FTR#‘s 1314 & 1315 “Injun’ Country”: The Mohawk Mothers’ Trail of Tears Parts 1 and 2

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE. You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself, HERE. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory’s entire life’s work is avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve, avail­able for a con­tri­bu­tion of […]

FTR#1313 Update on The Destabilization of China, Part 2

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE. You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself, HERE. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory’s entire life’s work is avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve, avail­able for a con­tri­bu­tion of […]

FTR#1312 Update on the Destabilization of China, Part 1

This pro­gram updates the ongo­ing desta­bi­liza­tion of Chi­na.

Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include:

1a.–Presidential emer­gency dec­la­ra­tions have made it legal for the U.S. to test chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons on the Amer­i­can peo­ple.

1b.–The impor­ta­tion of solar pan­els has been made more dif­fi­cult and opaque by virtue of the “Uighur genocide/human rights vio­la­tions’ meme.

1c.–A recent op-ed piece in The New York Times rein­forced the Uighur geno­cide meme.

2.–An expert opin­ion on the Biden admin­is­tra­tion ban on chips summed up the essence of the ban: “ . . . . Though deliv­ered in the unas­sum­ing form of updat­ed export rules, the Oct. 7 con­trols essen­tial­ly seek to erad­i­cate, root and branch, China’s entire ecosys­tem of advanced tech­nol­o­gy. ‘The new pol­i­cy embod­ied in Oct. 7 is : Not only are we not going to allow Chi­na to progress any fur­ther tech­no­log­i­cal­ly, we are going to active­ly reverse their cur­rent state of the art,’ Allen says. C.J. muse, a senior semi­con­duc­tor ana­lyst at Ever­core ISI, put it this way: “If you’d told me about these rules five years ago, I would’ve told you that’s an act of war—we’d have to be at war.’. . .”

3.–The U.N. report on alleged human rights vio­la­tions in Xin­jiang was fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed: “ . . . .It is well known but worth not­ing, that no Islam­ic coun­try has crit­i­cized Chi­na for human rights abus­es and, despite many vis­its, none have alleged crimes against human­i­ty by Chi­na . . . . opti­mism was dashed by this report being released around mid­night on her last day in office and with­out any sig­na­ture or com­men­tary from her inter­est­ing­ly, it is not signed by any­one, let alone any­one in author­i­ty; the authors, like many of the wit­ness­es, remain anony­mous. . . .”

4.–Despite sanc­tions, Huawei has devel­oped a new 7nm chip for its lat­est mobile phone.

5.–With char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly pro­pa­gan­dized cov­er­age, the U.S. MSM feeds the pub­lic a steady mes­sage of doom and gloom over Chi­na.

6.–Qualcomm will be par­tic­u­lar­ly hard hit by the new Huawei chips/phones.

7.–The doom and gloom over Chi­na has been sound­ed in the past and proved to be fal­la­cious.

FTR#1311 How Many Lies Before You Belong to the Lies?, Part 26

The war in Ukraine has served to make the nor­mal­iza­tion of Nazis almost rou­tine. This broad­cast high­lights that nor­mal­iza­tion, places it in a broad­er his­tor­i­cal con­text and sets forth essen­tial back­ground infor­ma­tion that flesh­es out under­stand­ing of the phe­nom­e­non.

Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include: 

1a.–The pro­gram begins with review of a crit­i­cal insight made by Glenn Pinch­back, an offi­cer at Fort Sill, Okla­homa. This insight encap­su­lates an ide­o­log­i­cal dynam­ic that has, in part, result­ed in the nor­mal­iza­tion of Nazis via the Ukraine war.

1b.–Exemplifying the nor­mal­iza­tion of Nazis is the white­wash­ing of the Plast orga­ni­za­tion by the New York Times, which presents it as a nor­mal sum­mer camp.

2.–A more accu­rate por­tray­al of the Plast orga­ni­za­tion was pre­sent­ed by Scott Rit­ter: “ . . . . Plast is to Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists like the Hitler Youth was to Ger­man Nazis. . . .”

3.–The white­wash­ing of Plast can be seen as deriv­ing from the cul­ti­va­tion of Ukrain­ian and oth­er East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist groups by the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion.

