The Cold War (MKULTA)

Following the end of World War II in 1945, the United States economy began to prosper. However, the end of the war brought on another kind of war, the Cold War. With suspicion and tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, the United States began to conduct research on alternate means to protect the national interest through an improved interrogation processes. One of these highly classified programs was known as “Project: MKULTRA.” According to Dr. Horowitz (2001), the basis for MKULTRA was the use of chemical and biological agents to affect and control or alter human behavior (Horowitz, 2001, p. 209). Dr. Horowitz (2001) states that the two main capacities in which the United States Army and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
were focusing for mind control were the chemical compound Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) and a biological/electromagnetic program (Horowitz, 2001, p 213). MKULTRA was kept secret due to the potential negative effects to the population and the ethical nature of the experiments.
Undertaking the MKULTRA venture started as a submission from Assistant Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Helms. It was then established on April 13, 1953 by then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Allen Dulles ("Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence", 1976). MKULTRA was organized through the CIA and the Special Operations Branch of the United States Army Chemical Corps (“Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments", 1995). The ultimate goal of the project was to develop a form of “truth serum” through mind control, extracting information from unwilling or strong-willed captives (McCoy, 2006, p. 22).
Consequently, the psychedelic drug LSD was used because of its mind altering capabilities.
Passie explains LSD is a physiological drug known for its ability to change the thinking process. While it is not considered addictive it can lead to other psychiatric reactions such as paranoia and delusions (Passie, Halpern, Stichtenoth, Emrich, & Hintzen, 2008). In 1953, once MKULTRA officially began, LSD was the first phase of experiments. LSD was initially used on mental patients in the state of Kentucky for 174 days to determine the effects on the brain after long term exposure. Use of LSD on CIA agents and military personnel were also conducted in the form of interrogation procedures to determine if it was an effective tool to coax sensitive information (McCoy, 2006, p.
24).
Keeping with the secretive nature of the program Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the chemist who directed Project MKULTRA, believed that it could be utilized in clandestine missions. He theorized that it was possible to control government officials for a short period of time during meetings, affecting the outcome of those meetings. It was understood that experiments in a laboratory setting and experiments in a “real world” environment are different, because of this, experiments were conducted in a subject’s everyday life. These experiments continued overtime, members of the CIA and military personnel would have unexplained “trips” after having LSD administered to them secretly in their morning coffee. These trials continued even after the death of Dr. Frank Olsen, who was suspected of committing suicide by jumping off a building after falling into depression after taking LSD. Research into the use of LSD came to a halt because of the unpredictable effects of the drug and interest diminished (Horowitz, 2001, p. 220).
Under the umbrella of MKULTRA other classified projects were conducted.
One of these projects was known as MKNAOMI, which consisted of biological research in mind control. A document produced by the United States Chemical Corps explains a correlation between research on fungi, fungal disease, and protein crystal and MKULTRA’s mind altering/mind control study (Horowitz, 2001, p210). With both offensive and defensive uses a biological agent (either a fungi or prion) would be disseminated in the air and heightened through the induction of an electromagnetic pulse. The research of electromagnetically induced biological- mind control agents was quickly dismissed. Nevertheless, biological radio communication research continued. It was found during different experiments between the 80 institutions and 44 colleges then conducting research for MKULTRA that very-low-frequency sound (VLF) was the most likely culprit when it came to mind control (Horowitz, 2001, p.
222).
In the aftermath of the entire program there were test subjects or families of test subjects of the secret trials performed by the Central Intelligence Agency and United States Army, who came forward and filed suits against the government (Rappoport, 1995, p. 56). The United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency would often deny any knowledge of MKULTRA and would often receive favorable court judgments. However, there were times when, without claiming knowledge of the program, the case would be settled out of court. The most famous of these cases was Dr. Frank Olson, a biochemist in the United States Army and chief of the Special Operations Division, who received $750,000 from Congress (Rappoport, 1995, p. 56). Dr. Olson was given LSD in 1953 without his knowledge or approval.
The scarcity of information pertaining to the program is of no surprise. Many issues regarding of the legality as well as public opinion threatened the completion of the program. There was a congressional investigation in 1975 into the project led by Frank Church (Horowitz, 2001, p. 209). During this investigation it was found that records for the program had been “destroyed by the Technical Services Division personnel acting on orders of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb Chief of TSD (Technical Service Division” (Horowitz, 2001, p. 208) he was acting on verbal order of then Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms (Horowitz, 2001, p. 209). Because of this destruction of records in 1973, only a few thousand documents remain pertaining to MKULTRA.
The federal government has spent countless hours and dollars trying to cover up the skeletons in the closet of the Central Intelligence Agency. The United States Army Chemical Corps was in the center of this program from the beginning. Even though nothing can be confirmed with absolute certainty it can be determined with reasonable certainty that human testing was done and it was done without the knowledge of the subjects. The use of LSD and biological agents as mind control devices was later determined to be “a waste of time and effort” by the scientist involved (McCoy, 2006, p. 30). Contrary to many conspiracy theorist, the government denies any human testing in today’s experiments.