by Ellen Lacter, January 1, 2025
I. Brief Background on MKULTRA
In 1953, Allen Dulles, then director of the USA Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), named Dr. Sidney Gottlieb to direct the CIA’s MKULTRA program, which included experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new dissociated identities, new memories, and responses to hypnotic access codes. In 1972, then-CIA director Richard Helms and Gottlieb ordered the destruction of all MKULTRA records. A clerical error spared seven boxes, containing 1738 documents, over 17000 pages. This archive was declassified through a Freedom of Information Act Request in 1977, though the names of most people, universities, and hospitals were redacted. The CIA assigned each document a number preceded by “MORI” for “Management of Officially Released Information”– the CIA’s automated electronic system at the time of document release. These documents are accessible on the internet (see: https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/cia-mkultra-collection/). The United States Senate held a hearing exposing the abuses of MKULTRA, entitled “Project MKULTRA, the CIA’s Program of Research into Behavioral Modification” (1977).The declassified CIA documents provide a historical record of MKULTRA projects that sought to control individuals and to manipulate amnestic and dissociative states. Noteworthy citations include:
CIA Document, Project ARTICHOKE, MORI ID 144686 (1952)
“Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature such as self-preservation?”
MORI 017395 states that Subproject 136 (1961) would use drugs and hypnosis to induce and control dissociative states, including multiple personality disorder, and would use “psychological tricks”, reward, punishment, and electroshock to control behavior, including that of children.
MORI 190713 (1955), “Hypnotism and Covert Operations,” discusses placing the “conscious mind in a state of suspended animation” to make subjects “have amnesia both for the fact of having been hypnotized and the origin of whatever new idea or impetus to action has been implanted in his unconscious mind.”
MORI 190527 (1951) http://abuse-of-power.org/modules/content/index.php?id=31http://michael-robinett.com/declass/c000.htmdetails an experiment that successfully placed two girls in “very deep trance,” and used post-hypnotic coded words to make them carry and activate a bomb, followed by instructions for absolute amnesia. In a May 13, 1968, article in the Providence Evening Bulletin, George Estabrooks, described as a former consultant for the FBI and CIA, is quoted to have stated, “the key to creating an effective spy or assassin rests in splitting a man’s personality, or creating multipersonality” (Ross, 2000, p. 162).
II. Recently Declassified MKULTRA Documents
On December 23, 2024, the National Security Archive declassified over 1,200 additional documents related to the CIA’s MKULTRA Program, including transcripts from the U.S. Senate’s 1975 Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Senator Frank Church chaired this committee, thus its designation: the Church Committee. The Church Committee conducted closed-door interviews of Sidney Gottlieb, director of MKULTRA, on October 15 to 18, 1975. See US Senate website: (see https://www.senate.gov/about/resources/pdf/church-committee-full-citations.pdf)
The newly-declassified documents on the CIA MKULTRA Program are published on George Washington University’s (GWU) National Security Archive on this website here:
George Washington University describes the National Security Archive on its website as follows:
The National Security Archive combines a unique range of functions in one non governmental, non-profit institution. The Archive is simultaneously a research institute on international affairs, a library and archive of declassified U.S. documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, a public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information through the FOIA, and an indexer and publisher of the documents in books, microfiche, and electronic formats. The Archive’s approximately $1.8 million yearly budget comes from publication revenues and from private philanthropists such as the Carnegie Corporation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. As a matter of policy, the Archive receives no government funding.
(see https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nsa/arc_overview.html)
Brief Background on the Church Committee
The background on the establishment and proceedings of the Church Committee is as follows:
On January 21, 1975, Senator John Pastore introduced a resolution to establish a select committee to investigate federal intelligence operations and determine “the extent, if any, to which illegal, improper, or unethical activities were engaged in by any agency of the Federal Government.” The Senate approved the resolution, 82-4.
The committee decided that most of its hearings would be held in closed, executive session, in order to protect intelligence sources and methods. The committee held a series of public hearings in September and October of 1975 to educate the American public about the “unlawful or improper conduct” of the intelligence community, highlighting a few carefully selected cases of misconduct. These hearings examined a CIA biological agents program, a White House domestic surveillance program, IRS intelligence activities, and the FBI’s program to disrupt the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements.
(See: the United States Senate website: ( https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/church-committee.htm)
III. Content from Recently Declassified Documents on Mind Control Experiments and Operations
A. MKULTRA Plans for “Implanting Suggestion and Other Forms of Mental Control”
Within the GWU National Security Archive of recently declassified document is: [Document] T.S. 87624 (Approved for Release: 2019/04/03 C06767515): PROJECT MKULTRA: Extremely Sensitive Research and Development Programs, dated April, 1953.
This document discusses a “Research Program” that “has been actively underway since the middle of 1952 and has gathered considerable momentum during the past few months.”
The most disturbing content within this document may be that it states that the CIA intended to develop “a chemical material” that “could potentially aid in discrediting individuals, eliciting information, implanting suggestion and other forms of mental control.”
