What follows is an excerpt from Tom O'Neill and Dan Piepenbring's 11-24-19 The Intercept article entitled "INSIDE THE ARCHIVE OF AN LSD RESEARCHER WITH TIES TO THE CIA’S MKULTRA MIND CONTROL PROJECT":
At the trial [of
Jimmy Shaver], [Louis Jolyon] West made only a minimal effort to
exonerate Shaver. The airman was found guilty [of murdering a three-year-old girl named Chere Jo Horton]. Though an appeals court
later ruled that he’d had an unfair trial, he was convicted again in the
retrial. In 1958, on his 33rd birthday, he was executed by the electric
chair. He maintained his innocence the whole time.
The trial,
which hinged on Shaver’s testimony, might have ended differently had the
jury known about West’s past. According to newly surfaced papers from
West’s archives, the psychiatrist had some of the clearest, most
nefarious ties of any scientist to the CIA’s Project MKUltra. West’s
files — especially his correspondence with the CIA’s longtime poisons
expert, Sidney Gottlieb — shed new light on one of the most infamous
projects in the agency’s history. Likely comprising more than 149
subprojects and at least 185 researchers working at institutions across America and Canada,
MKUltra was, as the New York Times put it, “a secret twenty-five year,
twenty-five million dollar effort by the CIA to learn how to control the
human mind.” Its experiments violated international laws, not to
mention the agency’s charter, which forbids domestic activity.
At
the trial, West maintained that Shaver had suffered a bout of temporary
insanity on the night of Chere Jo Horton’s killing, but he argued that
Shaver was “quite sane now.” In the courtroom, Shaver didn’t look that
way. One newspaper account said he “sat through the strenuous sessions
like a man in a trance,” saying nothing, never rising to stretch or
smoke, though he was a known chain-smoker.
Large portions of
West’s truth serum interview with Shaver were read into the court
record. The doctor had used leading questions to walk the entranced
Shaver through the crime. “Tell me about when you took your clothes off,
Jimmy,” he’d said. The transcript of the interview, which survived
among West’s papers, also showed West trying to prove that Shaver had
repressed memories: “Jimmy, do you remember when something like this
happened before?” Or: “After you took her clothes off, what did you do?”
“I never did take her clothes off,” Shaver said.
The
interview was divided into thirds, and the middle third hadn’t been
recorded. When the transcript picked up, it said: “Shaver is crying. He
has been confronted with all the facts repeatedly.”
West asked, “Now you remember it all, don’t you, Jimmy?”
“Yes, sir,” Shaver replied.
Though
lawyers scrutinized Shaver’s medical history, little mention was made
of the base hospital where West’s archived letters indicate he had
conducted his MKUltra experiments. Shaver had suffered from migraines so
debilitating that he’d dunk his head in a bucket of ice water when he
felt one coming on. His condition was severe enough that the Air Force
had recommended him for a two-year experimental program. The doctor
who’d attempted to recruit him was not named in court records or
transcripts.
On the stand, West said he’d never gotten around to
seeing whether Shaver had been treated in the experimental program.
Lackland officials told me there was no record of him in their master
index of patients. But, curiously, according to the base’s archivist,
all the records for patients in 1954 had been maintained, with one
exception: the file for last names beginning with “Sa” through “St” had
vanished....
To read O'Neill and Piepenbring's entire article, click HERE.
For more information about the crimes of Dr. Louis Jolyon West, read Chapter Two of my 2012 book CRYPTOSCATOLOGY: CONSPIRACY THEORY AS ART FORM (entitled "Honey, Did You Leave Your Brain Back at Langley Again?").
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