Newly declassified bombshell records of an infamous CIA mind control program, MKUltra, reveal how Americans were drugged and tortured more than 60 years ago.
The collection of more than 1,200 pages detail 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, but also Army soldiers and average citizens who were given drugs without their knowledge.
A total of 144 projects were conducted from 1953 to 1964, aimed at developing procedures and drugs that could be used during interrogations, weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.
The newly declassified pages detail how the CIA used methods such as induced sleep, electroshocks, and ‘psychic driving,’ under which drugged subjects were psychologically tortured for weeks or months to reprogram their minds.
While it has long been said that subjects only included prisoners, mental patients and drug addicts, one report showed that some CIA and Army officials and ‘subjects in normal life settings’ were ‘unwittingly’ given LSD over the decade-long experiment.
In a newly unsealed 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 as alterations in human behavior.’
A memo about a classified meeting showed that the CIA contemplated the possibility of testing on 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 an inmate at the Atlanta penitentiary.
He explained he was one of eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state while in MKUltra.
‘Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent,’ Bulger penned.
‘We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a camera change into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane.’
The National Security Archive (NSA) said in a statement: ‘The CIA conducted terrifying experiments using drugs, hypnosis, isolation, sensory deprivation, and other extreme techniques on human subjects, often US citizens, who frequently had no idea what was being done to them or that they were part of a CIA test.
‘These records also shed light on an especially dark period in the history of the behavioral sciences in which some of the top physicians in the field conducted research and experiments usually associated with the Nazi doctors who were tried at Nuremberg.’
A total of 20 documents with more than 1,200 pages were declassified on December 23, published by the NSA and ProQuest.
‘Despite the Agency’s efforts to erase this hidden history, the documents that survived this purge and that have been gathered together 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,’ shared NSA.
Former US Deputy Director of the CIA Allen Dulles ordered the agency to develop mind-controlling drugs to be used against the Soviets during the Cold War.
‘We in the West, are somewhat handicapped in brain warfare,’ he said.
A memorandum dated November 15, 1954 details how the CIA’s Technical Services Section (TSS) requested funding for a project at Georgetown University Hospital that would provide cover for research under the agency’s ‘biological and chemical warfare program.’
Using a philanthropic organization as 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.’
MKULTRA, the memo states, provided research and development funding ‘for highly sensitive projects in certain fields, including covert biological, chemical and radiological warfare’ but did not specifically 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 to endure ‘privation, torture and coercion during interrogation’ and attempts at ‘brain-washing.’
The list also featured substances that would ‘produce physical disablement, including paralysis, and others that alter personality structure’ or that ‘produce ‘pure’ euphoria with no subsequent let-down.’
A ‘knockout pill’ was also to be developed, 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 Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University who was known to conduct experiments on prisoners.
Pfeiffer was approved to develop ‘an anti-interrogation drug’ and ‘tests in human volunteers.’
The objectives included administering ‘large doses of LSD-25 in normal human volunteers.’
The document does not specify the amount given, but taking large doses of the drug can induce 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 process to streamline the manufacture of LSD in late 1954.
‘[The] CIA had [LSD] in abundance thanks to Eli Lilly, which had developed the capacity to produce the drug in ‘tonnage quantities’ and had agreed to become the agency’s supplier,’ according to NSA.
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 headed the CIA in the 50s and 60s, admitted in the report that activities were ‘highly unorthodox nature.’
Because of that ‘it [was] ‘impossible to require that they provide a receipt for these payments of that they indicate the precise manner in which the funds were spent,’ he wrote.
One of the last documents of the program, published in 1963, revealed researchers involved with MKUltra used radiation, electro-shock, 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 conducted at CIA safehouses, using suspect criminals as test subjects, but also ‘unwitting subjects drawn from all walks of life.’
‘It was noted earlier 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 reads.
As of 1960, however, the CIA was unable to develop a knockout pill, truth serum, aphrodisiac or recruitment pill.
Also during that time, the report noted that 25 of the 144 projects ‘remained in existence at present’ – 1960.
While most of the documents were destroyed in 1973, the US Church Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church opened an investigation into MKUltra in 1975.
‘The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy. Means are as important as ends,’ Frank’s 1977 report stated.
‘Crises make it tempting to ignore the wise restraints that make men free. But each time we do so, each time the means we use are wrong, our inner strength, the strength which makes us free, is lessened.’
That report found that there were at least six subprojects that involved testing on unwitting subjects and other projects researcher ‘drugs, toxins and biologicals in human tissue.’
The then-director of the CIA, Adam Stansfield Turner spoke during the investigation, saying the MKUltra’s activities were more than 12 years old following the investigation.
‘They in no way represent the current activities or policies of the Central Intelligence Agency,’ he added.
The investigation brought MKUltra to light, sparking public outcry and widespread criticism of the CIA’s unethical practices.
That led to the establishment of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence which provided ongoing oversight of intelligence agencies.