There is some dark irony here. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) is an organization with an Advisory Board composed of many members with ties to the CIA and MKULTRA (documented by Colin Ross in 1996*). Beginning in the early 1990s, the FMSF worked very hard to create a widespread narrative that individuals who reported recovered memories of child abuse, including memories of mind control abuse by the CIA, were suffering “False Memory Syndrome”**, thereby discrediting them and their memories. The FMSF promoted the idea that such “false memories” were the product of suggestion by “over-zealous” psychotherapists who implanted such memories in patients. The irony is that now we have proof that the CIA itself sought to implant “suggestion and other forms of mental control” in unwitting U.S. citizens (see below) and to discredit them. The FMSF accused psychotherapists of doing what the CIA, in fact, admits to intending.
* Colin Ross presented on this subject in a lecture titled: “The CIA and Military Mind Control Research: Building the Manchurian Candidate,” given at 9th Annual Western Clinical Conference on Trauma and Dissociation, April 18, 1996, Orange County, California. This lecture can be heard within this video beginning at minute 2:40: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnda1w929q. The transcript is posted here in full: https://mindscontrol.blogspot.com/p/ckln-fm-mind-control-series-part-1.html
** “False Memory Syndrome” was a fabricated disorder within the propaganda campaign of the FMSF and not any form of mental disorder acknowledged by psychology or medicine.
The irony is magnified when one considers that Peter Freyd, husband of Pamela Freyd, Co-founder and Executive Director of the FMSF, acknowledged in 1996 that: “Starting in 1988, I’ve been getting a lot of money from the U.S. Office of Naval Research” (Colin Ross, 2000***). The obvious question is: Why would the Navy want to support an organization building a narrative of “false memories” of abuse? Many individuals report having been victimized within abusive mind control projects, both experimentation and implementation, inflicted by branches of the U.S. military, as well as by the CIA.
*** Peter Freyd’s statement is cited by Colin Ross in his book, Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists, published in 2000.
Research bears up that therapists rarely influence clients to form “false memories”of abuse. See: Barlow, M. R., Pezdek, K., & Blandón-Gitlin, I. (2017). Trauma and memory. In S. N. Gold (Ed.), APA handbooks in psychology. APA handbook of trauma psychology: Foundations in knowledge (pp. 307-331). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association.
(See http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0000019-016 and https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/b31c0b_b314c3079e964c4595f6eddc00292435.pdf)
This documented MKULTRA intended objective of developing means of “implanting suggestion” supports the claims of people who report being victimized in government-sponsored mind control programs and ritualistic abuse networks that used drugs, torture, and deception to: 1) induce false memories and perceptions to terrorize and control them, and 2) cause them to dissociate a) their memories of abuse and b) prevent any awareness of the identities holding these memories.
Two well-documented sources of survivor accounts of such abuse, among many others, include:
- In the 1950s, Ewen Cameron, MD, of Allan Memorial Institute at McGill University in Montreal “treated” nonconsenting patients, most probably diagnosed with schizophrenia, in what inarguably amounted to torture. Between 1957 and 1960, MKULTRA funded this research (Weinstein, 1988).
Cameron’s treatment had two phases. In the “depatterning” phase, for 15 to 30 days (65 days in some cases), patients were administered massive doses of LSD and electroshock, usually combined with prolonged, drug-induced sleep, to ultimately induce a “tabula rasa” state and “complete amnesia” for one’s life (Cleghorn, 1990; Marks, 1979; McGonigle, 1999). The “psychic driving” phase followed 16-hours a day for several weeks. Patients were forced to listen to endless-loop taped descriptions of their painful past and inadequacies, sometimes shocking their legs to intensify the negative effect, followed by, for two to five weeks, listening to tapes describing how they wanted to get well and the behaviors to facilitate this, such as becoming self-assertive (an interesting irony) (Marks, 1979).
Harvey Weinstein (1988), psychiatrist and son of a victim, aptly describes Cameron’s work as “a wholesale attempt to erase minds and reprogramme” subjects (p. 147), assisted by MKULTRA.
Cleghorn, R. (1990). The McGill Experience of Robert A. Cleghorn, MD: Recollections of D. Ewen Cameron. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History / Bulletin canadien d’histoire de la médecine, 7 (1), 53-76. Retrieved June 12, 2010, from: http://www.cbmh.ca/index.php/cbmh/article/view/224/223
Marks, J. (1979). The Search for the Manchurian candidate: The CIA and mind control: The secret history of the behavioral sciences. W.W. Norton.
McGonigle, H.L. (1999) A Look at the Law and Government Mind Control Through Five Cases, Retrieved June 12, 2010, from: http://ritualabuse.us/mindcontrol/articles-books/the-law-and-mind-control-a-look-at-the-law-and-goverment-mind-control-through-five-cases/
Weinstein, H. (1988). Father, Son and CIA. Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada: Formac Publishing Co.
