Project MKUltra was a human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken individuals and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. The term MKUltra is a CIA cryptonym: "MK" is an arbitrary prefix standing for the Office of Technical Service and "Ultra" is an arbitrary word out of a dictionary used to name this project. The program has been widely condemned as a violation of individual rights and an example of the CIA's abuse of power, with critics highlighting its disregard for consent and its corrosive impact on democratic principles.
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, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and
sexual abuse, and other forms of torture.
Project MKUltra was preceded by Project Artichoke. It was
organized through the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence and coordinated
with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. The program
engaged in illegal activities, including the use of U.S. and Canadian citizens
as unwitting test subjects. 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. The CIA operated using front organizations, although
some top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA's involvement.
Project MKUltra was revealed to the public in 1975 by the
Church Committee (named after Senator Frank Church) of the United States
Congress and Gerald Ford's United States President's Commission on CIA
Activities within the United States (the Rockefeller Commission). 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. In 1977, a Freedom of
Information Act request uncovered a cache of 20,000 documents relating to
MKUltra, which led to Senate hearings. Some surviving information about MKUltra
was declassified in 2001.
Background
Origin of the project
During the early 1940s, Nazi scientists working in the
concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau during World War II conducted
interrogation experiments on human subjects. Substances such as barbiturates,
morphine derivatives, and hallucinogens such as mescaline were employed in
experiments conducted on Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish and other nationalities'
prisoners of war. The aim of these experiments was to develop a truth serum
which would, in the words of one laboratory assistant to Dachau scientist Kurt
Plötner, "eliminate the will of the
person examined". American historian Stephen Kinzer said that the CIA
project was a continuation of these earlier Nazi experiments, as evidenced by
MKUltra's use of mescaline on unwitting subjects, replicating previous Nazi
experiments conducted at Dachau.
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. In 1947, the United States
Navy initiated Project CHATTER, an interrogation program which saw the first
testing of LSD on human subjects.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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. The CIA wanted to use similar methods
on their own captives, and was interested in manipulating foreign leaders with
such techniques, devising several schemes to drug Fidel Castro. It often
conducted experiments without the subjects' knowledge or consent. 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.
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.
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. CIA counter-intelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton believed
that a mole had penetrated the organization at the highest levels. 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. Some historians assert that one goal of MKUltra and related
CIA projects were to create a Manchurian Candidate–style subject. 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 goals, which were effective
methods of interrogation.
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."
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. 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.
By March 1971, over 26,000 potential agents had been
acquired for future screening. 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. MKOFTEN was to deal with
testing and toxicological transmissivity and behavioral effects of drugs in
animals and, ultimately, humans. MKCHICKWIT was concerned with acquiring
information on new drug developments in Europe and Asia, and with acquiring
samples.
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. 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.
Experiments on Americans
CIA documents suggest that they investigated "chemical, biological, and
radiological" methods of mind control as part of MKUltra. They spent
an estimated $10 million or more, roughly $87.5 million adjusted for inflation.
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.
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 dosed 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.
After retiring in 1972, Gottlieb dismissed his entire effort
for the CIA's MKUltra program as useless. 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.
LSD
In 1938, LSD was isolated 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. 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. 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.
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.
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. In one case, they
administered LSD to a mental patient in Kentucky for 174 days. 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". Military personnel who received the mind-altering drugs
were also threatened with courts-martial if they told anyone about the
experiments. 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.
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. 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. Heroin addicts were bribed into taking LSD with offers of more heroin.
At the invitation of Stanford psychology graduate student
Vik Lovell, an acquaintance of Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey volunteered to take
part in what turned out to be a CIA-financed study under the aegis of MKUltra,
at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital where he worked as a night aide. The
project studied the effects of psychoactive drugs, particularly LSD,
psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, AMT and DMT on people.
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 affects
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. 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.
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.
MKUltra's researchers later dismissed LSD as too unpredictable
in its results. 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.
Other drugs
Another technique investigated was the intravenous
administration of a barbiturate into one arm and an amphetamine into the other.
The barbiturates were released into the person first, and as soon as the person
began to fall asleep, the amphetamines were released. Other experiments
involved heroin, morphine, temazepam (used under code name MKSEARCH),
mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, alcohol and sodium pentothal.
Hypnosis
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". 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.
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. His treatments resulted in victims' urinary incontinence,
amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents and thinking their
interrogators were their parents.
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.
Cameron was also a member of the Nuremberg medical tribunal in 1946–1947.
Motivation and
assessments
His work was inspired and paralleled by the British
psychiatrist William Sargant at St Thomas' Hospital, London, and Belmont
Hospital, Sutton, who was also allegedly working with MI5 and who experimented
on his patients without their consent, causing similar long-term damage.
In the 1980s, several of Cameron's former patients sued the
CIA for damages, which the Canadian news program The Fifth Estate documented.
Their experiences and lawsuit were adapted in the 1998 television miniseries
The Sleep Room.
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."
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", 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.
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.
Revelation
In 1973, amid a government-wide panic caused by the
Watergate scandal, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKUltra files
destroyed. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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.
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