Project MKUltra Part II

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, that had survived the 1973 destruction orders because they had been incorrectly stored at a records center not usually used for such documents. 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."

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. The CIA itself subsequently acknowledged that these tests had little scientific rationale. The officers conducting the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers.

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.

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.

The quote from the study:

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

Death of Frank Olson

Several known deaths have been associated with Project MKUltra, most notably that of Frank Olson. By 1951, Frank Olson was a United States Army biochemist and biological weapons researcher. In 1951 academic sources attributed the 1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning incident to ergot poisoning through a local bakery (which appeared to be plausible because ergot naturally contains lysergic acid, the chemical precursor to LSD).

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

Collaboration with former Nazi scientists under Operation Paperclip

LSD mind control research

The use of psychoactive drugs during "terminal" interrogations under a program code-named Project Artichoke

In November 1953, Olson was given LSD without his knowledge or consent 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.

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.

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.

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. The medical examiner termed Olson's death a "homicide".

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.

A 2010 book alleged:

That the 1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning was part of MKDELTA

That Olson was involved in that event

That he was eventually murdered by the CIA

On November 28, 2012, the Olson family filed suit against the U.S. federal government for the wrongful death of Frank Olson. In 2013 (July) the case was dismissed, due in part to the 1976 settlement between the family and government.

In the decision dismissing the suit, U.S. District Judge James 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.

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. 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.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing a separate dissent, stated:

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. 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.

Notable people

Documented experimenters

Confirmed experimenters:

Harold Alexander Abramson

Donald Ewen Cameron

Sidney Gottlieb

Harris Isbell

Martin Theodore Orne

Louis Jolyon West

George Hunter White

Alleged experimenters:

Jim Jones

Charlie Siragusa

Documented subjects

Confirmed subjects:

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." 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?"

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.

Harold Blauer was an American tennis player who died from injections of 3.4-Methylenedioxyamphetamine in the New York State Psychiatric Institute, which he had voluntarily checked into due to his depression following a divorce.

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, and 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.

Alleged subjects:

James "Whitey" Bulger, an organized crime boss, alleged he had been subjected to weekly injections of LSD and subsequent testing while in prison in Atlanta in 1957.

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. 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. In total, Kaczynski spent 200 hours as part of the study.

Sirhan Sirhan's attorney, Lawrence Teeter, believed that Sirhan was "operating under MKUltra mind control techniques" when he assassinated Robert F. Kennedy.

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. Such experiments hypothetically could have been continued through his ongoing connection to the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco once out of prison in 1967.

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.

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.

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.

Wormwood is a 2017 American six-part docudrama miniseries directed by Errol Morris and released on Netflix. The series is based on the life of the scientist Frank Olson and his involvement in Project MKUltra.

The Netflix series Stranger Things 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.

The ABC series "The Rookie" has Abigail (John Nolan's almost daughter-in-law) find forgotten documents pertaining to MKUltra. This continues the show's trend of having a show inside a show by having Abigail try to find out more. Not much else is mentioned other than the name and a CIA emblem in the manila folder she finds in the abandoned Westview Psychiatric. - S7 Ep. 15, "A Deadly Secret."

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.

Music

English band Muse's 2009 album The Resistance features a song titled "MK Ultra", which references brainwashing techniques utilized 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 among other themes.

The Glasgow-based band Mickey 9s have a song called "MK Ultra" in their 2021 album Modern Kunst.

Periphery's 2015 album Juggernaut: Alpha has a song titled "MK Ultra".

The title of Machine Girl's 2024 album, MG Ultra, is a reference to MKUltra. Along with this, the album has themes of conspiracy theory and government masking issues throughout.

Punk band Negative XP's supergroup, MKUltra Support Group, has four compilation albums named after MK Ultra, titled MKUltra Support Group, Vol. 1-4, and the song "MKULTRA Victim" is directly inspired by the project.

The accompanying video for the song Toxygene by The Orb from the album Orblivion was inspired by the MKUltra project.

Literature

The sixth and final volume of John Burdett's Bangkok detective novel series, The Bangkok Asset, features MKUltra as a major theme. The novel expands the impacts of the program to ultimately include the creation of super soldier-spies with "transhuman abilities".

Games

The 2013 video game Outlast makes explicit references to MK-Ultra, with the games antagonists being mental patients driven insane by mind control experiments.

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 video game Visage from 2020 is heavily inspired by the project MKUltra, as its main character Dwayne Anderson is a scientist who worked on spiking the drinking water with psychedelic drugs. The game also features the views of the projects victims, displaying hallucinations through paranormal events.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra