1950s: Dr. Max Fink is considered the godfather of electroshock therapy in the United States.

In the early 1950s and beyond, Fink was a CIA Project Artichoke consultant. In 1951, Paul Gaynor and Morse Allen of CIA’s Security Research Service (SRS) oversaw ARTICHOKE. They worked closely with Fink in New York City to thoroughly explore the merits of electroshock techniques for interrogations. The CIA was…

1950s–1960s: Dr. Ewen Cameron Destroyed Minds at Allan Memorial Hospital in Montreal

Cameron was an internationally prominent psychiatrist who developed torture techniques on his involuntary hospitalized patients — mostly women. His brutal techniques involved a three-stage method for “brainwashing” in order to eliminate the will and establish control: first, “mental depatterning” achieved through drug-induced coma; massive neuroleptic drug cocktails induced extended sleep…

1952: ARTICHOKE Memo: “Let’s get into the technology of assassination. . .”

A Memorandum for the Record, dated Jan. 31, 1975, reviews “available file information” about ARTICHOKE, “the agency cryptonym for the study and/or use of ‘special’ interrogation methods that have been known to include the use of drugs and chemicals, hypnosis, and ‘total isolation,’ a form of psychological harassment.” The memo…

1953: ARTICHOKE expanded its reach to civilian public health hospitals and institutions

A memorandum from Paul Gaynor, CIA Security Research chief to ARTICHOKE director, Morse Allen states: “It is imperative that we move forward more aggressively on identifying and securing a more reliable ready group, or groups, of human research subjects for ongoing Artichoke work.” The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare…

1953: Artichoke Conference

Artichoke Conference: “use of criminals and the criminally insane have been very successful.” CIA Security Research chief Paul Gaynor stated at an Artichoke Conference meeting at Fort Detrick, All individuals can be broken under mental and physical assaults and by such techniques as denying sleep, exhaustion, persuasion, starvation, pain, humiliation,…

Dr. Maitland Baldwin, a student of Harold Hebb explored sensory deprivation at NIH

Maitland Baldwin, a scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIH), had no moral inhibitions about carrying out CIA’s most radical experimental proposals. He had conducted “a rather gruesome experiment” on an Army “volunteer” who was kept in a box for 40 hours until he kicked his way out…

1953: Dr. John Lilly used electric stimulation to “map” brain locations that control body functions

Dr. John Lilly was a scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who conducted experimental studies on monkeys in an effort to “map” the body’s functions controlled from various locations in the brain. He devised a method of pounding up to 600 tiny sections of hypodermic tubing into the…

April 10, 1953: CIA Director Allen Dulles launches “Brain Warfare” — Technological Fascism

Allen Dulles, a master propagandist demonstrated his adroit duplicity when he delivered a fear mongering speech about “brain warfare” at a national Princeton alumni conference. He described the “abhorrent” but effective vast Soviet experiment in “brain perversion techniques” when, in fact he launched a massive abhorrent CIA brainwashing manipulation project….

*1953: MK-ULTRA was hatched by Allen Dulles and Richard Helms

In a rare exchange of memos (1953) between the two men Dulles reaffirmed his support for utilizing psychiatry’s “applied medical science” for torture. And in his memo to Dulles (April 13, 1953) Helms (then chief, CIA Office of Special Operations) proposed a program for the “covert use of biological and…

A vast web of clandestine collaborations between medical academics and the CIA

The CIA and DOD penetrated and compromised the research integrity of 88 non-government American institutions — universities, medical centers, hospitals; and covertly bankrolled substantially all of the post — World War II generation’s research into mass communication and techniques of persuasion, opinion measurement, and interrogation. This alliance between covert intelligence…

The Secret Nature Of CIA Ties Led Academic Medical Scientists To Don Moral Blinders

Shielded by a wall of secrecy medical scientist overturned traditional medical ethics, as German academics had done during the Nazi reign. The danger of separating science from ethics and divorcing the medical profession from its humanitarian commitment to heal — not to harm — results in the collapse of democracy…