MK-ULTRA MIND CONTROL ITS REAL

 MK-ULTRA

“In the 1950's and early 1960's, the agency gave mind-altering drugs to hundreds of unsuspecting Americans in an effort to explore the possibilities of controlling human consciousness. Many of the human guinea pigs were mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts and prostitutes – ''people who could not fight back,'' as one agency officer put it. In one case, a mental patient in Kentucky was dosed with LSD continuously for 174 days.” – New York Times199

MK-ULTRA is the codename given to a CIA research operation into biological behavioral engineering, also known as mind control. Many people are familiar with the operation but incorrectly assume that it was limited to LSD research. While there were plenty of resources devoted to LSD research, it was only one area of a vast field of mind control operations. MK-ULTRA researcher Ike Feldman said himself that:

“The LSD... that was just the tip of the iceberg... Espionage. Assassinations. Dirty tricks. Drug experiments. Sexual encounters and the study of prostitutes for clandestine use. That is what I was doing when I worked for George White and the CIA.”200

MK-ULTRA had several precursors. There was Project Chatter in 1947, which tested drugs such as the infamous Scopolamine during interrogations.201 There was Project Bluebird in 1949, which began studies into hypnosis.202 The document describing the initiation of Project Bluebird outlines these special problems, among many others, that they were hoping to address:

• Can we in a matter of an hour, two hours, one day, etc., induce an hypnotic condition in an unwilling subject to such an extent that he will perform an act for our benefit?

• Can we create by post-hypnotic control an action contrary to an individual's basic moral principles?

• Can we guarantee total amnesia under any and all conditions?

• Can we "alter" a person's personality? How long will it hold?

• Can we devise a system for making unwilling subjects into willing agents and then transfer that control to untrained agency agents in the field by use of codes or identifying signs or credentials?203

Project Artichoke began in 1951, with a scope of ... “Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?”204 All of the above projects were shuttled into MK-ULTRA in 1953, under the Technical Services Division, combining over 150 sub-projects205, undertaken at over 80 institutions206 such as universities, hospitals, prisons and pharmaceutical companies. Many of the projects were covertly ran through front organizations without the knowledge of the institution that hosted them.

The experiments and operations under MK-ULTRA have been shrouded in extreme secrecy. When it was enacted, then-CIA Director Allen Dulles exempted the program from normal financial controls, allowed the Technical Services Staff to begin experiments without contracts or written agreements with leadership, and ordered the financial office to pay any cost blindly on the signature of Sidney Gottlieb.207 CIA Document 17748 states that:

“There are just two individuals in TSD who have full substantial knowledge of the program and most of that knowledge is unrecorded. Both are highly skilled, highly motivated, professionally competent individuals. Part of their competence lies in their command of intelligence tradecraft. In protecting the sensitive nature of the American intelligence capability to manipulate human behavior, they apply “need to know” doctrine to their professional associates and their clerical assistants to a maximum degree...

TSD has pursued a policy of minimum documentation in keeping with the high sensitivity of some of the projects... The lack of consistent records precludes use of routine inspection procedures and raised a variety of questions regarding management and fiscal controls.”208

The two individuals the document refers to are likely Sidney Gottlieb, the director of MK-ULTRA, and Richard Helms, the Deputy Director of the CIA. In 1973, when Richard Helms became the Director of the CIA, he ordered all of the available MK-ULTRA files to be destroyed.209 Thanks to a clerical error, about 20,000 files survived the destruction order. However, not only were most of the files destroyed, but many experiments were so sensitive that they were never recorded in the first place, so we must understand that as brutal and astonishing as the recorded experimentation is, we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

Another file, MK-ULTRA document 87624, states:

“6% of the projects are of such an ultra-sensitive nature that they cannot and should not be handled by means of contracts which would associate CIA or the Government with the work in question. This 6% of the current research effort now lies entirely within two well-defined fields of endeavor... As present this results in ridiculous contracts, often with cut-outs, which do not spell out the scope or intent of the work.”210

The first 'well-defined field of endeavor' described by the document is developing the capability of biological and chemical weapons for the purpose of mind control. The second field of endeavor is entirely redacted from the document.