Project MKUltra began in 1953 and was halted in 1973. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions, such as the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals without the subjects' consent. Additionally, other methods beyond chemical compounds were used, including electroshocks,[2]hypnosis,[3][4]sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture.[5][6]
Project MKUltra was preceded by Project Artichoke.[7][8] It was organized through the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories.[9] The program engaged in illegal activities,[10][11][12] including the use of U.S. and Canadian citizens as unwitting test subjects.[10]:74[13][14][15] MKUltra's scope was broad, with activities carried out under the guise of research at more than 80 institutions aside from the military, including colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies.[16] The CIA operated using front organizations, although some top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA's involvement.[10]
American interest in drug-related interrogation experiments began in 1943, when the Office of Strategic Services began developing a "truth drug" that would produce "uninhibited truthfulness" in an interrogated person.[21][22] In 1947, the United States Navy initiated Project CHATTER, an interrogation program which saw the first testing of LSD on human subjects.[23][24]
In 1950, the Central Intelligence Agency under the direction of general Walter Bedell Smith initiated a series of interrogation projects involving human subjects, beginning with the launch of Project Bluebird, officially renamed Project Artichoke on August 20, 1951.[25] Directed and overseen by Brigadier General Paul F. Gaynor, the objective of Artichoke was to determine whether an individual could be made to involuntarily perform an act of attempted assassination.[26]Morphine, mescaline and LSD were all administered on unknowing CIA agents in an attempt to produce amnesia in the subjects. In addition, Project Artichoke aimed to employ certain viruses such as dengue fever as potential incapacitating agents.[27]
Aims and leadership
Sidney Gottlieb approved of an MKUltra sub-project on LSD in this June 9, 1953, letter.
The project was headed by Sidney Gottlieb but began on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles on April 13, 1953.[28][29] Its aim was to develop mind-controlling drugs for use against the Soviet bloc in response to alleged Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war during the Korean War.[30] The CIA wanted to use similar methods on their own captives, and was interested in manipulating foreign leaders with such techniques,[31] devising several schemes to drug Fidel Castro. It often conducted experiments without the subjects' knowledge and/or consent.[32] In some cases, academic researchers were funded through grants from CIA front organizations but were unaware that the CIA was using their work for these purposes.
The project attempted to produce a perfect truth serum for interrogating suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War and to explore other possibilities of mind control. Subproject 54 was the Navy's top-secret "Perfect Concussion" program, which was supposed to use sub-aural frequency blasts to erase memory; the program was never carried out.[33]
Most MKUltra records were destroyed in 1973 by order of CIA director Richard Helms, so it has been difficult for investigators to gain a complete understanding of the more than 150 funded research subprojects sponsored by MKUltra and related CIA programs.[34]
The project began during a period of what English journalist Rupert Cornwell described as "paranoia" at the CIA, when the U.S. had lost its nuclear monopoly and fear of communism was at its height.[35] CIA counter-intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton believed that a mole had penetrated the organization at the highest levels.[35] The agency poured millions of dollars into studies examining ways to influence and control the mind and enhance its ability to extract information from resistant subjects during interrogation.[36][37] Some historians assert that one goal of MKUltra and related CIA projects was to create a Manchurian Candidate-style subject.[38] American historian Alfred W. McCoy has claimed that the CIA attempted to focus media attention on these sorts of "ridiculous" programs so that the public would not look at the research's primary goal, which was effective methods of interrogation.[36]
Applications
The 1976 Church Committee report found that, in the MKDELTA program, "Drugs were used primarily as an aid to interrogations, but MKULTRA/MKDELTA materials were also used for harassment, discrediting or disabling purposes."[39][40][41]
Other related projects
In 1964, MKSEARCH was the name given to the continuation of the MKULTRA program. The MKSEARCH program was divided into two projects dubbed MKOFTEN and MKCHICKWIT. Funding for MKSEARCH commenced in 1965, and ended in 1971.[42] The project was a joint project between the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and the CIA's Office of Research and Development to find new offensive-use agents, with a focus on incapacitating agents. Its purpose was to develop, test, and evaluate capabilities in the covert use of biological, chemical, and radioactive material systems and techniques of producing predictable human behavioral and/or physiological changes in support of highly sensitive operational requirements.[42]
By March 1971, over 26,000 potential agents had been acquired for future screening.[43] The CIA was interested in bird migration patterns for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) research; subproject 139 designated "Bird Disease Studies" at Pennsylvania State University.[44] MKOFTEN was to deal with testing and toxicological transmissivity and behavioral effects of drugs in animals and, ultimately, humans.[42] MKCHICKWIT was concerned with acquiring information on new drug developments in Europe and Asia, and with acquiring samples.[42]
In January 1957, the CIA started a subproject of MKUltra in effort to broaden their scientific research. "Subproject 68", conducted at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal under the direction of psychiatrist Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron, represents one of the most infamous and ethically controversial endeavors within the MKUltra program.[45] This subproject aimed to explore innovative techniques for manipulating and controlling human behavior, particularly through the methods of "psychic driving" and "depatterning". Psychic driving involved subjecting patients to continuous playback of recorded messages, often with themes of self-improvement or identity reinforcement, while they were under the influence of powerful psychoactive substances such as LSD or barbiturates.[46]
Experiments on Americans
CIA documents suggest that they investigated "chemical, biological, and radiological" methods of mind control as part of MKUltra.[47] They spent an estimated $10 million or more, roughly $87.5 million adjusted for inflation.[48]
