social gatherings there, where they would be plied with psychedelic drugs, often without their knowledge. The aim was to see if White could successfully extract information from them and to assess those results, according to one CIA document.

[Thanks Brian!]