Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 18, Number 34, September 6, 1991

Dr. L. Jolyon West: the LSD behind the CultAwareness Network

by an EIR Investigative Team

The sixties are back! Teens in suburbia are corroding their aroused the ire of the dopelobby. CAN spends so much time brain cells with LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), taking and money attacking LaRouche and his associates, because trips into psychosis. EIR has learned that the same people its leading personalities helped create the drug-rock culture who made the LSD culture possible 20 years ago are now in the first place. leading activists in the . The Washington Post on Aug. 21 reported an increase in The Nazi doctors LSD use among white, middle-class suburban teens, describ­ The Cult Awareness Network bestowed its highest honor, ing an LSD party which was attended by a Post reporter, who the Leo J. Ryan award, on Dr. Louis Jolyon West in 1989, was allowed in on the condition thatthe teenagers would only for "extraordinary courage, tenacity and perseverance in the be identifiedby their firstinitials. Reporter Laura Blumenfeld battle against tyranny over the mind of man," yet West's calls these teens the "golden children," "90s-60s hybri�s, " entire careerhas been to manipulate and destroyminds. West and romanticizes the return to the psychedelic heyday of the is an advisory board member pf theAmerican Family Foun­ 1960s. The spaced-out children say they can see God, and see dation, the mother organizatiion of CAN, and he lectures roses blc;><>m and dance before their very eyes, Blumenfeld frequently to CAN conferences. He is held in reverence by reports. CAN supporters and members-and he was a pioneer in the LSD and other hallucinogens made their grand entrance creation of the drug culture. into American society through the CIA and military intelli­ CAN cannot plead ignorance as to who West is. As early gence's vast research experiments run during as 1977, Dr. West was exposed on the frontpage of theNew the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, known as MK-Ultra. Volun­ York Times as being funded; by the CIA to perform LSD teers and unwitting citizens were administered LSD, mesca­ experiments as part of the MK-Ultra project. In his book line, psilocybin, amphetamines, and a host of other psy­ In Search/or the Manchurian Candidate. John Marks also chotropic drugs, while neuropharmacological researchers fingeredWest as being among the pioneers of LSD and miod­ studied the drugs' effects under various conditions. New control experiments funded qy the CIA. CAN's decision to varietiesof easternand ancient pagan religions werespawned honor West exposes the truenature of the organization. from the "mystical insights" achieved under LSD; satanic West got his start in psycho-behaviorist research experi­ and violent groups like the Process Church and the Charles ments with the pool of returningKorean Warveterans, many Manson cult grew out of LSD experimentation. traumatized by combat. As the Air Force chief of psychiatry Some of the leading psychiatrists, behaviorists, and so­ at Lackland Air Force Base from 1952-56, West put these cial controllers who led these MK-Ultra experiments now veterans, among them former,prisoners of war, under intense lead the Cult AwarenessNetwork. CAN is a political vigilan­ study like so many white mice. He published several papers te group ostensibly set up to expose , but in fact its detailing his studies of Air Force POWs and presented an controllers include individuals who created the countercul­ overview of his work in 1957 entitled, "U. S. Air ForcePris­ ture in the first place, including irrational cults. Through a oners of the Chinese Communist Methodsof ForcefulIndoc­ sinister mind control and social engineering process, these trination: Observations and Interviews. " mind-benders became the architects of the destruction of Dr. West moved to the armed family life and traditional American values, the purveyors of with information about Chinese indoctrinationmethods and the "New Age." Cults were created as a political targeting began to set up hideous sleep and sensory deprivation studies. operation, and CAN also stepped in to "expose" as "cults" From 1956 to 1969, he conducted his researchin Oklahoma. groups which they wished to destroy politically. As head of the Department of Psychiatry, Neurology, and The most prominent target of this hate group, along with Behavioral Sciences, he oversaw numerous studies of the its fellow travelers at the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai effects of hallucinogenic drugs under various conditions of B 'rith (ADL) , is political prisoner Lyndon LaRouche, whose stress, as well as studies of �enage gangs and violence. He 20-year fight against the drug-sex-rock counterculture has continued to work on war-weary veterans at the Oklahoma

