In 1920, Hubbard was publicized in
West Coast newspapers as having developed a
free energy motor, though a
Popular Science article published in 1928 referred to it as a hoax. "Captain Hubbard" was interested in acquiring some mescaline, which was
then still legal, and Dr. Osmond supplied him with some. By the time
Timothy Leary and his colleagues were experimenting with psychedelic drugs in the psychology department of
Harvard in the early 1960s, Hubbard had obtained a supply of Sandoz LSD. Hubbard went there to meet Leary and wanted to swap some LSD for some
psilocybin, the psychoactive compound found in
magic mushrooms, which was, at the time, identified and synthesized by Switzerland's
Sandoz Laboratories. The Central Intelligence Agency grew out of the post-World War II OSS, which was reputed to be one of Hubbard's employers. Under the auspices of
MK-ULTRA, the CIA regularly dosed its agents and associates with powerful hallucinogens as a preemptive measure against what was alleged to be the
Soviets' own chemical technology, sometimes with
disastrous results. It is possible that Hubbard had some links with the CIA, but Humphry Osmond doubts that Hubbard would have been associated with a project like MK-ULTRA, "not particularly on humanitarian grounds, but on the grounds that it was
bad technique." Stolaroff learned of Hubbard through a mentor, philosopher
Gerald Heard, a friend and spiritual mentor to
Aldous Huxley. According to Todd Brendan Fahey, Hubbard introduced more than 6,000 people to LSD, including scientists, politicians, intelligence officials, diplomats, and church figures. == Works ==