During a hearing by the Senate Health Subcommittee, a testimony by the Deputy Director of the CIA stated that over 30 institutions and universities were involved in the experimentation program of testing drugs on unknowing citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the issuing of LSD to unaware subjects in social situations.[1]
The Army was subject to the testing of LSD which occurred in three phases. The first phase included over 1,000 American soldiers who willingly volunteered for testing of chemical warfare experiments. Phase two had 96 volunteers who were induced with LSD in evaluation of the possibility of intelligence uses of the drug. The third phase included Projects THIRD CHANCE and DERBY HAT which conducted experiments on 16 unwitting nonvolunteer subjects that after receiving LSD were interrogated as a part of operation field tests.[1]
After retiring in 1972, Gottlieb dismissed his entire effort for the CIA's MKUltra program as useless.[35][49] Files discovered in 1977 containing 700 pages of new information showed that experiments had continued until Gottlieb ordered the program halted on July 10, 1972.[50]
LSD
In 1938, LSD was created by Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. The early directors of MKUltra became aware of the existence of LSD and sought to use it for "mind-control". In the early 1950s, MKUltra director Sidney Gottlieb arranged for the CIA to buy the entire supply of LSD for $240,000, which in 2024, would be $4,227,079.[51] This LSD supply gave Gottlieb the ability to fulfill his experiment by spreading LSD to prisons, hospitals, institutions, clinics, and foundations in order to see how citizens would react to the drug without knowing exactly what was happening to them.
Early CIA efforts focused on LSD-25, which later came to dominate many of MKUltra's programs.[52] The CIA wanted to know if they could make Soviet spies defect against their will and whether the Soviets could do the same to the CIA's own operatives.[53]
Documents obtained from the CIA by John D. Marks under Freedom of Information in 1976 showed that, in 1953, the CIA considered purchasing 10 kilograms of LSD, enough for 100 million doses. The proposed purchase aimed to stop other countries from controlling the supply. The documents showed that the CIA purchased some quantities of LSD from Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland.[54]
Once Project MKUltra started, in April 1953, experiments included administering LSD to mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts, and prostitutes – "people who could not fight back", as one agency officer put it.[55] In one case, they administered LSD to a mental patient in Kentucky for 174 days.[55] They also administered LSD to CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, and members of the general public to study their reactions. The aim was to find drugs that would bring out deep confessions or wipe a subject's mind clean and program them as "a robot agent".[56] Military personnel who received the mind-altering drugs were also threatened with courts-martial if they told anyone about the experiments.[57] LSD and other drugs were often administered without the subject's knowledge or informed consent, a violation of the Nuremberg Code the U.S. had agreed to follow after World War II. Many veterans who were subjected to experimentation are now seeking legal and monetary reparations.[57]
In Operation Midnight Climax, the CIA set up several brothels within agency safehouses in San Francisco to obtain a selection of men who would be too embarrassed to talk about the events. The men were dosed with LSD, the brothels were equipped with one-way mirrors, and the sessions were filmed for later viewing and study.[58] In other experiments where people were given LSD without their knowledge, they were interrogated under bright lights with doctors in the background taking notes. They told subjects they would extend their "trips" if they refused to reveal their secrets. The people under this interrogation were CIA employees, U.S. military personnel, and agents suspected of working for the other side in the Cold War. Long-term debilitation and several deaths resulted from this.[56]Heroin addicts were bribed into taking LSD with offers of more heroin.[10][59]
The Office of Security used LSD in interrogations, but Sidney Gottlieb, the chemist who directed MKUltra, had other ideas: he thought it could be used in covert operations. Since its effects were temporary, he believed it could be given to high-ranking officials and in this way affect the course of important meetings, speeches, etc. Since he realized there was a difference in testing the drug in a laboratory and using it in clandestine operations, he initiated a series of experiments where LSD was given to people in "normal" settings without warning. At first, everyone in Technical Services tried it; a typical experiment involved two people in a room where they observed each other for hours and took notes. As the experimentation progressed, a point arrived where outsiders were drugged with no explanation whatsoever and surprise acid trips became something of an occupational hazard among CIA operatives. Adverse reactions often occurred, such as an operative who received the drug in his morning coffee, became psychotic and ran across Washington, D.C., seeing a monster in every car passing him. The experiments continued even after Frank Olson, an army chemist who had never taken LSD, was covertly dosed by his CIA supervisor and nine days later plunged to his death from the window of a 13th-story New York City hotel room, supposedly as a result of deep depression induced by the drug.[65] According to Stephen Kinzer, Olson had approached his superiors some time earlier, doubting the morality of the project, and asked to resign from the CIA.[66]
Some subjects' participation was consensual, and in these cases they appeared to be singled out for even more extreme experiments. In one case, seven drug-addicted African-American participants at the National Institute of Mental Health Addiction Research Center in Kentucky were given LSD for 77 consecutive days.[67][68]
MKUltra's researchers later dismissed LSD as too unpredictable in its results.[69] They gave up on the notion that LSD was "the secret that was going to unlock the universe", but it still had a place in the cloak-and-dagger arsenal. However, by 1962, the CIA and the army developed a series of super-hallucinogens such as the highly touted BZ, which was thought to hold greater promise as a mind control weapon. This resulted in the withdrawal of support by many academics and private researchers, and LSD research became less of a priority altogether.[65]
Declassified MKUltra documents indicate they studied hypnosis in the early 1950s. Experimental goals included creating "hypnotically induced anxieties", "hypnotically increasing ability to learn and recall complex written matter", studying hypnosis and polygraph examinations, "hypnotically increasing ability to observe and recall complex arrangements of physical objects", and studying "relationship of personality to susceptibility to hypnosis".[72] They conducted experiments with drug-induced hypnosis and with anterograde and retrograde amnesia while under the influence of such drugs.