- On March 15, 1995, New Orleans clinical social worker Valerie B. Wolf and two of her clients, Claudia S. Mullen and Christine D’Nicola Ebner appeared before President Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments in Washington, D.C. to testify on mind control experimentation on children. Their testimony is published on the GWU National Security Archive on this website: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/radiation/dir/mstreet/commeet/meet12/trnsc12a.tx
Here is the relevant citation from the CIA document:
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, namely:
(a) Research to develop a capability in the covert use of· biological and chemical materials. This area involves the production of various physiological conditions which could support present or future clandestine operations. Aside from the offensive potential, the development of a comprehensive capability in this field of covert chemical and biological warfare gives us a thorough knowledge of the enemy’s theoretical potential, thus enabling us to defend ourselves against a foe who might not be as restrained in the use of these techniques as we are. For example: we intend to investigate the development of a chemical material which causes a reversible non-toxic aberrant mental state, the specific nature of which can be reasonably well predicted for each individual. This material could potentially aid in discrediting individuals, eliciting information, implnting suggestion and other forms of mental control
B. Sources of Experimental Subjects
The Church Committee interviews of Sidney Gottlieb include highly disturbing content about his leadership and actions within the MKULTRA program.
For example, the GWU National Security Archive states:
The declassified evidence also shows that Gottlieb was a key bureaucratic player who signed off on hundreds of MKULTRA subprojects and who developed clandestine relationships with universities, prisons, hospitals, private laboratories, and private foundations that made it difficult to trace the programs back to the Agency.
A document titled: Report of Inspection of MKULTRA/TSD [TSD: Technical Services Division, successor to TSS: Technical Services Staff, components of the CIA], acknowledges that MKULTRA sought to investigate “additional avenues to the control of human behavior,” and explains that MKULTRA deemed voluntary subjects inadequate for their purposes:
The final phase of testing of MKULTRA materials involves their application to unwitting subjects in normal life settings. It was noted earlier that the capabilities of MKULTRA substances to produce disabling or discrediting effects or to increase the effectiveness of interrogation of hostile subjects cannot be established solely through testing on volunteer populations. (Page 10 in the document)
According to the GWU National Security Archive, Sidney Gottlieb acknowledged in his testimony that MKULTRA included experimentation on unwitting subjects, including prisoners, university students, patients in hospitals and mental institution, drug informants, military personnel, foreign nationals, and “large numbers of bodies.”
- Prisoners
When Gottlieb was asked on the first day of testimony if he recalled “ARTICHOKE operations either in prisons, mental hospitals or other facilities that might hold either criminals or the criminally insane,” Gottlieb replied: “I don’t remember anything like that.” However, the next day, Gottlieb said he did remember that the Agency’s Technical Services Staff (TSS) conducted “general research” at hospitals with “psychochemicals,” although he took issue with the word “prison” to describe what he said were treatment facilities run by the Public Health Service for “people with criminal background.”
Document 2 in the GWU National Security Archive, titled: “Report of Proceedings, Hearing held before Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, Testimony of Sidney Gottlieb,” dated October 16, 1975, states:
Gottlieb eventually admits that experiments were conducted in “institutions” that “had people with criminal background” but who were “not confined as they would be in a prison.” He said he preferred the term “treatment facility,” admitting that it was often a “hospital” but “not a hospital for the criminally insane.”
Document 9 in the GWU National Security Archive, titled: “ARTICHOKE Conference, 22 January 1953,” dated February 13, 1953, also indicates:
“that the ARTICHOKE organization had been studying the use of certain facilities in the United States as testing grounds for new ideas, experiments, etc. particularly using criminals and the criminally insane.”
An article in the Dayly Caller article states that: “One of Gottlieb’s acid guinea pigs reportedly was an inmate at the federal prison at Alcatraz from Boston named Whitey Bulger.” Whitney Bulger was an infamous organized crime boss for the Irish mob. See Dayly Caller article dated December 12, 2024: Documents Reveal Just How Crazy The CIA’s MKULTRA Mind-Control Program Really Was: 2024-12-26_
https://daylycaller.com-documents_reveal_just_how_crazy_the_cias_mkultra_mind-control_program_really_was.pdf
- University Students
Gottlieb also acknowledged experimentation conducted at universities as follows: “[T]here was some of the work involving such testing that went on at hospitals that were affiliated with universities, and might have used university students as a source of volunteers.”
- Patients in Hospitals and Mental Institutions
A document titled: Report of Inspection of MKULTRA/TSD indicates that MKULTRA would conduct “intensive testing on human subjects” in “general hospitals and in prisons”:
The next phase of the MKULTRA program involves physicians, toxicologists, and other specialists in mental, narcotics, and general hospitals and in prisons, who are provided the products and findings of the basic research projects and proceed with intensive testing on human subjects. (Page 9 in the document)
Document 1 in the GWU National Security Archive, titled: “Report of Proceedings, Hearing held before Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, Testimony of Sidney Gottlieb,” dated October 15, 1975, discusses Gottlieb testimony concerning surveillance of U.S citizens abroad and use of drug agents, such as LSD and Meratran (a nervous system stimulant), to aid in interrogation.
Gottlieb said that “Project ARTICHOKE,” which started in the early 1950s involved “a whole series of what I call hypnotics or sleep inducing materials” in an attempt “to catch a person on his way down to the sleep stage, and hope that he would be more open and vulnerable to interrogation.” Key to these ARTICHOKE interrogations, Gottlieb says, was “that it was done in a sort of a medical setting.”
The GWU National Security Archive states:
Gottlieb was similarly evasive in response to questions about whether experiments were done at universities, finally settling on this statement: “[T]here was some of the work involving such testing that went on at hospitals that were affiliated with universities, and might have used university students as a source of volunteers.” Asked again about these kinds of projects on the final day of testimony, Gottlieb admitted that the CIA had “an extensive research program in regard to human experimentation on psychochemicals” under MKULTRA, adding that “a lot of these things were done in hospitals and mental institutions. And when you say hospitalization, the people were already hospitalized.”
- Drug Informants
The GWU National Security Archive includes that Gottlieb was asked about drug testing in CIA-supplied “safehouses” in New York City and San Francisco that were staffed by federal narcotics agent George White. On day four of the testimony, Committee staffers cited a December 1963 memo that indicated that prior CIA Director Richard Helms, had called the project with White “eight years of close collaboration.”
Gottlieb described how they used the safehouses to conduct an array of experiments using drugs, hypnosis and other techniques:
We developed a liaison with the Bureau of Narcotics whereby we would share information on LSD or any other drugs… The mechanism for this was our funding of two safe houses at different times for the Bureau of Narcotics which the Bureau would use for meeting informants and pursuing their own business, and which premises we would occasionally use for our own meetings.
The GWU National Security Archive states:
Gottlieb told the committee he met with him [White] “three to four times a year.” White “had some prior experience with OSS [Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA] during World War II in using marijuana-related material in interrogations,” Gottlieb said. “And that was during a period when I was looking for this kind of knowledgeable individual specialist in an operational sense.”
The GSU National Security Archive further states:
White first spoke to Gottlieb about the project in May 1952 and while he did not get “final clearance” until the next year, his “experiments” dosing unwitting people with Gottlieb’s LSD were already underway in January 1953 and months before the relationship was formalized in the summer of 1953.
The GWU National Security Archive continues:
Gottlieb claimed to not remember much about how White reported back to him on the results of his drug experiments, but said that White “was trying to use this material as close to the manner in which we at that time thought we might find some use of operationally, namely to see whether we could elicit more information from informants and other people he was dealing with.” He later added that White’s experiments “were very useful operationally. It was practically the only information we had that was relevant to an operational situation or something near it.” (Gottlieb agreed with the Committee that this was excepting “the interrogations that were being performed overseas by the Agency”—presumably the P-1 and A-2 interrogations that they discussed at length previously.)
Asked again to reflect on the project with White, Gottlieb said: “I don’t think this corner of the ULTRA project was looked upon as a scientific experiment, it was more of an operational, simulated operational test. And I don’t think, as I remember it, that we were hoping to get what I would call scientific information from it.”
- Military Personnel
The Dayly Caller article (cited above) states that:
Gottlieb was also asked about drug tests on unwitting “volunteers” in the early 1960s, including U.S. military operations designated DERBY HAT and THIRD CHANCE. While not recalling those specific operations, Gottlieb said that, during the Vietnam War, the military was “considering the use of LSD on a fairly large scale.”
The article quotes Gottlieb as having said:
[And by fairly large scale I am talking about in an interrogation sense, interrogating a number of prisoners – and that we were asked to come on that. And I forget what the occasion was, and I forget who was there. But I do remember being there at least once with Mr. [Desmond] FitzGerald when he was DDP [Deputy Director for Plans].- Foreign Nationals
A declassified document titled: Report of Inspection of MKULTRA/TSD, discusses MKULTRA testing on “foreign nationals” (perhaps also civilians):
It does not follow that termination of covert testing of MKULTRA materials on unwitting U.S. citizens will bring the program to a halt. Some testing on foreign nationals has been occurring under the present arrangements. Various U.S. deep cover agents overseas would appear to be more favorably situated than the U.S. narcotics agents to perform realistic testing. Finally, the operational use of the substances clearly serves the testing function in view of the· lack of predictability of human reactions. (Page 19 of the document)
- “Large Numbers of Bodies”
In addition to the reference to conducting operations “On a fairly large scale,” Document 2 in the GWU National Security Archive, titled: “Report of Proceedings, Hearing held before Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, Testimony of Sidney Gottlieb,” dated October 16, 1975, states:
Senate investigators cite a number of CIA documents during the course of their interview with Gottlieb, including evidence in one memo that there was a need for a “large number sof bodies” to be “used for research and experimentation” (Document 11) and an ARTICHOKE Committee memo indicating that U.S. prisoners of war had been subjected to CIA interrogation techniques while detained at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Similarly, Document 11, titled: “ARTICHOKE Conference – 16 April 1953,” dated May 11, 1953, states that Project Artichoke participants discussed the need for wide testing and that: “it was essential to find an area where large numbers of bodies would be used for research and experimentation:
Committee investigators ask Gottlieb about his participation in the ARTICHOKE Conference of April 16, 1953, in which “all hands agreed that a great deal of work was necessary and it was essential to find an area where large numbers of bodies would be used for research and experimentation.” A participant not identified in the redacted document “stated that in connection with the testing of drugs, he was quite certain a number of psychiatrists all over the United States would be willing to test new drugs, especially drugs that affect the mind,” a proposal that sounds very much like the programs that were developed under MKULTRA. Others at the meeting “said there were foundations, laboratories, etc. that would test new drugs.” All of the meeting participants agreed “that the wider the testing the better chances of success.”
The meeting included a discussion about the proposed use of ARTICHOKE techniques on U.S. prisoners of war returning from Korea, including “a detailed description of the problem to that point and … ARTICHOKE efforts to assist in the interrogation of the returnees.” Participants “agreed that the ‘hard core’ group and those who had been successfully indoctrinated were excellent subjects for ARTICHOKE work,” but the “general opinion” in the room was “that owing to publicity and poor handling, the ARTICHOKE techniques could not probably be brought to bear.”
- CIA Officers (who may have had knowledge of the experimental testing)
The GWU National Security Archive indicates that the newly declassified documents include Gottlieb testifying that the CIA “did administer the drug to CIA employees”:
… they “did administer the drug to CIA employees” for “defensive pharmacology purposes” to familiarize them with the feeling of LSD in case it was ever surreptitiously given to them. Gottlieb remembered it as a program where they approached “people who were going to serve in the Soviet Union or in places that would be exposed” and said that Agency officials were told: “We have this capability of exposing you to this drug … because you might someday be covertly attacked by it.”
Underscoring his point, one Senate staffer then read to Gottlieb a portion of a January 1952 memo from the chief of the CIA Medical Staff, who cited “ample evidence in reports of innumerable interrogations that the Communists are utilizing drugs, physical duress, electric shock, and possibly hypnosis against their enemies.” It was “difficult not to keep from becoming rabid about our apparent laxity,” the memo said. “We are forced by this mountain of evidence to assume a more aggressive role in the development of these techniques, but must be cautious to maintain strict inviolable control because of the havoc that could be wrought by such techniques in unscrupulous hands.
C. Projects to Accomplish Behavioral Control
Recently declassified documents describe efforts to accomplish behavioral control in addition to aiding in interrogation.
One program called QKHILLTOP “included a lot of research activities having to do with the behavioral control”: Document 3: U.S. Senate, “Report of Proceedings, Hearing held before Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, Testimony of Sidney Gottlieb,” October 17, 1975. The GWU National Security Archive explains:
Gottlieb is also asked about a little-known program called QKHILLTOP, which the Church Committee report later defined as “a project to study Chinese Communist brainwashing techniques and to develop interrogation techniques.”
Gottlieb remembered it as “a cryptonym that referred to a group of behaviorable, control oriented research activities” that “included a lot of research activities having to do with the behavioral control.” HILLTOP included, “P-1 research, A-2 research… what we have been referring to as narcohypnosis interrogation techniques were also included under it.” The program would later transform into the Human Ecology Fund.
Another program called Project ARTICHOKE had the objective “to arrive at means of control, rather than the more limited concept involved in ‘special interrogations’.” Document 8: Memorandum for Deputy Director (Plans), “Project ARTICHOKE,” July 14, 1952, stated, per the GWU National Security Archive:
The committee refers to this memo on the first day of testimony in asking whether CIA mission chiefs were nominally in charge of “special interrogations” that occurred in their areas of responsibility. (Gottlieb says they were.) Attendees at the meeting “understood and confirmed” that, among other things, “the scope of Project Artichoke is research and testing to arrive at means of control, rather than the more limited concept involved in “special interrogations.”
D. Use of Electroshock Torture
A number of the recently declassified documents reference the use of electroshock in the CIA projects, admitting to their dangerous nature.
A document titled: Report of Inspection of MKULTRA/TSD, acknowledges that MKULTRA sought to investigate “additional avenues to the control of human behavior,” including electro-shock, as follows.
- Scope of the MKULTRA charter: (1) Over the ten-year life of the program many additional avenues to the control of human behavior have been designated by the TSD management as appropriate to investigation under the MKULTRA charter, including radiation, electro-shock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harrassment substances, and paramilitary devices and materials.
See: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docsREPORT%20OF%20INSPECTION%20OF%20M%5B15603475%5D.pdf
Similarly, the document later recommends that the Deputy Director:
… operate MKULTRA as a program for research and development of chemical, biological, and radioactive materials, and of techniques for the employment of electro-shock, capable of producing human behavioral or physiological change.
The document describes that some “test subjects” became very ill:
In a number of instances. however, the test subject has become ill for hours or days, including hospitalization in at least one case, and the agent could only follow-up by guarded inquiry after the test subject’s return to normal life. Possible sickness and attendant economic loss are inherent contingent effects of the testing. (Page 12 in the document)
Document 6: Memorandum for Assistant Director/Scientific Intelligence from Chief, Medical Staff, “Special Interrogations,” May 19, 1952, “recommends above all that the CIA Medical Staff be more involved in secret CIA interrogations using drugs, electroshocks and other dangerous techniques.”
Many individuals report being tortured with electro-shock in government-sponsored mind control abuse. Some of the strongest corroborative evidence for abusive mind control is a 2007 internet survey in which 1471 people from at least 40 countries responded as survivors to the Extreme Abuse Survey (EAS) (Becker, Karriker, Overkamp, & Rutz, 2007). Of 1119 EAS respondents who replied to the item: “My memories of extreme abuse include electroshock,” 558 (50%) said “Yes.” See: Becker, T., Karriker, W., Overkamp, B., & Rutz, C. (2007). Extreme Abuse Survey Project. Retrieved June 12, 2010, from: http://extreme-abuse-survey.net http://extreme-abuse-survey.net).
E. Brainwashing Techniques to Discredit Unwitting Individuals
The GWU National Security Archive includes Gottlieb testimony concerning studying “highly advanced brainwashing techniques.” This includes administration of “a large dose of LSD in a scheme to have them declared mentally ill by a physician who was also unaware that the drug had been administered,” in order to discredit this individual “in the eyes of the group with which he had been working,” and to cause the individual to be committed to a mental institution. Here is the GWU description of this testimony:
On the third day of testimony, Gottlieb was asked about a little-known program called QKHILLTOP, about which he offers few details, although it has since been learned that it was a program through which the CIA sought to study what they believed were highly advanced brainwashing techniques in use by Communist China. One of the Church Committee staffers described a record they had seen about a HILLTOP interrogation in which an unwitting subject had been given a large dose of LSD in a scheme to have them declared mentally ill by a physician who was also unaware that the drug had been administered.
The cable I referred to indicated that 200 units of P-1 were given to subject number one, and that this precipitated ‘severe classic paranoid reaction’. The subject believed that light bulbs were emitting hot and cold rays to produce ‘scientific death’, and told the guard that someone was trying to read his mind and went into a schizophrenic reaction.
“[T]he doctor diagnosed the subject as mentally ill,” according to the document. “And it was apparently done in order to have the subject labeled as mentally ill, which would allow him to be discredited in the eyes of the group with which he had been working.” Gottlieb did not remember that particular case but said “it had been recognized that this kind of thing might be a need that P-1 might help with, to make somebody behave erratically for the purpose of his colleagues losing faith in his ability to act responsibly.”
Senate investigators later asked Gottlieb about a separate MKDELTA Interrogation that was reported as a “success” because “it induced a paranoid reaction in the presence of an unwitting psychiatrist” such that it was possible to have the subject “committed to an institution at will, thereby denying to the [deleted] forever a loyal follower.” Gottlieb said that using LSD guaranteed that “you are almost sure to get some peculiar behavior on the part of an individual. And to the extent that that was useful to in Agency operations, it is an effective use of P-1.”
This testimony acknowledges the willingness of the CIA to psychologically harm, discredit, and even institutionalize individuals who threaten its agenda. Given this documentation, it is no surprise that the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, with its many ties to U.S. Intelligence agencies, engaged in large-scale efforts to discredit victims of abusive mind control projects, such as MKULTRA. Many individuals reporting such abuse have subsequently been mis-diagnosed as delusional and schizophrenic.
F. Remote Measurement of Physiological Processes
A document titled: Report of Inspection of MKULTRA/TSD lists the ongoing projects of MKULTRA, as follows:
- TSD has initiated 144 projects relating to the control of human behavior; i.e., [blanked out] during the ten years of operation of the MKULTRA program. Twenty-five (25) of these projects remain in existence at the present time, while a number of others are in various stages of termination.
- Active projects may be grouped under the following arbitrary headings. Many projects involve activity in two or more of the areas listed.
- basic research in materials and processes
- procurement of research materials
- testing of substances on animals and human beings
- development of delivery techniques
- projects in offensive/defensive BW, CW, and radiation
- miscellaneous projects; e.g. (1) petroleum sabotage, (2) defoliants, (3) devices for remote measurement of physiological processes (Pages 21 to 22 of the document)
It is of interest that “devices for remote measurement of physiological processes” is on this list. Many individuals claim that such devices have been used to surveil and monitor them.
G. Operational Use of Experimental Substances
The GWU National Security Archive provides evidence that these projects went beyond experimentation. The behavioral controls were implemented in operations:
Gottlieb also admitted to both testing/experimentation to understand the properties of substances, and operational use of substances. Gottlieb said there was “such a thing as operationally testing … where the two get combined.” On the one hand, “it is being potentially useful to an approved operation of the Agency, and the other is, it is providing what I would call research information in a testing sense.”
H. Limited Value of LSD in Interrogation
Gottlieb also discussed the limitations of the usefulness of drugs in interrogation. Per the GWU National Security Archive:
But Gottlieb said that his opinion about the usefulness of LSD had changed with time.
“[T]here was a continuum, if I can call it that, at one end of which was, if not an expectation, the possibility of this material being something you administered to somebody who later, when he is asked questions, simply gives answers where he wouldn’t before. That is one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum was that the material had no specific effect on interrogation, but what it did was to create a caricature of a person’s normal personality so that a skilled interrogator or psychologist can exploit the weaknesses that are now caricature.”