58 National EIR September 6, 1991

© 1991 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. City Veterans Administration Hospital and the Tinker Air drugs to help control a population. This method, foreseen by Force Base Hospital. Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (1932), has the govern­ To further his studies on LSD, he collaborated with Al­ ing element employing drugs selectively to manipulate the dous Huxley, the British pioneer promoter of LSD and sa­ governed in various ways." tanism. Huxley praised West in a 1957 letter to Dr. Hum­ phrey Osmond, the man who coined the phrase "psycho­ Studies of violence delic" (later changed it to psychedelic to take away any con­ If drugs did not prove an effective method of controlling notation of madness). Huxley wrote: "Dr. L.J. West, of the behavior and ensuring controlled political activity, West re­ Medical School of University of Oklahoma, was here a few sorted to other methods. He moved to the University of Cali­ weeks ago-an extremely able young man, I think. His find­ fornia at to head theNeuro-Psychiatric Institute ings are that mescalinized subjects are almost unhypnotiz­ in 1969, where he took his isolation and sensory deprivation able. I suggested to him that he should hypnotize his people studies one step further. He proposed in 1973 the establish­ before they took LSD." ment of a multidisciplinary Center for the Study and Reduc­ In 1961, Dr. Osmond wrote to Huxley that West had one tion of Violence. Among the programs planned were genetic, of the best equippedsensory deprivation centers in the United biochemical, and neurophysiological studies of violent indi­ States. In 1962, West shocked Oklahoma residents by killing viduals, including prisoners and "hyperkinetic" children. a 7,OOO -pound elephant, in an experimenttesting the potency Treatments considered were chemical castrationand psycho­ of LSD. surgery. West described theprogram as an attempt to "predict the probability of occurrences" of violent behavior among Group manipulation specific groups. The group described by West as most prone Trained in Group Dynamics at the British TavistockInsti­ to violence was young, black urban males. The purposeof his tute, the "mother" agency for most of the postwar Anglo­ proposed Violence Center was to use the "treatment models" American intelligence and "dirty tricks" apparatus, West be­ developed in prison facilities during the CIA's came an expert in small group manipulation. Tavistock's brainwashing research programs of the 1960s and 1970s, to Group Dynamics taught how "thought control" could be very treat "pre-delinquent" children before they became a "prob­ successful in small group "encounter" or "therapy" sessions; lem" to society. entire groups could be manipulated by correctly directing Among those West recruited for his proposed Violence tensions within the group. West coupled his expertise in Center was Dr. Frank R. Ervin of the Harvard Medical group behavior with his knowledge of the effects of halluci­ School. Ervin had already become n6torious through his rac­ nogenic drugs. He studied the behavior of drug-ingesting ist book Violence and the Brain, which proposed psychosur­ in isolated communes. gery. Ervin professed concernabout urban riots and violence, As a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behav­ asking whether there was something intrinsically violent ioral Sciences at Stanford University (1966-69), West gained about the "slum dweller," and proposed treatment with drugs access to the large population of flower children, runaways, and psychosurgery. and hippies that was flooding into California.West was run­ Although West's Violence Center was never approved, ning his LSD/group dynamic studies in California during the he continued to receive millions of dollars in researchfunding early days of what he termed a "cultural transition." West for the Neuro-Psychiatric Institute. Studies of gangs, alcohol said that in the early days of the cultural transition, LSD and drug abuse continued. symbolized "entering a new way of life and casting off the West was a pioneer in bringing psychiatryinto the evalua­ old." West did "field work" in the Haight-Ashbury district tion of criminal behavior and using such psychiatric expertise of Berkeley. as testimony in criminal trials. He was an "expert witness" West studied the use of drugs for controlling group be­ for several court cases, including the kidnaping havior and said that drugs can beused "as adjuncts to interper­ case and the case of . His job was to perpetrate the sonal manipulation or assault." He also saw their usefulness myth of the deranged individual or "lone assassin," and cover in other controlling ways. "The role of drugs in the exercise up the political nature of these cases. of internal political control is also coming under increasing Although a jury thought the evidence was insufficient to discussion. Control can be imposed either through prohibi­ findRuby either insane or suffering from brain damage, West tion or supply. The total or partial prohibition of drugs gives interviewed Ruby after the guilty verdict and found Ruby in government considerable power. . . . An example would be a paranoid state suffering from hallucinations and suicidal the selective application of drug laws permitting immediate tendencies. West asserted that Ruby was truly mentally ill, search, or 'no knock' entry, against selected components of because he rejected West's repeated suggestions that he was. the population, such as members of certain minority groups "The truemalingerer usually grasps eagerly at such an expla­ or political organizations." nation, " West concluded. Since Ruby claimed to be sane, he But, West continues, "government could also supply obviously was not!

EIR September 6, 1991 National 59