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 and academia proved seminal in…
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 and of a civilized society….
Dr. Charles Geschickter was an extremely important asset for Gottlieb’s division, with his connections in high places and as a funding conduit. In 1955 he convinced Agency officials to contribute $375,000 in secret funds toward the construction of a new research building at Georgetown University Hospital. (That amount was doubled under the Federal matching grant…
An Artichoke Conference was held at Fort Detrick at which Gaynor reminded officials that: All individuals can be broken under mental and physical assaults and by such techniques as denying sleep, exhaustion, persuasion, starvation, pain, humiliation, and sickness. The capacity to endure assaults of all kinds varies in individuals. We need to teach the Artichoke…
“Can an individual be made to perform assassination involuntarily under the influence of ARTICHOKE?” The question was contained in a CIA memo dated Jan 22, 1954. The question was not entirely hypothetical; the memo specified that “the assassination would be against a prominent ** official or if necessary, against an American official. . .” It…
Allen Dulles turned to Dr. Harold Wolff, a renowned neurologist, whose expertise was migraine headaches and pain; and, Dr. Lawrence Hinkle, a cardiologist both at Cornell University Medical College to investigate and prepare a report about Communist brainwashing techniques. Their report (1956) invalidates CIA propaganda about Communists using secret psychoactive “truth drugs” or any advanced…
Delgado was the Director of Neuropsychiatry at Yale University Medical School who was called a “technological wizard” for his numerous inventions. He invented a miniature electrode implanted in the brain — called a stimoceiver — which is capable of receiving and transmitting electronic signals wirelessly through radio waves. Once implanted, the subject’s emotional and behavioral…
Dr. Robert Galbraith Heath was the chairman of the Dept. of Psychiatry and Neurology at Tulane University; his invasive surgical brain physiology experiments were at the outer limits of existing neurophysiological knowledge. He surgically implanted electrodes into is psychiatric patients’ brains to test the effects of electrical brain stimulation (EBS). The first 19 patients who…
Alan A. Baumeister (2000), distinguished professor and the former director of Vanderbilt University Kennedy Center, analyzed Heath’s published reports and concluded that the Tulane EBS experiments refutes Heath’s claims that the experiments were motivated by a therapeutic justification. Prof. Baumeister concluded that Heath’s claim was invalid. The experiments lacked both scientific and ethical therapeutic justification….
In August, 1951, an outbreak of frenzied hallucinations, delirium and insanity shook the 500 inhabitants of the small French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit. The symptoms resembled descriptions of the malady known as St. Anthony’s Fire which afflicted communities during the Middle Ages. More than 500 people were affected; 7 people died, two committed suicide; 50 persons…
Dr. Frank Olson was a high level civilian U.S. biological warfare scientist who worked with CIA’s Top Secret Special Operations Division (SO) which worked as a team with the Army Chemical Corps at Fort Detrick from 1943 until his death in 1953. The mysterious circumstances of his death continue to haunt the CIA as snippets…
Stanley Glickman’s case was less widely reported than Frank Olson. Glickman was an American artist living in Paris in 1952, when he joined a group of fellow Americans at a café, among them was Sidney Gottlieb. A heated political debate ensued and when Glickman decided to leave, he was offered a drink to soothe ill…
