“We do not target American citizens . . . The nation must to a degree take it on faith that we who lead the CIA are honorable men, devoted to the nation’s service.” (Acid Dreams—The Complete Social History of LSD, 1992) His statement was proven to be a lie when…
Sidney Gottlieb, CIA’s “Black Sorcerer” brought the infamous projects MK-ULTRA and MK-SEARCH to a halt, pronouncing the entire exercise had been a waste of time; he cited fatal scientific and operational flaws. Specifically, the biological and chemical techniques used to control human behavior were too unpredictable in their effect on…
Many of these “throwaways” of society had been secretly subjected to CIA-mind control experiments. Dr. Gary Hackney, a psychologist who conducted behavior modification experiments into how much pain a subject could withstand at VA Hospital in Minnesota on the homeless veterans, soon recognized that these vets were not “crazy” they…
In January 1973, as Helms was leaving the Agency and James Schlesinger was coming in, Project OFTEN was abruptly canceled. And he ordered all documents pertaining to the unconscionable behavior control experiments — ARTICHOKE, MONARCH, OFTEN, Operation Midnight Crisis (collectively referred to as MK-ULTRA) destroyed. The outgoing CIA director and…
A front-page banner headline in The New York Times came just months after CIA’s involvement in the Watergate scandal was exposed. The article prompted President Ford to appoint a Commission headed by Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller (Feb. 1975) to investigate CIA’s unlawful domestic activities. The Commission’s report attempted to downplay…
The Commission’s task was to investigate CIA’s unlawful domestic activities. The Commission report attempted to downplay the scope of MK-ULTRA and its offshoots, barely including two pages about these experiments. The section about an employee of the Army who jumped from a hotel window after CIA operatives slipped LSD into…
In CIA et al v. Sims et al (no 83-1075, decided April 16, 1986), the majority opinion held that disclosure of the names of scientists and institutions involved in MKULTRA posed “an unacceptable risk of revealing intelligence sources.” The majority of the Court rationalized: “. . . it is conceivable…
*1975–1976: Church Committee Report laid the foundation for NSA surveillance controversy The Church Committee investigation was the most far reaching and comprehensive; the Committee interviewed 800 individuals and conducted 250 executive (closed) hearings and 21 public hearings. The Church Committee Report (14 reports in all) provides the most extensive review…
Following the disclosure that Frank Olson had been surreptitiously given LSD, the family met with President Ford who told them that he was “distressed that the family had not previously been told the truth.” They later met with then-CIA Director William Colby, who apologized for any role the agency played…
Among other matters, it prohibited “experimentation with drugs on human subjects, except with the informed consent, in writing and witnessed by a disinterested third party, of each such human subject and in accordance with the guidelines issued by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects for Biomedical and…
The joint Senate hearings were led by Sen. Edward Kennedy; the focus was Project MK-ULTRA. But the hearings, as John Marks concluded, added little information about CIA’s behavior-control programs. CIA officials (both past and present) who testified adopted the pattern of lying to Congress as they had lied to the…
The book is out of print, but a “Researchers Edition“ (2nd ed. 1994) is online. Walter Bowart was the first author to argue that the U.S. government conducted covert psychological experiments on unwitting Americans; he did so armed with key documents he had obtained under FOIA. Bowart coined the name…
