I don't think your first claim is true. It was "introduced" by psychiatrists and various philosophical zealots. MKULTRA attempted to research it to see if it could be used for the purpose you describe.
Without MKULTRA, LSD still hits the US and still causes some cultural tremors.
"The LSD movement was started by the CIA. I wouldn't be here now without the foresight of CIA scientists." -- Timothy Leary
Subproject 6 of MK-ULTRA involved funding Eli Lilly to develop its own synthesis of LSD. The CIA embarked on this to ensure an adequate supply after finding that Sandoz had produced only 40 grams total of LSD. After Lilly succeeded, the CIA became the main customer, and via various other subprojects funded and supplied researchers that experimented with LSD.
In particular, many counterculture figures first encountered LSD as subjects of CIA-backed experiments, including Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, and Grateful dead lyricist Robert Hunter.
Timothy Leary himself was one step removed, being introduced to psychedelics by a fellow Harvard researcher whose research into magic mushrooms was CIA-funded.
[this is all discussed in Kinzer's "Poisoner in Chief"]
Without the CIA it might have taken decades longer.
Kinzer reports a funny story. The officer dispatched to Basel "returned a report that Sandoz had ten kilograms of LSD on hand, which he correctly called a 'fantastically large amount'. [Allen] Dulles approved the expenditure of $240,000 to buy it all -- the world's entire supply. The two officers sent to pick it up, however, quickly discovered that their colleague had confused kilograms with grams. Sandoz had manufactured a total of less than forty grams, of which ten were in stock."
Without MKULTRA, LSD still hits the US and still causes some cultural tremors.