There has been renewed interest recently about the mysterious hallucinations suffered by the residents of the French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951. According to researcher Hank Albarelli, the hallucinations may have had a man-made origin:
Doctors at the time concluded that bread at one of the town’s bakeries had become contaminated by ergot, a poisonous fungus that occurs naturally on rye. That view remained largely unchallenged until 2009, when an American investigative journalist, Hank Albarelli, revealed a CIA document labelled: “Re: Pont-Saint-Esprit and F.Olson Files. SO Span/France Operation file, inclusive Olson. Intel files. Hand carry to Belin – tell him to see to it that these are buried.”
F. Olson is Frank Olson, a CIA scientist who, at the time of the Pont St Esprit incident, led research for the agency into the drug LSD. David Belin, meanwhile, was executive director of the Rockefeller Commission created by the White House in 1975 to investigate abuses carried out worldwide by the CIA.
Albarelli believes the Pont-Saint-Esprit and F. Olson Files, mentioned in the document, would show – if they had not been “buried” – that the CIA was experimenting on the townspeople, by dosing them with LSD. The conclusion drawn at the time was that one of the town’s bakeries, the Roch Briand, was the source of the poisoning. It’s possible, Albarelli says, that LSD was put in the bread.
Frank Olson is also, of course, known as the guy who (allegedly) jumped out of a window to his death under the influence of LSD.
For more interesting reading on the topic of CIA ‘dosing’, check out The Case of the Cursed Bread“, “Reservoir Drugs” and Don’t Drink the Water“, three recent features at the Fortean Times website which look at these claims with a critical eye.
