Nightmares of Naomi

Mind Control & Agents of Incapacitation and Lethality

As Executive Officer to the CIA’s head of clandestine services, Samuel Halpern would work long hours at the Agency and not be able to finish his paperwork “because my door was always open, everybody knew it,” he recalled. His fellow co-workers “would come in at all hours, particularly after hours, and they’d want to sit and talk.” It was in these informal sessions that they would spill secrets: “I was told more things about things I should never have known about. Had no reason to know. Didn’t want to know. Had plenty on my mind. And I couldn’t do anything about it.”

There were some secrets he never learned, but since Halpern saw reams of material at the hub of covert operations, his colleagues assumed he “knew everything. But obviously I didn’t. They didn’t know that.” That is why one day his co-workers stopped him in a hallway one day at the CIA in early 1975 and began screaming at him. He remembered it as “really a shouting match in the hall.” His friends were berating him over revelations at the time of the Agency’s acts of wrongdoing, particularly Project MKULTRA, which had involved the drugging of unwitting Americans with substances such as LSD. These colleagues knew that Halpern was a friend of Sidney Gottlieb, the leader of that mind control experimentation effort and the Chief of the Technical Services Division (TSD).

The CIA employees “took very great personal affront in the fact that they, because they were a part of CIA, were now and forever more tarred with this kind of thing.” The yelling amounted to “how could you?” and “how dare you?” from co-workers who were not young idealists but rather “a part of my generation” who were reacting to “something that they felt was beyond the pale.” There were aspects of the Agency operation that had surprised Halpern himself and he now had trouble defending: “I didn’t like it when I heard about it for the first time. Particularly some of the nasty details about the two-way glass and getting a drunk in a bar and giving [an unwitting citizen] something and following him to see what he did and that kind of stuff.” In response to their rage, Halpern tried his best to explain what he knew, that LSD had been this “new weapon that was going to be possibly used against us: a. How could we defend ourselves, and b. how would we use it if it was a proper weapon.” His angry co-workers “wouldn’t listen. And these were old friends. Go way back.” It turned out that Halpern had learned about MKULTRA in a roundabout way from Gottlieb in the years the project was active, but he had no idea what it was at the time. He felt that his colleagues were expressing their anger at him as their way of attacking Gottlieb, since the TSD Chief had retired from the Agency in 1973 and covered his tracks before leaving, destroying what he thought were all of the project’s records.

Subway Clouds

Senator Schwarz: Mr. Helms, were you aware that the CIA had a capability to use bacteriological and chemical weapons offensively?

Former CIA Director Richard Helms: Yes, I was aware of that. If one has in one’s possession or under one’s control bacteriological or chemical weapons, they can be used both defensively and offensively.

-U.S. Senate Testimony, September 17, 1975

People in the subway paid no mind to the mysterious clouds of an unknown substance enveloping them; one tester reporting “when the cloud engulfed people, they brushed their clothing, looked up at the grating apron and walked on.” In June 1966, U.S. Army scientists conducted a covert experiment in the New York City subway system to test the spread of bacteria as part of a 20-year germ warfare testing program. Recruited agents released the bacteria by smashing light bulbs filled with a bacterium called Bacillus subtilis. The organism spread quickly through subway tunnels, potentially exposing over a million people within minutes. These tests were conducted without public consent and the chilling conclusion in the resulting report, A Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers in New York City to Covert Attack with Biological Agents, was that “a large portion of the working population in downtown New York City would be exposed to disease if one or more pathogenic agents were disseminated covertly in several subway lines at a period of peak traffic.”

The photographer documenting the tests saw the unwitting test subjects “never noticed that anything unusual was going on. Some looked once and went on their way. I was asked by one man if I had taken any good pictures. I said yes and went on with my work.” The agents disseminating the bacterium and those taking samples also encountered little interest or difficulty from the public. One man looked at the sampling device, called Mighty Mite Air Sampler, and asked a sample tester “what was making so noise. I answered…the…radio. He seemed satisfied. A train came in and he caught it.” Another tester’s first attempt generated curiosity from one traveler: “while inserting Wagner sampler and turning Mighty Mite on, a man sitting on bench beside me leaned over and looked into the case. No comment made; I looked at him as if to indicate he should mind his own business and he looked away.” Since the Mighty Mite was a loud device, some testers learned to operate it when the trains were arriving or leaving to mask the noise.