4.–For the sec­ond time this year, Azov Nazis were fet­ed as heroes at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.

5.–Stanford fel­low and con­ser­v­a­tive lumi­nary Fran­cis Fukuya­ma was among those who cel­e­brat­ed the Azov Nazis.

6.–Azov’s Nazis evolved direct­ly from the Third Reich col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment of Ukraine. Roman Svarych, WWII Ukrain­ian Nazi satrap Yaroslav Stetsko’s per­son­al sec­re­tary in the 1980’s, was instru­men­tal in the spawn­ing of Azov. Svarych was the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice of Ukraine under three dif­fer­ent admin­is­tra­tions. (That is the equiv­a­lent of U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al.)

7.–Ukrainian revi­sion­ist Volodymyr Via­tro­vych served as Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion in Ukraine.

8.–Ukrainian school chil­dren are now taught the doc­trine of fas­cist and anti-Semit­ic ide­o­logue Ulas Sam­chuk.

9.–Apologists for the Ukrain­ian fas­cists cite Vlodymyr Zelensky’s Jew­ish her­itage as proof that Ukraine isn’t infest­ed with Nazis. Zelen­sky is exten­sive­ly net­worked with the Azov Nazis.

10.–Former U.S. Air­borne sol­dier Bri­an Boyenger appears to have assist­ed the Geor­gian Legion in the Maid­an false-flag sniper killings. Boyenger also pre­sides over Task Force Plu­to, which has incor­po­rat­ed U.S. Nazis into its ranks, includ­ing indict­ed mur­der­ers.

11.–Former Marine and U.S. Nazi Christo­pher Pohlhaus is train­ing Amer­i­can Nazis to fight in Ukraine. One won­ders if his trainees will return to the U.S. in order to sub­due those who fig­ure to be blamed for “los­ing” Ukraine.

FTR#‘s 1309 and 1310 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Parts 3 and 4

These broad­casts sup­ple­ment FTR#‘s 509, 1107 and 1108.

Sig­nif­i­cant sec­tions of the lat­ter two broad­casts are recapped in these pro­grams and this descrip­tion.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include:

1.–Iris Chang’s moth­er, Ying-Ying Chang, could not rule out the “dark con­spir­a­cy” that Iris was fac­ing. Ying-Ying’s point of view was shaped, in part, by Steven Clemons’ obser­va­tions.
2.–In an appen­dix titled “Requiem for Iris Chang,” Steven Clemons not­ed the alleged “sui­cide” of his asso­ciate Juzo Ita­mi, who was bat­tling the same forces as Iris Chang. “I have nev­er bought the sto­ry about Juzo Ita­mi, who was at war in his films with the Japan­ese right-wing crowd and yakuza.”
3.–Iris’ best-known work, “The Rape of Nanking”, inspired a con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion sup­port­ing Japan­ese com­pen­sa­tion for those who had been com­pelled to labor as slaves and slave pros­ti­tutes or “com­fort women.”
4.–Iris was work­ing on a book and doc­u­men­tary film project about the sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March. Some of those vet­er­ans had been used as slave labor­ers by Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions dur­ing the war. The Bataan Death March vet­er­ans were among those who sued the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions that had enslaved them.
5.–The pre­sid­ing judge ruled against the vet­er­ans and for the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions. On the day of Iris’ “sui­cide” Gov­er­nor Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger was meet­ing with Japan­ese busi­ness­men to pro­mote Cal­i­for­nia-Japan­ese trade.
6.–In ear­ly Sep­tem­ber of 2001, Iris spoke at a con­fer­ence assem­bled to protest the cel­e­bra­tion of the 50th anniver­sary of the U.S./Japanese treaty of 1951 (nego­ti­at­ed by John Fos­ter Dulles). Iris called “the San Fran­cis­co Peace Treaty a trav­es­ty of jus­tice, a betray­al of our own Amer­i­can vet­er­ans.” Recall the con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion passed in the after­math of, and because of The Rape of Nanking.
7.–After watch­ing a spir­it­ed dis­cus­sion between Iris and the Japan­ese ambas­sador to the U.S., a friend of Iris’ father advised her to hire a body­guard.
8.–As will be not­ed at greater length below, Iris was very crit­i­cal of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion and had writ­ten sev­er­al arti­cles crit­i­cal of his poli­cies.
9.–Iris was very crit­i­cal of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion, and had tak­en stances against many fea­tures of his for­eign pol­i­cy, Bush’s inva­sion of Iraq in par­tic­u­lar. Iris had long opposed all forms of racism in this coun­try.
10.–Sadly, many of those close to Iris dis­missed her fears con­cern­ing the government’s tar­get­ing of her and the over­lap­ping ide­o­log­i­cal ani­mos­i­ty and tar­get­ing of her by the Japan­ese right-wing. The his­tor­i­cal and oper­a­tional over­lap between the two is fun­da­men­tal and is explored in some of the mate­r­i­al below.
11.–When she trav­eled to Louisville, Ken­tucky to inter­view sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March, she felt she was under phys­i­cal sur­veil­lance and harass­ment. We note below that Ken­tucky was a place where Bush con­fi­dant William Stamps Far­ish III had pow­er­ful con­nec­tions.
12.–During her book tour for The Rape of Nanking, Iris was approached by some­one she felt was recruit­ing her. He said “You will be safer to join us.” Was this and attempt at recruit­ment by the CIA?
13.–We repeat the infor­ma­tion in #11, for pur­pos­es of empha­sis.
14.–Iris was con­vinced to her dying day that she was the focal point of hos­til­i­ty from the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. A remake of the movie The Manchuri­an Can­di­date height­ened her anx­i­ety. Her arti­cles crit­i­cal of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and, as we have and shall see, the over­lap­ping dynam­ics of her work on The Rape of Nanking and Gold War­riors fur­ther deep­ened her per­il. She first pur­chased a firearm for pro­tec­tion and was hop­ing that John Ker­ry would defeat Bush in 2004.
15.–Despite the fact that Iris’ corpse was found in her car in the ear­ly morn­ing, her par­ents weren’t noti­fied of her death until almost mid­night. Why?
16.–Iris’ corpse was dis­cov­ered ear­ly in the morn­ing with her head against the driver’s side win­dow, her hands crossed in her lap and the gun on her left leg. While not phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble, this is alto­geth­er unlike­ly for some­one who had alleged­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide by fir­ing a pow­er­ful hand gun into her mouth. She felt that her prob­lems were “exter­nal,” while those around her thought they were “inter­nal,” i.e. “all in her head.”
17.–Same as 16.
18.–Iris’ ordeal was remark­ably sim­i­lar to what Rita Katz endured fol­low­ing her work on Oper­a­tion Green Quest and the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion.
19.–George W. Bush was pur­su­ing Philip­pine Gold­en Lily loot in order to increase U.S. gold reserves and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, to for­ti­fy his blind trust. That trust was over­seen by William Stamps Far­ish III, who had con­sid­er­able polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic grav­i­tas in the state of Ken­tucky.
20.–Bush’s Harken Ener­gy may well have served as a mon­ey laun­der­ing front, per­haps for some of the gold recov­ered in the Philip­pines. We note that a direc­tor of Harken, Talat Oth­man, inter­ced­ed direct­ly with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 raids. The SAAR net­work was a pri­ma­ry tar­get of those raids: we have seen how Rita Katz and her fel­low inves­ti­ga­tors came under sur­veil­lance and harass­ment for dig­ging into that case.
21.–We revis­it the deep pol­i­tics of the Bush fam­i­ly, the fam­i­ly of Dou­glas MacArthur and William and Alan Quasha.
22.–More about the deep pol­i­tics of the Philip­pines, the Bush fam­i­ly, father and son Quasha, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Alan Quasha’s dom­i­nant pres­ence in Harken Ener­gy may be deriv­a­tive of the clan­des­tine acqui­si­tion of Gold­en Lily loot.
23.–The pro­gram con­cludes with review of the oper­a­tions of Gold­en Lily and their involve­ment with things Iris was inves­ti­gat­ing. The Rape of Nanking marked the for­mal begin­ning of Gold­en Lily.
24.–Colonel Tsu­ji Masanobu was heav­i­ly involved with Gold­en Lily and the Bataan Death March, the sur­vivors of which were a focal point of Iris Chang’s research at the time of her death.

