In 1979, the US Central Intelligence Agency began a three-year series of secret experiments in which operatives injected all the major aquifers of North America with an advanced-generation hallucinogen which, unlike LSD, is not rendered chemically inert in chlorinated tap water. The presence of the active chemical in the water supply made no noticeable difference in the daily life of the continent except that the Strategic Defence Initiative, the so-called "Star Wars" program of the Reagan administration, seemed plausible to many US voters and even to some Canadians and Mexicans.