Sex, Drugs & the CIA
by Douglas Valentine
Counter Punch Special Report
June 20, 2002
[Counter Punch Editors' Note: We are once
again pleased to publish an exclusive investigative report by
Douglas Valentine, author of The Phoenix Program, the best book
on the CIA's assassination program in Vietnam. This time Valentine,
who has just put the finishing touches on Strength of the Wolf
(a history of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the origins
of the war on drugs), explores one of the Agency's more disgusting
chapters, the doping of unsuspecting American citizens with LSD.
With the Bush administration and members of congress from both
parties clamoring to unfetter the spy Agency in the wake of 9/11,
this cautionary tale from the CIA's recent past couldn't come
at a more apt time. For more on George Hunter White and the CIA's
MK-Ultra program read our book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the
Press.--jsc/ac]
Barbara Crowley Smithe was nineteen years
old in January 1953. She was full-figured, sexy and smart, with
dark hair, blue eyes, and a trace of Irish freckles. She lived
in Manhattan with her husband Eliot Smithe, and their 20-month
old daughter, Valerie.
People who knew Barbara said she was a vibrant,
happy young woman, but that she became confused about her sexuality,
and gradually lost her self-esteem. Her friends did not know why,
but she began to have angry confrontations with Eliot. Arguments
led to rough fights and a separation in 1957. Two extra-martial
affairs engendered a haunting sense of guilt, guilt led to depression,
depression dissolved into despair, and ultimately Barbara succumbed
to paranoia.
At her psychiatrist's advice Barbara was
admitted to Stony Lodge Hospital in December 1958. Before long
she and Eliot divorced, and Valerie went to live with Eliot's
parents. Institutionalized for much of the next twenty years,
Barbara died of leukemia in February 1978, without ever telling
Eliot the secret she took to her grave--the stunning secret that
may very well explain her descent into mental illness.
Indeed, Barbara's mental breakdown may be
traced to the night of January 11th, 1953, when--without her knowledge
or consent--she was given a dose of LSD by an agent of the Central
Intelligence Agency. After that incredible night, her short, sad
life was never the same.
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