Morse Allen was a [[CIA]] officer and a deception and polygraph expert who played a significant role in the agency's early programs investigating altered states of consciousness and truth serums. In 1952, he was promoted to serve as the director of [[Project Artichoke]], a classified program that was a precursor to [[Project MKUltra]][^1]. Allen's primary objective was to search the globe for potent drugs that the [[CIA]] could exploit for intelligence purposes. This quest was influenced by the [[Nazi Germany|Nazis]]' [[Das Ahnenerbe|Ahnenerbe Institute]]'s research, which had pushed human physiology to extremes in concentration camps to measure and monitor results[^1]. In October 1952, Allen learned about the Mexican field mushroom, *teonanáctl* (God's flesh), which, according to ancient Aztec legend, endowed certain "sensitive" or psychic individuals with supernatural abilities. He believed this mushroom could act as a truth serum or provide divinatory powers[^1]. In early 1953, the [[CIA]] dispatched a scientist to Mexico to gather samples, but the initial attempt was unsuccessful due to the mushroom's elusive nature[^1]. Allen then traveled to Toughkenamon, Pennsylvania, the "mushroom capital of America," and secured a contract with a top mushroom grower, planning to mass-produce the hallucinogenic mushroom once located[^1]. The quest for *God's flesh* was later renamed [[Project MKUltra|MKULTRA Subproject 58]][^1]. In late summer 1954, Allen discovered that [[Henry Karel Puharich|Captain Henry Karel "Andrija" Puharich]] of the [[U.S. Army Chemical Center]], a [[Project MKUltra]] partner, was also searching for the hallucinogenic mushroom. Despite Puharich's extensive knowledge of mystical and supernatural research, the [[CIA]] ultimately bypassed him, approaching [[R. Gordon Wasson]] directly through their chemist, [[James Moore]], who posed as a professor[^1]. Allen's efforts to keep the drug a secret psychic weapon under military intelligence control were ultimately undermined when Wasson published a twelve-page account of his experience in *Life* magazine, highlighting the mushroom's alleged ability to enhance [[Extrasensory Perception|ESP]][^1]. ### Footnotes [^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.