> This story is taken from AP State Wire News at sacbee.com.

> ## Lawsuit claiming CIA put LSD in vet's drink in 1957 can proceed

> ###

> #### The Associated Press - (Published May 24, 2004)

> SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A former deputy U.S. marshal and Marine Corps veteran who claims the CIA slipped LSD into his drink in 1957 as part of a mind-control project offered enough evidence to send his $12 million lawsuit to trial, a federal judge ruled Monday.

> Chief U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled in favor of Wayne Ritchie, citing an apparent admission from a former CIA operative.

> "I drugged guys involved in about 10, 12 (instances)," former federal narcotics agent Ira Feldman, who worked for the CIA's Project MKULTRA, told Ritchie's lawyer in a sworn deposition in February 2003. "I didn't do any follow-up. ... You just back away and let them worry like this nitwit, Ritchie."

> Ritchie, 75, believes he may have been a guinea pig for the CIA's MKULTRA project, in which LSD and other drugs were given to hundreds of unsuspecting Americans during the Cold War.

> Ritchie believes his drinks at a 1957 office Christmas party attended by a federal agent involved in the project were spiked.

> The government denies drugging Ritchie and accuse him of concocting the theory to cash in on publicity about MKULTRA, the subject of congressional hearings in the 1970s and a 1997 movie.

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