Operation MONEYBAGS (Full)

On 30 November 1964, 17 Royal Marine commandos and 3 Officers from 41 Royal Marine Commando took part in an exercise on the 7,000 acre Porton Range designed to investigate the effects of an incapacitating agent on troops engaged in internal security situations. The Range is part of the Ministry of Defence Chemical and Biological Warfare facility at Porton Down, located near Salisbury, Wiltshire. The exercise scenario was that following a political uprising, Porton had been attacked by rebels during the night. They had been repulsed and sought refuge in the open country of Porton’s Range and were trying to escape westwards where they hoped to gain support. The Commandos mission was to capture as many of the rebels and their stores as possible. Although the Commandos knew that they were to be given some sort of drug on one of the days, they knew neither what it would be or when it would be administered. On the second day of the exercise, 01 December 1964, the Commandos were given a drink of water, as they had been the previous day, before they moved off onto the Range. Unlike the previous day, this time each glass of water had been spiked with 200 microgrammes of LSD. According to Rob Evans groundbreaking book, ‘Gassed - British Chemical Warfare Experiments on Humans at Porton Down’, the results of the administered drug on the troops were dramatic. “Within twenty minutes, the Commando unit had begun to fall apart and got worse and worse; radio operators were babbling gibberish and whistling down the handset; men were standing around giggling in the open in full view of the supposed enemy; one man was alternatively laughing and retching; the soldiers were unable to aim the rocket-launcher properly and would have been as great a hazard to their own side as the opposing troops – one sergeant was ‘apparently having considerable difficulty in maintaining realistic contact with the outside world’. In the next half an hour, the men completely went to pieces, The film of Operation Moneybags shows the Marines incapable of remembering what to do or even how to use their equipment. One Marine became very agitated, saying ‘I’m dying – it can’t go on’; he had to be taken immediately into medical care”.