Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

by Tom O'Neill

In fact, according to Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld, who participated in a portion of Smith’s rat research in 1965, LSD was an integral component of the project. Smith and his colleagues would inject the rats with acid in hopes of making them more suggestible before he gave them amphetamines. Suggestibility was among the most prized effects of LSD from a clinical perspective. And yet Smith kept LSD out of the official documentation of his research. The article he published in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs never mentioned acid. I asked Smith if LSD was part of his protocol. He denied it—then, a moment later, without provocation, he reversed himself. “Yeah, I stuck LSD in them,” he said.