Experiments on Canadians
Donald Ewen Cameron, c.1967
The CIA exported experiments to Canada when they recruited Scottish psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron, creator of the "psychic driving" concept, which the CIA found interesting. Cameron had been hoping to correct schizophrenia by erasing existing memories and reprogramming the psyche. He commuted from Albany, New York to Montreal every week to work at the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill University, and was paid $69,000 from 1957 to 1964 (US$766,936 in 2024, adjusted for inflation) to carry out MKUltra experiments there. The Montreal experiments research funds were sent to Cameron by a CIA front organization, the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, and as shown in internal CIA documents, Cameron did not know the money came from the CIA.[73]:141–142
In addition to LSD, Cameron also experimented with various paralytic drugs as well as electroconvulsive therapy at thirty to forty times the normal power. His "driving" experiments consisted of putting subjects into drug-induced comas for weeks at a time (up to three months in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements. His experiments were often carried out on patients who entered the institute for common problems such as anxiety disorders and postpartum depression, many of whom suffered permanent effects from his actions.[73]:140–150 His treatments resulted in victims' urinary incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents and thinking their interrogators were their parents.[74]
In the 1980s, several of Cameron's former patients sued the CIA for damages, which the Canadian news program The Fifth Estate documented.[76] Their experiences and lawsuit were adapted in the 1998 television miniseries The Sleep Room.[77]
Naomi Klein argues in her book The Shock Doctrine that Cameron's research and his contribution to the MKUltra project was not about mind control and brainwashing, but about designing "a scientifically based system for extracting information from 'resistant sources'. In other words, torture."[78]
Alfred W. McCoy writes, "Stripped of its bizarre excesses, Dr. Cameron's experiments, building upon Donald O. Hebb's earlier breakthrough, laid the scientific foundation for the CIA's two-stage psychological torture method",[79] referring to first creating a state of disorientation in the subject, and then creating a situation of "self-inflicted" discomfort in which the disoriented subject can alleviate pain by capitulating.[79]
Secret detention camps
In areas under American control in the early 1950s in Europe and East Asia, mostly Japan, West Germany and the Philippines, the CIA created secret detention centers (Black sites) so that the U.S. could avoid criminal prosecution. The CIA captured people suspected of being enemy agents and other people it deemed "expendable" to undertake various types of torture and human experimentation on them. The prisoners were interrogated while being administered psychoactive drugs, electroshocked and subjected to extremes of temperature, sensory isolation and the like to develop a better understanding of how to destroy and to control human minds.[2]
Revelation
In 1973, amid a government-wide panic caused by the Watergate scandal, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKUltra files destroyed.[80] Pursuant to this order, most CIA documents regarding the project were destroyed, making a full investigation of MKUltra impossible. A cache of some 20,000 documents survived Helms's purge, as they had been incorrectly stored in a financial records building and were discovered following a FOIA request in 1977. These documents were fully investigated during the Senate Hearings of 1977.[10]
Frank Church headed the Church Committee, an investigation into the practices of the U.S. intelligence agencies.
In December 1974, The New York Times alleged that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S. citizens, during the 1960s.[81] That report prompted investigations by the United States Congress, in the form of the Church Committee, and by a commission known as the Rockefeller Commission that looked into the illegal domestic activities of the CIA, the FBI and intelligence-related agencies of the military.
In the summer of 1975, congressional Church Committee reports and the presidential Rockefeller Commission report revealed to the public for the first time that the CIA and the Department of Defense had conducted experiments on both unwitting and cognizant human subjects as part of an extensive program to find out how to influence and control human behavior through the use of psychoactive drugs such as LSD and mescaline and other chemical, biological, and psychological means. They also revealed that at least one subject, Frank Olson, had died after administration of LSD. Much of what the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission learned about MKUltra was contained in a report, prepared by the Inspector General's office in 1963, that had survived the destruction of records ordered in 1973.[82] However, it contained little detail. Sidney Gottlieb, who had retired from the CIA two years previously and had headed MKUltra, was interviewed by the committee but claimed to have very little recollection of the activities of MKUltra.[16]
The congressional committee investigating the CIA research, chaired by Senator Frank Church, concluded that "prior consent was obviously not obtained from any of the subjects." The committee noted that the "experiments sponsored by these researchers[...] call into question the decision by the agencies not to fix guidelines for experiments."
Following the recommendations of the Church Committee, President Gerald Ford in 1976 issued the first Executive Order on Intelligence Activities which, among other things, prohibited "experimentation with drugs on human subjects, except with the informed consent, in writing and witnessed by a disinterested party, of each such human subject" and in accordance with the guidelines issued by the National Commission. Subsequent orders by Presidents Carter and Reagan expanded the directive to apply to any human experimentation.
1977 United States Senate report on MKUltra
In 1977, during a hearing held by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to look further into MKUltra, Admiral Stansfield Turner, then Director of Central Intelligence, revealed that the CIA had found a set of records, consisting of about 20,000 pages,[83] that had survived the 1973 destruction orders because they had been incorrectly stored at a records center not usually used for such documents.[82] These files dealt with the financing of MKUltra projects and contained few project details, but much more was learned from them than from the Inspector General's 1963 report.
On the Senate floor in 1977, Senator Ted Kennedy said:
The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an "extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to "unwitting subjects in social situations."[84]
At least one death, the result of the alleged defenestration of Frank Olson, was attributed to Olson's being subjected, without his knowledge, to such experimentation nine days before his death.[citation needed] The CIA itself subsequently acknowledged that these tests had little scientific rationale. The officers conducting the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers.[85][86]
In Canada, the issue took much longer to surface, becoming widely known in 1984 on a CBC news show, The Fifth Estate. It was learned that not only had the CIA funded Cameron's efforts, but also that the Canadian government was fully aware of this, and had later provided another $500,000 in funding to continue the experiments. This revelation largely derailed efforts by the victims to sue the CIA as their U.S. counterparts had, and the Canadian government eventually settled out of court for $100,000 to each of the 127 victims. Cameron died on September 8, 1967, after suffering a heart attack while he and his son were mountain climbing. None of Cameron's personal records of his involvement with MKUltra survived because his family destroyed them after his death.[87][88]
1994 U.S. General Accounting Office report
The U.S. General Accounting Office issued a report on September 28, 1994, which stated that between 1940 and 1974, the Department of Defense and other national security agencies studied thousands of human subjects in tests and experiments involving hazardous substances.
Working with the CIA, the Department of Defense gave hallucinogenic drugs to thousands of "volunteer" soldiers in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to LSD, the Army also tested quinuclidinyl benzilate, a hallucinogen code-named BZ. (Note 37) Many of these tests were conducted under the so-called MKULTRA program, established to counter perceived Soviet and Chinese advances in brainwashing techniques. Between 1953 and 1964, the program consisted of 149 projects involving drug testing and other studies on unwitting human subjects
In 1953, a few days before his death, Frank Olson quit his position as acting chief of the Special Operations Division at Detrick, Maryland (later Fort Detrick) because of a severe moral crisis concerning the nature of his biological weapons research. Among Olson's concerns were:
the development of assassination materials used by the CIA,
the CIA's use of biological warfare materials in covert operations,
experimentation with biological weapons in populated areas,
the use of psychoactive drugs during "terminal" interrogations under a program code-named Project Artichoke.[94]
In 1953 (November) Olson was given LSD without his knowledge or consent, (allegedly) as part of a CIA experiment, and died after falling from a 13th-story window a week later. A CIA doctor assigned to monitor Olson claimed to have been asleep in another bed in a New York City hotel room when Olson fell to his death. In 1953, Olson's death was described as a suicide that had occurred during a severe psychotic episode. The CIA's own internal investigation concluded that the head of MKUltra, CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb, had conducted the LSD experiment with Olson's prior knowledge, although neither Olson nor the other men taking part in the experiment were informed as to the exact nature of the drug until some 20 minutes after its ingestion. The report further suggested that Gottlieb was nonetheless due a reprimand, as he had failed to take into account Olson's already-diagnosed suicidal tendencies, which might have been exacerbated by the LSD.[90]
In 1975, Olson's family received a $750,000 settlement from the U.S. government and formal apologies from President Gerald Ford and CIA Director William Colby, though their apologies were limited to informed consent issues concerning Olson's ingestion of LSD.[95]
In 1977 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Committee on Human Resources wrote:
"Given the CIA's purposeful destruction of most records, its failure to follow informed consent protocols with thousands of participants, the uncontrolled nature of the experiments, and the lack of follow-up data, the full impact of MKUltra experiments, including deaths, may never be known."[34][96][89][95]
In 1994 Olson's body was exhumed and cranial injuries indicated that Olson had been knocked unconscious before he exited the window. This means the forensic evidence conflicted with the former official version of events by the CIA.[90] The medical examiner termed Olson's death a "homicide".[97]
Since 2001 (or earlier) the Olson family disputes the official version of events. They maintain that Frank Olson was murdered because, especially in the aftermath of his LSD experience, he had become a security risk who might divulge state secrets associated with highly classified CIA programs, about many of which he had direct personal knowledge.[98]
that he was eventually murdered by the CIA.[99][100]
In 2012 (November 28) the Olson family filed suit against the U.S. federal government for the wrongful death of Frank Olson.[101] In 2013 (July) the case was dismissed, due in part to the 1976 settlement between the family and government.[102] In the decision dismissing the suit, U.S. District JudgeJames Boasberg wrote,
"While the court must limit its analysis to the four corners of the complaint, the skeptical reader may wish to know that the public record supports many of the allegations [in the family's suit], farfetched as they may sound."[103]
Legal issues involving informed consent
The revelations about the CIA and the Army prompted a number of subjects or their survivors to file lawsuits against the federal government for conducting experiments without informed consent. Although the government aggressively, and sometimes successfully, sought to avoid legal liability, several plaintiffs did receive compensation through court order, out-of-court settlement, or acts of Congress. Frank Olson's family received $750,000 by a special act of Congress, and both President Ford and CIA director William Colby met with Olson's family to apologize publicly.
