The CIA Really Did Poison People With LSD In Search Of Mind Control Weapons

This story once fell into the point-and-laugh realm of ridiculous "conspiracies theories". Not anymore :

In 1951 a quiet village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were committed to asylums and hundreds afflicted.

For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now an even more extraordinary explanation has emerged, with evidence suggesting the CIA peppered food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind-control experiment at the height of the Cold War.

The mystery of Le Pain Maudit (''The Cursed Bread'') still haunts Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard, south-east France. On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants suddenly suffered frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire.

One man tried to drown himself, screaming his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted, ''I am a plane'', before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 45 metres. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the asylum in straitjackets.

Time magazine wrote at the time: ''Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead.''

However, H.P. Albarelli jnr, an investigative journalist, claims the outbreak resulted from a covert experiment directed by the CIA and the US army's top-secret Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The scientists who produced both the theories of accidental poisoning, he writes, worked for the Swiss-based Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company, which was then secretly supplying the US army and CIA with LSD.

....Albarelli spoke to former colleagues of Olson, two of whom told him that the Pont-Saint-Esprit incident was part of a mind-control experiment run by the CIA and US army.

Scientists at Fort Detrick told him that agents had sprayed LSD into the air and also contaminated ''local food products''.

In its quest to research LSD as an offensive weapon, Albarelli says, the army also drugged more than 5700 unwitting US servicemen between 1953 and 1965.

The Full Story Is Here

So how many other people were sprayed by the CIA with doses of milder LSD, a variant not so likely to cause mass, violent hallucinations, in the years after Pont-Saint-Esprit? Did they ever go forward with plans to dose the water supplies of their enemies with hallucinogens?

What bizarre extremes has hallucinogenic drug experimentation on unknowing victims by military contractors, pharmaceutical corporations and intelligence agencies reached in the decades since?

UPDATE : The story, seen on alternative news sites weeks ago, is popping up on the UK Telegraph, The Sun, across Murdoch's Australian media. How extensive will the American corporate news media reporting of this story be? It's a slow news day. They can't avoid reporting this mind-boggling (literally) horror story about the CIA. Can they?

Obviously it is proving extremely popular on blogs. Particularly so-called "conspiracy sites". Of course it is. It confirms other nightmarish tales about the CIA.

The story ran on the news.com.au front page in Australia, and drew about 60 comments as of this posting. Quite a few commenters celebrate the idea of getting free LSD in their food, or in the water supply, but there are next to no debunkers.

This comment, however, is a standard attack on the messenger, and a half-hearted denial of what millions are reading and hearing and seeing as fact in the mainstream media :

Conspiracy Pays of adelaide Posted at 10:00 AM Today

The author Mr Albarelli Jr is a sensationalist author who lives in Tampa Florida whose writngs and films are almost all based on information more than 50 years old. A graduate of the Antioch Law School Mr Albarelli found sensationalist novels were more palatable to the public than his questionable legal skills. Although he jumped on the bandwagon following the 911 Tradgedy ,he keeps to the past where all the people in his books are dead and gone.Hunter White{ an intelligence officer] was in fact a fictional account]once again in the 1950 s .His '' 80 greatest conspiracies of all time''was the same old pulp fiction. He sensationalised the Death of Dr Frank Olson an army Biochemist who accidentaly died in service. The trouble is many people like to read his sensationalist fiction that he often sells as fact. The most recent ramblings appeal to that same customer. It is however interesting to note that LSD was discovered after a Dr Hoffman found a growth ergot of rye ,while researching chemicals in plants; once again back in the 30 s,it is not beyond reasonable doubt that a village baker could have spores of this type in a small bakery and find their way into bread

Having read about the 'ergot mass poisoning' of the French town as a kid, and being horrified as any kid would be (the whole village goes nuts for no apparent reason?) and then having read in the 1980s stories theorising the CIA's involvement, along with plenty of denials, it is remarkable indeed now, all these years later, to see this story hitting news media the world over as fact, no longer fiction.

Wonder how the French are going to take it?