Artichoke
Written & Narrated By Baltimore Writer Charles Rammelkamp
After Dulles expanded Bluebird,
to include enhanced mind control experiments –
the new program called Artichoke
after the New York gangster, Ciro Terranova,
“the Artichoke King” –
a guy named Dmitri Dimitrov
became the first guinea pig,
spirited away from Greece to Fort Clayton,
a CIA “black site” on the Pacific coast of Panama.
Dimitrov’s code name was “Kelly” –
about as obscure as “Artichoke” –
a Bulgarian politician who knew too much
about CIA operations overseas, if you get my drift.
They tried various “behavior modification techniques”
involving truth drugs – LSD, mescaline, heroin –
to get him to spill his guts,
but there wasn’t much to spill.
They held him at Fort Clayton three years,
by which time his knowledge became obsolete,
and they “resettled” him in Greece,
though he later entered the USA as a refugee,
under the name Donald Donaldson.
Donaldson later told a Dutch journalist named Oltmans
Allen Dulles was behind the JFK assassination –
assassination teams did train at Fort Clayton –
but when Oltmans tried to give the story to Jimmy Carter
and the House Select Committee on Assassinations,
they refused to listen, and Donaldson moved to England.
He disappeared from a London hotel,
leaving large unpaid bills, never heard from again.