e in new yorker un reportaj genial despre cum armata americana a facut, prin 1950, experimente cu LSD pe soldati ca sa vada cum se comporta in situatii de interogatorii extreme.

dincolo de subiect care atrage imediat atentia, va spun despre acest articol ca sa va uitati la cum este scris si sa faceti un exercitiu: incercati sa identificati cam cite surse a avut semnatarul RAFFI KHATCHADOURIAN pentru articolul lui: sunt zeci, daca nu chiar peste 100.

iata citeva fragmente din text:

Dr. Van Murray Sim, the founder of Edgewood Arsenal’s program of clinical research on psychochemicals, was a man of deep contradictions. He was a Navy veteran, but he worked at the Army post as a civilian. For the doctors who worked with him, he was like Dr. Strangelove; he was a leader; he was the “Mengele of Edgewood”; he was a good old soul. Sim could be manipulative and vengeful, ethically shortsighted, incoherently rambling, rashly slipshod in his methods, but he was also fearless and ambitious and devoted to chemical-warfare research. He was gargantuan—his body exuded forcefulness, like an oversized rook on a chessboard—but he was willing to allow himself to be rendered helpless. In 1959, he was the first person to be given VX, a highly lethal nerve agent. As the drug began to take effect, Sim became irrational and started to thrash around. “I was having difficulty with vision, seeing—a distortion of vision, sweating, tremors, nausea, vomiting,” he later recalled. His face grew pale. He eventually stopped talking and descended into a world of his own imaginings.

(…)

By the time he met with Malitz in New York, the Army was interested primarily in LSD—known as EA 1729. Malitz agreed to test LSD and similar drugs on volunteers or “selected patients,” in order to determine how people would react during phony interrogations. He offered to use hypnosis to plant secrets in subjects’ minds. Then, he said, “one of the hallucinogens will be administered and an attempt made to see if the patient will reveal the information.”

Sim indicated that he would consider the offer. Three months later, he obtained permission to test psychochemicals at the arsenal itself. LSD’s effects were still little understood; as Sim acknowledged, it was possible to become “smothered by the preponderance of conflicting reports.”
(…)

Occasionally, the C.I.A. or senior military intelligence officers would send operatives to the arsenal to be given LSD and then questioned. Some of the tests were intended to see how soldiers would perform; some were designed to prepare them in the event that a Soviet operative secretly dosed them. In one experiment, intelligence specialists were blindfolded and placed in an isolation chamber. The men—some of whom had been told nothing about the drug’s effects—became tense and anxious, and quickly became unable to bear the isolation. When they emerged, they were subjected to hostile questioning. All agreed that the threat of return to isolation would constitute a very effective form of duress.

restul cititi aici, e un exemplu de jurnalism impecabil. si da, mi-ar placea sa faca si la noi cineva un asemenea reportaj care – atentie!- nu e facut intr-o saptamina, ci in luni de documentare, nu e scris intr-o zi, ci in saptamini. dar ce bijuterie este.