Following is an at-a-glance list of U.S. government projects and programs that have included criminal or inhumane acts against civilians. (Some of these programs have also victimized intelligence and armed services personnel.)
Each is supported by declassified documents, whistleblower testimony and extensive published investigation.
For each program, you’ll see:
- A one or two-sentence summary of the criminal and inhumane actions.
- A bulleted list of key facts about the project.
- Quotes and highlights from whistleblowers and investigative reporters.
- Resources for going deeper.
“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” – Edmund Burke
Introduction
This gives a general sense for the topic overall:
My book, The CIA Doctors, is based on 15,000 pages of documents I received from the CIA through the Freedom of Information Act and dozens of papers published in medical journals… The CIA funded top secret research at many leading universities including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Stanford. There was a series of CIA mind control programs including BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, MKSEARCH and MKNAOMI… The core purpose of MKULTRA and related programs was to learn how to enhance interrogations, erase and insert memories, and create and run Manchurian Candidates. All of this is described clearly and explicitly in the declassified CIA documents… The CIA mind control experiments were interwoven with radiation, chemical and biological weapons experiments conducted on children, comatose patients, pregnant women, the general population and other unwitting groups who had no idea they were subjects in secret experiments. – Colin A. Ross MD, CCHR International: The Mental Health Watchdog, The CIA Mind Control Doctors: From Harvard to Guantanamo
Artichoke & Bluebird
Summary
* Deliberate creation of dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities) using trauma and inhumane practices for the purposes of mind control.
Highlights
* BLUEBIRD was a 1950’s CIA research project to identify drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations to force confessions.
* In 1951, BLUEBIRD was expanded and renamed ARTICHOKE.
* Included deliberate traumatic creation of dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities) for the purpose of mind control.
* ARTICHOKE and BLUEBIRD evolved into MKULTRA and associated programs. (See MKULTRA below.)
Reports
Project BLUEBIRD was approved by the director of the CIA on April 20, 1950. In a 1951 memo, Bluebird states that practical research was to be conducted to include these specific problems:
* Can we create by post-[hypnotic] control an action contrary to an individual’s basic moral principles?
* Can we in a matter of an hour, two hours, one day, etc., induce an [hypnotic] condition in an unwilling subject to such an extent that he will perform an act for our benefit?
* Could we seize a subject and in the space of an hour or two by post-[hypnotic] control have him crash an airplane, wreck a train, etc.?
* Can we by [hypnotic] and [sleep inducing] techniques force a subject to travel long distances, commit specified acts and return to us or bring documents or materials?
* Can we guarantee total amnesia under any and all conditions?
* Can we ‘alter’ a person’s personality?
* Can we devise a system for making unwilling subjects into willing agents and then transfer that control to untrained agency agents in the field by use of codes or identifying signs?
* How can sodium A or P or any other sleep inducing agent be best concealed in a normal item, such as candy, cigarettes, coffee, tea, beer, medicines?
– CSGlobe, CIA The Secrets of Mind Control (Read the declassified documents for yourself
here.)
The participation of psychiatrists and medical schools in mind control research was not a matter of a few scattered doctors pursuing questionable lines of investigation. Rather, the mind control experimentation was systematic, organized, and involved many leading psychiatrists and medical schools. The mind control experiments were interwoven with radiation experiments, and research on chemical and biological weapons. They were funded by the CIA, Army, Navy, Air Force, and by other agencies including the Public Health Service and the Scottish Rite Foundation. The psychiatrists, psychologists, neurosurgeons, and other contractors conducting the work… did not occur in a vacuum. The importation of Nazi doctors to the US through secret programs like PAPERCLIP is part of the context… Over 1,000 German scientists were secretly brought into the US without State Department approval. The most famous individual brought over in this manner was Werner von Braun, the rocket scientist… Medical doctors also came over under PAPERCLIP. – Colin A. Ross MD, wantoknow.info, BLUEBIRD: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists
George Estabrooks, a Harvard University graduate, Rhodes Scholar and chairman of psychology at Colgate University, Canada… acknowledged building Manchurian Candidates. In his book Spiritism, Dr. Estabrooks describes experiments done to create multiple personality. In his book Hypnotism, Dr. Estabrooks states that the creation of experimental multiple personality for operational use in military subjects, whom he refers to as super spies, is ethical. – Alliance for Human Research Protection, 1963: Hypnotist George Estabrooks admits creating multiple personality assassins
The earliest of the CIA’s major programs involving the use of chemical and biological agents, Project BLUEBIRD, was approved by the Director in 1950. Its objectives were (a) discovering means of conditioning personnel to prevent unauthorized extraction of information from them by known means, (b) investigating the possibility of control of an individual by application of special interrogation techniques, (c) memory enhancement, and (d) establishing defensive means for preventing hostile control of Agency personnel. As a result of interrogations conducted overseas during the project, another goal was added: the evaluation of offensive uses of unconventional interrogation techniques, including hypnosis and drugs. In August 1951, the project was renamed ARTICHOKE. – Targeted Individuals Canada, Project BLUEBIRD / ARTICHOKE
Resources
1. Alliance for Human Research Protection — 1963: Hypnotist George Estabrooks admits creating multiple personality assassins
2. CSGlobe, CIA The Secrets of Mind Control
3. publicintelligence.net — CIA special Research Project Bluebird 1952 — Declassified CIA document
4. Ross, Colin A. MD, wantoknow.info — BLUEBIRD: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists
5. Ross, Colin A. MD — The C.I.A. Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists — 2006 book
6. Targeted Individuals Canada — Project BLUEBIRD / ARTICHOKE
7. Victorian, Dr. Armen — Mind Controllers — 1999 book
Chatter
Summary
* Performed LSD experiments on human subjects at a mental hospital.
Highlights
* A navy project under the direction of Doctor Charles Savage from 1947 to 1953.
* According to a Senate hearing document, the project was to “focus on the identification and testing of… drugs for use in interrogations and in the recruitment of agents. The research included laboratory experiments on animals and human subjects involving Anabasis aphylla, scopolamine, and mescaline in order to determine their speech-inducing qualities.”
* Tested the effects of increasing doses of LSD on mental patients.
Reports
Described as an “offensive” program, CHATTER was supposed to devise means of obtaining information from people independent of their volition but without physical duress… Dr. Charles Savage conducted experiments with mescaline (a semi-synthetic extract of the peyote cactus that produces hallucinations similar to those caused by LSD) at the Navy Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. – Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams – The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion
Savage gave depressed patients 20 micrograms of LSD on the first day, and then “increased daily up to a point where a definite psycho-physio-logical effect could be observed.” What made the project particularly disturbing was the procedure with which Savage chose his patients. Described on page 4 of the report, Savage admits that he selected “severely depressed” patients that were admitted at the mental hospital… It seems unconscionable that Savage would call such research a form of “treatment,” since he carefully selected identical patients… that he intentionally didn’t “treat” in order to have a control group. He was clearly experimenting, not treating. – topsecretwriters.com, Project Chatter: US Navy LSD Experiments on Mental Patients
Resources
1. Greenewald Jr., John, theblackvault.com — FOIA Documents from the Department of the Navy on Project Chatter
2. Lee, Martin A. and Bruce Shlain — Acid Dreams – The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion — 1994 book
3. topsecretwriters.com — Project Chatter: US Navy LSD Experiments on Mental Patients
Cointelpro
Summary
* Sabotaged constitutionally-protected political activity using unethical and illegal means.
Highlights
* Named for: COunter INTELligence PROgram (COINTELPRO).
* A series of secret projects conducted by the FBI between 1956 and 1971 aimed at “neutralizing political dissidents.”
* On public record, the FBI defined “neutralization” as including “making them incapable of engaging in political activity by whatever means.” (source)
* Included spying on, infiltrating, discrediting, disrupting and destroying American organizations considered “subversive,” with a particular focus on the Black Panther Party.
* FBI COINTELPRO documents include: “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of the Black nationalists.” (source)
Reports
The FBI used the COINTELPRO program to investigate ‘radical’ national political groups… This of course meant that the FBI specifically targeted American citizens. According to COINTELPRO documents, 5 groups were singled out for investigation: the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers’ Party, White Hate Groups, Black Nationalist Hate Groups and the New Left. The Black Panther Party was specifically targeted… Of the 295 documented actions taken by COINTELPRO to disrupt Black groups, 233 were directed against the Black Panther Party. – PBS.org, COINTELPRO
‘COINTELPRO’ was the FBI’s secret program to undermine the popular upsurge which swept the country during the 1960s. Though the name stands for ‘Counterintelligence Program,’ the targets were not enemy spies. The FBI set out to eliminate “radical” political opposition inside the US. When traditional modes of repression (exposure, blatant harassment, and prosecution for political crimes) failed to counter the growing insurgency, and even helped to fuel it, the Bureau took the law into its own hands and secretly used fraud and force to sabotage constitutionally- protected political activity. Its methods ranged far beyond surveillance, and amounted to a domestic version of the covert action for which the CIA has become infamous throughout the world… COINTELPRO was discovered in March, 1971, when secret files were removed from an FBI office and released to news media. – Brian Glick, COINTELPRO Revisited – Spying & Disruption
The most serious of the FBI disruption programs were those directed against “Black Nationalists.” Agents were instructed to undertake actions to discredit these groups both within “the responsible Negro community” and to “Negro radicals,” also “to the white community, both the responsible community” and to “liberals” who have vestiges of sympathy for militant black nationalists… A March 4th, 1968 memo from J Edgar Hoover to FBI field offices laid out the goals of the COINTELPRO – Black Nationalist Hate Groups program: “to prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups;” “to prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement;” “to prevent violence on the part of black nationalist groups;” “to prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability;” and “to prevent the long-range growth of militant black nationalist organizations, especially among youth.” Included in the program were a broad spectrum of civil rights and religious groups; targets included Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, and Elijah Muhammad… At its most extreme dimension, political dissidents have been eliminated outright or sent to prison for the rest of their lives… Many more… were “neutralized” by intimidation, harassment, discrediting, snitch jacketing, a whole assortment of authoritarian and illegal tactics. Neutralization, as explained on record by the FBI… [includes] making them incapable of engaging in political activity by whatever means. – Paul Wolf, COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story
As Martin Luther King’s fame grew, so too did the FBI’s campaign to discredit him. The Bureau compiled a tape recording of Reverend King with extra marital lovers and sent him a copy, along with an anonymous note that read in part, ‘There is only one thing left for you to do. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.’ … Journalist Danny Schecter, a local organizer for the march on Washington, says the FBI used any means necessary to achieve their goal: ‘Understand that COINTELPRO was not just surveillance, it was active disruption. It was putting agents into the movement to incite rivalries, a jealousy, to try to get people fighting against each other and not trusting each other. – NPR.org, COINTELPRO and the History of Domestic Spying
A major investigation was launched in 1975 by [a U.S. Senate committee] commonly referred to as the ‘Church Committee,’ for its chairman, Senator Frank Church… However, millions of pages of documents remain unreleased, and many released documents are heavily censored. In its final report, the committee sharply criticized COINTELPRO. – Nadine Frederique, Encyclopedia Britannica, COINTELPRO: United States Government Program
Resources
1. Frederique, Nadine, Encyclopedia Britannica — COINTELPRO: United States Government Program
2. Glick, Brian — COINTELPRO Revisited – Spying & Disruption
3. NPR.org — COINTELPRO and the History of Domestic Spying
4. PBS.org — COINTELPRO
5. TRT World — FBI COINTELPRO — 1 min video
6. Wolf, Paul — COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story
Hades / Ranch Hand
Summary
* Sprayed poisons on 6 million acres of land in Vietnam, causing civilian deaths by poisoning and starvation + horrifying birth defects in children of those exposed; the VA acknowledges more than 14 forms of cancer and other nerve and heart diseases directly associated with Agent Orange exposure.
Highlights
* The name Operation Hades was later changed to Operation Ranch Hand, but it kept the satanic symbol: a smiling devil with pitchfork.
* Developed by the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
* Intended to destroy the jungle canopy to clear areas of concealment and destroy the food supply.
* In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, sprayed toxic chemicals over more than one-fifth of all the forests in what was then South Vietnam. (source)
* By 1971, 6 million acres had been sprayed; more than a third of forestland was sprayed at least once (source); at least 15% of croplands were sprayed.
* Nearly four-fifths of the population lived in rural areas.
* Companies profiting from the spraying included Dow and Monsanto.
* Agent Orange used in Vietnam was thirteen times more concentrated than that used domestically. Agent White was so long-lasting in the environment that it was never allowed to be used on U.S. soil. Agent Blue was 54% arsenic.
* Caused deaths from poisoning and starvation, health issues and birth defects.
* Despite worldwide cries, individuals within the U.S. government, commercial companies and mainstream science deemed the poisons safe or “inconclusive.”