Previously, the CIA and the Army had actively and successfully sought to withhold incriminating information, even as they secretly provided compensation to the families. One subject of army drug experimentation, James Stanley, an army sergeant, brought an important, albeit unsuccessful, suit. The government argued that Stanley was barred from suing under the Feres doctrine.
In 1987, the Supreme Court affirmed this defense in a 5–4 decision that dismissed Stanley's case: United States v. Stanley.[104] The majority argued that "a test for liability that depends on the extent to which particular suits would call into question military discipline and decision making would itself require judicial inquiry into, and hence intrusion upon, military matters." In dissent, Justice William Brennan argued that the need to preserve military discipline should not protect the government from liability and punishment for serious violations of constitutional rights:
The medical trials at Nuremberg in 1947 deeply impressed upon the world that experimentation with unknowing human subjects is morally and legally unacceptable. The United States Military Tribunal established the Nuremberg Code as a standard against which to judge German scientists who experimented with human subjects... [I]n defiance of this principle, military intelligence officials[...] began surreptitiously testing chemical and biological materials, including LSD.
No judicially crafted rule should insulate from liability the involuntary and unknowing human experimentation alleged to have occurred in this case. Indeed, as Justice Brennan observes, the United States played an instrumental role in the criminal prosecution of Nazi officials who experimented with human subjects during the Second World War, and the standards that the Nuremberg Military Tribunals developed to judge the behavior of the defendants stated that the 'voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential[...] to satisfy moral, ethical, and legal concepts.' If this principle is violated, the very least that society can do is to see that the victims are compensated, as best they can be, by the perpetrators.
In another lawsuit, Wayne Ritchie, a former United States Marshal, after hearing about the project's existence in 1990, alleged the CIA laced his food or drink with LSD at a 1957 Christmas party which resulted in his attempting to commit a robbery at a bar and his subsequent arrest.[105] While the government admitted it was, at that time, drugging people without their consent and that Ritchie's behavior was typical of someone on LSD, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel found Ritchie could not prove he was one of MKUltra's victims or that LSD caused his robbery attempt, and dismissed the case in 2005.[106][107][105]
Allen Ginsberg first took LSD in an experiment on Stanford University's campus where he could listen to records of his choice (he chose a Gertrude Stein reading, a Tibetan mandala, and Richard Wagner). He said the experience resulted in "a slight paranoia that hung on all my acid experiences through the mid-1960s until I learned from meditation how to disperse that."[111] He became an outspoken advocate for psychedelics in the 1960s and, after hearing suspicions that the experiment was CIA-funded, wrote, "Am I, Allen Ginsberg, the product of one of the CIA's lamentable, ill-advised, or triumphantly successful experiments in mind control?"[112]
Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, is said to have volunteered for MKUltra experiments involving LSD and other psychedelic drugs at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Menlo Park while he was a student at nearby Stanford University. Kesey's experiences while under the influence of LSD inspired him to promote the drug outside the context of the MKUltra experiments, which influenced the early development of hippie culture.[64][113][114]
Robert Hunter was an American lyricist, singer-songwriter, translator, and poet, best known for his association with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Along with Ken Kesey, Hunter was said to be an early volunteer MKUltra test subject at Stanford University. Stanford test subjects were paid to take LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, then report on their experiences. These experiences were creatively formative for Hunter:
Sit back picture yourself swooping up a shell of purple with foam crests of crystal drops soft nigh they fall unto the sea of morning creep-very-softly mist[...] and then sort of cascade tinkley-bell-like (must I take you by the hand, ever so slowly type) and then conglomerate suddenly into a peal of silver vibrant uncomprehendingly, blood singingly, joyously resounding bells[...] By my faith if this be insanity, then for the love of God permit me to remain insane.[115]
