Dr. Mary’s Monkey

by Edward T Haslam

  The second reason for maintaining a low profile was that the animal rights movement was just starting to grow. Antivivisectionists groups were protesting the treatment of experimental animals, and were distributing literature which showed the horrors of life and death in the animal labs. Keeping a low profile prevented such publicity from creating negative pressures on researchers and their employers.

  The third reason for keeping a low profile was the secrecy demanded by covert Cold War operations. Simply said, Tulane was conducting sensitive research for the U.S. government, some of which was for the CIA. This was as much a matter of political pork as national security. Louisiana had one of the most powerful delegations in Washington, and much of that power was concentrated in the hands of legislators who controlled the military budgets. Congress works on the seniority system, and very few people had been in Washington longer than Louisiana’s most powerful members:

  F. EDWARD HEBERT, Chairman of Armed Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. Taxes start in the House, and budgets start in Committee. As Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, the entire U.S. military budget and the vast majority of the CIA budget started on Hebert’s desk. One of his jobs was to hide most of the CIA budget in the U.S. military budget. He was known as “the military’s best friend.”34

  ALLEN ELLENDER had been in the U.S. Senate for over 40 years. He was the senior senator when Huey Long was the junior senator in 1930s. Ellender sat on the Armed Services Committee of the U.S. Senate and got Hebert’s budget through the Senate. Between the two, they made sure that Louisiana received its fair share of military and space contracts.35

  RUSSELL LONG, the son of Huey Long, was Majority Whip of the U.S. Senate, Chairman of the Senate’s powerful Ways and Means Committee, and a member of the Senate Banking Committee.

  HALE BOGGS, Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives, was the 3rd most powerful man in that body, and was considered by many to be LBJ’s “man-in-the-House.”

  TULANE WAS A MAJOR WATERING HOLE for the Louisiana delegation, and it got “pork” whenever they could dish it out. Hebert and Ellender were in terrific position to assure that Tulane received pork in the form of CIA research contracts. CIA projects were hidden from both Soviet and American scrutiny by placing them in other agencies’ budgets, such as the National Institutes of Health, in the various military branches, or in private foundations.36 From what I heard through Tulane’s student grapevine over the years, I must conclude that Tulane was definitely involved in both NIH- and CIA-sponsored projects, especially research with psychoactive drugs.

  Why would the CIA be interested in doing medical research? There were three main reasons: (1) mind control, (2) to get rid of Castro or other foreign leaders, and (3) to keep up with the Soviets.

  First, mind control. The CIA’s much-publicized LSD experiments were just the beginning of their efforts to get people to talk when they wanted, to sleep when they wanted, and to kill when they wanted. Their general mind-control project was called OPERATION ARTICHOKE.38

  Secondly, the CIA was trying to get rid of Fidel Castro and Communism in the Western Hemisphere. They tried to use their mind-altering resources and other medical tactics to discredit Castro. The project was called MKULTRA.39 One specific plan was to spray a hallucinogenic drug in Castro’s personal radio studio, so that he would make a fool out of himself during a national radio broadcast. Then they decided to kill him. Their new team was called ZR-RIFLE, and its job was to explore exotic ways of advancing the date of his death.40 The CIA’s medical director for these projects was brain-function expert Dr. Sidney Gottlieb.41

  (The name “ Gottlieb” shows up frequently in AIDS literature. Dr. Michael S. Gottlieb is an immunologist at UCLA Medical School who “discovered AIDS” in 1981. Dr. A. Arthur Gottlieb is also an immunologist and is a professor at Tulane Medical School, as is his wife. In 1972 A. Arthur Gottlieb was chosen by the U.S. Army’s Biological Warfare Laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland to edit its book on infectious diseases.42 Please note that I have no information to suggest whether or not there is any relationship between Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, Dr. Michael S. Gottlieb, or Dr. A. Arthur Gottlieb, so the reader should be cautious about any such conclusions.)