* In 1969, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) formed a committee led by Matthew Meselson, to study Agent Orange in Vietnam. As a result, a petition with 5,000 scientist signatures was sent to the U.S. President, urging him to stop spraying, on the grounds of establishing a dangerous precedent in chemical and biological warfare. (source)
Reports
Of the 2.7 million U.S. troops who served in Vietnam, more than 39,000 have filed claims with the Veteran’s Administration (VA) for Agent Orange related health issues and, according to the Vietnamese government, more than 4 million of its citizens were victims of the spraying. The VA acknowledges more than 14 forms of cancer and other nerve and heart diseases to be directly associated with Agent Orange exposure. Birth defects in children of those exposed carry the toxic legacy forward into the next generation on both sides. – Norman Stockwell, The Progressive, Agent Orange: Its Legacy Endures
Resources
1. Anand, Ash, news.com.au — Vietnam’s horrific legacy: The children of Agent Orange
2. Oliver, Mark, allthatsinteresting.com — Agent Orange: 24 Haunting Photos Of The War Crime The U.S. Got Away With
3. Stockwell, Norman, The Progressive — Agent Orange: Its Legacy Endures
4. Thomas, Marshall — MONARCH: The New Phoenix Program — 2007 book
5. Uhl, Michael — The War I Survived Was Vietnam: Collected Writings of a Veteran and Antiwar Activist — 2016 book
6. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — Veterans’ Diseases Associated with Agent Orange
7. Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign — About
MK Ultra / Monarch
Summary
* Traumatic experiments on children, mentally ill and other people without their consent, designed to alter the mind and to achieve mind control.
Experiments Included
* Powerful mind-altering drugs such as barbituates, amphetamines, LSD, THC and “synthetic, government-created super hallucinogen BZ”
* Hypnosis to stimulate fears which could be exploited to gain intelligence
* Sensory deprivation
* Electroshock
* Paralytic drugs
Highlights
* Initially established to develop a truth serum, MK Ultra evolved into using chemical and biological weapons to alter the human mind and achieve mind control.
* It was treated with such secrecy that it was given multiple code names including Project MKNAOMI, MKDELTA and MKSEARCH.
* It grew into such a “mammoth undertaking” that few sources attempt to describe every initiative within MK Ultra; Carol Rutz reports 149 subprojects contracted out to at least 80 institutions, with other sources using similar numbers.
* It’s unclear at what point the programs may have evolved into Project Monarch. (Here we provide information related to MK Ultra and Monarch programs.)
* Allen Dulles, then-director of the CIA, sanctioned the project on April 13, 1953.
* Inspired by Nazi doctors who had “proven proficient in breaking the mind and rebuilding it,” the experiments were run by previous Nazi scientists brought to the U.S. via Operation Paperclip.
* To increase secrecy, the experiments were spread out across multiple cities in numerous facilities, including college campuses and hospitals. (See also: Compartmentalization)
* “At first the CIA experimented mostly on prisoners, drug addicts and terminally sick destitutes… [including] prisoners at California’s Vacaville prison, the Georgia state penitentiary and the Tennessee state prison system. There was a problem, however. In these instances a certain modicum of informed consent was often required. Prisoners could get reduced sentences… drug addicts would get cash, drugs or treatment…. For the CIA researchers, any type of informed consent was antithetical to their research task, which was to make unwilling subjects talk and covertly elicit cooperation.” (source)
* The CIA experimented on many unwitting subjects including children, clients of prostitutes, mental patients and CIA agents.
* After they had been experimented on, subjects often reported depression, amnesia, paralysis, withdrawal, confusion, disorientation, pain, insomnia and schizophrenic-like mental states.
* In 1973, after being tipped off about forthcoming investigations, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of any MKULTRA records.
* Only because they had been incorrectly filed, a small subset of documents were uncovered in 1977 as part of two investigations (the U.S. Congress Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission).