Ted Kaczynski, an American domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber, was said to be a subject of a voluntary psychological study alleged by some sources to have been a part of MKUltra.[118][119][120] As a sophomore at Harvard, Kaczynski participated in a study described by author Alston Chase as a "purposely brutalizing psychological experiment", led by Harvard psychologist Henry Murray.[121] In total, Kaczynski spent 200 hours as part of the study.[122]
Sirhan Sirhan's attorney, Lawrence Teeter, believed that Sirhan was "operating under MKUltra mind control techniques" when he assassinated Robert F. Kennedy.[123]
Charles Manson has been tied to MKULTRA by author Tom O'Neil, beginning with his time in prison, when Manson took part in drug-induced psychological experiments run by the federal government.[124] This continued through his ongoing connection to the CIA's Free Medical Clinic in San Francisco once out of prison in 1967.[citation needed]
In popular culture
MKUltra plays a part in many conspiracy theories due to its nature and the destruction of most records. This has also led to the urban legends that the human experiments performed by the CIA are ongoing into the present.[125]
Television
The 1998 CBC miniseries The Sleep Room dramatizes brainwashing experiments funded by MKUltra that were performed on Canadian mental patients in the 1950s and 60s, and their subsequent efforts to sue the CIA.[77]
In season 2, episode 5 of Fringe, "Dream Logic", Walter Bishop mentions his participation in MKUltra experiments, using LSD and suggestion.
In season 2, episode 19 of Bones, "Spaceman in a Crater", Jack Hodgins mentions that Frank Olson was an unwitting participant and committed suicide, but that an exhumation 45 years later proved he was murdered.[126]
The popular series Stranger Things, a Netflix original, is largely based on the MKUltra experiments and the subsequent US government cover-ups. The main character, Eleven, is a child of an MKUltra test subject and is the last child to survive the massacre of the facility in 1979. Contrary to popular belief from urban legends, while MKUltra did in fact experiment on children, the project was halted in 1973.[128]
Film
The 2009 film The Killing Room is a thriller based on the real life MKUltra top secret government psychological program in which various volunteer test subjects are put in a tense situation.[129]
Music
English band Muse's 2009 album The Resistance features a song titled "MK Ultra", which references brainwashing techniques utilised by the CIA in the eponymous project.
Will Wood's 2020 album The Normal Album features a song titled "BlackBoxWarrior - OKULTRA", which describes the experience of an MKUltra victim.
Glasgow band, the "Mickey 9s", have a song called "MK Ultra", from their 2021 album "Modern Kunst".
The sixth and final volume of John Burdett's Bangkok detective novel series The Bangkok Asset features MKUltra as a major theme.[130] The novel expands the impacts of the program to ultimately include the creation of super soldier-spies with "transhuman abilities".
Games
The main protagonist of the 2010 video game Call Of Duty: Black Ops, Alex Mason, is a victim of MKUltra and has been brainwashed into believing his old friend, Viktor Reznov, is alive, even years after he died. Mason was also programmed to kill US President John F. Kennedy, Russian war criminals Nikita Dragovich, Lev Kravchenko, and Nazi German scientist Friedrich Steiner.
The main protagonist of the 2020 video game Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, "Bell", is a victim of MKUltra and has been brainwashed into believing they served in the Vietnam War.
The antagonist of the 2024 video game Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Jane Harrow, is a victim of MKUltra and has been brainwashed into believing Adler was responsible for CIA-sanctioned assassination of her parents and Jane herself is responsible for the bioweapon called "the Cradle", before she was finished off by "Case" during an escape attempt at the end of the campaign.
Acid: The Secret History of LSD, by David Black, London: Vision, 1998, ISBN1901250113. Later edition exists.
Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain, New York: Grove Press, 1985, ISBN0802130623
The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA, by John Ranelagh, pp.208–10.
80 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, by Jonathan Vankin and John Whalin, chapter 1, "CIAcid Drop".
In the Sleep Room: The Story of CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada, Anne Collins, Lester & Orpen Dennys (Toronto), 1988.
Journey into Madness: The True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse, by Gordon Thomas, NY: Bantam, 1989, ISBN0553284134
Operation Mind Control: Our Secret Government's War Against Its Own People, by W H Bowart, New York: Dell, 1978, ISBN0440167558
The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, by John Marks, W.W. Norton & Company Ltd, 1999, ISBN0393307948
Storming Heaven: LSD and The American Dream, by Jay Stevens, New York: Grove Press, 1987, ISBN0802135870
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Incapacitating agent is a chemical or biological agent which renders a person unable to harm themselves or others, regardless of consciousness.
