MKULTRA

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Approved MKULTRA document: Analysis of the "Communist Control Techniques"

MKULTRA (also MK ULTRA , pronounced MK-Ultra) was an extensive secret research program by the CIA on the possibilities of mind control . It ran from 1953 to the 1970s in the context of the Cold War . The aim of the project was to develop a perfect truth serum for use in interrogating Soviet spies and to explore the possibilities of mind control. In part, the work also overlapped with research in other US programs on biological weapons .

The program included thousands of human experiments in which unsuspecting test subjects, often randomly selected from hospital patients and prison inmates, were exposed to highly potent hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and mescaline without their knowledge . Numerous test persons suffered severe physical and psychological damage in the experiments, in some cases even death. Much of the project's experiments violated US law. In retrospect, the CIA regards most of the experiments as worthless because they were often carried out by staff with no scientific qualifications.

In the mid-1970s, several investigative commissions of the US Congress dealt with the processing of the program. This was done as part of a broader attempt to investigate illegal actions by several US intelligence agencies and the FBI in parliament at home and abroad; a committee of inquiry known as the Church Committee became particularly well known . The investigation was made more difficult by the illegal systematic destruction of almost all internal CIA files on MKULTRA on the instructions of CIA Director Richard Helms in 1973. The investigation was therefore based on the few remaining files and on statements made by CIA staff before the committees.

Beginnings and goal setting

MKULTRA began in 1953 - in succession to the Artichoke and BLUEBIRD projects - on the orders of CIA Director Allen Dulles on April 13th. This was mainly a response to by Russians , Chinese and North Koreans against US prisoners of war in the Korean War mind-control techniques used, which under the name of " brainwashing " (German: " brainwashing ") has been known. The Stalinist show trials of the 1930s and the trial of the Hungarian Cardinal József Mindszenty in 1949, in which the accused apparently under the influence of drugs and torture had signed confessions and accused themselves in court of acts that they had not committed , also formed an important motivation .

The primary goal was the "prediction, regulation and control of human behavior". One of the few publicly known examples of such techniques is the interrogation method used by the British Army on prisoners in Northern Ireland . It was known as "UDIT" (Ulster Depth Interrogation Techniques) and published in 1972 by psychologist T. Shallice of the University of London, according to reports and data from the British Home Office .

Results

The head of the program, Sidney Gottlieb , later explained that an attempt had been made to destroy the existing consciousness in order to implant a new consciousness into the emptiness that had thus arisen. The desired mind control is not possible.

The Canadian psychologist Colin A. Ross , on the other hand, believes that it has been possible to produce so-called “Manchurian Candidates” , ie programmable contract killers.

According to the American psychologist John Ryder, it is impossible to reprogram people without their knowledge as was attempted in the MKULTRA experiments. At most, people with deviant inclinations can be induced to commit crimes, or threats or blackmail can be used. For this reason, MKULTRA and all comparable research programs for mind control in various dictatorships have meanwhile been terminated.

implementation

activities

Approved MKULTRA document on illegal drug distribution
In this letter of June 9, 1953, the project manager Sidney Gottlieb approved a MKULTRA sub-project that deals with LSD and that was classified as "Top Secret".

MKULTRA was mainly operated in the United States and Canada, but also in Europe. The scientific director was Donald Ewen Cameron , the overall direction was Sidney Gottlieb .

According to the then CIA director Admiral Stansfield Turner, MKULTRA comprised a total of 149 sub- projects in 1977 before an investigative committee of the US Senate - of which "at least 14 were definitely human experiments", a further 6 projects were experiments on ignorant people and 19 projects possibly involved human experiments. The effects of drugs (especially LSD and mescaline ), poisons, chemicals, hypnosis, psychotherapy, electric shocks , gas, pathogens, harvest sabotage, artificial concussion and operations were researched. The experiments were carried out at 44 universities, 12 hospitals, 3 prisons and 15 unspecified “research institutions”. It has been proven that numerous test persons sustained severe physical and psychological damage up to death, for example in the Olson affair , in the experiments . The practice of kidnapping for experimental purposes, at least for the MKULTRA project, was later confirmed by the CIA itself.

Special cases

The Unabomber

Theodore Kaczynski , who started out as a 17-year-old math student at Harvard University , was part of a personality study called Multiform Assessments of Personality , led by the then Harvard psychologist Henry A. Murray , from autumn 1959 to spring 1962, together with 21 other Harvard students Development , during which he was exposed to great psychological stress for about an hour every week over a period of three years by being verbally humiliated in a kind of interrogation situation, for a total of about 200 hours. The study was probably carried out as part of MKULTRA. Whether Kaczynski was also given LSD is controversial.

