Did the CIA spike a French towns baguettes with LSD?
A 60-year-old French medical mystery concerning hallucinogenic bread and mass hysteria has now been blamed on undercover operations by the CIA. According to American investigative journalist Hank Albarelli, the agency spiked French baguettes with LSD in secret experiments just after World War II. Citing anonymous US Army and CIA sources, Albarelli claims that members of the US Army’s Special Operations Division contaminated “local food products” with diethylamine – the D in LSD – to gauge the effect of the newly synthesised drug on French civilians. The CIA connection is the latest in a number of possible explanations for a series of tragic events that unfurled at Pont-Saint-Esprit, a small town on the banks of the River Rhône in southern France, in August 1951. After an outbreak of food poisoning, upset stomachs, vomiting and diarrhœa soon gave way to mass folly and collective hallucinations. Victims imagined themselves to have copper heads, stomachs full of writhing snakes or bodi
