mkultra

piggybacking of the essay about psychedelics and counterculture in the 1950’s, mkultra was an illegal human experiment designed by the CIA to see how mind altering drugs had an affect on behavior. this research was carried out across different institutions and penitentiaries. they were interested in the development and use of chemicals and to control human behavior, as well as other methods such as electrical shock to manipulate the human functions.

mkultra was an umbrella project for 149 sub-projects ran by chemist sidney gottlieb. mkultras phase was dedicated to federal institutions, hospitals and pharma houses specified to find new substances for these brainwashing techniques. the control group was unwilling and unaware subjects, american soldiers returning whom the government was afraid were being infiltrated by ‘soviet brain perversion techniques.’ this group also included prisoners, the mentally impaired, citizen volunteers, such as ken kesey who then later when on to conduct his own acid trials to the public. (read more here) mkultras program preyed on the most vulnerable members of society.

word spread of this “brain warfare” through newspaper headlines as well as sources from the cia, which terrified but also fascinated the american public. thus leading to the approval of the mind-control program on april 3, 1953.

it is noted that in the late 1940’s the soviet union has engaged in efforts to produce lsd, and that they had attempted to buy the world’s supply of that substance. a cia officer reported that the agency was terrified of the soviet lsd program, mainly because the lack of knowledge about the drug in the states. it was scarily reported that the government took their interest from defensive to offensive, “LSD could be potentially useful in “[gaining] control of bodies whether they were willing or not.”

a recount of these experiences by whitney bulger, a participant of the experiment, recorded it as: “total loss of appetite, hallucinating, the room would change shape, hours of paranoia…” this was the cia’s main interest for its effectiveness in interrogations.

i read that there was a victim in montreal, canada named Esther Schrier, whose legacy lives through her son, Lloyd, whom Esther was pregnant with at the time. this involved unethical psychiatric treatments at mcgills university allan memorial institute, where Esther went to see care, and was later an unwilling subject for the brainwashing experiments. she spent 30 days in a drug induced coma, only waking for 3 feedings per day, they broke down her mind and body so bad, through drugs and electroshock. though she remained strong, and gave birth to a healthy boy but nobody was able to return to the lives they had before.

something even more f***ed up was operation midnight climax. it was an cia funded mkultra project where they set up a trap in an unsuspecting safehouse on chestnut street in san francisco. they used the safehouse for "dry runs" in the intermediate stage between the laboratory and actual operations. they installed a two way mirror, as well as bugging equipment, and used prostitutes to lure unsuspecting men into these rooms where the were drugged with lsd and monitored behind this two way mirror. tom o’neill wrote: “the goal [of midnight climax] was to see if LSD, paired with sex, could be used to coax sensitive information from the men — something of a psychedelic honeypot experiment.” william hawkins, a 25 year old berkeley student who helped install the equipment noted that white “kept a pitcher of martinis in the refrigerator,..”

george hunter white, the head of this project, said: “I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun,” White later said. “Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?" it was said that white had the perfect excuse to be around these drugs, and no qualms when it came to unwitted testing, and with his job he had access to all the subjects they may need. funny enough, as most narcotic agents would be against drugs, white died because alcohol destroyed his liver.

let me note that i had such a hard time finding resources while looking up these things… a lot were published journals or archives from the cia, there were really only a few articles on both of these topics which made it hard to get clear information on both projects.

the reason there is so little information on these trials is because in 1973, the files of mkultra were ordered to be destroyed by a cia director, hoping to erase the approval of this program. the destruction was authorized by sidney gottlieb, head of mkultra… despite the efforts to erase the past of this program, information was recovered from fiscal reports about the institution involvement. 4 years later, cia director held a testimony about the horrors of secretive human drugging and ethical problems in production.

“The knowledge that the Agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its mission.”

“Precautions must be taken not only to protect operations from exposure to enemy forces but also to conceal these activities from the American public in general,” - cia general director 1957