FTR#1308 Interview with Dean McLeod and Peter Vogel About Port Chicago (A Reprise of FTR#605 Because of the Interest Generated by the Movie “Oppenheimer”)

Revis­it­ing a sub­ject Mr. Emory has researched for years, this pro­gram sup­ple­ments Peter Vogel’s hero­ic research on the Port Chica­go explo­sion of July 17th of 1944. For decades, Peter has researched that event, devel­op­ing a com­pelling body of evi­dence that the explo­sion was actu­al­ly the test of an ear­ly atom­ic bomb—the Mark II. (Peter’s research is avail­able in an online book: The Last Wave from Port Chica­go.) In this broad­cast, author Dean McLeod, whose book Images of Amer­i­ca: Port Chica­go is due for release on 9/15/2007, joins him. (An advance look at the con­tents of his book, includ­ing some very impor­tant doc­u­ments that com­ple­ment and rein­force Peter’s work on the explo­sion, are avail­able on DEAN’S WEBSITE.) After a syn­op­sis of the Port Chica­go explo­sion, inves­ti­ga­tion and mutiny, Dean sum­ma­rizes the his­to­ry of the town of Port Chica­go, includ­ing the fact that the town was relo­cat­ed in its entire­ty dur­ing the Viet­nam War, in order (osten­si­bly) to safe­guard the res­i­dents in the event of a future explo­sion like the one at Port Chica­go. Dean notes that, dur­ing the Cold War, Port Chica­go became a major trans­ship­ment point for nuclear weapons bound for the Pacif­ic the­ater. The sec­ond half of the pro­gram sum­ma­rizes Peter’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the explo­sion itself and the evi­dence that the blast was a test of an atom­ic bomb. Dean presents doc­u­ments that he has uncov­ered which strong­ly rein­force Peter’s argu­ment.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The neg­a­tive reac­tions of Edward Teller (father of the H‑bomb) and Don­ald Kerr (direc­tor of Los Alam­os Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry) to Peter’s inquiries about Port Chica­go; the tremen­dous inter­est of the Los Alam­os Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry in this (sup­pos­ed­ly con­ven­tion­al) explo­sion; the back­ground of Cap­tain William Par­sons (the point man for the Los Alam­os research on Port Chica­go); Par­sons’ role as bomb­ing offi­cer aboard the Eno­la Gay—the plane that dropped the first atom­ic bomb on Hiroshi­ma; the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the explo­sion that pin­point it as being a nuclear fis­sion blast; an August, 1944 mem­o­ran­dum con­grat­u­lat­ing par­tic­i­pants in the inves­ti­ga­tion for advanc­ing a “high­ly clas­si­fied and urgent project.” It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that the inves­ti­ga­tion of the explo­sion of an ammu­ni­tion ship would be con­sid­ered “high­ly clas­si­fied and urgent!”

FTR#1307 Interview with Peter Vogel (Reprise of FTR#444 Because of the Attention Generated by the Movie “Oppenheimer”)

Fol­low­ing up infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M23 and FTRs 129, 163, this broad­cast fea­tures the land­mark research of Peter Vogel on the Port Chica­go explo­sion of 7/17/1944. One of the largest man-made dis­as­ters in his­to­ry, the Port Chica­go explo­sion claimed the lives of 320 sailors, 220 of them African Amer­i­cans. Sub­se­quent­ly, African-Amer­i­can sailors refused to con­tin­ue load­ing ammu­ni­tion at Port Chica­go and were con­vict­ed of Mutiny. Offi­cial­ly the explo­sion of con­ven­tion­al muni­tions aboard an ammu­ni­tion ship, the E.A. Bryan, the Port Chica­go blast was actu­al­ly the test of an ear­ly atom­ic weapon, the auto­cat­alyt­ic ura­ni­um hydride lat­er­al implo­sion exper­i­men­tal device—named the Mark II. After relat­ing Peter’s long odyssey explor­ing the explo­sion and the offi­cial dis­sem­bling that sur­rounds the event, the pro­gram relates the fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­men­tary trail con­firm­ing the nature of the explo­sion and the chronol­o­gy of this ear­ly, sig­nif­i­cant step in the devel­op­ment of the atom­ic weapons.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Peter’s proof that a suf­fi­cient amount of fis­sion­able mate­r­i­al for test­ing a fis­sion weapon was avail­able in 1944 (despite offi­cial pro­nounce­ments to the con­trary); the neg­a­tive reac­tions of Edward Teller (father of the H‑bomb) and Don­ald Kerr (direc­tor of Los Alam­os Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry) to Peter’s inquiries about Port Chica­go; the tremen­dous inter­est of the Los Alam­os Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry in this (sup­pos­ed­ly con­ven­tion­al) explo­sion; the back­ground of Cap­tain William Par­sons (the point man for the Los Alam­os research on Port Chica­go); the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the explo­sion that pin­point it as being a nuclear fis­sion blast; cor­re­spon­dence among some of the prin­ci­pals in the Man­hat­tan Project con­firm­ing that the Port Chica­go explo­sion was a test of the Mark II; indi­ca­tions that the Ger­mans were work­ing on a ura­ni­um hydride weapon; Sovi­et espi­onage on the Man­hat­tan Project that indi­cat­ed aware­ness of the test of Mark II; the pos­si­ble sig­nif­i­cance of the Port Chica­go explo­sion for the revo­ca­tion of Robert Oppen­heimer’s secu­ri­ty clear­ance; the sig­nif­i­cance of the Port Chica­go explo­sion in the his­to­ry of African-Amer­i­can civ­il lib­er­ties.

Note: This descrip­tion is for­mat­ted by pre­sent­ing the ques­tions that Dave asked Peter Vogel, and then a syn­op­tic overview of Peter’s response. For more detailed infor­ma­tion about the Port Chica­go explo­sion, see The Last Wave from Port Chica­go.

FTR#1306 Where’s Nuremburg?

Exper­i­ment­ing on human beings with­out their knowl­edge and/or con­sent is for­bid­den by the Nurem­burg code. Nonethe­less, the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment has been doing just that as a mat­ter of course in the years since World War II.

Hav­ing import­ed many Nazi Ger­many’s and Impe­r­i­al Japan’s war crim­i­nals, the U.S. was on track to insti­tu­tion­al­ize exper­i­ment­ing on unwit­ting human sub­jects by the end of the Sec­ond World War.

This pro­gram doc­u­ments some of the exper­i­ments and the pro­grams which gave rise to such oper­a­tions:

Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: CIA researched the occult in what Hank Albarel­li spec­u­lates may have been a research project inspired by the Nazi Ahnenerbe; The agency researched var­i­ous ways of caus­ing can­cer and the effects of var­i­ous lev­els of stress on those suf­fer­ing from the dis­ease; Both the CIA and the Army researched the effects of radi­a­tion on human beings in a vari­ety of clan­des­tine exper­i­ments; The CIA’s “Human Ecol­o­gy” research projects embraced a wide vari­ety of exper­i­men­tal projects designed to learn how to con­trol and mod­i­fy human behav­ior; Ver­mont-based doc­tor Robert Hyde was among the pre­mier researchers to test LSD on human sub­jects, some in projects the details of which have not been ful­ly dis­closed.

FTR#1305 How Groovy Was It Really?

Explor­ing aspects of the “counter-cul­ture” of the 1960’s against the back­ground of the CIA and mil­i­tary’s exper­i­men­ta­tion with mind-alter­ing sub­stances and var­i­ous mind-con­trol tech­niques, this pro­gram asks the ques­tion: “Was it real­ly good?”

Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include:

1.–Details con­cern­ing SPAN, the oper­a­tional code-name for the dos­ing with LSD of the entire town of Pont St.-Esprit in South­ern France.

2.–The sto­ry of William Hay­ward, the direc­tor of the ’60s cult film Easy Rid­er. Hay­ward was the vic­tim of psy­chi­atric con­fine­ment by ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

3.–The mon­i­tor­ing of Ken Kesey’s LSD events by mem­bers of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

4.–Former OSS agent Gre­go­ry Bateson’s stew­ard­ship of the intro­duc­tion of Ken Kesey to LSD.

5.–Sourcing for the infor­ma­tion about the Bateson/Kesey dynam­ic and dis­cus­sion of CIA and mil­i­tary exper­i­ments with mind-alter­ing sub­stances at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont.

