MK Ultra Project

The MK Ultra project , sometimes also known as mind control program of the CIA - was the code name given to a secret and illegal program designed and implemented by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States (CIA) for experimentation in Humans. These human trials were intended to identify and develop new substances and procedures for use in interrogations and torture , in order to weaken the individual and force him to confess from mind-control techniques . It was organized by the CIA’s Division of Scientific Intelligence in coordination with the Chemical Corps of the United States Army’s Special Operations Directorate. ¹ The program began in the 1950s, officially sanctioned in 1953, and it was not until 1964 that it began gradually to reduce its activities, reducing them further in 1967 and officially discontinued in 1973. ² The program was devoted to many illegal activities, ^{3 4 5} in particular to the use of US and Canadian citizens as evidence against their will, which led to questioning their legitimacy. ^{3 6 7} MK Ultra used various methodologies to manipulate the mental state of test subjects, such as altering their brain functions with the administration of drugs such as LSD and other chemicals, hypnosis , sensory deprivation , isolation, various forms Of torture, and verbal and sexual abuse. ^{Referring to Fig.}

The scope of MK Ultra was extensive, conducting research in 80 institutions, including 44 colleges and universities, as well as hospitals, prisons and pharmaceutical companies. ⁹ CIA operatives used these institutions as a front, although often the high officials in these places were aware of the CIA’s activities. ¹⁰ Years later, the Supreme Court of the United States would define the program in this way:

Concerned about “the research and development of chemical, biological, radiological and material weapons capable of being used in clandestine operations for the control of human behavior”, the program consisted of 149 sub-projects which the agency contracted with several universities, research and Similar institutions. At least 80 institutions and 185 private investigators participated. Because the CIA financed MK Ultra indirectly, many of the people involved did not know that it was the agency. ^eleven

The MK Ultra project attracted the attention of public opinion in 1975, when the Church Committee of the US Congress , which investigated abuses by the intelligence services in the preceding decades, and the Commission Gerald Ford, investigated the activities of the CIA within the United States. Their efforts were hampered by CIA Director Richard Helms , who ordered the destruction of all MK Ultra documents. The investigations of the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission had to be based on the sworn testimony of direct participants and the small number of documents that survived attempts at destruction. ¹²

In 1977, an application to the Freedom of Information Act revealed a fund with 20,000 documents related to MK Ultra, which led to further hearings in the Senate that same year. ^{3 13} In July 2001, some residual remains of information about MK Ultra that were still secret, were declassified.

Name

It is a CIA cryptonym in which the MK digraph represents the CIA Technical Services Team project in the 1950s and 1960s .

Origins

The MK Ultra program was initiated by order of Allen Dulles , the director of the CIA , in 1953 . The first head of the program was Sidney Gottlieb . The main objective was to produce a drug that would force the subject to speak the truth. But there were approximately 150 research projects in the program, and the purpose of all of them is not yet known.

Goals

The Agency spent tens of millions of dollars back then on studies to control or influence the human mind, thereby improving their ability to extract information from interrogation-resistant individuals. ^{14 15}

Some historians believe that creating a ” Manchu candidate ” subject through ” mind control ” techniques was one of the goals of MK-ULTRA and other related CIA projects. ¹⁶ Alfred McCoy claimed that the CIA was trying to focus the attention of the mass media on these “ridiculous programs, to distract them from their primary goals , which were to develop effective methods of torture and interrogation .” These authors cite as an example , The fact that the CUB KUBARK interrogation manuals refer to “studies at McGill University ,” and most of the techniques KUBARK refers to are exactly the same as Ewen Cameron used in his test subjects ( sensory deprivation , drugs , isolation , etc.). ¹⁵

A 1955 MK-ULTRA document gives indications of the state and magnitude of the effort; This paper reports on a study of drugs that alter consciousness as follows: ¹⁷

