1953-1973, USA: MKUltra & LSD
By Jon Elliston, Dossier Editor
CIA Director Allen Dulles authorized the MKULTRA program, which became notorious for unusual and inhumane tests. Reviewing the experiments in 1957, the CIA auditor wrote: "Precautions must be taken to protect operations from exposure to enemy forces and to conceal these activities from the American public. The knowledge that the agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles."
Although the CIA destroyed many MKULTRA documents in 1972, some records survived. Historians, investigative reporters and congressional committees have released enough data to reveal one of the most disturbing instances of CIA community abuse.
Sidney Gottlieb was the Stranglovian scientist running the MKULTRA project. He gave subjects LSD-laced drinks, scrutinizing their reactions and searched for qualities of LSD to benefit CIA covert actions. (Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men)
The CIA's LSD experiments were conducted on many unwitting subjects, such as prisoners. Others, in "Operation Midnight Climax," were patrons of "national security brothels" where two-way mirrors allowed observation of the drug's effects. [The CIA was testing the use of LSD and sex to extract information from men.]
In 1953, an Army scientist and germ warfare specialist, Frank Olson, was slipped a massive dose of LSD. After eight days in a paranoid state, he jumped through a window and fell ten stories. Twenty-two years later his family learned what happened.
Source: "MKULTRA: CIA Mind Control."
www.parascope.com/ds/mkultra0.htm
A CIA mind control memo (1955) refers to their experiments with mind-altering substances to:
Promote illogical thinking & impulsiveness to discredit recipients,
Increase the efficiency of mentation and perception,
Prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol,
Promote alcohol's intoxicating effect,
Produce symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way so they may be used for malingering, etc.,
Render hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness,
Enhance the ability to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and 'brainwashing',
Produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use,
Produce shock and confusion over extended periods and capable of surreptitious use,
Produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia,
Produce 'pure' euphoria with no subsequent let-down,
Alter personality structure making a recipient dependent on another,
Cause mental confusion making it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning,
Lower ambition and efficiency,
Promote weakness or distortion of eyesight or hearing, preferably without permanent effects.
Source: www.parascope.com/ds/mkultra0.htm
The 1963 "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation" manual (declassified in 1997) reveals CIA methods for inducing mental and physical agony and cites MKULTRA research on how to make people talk. "Resistant sources" were broken with carefully chosen, concentrated psychological forces. Secrets for extracting information included:
Psychological assessments: Tricks for exposing and exploiting personality flaws and weaknesses.
Mental Trickery: Manipulating a subject's reality to fool him into revealing information, from the "Alice in Wonderland" technique to the "Spinoza and Mortimer Snerd" trick.
Sensory Deprivation and Heightened Suggestibility through Hypnosis: Spooky interrogation tricks with roots in the MKULTRA program.
Threats, Pain, Drugs and Electrocution: When other tactics failed, they used physical torture.
Source: www.parascope.com/articles/0797/kubark.htm
Read the complete manual at www.parascope.com/articles/0397/kubark06.htm
By Alexander Cockburn & Jeff St. Clair.
Michael Mello, notes in The USA vs. Theodore Kaczynski that while at Harvard (1958-1962), Theo-dore Kaczynski, volunteered for CIA-sponsored mind-control experiments. Chief researcher Dr. Henry Murray, chair of Harvard's Department of Social Relations was a lieutenant colonel in WWII. He was recruited by the CIA's predecessor (the OSS), to apply personality theories to the selection of agents and presumably to interrogation. Under Murray, Harvard students received LSD and psilocybin. How many other human time bombs were thus primed?
Source: "Ted K., the CIA & LSD," Counterpunch, July 15, 1999.
www.counterpunch.org/tedk.html
a stutterer since childhood, he got a master's degree in speech therapy; a clubfoot made him limp, but he was an avid square-dancer.
receiving a Ph.D. in chemistry (Cal Tech), he joined the CIA's Technical Services Staff (1951) and rose to became it's chief (1967)
living on a farm near Washington, he sold Christmas trees and milked his goats daily before going to work where he led the CIA's MKULTRA program (1953-1973) and masterminded bizarre biochemical devices to kill foreign leaders (poisonous darts, cigars, handkerchiefs, toothpaste, wetsuits and exploding conch shells). When these programs were uncovered, he destroyed most of the documents and retired (1973)
Sources:
www.subliminal.org/mugbook/madsci/gottlieb.html