What made the testers appear to be suspicious the most to the public was the fact that they remained in the subway stations for extended periods of time. However, some testers were not viewed as suspicious as fellow travelers asked for directions or the time. Subway workers and passengers tried to be helpful with these testers who appeared to be aimless and lost: “the operator of a news stand noticed I had been in the station for an extended length of time,” noted one tester, “and after 2 hours and 15 minutes called me over to find out where I wanted to go and help me find the right train.” Another tester was approached by a conductor, who asked him “if there was a particular train I was looking for. Mighty Mite was working at the time. I told him that I was trying to become familiar with the subway system, as the night before I had to ask three people how to get out to Shea Stadium. He gave me a map of the subway system, for which I thanked him without telling him I had one just like it in my pocket.”

Only once did law enforcement in the subways become involved. The test personnel had been “given letters identifying them as members of an industrial research organization as a cover in case they were questioned.” The only time a tester had to use this letter was because a cigarette was hanging from his mouth. On his first day, the tester was enroute to the station when a police officer stopped him: “Don’t you know that you are not supposed to smoke in the subway?” “No,” the tester replied. The policeman asked where he was from and upon learning the man was from Maryland, he asked the tester for identification. The tester only had the fake letter on him, “so I showed him that. The officer looked at the heading and said you are not supposed to smoke on any public transportation. I said thank you and was on my way.” This tester found that as long as he appeared to be “too busy for conversation” and pretended to watch and write, he was left alone: “The people of the big city are moving too fast to see what is going on about them, and those that give you the once-over are satisfied as long as it looked legal on the surface.” Other police officers observed additional samplers in action, but said nothing.

Releasing the light bulbs, which created the smoke clouds spreading the bacterium, was a more precarious endeavor, one tester noting: “During the dissemination phase, it was necessary to time the aerosol release carefully so as not to alert pedestrians in the vicinity. Reasonable care here completely eliminated any undue notice by people on the street.” The bacterium used in the study, Bacillus subtilis, referenced in the report as “harmless,” was later found to cause health issues for those with weakened immune systems or in otherwise poor health.

Records, Animals & Poison

Having done some “fringe work” for MKULTRA in his early years at the CIA with TSD, M. David Boston had a passing familitary with the project. He did not understand and was not told, however, why the records for the mind control project were now about to be destroyed in 1973. Many were “contract files,” he recalled, “funded under a special funding mechanism which would not show CIA or government interest.” His boss, Sidney Gottlieb, was months away from retirement and there had been an order issued that the Office of Research and Development “stop all work in its drug programs.” TSD was already out of the drug business, but now they were covering their tracks. Gottlieb had secured the approval of CIA Director Richard Helms to proceed with the document destruction, despite the Agency’s stated “legal and moral obligation within limits of security provisions to comply with records management legislation.” MKULTRA had 149 subprojects according to the financial records that escaped the burn bags, but Boston recalled 152 being destroyed, with files dating from April 1952 through May 1967. As instructed, Boston called up the records from the CIA Archives, whereupon they were “torn and burned. It took four people a full day to destroy these documents.”

After working at the private firm UMC Industries, Inc. for several years on CIA projects, including “an animal toxixology program and a secret writing systems program,” Boston had decided to join the CIA full-time in 1961. He worked for TSD, later renamed the Office of Technical Service (OTS) for his entire career, rising to the position of Branch Chief of Chemistry Branch in 1971. Boston had “conducted many tests of drugs on animals,” according to his account, many of them done through contractors such as his previous employer, UMC Industries and another named Resources Research Institute in San Mateo, California. Many of the drugs used in CIA experiments came from pharamaceutical houses, where they had been “rejected because of unusual side effets.” From 1961 to 1968, Boston worked for the Biological Branch which worked on chemical warfare and biological warfare surveillance programs “to determine if foreigners were manufacturing chemical warfare or biological warfare drugs. This consisted of taking air and water samples and analyzing them.” In an offensive capacity, the Branch “developed tear gas and other harassment gasses for use against foreign groups. These were used primarily by liaison services to control crowds…unfriendly to those governments. The gasses were manufactured in canisters which were unmarked and untraceable.” He recounted how animal training programs passed from ORD to TSD involved ravens being “trained to deliver packages.” Boston noted there were “hydrogen-cyanide capsulses for suicides” available when he first began working for TSD. These had been developed for agents in the field to commit suicide if captured: “the person taking the capsule had to crush a gas capsule with his teeth and then suck back sharply.”

