Project MKULTRA - CIA mind control program CIA Files & Congressional Investigations - Download

Project MKULTRA - CIA mind control program CIA Files & Congressional Investigations

17,241 pages of CIA Files.

Because of reports that the Soviet Union may have developed the capability to affect human behavior through the use of drugs, the CIA initiated MKULTRA.

In the 1950s and 60s, the CIA engaged in  extensive programs of human experimentation, using drugs, psychological, and other means, in search of techniques to control human behavior for counterintelligence and covert action purposes.

MKULTRA was the principal CIA program involving the research and development of chemical and biological agents.

Much of this research, which principally involved the use of LSD, was conducted at well-known institutions under the control and direction of researchers, and to the standards of, those institutions. The research and its results were generally unclassified and published in the normal manner by such institutions. Other MKULTRA research was performed in a questionable manner: research and tests were conducted on individuals who were not witting that they were the subjects of a research program and that they were being given a drug. This unwitting testing generally took place in social situations among friends and acquaintances of the researchers.

A tragic result of the testing of LSD by the CIA was the death of Dr. Frank Olson, a civilian employee of the Army, who died on November 27, 1953. His death followed his participation in a CIA experiment with LSD. As part of this experiment, Olson unwittingly received approximately 70 micrograms of LSD in a glass of Cointreau he drank on November 19,1953. The drug had been placed in the bottle by a CIA officer, Dr. Robert Lashbrook, as part of an experiment he and Dr. Sidney Gottlieb performed at a meeting of Army and CIA scientists.

Shortly after this experiment, Olson exhibited symptoms of paranoia and schizophrenia. Accompanied by Dr. Lashbrook, Olson sought psychiatric assistance in New York City from a physician, Dr. Harold Abramson, whose research on LSD had been funded indirectly by the CIA. While in New York for treatment, Olson fell to his death from a tenth story window in the Statler Hotel.

 When questions were raised within the Agency about MKULTRA, it was discontinued. A Memorandum from the CIA Inspector General to the CIA Director, dated 7/20/63, states,  It was “concerned with the research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.”

In the spring of 1963, during a wide-ranging Inspector General survey of the CIA's Technical Services Division, a member of the Inspector General's staff, John Vance, learned about MKULTRA and about the project involving the surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting, nonvoluntary human subjects. As a result of the discovery and the Inspector General’s subsequent report, this testing was halted and much tighter administrative controls were imposed on the program. According to the CIA, the project was decreased significantly each budget year until its complete termination in the late 1960s.

 A project with a similar scope with activities based in Asia and Europe was then stared in 1964 called MKSEARCH

 In January 1973, MKULTRA records were destroyed by the CIA's Technical Services Division personnel acting on the verbal orders of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, Chief of TSD. Dr. Gottlieb  testified to the Church Committee, and former CIA Director Helms confirmed, the ordering the records destruction, Dr. Gottlieb was carrying out the verbal order of then DCI Helms.

An article appeared about MKULTRA in the New York Times in 1974.

MKULTRA' nature and termination were learned by the CIA's Congressional overseers. Public attention was later drawn to the program in the 1975 Rockefeller Commission Report and in the Church Committee hearings in 1976.

In 1977, the agency uncovered additional MKULTRA files in the budget and fiscal records that were not indexed under the name MKULTRA. These documents detailed over 150 subprojects that the CIA funded.

 
CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS REPORTING

 In addition to the CIA Files the collection contains 1,128 pages of reporting from the  Church Committee (formally the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) and the Rockefeller Commission (formally the United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States), encompassing some significant information on MKULTRA.


President Ford Administration Files on Frank Olson

27 pages of files from the Ford Administration covering of to handle the revelation about Frank Olson. The first memo is from Dick Cheney to Donald Rumsfeld.