It turns out that Theodore Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, was a
                 volunteer in mind-control experiments sponsored by the CIA at
                 Harvard in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

                 Michael Mello, author of the recently published book, "The United
                 States of America vs. Theodore John Kaczynski," notes that at
                 some point in his Harvard years--1958 to 1962--Kaczynski agreed to
                 be the subject of "a psychological experiment." Mello identifies the
                 chief researcher for these only as a lieutenant colonel in World War
                 II, working for the CIA's predecessor organization, the Office of
                 Strategic Services. In fact, the man experimenting on the young
                 Kaczynski was Dr. Henry Murray, who died in 1988. Murray
                 became preoccupied by psychoanalysis in the 1920s, drawn to it
                 through a fascination with Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," which
                 he gave to Sigmund Freud, who duly made the excited diagnosis that
                 the whale was a father figure. After spending the 1930s developing
                 personality theory, Murray was recruited to the OSS at the start of
                 the war, applying his theories to the selection of agents and also
                 presumably to interrogation.

                 As chairman of the Department of Social Relations at Harvard,
                 Murray zealously prosecuted the CIA's efforts to carry forward
                 experiments in mind control conducted by Nazi doctors in the
                 concentration camps. The overall program was under the control of
                 the late Sidney Gottlieb, head of the CIA's technical services
                 division. Just as Harvard students were fed doses of LSD, psilocybin
                 and other potions, so too were prisoners and many unwitting guinea
                 pigs.

                 Sometimes the results were disastrous. A dram of LSD fed by
                 Gottlieb himself to an unwitting U.S. army officer, Frank Olson,
                 plunged Olson into escalating psychotic episodes, which culminated
                 in Olson's fatal descent from an upper window in the Statler-Hilton
                 in New York. Gottlieb was the object of a lawsuit not only by
                 Olson's children but also by the sister of another man, Stanley
                 Milton Glickman, whose life had disintegrated into psychosis after
                 being unwittingly given a dose of LSD by Gottlieb. What did Murray
                 give Kaczynski? Did the experiment's long-term effects help tilt him
                 into the Unabomber's homicidal rampages? The CIA's mind
                 experiment program was vast. How many other human time bombs
                 were thus primed? How many of them have exploded?

                 There are other human time bombs, primed in haste, ignorance or
                 indifference to long-term consequences. Amid all the finger-pointing
                 to causes prompting the recent wave of schoolyard killings, not
                 nearly enough clamor has been raised about the fact that many of
                 these teenagers suddenly exploding into mania were on a regimen of
                 antidepressants. Eric Harris, one of the shooters at Columbine, was
                 on Luvox. Kip Kinkel, who killed his parents and two students in
                 Oregon, was on Prozac.

                 There are a number of other instances. Apropos possible linkage,
                 Dr. Peter Breggin, author of books on Prozac and Ritalin, has said,
                 "I have no doubt that Prozac can contribute to violence and suicide.
                 I've seen many cases. In the recent clinical trial, 6% of the children
                 became psychotic on Prozac. And manic psychosis can lead to
                 violence."

                 A 15-year-old girl attending a ritzy liberal arts school in the
                 Northeast told me that 80% of the kids in her class were on Prozac,
                 Ritalin or Dexedrine. The pretext used by the school authorities is
                 attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
                 or ADHD, with a diagnosis made on the basis of questions such as:
                 "Do you find yourself daydreaming or looking out the window?"

                 Ritalin is being given to about 2 million American school children. A
                 1986 article by Richard Scarnati in the International Journal of the
                 Addictions lists more than a hundred adverse reactions to Ritalin,
                 including paranoid delusions, paranoid psychosis, amphetamine-like
                 psychosis and terror. Meanwhile, uncertainty reigns on the precise
                 nature of the complaint that Ritalin is supposed to be treating. One
                 panel reviewing the proceedings at a conference on ADHD last year
                 even doubted whether the disorder is a "valid" diagnosis of a broad
                 range of children's behavior, and said there was little evidence
                 Ritalin did any good. In 1996, the Drug Enforcement Administration
                 denounced the use of Ritalin and concluded that "the dramatic
                 increase in the use of [Ritalin] in the 1990s should be viewed as a
                 marker or warning to society."

                 Indeed. Land mines now litter the terrain of our society, waiting to
                 explode.

                 ______

                 Alexander Cockburn Writes for the Nation and Other Publications
                 Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved