Newly declassified records from the infamous CIA mind control program, MKUltra, reveal how Americans were drugged and tortured over 60 years ago.
The collection of over 1,200 pages describes how the CIA used induced sleep, electroshocks, and ‘psychic driving’ on drugged subjects who were psychologically tortured for weeks or months to reprogram their minds.
The subjects included criminals, mental patients, and drug addicts, as well as Army soldiers and ordinary citizens who were administered drugs without their knowledge.
Between 1953 and 1964, 144 projects were carried out with the goal of developing procedures and drugs for use during interrogations, weakening individuals, and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.
The newly declassified pages describe how the CIA used techniques such as induced sleep, electroshocks, and ‘psychic driving,’ in which drugged subjects were psychologically tortured for weeks or months in order to reprogram their minds.
While it has long been assumed that subjects consisted solely of prisoners, mental patients, and drug addicts, one report revealed that some CIA and Army officials, as well as’subjects in normal life settings’, were ‘unwittingly’ given LSD during the decade-long experiment.
According to a recently released document from 1956, researchers were developing ‘an anti-interrogation drug’ by testing’materials capable of producing alterations in the human central nervous system, which are reflected in alterations in human behavior.’
According to a memo from a classified meeting, the CIA considered testing foreign nationals but decided that ‘unwitting testing on American citizens must be continued’ instead.
Gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, a former organized crime boss, was used as a test subject in 1957 while incarcerated at the Atlanta Penitentiary.
He explained that he was one of eight convicts who became panicked and paranoid while in MKUltra.
‘Complete loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. “Hours of paranoia and feeling violent,” Bulger wrote.
‘We had horrible periods of living nightmares, with blood coming out of the walls. Guys are turning into skeletons in front of me. I saw the camera transform into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going crazy.
According to the National Security Archive (NSA), the CIA used drugs, hypnosis, isolation, sensory deprivation, and other extreme techniques on human subjects, many of whom were US citizens and had no idea what was going on.
‘These records also shed light on an especially dark period in the history of the behavioral sciences, during which some of the field’s top physicians conducted research and experiments typically associated with the Nazi doctors tried at Nuremberg.
On December 23, the NSA and ProQuest published 20 declassified documents totaling more than 1,200 pages.
‘Despite the Agency’s efforts to erase this hidden history, the documents that survived this purge and have been gathered here present a compelling and unsettling narrative of the CIA’s decades-long effort to discover and test ways to erase and reprogram the human mind,’ the NSA stated.
Allen Dulles, former US Deputy Director of the CIA, directed the agency to develop mind-controlling drugs to use against the Soviets during the Cold War.
‘We in the West are somewhat handicapped in brain warfare,’ he explained.
A memorandum dated November 15, 1954 describes how the CIA’s Technical Services Section (TSS) sought funding for a project at Georgetown University Hospital to cover research under the agency’s ‘biological and chemical warfare program.’
Using a ‘cut-out,’ the CIA partially funded ‘a new research wing’ of the hospital (the Gorman Annex) and used part of it to conduct ‘Agency-sponsored research in these sensitive fields.’
According to the memo, MKULTRA provided research and development funding ‘for highly sensitive projects in certain fields, including covert biological, chemical, and radiological warfare’ but did not explicitly authorize funds to establish cover for these programs.
In 1955, the secret program listed 17’materials and methods’ that the division was working on, including substances that ‘promote illogical thinking,’ would help individuals endure ‘privation, torture, and coercion during interrogation,’ and attempted ‘brain-washing.’
The list also included substances that would ‘produce physical disablement, including paralysis, and others that alter personality structure’ or produce ‘pure’ euphoria with no subsequent let-down.
A ‘knockout pill’ was also planned, which would be used in’surreptitious druggings and to produce amnesia, among other things.’
Another declassified document, dated June 7, 1956, discusses an MKUltra subproject to be led by Emory University’s Carl Pfeiffer, who was known for conducting prison experiments.
Pfeiffer was given permission to develop “an anti-interrogation drug” and conduct “tests on human volunteers.”
The goals included giving ‘large doses of LSD-25 to normal human volunteers.’
The document does not specify the dosage, but taking large amounts of the drug can cause terrifying hallucinations.
Another point was ‘to evaluate the threshold dose levels in humans of a particular natural product to be supplied by [deleted].’
The supplier’s name was redacted from the report, but pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly developed a method to streamline LSD production in late 1954.
According to the NSA, the CIA had an abundance of LSD thanks to Eli Lilly, which had developed the capacity to produce the drug in ‘tonnage quantities’ and agreed to become the agency’s supplier.
The documents also show that the CIA established safehouses in 1956, which were run by narcotics agent George White ‘for conducting experiments involving the covert administration of physiologically active materials to unwitting subjects.’
Sidney Gottlieb, a chemist and spymaster who led the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s, admitted in the report that the activities were “highly unorthodox in nature.”
As a result, ‘it [was] ‘impossible to require that they provide a receipt for these payments, indicating the precise manner in which the funds were spent,’ he wrote.
One of the program’s final documents, published in 1963, revealed that researchers involved in MKUltra used radiation, electroshock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment [sic] substances, and paramilitary devices and materials during the secret initiative.
It focused on drug experiments carried out at CIA safehouses, using suspect criminals as test subjects, as well as ‘unwitting subjects drawn from all walks of life.’
‘It was previously noted that the capabilities of MKUltra substances to produce disabling or discrediting effects, or to increase the effectiveness of interrogation of hostile subjects, cannot be established solely through testing on volunteer populations,’ it states.
As of 1960, the CIA had not developed a knockout pill, truth serum, aphrodisiac, or recruitment pill.
Also at the time, the report stated that 25 of the 144 projects’remained in existence at present’ – 1960.
While the majority of the documents were destroyed in 1973, the US Church Committee, led by Senator Frank Church, launched an investigation into MKUltra in 1975.
‘The US must not adopt the enemy’s tactics. Frank’s 1977 report stated that means are equally important as ends.
‘Crises make it tempting to disregard the prudent restraints that set men free. But each time we do so, each time we use the wrong means, our inner strength, the strength that sets us free, is weakened.
According to the report, at least six subprojects involved testing on unwitting subjects, while other projects investigated ‘drugs, toxins, and biologicals in human tissue.’
During the investigation, then-CIA Director Adam Stansfield Turner stated that the MKUltra’s activities were more than 12 years old.
‘They in no way represent the current activities or policies of the Central Intelligence Agency,’ he stated.
The investigation exposed MKUltra, causing a public outcry and widespread criticism of the CIA’s unethical practices.
This resulted in the establishment of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, both of which provided ongoing oversight of intelligence agencies.
