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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: April 7, 2007 11:53:16 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: The Nazis LOST World War II, Right?
Porton Down -- a Sinister Air?
August 20, 1999
http://www.geocities.com/ukgulfwarhelp/bbc20081999.htm
A sinister air surrounds the subject of chemical weapons, quite
different from the power politics of the nuclear arms race.
When terrorists targeted the Japanese subway, it was their use of
Sarin gas that caught the public fear. When Saddam Hussain's
crimes are mentioned, it is invariably using chemical weapons
against the Kurds that is cited.
And some of the mystery is attached to the name of Porton Down, the
secret chemical weapons centre in Wiltshire.
The centre, made up of forbiding buildings in 7,000 acres near
Salisbury, was set up in 1916 at the height of WWl.
Patrick Mercer, a retired army officer, spent several weeks there
on courses designed to tell soldiers about chemical warfare.
"It was hideous," he said, "a hutted camp, where it seemed to do
nothing but rain. There were a series of bunkers into which you
were thrust from time to time to be gassed with CS gas and to go
through ghastly exercises underground wearing a gas mask."
Ronald Maddison: Took part in experiments in 1953
During WWII Porton Down started researching a new menace --
biological weapons, but during the Cold War chemical weapons became
the top priority.
For many years, the mere fact that there was a chemical weapon
research centre there was secret, but after it was admitted in the
late 1960s, it became the most controversial military establishment
in the UK.
To test the effectiveness of nerve agents such as Sarin, servicemen
were offered about £2 and a pass for three days' precious leave if
they voluteered to take part in tests.
Rob Evans, a journalist researching a book into the experiments,
said the main reason people volunteered was because they were bored
with life at their own military establishments.
"They wanted to get away for any type of break, just anything. As
soon as something came up, they would step forward, say yes, I'll
take that.
"But sadly very few actually knew what Porton Down was, or what
they were letting themselves in for."
Allegations
Wiltshire detectives are investigating allegations that in 1953 one
serviceman, Ronald Maddison, died after taking part in a Sarin gas
experiment. It is claimed that he thought he was taking part in a
programme designed to find a cure for the common cold.
But the Maddison death was not the only thing to go wrong at the
centre.
Rob Evans said: "The two most embarrassing accidents, and they are
more tragic than embarrassing, were the death of Ronald Maddison
and also the death of one of their own scientists Geoffrey Bacon in
1962, who died of plague."
Since the end of WWI, 20,000 people have taken part in experiments
at Porton Down, and it is thought that there are a further 300
servicemen waiting to begin legal actions against the Ministry of
Defence.
--------
Inquest resumes into 1953 death at Porton Down
Rob Evans and Sandra Laville
The Guardian (UK), August 23, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1288547,00.html
In an old-fashioned Victorian courtroom, an inquest into one of the
most enduring cover-ups of the cold war is to resume today.
The inquest, sitting after a month's break, is examining how a 20-
year-old airman died in 1953 after a secret experiment in which
military scientists dripped liquid nerve gas on to his arm.
It is the first full public airing of the circumstances surrounding
the death of Ronald Maddison at the Porton Down chemical warfare
establishment in Wiltshire.
The original inquest, in 1953, was held behind closed doors on
government orders, and details of the death remained hushed up for
decades. After pressure from Maddison's family and supporters, the
lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, ordered a new hearing which opened
in May.
It is a test case for hundreds of servicemen who say they were
duped into volunteering for experiments at Porton Down, believing
they were attempts to find a cure for the common cold. Many claim
their health was damaged.
The inquest at Trowbridge, Wiltshire, has heard from more than 30
witnesses.
Robert Lynch, now 80, was a a lab technician, but was not involved
in the human testing. "Most of us had the thought that we were
going into very dangerous areas," he told the inquest, adding: "We
knew that we were pushing it. "There were very large amounts of
[sarin nerve gas] being used ... Because they were human
experiments, any of us who knew about them could not help feeling
nervous."
The jury has heard extracts from the memoirs of a Porton Down
scientist, the late Mark Ainsworth, who wrote that he and a
colleague had been "a bit unhappy" about the experiments in which
sarin was dropped on to the subjects' arms.
Ainsworth wrote that the head of the department responsible for the
human experiments, Dr Harry Cullumbine, "continued, but we
persuaded him to go carefully".
