Operation CASTIGATE

Operation CASTIGATE was the codename for the joint CIA-Navy operation conducted in Frankfurt, Germany, in August-September 1952. The operation brought together the ARTICHOKE team, led by Morse Allen and his boss Paul Gaynor, with the Navy's Dr. Samuel Thompson and Professor G. Richard Wendt, who claimed to have developed a secret truth drug formula. The CIA agreed to furnish human subjects for testing even though Wendt refused to reveal what drugs he planned to use.¹

The Subjects

Five subjects were selected for the experiments: one known double agent, one suspected double agent, and three defectors. The subjects were delivered to two CIA Safehouses in the countryside outside Frankfurt, where hidden microphones and two-way mirrors had been installed by CIA carpenters. The first subject arrived handcuffed, shackled, and forced to lie on the floor of a CIA sedan. Agency officials described him as a suspected Russian agent, about 40 years old, with a "Don Juan complex." Another subject, code-named EXPLOSIVE, was described as a Russian "professional agent type" and "a hard-boiled individual who apparently has the ability to lie consistently but not very effectively." He was no stranger to the ARTICHOKE team, who had previously plied him with drugs and Hypnosis under cover of a "psychiatric-medical" exam.¹

The Wendt Failure

Wendt's secret formula turned out to be a combination of Seconal, Dexedrine, and cannabis extract, all well-known drugs. The experiments failed across all five subjects. Wendt declared one dose too strong, another too weak. His subjects noticed they had swallowed something. The general attitude toward Wendt became "hostile as all hell." Allen felt he had been the victim of "a fraud or at least a gross misinterpretation" and described the trip as "a waste of time and money."¹

The "A" Treatment

After Wendt's drugs failed on the first subject, the team decided it would be a shame to waste a good subject and gave him the "A" (for ARTICHOKE) treatment. This consisted of injecting enough sodium pentothal to knock him out and then, twenty minutes later, stimulating him back to semiconsciousness with a shot of Benzedrine. The CIA psychiatric consultant used the technique of "regression" to convince the subject he was talking to his wife Eva at some earlier time, speaking through a male interpreter. For roughly an hour, the subject seemed to have no idea he was not speaking with his wife but with CIA operatives. When the subject began to weep violently, the consultant ended the session and suggested the subject would remember nothing.¹