Transcription
In October of 2021, we released an episode looking at early CIA mind control attempts, what would go on to collectively become known as project MK Ultra. We talked about America's fears of communist brainwashing and the risks they could pose to national security. Individuals brainwashed by the Soviets, the Chinese, or their allies could confess to non-existent crimes or even worse, infiltrate the West as ‘Manchurian Candidates’. I’m your host David, and today, we are going to follow the White Rabbit to where “logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead”, the dark recesses of the CIA’s Technical Service, where MKULTRA financed research on LSD, hypnosis, magic, and killer dolphins. This is…The Cold War.
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OK, we know much has been said about Project MKULTRA, its nature, methods, and its ultimate goals. To keep things simple, we'll define it through a quote directly from the CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner, from his testimony to the US Senate on the 21st of September 1977: “MKULTRA was an umbrella project under which a broad spectrum of sensitive activities was financed. Some of these activities dealt with research into behavioural modification - primarily by means of drugs and hypnosis - involving tests on human volunteers and, in some cases, on unwitting subject.”
The Project was officially sanctioned by CIA Director Allen Dulles in April of 1953, and was shut down in 1964. According to Prof Timothy Melley of Miami University, Director Dulles was obsessed with replicating the perceived successes of the Soviets and Chinese in brainwashing and mind control via hypnosis as well as the use of drugs. But, as we covered in our previous episode, brainwashing was not really a thing; it was a concept invented within the CIA itself, and had wormed its way into public consciousness thanks to journalist and former CIA propagandist, Ed Hunter. Melley concludes then, that Allen Dulles may have been influenced by the CIA's own propaganda, dedicating millions of taxpayer dollars into research which not only proved to be a dead end, but was eventually harmful, if not lethal to unwitting subjects both in the US and abroad.
In August of 1977, the organisation and structure of MKULTRA came under the scrutiny of the US Senate, the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources. Now, much of the paper documentation on the Project had been lost, largely to large-scale document shredding, but the Senate had access to a stash of financial statements, because everything has to be paid for and there is nothing an accountant likes better than filing paperwork. The Committees reconstructed that MKULTRA covered 149 sub-projects. Well, there were that many in theory anyway. In practice, the number was much smaller, as the same project could be assigned a new name or number from year to year. In most cases, six to eight sub-projects could have likely have been grouped under a single heading instead. In any case, the Senate determined that 85 of the MKULTRA sub-projects had not involved any human experimentation. Of course, of these 85 non-human tests, many were conducted on animals. Tests I would describe as ranging from ‘rather interesting’ all the way to ‘batsh*t crazy’.
Sub-project 94 and subproject 142 tested the implantation of devices which could turn cats or monkeys into covert recording devices or even weapons. Another programme considered the weaponization of dolphins. The plan was to somehow train or even control remotely these sea mammals. Once equipped with special needles, the dolphins would be manipulated into assassinating their targets via violent injections of compressed air. The chosen targets for such inventive assassination methods would have been scuba divers, of course, and the idea was that the dolphins could be used to protect ships and port facilities from saboteurs.
Now, of the 149 sub-projects, 40 of them involved tests on human subjects, but either did not involve any drugs, or involved compounds with no harmful side effects. Moreover, subjects in these 40 experiments had given informed consent and had even received payment. An example of these is subproject 5, headed by Prof Alden Sears from the University of Minnesota. Its aim was to assess the capability of hypnotic techniques to induce anxiety, increase the ability to learn and recall complex information, and in general, if one’s personality could be changed through hypnosis. Another interesting subproject in this category was number 4. This is when the CIA contracted master stage magician John Mulholland to train their agents in the finer techniques of misdirection and sleight of hand. And why, you might ask? Well, if MKULTRA was ever to identify the ultimate mind-altering wonder drug, thanks to Mulholland’s magical talent, CIA agents would be able to slip the wonder drug into their targets’ drink without being noticed!
