The Agencies Failed Experiment - Explained

In the early 1950s, the CIA began working on a new, secret project. The goal was simple, mind control. Over the years, agents tortured and brainwashed individuals using a number of techniques, including treatment with psychedelic drugs, hypnosis, and even abuse. The entire project would go down in history as one of the most unforgivable examples of degeneracy, ineptitude, and pure evil committed by a government agency. What made it even worse was the fact that these CIA agents weren't experimenting on the enemy, but rather, their own citizens. This tragic moment in human history would become known only by the project's ominous codename, MK-ULTRA. Although the project was eventually abandoned, it has a lasting legacy in the world of skeptics and conspiracy theorists. Perhaps most importantly, it proves that because of its complete disregard for human life and sanity, we can never, ever trust the CIA again. This is the story of that project. This is the story of MK-ULTRA. Like so many new and horrific changes that occurred in the 20th century, MK-ULTRA has its roots in World War II. According to one researcher, the CIA merely picked up where the Nazis and Japanese left off. They saw what they were doing to prisoners in their concentration camps, and wanted to continue these efforts to control the human mind. The CIA also allegedly recruited several Nazis who were skilled in the dark arts of torture for their new project. While the Germans had laid the foundation for psychological torture and mind control, the Americans believed that they could take it one step further, with something different. We're talking, of course, about mind-altering drugs. By the time the Cold War rolled around, the CIA was already engaged in extensive drug-related research. Mind-altering substances had been used to interrogate prisoners with early efforts like Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke, and the agency was desperate to develop a truth serum that they could use on captured Soviet agents. They were also looking for drugs that would cause their enemies to think illogically, to the point that no one would believe anything else they had to say. Another goal was to develop a drug that would lower a victim's overall ambitions and working efficiency. On the other end of the spectrum, the CIA was looking for other drugs that would increase mental efficiency and prevent their own agents from being tortured or manipulated. This was a genuine fear for the Americans at the time, who believed that the Chinese and Russians were fully capable of using mind-control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war. Due to this paranoia, the CIA was desperate to create its own mind-control program, and so Director Alan Dooles approved MKUltra in 1953. Eventually, the CIA discovered a drug that seemed perfect for their goals. Lysergic Acid Dithalamide, otherwise known as simply LSD. First synthesized in 1938 by a Swiss chemist, LSD was being explored by various psychologists during the early days of MKUltra. The agency saw the drug's potential and set out to purchase the world's entire supply of LSD. They initially bought $240,000 worth of the drug and in the early 50s, began administering doses to various people. Some were simply handed a few doses and were told to try it out. This included Ken Casey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Others were subjected to what can only be described as acid-fueled torture. These experiments were not consensual, and the CIA targeted subjects who couldn't fight back. These included mental health patients, prisoners, drug addicts, and sex workers. The man in charge was a chemist named Sidney Gottlieb, according to journalist Stephen Kinzer. Gottlieb wanted to create a way to seize control of people's minds, and he realized it was a two-part process. First, you had to blast away the existing mind. Second, you had to find a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void. We didn't get too far on number two, but he did a lot of work on number one. So what did these experiments actually look like? Unfortunately, many minds were completely destroyed, so the exact details are shrouded in a haze of drug-induced psychosis and amnesia. The experiments were also completely unsupervised, and Gottlieb destroyed almost all evidence of the tests when MKUltra was shut down. However, there are a few notable accounts. One mental patient in Kentucky was apparently dosed with LSD for 172 consecutive days, without consent of course. A pregnant woman in Canada was placed in a drug-induced coma for about 30 days, as CIA agents tried to de-pattern her. Their goal was to break her mind so completely that it would be reduced to a childish state. This would theoretically give the CIA a clean slate, allowing them to reprogram her brain. After they were finished with the woman, she had completely forgotten how to take care of herself. She couldn't even remember how to boil water, and she had no idea who her family members were. Even worse, she was incapable of coherent speech. When she was 8 months pregnant, the CIA stopped the experiments and dumped her back into society. But the damage was already done, and she was completely incapable of caring for her unborn child. Although the CIA succeeded in breaking this woman down, they completely failed to reprogram her or control her mind. This would become a common theme during Project MKUltra, but it didn't stop them from continuing to ruin people's lives. Another notable experiment was Operation Midnight Climax. This involved targeting sex workers