1. Substances that promoted illogical thinking and impulsivity to the point where the subject lost credibility in public. ¹⁸
2. Substances that increased the effectiveness of mentalization and perception.
3. Materials that prevented or counteracted the effects of alcohol .
4. Materials that promoted the intoxicating effects of alcohol.
5. Materials that produce symptoms and signs of diseases recognizable in a reversible form so that they can be used to make people believe that they are sick, etc.
6. Materials that aid in the rapid induction of hypnosis or enhance its usefulness.
7. Substances that improved the capabilities of individuals to support sensory deprivation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so - called ” brainwashing “.
8. Physical materials and methods that produce amnesia for the preceding events or during their use. ¹⁹
9. Physical methods to produce shock and confusion during extended periods of use and surreptitious use.
10. Substances that produce physical incapacity such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia , etc.
11. Substances that produce “pure” euphoria without posterior depression.
12. Substances that alter the structure of the personality in such a way that the receiver is facilitated to be dependent on another person.
13. A material that produces mental confusion as the type in which the individual is prevented from questioning the orders given.
14. Substances that reduce ambition and work efficiency when administered in undetectable amounts.
15. Substances that promote auditory or visual deficits , preferably without permanent effects.
16. A pill Nocaut that can be given surreptitiously drinks, food, cigarettes, such as aerosol , etc., which should be safe to use producing amnesia, and portable for use by field agents.
17. A material that could be surreptitiously administered by the routes described above, and that in small doses made a man completely disabled.

Experiments

Some of the elements used in the program were radiation and the LSD drug . They are also used barbiturates and amphetamines , a process that was abandoned because death of simultaneously interrogated was too frequent. Many other drugs were also used. The test subjects were CIA employees , members of the military services, doctors, other government agents, indigents, prostitutes, patients with mental illness and members of the public, many times without those involved knowing what was done to them Nor was their consent sought. ^{20 21}

Finally, the researchers ruled out LSD because its effects were unpredictable.

The MK Ultra project consumed six percent of CIA funds in 1953 .

Drugs

It is not clear what the drugs used in this process were. It is taken into account that it was the drugs that caused the most brain damage, forcing the test subject to see things and do what the “CIA” wanted. The drug that could be said to be used was the already known “LSD”, which was a psychedelic drug used in “brainwashing”.

LSD

Early efforts focused on LSD , which later came to dominate many of MK-ULTRA’s programs.

The experiments included administering LSD to CIA employees, military personnel, physicians, other government agents, prostitutes , patients with mental illnesses and members of the general public, in order to study their reactions. LSD and other drugs were usually administered without the subject’s knowledge or informed consent, a violation of the Nuremberg Code that the US Agreed to continue after World War II .

Efforts to “recruit” subjects were often illegal even if the fact that the drugs were being administered was deduced (although actual LSD use, for example, was legal in the United States until October 6, 1966 ). In Operation Midnight Climma , the CIA established several brothels to obtain a selection of men for whom it would be too embarrassing to talk about events. Men were treated with LSD, brothels were equipped with one-way mirrors, and sessions were filmed for later viewing and study. ²²

The participation of some of the subjects was by common agreement, and in many of these cases, the subjects appeared to be chosen for the even more extreme experiments. In one case, volunteers were given LSD for 77 consecutive days. ^{2. 3}

LSD was finally dismissed by MK-ULTRA researchers as too unpredictable in its results. ²⁴ Although sometimes useful information was obtained through interrogation, it was not unusual that the most marked effect was an absolute and total certainty that the subject was able to withstand any kind of attempt of interrogation, even physical torture.

Hypnosis

“Hypnotically enhancing the ability to observe and remember complex arrangements of physical objects,” and the study of the “relationship of personality to susceptibility to hypnosis.” ²⁵

Experiments in Canada

The experiments were exported to Canada ^{26 27 28} when the CIA recruited the Scottish psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron , creator of the concept of ” psychic management” in which the CIA was particularly interested. Cameron wanted to correct schizophrenia by erasing existing memories and reprogramming the psyche . He moved from Albany , New York to Montreal weekly to work at the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill University being paid by the Agency with $ 69,000 from 1957 to 1964 to do the MK ULTRA experiments there.

