I now admit this to you, one and all:
I actually really enjoy abstract expressionism. I know it was literally a CIA op, I know. and I care, I just... I still like it. it's pretty and effusive without and indirect, all allusion and no specific definite invocation of any particular ideam while basking in all the possibilities of things it could be and being entirely deniable. it warms my deeply postmodern cognitive organs.
which way to the gulag?
making the USSR look stodgy and old fashioned and unfashionable-remember, communism used to be hot and hip and shit. I don't know how effective it was, but the soviets were (rightly) like "okay but WTF is this" (because the CIA had bought up the world's supply of acid so the soviets didn't have the necessary "sophistication" to see it) and kept painting things that were actually good and spoke to, like, life and shit and actual experiences. I don't know how effective/useful it was, and I don't think the CIA does either, but it happened.
There was a large supply for psychological research at Dr. Stanislav Groff's lab in the CSSR, leading socialist investigation on the use of psychedelics. The Sandoz works in Switzerland where still producing LSD as well and selling it to everyone interested, as it was entirely unregulated in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Yes, the CIA actually did make such big orders that Sandoz struggled to produce much for anyone else, but it's not as if all the acid went to the CIA.
Within the US, the CIA was not the only government agency storing acid either, the army had a whole barrel of the stuff at Edgewood Arsenal for their own experiments. I assume similar things can be said about the British armed forces, who verifiably did test LSD as a chemical warfare agent at the time, but i have never found any information about how much exactly they ordered and put into storage.
im aware that sandoz was still producing and the CIA didn't have a monopoly. didn't know about the CSSR stockpile or the US army stash. yay, information!
I was just saying that the CIA were just completely batshit nutjobs and pointing out that communists of the day were, you know; less absurd.
Anyways, it was a phenomenal grift, o7 to them for deviating money that could have used for evil purposes elsewhere
yeah it could have been used for worse things.