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60 - PLACES/LANDMARKS/Dachau.md

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+---
+category: "World War II & Nazi Era"
+tags:
+  - Place
+  - WorldWarII
+  - NaziExperiments
+  - Mescaline
+  - OperationPaperclip
+summary: "Nazi concentration camp near Munich where SS doctors including Kurt Plotner conducted mescaline and hypothermia experiments on prisoners, with the results later accessed by U.S. intelligence and used to inform early ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA research directions."
+location: Dachau, Germany
+created: 2026-06-03
+updated: 2026-06-03
+---
+Dachau was a Nazi concentration camp where S.S. doctors took the search for scientific knowledge of military value to its most awful extreme during [[World War II]]. In a closely guarded, fenced-off part of the camp, doctors studied questions such as how long a downed airman could survive in the [[North Atlantic]] in February. At [[Heinrich Himmler|Heinrich Himmler]]'s personal order, doctors sat by huge tubs of ice water with stopwatches and timed how long immersed prisoners took to die. In other experiments under the cover of "aviation medicine," inmates were crushed to death in high-altitude pressure chambers to learn how high pilots could safely fly, and prisoners were shot so that special blood coagulants could be tested on their wounds.[^1]
+
+### Mescaline and Hypnosis Experiments
+
+Less than 200 miles from [[Albert Hofmann]]'s [[Sandoz]] laboratory in [[Basel]], doctors connected to the S.S. and [[Gestapo]] were conducting experiments that led to the testing of [[mescaline]], a drug with many of the mind-changing qualities of [[LSD]], on prisoners at Dachau. Germany's secret policemen had the notion, completely alien to Hofmann, that they could use drugs like mescaline to bring unwilling people under their control. According to research team member [[Walter Neff]], the goal of the Dachau experiments was "to eliminate the will of the person examined."[^1]
+
+The mescaline tests at Dachau, run by Dr. [[Kurt Plotner|Kurt Plötner]], were not nearly so lethal as the others in the "aviation" series, but the drug could still cause grave damage, particularly to anyone with pre-existing mental instability. The danger was increased by the fact that the mescaline was administered covertly by S.S. men who spiked the prisoners' drinks. Unlike Hofmann, the subjects had no idea that a drug was causing their extreme disorientation. Many must have feared they had gone stark mad on their own. Always, the subjects were Jews, gypsies, Russians, and other groups on whose lives the Nazis placed little or no value.[^1]
+
+### Results and Aftermath
+
+After the war, Walter Neff told American investigators that subjects showed a wide variety of reactions: some became furious, others melancholy or gay, as if drunk. Not surprisingly, "sentiments of hatred and revenge were exposed in every case." Neff noted that the drug caused certain people to reveal their "most intimate secrets." Still, the Germans were not ready to accept mescaline as a substitute for their more physical methods of interrogation. They went on to try hypnosis in combination with the drug, but they apparently never felt confident that they had found a way to assume command of their victim's mind.[^1]
+
+### American Exploitation of Records
+
+After an Allied tribunal convicted the first echelon of surviving Nazi war criminals, American prosecutors charged the Dachau doctors with "crimes against humanity" at a second [[Nuremberg Trials|Nuremberg]] trial. The judges, all Americans, sentenced seven of the Germans, including [[Karl Brandt|Dr. Karl Brandt]], Hitler's personal physician, to death by hanging. Nine others received long prison sentences. The judges put forth what came to be known as the [[Nuremberg Code]] on scientific research.[^1]
+
+Even before the verdicts were in, however, special U.S. investigating teams were sifting through the experimental records at Dachau for information of military value. The report of one such team found that while part of the data was "inaccurate," some of the conclusions, if confirmed, would be "an important complement to existing knowledge." Military authorities sent the records, including a description of the mescaline and hypnosis experiments, back to the United States. None of the German [[Mind Control]] research was ever made public.[^1]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*, Chapter 1.