In addition to LSD, Cameron experimented with several paralyzing drugs and also with electroconvulsive therapy at 30-40 times the recommended dose of electricity. Their behavioral experiments consisted in putting subjects in drug-induced coma for weeks (up to three months in one case) while repeating repeated sounds or simple repetitive statements. His experiments were normally carried out on patients who had entered the institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and postpartum depression, many of whom suffered permanent damage from their actions. ²⁹

Their treatments produced in their victims incontinence , amnesia , forgot how to speak, forgot their parents, or thought that their interrogators were their parents. ³⁰ His work was inspired and paralleled by the British psychiatrist Dr. William Sargant at St. Thomas Hospital , London , and at Belmont Hospital , Surrey , who was also involved with the Intelligence Services and experienced much of his work. Patients without their consent, causing similar long-term damage. ³¹ Dr. Cameron and Dr. Sargant are the only two Canadian experimenters identified, but the MK ULTRA file refers to many other unidentified physicians who were recruited by the CIA.

During this time Cameron became known around the world as the first president of the World Psychiatric Association , as well as president of the American Psychiatric Association and the Canadian. Cameron was also a member of the Nuremberg Medical Tribunal in the biennium 1946-47. ³²

Revelation

In December of 1974 the New York Times reported on illegal domestic activities of the CIA, citing experiments with US citizens. Research from Congress and the Rockefeller Commission soon followed . Investigations showed that Dr. Frank Olsen had died of a fall from the window after drug administration. ^{33 34 35 36 37} However, the Olsen family managed to reopen the case in 1994, after exhuming the body and finding evidence of homicide. The investigation, however, failed to find conclusive evidence and closed the case in 1996. It was also shown that the persons undergoing the experiments had not given their consent. ^{33 34 35 36 37}

Schedule

In 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MK ULTRA files to be destroyed. By virtue of this order, most of the CIA documents relating to the project were removed, making a complete investigation of MK ULTRA impossible.

In December 1974, The New York Times reported that the CIA had conducted illegal activities within the United States, including experiments on US citizens during the 1960s That report sparked investigations of US Congress , Which formed the Church Commission for this purpose , as well as the formation of a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission that investigated the domestic activities of the CIA, the FBI , and agencies related to the intelligence of the military.

In the summer of 1975 the Church Commission and Rockefeller Commission reports first made public that the CIA and the Department of Defense had conducted experiments with unconscious and conscious humans as part of a comprehensive program on Influence and control of human behavior through the use of psychotropic drugs such as LSD and mescaline and other chemical and biological substances and other psychological means. It also revealed that at least one person had died after the administration of LSD. Much of what the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission learned about the MK ULTRA program was contained in a report prepared by the Inspector General’s office in 1963 that had survived the destruction of records ordered in 1973. ³⁸ However, Contained few details.

The Congressional inquiry into the CIA, chaired by Senator Frank Church , concluded that “prior consent was obviously something that was not obtained from any of the subjects.” The Committee noted that the experiments “sponsored by these researchers … challenged the decision of the agencies not to set guidelines for the experiments”.

Following the recommendations of the Church Commission, President Gerald Ford in 1976 issued the first Executive Order on Intelligence Activities which, inter alia, prohibited “experimentation with drugs in humans, except with informed consent , in writing and with the Witness a disinterested part of each human subject “and in accordance with the guidelines issued by the National Commission. In the subsequent orders of Presidents Carter and Reagan the directive was extended to apply to any human experimentation.

Because of the revelations about the CIA experiments, similar stories emerged in relation to the experiments of the United States Army . In 1975, the Army Secretary instructed the Army Inspector General to conduct an investigation. Among the findings of the Inspector General is the existence of a memorandum written in 1953 by then Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson . These documents show that the CIA participated in at least two of the Department of Defense committees during 1952. These findings of the committee led to the issuance of the “Wilson Memorandum”, which ordered - in accordance with the Nuremberg Code protocols - that only Volunteers would be used for experimental operations in the US military. In response to the Inspector General’s investigation, Wilson’s memorandum was declassified in August 1975.

With regard to drug testing in the Army, the Inspector General found that “the evidence clearly reflects that all possible medical considerations were observed by professional investigators in medical research laboratories.” However, the Inspector General also found that the requirements required by the Wilson memorandum of 1953 had been only partially effective; Concluded that volunteers “were not fully informed, as necessary, prior to their participation, and the methods of acquiring their services, in many cases, did not appear to have been in accordance with the intent of the policies. The Secretariat governing the use of volunteers by the Army for research. ”

In other branches of the US Armed Forces, the Air Force for example, found that they had not adhered to the voluntary drug test provisions of the Wilson Memorandum.

In 1977, during a hearing held by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee to deepen MK ULTRA, Admiral Stansfield Turner, former Central Intelligence Director, revealed that the CIA had found a 20,000-page set of records that Had survived the destruction orders of 1973 because they had been stored in a logging center not usually used to obtain documents. ³⁸ These files related to the financing of MK ULTRA projects, and as such contained some details of those projects, but much more was known of them than the Inspector General’s report of 1963.

In Canada, the subject took much longer to surface, becoming widely known in 1984 on a CBC news program called The Fifth State . It was learned that not only had the CIA funded Cameron’s efforts , but perhaps even more shockingly, that the Canadian government was fully aware of it, and had later lent another $ 500,000 in funds to continue the experiments. This revelation greatly derailed the victims’ efforts to sue the CIA as their counterparts in the US, and the Canadian government finally reached an out-of-court settlement, compensating $ 100,000 each of the 127 victims. None of Dr. Cameron’s personal documents of his relationship with MK ULTRA survived, as his family destroyed them after his death from a heart attack while practicing mountaineering in 1967. ³⁹

Report of the US General Accounting Office References

The US General Accounting Office Issued a report on September 28, 1994, in which he stated that between 1940 and 1974, the Department of Defense and other national security agencies studied thousands of humans in trials and experiments using hazardous substances.

The Study Citation:

… In 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 analyzed quinuclidinyl benzylate , a hallucinogen named in BZ code . Many of these tests were carried out under the program called MK ULTRA, established to counter what was perceived as Soviet and Chinese advances in the techniques of brainwashing . Between 1953 and 1964, the program consisted of 149 drug testing projects and other studies on involuntary human subjects …

⁴⁰

Deaths

Given the CIA’s intentional destruction of most records, its inability to follow informed consent protocols with thousands of participants, the uncontrolled nature of the experiments, and the lack of follow-up data, the total impact of the experiments Of MKULTRA, including mortals, will never be known. ^{40 41}

Frank Olson

Several known deaths have been associated with the MKULTRA Project, especially in Frank Olson’s . Olson, a US Army biochemist and biological weapons expert , was given LSD without his knowledge or consent in November 1953 as part of a CIA experiment and died in suspicious circumstances a week later. A CIA doctor assigned to oversee Olson said he slept on another bed in a hotel room in New York when Olson jumped out of the window and dropped thirteen stories on the spot. In 1953, Olson’s death was described as a suicide that occurred during a severe psychotic episode. The CIA’s own internal investigation concluded that the director of the CIA Technical Department Sidney Gottlieb had carried out the LSD experiment with Olson’s prior knowledge, although neither Olson nor the other men who participated in the experiment were informed about the Exact nature of the drug administered until about 20 minutes after its ingestion. The report further suggests that Gottlieb was, nonetheless by a reprimand, had failed to take into account that Olson had already been diagnosed with suicidal tendencies, which could have been exacerbated by LSD. ⁴²

The Olson family questions the official version of the events. They argue that Frank Olson was killed because, especially as a result of his experience with LSD, he had become a security risk that could disclose state secrets associated with highly classified CIA programs, many of which he had had Direct personal knowledge. A few days before his death, Frank Olson resigned his position as Acting Chief of the Division of Special Operations at Fort Detrick, Maryland (later Fort Detrick) because of a grave moral crisis over the nature of his biological weapons research. Among Olson’s concerns were the development of materials for assassinations used by the CIA, the CIA’s use of biological warfare material in undercover operations, experimentation with biological weapons in populated areas, collaboration with former Nazi scientists in Operation Paperclip , LSD mental control research, the use of biological weapons (including anthrax) during the Korean War, and the use of psychoactive drugs during “terminal” interrogations under a program codenamed ARTICHOKE Project . ⁴³ Forensic evidence later came into conflict with the official version of the facts, when Olson’s body was exhumed in 1994, cranial lesions indicated that Olson had been beaten to the point of being knocked unconscious before he fell through the window. ⁴² The medical examiner called Olson’s death a “murder.” ⁴⁴ In 1975, the Olson family received a $ 750,000 settlement from the US government. And formal apologies from President Gerald Ford and CIA Director William Colby , despite his apologies were limited to matters relating to informed consent about Olson’s ingestion of LSD. ^{41 45}