Under questioning, Mr Lynch agreed Cullumbine had been a "forceful
personality".
The jury has also heard that another Porton Down scientist, John
Rutland, believed that the levels of sarin used in Maddison's test
were "well above the normal limits".
The inquest is scrutinising whether the scientists took enough care
when they exposed the airman to nerve gas on May 6 1953. Ten days
earlier, another human guinea pig, John Kelly, nearly died after
scientists dropped nerve gas on to his arm. A third serviceman,
Oliver Slater, also suffered a bad reaction days before that.
Professor Robert Forrest, an expert toxicologist, said the
experiments should have immediately been stopped.
At the time, the British government feared the threat of a chemical
attack by the Soviet Union, and so Porton Down was hurriedly
developing a nerve gas arsenal, as well as defences against poison
gas.
Maddison was one of 396 servicemen to undergo the experiment "to
determine the dosage of sarin (and two other nerve gases) which
when applied to the clothed or bare skin would cause incapacitation
or death".
Two of the six servicemen who were in the gas chamber with Maddison
have given evidence.
One, Mike Cox, said they had been playing noughts and crosses to
pass the time when Maddison suddenly fell forward on to the table.
He said two Porton technicians had "half-carried" him out. Within
half an hour he died, despite frantic attempts to revive him.
The jury has also heard about a letter written in August 1953 by a
government lawyer, Mr H Woodhouse, to another official, in which he
admitted the government was liable for Maddison's death.
He proposed paying a pension to the family: "This would probably
dispose of the case and Maddison's family would probably be
satisfied."
John Harding, a Ministry of Defence historian, could not recall any
compensation being paid to the airman's relations.
At least 20,000 servicemen have taken part in tests at Porton Down
since the first world war. More than 3,000 were exposed to nerve gas.
The inquest was due to end in June, but is now likely to finish in
late September. The original verdict was death by misadventure.
-------------------
Inquest reopens into Porton Down nerve agent death
http://www.ladlass.com/intel/archives/006342.html
Steven Shukor
September 28, 2003
AN RAF engineer who died 50 years ago was unlawfully killed by the
government in secret chemical weapon trials, an inquest will be
told this week.
Ronald Maddison, 20, from County Durham, volunteered to participate
in experiments at the Porton Down military testing centre near
Salisbury in May 1953 believing they were to help find a cure for
the common cold. He collapsed and died an hour after 200mg of
liquid sarin — a deadly nerve agent — was dripped onto his uniform
in a gas chamber.
An inquest into Maddison’s death was held in secret in 1953 and
recorded a verdict of misadventure. However, last year the Lord
Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, approved a new hearing, saying the
circumstances were of “real public concern”.
The outcome of the inquest is considered crucial by hundreds of
Porton Down veterans, who want a public inquiry into a secret
testing programme held there between 1948 and 1983.
They have obtained legal aid to challenge a decision this summer by
the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute those behind the
programme, following a four-year police investigation. The veterans
claim they were duped into volunteering for the tests which
involved a series of chemical agents including mustard gas and
hallucinogens such as LSD.
The servicemen were not told what chemicals were being tested on
them and many say they were told they were helping to find a cure
for the cold.
Official government notices calling for volunteers for the Porton
Down experiments in February 1953 stated:
“The physical discomfort resulting from the tests is usually very
slight. Tests are carefully planned to avoid the slightest chance
of danger.”
The reality, it appears, was different. John Longden, a volunteer,
had liquid CS gas dripped into his eye in 1969 after being told it
would feel like “soap in the eye” and that there was an antidote.
In the event, he was strapped into a chair and held down for an
agonising eight minutes. The antidote turned out to be a bucket of
cold water thrown in his face.
In another case, Gerald Beech, who took part in a sarin gas test in
1950, said: “We couldn’t see in the daylight for a good 48 hours.
Virtually blinded we were and that was just the beginning of my
troubles.”
Many of the volunteers, like Beech, complain of long term ill-
health, including severe respiratory problems, as a result of the
experiments.
In Maddison’s case the tests resulted in his death. There is
evidence the scientists knew the risks. A report written on the eve
of the test by Dr Harry Cullumbine, head of the physiology section
at Porton Down, said: “The object of these experiments has been to
discover the dosage of (sarin) which when applied to the clothed or
bare skin of men would cause incapacitation or death.” Dr
Cullumbine went ahead with the tests although five men had been
hospitalised in the previous weeks.
It is understood lawyers acting for the Maddison family will argue
that scientists, who are all dead, acted recklessly and unlawfully.
Ken Earl, 69, chairman of the Porton Down Veterans Support Group,
said: “It’s imperative that we get a good result here. It may bring
on a public inquiry.”
A preliminary hearing takes place on Wednesday.
------------------
Scientists 'kept body parts of 1953 nerve gas victim'
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
The Telegraph, July 18, 2004
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...questid=119578
Government scientists secretly removed body parts from a national
serviceman who died after taking part in nerve gas experiments, a
new inquest has been told.
Up to 200 separate samples were taken from 20-year-old Ronald
Maddison's brain, spinal cord, heart and skin -- without his
family's permission -- days after he died at Porton Down,
Wiltshire, the government top-secret chemical warfare research
base, in 1953.
Details of the removal of organs from the airman's body has emerged
during a new inquest into his death which opened in May.
The original inquest, held in secret in 1953, found that Leading
Aircraftman Maddison's death was accidental, but the new inquest
will examine fresh evidence and decide whether the original verdict
still stands.
Mr Maddison, from Consett, Co Durham, was among hundreds of
national servicemen who volunteered in the 1950s and 60s to take
part in tests at Porton Down in the belief that they were helping
scientists find a cure for the common cold.
The airman died less than an hour after 200mg of the highly toxic
Sarin nerve agent was placed on layers of cloth on the inside of
his arm.
Robert Hogg, the witness who made the body parts disclosure at the
inquest in Trowbridge, revealed that parts of Mr Maddison's skin,
brain, spinal cord, heart, stomach, lung, duodenum and muscle were
removed without the knowledge of his family.
Mr Hogg, who was employed as a laboratory assistant during his
national service, also revealed that the body parts could still be
in existence.
Mr Hogg, now a retired senior chief scientific officer, told the
inquest that in May 1953 he was summoned by his line manager and
told that one of the volunteers had died.
He was given orders to drive to Salisbury Infirmary, where the post
mortem examination was to take place and to wait in a car.
After 90 minutes, his colleagues appeared with "umpteen" cardboard
boxes, containing more body part samples "than I have ever seen at
any post mortem in my life". Asked how many, Mr Hogg said: "I
would say between 100 and 200."
He said the bottles contained parts of almost every organ and gland
in the body, "especially heart, peripheral muscle and brain . . .
spinal cord and skin, quite a lot of skin."
Mr Hogg disclosed that his line manager had told him that Mr
Maddison had died of a heart attack. He said: "I was told that he
had a heart condition and should never have been on the course.
That was the excuse given to me."
He added: "These samples could still exist today. In Edinburgh
[where Mr Hogg worked during his career] we had sections going back
to the 1950s, even before."
Mr Hogg suggested that the samples could be in storerooms at the
Royal Army Medical College in Millbank, Westminster. The inquest
also heard evidence from Alfred Thornhill, an ambulance driver at
Porton Down in 1953 who saw Mr Maddison moments after he began
suffering from nerve agent poisoning.
Mr Thornhill said that he was ordered to drive his ambulance to the
gas chamber because there had been an accident. When he arrived, he
was shocked to see two men holding a third man down on the floor.
"I said to this chap that stood up, 'What is happening here?' He
had a very, very peculiar look on his face, as though he had seen
somebody who had their head cut off, you know, frightened . . . and
he said, 'He took his mask off'."
Mr Thornhill told the jury that one of the scientists had Mr
Maddison's head and appeared to be pushing his face into the ground.
Visibly distressed by memories of the event, he said: "I have never
seen anything like that, never ever. This lad, his whole body was
rippling." Mr Thornhill said that on the way back to the medical
centre four people were needed to hold down Mr Maddison because the
body convulsions had become so violent.
He told the jury that he was made to sign the Official Secrets Act
and warned that he risked jail if he spoke of what he saw. The
inquest continues.
