& & L 9 Psychedelic Warfa Exploring the Potenti :: - .,. of Psychoactive Weapons Interview with James Ketchum James Ketchum, M.D., is a retired Army colonel, a board-certified psychiatrist, and an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA. He received his MD. from Weill Medical College at Cornell University and is the author of the book Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten. During the 1960s, Ketchum was a research director for the Army's Chemical Center at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, where thousands of U.S. soldiers served as volunteers for the secret testing of psychedelic and deliriant drugs as incapacitating agents. The goal was to develop nonlethal military weapons, which could be used to temporarily knock people out without necessarily hurting them. I found Ketchum's book, Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten, to be absolutely fascinating and difficult to put down. It's a treasure chest of rare information, compiled from a massive amount of research of which I was largely unaware. The book is filled with many interesting personal photographs and humorous anecdotes, and it is compulsively readable. Most important, it fills a vital historical gap in the archives of 157 158 Psychedelic Warfare? Exploring the Potential of Psychoactive Weapons psychedelic drug research. From 1955 to 1975 several thousand U.S. editing of the soldiers served as volunteer test subjects for psychedelic drugs (such festival in NE as LSD and strong cannabis derivatives) and deliriant drugs (such as BZ across some and other belladonnoid compounds). The soldiers were administered a battery of physical and cognitive performance tests to see how well they could perform under the drugs' influence. I spoke witl: While reading Ketchum's book I was struck by the strange historical very graciou irony that some of the very drugs that were associated in the 1960s with about his res the counterculture's antiwar movement in America were at the very chemical wa same time being researched as secret military weapons. ons, the fun: While the thought of government-funded experiments into tial of psych. chemical-warfare agents may give you the chills, Ketchum maintains How did yo that his research was motivated by the desire to save human lives and develop more humane, nonlethal weapons. Part of his motivation for JIM: When writing his book was to clear up the misconceptions that many people in stated I war, the media have about the Army's all-volunteer research program, often humanity." . confused with the CIA's notorious and nefarious MK-ULTRA mind- Then Ishift control program, which sometimes even administered LSD to ordinary, psychology, c unwitting U.S. citizens. try when I i Ketchum is a difficult man to pigeonhole as he has always been training in : somewhat of a maverick. In 1966 he was granted two years off from entered the _ his research at Edgewood Arsenal to become a postdoc in neuropsy- near the er., chology with Karl Pribram at Stanford University. While in California he warfare goe' spent time documenting on film the psychedelic subculture in the Bay When you Area and volunteered time as a physician at the Haight Ashbury Free reaction w! Clinic in San Francisco. secret rese. Ketchum also supports research into the potential therapeutic benefits of cannabis and psychedelics; he served for several years as a JIM: The in- member of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws school, and (NORML) and is still active in MAPS. Arsenal prc: Ketchum's book contains a foreword by the legendary psychedelic on incapac.: chemist Alexander Shulgin. Popular cyberculture commentator Ken agents. No Goffman (a.k.a. R. U. Sirius, founder of Mondo 2000) helped with the disturbing? r u • An Interview with James Ketchum 159 S?-: U.S. editing of the book. In 2007, Ketchum even lectured at the Burning Man :_::0 .such festival in Nevada, so he's demonstrated a rare ability to communicate _:- :::5 BZ across some pretty varied subcultures. - 0:2red a -------------@------------- .'.e they I spoke with James Ketchum on September 8, 2008. I found Jim to be • - 3::)rical very gracious, and he appears to have a lot of integrity when he talks :::5 with about his research. We discussed his studies at Edgewood Arsenal, why : :-e very chemical warfare agents may be more humane than traditional weap- ons, the future of chemical warfare, and the possible therapeutic poten- e-:5 into tial of psychedelics. -? -:ains How did you become interested in psychiatry? ·25 and ,;,::)~for JIM: When I was eight years old I wrote a composition in class that : e: ole ir. stated I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up and "help struggling often humanity." So when I entered college I started as a premed student. "':"'inc- Then I shifted briefly to a philosophy major. I left it to major in clinical psychology, and finally reverted to premed. I focused my eye on psychia- try when I got through all this switching around. I got the necessary "';" S ceen training in medicine at Cornell University's medical school, but then entered the Army for my internship and residency training. It was only - e _-Ousy- near the end of my residency that the story starts, as far as chemical :"·:-:--iahe warfare goes. -:-e Bay When you graduated from medical school, what was your initial ': .r. Free reaction when you were first approached by the military to do secret research into incapacitating agents? JIM: The invitation came more than four years after completing medical _?