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PROJECT MK-ULTRA
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FOIA Collection
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
06760269
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RIPPUB
Original Classification:
U
Document Page Count:
8
Document Creation Date:
December 28, 2022
Document Release Date:
December 14, 2018
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Case Number:
F-2018-01345
Publication Date:
April 3, 2018
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PDF icon project mk-ultra[15545700].pdf 470.62 KB
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Project MK-ULTRA - Intellipedia Doc ID: 6613524 Approved for Release: 2018/12/12 006760269 W (U) Project MK-ULTRA From Intellipedia (b) (3) - P.L. 86-36 (U) This page has not been edited since October 02, 2011. Please help with completing or updating the page if it has intelligence value (U) See inteilipedia:Abandoned pages for more information about pages with this banner. (U) See the discussion Page for more information about the status of this page. 9 Oa Project MK-ULTRA, MK-ULTRA, or MKULTRA, was the code name for a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. This official U.S. government program began in the . early 1950s, continuing at least through the late 1960s, and it supposedly used United States citizens as unwitting test subjects.E11[21[311'he published evidence indicates that Project MK-ULTRA involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other methods, to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function. � Project MK-ULTRA was first brought to wide public attention in 1975 by the U.S. Congress, through investigations by the Church Committee, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission. Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms�ordered all MK-ULTRA files destroyed in 1973; the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the relatively small number of documents that survived Helms' destruction order.1-41 Although the CIA insists that MK-ULTRA-type experiments have been abandoned, 14-year CIA veteran Victor Marchetti has stated in various interviews that the CIA routinely conducts disinformation campaigns and that CIA mind control research continued. In a 1977 interview, Marchetti specifically called the CIA claim that MK-ULTRA was abandoned a "cover story.451161 � On the Senate floor in 1977, Senator Ted Kennedy said: The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty 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. Frank 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:171 Sec the Wikipcdia article Project MICULTRA a � smsear...- es� mu � �,������� %VW. ...�������� Cover sheet for MKULTRA proposal � "lb this day most specific information regarding Project MKULTRA remains highly classified.E81 Contents � 1 Title and origins � 2 Goals � 3 Budget � 4 Experiments n 4.1 LSD � � 4.2 Other drugs � 4.3 Hypnosis and Magic � 4.4 Canadian experiments sr 5 Revelation � 6 U.S. General Accounting �trite Report ri 7 Legal issues involving informed consent � 8 Extent of participation � 9 Notable subjects � 10 Incidents � 10.1 Dr:Frank Olson Commits Suicide � 11 Sec also � 12 Web links � 13 References Title and origins The project's intentionally oblique CIA myPtonym is made tip of the digraph MK. Meaning that the project was sponsored by the agency's Technical Services' I of 8 Approved for Release: 2018/12/12 006760269 4/3/2018 8:13 AM Project MK-ULTRA - Intellipedia Approved for Release: 2018/12/12 006760269 I I upsittruclicpcula.inteimx.ic.goviwnnacx.phpllitle=Project_MK-ULT... 2 Of 8 � � vi v peva.. g rr, " g a.4 Dr. Sidney Gottlieb approved of an MKULTRA subproject on LSD in this lone 9.1953 letter. Division, followed by the word ULTRA (which had previously been used to designate the most secret classification of World War II intelligence). Other related cryptonyrns include MK-NAOMI and MK-DELTA. A precursor of the MK-ULTRA program began in 1945 when the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency was established and given direct responsibility for Operation Paperclip. Operation Paperclip was a program to recruit former Nazi scientists. Some of these scientists studied torture and brainwashing, and several had just been identified and prosecuted as war criminals during the Nuremberg Trials.191"1 Several secret U.S. government projects grew out of Operation Paperclip. These projects included Project CIIATTER (established 1947), and Project BLUEBIRD (established 1950), which was later renamed to Project ARTICHOKE in 1951. Their purpose was to study mind-control, interrogation, behavior modification and related topics. Headed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the MK-ULTRA project was started on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles on April 13, 1953,011 largely in response to Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind-control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war in Korea.1121 The CIA wanted to usc similar methods on their own captives. The CIA was also interested in being able to manipulate foreign leaders with such techniques,1131 and would later invent several schemes to drug Fidel Castro. Experiments were often conducted without the subjects' knowledge or consent") In some cases, academic researchers being funded through grants from CIA front organizations were unaware that their work was being used for these purposes.115) In 1964, the project was renamed MK-SEARCII. 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. Sidney Gottlieb Another MK-ULTRA effort, Subproject 54, was the Navy's top secret "Perfect Concussion" program, which used sub-aural frequency blasts to erase mcmory.1161 Because most MK-ULTRA records were deliberately destroyed in 1973 by order of then CIA Director Richard Helms, it has been difficult, if not impossible, for investigators to gain a complete understanding of the more than 150 individually funded research sub-projects sponsored by MK-ULTRA and related CIA 171 programs.[ Goals The Agency poured millions of dollars into studies probing dozens of methods of influencing and controlling the mind. One 1955 MK-ULTRA document gives an indication of the size and range of the effort; this document refers to the study of an assortment of mind-altering substances described as follows:" I. Substances which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public. 2. Substances which increase the efficiency of mcntation and perception. 3. Materials which will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol. 4. Materials which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol. 5. Materials which will produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases inn reversible way so that they may be used for malingering, etc. 6. Materials which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness. 7. Substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so-called "brain-washing". 8. Materials and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use. 9. Physical methods of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use. IS. Substances which produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc. II. Substances which will produce "pure" euphoria with no subsequent let-down. 12. Substances which alter personality structure in such a way that the tendency of the recipient to become dependent upon another person is enhanced. 13. A material which will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning. 14. Substances which will lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men when administered in undetectable amounts. IS. Substances which promote weakness or distortion of the eyesight or hearing faculties, preferably without permanent effects. 16. A knockout pill which can surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol. etc., which will be safe louse, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis. 17. A material which can be surreptitiously administered by the above routes and which in very small amounts will make it impossible for a man to perform any physical activity whatsoever. Historians have asserted that creating a "Manchurian Candidate" subject through "mind control" techniques was a goal of MK-ULTRA and related CIA projects."' 4/3/2018 8:13 AM Approved for Release: 2018/12/12 006760269 Project MK-ULTRA - Intellipedia Budget Approved for Release: 2018/12/12006760269 A secretive amangement granted the MK-ULTRA progratn a percentage of the CIA budget. The MK-ULTRA director was granted six percent of the CIA 'operating budget in 1953, without oversight or accounting.101An estimated USSIOm or more was spent.I'll Experiments CIA documents suggest that "chemical, biological and radiological" means were investigated for the purpose of mind control as part of MK-ULTRAP21 LSD Early efforts focused on LSD, which later came to dominate many of MK -ULTRA's programs. Experiments included administering LSD 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. LSD and other drugs were usually administered without the subject's knowledge or informed consent, a violation of the Nuremberg Code that the U.S. agreed to follow after World War II. � 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 October 6, 1966). 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 men were dosed with LSD, the brothels were equipped with one-way mirrors, and the sessions were filmed for later viewing and study.123I � Some subjects' participation was consensual, and in many of these cases, the subjects appeared to be singled out for even more extreme experiments. Inane case, volunteers were given LSD for 77 consecutive days.1241 LSD was eventually dismissed by MK-ULTRA's researchers as too unpredictable in its resultsP1 Although useful information was sometimes obtained through questioning subjects on LSD, not =commonly the most marked effect would be the subject's absolute and utter certainty that they were able to withstand any forte of interrogation attempt, even physical torture. Other drugs Another technique investigated was connecting a barbiturate IV into one arm and an amphetamine IV into the other.1261The 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. Other experiments involved heroin, morphine, temazepam (used under code name MK-SEARCH), mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, marijuana, alcohol, sodium pentothal.1271 and ergine (in Subproject 22). Hypnosis and Magic Declassified MK-ULTRA documents indicate hypnosis was studied in the early 1950s. Experimental goals included: the creation of "hypnotically induced anxieties," "hypnotically increasing ability to learn and recall complex written matter." studying hypnosis and polygraph extuninations. "hypnotically increasing ability to observe and recall complex arrangements of physical objects." and studying "relationship of personality to susceptibility to hypnosis."Eni In addition, the CIA used the services of American magician John Mulholland to write two manuals on sleight of hand and undercover communication techniques. hi 1973, virtually all documents related to MKULTRA were destroyed. Mulholland's manuals were thought to be among them until a single surviving copy of each was discovered in the agency's archives around 2008-2009. Bob Wallace and H. Keith Melton published "The Official CIA Manual qf Thicket:I, and Deceplion" to chronicle this research into the use of illusion for the agency's field agents.1291 Canadian experiments The experiments were exported to Canada when the CIA recruited Scottish psychiatrist Donald Owen Cameron, creator of the "psychic driving" concept, which the CIA found particularly interesting. Cameron had been hoping to correct schizophrenia by erasing existing memories and reprogramming the psyche. He commuted from Albany, New York to Montreal every week to work at the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill University and was paid $69,000 from 1957 to 1964 to carry out MKULTRA experiments there. In addition to LSD. Cameron also experimented with various paralytic chugs as well as electroconvulsive therapy at thirty to forty 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 pernmnently from his actions.130/ His treatments resulted in victims' incontinence, artmesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and thinking their interrogators were their parents.Pli His work was inspired and paralleled by the British psychiatrist Dr. William Sargant at St. Thomas' Hospital, London, and Belmont Hospital, Surrey. who was also involved in the Intelligence Services and who experimented extensively on his patients without their consent, causing similar long-term damage.1321 Dr. Cameron and Dr. Sargant are the only two identified Canadian experimenters, but the MKULTRA file makes reference to many other unnamed physicians who were recruited by the CIA.16"u"!""dedi It was dining 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 in 1946-1947.1331 Revelation 3 of 8 4/3/2018 8:13 AM Approved for Release: 2018/12/12 006760269 Project MK-ULTRA - Intellipedia Approved for Release: 2018/12/12006760269 In 1973. CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MK-ULTRA files destroyed. Pursuant to this order, most CIA documents regarding the project were destroyed, making a full investigation of MK-ULTRA impossible. In December 1974, The A'ew Mt* 7711ICA reported that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S. citizens, during the 1960s. That report prompted investigations by the U.S. Congress, in the form of the Church Conunittee, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission that looked into domestic activities of the CIA, the FBI. and intelligence-related agencies of the military. In the summer of 1975, congressional Church Committee reports and the presidential Rockefeller Commission report revealed to the public for the first time that the CIA and the Department of Defense had conducted experiments on both unwitting and cognizant human subjects as pan of an extensive program to influence and control human behavior 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. Much of what the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission learned about MKULTRA was contained in a report, prepared by the Inspector General's office in 1963, that had survived the destruction of records ordered in 1973.1341 However, it contained little detail. The congressional committee investigating the CIA research, chaired by Senator Frank Church. concluded that "Iplrior 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." 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. On the heels of the revelations about CIA experiments, similar stories surfaced regarding U.S. Army experiments. 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 a 1953 memorandum penned by then Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson. Documents show that the CIA participated in at least two of Department of Defense committees during 1952. These committee findings led to the issuance of the "Wilson Memo," which mandated�in accord with Nuremberg Code protocols�that only volunteers be used for experimental operations conducted in the U.S. armed forces. In response to the Inspector General's investigation, the Wilson Memo was declassified in August 1975. With regard to drug testing within the Army, the Inspector General found that "the evidence clearly reflected that every possible medical consideration was observed by the professional investigators at the Medical Research Laboratories." However the Inspector General also found that the mandated requirements of Wilson's 1953 memorandum had been only partially adhered to: he 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 goveming use of volunteers in research." Other branches of the U.S. armed forces, the Air Force for example, were found not to have adhered to Wilson Memo stipulations regarding voluntary drug testing. In 1977, during a hearing held by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to look further into MKULTRA, Admiral Stansfield Turner, then Director of Central Intelligence, revealed that the CIA had found a set of records. consisting of about 20,000 pages,1351 that had survived the 1973 destruction orders, due to having been stored at a records center not usually used for such documents.1341 These files dealt with the financing of MKULTRA projects, and as such contained few details of those projects, but much more was learned from them than from the Inspector General's 1963 report. In Canada, the issue took much longer to surface, becoming widely known in 1984 on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news show, The Fift
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Search formSearch Query for FOIA ERR:
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MK/ULTRA
Document Type:
CREST
Collection:
General CIA Records
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP90-00965R000100140109-9
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
4
Document Creation Date:
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date:
April 13, 2012
Sequence Number:
109
Case Number:
Publication Date:
February 12, 1983
Content Type:
OPEN SOURCE
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PDF icon CIA-RDP90-00965R000100140109-9.pdf 165.02 KB
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/04/13: CIA-RDP90-009658000100140109-9 7 I RADIO N REPORTS, ~N~ 4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068 PrtocR~M Jack Anderson Confidential srAnorv WJLA-TV Syndicated DATE February 12, 1983 7:30 P.M. GTY Washington, D.C. ~EC7 MK/Ultra JACK ANDERSON: Two decades ago, the Central Intelligence Agency carried out secret experiments on thousands of American citizens. The purpose was to discover ways to control human behavior. The super-secret program used unwitting victims as living test tubes for bizarre mind-altering drugs. The CIA called the project MK/Ultra. Now, for the first time, some of the victims have stepped forward. They're former inmates of Atlanta federal penitentiary, where they were given LSD and other drugs as part of the MK/Ultra program. Now they're suing the CIA for lying to them about the true purposes of the experiments, also for the mental damage they say they suffered from the drug sessions. Last week I sent my associate John Lee Anderson to investigate their story. He traveled to Georgia, Florida, and Kentucky. He interviewed the men involved in the sordid CIA experiment. This is what they told him. RUSSELL KIRK: After 1960, I was just -- I didn't even know what I was doing at times. And it had to be what they gave me in 'S7 and 'S8, 'cause I never, never took any drugs before. ANDERSON: Farrell Kirk was one of the CIA's unsuspecting human guinea pigs. He was used as a living medical mixing bowl. What happened to him? He was driven to repeated suicide attempts. KIRK: I got very depressed because I knew something was wrong and I couldn't figure out what it was. And it was just like a voice was telling me, you know, I just soon be dead as to be in this shape or predicament. Nbierial wpplied by Radio N RepOAs. Inc. may be used for file and reference purposes only. K may not be reproduced, sob or publicly demonstrated or exhibffed. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/04/13: CIA-RDP90-009658000100140109-9 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/04/13: CIA-RDP90-009658000100140109-9 JOHN LEE ANDERSON: So you slashed your wrists? KIRK: I did. And they took and sewed me up and brought me back and put me in the hole. And I begged them not to put me in the hole. They asked me why did I do it. I said I don't know. And I said I just felt like I didn't want to live any longer. And he said, "Well, we've got to put you in there for safe-keeping. J.L. ANDERSON: With your teeth. KIRK: Yeah. And when I passed out -- when they opened the door to check, I just feel out, and they went and gave me a blood transfusion. They put me in a straitjacket then. And when they took me out of the straitjacket, I tried to hang myself with the blanket. And I very nearly suc -- I almost succeeded more with the blanket than I did with the razor blade. ANDERSON: Kirk is not the only one affected by the drug test. His fellow plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the CIA complain of long-term aftereffects. JAMES KNIGHT: I go off occasionally. And I've had loss of memory real bad. Several years [unintelligible], some of the experiences that I had while I was on LSD, some of them will come back to me. ANDERSON: James Knight is back in prison on a parole violation. He comes from a long line of moonshiners. He was doing time for this offense when he participated in the Atlanta LSD experiments. Like Kirk, Knight says the effect was to turn him violent. KNIGHT: I was a bootlegger when I started, and I never been in no crime of violence or anything like that. And I got convicted. And I've cut several since then and pistol-whipped two or three since then. And it's just changed -- it's just changed me altogether. In fact, no longer than September I was on furlough and I went home and I beat my wife real bad. J.L. ANDERSON: And you never did this before the experiments. KNIGHT: No, I've never done anything like that before. J.L. ANDERSON: You attribute it to the LSD experiments. KNIGHT: Certainly I do. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/04/13: CIA-RDP90-009658000100140109-9 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/04/13: CIA-RDP90-009658000100140109-9 ANDERSON: Justice Department lawyers handling the CIA's defense refused to be interviewed. They also counseled defense witnesses against speaking to us. But Dr. Lawrence Bryan did come forth. He's a clinical psychologist who worked in the Atlanta prison at the time of the experiment. He did the psychological screening tests of the prisoners who took part in the LSD. project. J.L. ANDERSON: Do you believe, as a psychologistand as a person who was there at the time when these experiments were conducted, that their claim is justified, that of damages for physical and mental harm done to them as a result of these experiments? DR. LAWRENCE BRYAN: I cannot see that there was any harm that they sustained. They certainly did not tell me about any harm, either during the project or any time later on. ANDERSON: This story may never have become known but for the efforts of John Marks. He's an intelligence expert and author of the definitive book on the CIA's attempts to control human behavior. Marks spoke to us about the CIA's reasons for the MK/Ultra project. JOHN MARKS: There was an age-old dream in the intelligence business about making people do things against their will, to give you information, to perform acts that they didn't want to perform. And the CIA secretly was looking for a pill or a ray or some technique, a panacea, if you will, which would allow them to manipulate people against their will. What the CIA was doing in Atlanta was trying out LSD on people, on a captive population. But mainly, the CIA was looking for the effect that it would have on certain personality types. J.L. ANDERSON: Is there punishment that can be meted out to them? Should there be? MARKS: Well, there's a standard of medical testing which the United States Government established at Nuremberg in 1945 because there had been Nazi experimentation on prisoners in concentration camps during the war. And that standard was very basic. It said that you could not do medical experiments on people against their will. They had to give their consent and they had to understand what they were consenting to. And we, as a country, executed Nazi doctors who had violated that standard. Three or four years later, by 1950, our own government was doing those same kinds of experiments on unwitting subjects. ANDERSON: How many men had their lives ruined by the Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/04/13: CIA-RDP90-009658000100140109-9 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/04/13: CIA-RDP90-009658000100140109-9 CIA's secret tests? We may never know. On February 14th, a pre-trial hearing will be held in Atlanta to determine whether the case can go to the trial court. The CIA's defense? That the statute of limitations has run out. In other words, our government is trying to evade responsibility through legal technicalities. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/04/13: CIA-RDP90-009658000100140109-9
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