Some experiments were non-coercive, even attractive. 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). During the Cold War, the CIA explored the unchartered world of 'brain warfare,' using LSD. [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. A forensics team found injuries on the body that had likely occurred before the fall. 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, collaboration with former Nazi scientists under Operation Paperclip, LSD mind-control research, and the use of psychoactive drugs during "terminal" interrogations under a program code-named Project ARTICHOKE. At a 1953 CIA retreat, Olson drank a cocktail that had been secretly spiked with LSD. 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". 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. 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. It is no coincidence that with the decline of these movements in the late seventies, any kind of accountability was once again curtailed. The proposed purchase aimed to stop other countries from controlling the supply. This was only the beginning. The book shows that years of costly experimentation never brought any results that even pointed to the possibility of Manchurian Candidatestyle brainwashing. 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. Founded in 1953, MK-Ultra was seen by CIA director Allen W. Dulles as a way to study mind control, which he wanted to weaponise against the Soviet Union to gain a critical edge in the Cold War. What we do know is the stuff of nightmares. [19] MKUltra's scope was broad, with activities carried out under the guise of research at more than 80 institutions aside from the military,[20] including colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies. [citation needed] The CIA itself subsequently acknowledged that these tests had little scientific rationale. [78] However, it contained little detail. Nazi scientists also worked on chemical weapons, infamously experimenting on prisoners for their research. [70], In the 1980s, several of Cameron's former patients sued the CIA for damages, which the Canadian news program The Fifth Estate documented. U.S. psychologist Zarnoff Mednick teamed up with Danish professor Fini Schulsinger to study schizophrenia progression in Danish orphans. The government argued that Stanley was barred from suing under the Feres doctrine. After retiring in 1972, Gottlieb dismissed his entire effort for the CIA's MKUltra program as useless. In 1953, Olson's death was described as a suicide that had occurred during a severe psychotic episode. Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra) [a] was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used in interrogations to weaken individuals and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. The CIA began to experiment with LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) under the direction of agency chemist and poison expert Sidney Gottlieb. Other notable people who reportedly volunteered for CIA-backed experiments with LSD include Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead lyricist; Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber; and James Joseph Whitey Bulger, the notorious Boston mobster. Most of these took place between 1953 and 1964, but its not clear how many people were involved in the teststhe agency kept notoriously poor records and destroyed most MK-Ultra documents when the program was officially halted in 1973. [58] The project studied the effects of psychoactive drugs, particularly LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, AMT and DMT on people. But instead of concluding they were chasing a white rabbit, CIA scientists persisted. But Colby acted in a much wider context shaped by the Anti-War Movement, Watergate, and revelations such as the Pentagon Papers. The story of programs like MK-Ultra is a chilling look at how the US government turned its own citizens into guinea pigs and destroyed lives in the process. The children were required to undergo frequent and harsh mental health assessments for which there was no informed consent. Between 1953 and 1964, the program consisted of 149 projects involving drug testing and other studies on unwitting human subjects, 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. The story of programs like MK-Ultra is a chilling look at how the US government turned its own citizens into guinea pigs and destroyed lives in the process. This page was last edited on 1 May 2023, at 00:15. The Commission was led by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and is commonly referred to as the Rockefeller Commission. All Rights Reserved. The covert operation aimed to develop techniques that could be used against Soviet bloc enemies to control human behavior with drugs and other psychological manipulators. The town of Taos, NM, where a hum was heard by many citizens, was the subject of a directed energy experiment by the U.S. Navy, he claimed . 1953: Central Intelligence Agency director Allen Dulles authorizes the MK-ULTRA project. The program involved more than 150 human experiments involving psychedelic drugs, paralytics and electroshock therapy. More recently, in the era of Trump, we have even seen attempts to re-brand the CIA as a kind of rational, knowledgeable, and benevolent arm of the US state. Subsequent orders by Presidents Carter and Reagan expanded the directive to apply to any human experimentation. Materials which will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol. The men were dosed with LSD, the brothels were equipped with one-way mirrors, and the sessions were filmed for later viewing and study. Stanley. It also uncovered thousands of documents related to MK-Ultra. The project grew out of QKHilltop and was later absorbed into MKUltra. [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. A