So this leaves us with 24 sub-projects, which involved experimentation with potentially dangerous drugs and medical devices, often on unwitting subjects. Part of these experiments were carried out within CIA offices and agency-controlled facilities. Subproject 43, for example, was headed by Prof Jolyon West of the University of Oklahoma. This was about experimenting with a combination of hypnosis and psychoactive drugs to alter normal psychological function. Sub-projects 73, 91 and 147 were conducted by Dr Harris Isbell at the Addiction Research Centre in Lexington, Kentucky. This is where much of the research on LSD and mescaline was carried out. LSD was tested also in less formal settings, namely one of many CIA safehouses inside the United States or even sometimes abroad. One of the most active LSD safe dens was located at 81 Bedford Street, New York, also known as subproject 3. The man in charge here was George White aka Morgan Hall, a former Narcotics agent with a taste for folk dancing, group sex, and a fetish for leather boots. White would invite Greenwich Village bohemian types to the safehouse, and serve them drinks spiked with LSD, to then observe their reactions. To be more specific, White would often use prostitutes to entice these bohemian types to the safe house where they would then get higher than a U-2 over the Soviet Union while White observed from behind a two-way mirror.
So, beyond the confines of Agency facilities and personnel, most sub-projects were conducted by private institutions, such as hospitals or even pharmaceutical companies. These entities may have not even have been aware that they were working for the CIA, as they received funding for these projects via the agency's civilian front organisation, the Human Ecology Fund, which was designed to support research of interest in the fields of sociology, psychology, and behaviourism. Perhaps the most infamous beneficiary of these research grants was Dr David Ewen Cameron. This Scottish-born, well-regarded psychiatrist conducted research on a topic that was central to MKULTRA’s objectives: how to establish mind control by wiping out one’s personality, before implanting a new set of beliefs and behaviours. Cameron’s view was that the human psyche was not a unified entity, rather a series of patterns, mechanisms, and feedback functions. Psychiatric illness was due to the formation of the wrong patterns. Cameron believed that they could be dismantled, and then reassembled, according to a desired design that would cure the deviant personality.
His preferred method to achieve this was ‘psychic driving’, which he experimented with from 1955 to 1964 at the Allan Memorial Institute, in Montreal. Cameron would record on tape a specific statement by the patient, which bore some importance to their condition or underlying issue. He would then play the statement on a 5 to 7 second loop, with the tape running at 7 ½ inches per second. The patients were forced to listen to this loop for hours on end. If they were awake, Cameron would play the recording from inside a custom-designed wired football helmet. In many cases, the doctor would place the patients in a forced sleep state, with the tape running under their pillow. One patient was kept in this state for 30 consecutive days. Often, Cameron would complement the treatment with drugs such as barbiturates, methamphetamine, or LSD. An alternative to psychic driving though was sensory deprivation. Patients were locked in specialised chambers with their eyes and ears covered. Their hands were also tied, so they couldn’t feel their surroundings or even their own body. They were then put through non-specified sources of stress and exertion and also prevented from screaming. In the short term, patients experienced strong distress, which caused them to reveal long-buried, disturbing experiences. If carried out over the long term, Cameron noted that patients presented disorientation, loss of time awareness, disorganisation, near total amnesia of their identity, double incontinence, and child-like dependency on the hospital staff. The slates of their personality patterns had been successfully wiped clean. But the part that continued to be missing was how to rebuild a new, supposedly healthy, personality.
OK, so there is Cameron, White, Mulholland… all key players in the MKULTRA saga, but I haven’t introduced THE key actor yet, the mastermind behind the entire project. This was its operational lead, personally selected by Allen Dulles: the so-called poisoner-in-chief Sidney Gottlieb, Chief of the Chemical Division of the Technical Service Staff. In his quest to establish mind-control techniques, Dr Gottlieb had theorised the two-step process I just described: first, you blast away the existing mind; then, insert a new one into the void that is created. Gottlieb had initially theorised that mind-control or brain washing could be achieved via hypnosis. As mentioned, at least two of the sub-projects dealt with this technique. Interestingly, hypnotic suggestion had already proven unreliable from the early days of ARTICHOKE and BLUEBIRD, which we talked about in our first episode. Psychiatry had already established that hypnosis could not bend an individual’s will beyond their own sense of morals. That is why the MKULTRA chief quickly redirected his main efforts to the pharmacological field. He was a chemist by trade after all, and one with a keen interest in LSD, since its discovery by Sandoz Laboratories in April 1943.
Initial experiments championed by Gottlieb involved willing individuals, who knew what to expect and took the drug in a safe and controlled environment. Participants included author Ken Kesey, who would go on to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; beat poet Allen Ginsberg; and Robert Hunter, lyricist for The Grateful Dead. We could almost claim that the CIA gave birth to the counterculture movement that would later cause them such headaches! Gottlieb soon changed his approach however, preferring to conduct his tests on subjects who weren’t aware that there was a test, as their responses would be more spontaneous. In addition to the experiments that we’ve already talked to, Gottlieb authorised experimentation on ‘expendable’ prisoners in US detention centres, located in Japan, the Philippines, and Germany. Alleged or confirmed communist spies, informants, defectors…they were subjected to physical and psychological torture which involved the use of high doses of LSD, sensory deprivation, and electroshock. All in the name of completing phase 1 of Gottlieb’s process to destroy the human ego. Sidney Gottlieb went even further though, sometimes personally spiking his friends’ and colleagues’ drinks during meetings or after work.
Of course, no discussion of MKULTRA and Gottlieb is complete however without talking about Frank Olsen. On the 18th and 19th of November 1953, Sidney Gottlieb attended an offsite meeting with members of the Army’s Special Operations Division, a section specialised in chemical and biological warfare. One of the attendees was bacteriologist Frank Olson, who had witnessed first-hand the unethical techniques applied by MKULTRA in its detention centres. Over the meeting, Olson and other delegates were served shots of Cointreau by Gottlieb himself. Yes, you guessed it, the tasty orange liquor had an extra ingredient that day: LSD. Olson’s health and mental stability deteriorated progressively over the next few days, in a whirlwind of paranoia, anxiety, and a loss of cognitive function. Upon learning that he had been given LSD against his will, he resolved to resign. On the 27th of November, however, the CIA sent him to New York for treatment with one of their doctors, Harold Abramson. That night, Olson stayed at the Hotel Statler, under the supervision of CIA chemist Richard Lashbrook. At 2:30am, Frank Olson fell to his death, plunging from the 13th floor of the hotel. This mysterious death may have been the result of suicide, following a mental breakdown brought about by LSD. A 1994 autopsy found evidence however of blunt-force trauma which may have taken place before the fall, leading to speculation that Frank Olson may have been murdered in order to cover up MKULTRA. Olsen’s death by suicide, or misadventure, remains one of the most reviewed and studied facets of the Project and speculation over his death runs rampant to this day.
So what then happened to MKULTRA? Well, funding was shut down in 1964 for two good reasons. First, the then CIA Director John McCone was concerned about the ethical implications of experiments conducted without informed consent. And second, after almost 20 years of experiments under BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, and MKULTRA, they had produced little to no results. Except of course for the serious health consequences for the human guinea pigs involved, including several deaths, although we’ll likely never be able to confirm the exact number. Cameron’s and Gottlieb’s experiences may have shown that it was possible to wipe out a person's personality. But there had been zero success in implanting a new, replacement set of beliefs and directives, especially if these are in conflict with an individual’s morals and sense of self-preservation. If anything, MKULTRA had proven that the concept of ‘brainwashing’ just didn’t exist. What may have appeared as communist ‘brainwashing’ to the paranoid minds of late 1940s was the result of torture, isolation, sensory deprivation, and endless revisions of personal confessions. In other words: you can’t brainwash a person into following a new set of beliefs. But you can coerce them into acting as if they had. MKULTRA also showed that hypnosis or the administration of drugs couldn’t force a captive to reveal information or make confessions, real or otherwise. The CIA did however incorporate the lessons of the MKULTRA failure into their own interrogation techniques, codified into the KUBARK Counter-Intelligence manual, recommending the use of sensory deprivation, pain, confusion, until interrogation becomes mentally intolerable.
That concludes our overview of MKULTRA. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and to make sure you don’t miss our future work, please make sure you are subscribed to our channel and have given the bell button so much LSD, it thinks you are a dragon. Please consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com/thecoldwar or through YouTube membership. We can be reached via email at thecoldwarchannel@gmail.com. This is the Cold War Channel and as we think about the Cold War, I will leave you with the words of JFK: “In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”