TURNER PLEDGES TO TRY TO FIND AND ASSIST VICTIMS OF CIA'S SECRET DRUG EXPERIMENTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000100110070-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 20, 2007
• Sequence Number: 70
• Publication Date: August 4, 1977
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/10/19: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100110070-4
A9TICLE APPEARb~7.
-ON PAGE I /-6
TIIE BALTIMORE SUN
4 AUGUST 1977
urner pled to try 10' IIIIM and assi.sl
S' bf'CIA~s - secreat'dr ul'a ex erim-ents.
Br GILBERT A. LEWTIIWAITE
Washington Bureau of The Sun.
Washington-Adm. Stansfield Turner,
director of the Central Intelligence Agen-
cy, yesterday pledged to try to inform and
"assist" all identifiable victims of the hu-
man guinea-pig program the'agency se-
cretly carried out in 80 institutions during
the 19.50's and early 1960's.
Admiral Turner was unable to give any
indication of the number of citizens used
wittingly or unwittingly, during, the 11-.
year-long series of behavior-control expe-
riments, but Senator Edward M. Kennedy
(D., Mass.).observed during a Senate hear-
ing on the scandal that it could be "consi-.
derable." - .
The CIAdirector confirmed that 185
nongovernment specialists had participat-
ed in- the behavior-control project known
as MK-ULTRA, which involved drug -and-
other experiments.
Admiral Turner, testifying before the
.panel, said'no similar mind-bending pro-
grams were now being conducted by the
agency and added that, if ever he discov-
ered any, "beads-would roll."
"It is totally abhorrent to me to think
of using a human being as a guinea pig
and in any way jeopardizing his life and
health, no matter how great the cause," he
said. . -
"I am not here to pass judgment on my
predecessors, but I can assure you this is
totally beyond the pale of my contempla-
tion of what the CIA or any other of our in-
. telligence agencies should undertake," he
told. members at a joint hearing of the
Senate Intelligence Committee and a.
health subcommittee. Admiral Turner vol.
unteered to testify after the recent discov- .
cry. of. 8,000 -pages of records in -the .CI
archives relating to the behavior modifi.
cation project,' which ran -from 1953 to.
1964. -. ,.
The program was aimed at enabling
the CIA to perfect interrogation tech-..
niques, detect use of similar techniques by
the enemy and enable it to induce amnesia
in its own as well as enemyagents,
Senator Daniel K. Inouye (D., Hawaii),
chairman of the intelligence committee,
called it a "grandiose and sinister pro-
ject," while Senator Kennedy, chairman of
the health subcommittee, accused the CIA
of "perversion and corruption" of many
U.S. institutions and researchers.
Senator Kennedy said "any number of
people" could still be .walking around
"with all kinds of physical and psychologi-
cal damge'.' after being subjected to the
experiments, some of which were carried .
on at secret "safe" houses maintained by the CLA in New
York and San Francisco.
Senator Inouye asked Admiral Turner to give the com-
mittee a progress report in three months on the agency's
efforts to identify and notify victims of the experiments
and to "assist them, monetarily or otherwise."
The CIA director yesterday presented the committee
with a still-classified list of all the institutions, which in-
cluded hospitals prisons, universities and research labora-
tories,
recruited-many of them unknowingly-for the
MK-ULTRA program consisting of 149 subprojects.
. At least six of. these projects, and possibly 19 others, in-
volved tests on unwitting subjects. These were mainly car-
ried out in the "safe" houses and involved the administra-
tiDn of -drugs such as LSD to subjects frequently picked up
in bars
Prostitutes were recruited, but the records did not
specify their services, although there were a series of $100
payments to unidentified recipients for "entertaining and
administering."
At least one victim of the CIA drug experiments, a cl
vilian Army employee at Fort Detrick, committed suicide
by leaping to his death from a New York hotel room a
week after having unwittingly consumed LSD.
Experiments were carried out on criminal sexual psy-
chopaths in one state hospital (at least 12 hospitals were
used during the program) and on terminal cancer patients
in another.
The CIA made a $375,000 contribution, masked as a
private donation which qualified for matching federal
funds for the construction of a private medical institution.
This secured use of one-sixth of the facility for CIA bioch-
emical experiments and provided legitimate cover for
their own technicians.
STAT
- Approved For Release 2007/10/19: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100110070-4