Operation Midnight Climax Analysis

Uncovering the secretive experiments of the CIA isn’t exactly as easy task, especially when the files have been ordered to be destroyed. However, some of these files always manage to survive, often “sent to the wrong place.” Files such as those from the highly confidential Project MKUltra as well as its offshoot, Operation Midnight Climax. As hotly contested experiments conducted during the height of the Cold War, they were designed to attempt to control the minds of test subjects at first, with the hopes of controlling Soviet spies. I will examine the experiments themselves, as well as the need at the time vs the moral and ethical high-horses the US stood on. Project MKUltra officially began April 13th, 1953 on CIA director Allen Dulles’
It was based mostly in San Francisco, but had an office in New York as well that was shut down and later restarted. George White and Sidney Gottlieb headed the project, with White being the powerhouse and Gottlieb the brains. Operation Midnight Climax became even wilder than Project MKUltra, seeming like something out of a movie rather than a government operation. The main test subjects were unsuspecting men lured in by drug addicted prostitutes on the CIA’s payroll. The men were served LSD laced drinks by the prostitutes and were then watched by White and his colleagues while they sipped martinis behind a two-way mirror. White had the encounters filmed for surveillance as well as blackmail for the men, many of whom were prominent citizens. White grew more bold than that though, drugging everyone from colleague Wayne Ritchie, random drunks, and even friends at dinner parties (Miezo). Ritchie was an U.S. deputy marshal at the time, but in his drugged state committed armed robbery and later resigned from his position (Hooper). After a biological warfare specialist jumped or was pushed out of a window a few days after being dosed with acid, the New York office had to shut down when the investigation on the death brought the police to the safehouse. These stories are just a few of the horrific incidents surrounding Operation Midnight Climax, with many more lives being affected, or ruined, by the CIA’s
But were those outcomes really necessary? Did the era we were in call for these rampant experiments? After World War II the U.S. emerged as a powerhouse, with the whole world looking to it. And after the Nazi doctor’s experiments, we needed to set an ethical example. We held ourselves to a very high standard, thinking we were above all else in the medical world. Yet at the height of McCarthyism, we seemed to abandon that high horse. We let the rumor of Soviet mind control rattle our bones and drive us to harm our own citizens. Rumors were not a valid need to disregard all moral and ethical standpoints we in the United States held. Even if they had been, we knew better than to test methods on unknowing