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Project MKUltra is the code name given by the CIA to a series of experiments on human subjects carried out over three decades. The main objective of the project was to develop and identify substances and techniques that could be used in interrogations in order to weaken the subjects' willpower and force confessions.
The operation was officially sanctioned in 1953, but some similar experiments were already being conducted in the late 1940s. CIA director Allen Welsh Dulles ordered that a division was formed to study mind-controlling drugs in response to the alleged Soviet, Chinese and North Korean use of similar substances and techniques on prisoners of the war in Korea. The experiments were more often than not carried out without the consent of the subjects.
The Experiments
MKUltra’s had a broad outreach. There were more than 80 institutions involved, including 44 universities and colleges, as well as prisons and hospitals. The CIA used many front organizations to operate in order to keep a low profile.
Psychedelics
LSD was the most experimented substance in the early days of the project. The original proposition was to see if they could make Soviet spies defect against their will. Experiments included giving LSD to vulnerable people like patients, drug addicts, and prostitutes. In one particular case, a mental patient from Kentucky was drugged 174 days in a row with LSD.[1]
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CIA employees, military, and government agents were not safe either. If you worked for the CIA in the 1950’s, there was a good chance you’d be tripping balls in the office at some point. There was a point where surprise LSD trips were even considered an occupational hazard.
The footage below suggests the British were also actively studying these substances.
Other experiments included the administration of heroin, morphine, mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, and cannabis. One of the techniques investigated the administration of barbiturates and amphetamines. The barbiturates were injected into one arm. As soon as the subject began falling asleep, amphetamines were shot in the other arm. The person would babble incoherently, but sometimes the experimenters were able to ask questions and get useful answers.
Hypnosis
Some declassified documents indicate that experiments involving hypnosis were being done since the early 1950s. Some of the goals were the creation of “induced anxieties", “increasing ability to learn and recollect complex writings", “increasing ability to observe and recall complex arrangements of physical objects" and the “relationship of personality traits and susceptibility to hypnosis".[2]
One of the most interesting experiments is described in one of the declassified files:
1. A posthypnotic of the night before was enacted. Misses [redacted] and [redacted] immediately progressed to a deep hypnotic state with no further suggestion. This was to test whether the mere carrying out of the posthypnotic would produce the state of hypnosis desired. Needless to say, it did.
2. Miss [redacted] was then instructed (having previously expressed a fear of firearms in any fashion) that she would use every method at her disposal to awaken Miss [redacted] (now in a deep hypnotic sleep) and failing to do this, she would pick up a pistol nearby and fire it at Miss [redacted]. She was instructed that her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to “kill" [redacted] for failing to awaken. Miss [redacted] carried out these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded pneumatic pistol) gun at [redacted] and then proceeding to fall into a deep sleep. After proper suggestions were made, both were awakened and expressed complete amnesia of the entire sequence. She expressed absolute denial that the foregoing sequence had happened.[3]
The Canadian Chapter
Some of the darkest experiments were conducted in Canada, mostly under the guise of Scottish psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron. Cameron’s thesis suggested that schizophrenia could be corrected by erasing some memories and reprogramming the mind.
Cameron was allegedly not aware that these experiments were being funded by the CIA, as he was being paid by a front organization called Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology.
Apart from administering LSD, Cameron experimented with several paralytic drugs as well as shock therapy at levels up to forty times the normal power used. Another famous experiment consisted of playing taped loops of noise or repetitive statements to subjects in a drug-induced coma for weeks or months at a time.
Oftentimes his subjects were patients who checked in for minor problems like anxiety disorders, many of whom were left with permanent effects like incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to walk and even forgetting their parents. Several of Cameron’s patients sued the CIA for damages in the 1980s.[4]
The Actual Conspiracies
All that you’ve read so far has been well documented and can’t even be described as conspiracy theories. It’s hard to believe that all of that took place in the US and was financed with government funds. But it did.
Most of the files from the MKUltra project were destroyed in 1973 by then CIA Director Richard Helms, rendering a thorough examination of the MKUltra project impossible.
Frank Olson’s Death
Olson was a biochemist and biological weapons researcher for the US Army. In November 1953, Olson’s liquor was laced with LSD without his knowledge or consent. He then developed a severe psychotic episode which turned into severe depression in the aftermath. A CIA doctor was assigned to take care of him and assist with his recovery. Nine days later, while his doctor was asleep, Olson would jump out the window of the tenth floor of the hotel he was staying.
The Olson family disputed the official account of the events. According to them, Frank Olson was murdered because he became a security risk after quitting his position as chief of the Special Operations Division in Maryland. The resignation was motivated by a severe moral crisis concerning the nature of his research. Forensic evidence also conflicted with the official version when Olson’s body was exhumed in 1994 - cranial injuries indicated that Olson has been knocked unconscious before falling out the window.[5]
Olson’s family would later receive a settlement of $750,000 from the US government and apologies from President Gerald Ford and the CIA director William Colby.[6]
RFK Assassination
Sirhan Sirhan’s attorney, Lawrence Teeter, believed Sirhan fired his weapon at Robert F. Kennedy while under the influence of hypnosis. Teeter associated the CIA's program to the mind control techniques that were used to control Sirhan.
The defense also presented the case that Sirhan was used as a decoy and that the shots that killed Kennedy were fired by a second gun.
Under hypnosis, he said that a mystery girl had let him into the pantry of the hotel where the shooting had taken place and had pinched him on the shoulder, a gesture which he said had sent him into "range mode." In that mode, all he could see were circles with targets in front of his eyes as if he was on a firing range, he claimed. "I was fascinated with her looks," he said. "She never said much. It was very erotic. I was consumed by her. She was a seductress with an unspoken unavailability." Witnesses have spoken in the past of seeing a mystery girl running from the hotel shouting "We shot Kennedy" but she has never been identified.[7]
Robert Joling, a forensic scientist involved with the Kennedy case for nearly 40 years, also believes Sirhan was used as a decoy:
"There is no doubt in our minds that no fewer than 14 shots were fired in the pantry on that evening and that Sirhan did not, in fact, kill Senator Kennedy."[8]
Sirhan’s gun, a cheap Iver Johnson Cadet 55 revolver, carried only 8 bullets.
Final Considerations
MKUItra would come to a halt in 1963, but projects of the same nature were allegedly carried out until the late 1970s. However, there’s no reason to believe that it ended there.
Although the CIA insists that these types of experiments were abandoned, some CIA observers say there is little reason to believe they're not being pursued today under a different set of acronyms.
Several deaths have been associated with the Project MKUltra, and we’ll probably never know the full extent of the experiments’ impact. If Project MKUltra doesn't make the hairs on your neck stand up, I don't know what will.
Sage up,
References
[1] Sidney Gottlieb, 80, Dies; Took LSD to CIA
[2] Declassified Mk-Ultra Project Documents
[3] Document 0000190691: Hypnotic Experimentation and Research, 10 February1954
[4] CBC MKUltra Special
[5] Documents on Cheney Coverup of Olson Assassination
[6] Family Sues Us Over Scientist's Mysterious Death
[7] Bobby Kennedy assassin brainwashed by 'girl in polka dot dress'
[8] New evidence challenges official picture of Kennedy shooting
Other Sources
- CIA Director Stansfield Turner's Testimony
- Project MKUltra, The CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification
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