and their patrons, individuals who the CIA thought would be so embarrassed to reveal the details of their experimentation. Again, the goal was to target people who couldn't fight back. These workers were paid by the agency to lure men back to safe houses operated by the CIA. Once the men were inside, they were subjected to experiments involving LSD. Although the men were completely unaware, they drank cocktails spiked with acid while being watched through two-way mirrors by the CIA agents. The victims were then subjected to subliminal messaging as the prostitutes attempted to convince them to reveal their deepest, darkest secrets. These experiments were not carried out in a professional manner, and many of the CIA agents indulged both in the LSD and the sex workers. Inmates were also targeted, including a crime boss who was incarcerated in Atlanta, Whitey Bulger. Bulger claims that he and several other inmates were injected with LSD in exchange for commuted sentences, and his account of the experiment is shocking. Eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state, total loss of appetite, hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent. 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. Although the exact number of fatalities is not known, some of the victims did in fact lose their lives. One notable example was a CIA scientist named Frank Olson. After unwittingly drinking a cocktail that had been spiked with LSD, Olson threw himself out of a New York City hotel room in an apparent suicide. The CIA targeted its own people for some of the earliest non-consensual experiments. However, some believe that Olson was assassinated because he was found with injuries that must have occurred before his fall. At the end of the day, it was clear that MKUltra was a complete failure. The agency was simply destroying minds, not controlling them. LSD was not a magic key to the human brain, and this should have been obvious from the very first experiments. But the CIA kept torturing hundreds of people anyway, destroying minds and lives in the process for decades. By the 1970s, Project MKUltra wasn't so secret. Concerned CIA agents started to investigate the matter more closely, and eventually, President Ford set up the Commission on CIA Activities to investigate crimes committed by the agency. This inevitably led to the exposure of MKUltra. Eventually, Senator Edward Kennedy oversaw congressional hearings on MKUltra, interrogating various CIA agents on the details of these experiments. But as you might have guessed, these agents were very tight-lipped, claiming that they couldn't remember exactly what happened. It didn't help that Sidney Gottlieb had destroyed the records years earlier. Finally, President Ford shut down MKUltra in the late 1970s. Several victims eventually sued the United States government, receiving millions of dollars in settlement money for the trauma they had been forced to endure. But was MKUltra really such a terrible failure? The CIA might have failed to control people's minds, but you do have to remember that this was only one of their objectives. According to the official documents, the agency also set out to find drugs that could promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness, to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public, and lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men when administered in undetectable amounts. In other words, the CIA was searching for drugs that could destabilize the minds of their enemies, making them lazy, unmotivated, and incoherent. Sound familiar? There are some who believe that the CIA actually started the hippie movement, or at least hijacked it. In the beginning, this was a strong counterculture that had a decent chance of overthrowing the military-industrial complex, and holding the United States accountable for their war crimes. However, the peace movement eventually became inundated with mind-altering drugs, such as psilocybin, marijuana, and of course, LSD. Some might argue that if the hippie movement hadn't been so focused on getting high, they might have been able to actually achieve something. Perhaps most importantly, they would have had a much lower chance of being discredited by the public. Some argue that the CIA intentionally introduced counterculture leaders to LSD in order to destroy their minds, making them lose focus. More importantly, they lost legitimacy in the eyes of the public. You should also know that many of the most prominent musicians of the 60s came from military families, and they all seem to have come from Laurel Canyon, California, the site of a well-known army base. The book, Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops, and the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream, by David McGowan, explores this subject in great depth. Was this all part of the plan? Who knows, but it's certainly possible that even though MKUltra failed to control the human brain, it succeeded in other areas of control and subversion of the general public. The failure of MKUltra does not mean that the government ever stopped trying to control our minds. It simply shows that such a direct, unsubtle method was determined to be ineffective. Subliminal messaging, propaganda, predictive programming, all of these techniques can be implemented on a much grander scale, across film, music, and news. You might even argue that from the very first moment a baby stares at a TV screen, they are being programmed to a certain extent. Who knows, maybe MKUltra never really came to an end. Perhaps it simply evolved into something far more effective.