-? c.aW5 school, and was actually somewhat of a happenstance. The Edgewood Arsenal program of research into chemical weapons had started to focus ~o. :ledelic on incapacitating agents-which is to say nonlethality, or low-lethality r:?:::- Ker agents. No psychiatrist had been assigned to the medical labs, and a c: .',:" the disturbing psychiatric reaction had occurred in one of their studies. My 160 Psychedelic Warfare? Exploring the Potential of Psychoactive Weapons mentor at Walter Reed, Dr. David Rioch, called me in and said a psy- Meanwl: chiatrist was needed at Edgewood Arsenal, and would I be interested in type, which such an assignment? I grabbed at it, because it seemed challenging and qualitatively really interesting. centuries. Sc the tic to red What were some of the chemical agents that you studied at BZ diffe Edgewood, and what did you learn about them? and up to t\'. JIM: Before my arrival LSD was the only agent that had been studied in by injection some detail. My predecessor, Dr. Van Sim, initiated and supervised most duce an inca of the human research prior to 1961. But a new and different agent was followed by provided to the Army a few months before I arrived. Over time it was The oth. referred to by a number of names, but finally was called simply BZ. I even better. spent the better part of three years studying it intensively and eventu- with very Ii: ally writing up a detailed summary. I also did, however, some additional cal effects v work with LSD, and with a variant of THC-tetrahydrocannabinol- that some si: provided by Harry Pars, a chemist at A.D. Little, with some technical Thus we we: guidance by Dr. Alexander Shulgin, primarily known, then and now, structural r: for his creative synthesis of psychedelic drugs. potent, mor: It was evident that this variant of THC had several times the while the A: potency of THC found in marijuana, so there was speculation that it and put ther might be powerful enough to be useful as an incapacitating agent. It unpopular '.' certainly was predicted to be safe, much like the marijuana to which it weapons of; was related, but it lacked sufficient intoxicating effects in the dose range Why do yc we studied. It was obvious that it wouldn't be a practical agent, so after humane the a brief trial with the volunteer subjects, I turned my attention almost what inspir entirely to BZ, whose effects I thereafter studied in detail with the help Almost For, of more than three hundred highly cooperative enlisted soldiers. Convinced of its effectiveness and safety, BZ was actually adopted JIM: It seer: by higher Army echelons as the first, and only, standard incapacitating duce nonletl agent. It was produced in quantity and loaded into volleyball-size born- conventiona blets for delivery as an aerosol from overhead aircraft. I had very little your mind-s to do with this phase, nor was I particularly interested in the dispersal 1960s the ic aspects. ally accepte( r- i I [. :,.Veapons An Interview with James Ketchum 161 c.:-. -=- said a psy- Meanwhile, we continued to study additional compounds of similar ~~.nrerested in type, which is to say the belladonnoid category, since their effects were :~.:enging and qualitatively very much like atropine, a drug approved for use for many centuries. Some people may be familiar with atropine, used as a preanes- thetic to reduce salivation. II.' studied at BZ differs from atropine in that it is about twenty times as potent and up to twenty times longer lasting than atropine. The dose required :-~::1studied in by injection or inhalation is only about half a milligram, enough to pro- .-~-~;~------ c::rvised most duce an incapacitating delirium lasting forty-eight to ninety-six hours, , , '0". ' (:;to' - ::::::--.L agent was followed by full recovery. .1- -;:: = rime it was The other compounds that came under scrutiny after BZ were often .: '~mply BZ. I even better. Some acted relatively more on the central nervous system, ::-- and eventu- with very little effect on heart rate or blood pressure. Such physiologi- ,=~.C additional cal effects were more characteristic of atropine and BZ.