knockout pill which can be surreptitiously administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis. Kinzers explanation of Gottliebs motivation only goes so far. Nine days before his death, Olson who talked about leaving his job and told his wife he had made a terrible mistake had been secretly dosed with LSD by a CIA operative. [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. do to Eric Olson's father? In one case, seven drug-addicted African-American volunteers at the National Institute of Mental Health Addiction Research Center in Kentucky were given LSD for seventy-seven consecutive days. MK-ULTRA, which operated from the 1950s until the early '60s, was created and run by a chemist named Sidney Gottlieb. [25][26] 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. Adverse reactions often occurred, such as an operative who received the drug in his morning coffee, became psychotic and ran across Washington, seeing a monster in every car passing him. The MKULTRA activity is concerned with the research- A operational use made of these end products.- ' '_. The CIA exported experiments to Canada when they recruited British psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron, creator of the "psychic driving" concept, which the CIA found interesting. It refers to the study of an assortment of mind-altering substances described as follows:[37], 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. The findings sparked conspiracy theories that Olson might have been assassinated by the CIA. Gottlieb was born in 1918 as the son of Hungarian-Jewish immigrants. 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. [72], 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'. Often the test subjects did not know what they were going to be subjected to a clear violation of research ethics. 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. Working with the CIA, the Department of Defense gave hallucinogenic drugs to thousands of "volunteer" soldiers in the 1950s and 1960s. MK-Ultra also included experiments with MDMA (ecstasy), mescaline, heroin, barbiturates, methamphetamine and psilocybin (magic mushrooms). This May Day, consider getting (or gifting) a subscription at a discounted price of $1 for a yearlong digitalsubscription,and $10 for print. In 1994 a Congressional subcommittee . 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). [21] The CIA operated using front organizations, although some top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA's involvement.[13]. [81][82], In Canada, the issue took much longer to surface, becoming widely known in 1984 on a CBC news show, The Fifth Estate. The volunteers were so fascinated by their psychedelic experiences that doctors and nurses signed up to try it themselves. 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. 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. By the mid-1950s, the CIA was subsidizing research by numerous leading psychologists and psych-pharmacologists. The story of Frank Olson inspired a Netflix TV series by Errol Morris but his death is still surrounded by mysteries. Originally synthesized in 1938, its hallucinogenic properties first became apparent to scientists in the forties. In a must-read feature on newly unclassified material on the Central Intelligence Agency's covert operation, the MK-ULTRA program, which ran from 1953 to 1964, SF Weekly fully exposes the. 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. The True Story of MK-Ultra and the CIA Mad Scientist By Alex de Jong In its search for the perfect mind-control technique, the CIA carried out horrifying tests on unwitting humans. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill and cheat, steal, deceive, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?. The U.S. General Accounting Office issued a report on September 28, 1994, which stated that between 1940 and 1974, Department of Defense and other national security agencies studied thousands of human subjects in tests and experiments involving hazardous substances. [12] The program engaged in illegal activities,[13][14][15] including the use of U.S. and Canadian citizens as unwitting test subjects. ", Stunning tale of brainwashing, the CIA and an unsuspecting Scots researcher, "Is Military Research Hazardous to Veterans Health? Details of the illicit program didn't become public until 1975, during a congressional investigation into widespread illegal CIA activities within the United States and around the world. 2018 Attachment Size project mk-ultra[15545700].pdf 470.62 KB Project MK-ULTRA- Intellipedia Doc ID: .6613524 Approved for Release: 2018/12/12 006760269 W (U) Project MK-ULTRA From Intellipedia (b) (3)- P.L. [10][11] It was organized through the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. Cameron had been hoping to correct schizophrenia by erasing existing memories and reprogramming the psyche. Testing and Use of Chemical and Biological Agents by the Intelligence Community, List of MKULTRA Unclassified Documents including subprojects, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MKUltra&oldid=1152561799. 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. [62][63], MKUltra's researchers later dismissed LSD as too unpredictable in its results. The history of Unit 731 is even less transparent than that of its Nazi equivalents. In 1987, the Supreme Court affirmed this defense in a 54 decision that dismissed Stanley's case: United States v. One subject of army drug experimentation, James Stanley, an army sergeant, brought an important, albeit unsuccessful, suit. [22] In 1977, a Freedom of Information Act request uncovered a cache of 20,000 documents relating to MKUltra, which led to Senate hearings. 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. 