  One of the best sources of information on “The Secret War Against Cuba” is a book called Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of J.F.K., written by Warren Hinckle and William Turner. Turner is an ex-FBI agent who specialized in the political right. He worked with Jim Garrison on his JFK probe and was inside David Ferrie’s apartment. His writing partner Warren Hinckle was editor of Ramparts magazine. In Deadly Secrets they made numerous references to the fact that the CIA was getting the best minds in America, and particularly from the universities, involved in figuring out exotic ways to eliminate Castro and his government from Cuba.43

  Hinckle and Turner explained the frustration of the Kennedy White House. After spending hundreds of millions of dollars and recruiting thousands of Cuban exiles for OPERATION Mongoose (a free Cuba paramilitary operation based on the campus of the University of Miami), the Kennedy brothers wanted to see some action. They pressured the CIA for more tangible and immediate results and encouraged the use of alternative means to remove Castro and Communism from Cuba. Consider this passage:

  ... The pressure for more spectacular results was on Lansdale (CIA), who was in almost daily contact with the attorney general (Bobby Kennedy). He passed the pressure on to an interagency group formulating plans for approval by the SGA (Special Group Augmented — a CIA/White House task force focused on Cuba), saying that “it is our job to put the American genius to work on this project, quickly and effectively. This demands a change from the business as usual and a hard facing of the fact that we are in a combat situation — where we have been given full command.” Lansdale hinted that “we might uncork the touchdown play independently of the institutional program we are spurring.”44

  Other than naming the University of Miami, Deadly Secrets does not say which universities were involved. Was Tulane one of the universities asked “to put the American genius to work”? It certainly would have fit into the economic interests and anti-Communist sentiment of the New Orleans business community. It would have fit into the tradition of close cooperation between CIA officials and certain members of the Tulane Board, most notably Sam Zemurray (who was chairman of both the United Fruit Company and the Tulane University Board of Directors in 1954, when the CIA produced a coup d’etat in Guatemala to reclaim 250,000 acres of United Fruit land which had been nationalized by Guatemala’s democratically elected government).45 And the project would have been considered “pork” by the elected political officials who were in a position to approve the budget.

  And what of Lansdale’s proposal to “uncork the touchdown play independently of the institutional program”? Does this not suggest that there were some back channels open which were not officially or overtly connected to institutions? Was he referring to the CIA’s much-publicized use of the Mafia to try to kill Castro? Or might he have been referring to an underground medical laboratory run by politically sympathetic scientists who might develop a biological means of eliminating the entire Cuban leadership?

  Thirdly, the CIA would have been interested in medical research for political reasons. In the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet scientists were ahead of U.S. scientists in certain areas of medical research, one of which was the investigation of cancer-causing monkey viruses. The Soviets were explicit, as early as 1951, about their demonstration that certain simian viruses caused a variety of cancers.46 This was six to eight years before American government researchers produced the same results. This Soviet edge was a concern for American Cold War planners, who monitored Soviet scientific journals. From their perspective, this was just another Soviet threat. Either the Soviets might use this information to develop a sexually-transmitted biological weapon to undermine freedom in the promiscuous West, or they might develop a cure for cancer bef
ore the U.S. did and thereby cause a major American political embarrassment. Either could provide sufficient reason for the CIA not to want the U.S. to fall behind the Soviets in this important area.47

  Whatever the motive, the U.S. government wanted the work done. The money was provided for researching monkey viruses through convenient channels, but the doctors were not supposed to talk about it. In the process, New Orleans became one of the leading centers of knowledge about immunology and retroviruses. The doctors at Tulane who specialized in cancer and pathology had access to this knowledge, to these monkeys, and to their viruses.

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  1 My father was a limb surgeon whose specialties were reconstructive surgery and the rehabilitation of amputees. He was President of the Crippled Children’s Hospital and Medical Director of the Physical Rehabilitation Center at Delgado College. He knew Mary Sherman because they both taught orthopedic surgery at Tulane Medical School in the 1950s and early ‘60s. He never worked at Ochsner’s clinic or hospital. He was not a virus researcher and was not involved in the underground medical laboratory in any way.

  2 Tulane did publish the Bulletin of the Tulane Medical School, but it was an industry relations piece sent to other medical schools.

  3 An outbreak of infectious hepatitis was reported in New Orleans in 1962 by A. Riopelle and J.F. Molloy: “Infectious Hepatitis at Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology,” Laboratory Primate Newsletter, 1962, Vol. 1 (4), p. 12. See also Fiennes, Zoonoses of Primates as related to Human Disease (Cornell, 1965), p. 146.