Kaczynski achieved worldwide fame as the Unabomber through 16 bomb attacks between 1978 and 1995, which resulted in a total of 23 injuries and three deaths . Various authors suggest that the experiments were the main trigger for Kaczynski's later attacks. He himself later described the experiments carried out on him as not particularly formative.

A deadly experiment

The physically healthy tennis coach Harold Blauer suffered from depression after his divorce, for the treatment of which he had gone to the New York State Psychiatric Institute . There he died on January 8, 1953, after receiving high doses of MDA several times in the context of MKULTRA experiments. His ex-wife filed a complaint after his death, and in the course of the trial the authorities covered up the real cause of death. The consequences of the fatal injection , which led to circulatory collapse and heart failure , were recorded in a log.

Shredding

Most of the official documents on the project were deliberately and illegally destroyed in 1972 under the then CIA director Richard Helms . Until his appointment as CIA director, Helms was the person in charge of MKULTRA within the CIA. It is therefore not possible to reconstruct the entire project with its approximately 150 individual research projects and the associated CIA programs in detail. Several state investigation commissions dealt with MKULTRA in official investigations . Some of the documents received have now been made available to the public.

Official investigations

There were several official commissions of inquiry into MKULTRA in the USA. In 1975, the President examined Gerald Ford used Rockefeller Commission the operations, which led, among other things to expose the so-called Olson affair. In 1977 the Church Committee of the US Congress dealt with the Enlightenment. Senator Edward Kennedy played an important role on the committee .

At a meeting of the committee of inquiry in August 1977, Kennedy said:

"The Deputy Director of the CIA stated that over 30 universities and institutions were involved in 'intensive testing and research programs' that included drug testing on ignorant people from 'all walks of life, from the US and elsewhere'. Numerous tests included the administration of LSD to 'ignorant people in everyday situations'. At least one death, that of Frank Olson, resulted from the experiments. The agency itself admitted that the tests had little scientific meaning. The agents used to oversee the experiments had no scientific qualifications. "

- Edward Kennedy

The Olson Affair

In 1975, the Rockefeller Commission also came across clues about mysterious circumstances in the death of MKULTRA scientist Frank Olson in 1953, which gained widespread publicity. Olson had fallen from the ninth floor of a New York hotel after being secretly administered LSD nine days earlier and then denied the psychiatric help he would have needed. For a long time it was believed in a suicide due to substance-induced psychosis , but an autopsy in 1994 revealed evidence of violent external influences. The case is controversial to this day and gives rise to various conspiracy theories.

reception

Ken Kesey processed his experiences as a test person in the 1962 book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , which was filmed in 1975 under the same name . The published 2003 novel Shutter Iceland by Dennis Lehane also taken up human trials in the United States this time, and was filmed in 2010 . The 2017 series Wormwood deals with the circumstances of Frank Olson's death. Stephen King's novel Feuerkind from 1980 also addresses human experiments with strong hallucinogens disguised as harmless drug studies by a secret service similar to the CIA, whereby two test subjects develop psychic abilities and pass them on to their daughter (in the form of pyrokinesis ).

The documentaries by Stefan Albrecht and Johannes Schäfer Die Trainierte Killer (August 4, 2002 / ZDF) as well as the code name Artichoke by Egmont R. Koch and Michael Wech (August 12, 2002 / ARD) and a number of feature films, including Fletcher's , were created through MK ULTRA Visions (1997), Experiment Killing Room (2009) and American Ultra (2015). The TV series Stranger Things also makes reference to the MKULTRA program.

literature

  • Anne Collins: In the Sleep Room: The Story of CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada . Lester & Orpen Dennys Ltd, Toronto 1988, ISBN 0-88619-198-X (the book is available as a reprint under ISBN 1-55013-932-0 ; review ).
  • Fran Mason: MK-ULTRA . In: Peter Knight (Ed.): Conspiracy Theories in American History. To Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, Santa Barbara / Denver / London 2003, Volume 1, p. 490 ff.
  • Stephen Kinzer : Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. Henry Holt and Co., New York 2019, ISBN 978-1-250-14043-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The protocol of a fatal experiment with a mescaline infusion from 1953 by E. Koch, M. Wech: alias Artichoke . Goldmann, 2004, p. 136 .
  2. ^ US Senate: Joint Hearing before The Select Committee on Intelligence and The Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources . 95th Cong., 1st Sess., Aug. 3, 1977.
  3. ^ Church Committee : Report. p. 390 .
  4. ↑ Dave Harper: Psychology and the 'War on Terror' . In: Journal of Critical Psychology, Counseling and Psychotherapy . March 4, 2004 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Terry Gross: The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief' . npr.org , September 9, 2019.
  6. ^ Colin A. Ross: Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists . Manitou Communications, Richardson 2000, pp. 162 .
  7. ↑ John Ryder: Is Total Mind Control Possible? Expert perspective on a scenario from the worlds of sci-fi and espionage. psychologytoday.com , September 24, 2015, accessed July 27, 2020.
  8. ^ Declassified Mk-Ultra Project Documents. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 30, 2002 ; accessed on May 15, 2019 .
  9. ^ Prepared Statement of Admiral Stansfield Turner , Director of Central Intelligence. US Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, and Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, August 3, 1977. Quoted in: Schaffer Library of Drug Policy, www.druglibrary.org, subsections 6 and 7.
  10. ^ A. Collins: In the sleep room. The story of the CIA brainwashing experiments in Canada . Lester & Orpen Dennys Ltd, Toronto 1988.
  11. ^ HM Weinstein: Psychiatry and the CIA: Victims of Mind Control . American Psychiatric Press, Washington 1990.
  12. ↑ Alston Chase: Harvard and the Unabomber. WW Norton & Company, New York, NY 2003, ISBN 0-393-02002-9 , p. 373.
  13. ↑ Todd Gitlin: A Dangerous Mind. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved May 15, 2019 (review of the book Harvard And The Unabomber).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.washingtonpost.com
  14. ^ Moreno, Jonathan (2012). Mind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21st Century. Bellevue Literary Press, NYU School of Medicine. ISBN 978-1-934137-43-7 .
  15. ↑ MKUltra: Inside the CIA's Cold War mind control experiments. Thousands of Americans were unknowing test subjects for psychological warfare research. (No longer available online.) July 21, 2017, formerly in the original ; accessed on May 15, 2019 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.theweek.co.uk
  16. ↑ Alston Chase: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on May 15, 2019 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.theatlantic.com
  17. ^ Alston Chase: Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist. Norton, ISBN 0-393-02002-9 , a former philosophy professor's book, is an extension of an article in The Atlantic, June 2000. It also covers Murray's experiment. Chase also writes that he could not find any evidence of drug use in the Harvard experiments.
  18. ↑ Alston Chase: Harvard and the Unabomber. WW Norton & Company, New York, NY 2003, ISBN 0-393-02002-9 , pp. 18-19
  19. ^ Alston Chase: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber In: The Atlantic, published June 2000, pp. 41-65
  20. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20100908003140/http://www.radiolab.org/2010/jun/28/
  21. ↑ Jeffrey St. Clair & Alexander Cockburn: CIA Shrinks & LSD , published Oct. 18, 1999 on counterpunch.org
  22. ^ Das Netz (2004) , a documentary by Lutz Dammbeck about the development of the Internet and the Unabomber
  23. ↑ E. Koch, M. Wech: Code name artichoke . Goldmann, 2004, p. 136 .
  24. ↑ An Interview with Richard Helms. Central Intelligence Agency , May 8, 2007.
  25. ^ US Senate: Joint Hearing before The Select Committee on Intelligence and The Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources . 95th Congress, 1st Session, August 3, 1977.
  26. ↑ Marlon Kuzmick: LSD . In: Peter Knight (Ed.): Conspiracy Theories in American History. To Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, Santa Barbara / Denver / London 2003, Volume 2, p. 448. Paul G. Pierpaoli Jr .: Olson, Frank (1910-1952) . In: Jan Goldman (Ed.): The Central Intelligence Agency. An Encyclopedia of Covert Ops, Intelligence Gathering, and Spies . ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara / Denver / London 2015, p. 279 f.
  27. ^ Bennett Huffman: Ken Kesey. In: The Literary Encyclopedia. Vol. 3.2.4: Postwar and Contemporary Writing and Culture of the United States, 1945 – present. May 17, 2002 (online).
  28. ↑ Willi Winkler: The thing with the CIA and the LSD . sueddeutsche.de , December 15, 2017.
  29. ↑ ZDF press release "Die trained Killer": ZDF documentary about secret services and brainwashing. (No longer available online.) August 1, 2002, formerly in the original ; accessed on May 30, 2019 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.presseportal.de
  30. ↑ Code name artichoke ( memento of March 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive ).
  31. ↑ Cady Drell: 'Stranger Things': The Secret CIA Programs That Inspired Hit Series. In: Rolling Stone , August 5, 2016 (English).