After Bulger's trial, one of the jurors who'd convicted him wrote Bulger a letter and they began a lengthy correspondence. In one of his letters, Bulger wrote that back in the late 50s during his incarceration at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, he'd signed up for a medical experiment on whooping cough in exchange for a good time reduction in his sentence. But then, while participating in the study, he was asked if he wanted to volunteer for a separate research project seeking a cure for schizophrenia. Bulger agreed and for the next 15 months, rather than receiving an antiscychotic medication, Bulger was injected with high doses of LSD three times a week, every week, and then subjected to repetitious questioning, including two questions which stuck with Bulger all his life. Have you ever killed anyone? Would you ever kill anyone? It turned out that the study being run by the noted pharmarmacologist and researcher from Emory University, Dr. Carl Feifer was actually being sponsored by the CIA as part of the MK Ultra program. On August 6th, 1957, Whitey signed a contract affirming that he understood the hallucinatory effect of lysurgic acid dialomide LSD25 and that the potential benefits to humanity and the risks to my health of participation in the study have been explained to me, and I hereby freely assume all such risks. 6 days later, he reported to the psychiatric ward, a large antiseptic room with bars and a locked steel door in the basement of the prison hospital where he was injected with his first dose of LSD. It was a routine that would continue once a week for the next 15 months. Whitey got $3 for every injection and 54 days off his sentence in total, but it was a devastating compact. The hallucinatory effects of the LSD would last a lifetime. and Whitey would bitterly recall years later how he felt tricked into taking something that nearly drove him mad and would forever rob him of a good night's sleep. The hallucinations began within minutes of the injection. Suddenly, blood seemed to explode from the walls and drown him. The bars on the windows morphed into writhing black snakes. He and the other test subjects became raving, totally out of control mental and psychological animals. Whitey felt depressed and suicidal after the sessions. He said two inmates in the project became psychotic and were shipped off to the federal prison hospital in Missouri. Richard Sunday, an inmate who worked in the prison hospital with Whitey and became one of his closest friends, witnessed the effects of the experimental injections and was horrified. Whitey, he said, screamed wildly and babbled incoherently. His face was contorted. He was one crazy individual when he was on those drugs. Sunday said he was a lunatic. A local news station obtained an undated journal Bulger had apparently written in the years after his first term in federal prison in which he described horrible LSD experiences followed by thoughts of and deep depression and wrote that he developed a quote morbid fear of LSD feeling that if he had any more of it, it would push him over the edge. We were injected with massive doses of LSD25. In minutes, the drug would take over and about eight or nine men, Dr. Feifer and several men in suits who weren't doctors, would give us tests to see how we reacted. Eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state, total loss of appetite, hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent, horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a camera change under the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane. The men in suits would be in a room and hook me up to machines asking questions like, "Did you ever kill anyone? Would you kill someone?" Bulger soon found that he could sleep for only a few hours before inevitably waking up in a cold sweat. He felt like his head changes shape and the only antidote is to look in the mirror to make sure his head was still the same. According to Bulger, two of the other men in the experiment, quote, "When psychotic, they had all the symptoms of schizophrenia. They had to be pried loose from under their beds, growling, barking, and frothing at the mouth. They put them in a strip cell down the hall. I never saw or heard of them again. Declassified CIA documents would later confirm that at least two prisoners were transferred out of the program because of mental problems. For decades afterward, he refused to talk about his experience. Bulger feared that if I mentioned hearing voices or the seeming movement of calendar and cell, etc., that I'd be committed for life and never see the outside again. In his journal, Bulger wrote of having nightmares on a nightly basis and suspected the LSD had been responsible for years of allergies and stomach pains. He called the doctor administering the study a modern-day Mangala. I was in prison for committing a crime and feel they committed a worse crime on me. Years later, Bulger was still so disturbed by the experience that he threatened to kill anyone caught selling LSD in South Boston and at one point planned to hunt down and murder Dr. Feifer.
Cover Up - Incredibly, during his trial, Bulger's defense lawyers managed to not only avoid implicating any government officials besides John Connelly in any criminal activity, but they also failed to mention LSD, MK Ultra, or the CIA at all. Questioned after Bulger's conviction, famed Boston defense attorney Anthony Cardinau said, "If I defended him, I would have got him off. It's a simple defense, two parts. a nearly two years of LSD testing fried his brain. You bring in expert witnesses, psychiatrists, and others who detail the history of how people who took part in this secret CIA program committed suicide or became institutionalized. I'd have Bulger sit there doodling and drooling. He's a victim driven insane by his own government. Part B. He returns from prison in the early 1970s and the FBI gets a hold of him. They recruit him as an informant and enable him to the point where he delusionally believes there's no difference between right and wrong, that he can kill. He believes that it's okay to do that because the FBI enabled him to the point he insanely believes he had the right to kill people. I'm telling you, I could have had a jury feeling sorry for Whitey Bulger. He's a victim, ladies and gentlemen, and they, the government, are the reason he did all this. He truly believed he could get away with it. He didn't know the difference between right and wrong. They put all this in his head. They damaged and manipulated him to the point they turned him into a psychotic killer.''
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By: Psych History Show
Raped by: Otto Heckel
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