Project MKUltra, the code name for a sprawling and illegal CIA program that ran from 1953 to 1973, is one of the “conspiracy theories” that turned out to be completely true (and often far worse than anyone initially imagined). Officially authorized in 1953 by CIA Director Allen Dulles, MKUltra’s stated goal was to develop drugs, techniques, and procedures that could be used during interrogations or to forcibly alter human behavior, effectively creating “mind control” tools to use against Soviet agents and others during the Cold War. The program eventually grew to include 149 sub-projects spread across 80 institutions, including 44 universities, 15 private research foundations, 12 hospitals, and three prisons.
What made MKUltra especially shocking was the utter disregard for ethics or consent. The CIA administered LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, and other psychoactive drugs to hundreds (possibly thousands) of unwitting American and Canadian citizens, including mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts, prostitutes, and even agency employees. Techniques tested under MKUltra included sensory deprivation, extreme isolation, sexual abuse, verbal and psychological manipulation, electroshock far beyond therapeutic levels, and hypnosis. One notorious sub-project, Operation Midnight Climax, involved CIA-run brothels in San Francisco and New York where johns were secretly dosed with LSD while agents watched behind two-way mirrors. In Canada, under Dr. Ewen Cameron at McGill University’s Allan Memorial Institute (Sub-project 68), patients seeking treatment for anxiety or postpartum depression were subjected to “psychic driving” entailing months of drug-induced comas paired with taped messages played thousands of times, leaving many permanently brain-damaged.
Most records were deliberately destroyed in 1973 on orders from CIA Director Richard Helms, but the surviving 20,000 pages that escaped the shredder, plus testimony at the 1975 Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission hearings, confirmed the program’s existence and scope. Declassified documents revealed the CIA also collaborated with Nazi scientists brought to the U.S. under Operation Paperclip (article coming soon) and explored paranormal avenues such as remote viewing. Lawsuits from victims and their families continue to this day; in 2018 the Canadian government settled with hundreds of Cameron’s former patients for $8 million CAD.
Though MKUltra officially ended in 1973, many researchers and survivors believe aspects of the program simply migrated under new code names (MKSEARCH, Project Bluebird/Artichoke successors, etc.). What began as a paranoid Cold War quest for the ultimate truth serum became one of the darkest chapters in American intelligence history, and a chilling reminder of how far a government will go when it believes no one is watching.
For Further Reading
- Stephen Kinzer – Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (2019) – The definitive modern biography of the man who ran MKUltra. (Amazon link)
- Tom O’Neill & Dan Piepenbring – Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties (2019) – Explores possible MKUltra links to the Manson murders and the counterculture. (Amazon link)
- H.P. Albarelli Jr. – A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments (2009) – Deep dive into the death of CIA scientist Frank Olson, who was dosed with LSD and fell from a hotel window nine days later. (Amazon link)
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