As Halpern later explained, it was possible to work at the CIA in a particular division and not know the full extent of their activities: “We used to have compartmentation in those days because even as the Exec to the [Deputy Director for Plans], there’s lots of things I didn’t know about” until they were later exposed in congressional investigations. New CIA leadership discovered one such project after a call for Agency misdeeds was sent out.

The Family Jewels

James R. Schlesinger was CIA Director (DCI) for only five months in 1973, but it was enough time to make an impact on the Agency and its employees. Halpern recalled Schlesinger being known to the CIA “just by reputation [which was] bad, because of the things he had done in the Atomic Energy Commission and the Bureau of Budget. And his whole approach. Totally impersonal. The new ‘machine man’ kind of thing, you know, the mathematical brain or whatever...immediately the phone calls went out all over town asking, ‘What about this, who is this guy, what’s he like?’ And everything we got back was bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad...”

Schlesinger cut 7% of CIA staff which greatly affected morale. Halpern “saw how some of those separations of some senior officers were done. And believe me, it was brutal. Brutal and awful...No sense of personalities. No sense of humanity. No sense of the dealing with individuals’ problems.” Schlesinger also issued a call-out to CIA employees to report internally questionable past activities by the CIA, later known as the Family Jewels. Halpern recalled that some employees “were shocked and surprised that anybody would put it all on a piece of paper, number 1. Some accepted it as just another order and filled out all kinds of stuff...I never responded to it. Because it didn’t apply to me, as far as I was concerned, because none of the things that I had ever done were, as far as I was concerned, beyond the pale, beyond the law, beyond interpretation of the law or anything like that...[there was] a lot of talk. Obviously. ‘What’s this all about? Why?’ All that kind of stuff.”

One employee responded to the DCI’s Family Jewels request by reporting a biological warfare capability that had been established by the CIA in the early 1960s. An internal investigation at the CIA found an Inspector General (IG) report from 1963 referring to the Agency spending $90,000 at the U.S. Army’s Fort Detrick facility “for the maintenance of a [biological warfare] capability.” Based on an interview with a staff member, who called it “a small effort” aimed at developing “incapacitants and [biological warfare/chemical warfare] detention” and downplayed its importance, this satisfied the investigators for the time being. When “new and more disturbing information” was revealed, however, they began a more intensive search but had no cryptonym with which to conduct the search. Finally an individual who had worked on Fort Detrick-related activities provided the MKNAOMI cryptonym, and two files were pulled from the Agency’s Records Center along with some information from the Office of Logistics. The small amount of information was a “cause for concern” as the employees listed as being involved in MKNAOMI were also implicated “with specific assassination plans” as revealed in an IG report on the topic.

As investigators learned through review of the scant documentation, Project MKNAOMI was a covert operation conducted by the CIA and the U.S. Army's Special Operations Division (SOD) from the 1950s to the 1970s. MKNAOMI focused on the development, testing, and stockpiling of biological and chemical agents for use in covert operations. The project aimed to create devices for disseminating these agents and involved extensive research and development of various biological agents, including bacteria and viruses, and chemical agents like toxins and drugs. These agents were tested on animals and, in some instances, human subjects without their knowledge or consent. Fort Detrick served as the primary research and testing facility, but the CIA stored some of the developed material in its TSD laboratory. The $3 million program (approx. $28 million today) and twenty years of research was summarized in a 1967 CIA memo, which made reference to the New York City subway system tests: “In anticipation of a future need for information and to establish a capability, a study on the vulnerability of subway systems to covert attack and development of a method to carry out such an attack was conducted. The suitability of the system was assessed and evaluated covertly, utilizing the New York City subways as the trial model. Results provided information on distribution and concentrations of organisms which are obtained. The data provided a means of assessing the threat of infection to subway passengers. The study provided a threat model and information on ease of dissemination and methods of delivery which could be used offensively.”