Frank Rudolph Emmanuel Olson was an American bacteriologist, biological warfare scientist, and an employee of the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories (USBWL) who worked at Camp Detrick in Maryland. At a meeting in rural Maryland, he was covertly dosed with LSD by his colleague Sidney Gottlieb and, nine days later, plunged to his death from the window of the Hotel Statler in New York. The U.S. government first described his death as a suicide, and then as misadventure, while others allege murder. The Rockefeller Commission report on the CIA in 1975 acknowledged their having conducted covert drug studies on fellow agents. Olson's death is one of the most mysterious outcomes of the CIA mind control project MKUltra.
Sidney Gottlieb was an American chemist and spymaster who headed the Central Intelligence Agency's 1950s and 1960s assassination attempts and mind-control program, known as Project MKUltra.
Project Artichoke was a project developed and enacted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the purpose of researching methods of interrogation. Project Artichoke was succeeded by Project MKUltra, which began in 1953.
MKNAOMI is the code name for a joint Department of Defense/CIA research program from the 1950s through to the 1970s. Unclassified information about the MKNAOMI program and the related Special Operations Division is scarce. It is generally reported to be a successor to the MKULTRA project focusing on biological projects including biological warfare agents—specifically, to store materials that could either incapacitate or kill a test subject and to develop devices for the diffusion of such materials.
Donald Ewen Cameron was a Scottish-born psychiatrist. He is largely known today for his central role in unethical medical experiments, and development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the Central Intelligence Agency. He served as president of the American Psychiatric Association (1952–1953), Canadian Psychiatric Association (1958–1959), American Psychopathological Association (1963), Society of Biological Psychiatry (1965) and the World Psychiatric Association (1961–1966).
Project Chatter was a United States Navy program beginning in the fall of 1947 focusing on the identification and testing of drugs in interrogations and the recruitment of agents. Their search included laboratory experiments on both animal and human subjects. The program operated under the direction of Charles Savage of the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, from 1947 to 1953. The project was geared to identifying agents both synthetic, and natural that were effective during interrogation, as well as testing possible treatments for depression. The project was centered on, but not restricted to, the use of anabasine, scopolamine and mescaline. It was the first U.S. government project in which lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25) was used on human subjects. The Navy ended the project in 1953 when its experiments were merged into Project MKULTRA.
The Office of Technical Service is a component of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, responsible for supporting CIA's clandestine operations with gadgets, disguises, forgeries, secret writings, and weapons. The OTS traces its history to October 1942, when OSS director William J. Donovan created the OSS Research and Development Branch, a technical group tasked with creating "dirty tricks and deadly weapons" to combat the US's World War II enemies. Donovan named Cornell University-trained chemist and executive Stanley Platt Lovell as the branch's first head, a man whom the CIA remembers as the "founding father" of the OTS. In the 1950s and early 1960s it also researched, investigated, and experimented with the use of drugs, chemicals, hypnosis, and isolation to extract information during interrogation, as well as to make it easier for American captives to resist interrogation. OTS is part of CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology.
The United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States was ordained by President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States. The Presidential Commission was led by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, from whom it gained the nickname the Rockefeller Commission.
Pharmacological torture is the use of psychotropic or other drugs to punish or extract information from a person. The aim is to force compliance by causing distress, which could be in the form of pain, anxiety, psychological disturbance, immobilization, or disorientation.
Operation Midnight Climax was an operation carried out by the CIA as a sub-project of Project MKUltra, the mind-control research program that began in the 1950s. It was initially established in 1954 by Sidney Gottlieb and placed under the direction of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in Boston, Massachusetts with the "Federal Narcotics Agent and CIA consultant" George Hunter White under the pseudonym of Morgan Hall. Dr. Sidney Gottlieb was a chemist who was chief of the Chemical Division of the Office of Technical Service of the CIA. Gottlieb based his plan for Project MKUltra and Operation Midnight Climax off interrogation method research under Project Artichoke. Unlike Project Artichoke, Operation Midnight Climax gave Gottlieb permission to test drugs on unknowing citizens, which made way for the legacy of this operation. Hundreds of federal agents, field operatives, and scientists worked on these programs before they were shut down in the 1960s.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the United States federal government, tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world.
Psychochemical warfare involves the use of psychopharmacological agents with the intention of incapacitating an adversary through the temporary induction of hallucinations or delirium. These agents, often called "drug weapons", are generally considered chemical weapons and, more narrowly, constitute a specific type of incapacitating agent.
Throughout history, prisoners have been frequent participants in scientific, medical and social human subject research. Some of the research involving prisoners has been exploitative and cruel. Many of the modern protections for human subjects evolved in response to the abuses in prisoner research. Research involving prisoners is still conducted today, but prisoners are now one of the most highly protected groups of human subjects
Numerous experiments which were performed on human test subjects in the United States in the past are now considered to have been unethical, because they were performed without the knowledge or informed consent of the test subjects. Such tests have been performed throughout American history, but have become significantly less frequent with the advent and adoption of various safeguarding efforts. Despite these safeguards, unethical experimentation involving human subjects is still occasionally uncovered.
Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond, originally released as Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion, is a 1985 book by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, in which the authors document the 40-year social history of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), beginning with its synthesis by Albert Hofmann of Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in 1938. During the Cold War period of the early 1950s, LSD was tested as an experimental truth drug for interrogation by the United States intelligence and military community. Psychiatrists also used it to treat depression and schizophrenia. Under the direction of Sidney Gottlieb, the drug was used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in cooperation with participating "colleges, universities, research foundations, hospitals, clinics, and penal institutions". LSD was tested on "prisoners, mental patients, volunteers, and unsuspecting human subjects".
Unethical human experimentation is human experimentation that violates the principles of medical ethics. Such practices have included denying patients the right to informed consent, using pseudoscientific frameworks such as race science, and torturing people under the guise of research. Around World War II, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany carried out brutal experiments on prisoners and civilians through groups like Unit 731 or individuals like Josef Mengele; the Nuremberg Code was developed after the war in response to the Nazi experiments. Countries have carried out brutal experiments on marginalized populations. Examples include American abuses during Project MKUltra and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the mistreatment of indigenous populations in Canada and Australia. The Declaration of Helsinki, developed by the World Medical Association (WMA), is widely regarded as the cornerstone document on human research ethics.
The Montreal experiments were a series of experiments, initially aimed to treat schizophrenia by changing memories and erasing the patients' thoughts using the Scottish psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron's method of "psychic driving", as well as drug-induced sleep, intensive electroconvulsive therapy, sensory deprivation and Thorazine. The experiments were conducted at the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill University between 1957 and 1964 by Cameron and funded by the CIA as part of Project MKUltra, which lasted until 1973 and was only revealed to the public in 1975.
Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control is a 2019 book by The New York Times journalist and historian Stephen Kinzer. The book contains untold stories of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chemist called Sidney Gottlieb, who tried to "find a way to control the human brain". In 1953, CIA director Allen Dulles appointed Gottlieb to "run the covert program".
MK Ultra is a 2022 American psychological thriller film written and directed by ex-intelligence officer Joseph Sorrentino. Based on a true story about the human experimentation program MKUltra conducted by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1960s, the film follows Dr. Ford Strauss, a psychiatrist who gets involved in a government experiment and conspiracy involving the use of psychedelic and other mind-controlling substances. It was released theatrically and on video on demand on October 7, 2022.
↑ Otterman, Michael (2007). American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond. Melbourne University Publishing. p.24. ISBN978-0-522-85333-9.
↑ McCoy, Alfred (2007). A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Macmillan. p.29. ISBN978-1-4299-0068-3.
↑ Church Committee; p. 391 "A special procedure, designated MKDELTA, was established to govern the use of MKUltra materials abroad. Such materials were used on a number of occasions."
↑ Church Committee; "The congressional committee investigating the CIA research, chaired by Senator Frank Church, concluded that '[p]rior consent was obviously not obtained from any of the subjects.'"
1 2 McCoy, Alfred (2006). A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror. New York: Metropolitan Books. pp.8, 22, 30. ISBN0-8050-8041-4.
↑ Scheflin, Alan W. Jr.; Opton, Edward M. (1978). The mind manipulators: a non-fiction account. New York: Paddington Press. p.158. ISBN978-0-448-22977-5.
↑ Thomas, Gordon (1989). Journey into madness: the true story of secret CIA mind control and medical abuse. New York: Bantam Books. p.123. ISBN978-0-553-05357-9.
1 2 3 4 1977 Senate MKULTRA Hearing: Appendix C – Documents Referring to subprojects
↑ Collins, Anne (1998) [1988]. In the Sleep Room: The story of CIA brainwashing experiments in Canada. Toronto: Key Porter Books. pp.39, 42–43, 133. ISBN1-55013-932-0.
↑ "MK Ultra episodes". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). 40years of The Fifth Estate.
↑ PROJECT MKULTRA, THE CIA's PROGRAM OF RESEARCH IN BEHAVIORAL MODIFICATION(PDF). Joint Hearing Before The Select Committee On Intelligence And The Subcommittee On Health And Scientific Research of The Committee On Human Resources, United States Senate (Report). U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. August 3, 1977. Archived(PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022.
↑ "Opening Remarks by Senator Ted Kennedy". U.S. Senate Select Committee On Intelligence, and Subcommittee On Health And Scientific Research of the Committee On Human Resources. August 3, 1977.
1 2 Ritchie v. US, vol.451, May 18, 2006, p.1019, retrieved January 20, 2023
↑ "Findings of Fact and Conclusion of Law Re: Motion for Judgment on Partial Findings". Ritchie v. United States of America(PDF) (Court case). No. C 00-3940 MHP. Archived(PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved April 20, 2021.{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |agency= ignored (help)
↑ Marks, John (1991). The search for the "Manchurian candidate". New York: Norton. pp.129–130. ISBN0-393-30794-8. OCLC23973516.
↑ Lee, Martin A.; Shlain, Bruce (1992). Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond. USA: Grove Press. pp.xix. ISBN0-8021-3062-3.
↑ Moreno, Jonathan (2012). Mind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21st Century. Bellevue Literary Press, NYU School of Medicine. ISBN978-1-934137-43-7.
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