60 - PLACES/LANDMARKS/Deep Creek Lodge.md

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+---
+category: "Place"
+tags:
+  - Place
+  - CIA
+  - MKULTRA
+  - FrankOlson
+  - SidneyGottlieb
+summary: "Remote retreat in western Maryland where Sidney Gottlieb dosed Special Operations Division scientists with LSD on November 19, 1953, triggering the crisis that ended in Frank Olson's death nine days later."
+location: Deep Creek Lake, Maryland
+created: 2026-06-03
+updated: 2026-06-12
+---
+Deep Creek Lodge was a log building in the woods of [[Western Maryland]], beside [[Deep Creek Lake]], built as a [[Boy Scouts|Boy Scout]] camp about 25 years before the [[CIA]] used it. Surrounded by the water of a mountain lake on three sides, with the peaks of the [[Appalachian Mountains|Appalachian chain]] looking down over thick forest, the lodge was isolated enough for even the most security-conscious spy. Only an occasional hunter was likely to wander through after the summer months.[^1]
+
+### The November 1953 retreat
+
+[[Sidney Gottlieb]] chose Deep Creek Lodge for a working retreat beginning November 18, 1953, where he planned to test [[LSD]] on scientists from the Army's [[Special Operations Division]] (SOD) at [[Fort Detrick]]. Twice a year, the SOD and [[TSS]] men who collaborated on [[MKNAOMI]] held planning sessions at remote sites. The SOD group was led by Dr. [[John Schwab]], Lt. Colonel [[Vincent Ruwet]], and Dr. [[Frank Olson]], and included biochemist [[Benjamin Wilson]]. Gottlieb brought three CIA coworkers, among them his deputy [[Robert Lashbrook]]. The germ warriors came under the cover of being wildlife writers and lecturers, having carefully removed Fort Detrick parking stickers from their cars.[^1]
+
+After dinner on Thursday, November 19, Gottlieb produced a bottle of Cointreau and poured drinks for the group. Unknown to the SOD men, he had laced the liqueur with LSD, and about twenty minutes passed before he told them what they had swallowed. Wilson recalled that "no one was aware anything had happened until Gottlieb mentioned it." Ruwet later called the experience "the most frightening experience I ever had or hope to have." The meeting dissolved into laughter and boisterous talk before turning unpleasant. Olson grew psychotic, unable to understand what had happened and convinced that someone was playing tricks on him; he and most of the others could not sleep. When the men gathered the next morning, Olson was still agitated, the meeting had soured, and they all straggled home.[^1]
+
+### Olson's deterioration
+
+Back at home Olson told his wife he had made "a terrible mistake" and felt humiliated by his behavior at the retreat. On Monday he reported to Ruwet, said he wanted to resign, and questioned his own competence. Ruwet and Lashbrook took him to [[New York]] to see Dr. [[Harold Abramson]], an allergist with a CIA clearance who served as the Agency's informal LSD consultant. Olson's condition worsened over the following days: he became convinced people were waiting outside a theater to arrest him, wandered the Manhattan streets at night, tore up his money, and discarded his wallet. In the early morning of November 28, 1953, Olson went through the closed window of his tenth-floor room at the [[Statler Hotel]], with Lashbrook present in the room, falling to his death on the street below.[^1]
+
+### Public disclosure
+
+The dosing at Deep Creek Lodge remained secret for more than two decades. In June 1975 the [[Rockefeller Commission]] report briefly described an unnamed Army scientist's drug-induced death, and the Olson family recognized the case from press coverage; Ruwet confirmed it to them. In 1976 Congress voted the family $750,000 in compensation and President [[Gerald Ford]] apologized to them in person. The [[Church Committee]] examined the same events that year as part of its inquiry into CIA testing of drugs on unwitting subjects.[^2]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Marks, John D. *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*. Times Books, 1979, Ch. 5. https://bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/manchurian/marks5.htm
+[^2]: "CIA Scientist Frank Olson," *NPR,* Aug. 7, 2002. https://www.npr.org/2002/08/07/1147964/cia-scientist-frank-olson