Psilocybin

Psilocybin was the active chemical ingredient of the Mexican "magic mushroom," synthesized by Albert Hofmann at Sandoz after the CIA failed to isolate it first. The compound became the drug that Timothy Leary preferred to LSD for his Harvard experiments. The CIA's quest for the divine mushroom began when a young scientist sent to Mexico by Morse Allen in 1953 heard tales of special mushrooms used in Indian religious ceremonies. Aztec priests had called them teonanactl, "God's flesh." Allen declared that "full consideration" should be given to sending an Agency man back to Mexico during the summer.¹

The Race to Synthesize

Gordon Wasson found the mushroom in 1955, and the CIA quickly learned of his discovery through its informant network. James Moore, a CIA contractor, joined Wasson's 1956 expedition. Back in Paris, French mycologist Roger Heim grew the mushrooms from spore prints and sent samples to Albert Hofmann at Sandoz, who quickly isolated and chemically reproduced the active ingredient, naming it psilocybin. Sidney Gottlieb had written that if Moore succeeded, it was "quite possible" that the new drugs could "remain an Agency secret." Instead, the CIA found itself trying to obtain formulas and supplies from overseas, as with LSD.¹

Testing

Agency scientists rushed psilocybin into the experimental stage. Within three summers of the expedition, the mushroom's chemical essence had worked through laboratories on two continents and back to CIA contractors. Harris Isbell injected psilocybin into nine black inmates at the narcotics prison in Lexington, Kentucky. His staff recorded that after 30 minutes, "anxiety became quite definite and was expressed as consisting of fear that something evil was going to happen, fear of insanity, or of death." Two of the nine patients "felt their experiences were caused by the experimenters controlling their minds." But the magic mushroom never became a good spy weapon. It made people behave strangely but no one could predict where their trips would take them.¹