Govt to pay $1.7M for doping soldier with LSD

Press, 11 August 1979, Page 8

Govt to pay $1.7M for doping soldier with LSD

• NZPA-Reuter ashington The United States Government has agreed to pay a ' former soldier SUSI. 7 mil- ■ lion rather than face a trial i for giving him the hallucii nogenic drug LSD in a sei cret Army experiment in i France 18 years ago. A Government spokesman i said that the Army and the i Justice Department would 1 support a special bill providi ing for $1.7 million for the i former private, James : Thornwell, aged 41, desi cribed by a judge earlier I this year as a social and . economic cripple. The alternative to the . legislation, introduced in i Congress last week, would I be a long, drawn-out court ; case. Extraordinary claims i against the Government often are" settled through

private bills introduced in Congress. , Mr Thornwell was given LSD without his knowledge in a secret Army experiment called Operation Third 1 Chance in 1961. The purpose of the experiment was to test the value of the drug as a truth serum in the interrogation of Army intelligence sources. He was administered the LSD at a United States Army message centre in Orleans, France, after he had come under suspicion of having stolen secret documents. First, he was put in solitary confinement in a small chamber with covered windows and he was deprived of food, drink, sleep, and the use of a lavatory.

An Army report at the time said he was “interrogated with abusive and profane language, threatened with physical harm including death, referred to as a homosexual, not allowed to sleep... blindfolded, handcuffed and, at pistol point, taken to a place where he was subjected to very painful treatment.” Six weeks later, Mr Thornwell was given the LSD, causing in him an extreme paranoic reaction. He suffered highly sustained and almost incapacitating side effects, the Army report said. Army interrogators threatened to extend his drug-in-duced state indefinitely, “even to a permanent condition of insanity,” it said. Mr after suffering' from physical -.dis-

orders and physical pain for years without ever knowing the cause, learned he was the Army’s human guinea pig only through legal moves to gain access to the Army report two years ago. He sued the Government for $lO million. Judge Charles Richey ruled in May that he had no right to damages for injuries sustained while on active military duty but he was entitled to a trial on a claim for injuries sustained after his Army discharge. The judge said Mr Thomwell. who lives in Oakland, California, “has been transformed from a productive, healthy individual into ar. isolated social and economic cripple, deprived of the pleasant experiences of human society.” £