Materials and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use. Investigative efforts were hampered by CIA Director Richard Helms's order that all MKUltra files be destroyed in 1973; the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the small number of documents that survived Helms's order. .MK-ULTRA, MK-ULTRA, or MKULTRA, was the code name for a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation .I l Approved for Release: 2018/12/12 C06760269 Project MK-ULTRA . The CIA began to experiment with LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) under the direction of agency chemist and poison expert Sidney Gottlieb. Gottliebs career in destroying lives is a startling example of bureaucratic irrationality, showing how without democratic oversight, secret projects can take on a life of their own. It proved to their satisfaction that effective dosages can be produced over relatively large areas.. The proposed purchase aimed to stop other countries from controlling the supply. Cameron was looking for techniques that would enable him to, as he put it, re-pattern individuals, changing their attitudes and beliefs. High doses cause convulsions, as discovered in 1934 by the Hungarian-American neurologist and psychiatrist Ladislas J. Meduna. [62][63], MKUltra's researchers later dismissed LSD as too unpredictable in its results. In 1974, New York Times journalist Seymour Hersh published a story about how the CIA had conducted non-consensual drug experiments and illegal spying operations on U.S. citizens. Anecdotes vary from horrifying in one experiment, mentally handicapped children were fed cereal laced with uranium and radioactive calcium to merely amusing, such as the time when CIA operatives supposedly implanted a listening device in a cat, but forgot that cats do not listen to instruction (it walked away during a test in a park). The family of Frank Olson decided to have a second autopsy performed in 1994. On November 28, 1953, Frank Olson, a scientist researching biological warfare for the US army, fell to his death from the tenth floor of the Manhattan Statler hotel. The Church Committee delved into plots to assassinate foreign leaders, including Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba. [69], During this era, Cameron became known worldwide as the first chairman of the World Psychiatric Association as well as president of both the American Psychiatric Association and the Canadian Psychiatric Association. But Gottliebs success stories were almost all failures, such as failed attempts to assassinate the Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai, Fidel Castro, or the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba (Lumumba was murdered before Gottliebs plan could be put into effect). But instead of concluding they were chasing a white rabbit, CIA scientists persisted. ", "The Legacy of the CIA's Secret LSD Experiments on America", "Cloak and Dropper The Twisted History of the CIA and LSD", " " "", "Cruel science: CIA torture and U.S. foreign policy", "CIA Funded Experiments On Danish Orphans For Decades", "Huge C.i.a. National Public Radio (NPR), 9 Sept. 2019. Many of them were not aware of where their funding came from. Did he jump or was he pushed? They told subjects they would extend their "trips" if they refused to reveal their secrets. 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. 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. Physical methods of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use. Articles with the HISTORY.com Editors byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan and Matt Mullen. Long-term debilitation and several deaths resulted from this. [1][2][3][4] It began in 1953 and was halted in 1973. In accordance with the procedures recently worked out for handling correspondence regarding MKULTRA Addressee w/atts ~,1~- DDA Subject w/o atts 1- AI Subject (MKULTRA) w/atts 1- HGB Chrona w/o atts A~tts: YRS in which you are requesting that we resend to you the 86-page MKULTRA list that we sent to you on 9 September 2011 in connection with your 17 August 2011 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for MKULTRA-related documents. Though Project MK-Ultra lasted from 1953 until about 1973, details of the illicit program didnt become public until 1975, during a congressional investigation into widespread illegal CIA activities within the United States and around the world. In the mid-fifties, CIA operatives took note of the work of Ewen Cameron, president of the American Psychological Association and the Canadian Psychiatric Association. It also uncovered thousands of documents related to MK-Ultra. The experiments laid the groundwork for modern-day torture techniques. The committee noted that the "experiments sponsored by these researchers call into question the decision by the agencies not to fix guidelines for experiments.". Review of Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephen Kinzer (Henry Holt & Co, 2019). The CIA needed human guinea pigs, but Korean prisoners of war and suspected Communist spies provided only a limited supply. New Information About Funding and Operations Disclosed by Documents and Interviews Private Institutions Used in C.I.A. Here's How the CIA Used Me for Drug