In his 2009 book, A Terrible Misconception , researcher HP Albarelli Jr. agrees with the Olson family and concludes that Frank Olson was killed because of a crisis of consciousness that made him likely to disclose state secrets affecting several CIA programs, the chief among them the ARTICHOKE Project and a MKNAOMI project called SPAN project code . Albarelli presents considerable evidence in support of his theory that the SPAN Project involved contamination of food supplies and aerosol spraying of a potent LSD blend in the village of Pont-Saint-Esprit , France in August 1951 . (The French word “pont” is translated as “bridge” in English, a synonym is “span”). The Pont-Saint-Esprit incident resulted in collective psychosis, the internment of 32 people in mental institutions, and at least seven deaths. In his work as Acting Chief of the Division of Special Operations, Olson was involved in the development of aerosol systems, which was present at Pont-Saint-Esprit in August 1951 and several months before he resigned. Had witnessed a terminal interrogation carried out in Germany under the framework of the ARTICHOKE Project. Other researchers have come to conclusions similar to Albarelli, including John Grant Fuller, author of The Day of the Fire of San Antonio , a reference book that at first quoted ergot as the intoxication responsible for the events at Pont-Saint- Esprit .. ^{41 46}

Harold Blauer

Another known victim of the MKULTRA Project was Harold Blauer , a professional tennis player in New York , who died in January 1953 as a result of a secret Army experiment involving MDA . ⁴⁷

Legal issues involving informed consent

The revelations about the CIA and Army led a number of survivors to their experiments to file lawsuits against the federal government for conducting illegal experiments. Although the government aggressively, and sometimes successfully, tried to avoid legal liability, several plaintiffs received compensation by court order, out-of-court settlement of the court, or acts of Congress. The Frank Olson family received $ 750,000 for a special congressional bill, 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 retain incriminating information, even though families had been compensated in secret. One of the subjects of the Army’s drug experimentation, James Stanley, Army Sergeant, filed an important, but unsuccessful, lawsuit. The government argued that Stanley was forbidden to sue under a legal doctrine known as the Feres doctrine, following a 1950 Supreme Court, Feres v. United States - which prohibits members of the Armed Forces from suing the government for any Damage that had been committed “as an incident of service”

In 1987, the Supreme Court affirmed this defense in a 5-4 decision that dismissed the Stanley Case . ⁴⁸ The majority held that “a test of responsibility that depends on the extent to which it fits in with everything would call into question military discipline and decision-making, requiring judicial investigation, and therefore intrusion into military affairs” . In dissent, Judge William Brennan argues that the need to preserve military discipline should not protect the government from responsibility and punishment for serious violations of constitutional rights :

The medical trials at Nuremberg in 1947 deeply impressed the world that experimenting with human beings unknowingly is unacceptable, both morally and legally. The United States Military Tribunal established the Nuremberg Code as a standard against which to judge German scientists who experimented with humans …. In defiance of this principle, military intelligence officials … surreptitiously began to test chemical and biological materials, such as LSD in humans.

Judge William Brennan

There is no rule modeled judicially in which the responsibility of human experimentation, involuntary and unknown that would have occurred in this case should be isolated. In fact, as Judge Brennan observes, the United States played an instrumental role in the criminal prosecution of Nazi officers conducting experiments with humans during World War II, and the standards developed by the Nuremberg Military Tribunals to judge the behavior of Defendants stated that voluntary “voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential … to satisfy moral, ethical and legal concepts. If this principle is violated, at a minimum, society can do is see that victims are compensated, as Can be, by the authors.