  4 Fiennes, Zoonoses of Primates, p. 142, plus Hazards of Handling Simians (International Association of Microbiological Associations, 1969).

  5 Allison, A.C., “Simian Oncogenic Viruses,” Hazards of Handling Simians, p. 172.

  6 Hazards of Handling Simians (International Association of Microbiological Associations, 1969), table.

  7 Fiennes, Zoonoses of Primates, pp. 144-150.

  8 Ibid., p. 149

  9 Lemonick, Michael D., “A Deadly Virus Escapes,” Time magazine, September 5, 1994, p. 63.

  10 Petrov, a Soviet scientist, used viruses to produce bone cancer in monkeys in 1951: Lapin, B.A., et al., “Use of Non-Human Primates in Medical Research, Especially in the Study of Cardiovascular Pathology and Oncology,” Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy, U.S.S.R., in Some Recent Developments in Comparative Medicine (London: 1966), ed. Richard Fiennes, p. 204. In the U.S., in 1957, Stewart and Eddy discovered “polyoma,” a virus that caused a variety of cancers in various animals; reported in Edward Shorter, The Health Century (New York, 1987), p. 198. By 1959, polyoma was considered to be essentially the same as SV-40, a monkey virus that caused various cancers in a variety of animals: Ibid., p. 201.

  11 Lapin, “The Use of Non-Human Primates...,” Some Recent Developments in Comparative Medicine, ed. Fiennes, p. 206; also Spencer Munroe, “Viral Oncogenesis in the Rhesus Monkey,” Ibid., p. 229; also J.S. Munroe & W.F. Windle, “Tumors induced in Primates by a Chicken Sarcoma Virus,” Science (1963), vol. 140, p. 1415.

  12 Grace, J. T. Jr. & E. A. Mirand, “Human Susceptibility to a Simian Tumor Virus,” Annals of the N.Y. Academy of Science (1963), vol. 108, p. 1123.

  13 Essex, Max & Phyllis J. Kanki, “The Origins of the AIDS Virus,” Science of AIDS: A Scientific American Reader (New York, 1989), p. 30.

  14 Ibid., p. 32.

  15 Three references to the use of radiation on tumors can be found in Tumors of Bone and Soft Tissue (Chicago: 1964). In “Histogenesis of Bone Tumors,” p. 16, Mary Sherman discusses genetic damage inflicted on cells by irradiation. In “Giant Cell Tumor of Bone,” p. 166, Sherman questions the claim that x-ray therapy turns benign tumors into deadly sarcomas. On p. 10 R. Lee Clark says, “X-ray therapy in the management of soft tissue of tumors is almost limited to Kaposi’s sarcoma.”

  16 “The New War on Cancer via Virus Research and Chemotherapy,” Time, July 27, 1959, p. 54.

  17 Dr. John Roberts, surgeon and president of the Medical Legal Foundation, interviewed by author, October 3, 1994. Roberts was one of the doctors who used linear particle accelerators to destroy cancer tissue, preferring it to Cobalt-60 because it could be controlled more precisely, minimizing destruction of healthy tissue.

  18 Roberts interview.

  19 Roberts interview.

  20 Fiennes, Zoonoses of Primates, p. 149.

  21 Eyestone, Willard H., “Scientific and Administrative Concepts Behind the Establishment of the U.S. Primate Centers,” Some Recent Developments in Comparative Medicine, ed. Fiennes, p. 2.

  22 Ibid., p. 6.

  23 Willits, Stacy, “Escapees Swinging Through Trees,” Times-Picayune/States-Item (New Orleans), September 1, 1994, Metro News

  24 Willits, Stacy, “Primate Center Back in Spotlight,” Times-Picayune (New Orleans), September 8, 1994, p. B-1.

  25 Ibid.,” p. B-2.

  26 Guillermo, Kathy Snow, Monkey Business (Washington, 1993). This book chronicles the decade-long battle between two tenacious whistle-blowers and the federal government over extreme animal cruelty in the name of science. The level of animal cruelty described in this book can only be described with words like “mutilation” and “torture.” Criminal charges resulted. In the process, the whistleblowers founded PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and took their battle to both the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court ruled in their favor, but not soon enough to save 60% of the monkeys from further experimentation and death. Scientific experimentation on monkeys continues today and is financed annually by $20,000,000 of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

