Chemical Warfare

Review Written by Bernie Weisz, Historian December 16, 2010 Pembroke Pines, Florda, USA Contact: BernWei1@aol.com Title of Review: THC, LSD and BZ Chemical Warfare Research:Selecting Volunteer Astronauts Ready to Go Into "Inner:" Rather Than Outer Space" James S. Ketchum's book "Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten" is the first and only account that exists revealing the U.S.Army's research into Chemical Warfare that occurred in one of the most tumultuous settings the United States ever has experienced. It is, however, a taboo topic and Ketchum states with chagrin that when he mentions to people that he is a psychiatrist that worked during the 1960's studying chemical methods for "subduing" normal people, most react politely by changing the subject. Perhaps this reflects the times in which these experiments occurred. Ketchum boldly proclaims the goal of his book is as follows: "Many books and articles have been published about the shady and nefarious activities of the CIA in relation to LSD, supposedly contemporaneously with our own officially approved medical research. I have read several of them and it is distressing how often our clinical research program has been confused with the CIA's covert use of LSD. Some authors do not refer to drugs we studied by their correct names, and attribute properties to them that are quite fanciful. A primary purpose of this book, therefore, is to provide truthful, comprehensive, accurate information about the Edgewood Arsenal medical research program, and what we actually learned from our studies." As a historical reviewer with zero psycho pharmacological foreknowledge, I intuitively understood Ketchum's comment when he wrote: "Medical experts enjoy using pedantic language that underlies their erudition, and I must admit I was not immune to this affliction." I did understand the cliche of the month of March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb juxtaposed with Ketchum's stay at Edgewood being a reflection of "the times." Did you go through that period of history or did you hear about it from your parents or other elders? Some people mistakenly think the 60's were all about hippies ... well, the 60's were more than just hippies, although they did play an important role during the decade. There was also: Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, psychedelic music, Kennedy's assassination, the Vietnam War, and the first man to walk the moon! The decade started rather staid in 1960 with the first debate for a presidential election televised between Senator John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. Nixon seemed nervous, but Kennedy stood tall. The debate on TV changed many people's minds about Kennedy. Gary Powers and the American "U 2" spy plane were shot down over the Soviet Union. In 1961, John F Kennedy moved into the White House. He gave his famous speech, i.e. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." The Soviets sent the first man into space and the Americans needed to compete. The event came on May 5, 1961 as Alan Shepard was sent to space in the "Freedom 7". On May 25, 1961. J.F.K. announced he wanted to have a man on the moon and back before the decade was over. In 1962 John Glenn became the first man to orbit the earth 3 times. It was a five hour flight. Most important for the predicted outcome of chemical warfare experiments at Edgewood, was Rachel Carson's statement. A scientist and writer, she warned that our earth would die of pollution and chemicals, especially ones that were developed to kill bad insects and defoliate jungles. DDT was a real bad chemical used to kill pest insects. It wound up killing good insects, along with plants and animals. Carson authored a book entitled "Silent Spring" with a warning that resulted in five states banning DDT. The Chemical that defoliated jungles was called "Agent Orange." This was a U.S. Government code name for one of the herbicides and defoliants that was used by the military as part of its herbicidal warfare program, "Operation Ranch Hand", during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. A 50:50 mixture of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, it was manufactured for the U.S. Department of Defense primarily by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical. It was later discovered to be an extremely toxic dioxin compound. It was given its name from the color of the orange-striped 55 US gallon barrels in which it was shipped. During the Vietnam war, between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed 20,000,000 gallons of Agent Orange in S.E. Asia with an intended goal of defoliating forested and rural land and depriving the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese of cover. The ultimate effects on Vietnam Veterans were to be horrifying. Increased rates of nerve, digestive, skin and respiratory disorders, Hodgkin's lymphoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, prostate, lung and liver cancers, as well as soft tissue sarcoma occurred. As a side note, over 150,000 U.S. Veterans were affected by Agent Orange, and according to Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 people being killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects. Getting back to a historical reference, on August 28, 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. made the speech, "I have a Dream." More than 200,000 peaceful demonstrators came to Washington DC to demand equal rights for Black and Whites. On November 22, J.F.K. was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. His assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was never sent to trial. While being moved by police to a different jail, a man named Jack Ruby killed him. Who killed President Kennedy nobody will ever know. It is understandable that Ketchum wrote: And so it went at Edgewood-a constant oscillation between seriousness of purpose and absurdity." This echoed what was happening in 1964. The Beatles, a British rock and roll band became extremely popular, as John, Paul, George, and Ringo played on radio stations all over the world. They were seen on the "Ed Sullivan Show". While Ketchum experimented with "incapacitating agents, i.e. substances that were thought to pave the way to battle enemy forces with a minimum of lethal outcomes, 1964 was the first year that cigarette boxes had a warning printed on them declaring: "Smoking can be hazardous to your health". While Congress was mesmerized by Major General William Creasy's sales pitch that chemical warfare testing would result in war without casualties, it had not occurred to them to give warnings that smoking lead to cancer and lung deaths. Most important for this decade, the "Tonkin Gulf Resolution" was passed that authorized U.S. military action in Southeast Asia. On Aug. 4, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin were alleged to have attacked without provocation U.S. destroyers that were reporting intelligence information to South Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers decided upon immediate air attacks on North Vietnam in retaliation; he also asked Congress for a mandate for future military action. On August 7, Congress passed a resolution drafted by the administration authorizing all necessary measures to repel attacks against U.S. forces and all steps necessary for the defense of U.S. Allies in Southeast Asia. The Vietnam War was on! In 1965 the war continued to escalate, with L.B.J. ordering bombing raids on North Vietnam and Americans began protesting the war. The Houston Astrodome was built, America's first roofed stadium. fashion started to change, with women wearing short Mini skirts. "Pop Art" became more popular, an artistic technique that used contrasting colors with black and white to make a sort of optical illusion. In 1966, Psychedelic clothing was now a hit. Colors worn were brighter and bolder. Men begin to dress "fancy". Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse and a Pioneer of animated films, died of cancer on December 15. In 1967, The first heart transplant was performed by Dr. Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town, South Africa, and the "Summer of Love" occurred. This was a social phenomenon that occurred during that summer, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion. James Ketchum, on sabbatical at Stanford for 2 years, was there. While hippies also gathered all over the world, San Francisco was the center of the hippie revolution, a melting pot of music, psychoactive drugs, sexual freedom, creative expression, and politics. Cited as a defining moment of the 1960s, the hippie counterculture movement came into public awareness, with themes of lifestyles included communal living, widespread usage of psychedelic drugs, free and communal sharing of resources, including love and sex. However, the summer of 1967 also saw some of the worst violence in US cities in the country's history, with race riots occurring in places such as Detroit and Newark. The body bags kept coming home from Vietnam, with no end to the war in sight. Distrust of the government ran high, which with the secrecy of Edgewood's operations possibly being their ultimate death knell. With furtive drug testing on Chemical warfare, Ketchum wrote: "The problem, of course, was that Edgewood kept reporters in the dark by classifying most of our work, thus keeping it out of the public's purview." The 1960's were about to get ugly. In the early hours of January 31st, 1968, 70,000 North Vietnamese soldiers, together with Viet Cong fighters, launched one of the most daring military campaigns in history. The Tet Offensive was the real turning point in the Vietnam War. The Communists launched a major offensive to coincide with the traditional Vietnamese New Year celebrations (January 29 to 31)called "Tet". It was a time of an agreed cease-fire. NVA/VC suicide troops struck in Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital. News media all over America reported immense damage in the South detailing 80 different cities, towns or military bases that were attacked, more or less simultaneously. Walter Cronkite, America's most respected journalist at that time, asserted that America was losing the war. It was militarily inaccurate, however it created the first significant crack in President Johnson's belief that he could win both the war and re-election. As it turned out he did neither. Anti war protests peaked, with growing reluctance in America to support a war we weren't winning. The assassinations of Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee and Robert Kennedy, in Los Angeles left a country that had gone amok. Fear and distrust of anything related to the U.S. Government reached it's apex with nationwide antiwar student demonstrations and the shootings at Kent State on a Ohio campus. Everything was changing since the start of the decade. The "Hippie look" was now popular. The women wore long floor length dresses and skirts called maxies. Men continued to grow their hair longer. Hippies decorated everything, including painting their bodies. Ketchum returned to Edgewood in 1969, his work completed at Stanford. Nearly half a million people headed over to a 600 acre farm in New York for the Woodstock Festival. Many top rock musicians were there. It lasted three days, a weekend of music, love and peace. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon, with astronauts aboard. Neil Armstrong made his famous speech: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The sun on the 1960's set amongst anti government distrust at an all time high. So what was Ketchum doing at Edgewood? He was directing experiments performed at the Edgewood Arsenal, which was northeast of Baltimore, Maryland, and involved the use of hallucinogens such LSD, THC, and BZ, in addition to biological and chemical agents on human subjects. The Edgewood experiments took place from approximately 1952-1974 at the Bio Medical Laboratory, which is now known as the U. S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense. The volunteer would spend the weekend on-site, performing tests and procedures (math, navigation, following orders, memory and interview) while sober. The volunteer would then be drugged by an incapacitating agent and then studied while attempting to perform the same tests. These tests occurred in the Edgewood facility under Ketchum's supervision. Field tests, such as having to guard a check point while under the influence of an incapacitating agent such as LSD or BZ was done to see what effects certain drugs had on the patient. LSD is well known with it's hallucinatory visual and auditory effects. However, there is a stigma on BZ. BZ, or 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, is an odorless military incapacitating agent. It is related to atropine, scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and other deliriants. It could be released as an aerosol for inhalation, injected or dissolved in a solvent for ingestion or percutaneous absorption. It's effects include stupor, confusion, and hallucinations. The antidote for BZ is "Physostigmine," which is now commonly stocked in emergency rooms for Atropine overdose. Dr. Ketchum's response as to what happens to a soldier dosed on BZ? Citing his distaste for the ludicrous portrayal of BZ's effects in the movie "Jacob's Ladder", he sets the world straight by giving his version: "They gradually go into a stupor and when they wake up, they crawl around on the floor, frequently take off their clothes, hallucinate and talk nonsense." Dr. James Ketchum was recruited in his junior year at Cornell University Medical College in 1955 by a very enticing offer. An Army recruiter promised him that to sign the dotted line, all he had to do was finish his last year as a medical student, joining Uncle Sam as a 2nd Lieutenant with full pay and benefits. After graduation, he did an internship at Letterman Hospital in San Francisco. After a six month officer course at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, Ketchum was offered by Dr. David Rioch, the chief of Neuropsychiatry at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research an internship at Edgewood. Sounding attractive, Ketchum accepted and arrived at Edgewood in early 1961 right after the chemical warfare volunteer testing program began. Soon he would be running things there. The Army's quest was to search for a drug that would temporarily incapacitate someone for a condensed period of time with a assured recovery absent of residual effects. Ketchum throughout the book makes it clear that the erroneous belief that the Army had ulterior motives to develop a drug that would derange people was fictitious. The advantage of testing volunteers at Edgewood was that the facility could keep volunteers safe during the experiments and testing. Edgewood was a facility that had doctors, nurses, padded rooms and a complete medical testing operation. Although LSD and Marijuana were used (THC was synthesized into "Red Oil"), BZ was the main focus. Ketchum, with the excepti