Judge Sandra Day O’Connor

This is the only case in the Supreme Court that addresses the application of the Nuremberg Code to US government-sponsored experimentation. Although the claim was unsuccessful, dissenting opinions put the Army-and by association to everything The Government-on notice that the use of people without their consent is unacceptable. The limited application of the Nuremberg Code in US courts. Does not restrict competition from the principles it advocates, especially in the light of stories of ignoring these principles that appeared in the mass media and professional literature during the 1960s and 1970s and finally the policies adopted in the mid-1990s. 1970.

In another play of law, Wayne Ritchie, former US Marshall, after hearing about the existing projects in 1990, claimed that the CIA mixed food or drinks with LSD at a Christmas party in 1957 culminating in its attempt Of committing a robbery in a bar and its subsequent arrest. While the government admitted that it was, at that time, it was drugging people without their consent, the US District Judge. Marilyn Hall Patel found that Ritchie could not prove that she was one of MKULTRA’s victims or that LSD stimulated her attempted theft and dismissed the case in 2007. ⁴⁹

Degree of participation

Forty-four US universities, 15 research foundations or chemical or pharmaceutical companies and the like including Sandoz (now Novartis ) and Eli Lilly & Co. , 12 hospitals or clinics (in addition to universities), and three prisons are known to Have participated in MKULTRA. ^{50 51}

Notable people

A considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence suggests that Theodore Kaczynski , also known as the Unabomber , participated in CK-sponsored MKULTRA experiments conducted at Harvard University in the fall of 1959 until spring 1962. ⁵² During the World War II , Henry Murray , the principal investigator in the Harvard experiments, served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was the forerunner of the CIA. Murray requested a grant funded by the US Navy , and his near- stress Harvard experiments closely resembled those run by the OSS. ⁵² Beginning at the age of sixteen, Kaczynski participated along with twenty other undergraduates in Harvard experiments, which have been described as “disturbing” and “ethically indefensible.” ^{52 53}

Ken Kesey of the Merry Prankster , author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , volunteered for the MKULTRA experiments as a student at Stanford University . Kesey’s ingestion of LSD in these experiments led directly to its widespread promotion of the drug and the subsequent development of hippie culture . ⁵⁴

Robert Hunter is a lyricist, songwriter and singer, translator and American poet known for his association with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead . Together with Ken Kesey, Hunter was a volunteer of the first MKULTRA test subjects at Stanford University. Stanford test subjects were paid to take LSD , psilocybin and mescaline , and then report their experiences. These experiences were creatively formative for Hunter:

Each picture of yourself shedding a purple peel with crests of crystal foam falls almost soft fall down to the sea of ​​morning fog-very-softly softly … and then a kind of cascading conglomeration of jingles Bell like (I must hold hands, occasionally slowly) and suddenly in a vibrating silver rush uncomprehending, blood singing, merrily like bells …. By my faith, if this is madness, to For the love of God, then, let me continue to be crazy.

McNally 42-43 ⁵⁵

Candy Jones , an American model and radio host, said she had been a victim of mind control in the 1960s. ⁵⁶

Fugitive Mafioso James “Whitey” Bulger volunteered to try psychoactive drugs while in jail. ⁵⁷

Lawrence Teeter , an advocate for the killer Sirhan Sirhan , stated Sirhan was under the influence of hypnosis when he fired his weapon against Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Teeter linked the CIA’s Operation MK Ultra program to the mind control techniques which, according to him Used for the control of Sirhan. ⁵⁸

Jonestown , the location in Guyana of the Jim Jones cult and mass suicide of the People ‘s Temple , was thought to be a test site for MKULTRA mental control medical experiments and after the official end of the program. Congressman Leo Ryan , a well-known critic of the CIA, was murdered by members of the People’s Temple after he personally visited Jonestown to investigate various irregularities. ⁵⁹

MK Ultra in conspiracy theories

Due to its secretive nature and the destruction of most records, MK Ultra is a source of inspiration for the promoters of conspiracy theories . ⁶⁰