Transcription
The CIA's secret mind control experiments are back in the spotlight. Newly released documents revealed details about MK Ultra, a 1950s program using LSD and hypnosis to study behavior control. Pharmaceutical company Eli Liy reportedly supplied large amounts of LSD for that project. Some tests were done on unsuspecting Americans, including prison inmates. National Security Archive, marking 50 years since the program's exposure, compared the research to Nazi experiments and criticized the lack of accountability.
The CIA actually has been potentially researching how vaccines could be used for mind control as well as many other methods. The documents that are circulating around are regarding Project Artichoke. So, this says, "Look, we've got this grand idea of how we're basically going to drug people and do all kinds of weird experiments on them to see if we could control their minds. These documents don't show that anything was actually done. It just shows that we've got these really crazy ideas and they're extremely unethical, inhumane, terrible, terrible ideas."
The 1977 leak of documents say, "Oh, yeah. Well, actually, the government did it. They did all of those terrible things they said they were doing in that previous memo. They did it. And now here's some of the archives that we have from when they did all of those terrible things. So, okay, these documents, special research for artichoke dated April 21st of 1952, the memo proposes developing long-term covert drugs that could be slipped into daily life. Drugs that were quote administered over considerable period of time, possibly being placed in food or water that caused either agitation or depression. These quote should include chemicals or drugs that can be effectively concealed in common items such as food, water, Coca-Cola, beer, liquor, cigarettes, etc. and should also be capable of use in standard medical treatments such as vaccinations and shots. We can do all this other experimentation which nobody will know about. It's sneaky. Sneak it into their Coca-Cola. Sneak it into their beer, their cigarettes, their vaccines, their medications. Let's sneak it all in. So, there you all those wild conspiracy theorists.
But the CIA also made sure most of this would never be seen by the public, destroying most of the files. They were torn and burned just days before the head of the agency was fired by then President Richard Nixon for refusing to help cover up Watergate. Beyond just mind control, declassified documents show the agency also chased a dark tool, discrediting, using drugs like LSD to make someone look insane, then watching the world turn on them. They were experimenting on American citizens. I hate conspiracy theories that run a muck. But you know, a former CI director is the one who came up with the term conspiracy theory to discredit people by making them sound like crazy people when in fact there was such a thing called MK Ultra, Operation Grasshopper or MK Chickwit. You the CIA did crazy crazy stuff from roughly 1952 to 1975.
The Chinese told us in like 1951 that the Russians were using LSD to try to engineer it to be used as a mind control drug. That was disinformation. The truth was the Russians had no LSD program. The Chinese did. So they tried to throw us off the off the scent by blaming the Russians. We panicked. And by 1952, we started this program called MK Ultra, which began by using LSD experimentally. They started by dosing their own employees without telling them. Several committed. One jumped out of a hotel window.
Doing them with what? LSD. With the hope that see if we can control them. See if we can plant memories that didn't actually happen. Then they decided, no, it's not a good idea to dose our own people. Let's just dose strangers out in public. So they went to San Francisco, rented a safe house. They hired to go out on the street, pick up John's people who hire, bring them back to the safe house, dose the John's with uh LSD, and just see what happens. But I mean, these are like serious crimes you're committing against people. The CIA paid workers to lure men to safe houses where agents drugged them and then watched them through oneway mirrors and recorded their behavior.
Exactly. They tried to erase their personality. Nice, huh? The goal was often to break and rebuild the human mind. In 1973, the CIA director ordered mass destruction of the MK Ultra files. That day, he testified before the Church Committee. The church committee specifically told him, "Do not destroy any documents." He went back that afternoon to the CIA and said, "Destroy everything."
Why? Because it it was damning. They were experimenting on American citizens. They were they were experimenting by spreading diseases in American cities. He was fined like $150 and um about 15% of the documents were overlooked and survived. We'll never know exactly what happened under MK Ultra.
This is a special 10 News Plus program. We've seen the meltdowns when kids are pried away from screens, but frightening new data shows those devices could be causing deeper problems. Tonight, the experts call to radically change the rules. I'm sorry buddy. You can't have iPad. Okay. Parents, we already know it. Excessive screen time, excessive emotion. But what if it's much worse than that?
Can you see the screen? All right. This is 5-year-old Rose. She was one of 60 kids to undergo an exhaustive study in the US using an MRI machine to scan the brains of kids aged 3 to 5 years old. The results truly shocking. Interactive screen time causes a loss of white matter in the brain.
Well, in the simplest terms, we could actually refer to as some measure of brain impairment or brain damage. Professor Mike Nagel from the University of the Sunshine Coast has spent a career studying child brain development. So, white matter in the brain is a material called myelin. So what myelin does is it wraps around the axons of neurons and acts like an insulator conductor not too dissimilar to the plastic coating of a wire. So if we're seeing definitence in myelin production early in life we're probably seeing deficits in neural connectivity. The study shows the more screen time a child is exposed to the greater the loss of white matter.
Can you remember your first reaction to those results not only as a professional in this field but as a father? Uh my gut reaction was wow. I I I was not anticipating seeing anything like that. It hadn't occurred to me at the time that something as little as and it said 2 hours a day was having such a profound effect on the white matter associated with sort of language development and by association literacy. It was a shock to be honest.
He also believes big data. How are you? I'm good. Thanks. It's great to finally see you. Good to see you as well. Thanks for your patience. Professor Hutton is a man in demand. It was his research that proved the link between screen time and the loss of white brain matter. Yeah, I I mean it's it's really the elephant in the room. It's it's such a to me an obvious uh relationship.
John, what is your fear if we don't address it? Uh the fear is just losing a generation of kids, just kids growing up not meeting their potential. The continued rise in self harm and uh body image disorder, anorexia, bulimia, smoking causes mouth cancer. The professor believes screen time will be what smoking was to a previous generation. For decades, you know, we pretended like smoking, you know, everyone kind of knew that it was probably harmful, but you know, the industry pushed back and said, "No, this is it's it's not." I think the same thing is going to come down the road for for devices, but I think we are at risk of of really um having a lot of kids and a whole generation that's going to be that's going to struggle unnecessarily.
As a parent, there are already more than enough dangers to navigate, but clearly screen time is something we need to pay attention to. So, what should the guidelines be? How much of this is too much? In fact, is there any safe limit at all? So, what is the balance, Mike? What is the right balance? Well, you know, that's that's the million-dollar question. There really isn't any ne necessity for a child uh from 0 to 8 to be using screens on a regular basis.
The advice from our experts, no devices in the bedroom, no devices at meal time, that's adults included. No interactive screen time for any child up to the age of 5. For older kids up to 12, no more than 30 minutes a day. Limits for teenagers? Well, that's easier said than done, right? But fear not, there are more extreme options. Three sections, sir. If they knew full well what they were in for, they got a bit of a rude shock.