Acid Tests

The agency dosed unwitting citizens for science. One of them was its own scientist.

The CIA's LSD program is exhaustively documented: bulk purchase attempts of Sandoz's world supply, Subproject 42's safe houses, dosing of unwitting citizens, soldiers (Edgewood), prisoners (Lexington's addiction ward, where inmates were kept on LSD for 77 days), and its own staff (Olson). Marks' 'The Search for the Manchurian Candidate' (built on 16,000 FOIA pages) remains the standard account. The counterculture irony — agency acid seeding the movement it then surveilled — is the Laurel Canyon file's engine. Links Olson, Midnight Climax, Edgewood, and Leary-era distribution questions.