A Vietnam veterans group is suing the CIA for "thousands of secret experiments to test toxic chemical and biological substances under code names such as MKULTRA.," its attorneys said today.

The suit was filed in federal court in northern California on behalf of the Washington-based Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc., and six aging veterans with multiple diseases and ailments "tied to a diabolical and secret testing program, whereby U.S. military personnel were deliberately exposed, by government and military agencies, to chemical and biological weapons and other toxins without informed consent," the Morrison & Foerster law firm said in a press release.

The firm said the alleged CIA research program was launched in the early 1950s and continued through at least 1976 at the Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick, Md., as well as universities and hospitals across the country contracted by the CIA.

Defendants include the CIA, the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense and various government officials responsible for these agencies.  

"The CIA secretly provided financing, personnel, and direction for the experiments, which were mainly conducted or contracted by the Army," the suit says.

According to the veterans, the experiments, conducted over a 25 year period, included:

·    the use of troops to test nerve gas, psychochemicals, and thousands of other toxic chemical or biological substances, and ... the insertion of septal implants in the brains of subjects in ... mind control experiments that went awry, leaving many civilian and military subjects with permanent disabilities;

·    the failure to secure informed consent and other widespread failures to follow the precepts of U.S. and international law regarding the use of human subjects, including the 1953 Wilson Directive and the Nuremberg Code;

·    a ... refusal by the DoD, the CIA, and the Army to ... locate the victims of their ... experiments or to provide health care or compensation to them;

·    the  destruction by the CIA of evidence and files

The plaintiffs have scheduled a news conference Wednesday at the San Francisco offices of the Morrison & Foerster firm.

UPDATE: CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf said the agency would have no comment "on specific matters before the court."

But, she added, "CIA activities related to MK-ULTRA have been thoroughly investigated, and the CIA fully cooperated with each of the investigations. In addition, tens of thousands of pages from documents related to the program have been declassified and released to the public.

"MK-ULTRA was investigated in 1975 by the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee, and in 1977 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research," Harf added.

Several books have been written about the CIA drug experiments, which began with a Korean War-era mind-control race with Soviet and Chinese scientists. The idea was to create an American version of "The Manchurian Candidate," or drug-controlled assassin.

Pentagon Counterterror Teams Go Deep  

It's interesting to speculate on why the expanded operations of Pentagon counterterror teams surfaced in the New York Times today. But one of them has to be that the noses of CIA and State Department officials remain severely out of joint from an initiative launched right after the  9/11 attacks by President Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush issued a classified order authorizing the C.I.A. to kill or capture Qaeda militants around the globe," write Times reporters Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti.

"By 2003, American intelligence agencies and the military had developed a much deeper understanding of Al Qaeda's extensive global network, and Mr. Rumsfeld pressed hard to unleash the military's vast firepower against militants outside the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan."

According to the Times, a 2004 order identified "15 to 20 countries, including Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and several other Persian Gulf states, where Qaeda militants were believed to be operating or to have sought sanctuary, a senior administration official said."  

Soon enough, American ambassadors, who are supposed to be the top U.S. official in a foreign country, grew increasingly annoyed by Pentagon "cowboys" zipping in and out, congressional committees heard.

But if only because the State Department, and the CIA, couldn't keep DoD out of their sandboxes, they have been supporting the operations, the Times said.

A number of CIA veterans, however, say that the military teams are too often ill equipped for the missions, in terms of language abilities and knowledge of local customs and mores.

And they wonder what will happen when - inevitably, they say - a solider in mufti is caught red-handed in a place like Pakistan or Turkey, where nationalist feelings run high. Show trials - and the threat of executions (not to mention waterboarding) - are not out of the question.

Not that CIA assassins or kidnappers would be treated any better - or  know their way around a foreign country better -- than a veteran Army Special Forces operative, they also concede.

In any event, there's plenty of work to go around to keep everybody busy.

"It is far too easy to criticize CIA," a longtime Special Forces and Delta operative told me last year, "but all their renditions have resulted in far less than 100 detentions.  For an outfit like al Qaeda, which trained tens of thousands in Afghanistan, that doesn't amount to many at all."

Manchurian Candidates, Saudi Style

Tucked into the back of Sunday's New York Times Magazine is a fascinating piece on the Saudi way of dealing with former al Qaeda operatives (some captures, some inherited from Guantanamo).

"Brainwashing lite," the Chinese might call it. Or "re-education," what the North Vietnamese termed the communist dogma they poured into the heads of the southern brethren they defeated in 1975, usually in brutal work camps.

The Saudies have a kinder, gentler way. They board their charges in comfortable seaside dormitories, give them electronic toys and stipends, and talk them out of jihad by challenging their religious rationales for choosing guns and bombs.   

It seems to work, by the students' accounts, anyway.

Writer Katherine Zoepf, who visited the classes, quotes Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, who says the methods are "consistent with Saudi history, in that you try through nonviolent means to cajole, to bribe, to buy off the opposition."

"I would say that we mostly were focused elsewhere, unlike during the Cold War, when we'd see a single Soviet armor battalion move. So, yes, the size and scope of the Russian move has come as something of a surprise."