Chemcical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forogotten
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CHEMICAL WARFARE SECRETS ALMOST FORGOTTEN A Personal Story of Medical Testing of Army Volunteers with Incapacitating Chemical Agents During the Cold War (1955-1975) by JamesS.Ketchum,MD With a foreword by Alexander Shulgin, PhD Copyright © 2006 by James S. Ketchum All rights reserved. Permission to archive and publish provided to Erowid Center © 2016 Published by ChemBooks Inc. 2304 Fairbanks Drive Santa Rosa, California 95403 ISBN # 978-1-4243-0080-8 Registration Number TXu -1 - 333 – 097 Effective Date of Registration 11 Dec 2006 Cover design by Jim O’Neil Dedicated to My loving wife Judy Ann (Schaller) Ketchum who helped and encouraged me to undertake and complete this book TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword – Alexander Shulgin, PhD Prologue: Hot Night in Halifa 1 Cold War – Chemical Call to Arms 1 2 Incapacitating The Enemy Strange Fruit and Stray Smoke 9 3 Hello, Edgewood Arsenal 17 4 The Volunteers: Human Guinea Pigs – Not! 29 5 An Interesting Drug to Start With 35 6 BZ: Tiny Baseball Games and DC-3’s on a Padded Floor 43 7 LSD: The Other Acid Test 53 8 Working Out the Kinks 69 9 BusyasaBeeonaDoseofBZ 81 10 More Breeds than at a Dog Show 97 11 Taming the Fractious Belladonnoids 109 12 Altered States In Fish Tanks and Field Tests 117 13 Name Your Poison: Safety First and Always 127 14 Project Dork: Soldiering on BZ in the Utah Desert 141 15 Rummaging Through the Closet 153 16 Post-Doc with Pribram 171 17 Edgewood Again: Hoping for Déjà Vu 181 18 Good and Bad Vibrations Within and Without 193 19 Rearranging the Deck Chairs 201 20 Final Days at Edgewood 207 21 CIA Connections: Now You See Them, Now You Don’t 217 22 On Into the 70s and 80s 227 23 To the End of the Century and Beyond 235 24 Belated Alarms: What Have We Done? 243 25 Chemical Warfare Then and Now: A Reality Check 257 Appendix 269 FOREWORD My first two interactions with the world of US Government chemical warfare were in the 1950s or maybe the 1960s when I was still a senior research chemist at the Dow Chemical Company in the San Francisco Bay Area. They were totally opposite in the images of secrecy and research process that they presented. I kept no notes, so all is from ancient memory. The first meeting was with two or three chemists in dark suits and ties who were introduced to me and a half dozen other research chemists as being government researchers in the area of potentially interesting synthetic organic chemicals. We were not told from which laboratory they came and the only clues to their areas of interest were two synthetic reaction sequences which had been drawn on the conference room blackboard. The man with the chalk told us that these two pictures had been worked out successfully, and their question was: could any of us propose a last step which might link them together. The bottom compounds in the two schemes were followed by arrows which pointed to an empty area at the bottom of the blackboard. I asked them why not draw in the structure of the desired product and they said that they were not at liberty to do so. "Oh, nonsense," I said and got up and went to the blackboard and drew the structure of the target. I drew the isomeric homologue of tetrahydrocannabinol with the terpene double bond down in the terpene 3,4-position and a 1,2-dimethylheptyl chain at the aromatic 3- position. "This is the obvious product you want," I added as I returned to my seat, "So why don't we discuss how this coupling could be achieved." There was an unmistakable discomfort shared by the gentlemen from Washington. After a bit of discussion I volunteered the statement, "Of course, with three chiral centers, there will be eight distinct optical isomers possible, all of different pharmacology, and some may not resemble marijuana at all in action." The meeting broke up shortly thereafter. A lot of things just couldn't be talked about. The second meeting occurred at an informal conference with some thirty people present, located at a retreat north of Los Angeles. This was organized by my good friend (and secret trumpet player) Daniel H. Efron, MD, PhD (1913-1972). This get-together was sponsored by the Washington operation he ran, the Pharmacology program at the National Institute of Mental Health. He told me to sit over there, pointing to an interesting looking man who was a total stranger. We introduced ourselves. I said my name was Sasha Shulgin, and he said his name was Van Sim. "Oh," I asked him, "What is your first name?" "Van is my first name -- I am Van M. Sim." We quickly discovered that we were both fascinated by psychedelics (they were called psychotomimetic drugs at that time) and that we were both personally experimenting with them. My art was the synthesis of new ones to compare the difference in activity due to structural changes (this at my laboratory at Dow and in my basement lab at home) and his curiosity was met by varying not the compound so much as the setting and the immediate environment around him (this at his laboratory at Edgewood Arsenal). Oh! A government scientist with whom there was nothing in the world that couldn't be talked about. Thus, this foreword is intended to prepare the reader for a story that has never before been told, the telling of the history, the origins and the development of the physical structure and the variety of people who worked at both the Edgewood Arsenal and its precursor, the Army Chemical Center. This it indeed does, with a flood of photographs and names and candid viewings of the people who worked there during the 11 or so years that Jim Ketchum was a major research person in the medical section. There is a mass of small detail, ranging from unexpected visits and unusual interviews to the conversations taking place during some of the drug experiments with volunteer subjects. This is an intimate portrayal of the structure of the research group, and the slow but inevitable changes in attitudes and research goals that occurred over time. But to me, this book is much more than an introduction to the Edgewood Arsenal. It is an autobiography of the author himself, from a young man with a developing medical career to an older, articulate analyst of today's world of chemical weapons in general, but particularly the instruments of psychochemical warfare. It is a pleasure to be able to contribute to this story. Alexander T. Shulgin, PhD ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Prologue PROLOGUE Ittakestwotospeak the truth – one to speak, and another to hear. Thoreau: A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers Hot Night in Halifa It is 4 A.M. – close to the end of another hot night in the desert. American troops are moving into position on the outskirts of the city, preparing to carry out an unprecedented tactical plan. Actionable intelligence, validated by three sources, has established that several hundred Islamic terrorists are in a particular part of the city, some no doubt asleep while others plan attacks with IEDs (improvised explosive devices). A few may be preparing to strap on suicide bombs. Most of the opposition consists of leftover loyalists; some are members of Al Qaeda and a few are foreign extremists, drawn by religious fanaticism and eagerness to die for Islam. During these dark early morning hours, some of the coalition soldiers are understandably nervous. Their charge is to carry out a plan they have never attempted, except in simulated exercises. Each platoon has gone through drills with gas masks for several days, sometimes also wearing the hated, stifling suits that make it so difficult to function. Uncharacteristically, several dozen vehicles, modified to serve as ambulances, have pulled up behind the ring of coalition troops, tactically placed to make undetected exit from the city impossible. Further away, on improvised pads, crews have modified more than a hundred helicopters and are examining them once again to be sure they have done everything right. They chat and periodically glance at their watches. Inside each helicopter is a bank of unfamiliar munitions, brought in by armored, remotely operated tanks. They are specially designed smoke generators, each loaded with 100 kilos of sufentanil. According to what medics previously explained to the commanders, this synthetic chemical is so potent that less than half a milligram can quickly produce profoundly incapacitating central nervous system effects. This amount, one of them noted, is about same as the quantity of LSD that they would need to cause a comparable degree of military ineffectiveness. And the mode of action of this drug is quite different from LSD. iiii ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Prologue Once in the lungs, this tiny dose – less than a thousandth of the amount of powder in a packet of artificial sweetener – less than the weight of a gnat’s wing – will rapidly bring sleep and anesthesia lasting several hours. In larger doses, the drug will produce the same effects but they will come on almost instantly and last longer. No one who inhales sufentanil can stay awake, much less fight. And for added safety, it has been mixed with another synthetic chemical that keeps it from stopping respiration. The commander and his key subordinates meet in an improvised briefing room. The colonel who is leading the operation reminds the small group that the participants must maintain synchrony in their actions. He tells them again the importance of not using the radio except for essential communications.