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Project MKULTRA

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Health and medicine;
Recent History

   Declassified MKULTRA documents
   Enlarge
   Declassified MKULTRA documents

   Project MKULTRA (also known as MK-ULTRA) was the code name for a CIA
   mind-control research program that began in the 1950s. There is much
   published evidence that the project involved not only the use of drugs
   to manipulate persons, but also the use of electronic signals to alter
   brain functioning.

   It was first brought to wide public attention by the U.S. Congress (in
   the form of the Church Committee) and a presidential commission (known
   as the Rockefeller Commission) (see Revelation below) and also to the
   U.S. Senate.

   On the Senate floor in 1977, Senator Ted Kennedy said:

     The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over 30 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, that of Dr. Olson, resulted from these
     activities. The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made
     little scientific sense. The agents doing the monitoring were not
     qualified scientific observers.

Origins

   Headed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, MKULTRA was started on the order of CIA
   director Allen Dulles on April 13, 1953, largely in response to alleged
   Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind-control techniques on
   U.S. prisoners of war in Korea. The CIA wanted to use similar methods
   on their own captives. The CIA was also interested in being able to
   manipulate foreign leaders with such techniques, and would later invent
   several schemes to drug Fidel Castro.

   In 1964, the project was renamed MKSEARCH. The project attempted to
   produce a perfect truth drug for use in interrogating suspected Soviet
   spies during the Cold War, and generally to explore any other
   possibilities of mind control.

   Because most of the MKULTRA records were deliberately destroyed in 1972
   by order of the Director at that time, Richard Helms, it is impossible
   to have a complete understanding of the more than 150 individually
   funded research projects sponsored by MKULTRA and related CIA programs.
   Dr. Sidney Gottlieb approved of an MKULTRA subproject on LSD in this
   June 9, 1953 letter.
   Enlarge
   Dr. Sidney Gottlieb approved of an MKULTRA subproject on LSD in this
   June 9, 1953 letter.

   Experiments were often conducted without the subjects' knowledge or
   consent.

Experiments

   Central Intelligence Agency documents suggest that the agency
   considered and explored uses of radiation for the purpose of mind
   control as part of MKULTRA. Other early efforts focused on LSD, which
   appears to have formed the majority of research as time went on.
   Experiments included administering the drug to CIA employees, military
   personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill
   patients, and members of the general public in order to study their
   reactions, usually without the subject's knowledge.

   The experiments often took a sadistic turn. Gottlieb was known to
   torture victims by locking them in sensory deprivation chambers while
   under the psychedelic influence of LSD, or to make recordings of
   psychiatric patients' therapy sessions, and then play a tape loop of
   the patient's most self-degrading statement over and over through
   headphones after the patient had been restrained in a straitjacket and
   dosed with LSD. Gottlieb himself took LSD frequently, locking himself
   in his office and taking copious notes.

   Efforts to "recruit" subjects were often illegal even discounting the
   fact that drugs were being administered (though actual use of LSD, for
   example, was legal in the United States until 1967). In Operation
   Midnight Climax, the CIA set up several brothels to obtain a selection
   of men who would be too embarrassed to talk about the events. The
   brothels were equipped with one-way mirrors and the "sessions" were
   taped for later viewing.

   Some subjects' participation was consensual, and in these cases, the
   subjects appeared to be singled out for even more horrific experiments.
   In one case, a selection of volunteers were given LSD for 69 days
   straight.

   LSD was eventually dismissed by the researchers as too unpredictable in
   its effects. Although useful information was sometimes obtained through
   questioning subjects on LSD, not uncommonly the most marked effect
   would be the subject's absolute and utter certainty that they were able
   to withstand any form of interrogation attempt, even physical torture.

   Another technique was connecting a barbiturate IV into one arm and an
   amphetamine IV into the other. The barbiturates were released into the
   subject first, and as soon as the subject began to fall asleep, the
   amphetamines were released. The subject would begin babbling
   incoherently at this point, and it was sometimes possible to ask
   questions and get useful answers. This treatment was discarded as it
   often resulted in the death of the patient from physical side effects
   of the drug combination, thus making further interrogation impossible.
   Other experiments involved heroin, mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine,
   marijuana, alcohol, and sodium pentothal.

   There is no evidence that the CIA (or anyone else) has actually
   succeeded in controlling a person's actions through the "mind control"
   techniques that are known to have been attempted in the MKULTRA
   projects. The file destruction undertaken at the order of CIA Director
   Richard Helms in 1972 makes a full investigation of claims impossible.

Budget

   A secretive arrangement granted a percentage of the CIA budget. The
   MKULTRA director was granted 6% of the CIA operating budget in 1953,
   without oversight or accounting.

Canadian experiments

   The experiments were even exported to Canada when the CIA recruited
   Albany, New York doctor D. Ewen Cameron, author of the psychic driving
   concept which the CIA found particularly interesting. In it he
   described his theory on correcting madness, which consisted of erasing
   existing memories and rebuilding the psyche completely. He commuted to
   Montreal every week to work at the Allan Memorial Institute and was
   paid $69,000 from 1957 to 1964 to carry out MKULTRA experiments there.
   The CIA appears to have given him the potentially deadly experiments to
   carry out since they would be used on non-U.S. citizens.

   In addition to LSD, Cameron also experimented with various paralytic
   drugs as well as electroconvulsive therapy at 30 to 40 times the normal
   power. His "driving" experiments consisted of putting subjects into
   drug-induced coma 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 typically carried out on patients who had entered the
   institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and postpartum
   depression, many of whom suffered permanently from his actions.

   It was during this era that Cameron became known worldwide as the first
   chairman of the World Psychiatric Association as well as president of
   the American and Canadian psychiatric associations. Cameron had also
   been a member of the Nuremberg medical tribunal only a decade earlier.

Revelation

   In December 1974, The New York Times reported that the CIA had
   conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S.
   citizens, during the 1960s. That report prompted investigations by both
   the U.S. Congress (in the form of the Church Committee) and a
   presidential commission (known as the Rockefeller Commission) into the
   domestic activities of the CIA, the FBI, and intelligence-related
   agencies of the military.

   In the summer of 1975, congressional hearings and the Rockefeller
   Commission report revealed to the public for the first time that the
   CIA and the Department of Defense had conducted experiments on both
   cognizant and unwitting human subjects as part of an extensive program
   to influence and control human behaviour 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 had died after administration of LSD.

   Frank Olson, a United States Army biochemist and biological weapons
   researcher, was given LSD without his knowledge or consent in 1953 as
   part of a CIA experiment, and allegedly committed suicide a week later
   following a severe psychotic episode. A CIA doctor assigned to monitor
   Olson's recovery was supposedly asleep in another bed in a New York
   City hotel room when Olson jumped through the window to fall ten
   stories to his death.

   Olson's son disputes this version of events, and maintains that his
   father was murdered due to his knowledge of the sometimes-lethal
   interrogation techniques employed by the CIA in Europe, used on Cold
   War prisoners. Frank Olson's body was exhumed in 1994, and cranial
   injuries suggested Olson had been knocked unconscious before exiting
   the window.

   The CIA's own internal investigation, by contrast, claimed Gottlieb had
   conducted the experiment with Olson's prior knowledge, although neither
   Olson nor the other men taking part in the experiment were informed 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 suicidal tendencies Olson had
   been diagnosed as suffering from which might well have been exacerbated
   by the LSD.

   Subsequent reports would show that another person, Harold Blauer, a
   professional tennis player in New York City, died as a result of a
   secret Army experiment involving mescaline.

   The congressional committee investigating the CIA research, chaired by
   Senator Frank Church, concluded that "[p]rior 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."
   (Documents show that the CIA participated in at least two of the DOD
   committees whose discussions, in 1952, led up to the issuance of the
   memorandum by Secretary of Defense Wilson which initiated the project.)

   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.

   Following on the heels of the revelations about CIA experiments were
   similar stories about the Army. In response, in 1975 the Secretary of
   the Army instructed the Army Inspector General to conduct an
   investigation. Among the findings of the Inspector General was the
   existence of the then-still-classified 1953 Wilson memorandum.

   In response to the Inspector General's investigation, the Wilson
   Memorandum was declassified in August 1975. The Inspector General also
   found that the requirements of the 1953 memorandum had, at least in
   regard to Army drug testing, been essentially followed as written. The
   Army used only "volunteers" for its drug-testing program, with one or
   two exceptions. However, the Inspector General concluded that the
   "volunteers were not fully informed, as required, prior to their
   participation; and the methods of procuring their services, in many
   cases, appeared not to have been in accord with the intent of
   Department of the Army policies governing use of volunteers in
   research." The Inspector General also noted that "the evidence clearly
   reflected that every possible medical consideration was observed by the
   professional investigators at the Medical Research Laboratories." This
   conclusion, if accurate, is in striking contrast to what took place at
   the CIA.

   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 Dr. Cameron's efforts, but perhaps even more
   shockingly, 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.

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, DOD and other national
   security agencies studied hundreds of 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
     1950's and 1960's. 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...

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 illegal experiments. 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 publicly apologize.

   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 a legal doctrine—known as the Feres doctrine, after a 1950
   Supreme Court case, Feres v. United States—that prohibits members of
   the Armed Forces from suing the government for any harms that were
   inflicted "incident to service."

   In 1987, the Supreme Court affirmed this defense in a 5–4 decision that
   dismissed Stanley's case ( 483 U.S. 669). 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 behaviour 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.

   This is the only Supreme Court case to address the application of the
   Nuremberg Code to experimentation sponsored by the U.S. government. And
   while the suit was unsuccessful, dissenting opinions put the Army—and
   by association the entire government—on notice that use of individuals
   without their consent is unacceptable. The limited application of the
   Nuremberg Code in U.S. courts does not detract from the power of the
   principles it espouses, especially in light of stories of failure to
   follow these principles that appeared in the media and professional
   literature during the 1960s and 1970s and the policies eventually
   adopted in the mid-1970s.

   In another law suit, Wayne Ritchie, a former United States Marshall,
   alleged the CIA laced his food or drink with LSD at a 1957 Christmas
   party. While the government admitted it was, at that time, drugging
   people without their consent, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel
   found Ritchie could not prove he was one of the victims of MKULTRA. She
   dismissed the case in 2005. See Image:Ritchie.pdf.

Conspiracy theories

   There are also conspiracy theories which claim that the MKULTRA project
   was also linked with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Some have
   argued that there is evidence that the assassin, Sirhan B. Sirhan, had
   been subjected to mind control, though such ideas are generally
   dismissed due to a lack of supporting evidence, although such views are
   becoming more widespread after the evidence cited by Sirhan's most
   recent lawyer Lawrence Teeter, in the June 11th, 2003 Interview with
   Sirhan's attorney Lawrence Teeter on KPFA 94.1 / Guns & Butter show
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