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. The CIA wanted to verse itself in this type of "mind control" to be able to recognize and use it in case of a conflict with the USSR. Under the auspices of Project MK-Ultra, the CIA began to fund studies at Columbia University, Stanford University and other colleges on the effects of the drug. 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. Monarch mind control programming imagery is common with celebrities. 2010. 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, Ninety-Fifth Congress, First Session", "Chapter 3: Supreme Court Dissents Invoke the Nuremberg Code: CIA and DOD Human Subjects Research Scandals", "U.S. Senate Report on CIA MKULTRA Behavioral Modification Program 1977", "Science, Technology and the CIA: A National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book", "Chapter 3, part 4: Supreme Court Dissents Invoke the Nuremberg Code: CIA and DOD Human Subjects Research Scandals", "The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Foreign and Military Intelligence", "U.S. vets say there were human guinea pigs | ABC7 San Francisco | abc7news.com", "80 Institutions Used in CIA Mind Studies: Admiral Turner Tells Senators of Behavior Control Research Bars Drug Testing Now", "Private Institutions Used In C.I.A Effort To Control Behavior. The CIA funded and protected Cameron, who carried out tests that according to a review conducted decades later had no therapeutic validity whatsoever and were even comparable to Nazi medical atrocities. To explain Camerons actions, there is no need to consider misguided patriotism or Cold War fears as motivations. 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. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest? [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. Kinzer gives evidence of the continuation of a Nazi agenda, citing the CIA's secret recruitment of Nazi torturers and vivisectionists to continue experimenting on thousands of subjects, and Nazis were brought to Fort Detrick, Maryland, to instruct CIA officers on the lethal uses of sarin gas. This report is forwarded herewith. "[73], 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",[74] 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. To this end, the institutions where Project MKULTRA testing took place you who expresses- letter from your constituent e unwitting h f os t his concerns for the human rights o MKULTRA . 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. We are no longer of documents indexed by the terms MKULTRA and behavioral research to serve as an index to the CDs. [13]:74[16][17][18] Over 7,000 American veterans took part in these experiments non-consensually during the 1950s through 1970s, many of them suing later on. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Monarch programming stems from the U.S. governments Project MK-Ultra. During the Cold War, the CIA explored the unchartered world of 'brain warfare,' using LSD. [33][119] The CIA insists that MKUltra-type experiments have been abandoned. With regard to MKULTRA of the MKULTRA material is very limited in scope and consists primarily of financial records. But Gottlieb was still no closer to his dream of a drug that could control minds. In what was informally called Operation Midnight Climax, Gottlieb worked together with agents from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to set up a safe house in San Francisco. They were taken out into Tokyo Bay, shot and dumped overboard. The cryptonym MKULTRA encompasses 2018 Attachment Size project mk-ultra[15545700].pdf 470.62 KB Project MK-ULTRA- Intellipedia Doc ID: 6613524 Approved for Release: 2018/12/12 006760269 W (U) Project MK-ULTRA From Intellipedia (b) (3)- P.L. 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. The CIA began to experiment with LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) under the direction of agency chemist and poison expert Sidney Gottlieb. Between 1953 and 1966, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) financed a research project, code-named MKULTRA the research under MKULTRA. [41], CIA documents suggest that they investigated "chemical, biological, and radiological" methods of mind control as part of MKUltra. ", "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. One series of experiments involved giving LSD to student volunteers. The experiments laid the groundwork for modern-day torture techniques. Over twenty years later, US president Gerald Ford personally met with Olsons family to offer his apologies. 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$579,480 in 2021, adjusted for inflation) to carry out MKUltra experiments there, the Montreal experiments. [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. In 1977, Schulsinger completed his doctoral dissertation on the project, but as MKUltra had been officially declared in the U.S. to have been discontinued with records destroyed, Schulsinger's thesis became a state secret. [76] Pursuant to this order, most CIA documents regarding the project were destroyed, making a full investigation of MKUltra impossible. In the days that followed, eleven people checked into hospitals, and one person died. Most of the Operation Midnight Climax experiments took place in San Francisco and Marin County, California, and in New York City. [13][23] Some surviving information about MKUltra was declassified in July 2001. Gottlieb was not alone in thinking this. 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. Come NASA ed ESA hanno involontariamente alimentato una leggenda metropolitana . After a series of tests, the drug was deemed too unpredictable for use in counterintelligence. 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. A few days later, on November 28, 1953, Olson tumbled to his death from the window of a New York City hotel room in an alleged suicide.

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