MDA, MDMA and other mescaline-like substances in the US military’s search for a truth drug (1940s to 1960s)

This review (2017) summarizes the history of the US military’s attempt to operationalize psychotropic drugs, first scopolamine, and mescaline then later on MDMA and other derivatives, as a truth serum. These attempts were largely futile because scopolamine induced a delirium-like state of mind which raised doubt over the validity of the extracted information, whereas psychedelic substances produced excessive hallucinations, thought disturbance, and confusion, which hindered the interrogation process.

Abstract

“This article describes the context in which 3,4‐methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA), 3,4‐methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and other mescaline‐like compounds were explored as hallucinogens for military and intelligence purposes from the 1940s to the 1960s. Germans first tested mescaline as a “truth drug” in a military context. In the 1940s, the United States military started testing hallucinogenic substances as truth drugs for interrogation and behavior manipulation. After tests carried out using mescaline and other drugs in 1950, some derivatives of mescaline were synthesized by the Army for the exploration of possible “speech‐inducing” effects. After insufficient animal testing, the substances were given to patients at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). 3,4‐Methylenedioxy‐N‐ethylamphetamine (MDE), a compound almost identical to MDMA, was among the compounds delivered for testing at the NYSPI. During tests with other derivatives (3,4‐dimethoxyphenethylamine (DMA), 3,4‐methylenedioxyphenethylamine (MDPEA), MDA) in 1952–53, an unwitting patient died in these tests, which was kept secret from the public. Research was interrupted and toxicological animal testing procedures were initiated. The secret animal studies run in 1953/1954 revealed that some of the “mescaline derivatives” tested (e.g. MDA, MDE, DMA, 3,4,5‐trimethoxyamphetamine (TMA), MDMA) were considered for further testing in humans. In 1955, the military changed focus to lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), but some interest in mescaline‐like compounds remained for their ability to change mood and habit without interfering with cognition and sensory perception. Based on the known documents, it remains unclear (but probable) whether any of the mescaline derivatives tested were being used operationally.”

Authors: Torsten Passie & Udo Benzenhöfer

Summary

Germans first tested mescaline as a “truth drug” in the 1940s, and the United States military tested hallucinogenic drugs as “truth drugs” for interrogation and behavior manipulation. In 1952-53, an unwitting patient died in these tests, and toxicological animal testing procedures were initiated.

This article provides an overview of the history of how the US military synthesized and experimented with mescaline derivatives, including 3,4,5-trimethoxyamphetamine (TMA), 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA), 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-ethylamphetamine (MDE) and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA).

Robert House attended a childbirth in 1916, and found that a mother under the influence of scopolamine gave instructions where the baby scale could be found. This led House to further experiments with scopolamine and mescaline, which revealed that individuals under the influence of these drugs generally cannot withhold secrets.

In the 1920s, Heinrich Klüver and Gordon A. Alles were interested in mescaline and its derivatives. Klüver noted that mescaline inebriation caused decreased cognition and enhanced suggestibility, which could be used for military use to extract information from unwilling subjects.

Alles’ research focused on the derivatives of adrenaline and amphetamine. He discovered the psychophysiological effects of amphetamine in 1927, and later synthesized TMA, another analog of mescaline, and studied its effects in mice, rats and humans.

Mescaline was delivered to SS medical headquarters in Berlin for interrogation purposes, because experiments with scopolamine were successful. German military physicans experimented with barbiturates, morphine derivatives and mescaline at the concentration camps Dachau and Auschwitz beginning in 1943. Despite apparent successes, mescaline was too unreliable to be a truth drug and was not used by the US military during World War II.

The first trials of the US military to use drugs in interrogation date back to 1941. The OSS set up a „Truth Drug Committee” in spring of 1943 and tested mescaline, barbiturates, scopolamine, and Cannabis indica, but none of the three volunteers gave up any information.

It must be administered without the subject’s knowledge, must induce a talkative mood, and must leave no recollection or suspicion of any kind. In 1946, a physician who had just returned from Germany from interrogations of captured Nazi scientists remarked that the Germans had conducted elaborate human experiments using hallucinogenic drugs. In 1947, the US Navy started project CHATTER, a „drug testing program”, which included animal and human studies with scopolamine, mescaline and LSD.

In 1950, the CIA increased its research on mind control and manipulation after US prisoners of war claimed that the US had used biological weapons in Korea. The CIA authorized Projekt BLUEBIRD to conduct experiments with drugs on unwilling subjects for speech inducement purposes. At a CIA-initiated meeting on July 23, 1951, the intelligence divisions of the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Federal Bureau of Investigations agreed to cooperate in a joint program on mind control. The project CHATTER developed a truth drug treatment with the desired characteristics.

According to its principal architect, CIA Director Richard Helms, MKULTRA was designed to investigate the development of a chemical material that causes a reversible non-toxic aberrant mental state.

Henry K. Beecher studied chemistry and medicine and became a professor of anesthesia at the Harvard Medical School in Boston. He consulted with the CIA about testing synthetic drugs on prisoners at the Dachau Concentration Camp. In 1951, Beecher travelled to England, France and Germany to evaluate the research on ego-depressant drugs, and concluded that it would be desirable to return to Camp King in Germany in a year to interrogate high level escapees from Russian interrogation.