-----------------
MI6 ordered LSD tests on servicemen
Volunteers fed hallucinogen in mind control experiments
Rob Evans
The Guardian (UK), January 22, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5109714-103690,00.html
Fifty years ago, Eric Gow had a baffling and unexplained
experience. As a 19-year-old sailor, he remembers going to a
clandestine military establishment, where he was given something to
drink in a sherry glass and experienced vivid hallucinations.
Other servicemen also remember tripping: one thought he was seeing
tigers jumping out of a wall, while another recalls faces "with
eyes running down their cheeks, Salvador Dalí-style".
Mr Gow and another serviceman had volunteered to take part in what
they thought was research to find a cure for the common cold.
Mr Gow felt that the government had never explained what happened
to him. But now he has received an official admission for the first
time, confirmed last night, that the intelligence agency MI6 tested
LSD on servicemen.
The Guardian has spoken to three servicemen who say that they were
not warned that they were being fed a hallucinogen during experiments.
One of the scientists involved at the time suggested that the
experiments were stopped because it was feared that the acid could
produce "suicidal tendencies".
MI6, known formally as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and
responsible for spying operations abroad, carried out the tests in
the cold war in an attempt to uncover a "truth drug" which would
make prisoners talk against their will in interrogations.
It appears that MI6 feared that the Russians had discovered their
own "brainwashing" chemical to control the minds of their enemies,
fears triggered by pictures of American servicemen who had been
captured during the Korean war confessing to their "crimes" and
calling for a US surrender.
In 1949, a Hungarian dissident had also "confessed" robotically in
a show trial without, it seemed, being in control of himself.
In parallel experiments, the CIA infamously tested LSD and other
drugs on unwitting human subjects in a 20-year search to uncover
mind-manipulation techniques. The trials were widely criticised
when they came to light in the 1970s.
Mr Gow and another man say that while serving in the military they
volunteered to take part in research. They were told to go to the
Porton Down chemical warfare establishment in Wiltshire, where
servicemen were regularly tested in experiments.
Mr Gow, then a radio operator in the Royal Navy, says that
scientists gave him the liquid to drink in 1954, a decade before
the effects of LSD were popularised by hippies.
Soon he could not add up three figures. The radiator started to go
in and out "like a squeezebox", while shoe marks on the floor spun
like a catherine wheel. He says he still seemed to be tripping that
evening, when he and a colleague went dancing in nearby Salisbury,
with wellies on. "I don't think we got a date that night," he said
yesterday.
He added that the scientists had been "irresponsible", particularly
as they had not kept the men under close supervision. Now a
magistrate, he submitted an open government request to the Ministry
of Defence seeking more details of the experiments.
The MoD replied that "much of the information concerning LSD
involves research conducted at the behest of the Secret
Intelligence Service ... We are more than happy to speak to them
[SIS] on your behalf and will pursue the question of downgrading
the security classification of certain documents to allow us to
disclose them to you".
Last night, a Foreign Office spokesman confirmed that in 1953 and
1954 Porton Down carried out SIS-commissioned tests of LSD on
service personnel.
Don Webb says that in 1953, when he was a 19-year-old airman,
scientists told him to take LSD several times in a week. He
experienced "walls melting, cracks appearing in people's faces, you
could see their skulls, eyes would run down cheeks, Salvador Dalí-
style faces".
Alan Care, a lawyer representing Mr Gow and Mr Webb, has written to
MI6 demanding more documents about the trials and is threatening
legal action. Yesterday he said: "Clearly these men were duped and
subjected to unethical LSD thought control experiments. MI6 should
release all its documents about these trials -- national secrets
will not be compromised."
A senior Porton Down official described the LSD trials as
"tentative and inadequately controlled", according to a document
made public in the National Archives.
One scientist involved was believed to be the late Harry
Cullumbine, who was in charge of human experiments at Porton Down
in the 1950s.
Extracts from his unpublished autobiography were aired at the
recent inquest into the death of the airman Ronald Maddison after
nerve gas trials in 1953. According to the Wiltshire coroner,
David Masters, Cullumbine wrote: "We stopped the trials ... when it
was reported that in a few people it might produce suicidal
tendencies."
Mr Masters told the inquest: "MI6 was eager to try it as a truth
drug."
However, the quest came to nothing, because the scientists
discovered that LSD was useless for manipulating the human mind.
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