Conspiracy Theory: Electric French Bread

Just for your enjoyment, and complete with a creepy black and white photo to make it seem more legit, an obscure new explanation for an incident already explained once, but that wasn’t good enough, apparently. Er … Henry Samuel, in Paris, for The Daily Telegraph:

In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.

For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind control experiment at the height of the Cold War.

The mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread) still haunts the inhabitants of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard, southeast France.

On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire.

One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: “I am a plane”, before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets.

Time magazine wrote at the time: “Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead.”

Eventually, it was determined that the best-known local baker had unwittingly contaminated his flour with ergot, a hallucinogenic mould that infects rye grain. Another theory was the bread had been poisoned with organic mercury.

However, H P Albarelli Jr., an investigative journalist, claims the outbreak resulted from a covert experiment directed by the CIA and the US Army’s top-secret Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

This is one of those I kind of hope is true. I mean, on some level … really, dosing a village full of people? That’s pretty wild. Awesome, as conspiracy theories go.

Oh, big surprise

But … Lithuania? That was always my first question about this story. And I was probably late to it. It seems to me I picked it up only a couple weeks ago.

The CIA used at least two secret detention centres in Lithuania after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the US, a Lithuanian inquiry has found.

The report by a Lithuanian parliamentary committee says that in 2005 and 2006 CIA chartered planes were allowed to land in Lithuania.

It says that no Lithuanian officials were allowed near the aircraft, nor were they told who was on board ….

…. Poland and Romania hosted similar CIA “black sites”, media reports say.
In Lithuania, at least eight terror suspects were held at one centre on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius, the investigation found.

It was formerly a riding school and the suspects were reportedly held there between 2004 and 2005.

In August this year, US media reports claimed that Lithuania, Poland and Romania all hosted secret CIA interrogation centres.

But the parliamentary report appears to absolve Lithuania’s political leaders of responsibility for any human rights violations that may have been committed by the CIA, the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Moscow.

It says even the president was unaware of exactly what the US intelligence service was doing.

The only thing that’s really surprising about this is that it was Lithuania. Not that any ancient legend says they are the paladins to lead us to new enlightenment, or anything like that. But I don’t know. Is it unfair to mutter something about the Soviet experience? You know, like, you’d think Lithuania, not even twenty years out of Soviet reach ….

Okay, that’s probably not fair. There are also rumors of similar sites in Poland and Romania, so maybe they’re just calling on some of Europe’s surviving old-school bonebreakers.

Hired goons. Why not? There will always be a market for cruelty.