The Cave of Bugs

The MKNAOMI investigators’ “major concern” after discovering this information revolved around whether there remained at Fort Detrick a stockpile of biological warfare agents and toxins for CIA use, in violation of the President Richard Nixon’s directives issued in November 1969 and February 1970 to destroy such materials. The review found an unsigned memo posing the option that the chemical agents could be “stored in a commercial laboratory.” OTS employees who were interviewed said they thought the materials had been destroyed. Boston had his doubts and checked with Nate Gordon, a former Chemistry Branch Chief who had retired in September 1972. Gordon told him that he thought that shellfish toxin had not been destroyed and was in fact in storage in the OTS lab. After searching through the lab storage facilities, Boston found “11 grams of shellfish toxin and 6 mg of cobra venom.” None of the other substances that were referenced in the Agency’s internal list were located, which included the following:

Agents:

1. Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) - 100 grams

2. Pasteurella tularensis (tularemia) - 20 grams

3. Venezuelan Equine Encephalomyelitis virus (encephalitis) - 20 grams

4. Coccidioides immitis (valley lever) - 20 grams

5. Brucella suis (brucellosis) - 20 grams

6. Brucella melitensis (brucellosis) - 2 to 3 grams

7. Mycobacterium tuberculosis (tuberculosis) - 5 grams

8. Salmonella typhimurium (food poisoning) - 10 grams

9. Salmonella typhimurium (chlorine resistant) (food poisoning) - 3 grams

10. Variola Virus (smallpox) - 50 grams

Toxins:

1. Staphylococcal Enterotoxin (food poisoning) - 10 grams

2. Clostridium botulinum Type A (lethal food poisoning) - 5 grams

3. Paralytic Shellfish Poison - 5.193 grams

4. Bungarus Candidis Venom (Krait) (lethal snake venom) - 2 grams

5. Microcystis aeruginosa toxin (intestinal flu) - 25 mg

6. Toxiferine (paralytic effect) - 100 mg

The investigators could not explain the discrepancies between the amounts of shellfish toxin and cobra venom on the original inventory list versus what was found in the vault. Given the extreme lethality of shellfish toxin, former Department of Defense employee Dr. Edward Schantz estimated that the 11 grams of shellfish toxin found was sufficient to kill approximately 55,000 people. He assured U.S. Senators in later testimony that for this to actually work in practice, the crowd would need to be lined up with the toxin administered to each of them individually: “the only way that you could kill those large numbers of people as related to the quantity of stockpile, is, in my humble opinion, to put some of them in one long line and inoculate each and every one.”

An infectious disease on the list had been considered as part of U.S. Army tests in 1964 and 1965 in Washington, D.C. at the National Airport and Greyhound bus terminal. The test itself, however, used the same bacterium as the New York subway tests, Bacillus subtilis, and was spread to an estimated 200 cities due to the myriad destinations of the travelers. On this occasion, the organism was stored in briefcases and pumped into the air for 30 minutes at a time using battery-powered pumps. The Army’s resultant report explained how large quantities of the smallpox virus could be converted into a lethal powder and sprayed using the suitcases employed in the experiment. Smallpox was described in the report as useful for covert action due to three main factors:

1. Smallpox is highly infectious with close contact; it spreads readily from an infected person to susceptible individuals.

2. A long incubation period of relatively constant duration permits the operatives responsible for the attacks to leave the country before the first case is diagnosed.

3. The duration of illness for those who recover is relatively long.

Among the 239 open-air tests conducted in the United States, which were disclosed in 1977, included the following:

• 1950: A ship offshore from San Francisco used generators to release Serratia marcescens (SM), Bacillus globigii (BG), and fluorescent particles (FP). These were dispersed over the city to study how the agents would spread. One person died after 11 infected individuals ended up in the hospital.

• 1953: Generators on land and rooftops in Minneapolis released FP to examine how it would travel through urban areas.

• 1953: Automobiles in traffic in Minneapolis and St. Louis were used to release FP to assess how the particles would disperse in populated areas during regular movement.

• 1956: Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, known for transmitting yellow fever and other viruses, were released in Savannah, Georgia, to determine how many mosquitoes would enter homes and bite residents. These mosquitoes were not infected, but the long-term impact on the local population is unclear.