6.–CIA oper­a­tive George Hunter White’s sur­rep­ti­tious dos­ing of unwit­ting sub­jects with LSD.

7.–George Hunter White’s arrest of jazz singer Bil­lie Hol­i­day for opi­um pos­ses­sion in 1949. Drug arrests destroyed Hol­i­day’s abil­i­ty to work in estab­lish­ments that served alco­hol.

8.–The sto­ry of a San Fran­cis­co event fea­tur­ing the cream of the psy­che­del­ic bands of the time. The event ben­e­fit­ted the Hare Krish­na cult.

9.–Discussion of the fas­cist phi­los­o­phy of the leader of the Hare Krish­na cult.

10.–The biog­ra­phy of John Per­ry Bar­low, for­mer cam­paign man­ag­er for Dick Cheney and lyri­cist for the Grate­ful Dead. Bar­low’s role with the EFF, an orga­ni­za­tion with many wor­thy mem­bers and rep­u­ta­tion but one which, nonethe­less, has worked for the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

11.–Barlow’s inter­ac­tion with the CIA and NSA and an exam­i­na­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of his stew­ard­ship of social media.

FTR#1304 Albert Hofmann, The Nazis and The CIA

Trans­formed into some­thing of an icon dur­ing the “Psy­che­del­ic Era” of the 1960’s, San­doz’s Albert Hoff­man’s polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions are fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from his “Peace and Love” per­sona mint­ed dur­ing that time.

The real­i­ty of that time is fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from the sur­viv­ing cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal nar­ra­tive.

This pro­gram sets forth dis­turb­ing facts about Hoff­man, his rela­tion­ship with the CIA and the San­doz fir­m’s activ­i­ties in World War II.

“. . . . In the same inter­view [Gor­don] Was­son said that Albert Hof­mann ‘worked in some way with the CIA’ and that Hoffman’s ‘dis­cov­er­ies were impart­ed in whole by San­doz to the U.S. gov­ern­ment. San­doz want­ed to be on the right side of things.’ Hofmann’s con­nec­tion to the CIA has nev­er been offi­cial­ly con­firmed by the CIA, which main­tains a pol­i­cy of not com­ment­ing on or reveal­ing infor­ma­tion on for­eign cit­i­zens who find their way into its employ­ment. For­mer agency offi­cials have com­ment­ed anony­mous­ly that sev­er­al San­doz sci­en­tists and offi­cials, includ­ing Hof­mann, main­tained a close rela­tion­ship with the CIA, but the ‘Agency nev­er ful­ly trust­ed the Swiss’ and ‘always held a dual insur­ance pol­i­cy with San­doz’ by vet­ting and plac­ing covert employ­ees with­in the firm’s lab­o­ra­to­ries and admin­is­tra­tion. . . .”

Ele­ments of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The World War II indict­ment of San­doz for col­lab­o­rat­ing with Nazi Ger­many; Hof­man­n’s work for the CIA; the pres­ence of U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare per­son­nel in France at the time of the dis­as­trous Pont St.-Esprit ergot/LSD out­break; Hof­man­n’s pres­ence in Pont St.-Esprit in the imme­di­ate after­math of the out­break; Hof­man­n’s mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the cause of the out­break, attribut­ing it to the use of a mer­cury com­pound used to pre­serve seeds: ” . . . . ‘The mass poi­son­ing in the south­ern France city of Pont-St. Esprit in the year 1951, which many have attrib­uted to ergot-con­tain­ing bread, actu­al­ly had noth­ing to do with ergo­tism. It rather involved poi­son­ing by an organ­ic mer­cury com­pound that was uti­lized for dis­in­fect­ing seeds]’ . . . .”; Hof­man­n’s dis­cus­sion with doc­tors inves­ti­gat­ing the out­break in the imme­di­ate after­math of the event–a dis­cus­sion in which the mer­cury poi­son­ing the­o­ry was dis­missed: ” . . . .The doc­tors at the meet­ing agreed that mer­cury poi­son­ing was not evi­dent in any man­ner, spe­cial­ly because of the per­sis­tent lack of kid­ney or liv­er dam­age. . . .”; an account of the Pont St.-Esprit out­break.