The document titled: Report of Inspection of MKULTRA/TSD, also states that Project MKDELTA did not achieve much success in using drugs to support interrogation, but did help develop a “psychological theory of interrogation”:
- Technical shortcomings of the drugs: As of 1960 no effective knockout pill, truth serum, aphrodisiac, or recruitment pill was known to exist. MKDELTA was described as inherently a high-risk, low-yield field of operations. Three years later the situation remains substantially unchanged, with the exception that real progress has been made in the use of drugs in support of interrogation. Ironically, however, the progress here has occurred in the development of a total psychological theory of interrogation, in which the use of drugs has been relegated to a support role. (Page 17 in the document)
I. Suppression of Information and Disbandment of MKULTRA Project
A document titled: Report of Inspection of MKULTRA/TSD describes collaboration with local authorities to suppress information about people who experienced “an extreme reaction to a test substance” [drugs administered to unwitting subjects] and “termination of this phase of the MKULTRA program”:
An extreme reaction to a test substance could lead to a Bureau request for cooperation from local authorities in suppressing information of the situation. This would in turn broaden the circle of individuals who possessed at least circumstantial evidence of the nature of the activity. Weighing possible benefits of such testing against the risks of compromise and of resulting damage to CIA has led the Inspector General to recommend termination of this phase of the MKULTRA program. Existing. checks and balances on the working level management of such testing do not afford the senior command of CIA adequate protection against the high risks involved. (Page 15 in the document)
The document further describes use of “harrassment [sic] materials (not controlled under the MKDELTA regulation)” without describing their nature or the agency under which this occurred:
He [Sidney Gottlieb] observed that the Clandestine Service had encouraged TSD on various occasions to develop and maintain the operational capability in special drugs and chemicals, but that TSD had received little or no guidance in directing the work and that the Clandestine Services had up to that time shown little inclination to use the end products operationally. He indicated that there had been approximately 100 operations over the eight years employing harrassment [sic] materials (not controlled under the MKDELTA regulation) and only nine operations employing disabling drugs, (NB: two-thirds of these involved the use of drugs in interrogations). No use of lethal substances was reported.
The document states that some case officers had moral objections to the work of MKDELTA:
- Negative attitudes toward the use of MKDELTA materials; problems in the training of case officers in this field: The 1960 Gottlieb report observed that some case officers have basic moral objections to the concept of MKDELTA and therefore refuse to use the materials. Some senior officers were reported to believe that the proper employment of the capability required more sophistication than most case officers possessed and that there would be a tendency toward over-reliance on and misuse of drugs in lieu of perfecting classic espionage techniques. Finally, it was suggested that MKDELTA controls were so restrictive as to have generated a general defeatism among case officers concerning the chances of getting approval for use of materials in routine rather than extreme situations. (Pages 19 to 20 in the document)
Finally, it is of interest that this document claims that MKULTRA was unlikely to return to research “in the fields of applied psychology, sociology, anthropology, and graphology,” adding that, “The present management is unlikely to return to these fields of research under the MKULTRA charter.”:
- The current management of TSD bas initiated a policy of directing the activities of MKULTRA and of the Behavioral Activities Branch towards operations and away from long-range research. Prior to this change in policy which occurred in 1962, MKULTRA sponsored a large number of projects in the fields of applied psychology, sociology, anthropology, and graphology. The present management is unlikely to return to these fields of research under the MKULTRA charter. (Page 22 in the document)
This final clause leaves open the possibility that such research would continue to occur within other government bodies. In fact, many individuals report that their mind control abuse was conducted within military intelligence, the National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies.
IV. Suspicious Death of Army Special Operations Division (SOD) scientist Frank Olson
Within the administration of drugs to CIA employees was the administration of large dose of LSD to a group of CIA scientists in November 1953 at a “retreat” at the Army’s Special Operations Division (SOD) at Deep Creep Lake in Western Maryland. The GWU National Security Archive states that Gottlieb said that the CIA’s relationship with SOD had:
an offensive connotation in the sense of preparing for a contingency either in a hot war or some special operation that was levied on TSD, and also as a defensive study of the potential of U.S. individuals or installations being covertly attacked by BW materials abroad.
Document 4: U.S. Senate, “Report of Proceedings, Hearing held before Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, Testimony of Sidney Gottlieb,” October 18, 1975, discusses the final day of Gottlieb’s testimony, in which he was questioned about the mysterious 1953 death of Army Special Operations Division (SOD) scientist Frank Olson days after his unwitting participation in one of Gottlieb’s LSD experiments.
Biochemist Frank Olson was unwittingly administered LSD at the Deep Creek Lake experiment in 1953. Frank Olson fell to his death just ten days after this “retreat” from the 13th Floor of New York City’s Statler Hotel where he was staying under the supervision of a CIA chemist, Richard Lashbrook. The CIA alleged that Frank Olson jumped to his death – a suicide.