Since at least 1950, psychochemical substances have been synthesized at Edgewood Arsenal. The Army Chemical Center’s Special Operations Division studied these substances on humans under controlled laboratory conditions.

The NYSPI was one of the most prominent psychiatric research institutions in the U.S. It experimented with mescaline since 1946 and was used by the US Military to determine the effects of psychochemical agents on psychological behavior.

The Edgewood Arsenal coding suggests that mescaline derivatives were synthesized consecutively during years 1950-52, but MDMA, LSD and MMDA might have been synthesized later.

In November 1952, the Army Chemical Corps delivered five substances to the NYSPI for human tests: MDPEA, MDA, MDE, DMA and 2,5 -dimethoxy-N-methylamphetamine (DMMA). Within a month, experimenters began injecting the drugs into patients without their informed consent.

Harold Blauer was a patient suffering from depression and attended the NYSPI for psychiatric/psychotherapeutic treatment. He received hallucinogenic drugs, but experienced terrib le hallucinations and a strong body tremor. Blauer was injected with 450 mg MDA, and died 30 minutes later from an epileptic seizure and a fatal coronary attack. Another patient was given 150 mg MDA instead of the planned 450 mg dose, because her reaction to MDA was so violent. After Blauer’s death, Amedeo Marazzi instructed Drs. Hoch and Cattell not to continue the experiments, but recommended that they implement safety measures to continue with the experiments. The Army Chemical Corps renewed its contracts with the NYSPI in 1953 and instructed the Medical Examiner not to disclose any details of Blauer’s death. The Inspector General of the Army led an official examination of Blauer’s death in 1975 and paid $18,000 to Blauer’s relatives.

Harold Blauer died after an accidental overdose of EA-1298, possibly caused by the steep dose escalation scheme mentioned in Table 2. The judges concluded that the Chemical Corps’s negligence was a proximate cause of Blauer’s death.

In 1953, the University of Michigan began to conduct animal toxicology studies on some mescaline derivatives on behalf of the Army Chemical Warfare Corps. The studies were conducted by Dr. Maurice H. Seevers, who had already intended to do research on mescaline derivatives. The Army’s toxicological studies at Seevers’s Dept. commenced in 1953 and were completed in 1954. The studies showed that dogs are a more reliable animal to detect hallucinogenic effects than rodents or monkeys.

The authors considered the data from animals testing interesting, but did not predict the pharmacologic actions of these agents in man. They hoped that the extensive data contained in this report provide a base for further studies in man.

Since 1952, the CIA’s MKULTRA-program on behavior manipulation through drugs focused more on lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). LSD is active at minute doses (1/10,000 of a gram), colorless, tasteless and odorless.

The Army continued to use the NYSPI after Blauer’s death to test the effects of drugs on personality types during interrogations. No secret information was revealed when subjects became semi-comatose, delirant, developed panic or became talkative and euphoric. During the years 1954/55, Marazzi organized a few „Psychochemical conferences” at Edgewood Arsenal, which had Hoch, Abramson and Seevers as participants. Heath studied the effects of mescaline and LSD on patients’ EEGs and behavior, and identified a specific subcortical paroxysmal activity caused by LSD and mescaline.

Alles synthesized four methylenedioxy compounds and submitted them to the Directorate of Medical Research, Army Medical Center, for testing. Only two methylenedioxy compounds (MDA and MMDA) were used in the tests, and other methylenedioxy compounds were not researched further. Alles’s further experiments with cats showed that all hallucinogenic compounds produced high-amplitude, low-frequency activity with hypersynchronous wave forms in the EEG. This indicates that there is a gross correlation between their ability to produce hypersynchronous bursting activity in the brain of the cat and their hallucinogenic potency in man.

Research on truth drugs commenced in the early 1920s with the use of scopolamine and mescaline. Scopolamine was discarded because it induced a delirium-like state of mind and mescaline was rejected because it produced ‘hallucinations’ that got in the way of eliciting information.

After first testing LSD for the purpose of interrogation in 1952, the Army synthesized mescaline-like compounds to minimize the “counter-productive” effects of mescaline. These compounds were used operationally for interrogations until 1966, when the use of LSD for interrogation was stopped.

To develop drugs with effects that could be predicted, the CIA turned to methylenedioxy compounds, which were virtually devoid of hallucinogenic activity and left subjects with widely intact cognition.

Bundled effects of mescaline and LSD could make a subject more vulnerable, unstable and cooperative by lowering anxiety, defensiveness and self-control. This favored research into the borderland between mescaline and amphetamine, which could be seen in the methylenedioxy compounds. The fact that the Army continued to contract with the NYSPI after Harold Blauer’s death suggests that some mescaline derivatives were tested in humans, but no documentation exists. The CIA’s Technical Services Staff had reached concrete results and had used mind manipulation techniques on 33 subjects, but the extent of field use will probably never become clear.

The research on mescaline derivatives ceased in the early 1960s, presumably because LSD, with its specific physical properties, appeared to have indicated a larger potential for military and intelligence purposes. However, LSD induced severe anxiety and ego -disintegration and could not be used for interrogation or other operational purposes.