#2 — The Horrific Conspiracy that Turned Out to be True (MK-ULTRA)
In the early 1950’s, one of the most darkest United States secrets first started its operations. With the Korean War just ending, and WW2 ending just five years earlier, tensions from post-war consequences were at an all time high. American citizens were deathly afraid of mind-control. Popular news outlets were writing a surplus of articles about Prisoners of War coming home and being “brainwashed” by Communist terrorists. War veterans were confessing to spreading germ-warfare, and everyday there seemed to be more fuel added to the fire.
The head of the CIA, Allen Dulles, spoke at his speech, saying “In the past few years we have become accustomed to hearing much about the battle for men’s minds–the war of ideologies… I wonder, however, whether we clearly perceive the magnitude of the problem, whether we realize how sinister the battle for men’s minds has become in Soviet hands….We might call it, in its new form, ‘brain warfare.’”
This made the American population wonder — is the United States above brainwashing? Would they even tell the public if they were, and just how horrific could brainwashing even be? Unfortunately, the public was closer to the truth than they thought.
A couple days after his concerning speech, Dulles created MK-ULTRA — an extremely secretive project to truly test brainwashing. They tested behavior modification on subjects by shock therapy, hypnosis, polygraphs, radiation, and most importantly — LSD. The subjects had vulnerable characteristics, and many of them were either not aware they were taking part of the experiments, or some agreed under coercion ( extreme force). Prisoners were especially used, since more were more likely to comply for lesser sentences.
Whitey Bulger, one of the subjects, described his experience as horrific. Bulger was in a room with 8 other subjects, and they were all unknowingly injected with LSD (Lysergic acid diethyl-amide/Acid). They hallucinated, and saw hallucinations that seemed to be right out of a horror movie. Bulger concluded his statement by saying, “I felt like I was going insane.”
As the experiments continued, the project became more offensive than defensive. Agency officials noted how their experiments had the potential gain “control of bodies whether they were willing or not.”
The CIA was extremely careful to make the MK-ULTRA project non-public. Scientist would meet in the woods to discuss further action in the project, just for they didn’t have the potential to be spied on.
One particularly complex experiment called “Operation Midnight Climax,” had George White, a supervisor for the New England area of the Federal Narcotics Bureau, building a room for prostitutes to bring men in. A side of the room was a disguised two-way mirror. The prostitutes would inject the “subjects” with LSD, and the experiment would continue. In the future, White would late cruelly admit,
“I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun…Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?”
Project MK-ULTRA ended in the spring of 1963. John Vance, a CIA inspector, learned about the project. He quickly shut the experiments down, despite the objection from the heads of the CIA. Staff was brought into question in front of Congress, and gore filled details were handed over. Majority stated that they couldn’t recall their time working the experiments. The president at the time called on the war on drugs, and the a majority of the MK-ULTRA stayed secretive.
Nofil, Brianna “THE CIA’S APPALLING HUMAN EXPERIMENTS WITH MIND CONTROL” https://www.history.com/mkultra-operation-midnight-climax-cia-lsd-experiments
Adl — Tabatabai, Sean “CIA Apologise For Conducting MKUltra Experiments On Canadian Patients” May 3, 2018 https://newspunch.com/cia-mkultra-canadian-patients/