  27 Willits, “Escapees Swinging Through Trees.” Times-Picayune (New Orleans) September 1, 1994, Metro News

  28 Willits, “Primate Center Back in Spotlight.” Times-Picayune (New Orleans) September 8, 1994, p. B-1

  29 Guillermo, Monkey Business, p. 173.

  30 Richard Hatch, “Cancer Warfare,” Covert Action, Winter 1991-92, p. 18.

  31 Eyestone, Willard H., “Scientific and Administrative Concepts Behind the Establishment of the U.S. Primate Centers,” Some Recent Developments in Comparative Medicine, ed. Fiennes., p. 6.

  32 Fiennes, Zoonoses of Primates, p. 142; A. Riopelle and J.F. Molloy, “Infectious Hepatitis at Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology,” Laboratory Primate Newsletter, 1962, vol. 1 -4, p. 12.

  33 Shorter, Health Century, p. 65.

  34 Word-of-mouth description of Congressman Hebert which this author personally heard in his district in the 1960s.

  35 Not the least of which was the NASA facility that builds the huge fuel tank for the space shuttle. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was head of NASA when this facility was announced, and President when it was built.

  36 Marks, John, Search for the Manchurian Candidate (New York, 1980).

  37 (fig2a) “Un-identified white female between the age of 8 and 10 years old. Subject underwent 6 months of treatment using heavy doses of LSD, electroshock and sensory deprivation. Experiments under codename: MKULTRA about early 60s. Subjects memory was erased and her brain is that of a newborn baby.”

  38 Russell, Dick, The Man Who Knew Too Much (New York, 1992), p. 380-381.

  39 Ibid., p. 380., and Project MKULTRA, the CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification, U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, August 3, 1977

  40 Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, p. 381.

  41 Ibid., p. 380.

  42 Gottlieb, A. Arthur, et al., Transfer Factor (New York, 1976).

  43 Hinckle, Warren and Turner, William, Deadly Secrets (New York, 1992), p. 122.

  44 Ibid., p. 135. Caution: James DiEugenio told me that the source of these statements is ultimately CIA officer Howard Hunt, and that he may have fabricated them to make his anti-Castro activities to appear to have been authorized by the White House. If so, we should remember that fabricating the authorization does not equal fabricating the activity. In fact, there is little reason to fabricate the authorization unless one w
as trying to legitimatize an otherwise illegal activity. Or to put it bluntly, it is unlikely that someone would try to legitimatize an activity that did not exist.

  45 Ibid., p. 40.

  46 B.A. Lapin et al, “Use of Non-Human Primates in Medical Research, Especially in the Study of Cardiovascular Pathology and Oncology,” Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy, U.S.S.R., Some Recent Developments in Comparative Medicine, ed. Fiennes, p. 204.

  47 Who would synthesize a disease for which there is no cure? Consider the Defense Appropriations Hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1970: “Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which would differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease.” While I personally do not think that this conversation led to HIV-1, it does show the thinking of a biological weapons developer. Of course, the rationale was defensive: we’d better do it before some bad guy does.

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  CHAPTER 2

  The Classroom

  CARROLLTON AVENUE is a wide, tree-lined boulevard which runs north and south, bisecting New Orleans and connecting the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain. At its mid-point, in a residential neighborhood near the corner of Canal Street, stands a huge four-story brick building resembling a fortress. It covers an entire city block. This is Jesuit High School, where the Jesuit priests have been educating the future leaders of New Orleans for over 100 years. The Jesuits are famous, even notorious, for demanding academic excellence. Therefore, the economic and power elite of this predominantly Catholic city send their male children to the Jesuits to be educated. Admission is highly competitive. Discipline is strict. Military uniforms are worn. High performance is required. And nobility is expected. The students are trained for success and for leadership roles in tomorrow’s society. Above all else, they are expected to carry the militant social conscience and uncompromising values of their Jesuit educators with them into their future roles.