• 1957-1958: Planes continuously released FP over a vast area spanning from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, to study large-scale dispersal patterns.

In addition, Project SHAD (Shipboard Hazards and Defenses) was later revealed as a series of U.S. military tests conducted between 1963 and 1973 to evaluate the effects of biological and chemical agents on naval vessels and their personnel. Inspired by earlier British open-air trials, American scientists participated in these experiments, gaining experience for similar tests. SHAD involved the release of pathogens as well as nerve agents across various locations, including the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii, and the Panama Canal Zone. In total, 52 sets of tests were carried out, with biological simulants like Bacillus globigii and Serratia marcescens used in some cases. Despite the magnitude of the project, the public only became aware of SHAD in 2002. The earlier disclosures in 1977 revealed U.S. Army germ warfare tests conducted from 1949 to 1969, but SHAD was kept secret at the time. The earlier tests primarily involved simulants, in contrast to the actual pathogens used in SHAD.

The Forgotten Vault

The CIA’s shellfish toxin was found stored in a freezer under a work bench in the TSD lab. Only Fort Detrick materials were inside the freezer, contained in two unlabelled one-gallon cans. On top of each can was a folded piece of paper that described the contents, including type, amount, and when it was put into storage. The shellfish toxin was stored in February 1970, while the cobra venom dated from February 1961. The toxin was in several different forms, including two tablet doses. The substances had largely been forgotten and stored for years without employees noticing them because, the review explained, the lab was “no longer used for the type of work for which it was originally built and had become a disordered storage facility.” The freezer containing the dangerous substances had no other usage and it was possible “no occasion arose to investigate the contents of the freezer,” which continued to continue to function operationally and keep the materials at a cold temperature for the entire storage period.

Boston had no recollection of the shellfish toxin being obtained from Fort Detrick and then stored in the CIA lab. Boston listened to Gordon explain in an interview with internal investigators that he had decided to call back the toxin from Fort Detrick to be kept in the Agency’s lab after a conversation he had with Boston. The thinking was that the toxin had been so difficult and costly to produce that “it simply made no sense to have it destroyed.” Once the toxin was delivered to the CIA from Fort Detrick, Gordon added the 10.9 grams to the 0.5 grams of the same toxin already in the Agency’s possession.

Gordon was later told by the TSD Chief to instruct Fort Detrick to destroy the items on their inventory list as per the presidential directives, but Gordon never mentioned that they were already hiding two substances internally. Despite the fact that the maintenance of these substances was in violation of these directives and that senior management at the CIA claimed that a clear decision had been made that “the CIA should get completely out of the [biological warfare] business,” Gordon assured investigators that “the material was always handled with extreme care” as it lay forgotten in a lab and unknown to any current employees: “in his view [they were] continually under adequate control.” Gordon believed that nothing had been done with the substances and Boston agreed, providing “assurance that it was untouched subsequent” to its delivery, even though he had forgotten the substances existed. Gordon later testified before the U.S. Senate on the lax controls in place over the substances:

Senator SCHWEIKER. Dr. Gordon, when you received these two cans of material, did you log them in in any way?

Mr. GORDON. No; we did not, sir. We did not have a practice of logging. We did not have a practice in that small, secure laboratory of logging in material because the degree of activity was practically nil. We did not look at it as a use laboratory, Senator Schweiker. It was essentially, in effect, a storage, secure storage area in the event that it would ever be needed for an operational need, pill, or any other application.

Senator SCHWEIKER. Here is a toxin that could kill thousands of people. If you walk into the CIA building you have to be logged in. I do not know why we do not log a toxin that could kill many thousands of people.

Following the discovery of the disturbing cache, OTS was instructed to investigate means of destruction for the unwanted inventory, as the investigation explained: “Edgewood Arsenal was contacted and arrangements were made to deliver the material to Edgewood for disposal on 11 June 1975. The disposal was to be witnessed by a representative from the IG’s office. On the day prior to the scheduled delivery, these arrangements were cancelled, however, because the DD/S&T wished to consider further ways of insuring that the destruction of the material could not be later misinterpreted. Upon informing Edgewood Arsenal of this decision, Boston was told that while Edgewood would dispose of chemical material for the CIA, it would not do so in the case of biological materials since that was not consistent with the mission of the arsenal.” At the time of the review, no further efforts to dispose of the material had taken place, which remained “under guard in the OTS vault.”

