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


MKULTRA's Goals

 

A CIA mind control memo (1955) refers to their experiments with  mind-altering substances to:

 Source: www.parascope.com/ds/mkultra0.htm


 KUBARK Torture Manual

 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:

 

Source: www.parascope.com/articles/0797/kubark.htm

 

Read the complete manual at www.parascope.com/articles/0397/kubark06.htm


 The "Unabomber"

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


  

 

Dr. Sidney Gottlieb

(1918-1999)

 

 

 Sources:

www.subliminal.org/mugbook/madsci/gottlieb.html

members.nbci.com/1spy/Gottlieb.html

www.karljones.com/history/spooks/gottlieb.asp