Project MKULTRA

Project MKULTRA (pronounced M-K-ULTRA) was the code name for a secret CIA human experimentation program. Project MKULTRA occurred from the early 1950's to the late 1960's and was used to test mind control. This program took some willing, and some unwilling, Canadian and US citizens and performed experiments on them. These experiments ranged from dosing the patients with drugs, like LSD, to shocking them into comas. Project MKULTRA was also granted 6% of the CIA operating budget in 1953, without oversight or accounting. Project MKULTRA ended up spending an estimated $10 Million or more.


One 1955 MKULTRA document gives an indication of the size and range of the effort, this document shows what the CIA was trying to accomplish with these tests, including:


-Substances which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public.
-Substances which increase the efficiency of mentation and perception.
-Materials which will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol
-Materials which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
-Materials which will produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way so that they may be used for malingering, etc.
-Materials which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness.
-Substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so-called "brain-washing".
-Materials and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use.
-Physical methods of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use.
-Substances which produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc.
-Substances which will produce "pure" euphoria with no subsequent let-down.
-Substances which alter personality structure in such a way that the tendency of the recipient to become dependent upon another person is enhanced.
-A material which will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning.
-Substances which will lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men when administered in undetectable amounts.
-Substances which promote weakness or distortion of the eyesight or hearing faculties, preferably without permanent effects.
-A knockout pill which can surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis.
-A material which can be surreptitiously administered by the above routes and which in very small amounts will make it impossible for a person to perform physical activity.




The CIA did many tests with a variety of psychoactive drugs including but not limited to LSD, heroin, morphine, MDMA, mescaline, psilocybin, marijuana, alcohol, barbiturates, and amphetamines. Along with drugs, in Canada, a recruited psyciatrist Donald Cameron also experimented with electroconvulsive therapy at thirty to forty times the normal power. His "driving" experiments consisted of putting subjects into drug-induced coma for weeks at a time (up to three months in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements. His experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and postpartum depression. Many of the patients suffered permanently from his actions. His treatments resulted in victims' incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and thinking their interrogators were their parents.


In 1977 Senator Ted Kennedy said: 
"The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an "extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to "unwitting subjects in social situations." At least one death, that of Dr. Olson, resulted from these activities. The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense. The agents doing the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers"


Information about this CIA program is limited due to the CIA director Richard Helms, who ordered the destruction of all MKULTRA files in 1973. This made a full investigation of the program impossible, until 1977 when the FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) uncovered a cache of 20,000 documents relating to Project MKULTRA. This cache made it possible to get a general idea of the program, even though most of the documents were destroyed. Given the CIA's purposeful destruction of most records, its failure to follow informed consent protocols with thousands of participants, the uncontrolled nature of the experiments, and the lack of follow-up data, the full impact of MKULTRA experiments, including deaths, will never be known.