A 1967 CIA memo explained the purpose of MKNAOMI, which included: “To stockpile severely incapacitating and lethal materials for the specific use of TSD” and “To maintain in operaitonal readiness special and unique items for the dissemination of biological and chemical materials.” With the discovery of the toxin and venom, a complete inventory of the lab was taken, which resulted in “a large number of dangerous chemicals or drugs of various types” being found. The contents revealed a history of TSD programs, including drugs for MKULTRA, “harassment materials for crowd control or meeting disruption,” “crop contamination programs” and small amounts of lethal material meant for assassinations. For two of the substances, the Agency was able to identify that they had been obtained by the CIA for testing at Fort Detrick, but nothing was known about three others that were found. Finally, several “L-Pills” were located, which had been developed to give to U-2 pilots as suicide pills in case they were captured during their operations.

In the CIA’s inventory, shellfish was described as “Highly lethal nerve toxin. Attacks cardiovascular, respiratory, nervous, and muscle systems. Death in seconds.” Cobra venom’s characteristics were mentioned as “Lethal nerve toxin; attacks nervous system.” Other lethal substances located in 1975 included “French compound,” Aconitum ferox extract, aconitine nitrate, colchicine, strychnine, cyanide L-pills, and Fish toxin.

Among the CIA’s incapacitants found scattered throughout the lab, the substances had details listed such as: “Blocks nerve responses in central and autonomic nervous systems” (BZ), “Causes flsuhing, colic, diarrhea, salivation, nausea” (Carbachol), “Intestinal inflammation and dysentery” (Salmonella S. enteriditis), “Impairs kidney function and causes vomiting and convulsions” (Dehydroacetic acid), and “Causes abortion in animals” (Salmonella abortus). The CIA’s interest in the latter substance, according to its files, involved abortions observed in sheep and horses.

The Agency kept these substances on a strictly need-to-know basis, allowing only a handful of employees to be aware of their existence and their usage in the field was not documented. At the outset of the Agency’s relationship with the Army’s SOD in 1952, the wish list for chemical warfare devices included “cigarettes, chewing gum, cigarette lighters, wrist watches, fountain pens, rings, etc.” for both Army and CIA uses. Further details on these devices remain classified, but U.S. Senate testimony in 1975 confirmed that many of these devices had been created. According to the MKNAOMI investigators, the CIA’s primary interest “seemed to relate to the development of dissemination equipment to be used with a standard set of agents kept on the shelf. A number of such dissemination devices appear to be peculiarly suited for the type of clandestine use one might associate with Agency operations. Some of these were included among hardware stored for the Agency at Edgewood Arsenal subsequent to the closure of SOD: attache cases rigged to disseminate an agent into the air, a cigarette case rigged to disseminate an agent when lighted, a fountain pen dart launcher, an engine head bolt designed to release an agent when heated, a fluorescent light starter to activate the light and then release an agent, etc.”

The shellfish boxin and cobra venom were found by David Boston “in Vault B10 in the basement of South Building which houses OTS. This vault is a lightly used laboratory area...It has been regularly used for the storage of dangerous materials of various types.” The combination to access the vault had been gradually disseminated among staff members of the Chemistry Branch. After the discovery, access was restricted and “the vault was put under 24-hour guard.” At least one of the substances, shellfish toxin, was later handed over to researchers, primarily at Yale University. The CIA was said to have held “nearly the entire world’s known supply” of this biological weapon of “extraordinarily toxicity.”

A Very Serious Weapon

After working as a secretary in the CIA’s Audio Surveillance Division, Mary Embree was transferred to TSD and asked to research various topics: “I was in charge of finding documents…that you don’t find in libraries, like where you put explosives on a bridge. ‘Where is the best place to put an explosive on a bridge?’ And: ‘What kind of explosive do you have to get that goes under water without destroying its effectiveness?’ Also one time…they wanted me to find out if there was such a thing as a poison that was undetectable, especially one that seemed to mimick a heart attack. That would kill someone but it would appear that they had a heart attack. I did find such a thing.”