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10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Samuel Thompson.md

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+---
+category: "Scientists & Researchers"
+tags:
+  - Person
+  - CIA
+  - Navy
+  - ProjectCHATTER
+  - ARTICHOKE
+summary: "Navy psychiatrist who oversaw Project CHATTER's truth drug research and witnessed CIA ARTICHOKE interrogation techniques firsthand during Operation CASTIGATE in Frankfurt in 1952."
+location: Washington, D.C.
+created: 2026-06-03
+updated: 2026-06-03
+---
+Dr. Samuel Thompson was a psychiatrist, physiologist, and pharmacologist who held the rank of Navy commander. He inherited [[G. Richard Wendt|Professor Wendt]] and [[Project CHATTER]] in 1951 when he became head of psychiatric research at the [[Naval Medical Institute]]. Thompson remembered Naval intelligence telling him of the need for a truth drug in case "someone planted an A-bomb in one of our cities and we had twelve hours to find out from a person where it was. What could we do to make him talk?" Thompson conceded he was always "negative" about the possibility that such a drug could ever exist, but cited the fear that the [[Soviet Union|Russians]] might develop their own miracle potion as reason enough to justify the program.[^1]
+
+### Operation CASTIGATE
+
+When Wendt announced his secret truth drug formula in the summer of 1952, Thompson contacted the [[CIA]], thinking "they might have someone with something to spill." Thompson, Wendt, and a Naval Intelligence man traveled to [[Frankfurt]], [[Germany]], to join the [[ARTICHOKE]] team led by [[Morse Allen]] and his boss [[Paul Gaynor]]. Thompson asked what would happen if something went wrong and the subject died. He recalls one of the Frankfurt CIA men replying, "Disposal of the body would be no problem."[^1]
+
+### The Wendt Fiasco
+
+When Wendt finally revealed his formula to Thompson, it turned out to be a combination of the depressant [[Seconal]], the stimulant [[Dexedrine]], and [[marijuana|cannabis extract]], all well-known drugs. Thompson was dumbfounded and remembers wanting to shoot Wendt on the spot. He quickly passed on the information to the CIA men, who were more than a little disappointed. The general attitude toward Wendt became, in Thompson's words, "hostile as all hell." After the experiments failed, Thompson stated he could never work with Wendt again.[^1]
+
+### The "A" Treatment
+
+After Wendt's drugs failed, the ARTICHOKE team gave the first subject the "A" (for ARTICHOKE) treatment, a technique used during the war to interrogate prisoners and treat shell-shocked soldiers. As practiced on the suspected Russian agent, it consisted of injecting enough [[sodium pentothal]] to knock him out and then, twenty minutes later, stimulating him back to semiconsciousness with a shot of [[Benzedrine]]. The CIA psychiatric consultant used the technique of "regression" to convince the subject he was talking to his wife Eva at some earlier time in his life, speaking through a male interpreter playing the wife. The consultant stated he could "create any fantasy" with 60 to 70 percent of his patients using [[narcotherapy]] or [[Hypnosis]].[^1]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*, Chapter 3.