The GWU National Security Archive includes the following testimony related to the Deep Creek Lake experiment and Frank Olson:
One Senate staffer reminded Gottlieb that he had said in his opening statement “that either sometime during the summer or fall you met with individuals from SOD, and that at the meeting it was discussed whether there should be a covert application of LSD to determine what the effects would be on a meeting of someone adding LSD to a drink or whatever.” Gottlieb strongly implied that Olson attended this meeting and thus would have known that he was among a group of CIA and SOD officials who had agreed at some unspecified time to be given the drug without their knowledge.
While he claimed to not remember details, Gottlieb said that “unwitting administration was talked about as being the only way to determine” what effect it would have in real operations. “[U]nwitting in this sense obviously meant that they knew they might get it sometime,” he said. Gottlieb said he recalled “a mix of individuals being there. And my recollection, including Mr. Olson, is that they might not have been completely the ones that were at the Western Maryland meeting, but roughly the same mix.” Olson is one of just a few people that he specifically remembers attending the earlier meeting. “I had the impression,” Gottlieb said, “that we had the agreement of that group at some time in the future to participate in that kind of an experiment.” There was no formal agreement. “There certainly wasn’t anything in writing.”
One Committee staffer wondered why, if the object of the experiment was to determine the effect of LSD on the unwitting, they chose to administer the drug to “a group of people who knew that at some point they would be given LSD, and secondly, a group of people a number of whom had previously taken LSD?” Gottlieb said they hoped they would not remember the agreement and that “their reactions would be innocent ones.” For the ones who had taken LSD before, “there was an ancillary gain, would they recognize it or not.”
Regarding how the LSD was given to the attendees at Deep Creek Lake, Gottlieb remembered that it “was administered in Cointreau, and that Dr. Lashbrook had prepared that earlier, and that it had about 60 gammas [micrograms] per whatever was considered a drink-sized amount of Cointreau.” Asked if he had been given LSD that night, Gottlieb said, “As I remember it, yes. But my remembrance is hazy on this point.” Asked again whether he had taken LSD that night, Gottlieb said, “My recollection is that I did.” Asked if medical observers were present, Gottlieb said there were not.
Following this retreat, Olson allegedly appeared very distraught and told his wife that he had made “a terrible mistake” (See: https://frankolsonproject.com/james_starrs/, citing Chapter 3, of: A Voice for the Dead: A Forensic Investigator’s Pursuit of the Truth in the Grave, by James E. Starrs, LL.M, Professor of Law and Professor of Forensic Sciences at George Washington University, with Katherine Ramsland, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2005)
The initial autopsy report of Frank Olson’s body indicated that he had “multiple lacerations on his face and neck as well as his lower extremities” from the broken glass of the window and the fall, and no indications of a blow to his skull.
However, in 1994, Frank Olson’s body was exhumed and another autopsy was performed. The 1994 autopsy showed no lacerations at the sites indicated in the first autopsy report, and substantial evidence of a blow to the skull.
James E. Starrs, LL.M, in examining the autopsy results and the other forensic evidence, concludes:
In the present state of our factual knowledge about the death of Dr. Olson, I would venture to say that the sub-galeal hematoma is singular evidence of the possibility that Dr. Olson was struck a stunning blow to the head by some person or instrument prior to his exiting through the window of Room 1018A, a person or persons with a homicidal frame of mind The convergence of this physical evidence from our scientific investigations with the results of our non-scientific inquiries raises this possibility from the merely possible to the realm of real and incontestable probability.
Eric Olson, son of Frank Olson, maintains a website titled: The Frank Olson Project: https://frankolsonproject.com/ in which he makes a very strong case that his father was having misgivings about the work he was doing for SOD and that, in turn, the CIA murdered his father.
The Frank Olson Project website includes the document package provided to the Olson family during their 1975 meeting with CIA Director William Colby at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
(See: https://frankolsonproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/William_Colby-1975-documents.pdf)
This document includes three letters of reprimand from then-CIA director, Allen Dulles, to Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, Chief Chemical Division, Technical Services Staff, concerning the alleged “suicide” of Frank Olson. One reprimand stated as follows:
I have personally reviewed the files from your office concerning the use of a drug on an unwitting group of individuals. In recommending the unwitting application of the drug to your superior, you apparently did not give sufficient emphasis to the necessity for medical collaboration and for proper consideration of the rights of the individual to whom it was being administered. This is to inform you that it is my opinion that you exercised poor judgment in this case. Sincerely, Allen W. Dulles, Director.
This letter of reprimand is CIA admission of wrongdoing in administering drugs to Frank Olson. It is not an admission of killing Frank Olson.
In Conclusion
The CIA documents declassified in December, 2024, provide further evidence, in addition to prior declassified CIA documents, of the CIA’s substantial use of deception, manipulation, extreme abuse, experimentation, and operations, on a large scale, that corroborates the accounts of individuals who report being abused within government-sponsored abusive mind-control projects.
Psychotherapy providers, medical providers, law enforcement, the judiciary, the media, etc., have no reasonable basis for discounting reports of such abuse by such institutions or for dismissing individuals simply because they report having been abused in these calculated ways. We need to stay informed, humble, respectful, compassionate, and deeply concerned.
Ellen Lacter, Ph.D., January 1, 2026