The project attempted to produce a perfect truth drug for interrogating suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War and to explore other possibilities of mind control.

In some cases, academic researchers were funded through grants from CIA front organizations but were unaware that the CIA was using their work for these purposes. It often conducted experiments without the subjects' knowledge or consent. The CIA wanted to use similar methods on their own captives, and was interested in manipulating foreign leaders with such techniques, devising several schemes to drug Fidel Castro. Its aim was to develop mind-controlling drugs for use against the Soviet bloc in response to alleged Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind control techniques on U.S. The project was headed by Sidney Gottlieb but began on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles on April 13, 1953. Kinzer gives evidence of the continuation of a Nazi agenda, citing the CIA's secret recruitment of Nazi torturers and vivisectionists to continue experimenting on thousands of subjects, and Nazis were brought to Fort Detrick, Maryland, to instruct CIA officers on the lethal uses of sarin gas. Origin of the project Īccording to Stephen Kinzer, the CIA project 'was a continuation of the work begun in WWII-era Japanese facilities and Nazi concentration camps on subduing and controlling human minds.' Kinzer writes that MKUltra's use of mescaline on unwitting subjects was a practice that Nazi doctors had begun in the camps at Auschwitz and Dachau. Some surviving information about MKUltra was declassified in 2001.īackground Sidney Gottlieb approved of an MKUltra sub-project on LSD in this June 9, 1953, letter. In 1977, a Freedom of Information Act request uncovered a cache of 20,000 documents relating to MKUltra, which led to Senate hearings. Investigative efforts were hampered by CIA Director Richard Helms's order that all MKUltra files be destroyed in 1973 the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the small number of documents that survived Helms's order. MKUltra was revealed to the public in 1975 by the Church Committee of the United States Congress and Gerald Ford's United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States (the Rockefeller Commission). The CIA operated using front organizations, although some top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA's involvement. : 74 MKUltra's scope was broad, with activities carried out under the guise of research at more than 80 institutions aside from the military, including colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies. and Canadian citizens as unwitting test subjects. The program engaged in illegal activities, including the use of U.S. It was organized through the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. MKUltra was preceded by Project ARTICHOKE. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions, such as the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals without the subjects' consent, electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken people and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.

Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra) was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Not to be confused with Edgewood Arsenal human experiments.

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