Experiments", "MKUltra: Inside the CIA's Cold War mind control experiments", "Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber", "Harvard's Experiment on the Unabomber, Class of '62", "Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill with Dan Piepenbring", "7 Key Questions to Help You Understand Wormwood", Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control, "U.S. Congress: The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Foreign and Military Intelligence (Church Committee report), report no. Letters requests for substantive informa- tion on the MKULTRA program are answered by the Office of Technical discovered files of Project MKULTRA do contain evidence that research involving human testing was conducted such testing on unwitting subjects ceased in 1963. Stanley. (David Burnett / Newsmakers). Ken Kesey, author of the 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, volunteered for MK-Ultra experiments with LSD while he was a college student at Stanford University. The recently discovered files of Project MKULTRA do contain evidence that research involving human testing indicate such testing on unwitting subjects ceased in 1964. The project grew out of QKHilltop and was later absorbed into MKUltra. [94][95] However, academic sources attribute the incident to ergot poisoning through a local bakery.[96][97][98]. An agent named George White wrote to Gottlieb in 1971: Of course I was a very minor missionary, actually a heretic, but I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. 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. Kinzer describes how, in the context of the Cold War, US officials concluded that such research had produced knowledge that might prove decisive in a future war. Rather than winding down after the war, the US biological and chemical research project grew. In response, Allan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), approved Project MK-Ultra in 1953. Operation Midnight Climax was an MK-Ultra project in which government-employed prostitutes lured unsuspecting men to CIA safe houses where drug experiments took place. Substances which will lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men when administered in undetectable amounts. Olsons work had brought him into contact with the man who would secretly drug him: Sidney Gottlieb, head of one of the most infamous projects in CIA history, MK-Ultra. 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. Alex de Jong is editor of the socialist journal Grenzeloos and an activist in the Netherlands. Kinzer describes the tug-of-war between officials who sought to use such investigations as an alibi and the pressure for meaningful probes into illegal activity. Nazi scientists also worked on chemical weapons, infamously experimenting on prisoners for their research. 'Americas Book of Secrets' asks the highly intriguing question: What if there is a book that serves as a repository for Americas most closely guarded secrets? This resulted in the withdrawal of support by many academics and private researchers, and LSD research became less of a priority altogether. 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. 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. [32], 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. [51] 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. After a series of tests, the drug was deemed too unpredictable for use in counterintelligence. [citation needed] The CIA itself subsequently acknowledged that these tests had little scientific rationale. [12] The program engaged in illegal activities,[13][14][15] including the use of U.S. and Canadian citizens as unwitting test subjects. Project MKULTRA. MK-Ultra also included experiments with MDMA (ecstasy), mescaline, heroin, barbiturates, methamphetamine and psilocybin (magic mushrooms). 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. June 28, 2007 and Tim Weiner, United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories, United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Unethical human experimentation in the United States, Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, Category:Central Intelligence Agency operations, "One of the Most Shocking CIA Programs of All Time: Project MKUltra", "The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief'", "Dialogue Sought With Professor In CIA Probe", "Statement of Director of Central Intelligence Before Subcommittee On Health And Scientific Research Senate Committee on Human Resources", "PROJECT BLUEBIRD | CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov)", "Advisory on Human Radiation Experiments, July 5, 1994, National Security Archives, retrieved January 16, 2014", "Project MKUltra, the Central Intelligence Agency's Program of Research into Behavioral Modification. Sometimes the test subjects knew they were participating in a studybut at other times, they had no idea, even when the hallucinogens started taking effect. Plan", "The CIA's Appalling Human Experiments With Mind Control", "Buying a Piece of Anthropology: Human Ecology and unwitting anthropological research for the CIA", "Senate MKUltra Hearing: Appendix C Documents Referring to Subprojects, (p. 167, in PDF document page numbering)", "Data shows 50s projects: Germ Testing by the CIA", "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate Chapter 4", "Sidney Gottlieb, 80, Dies; Took LSD to C.I.A. As with their fixation on supposed Soviet advances in bacteriological and chemical warfare, the fear of Communist brainwashing skills in US intelligence circles drove them to break their own laws. The findings sparked conspiracy theories that Olson might have been assassinated by the CIA. One series of experiments involved giving LSD to student volunteers. Kesey later went on to promote the drug, hosting LSD-fueled parties that he called Acid Tests.. A material which will cause mental confusion of such a type the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning. Cameron was also a member of the Nuremberg medical tribunal in 19461947. 2010. Seven is considered lucky. NPR Fresh Air. You are also requesting a copy of the documents you have sent to the CIA Director, above. The Church Committeehelmed by Idaho Democratic Senator Frank Churchwas a larger investigation into the abuses of the CIA, FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies during and after the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. [100] 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. In December 2021, radio documentarian Per Wennick discovered 36 boxes of MKUltra records stored at a psychiatric center in a Copenhagen suburb, but when he asked for access, the center shredded the records, in violation of Danish law. Topics covered include behaviorism, scientific management, work-place democracy, schooling, frustration-aggression hypothesis and human experimentation. Many veterans who were subjected to experimentation are now seeking legal and monetary reparations. Many of the tests were conducted at universities, hospitals or prisons in the United States and Canada. Gottlieb proved resourceful in finding new victims. None of Cameron's personal records of his involvement with MKUltra survived because his family destroyed them after his death.[83][84]. [49] In one case, they administered LSD to a mental patient in Kentucky for 174 days. 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. All Rights Reserved. At Gottliebs direction, writes Kinzer, Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent George Hunter White assembled a group of prostitutes whose job it would be to bring their clients to the pad and dose them with LSD while he watched and recorded their reactions. White profited from the covered nature of the operation to satisfy his own urges. A material which can be surreptitiously administered by the above routes and which in very small amounts will make it impossible for a person to perform physical activity. [89] Later forensic evidence conflicted with the official version of events; when Olson's body was exhumed in 1994, cranial injuries indicated that Olson had been knocked unconscious before he exited the window. Subsequent orders by Presidents Carter and Reagan expanded the directive to apply to any human experimentation. Maps can show us different things, so New World Order encourages us to ask computers and satellites for directions, increasing our dependence on NASA, USAF, CIA, and their affiliates. Often the test subjects did not know what they were going to be subjected to a clear violation of research ethics. [30], The project attempted to produce a perfect truth drug for interrogating suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War, and to explore other possibilities of mind control. [24], The project was headed by Sidney Gottlieb but began on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles on April 13, 1953. Monarch programming stems from the U.S. governments Project MK-Ultra. His report started the lengthy process of bringing long-suppressed details about MK-Ultra to light. Kesey later went on to promote the drug, hosting LSD-fueled parties that he called Acid Tests.. The program involved more than 150 human experiments involving psychedelic drugs, paralytics and electroshock therapy. The documents showed that the CIA purchased some quantities of LSD from Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland. Not satisfied with the Kentucky research, MK-Ultra branched further out. 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. Very few people have recognized the connection between MK Ultra and the rise of the UFO movement that grew in spades throughout the Cold War. [68]:140150 His treatments resulted in victims' urinary incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents and thinking their interrogators were their parents. With the war on terror, the CIA and other intelligence agencies won unprecedented freedom to operate. The children were required to undergo frequent and harsh mental health assessments for which there was no informed consent. [27] The CIA wanted to use similar methods on their own captives, and was interested in manipulating foreign leaders with such techniques,[28] devising several schemes to drug Fidel Castro. To this end, the institutions where Project MKULTRA discovered files of Project MKULTRA do contain evidence that research involving human testing was conducted such testing on unwitting subjects ceased in 1963.
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