This story is taken from AP State Wire News at sacbee.com.
Lawsuit claiming CIA put LSD in vet's drink in 1957 can proceed
The Associated Press - (Published May 24, 2004)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A former deputy U.S. marshal and Marine Corps veteran who claims the CIA slipped LSD into his drink in 1957 as part of a mind-control project offered enough evidence to send his $12 million lawsuit to trial, a federal judge ruled Monday.Chief U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled in favor of Wayne Ritchie, citing an apparent admission from a former CIA operative.
"I drugged guys involved in about 10, 12 (instances)," former federal narcotics agent Ira Feldman, who worked for the CIA's Project MKULTRA, told Ritchie's lawyer in a sworn deposition in February 2003. "I didn't do any follow-up. ... You just back away and let them worry like this nitwit, Ritchie."
Ritchie, 75, believes he may have been a guinea pig for the CIA's MKULTRA project, in which LSD and other drugs were given to hundreds of unsuspecting Americans during the Cold War.
Ritchie believes his drinks at a 1957 office Christmas party attended by a federal agent involved in the project were spiked.
The government denies drugging Ritchie and accuse him of concocting the theory to cash in on publicity about MKULTRA, the subject of congressional hearings in the 1970s and a 1997 movie.