* Katie Serena writes, “Countless shows and movies have been inspired by the MKUltra events, most notably The Men Who Stare at Goats and Stranger Things… most people don’t realize just how accurate these seemingly-fictional accounts actually were.” (source)
Reports
MK Ultra was the name for a previously classified research program through the CIA’s scientific intelligence division. It was the CIA’s program of research in behavioral modification on human beings that’s now declassified. The United States government even issued a national apology for the program while Bill Clinton was in office. – Arjun Walia, Collective Evolution, MK Ultra: CIA Admits Behavioral Engineering on Humans
Learning studies will be instituted in which the subject will be rewarded or punished for overall performance and reinforced in various ways—with electric shock, etc. In other cases, drugs and psychological tricks will be used to modify attitudes. The experimenters will be particularly interested in dissociative states [multiple personality]. An attempt will be made to induce a number of states of this kind, using hypnosis. – CIA FOIA Documents
[May 6, 1987] A Federal judge in Manhattan ruled yesterday that the Government must pay $700,000 to the family of a man who died in 1953 when the Army secretly used him in a chemical warfare experiment. The victim, Harold Blauer, was a civilian patient in a psychiatric institute who received injections of mescaline derivatives, without knowing that they were part of an experiment. – Arnold H. Lubasch, The New York Times, Article 388687 — No Title
Regardless of a report by the CIA’s Inspector General in 1963 recommending the termination of testing on unwitting subjects, future CIA Director Richard Helms continued to advocate covert testing on the grounds that ‘we are less capable of staying up with the Soviet advances in this field. ‘On the subject of moral issues, Helms commented, ‘we have no answer to the moral issue.’ – CSGlobe, CIA The Secrets of Mind Control
James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, who wrote this feature for OZY last year, was found dead in prison on Oct. 30, 2018: In 1957, while a prisoner at the Atlanta penitentiary, I was recruited by Dr. Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University to join a medical project… For our participation, we would receive three days of good time for each month on the project… We were injected with massive doses of LSD-25… Dr. Pfeiffer and several men in suits who were not doctors would give us tests to see how we reacted. Eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state. Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating… Hours of paranoia and feeling violent. We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls… I felt like I was going insane. The men in suits would… hook me up to machines, asking questions like: Did you ever kill anyone? Would you kill someone? Two men went psychotic. They had all the symptoms of schizophrenia. They had to be pried loose from under their beds, growling, barking and frothing at the mouth. They put them in a strip cell down the hall. I never saw or heard of them again. – James “Whitey” Bulger, ozy.com, I Was a Guinea Pig for CIA Drug Experiments
As a survivor of CIA programs Bluebird/Artichoke and MKULTRA, I began my intense search to document some of the mind control experiments that I was made part of, starting at the tender age of four… 48 years after I was first experimented on, I found solid proof of my memories—proof that was in the government vaults of the nearly 18,000 pages of declassified documents… The government had finally handed me the validation I had been searching for… The ‘Manchurian Candidate,’ where a programmed alter or personality is created to respond to a post-hypnotic trigger to perform an act and not remember it later, was just one of the operational uses of the mind control by the CIA. A reliable truth serum would be another. In Bluebird, Dr. Colin Ross documents the deliberate creation of Multiple Personality by psychiatrists working under government contracts. Your hard earned tax dollars support this, as well as experiments on extrasensory perception and remove viewing, all of which I was tested and trained for. – Carol Rutz, A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on Our Children and Other Innocent People
On Jan 8 1953 Harold Blauer, a widely known tennis professional, died after being injected with a massive dose of a mescaline derivative at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Blauer was being treated for mild depression, but the injection was nothing to do with his treatment. The injection was part of secret Army-funded research conducted by Dr. Paul Hoch… The Institute had been covertly administering hallucinogenic drugs to patients in order to observe reactions. Dr Hoch was director of experimental psychiatry at the Institute, and secret collaborator with the Army Chemical Corps chief of clinical research, Dr. Amedeo Marrazzi. – Dr. Aubrey Blumsohn, Scientific Misconduct Blog, LSD and the corruption of medicine (Part I): Invention and the beginnings of MK-ULTRA
A behavior control research project was begun in the 1950s, coordinated by the British psychological warfare unit called the Tavistock Institute, with the Scottish Rite Masons, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other British, U. S., Canadian, and United Nations agencies. The project became famous in the 1970s under a CIA code name, “MK-Ultra.”… The outrages perpetrated by Ewen Cameron became the most notorious aspect of the… mind-control program…. Cameron was also elected president of the Canadian, American, and world psychiatric associations. He became famous after the CIA was sued by some survivors of his work—because the CIA had financed the tortures. Cameron would drug his victims to sleep for weeks on end, waking them daily only to administer violent electric shocks to the brain. He used the British Page-Russell electroconvulsive method, an initial one-second shock, then five to nine additional shocks, administered while the patient was in seizure. But he increased the normal voltage and the number of sequences from one to two or three times per day. Patients lost all or part of their memories, and some lost the ability to control their bodily functions and to speak… Some subjects were deposited permanently in institutions for the hopelessly insane. – Anton Chaitkin, EIR, British Psychiatry: From Eugenics to Assassination
I then began a “FOIA Battle” with the CIA about this entire issue… They stated the index (available for download [here]) was supposed to ALL be on the CD-ROMs. Obviously, they were not, and I double and then later TRIPLE checked the work of Oscar Diggs to ensure accuracy. There was no error, and I stood by the fact taht the documents were missing. After sending a 97 page fax proving that the records were not on the original disks (which is what they required me to do) they changed their story once they realized I proved what I said. They then claimed they made a “mistake,” and they should have been better at clarifying, but the documents regarding “behavioral modification” were NOT supposed to be on the CD-ROMs, and I only paid for the “MKULTRA” material. After wasting hours upon hours of time stretching over months, I then officially requested a “fee waiver” but I was ultimately denied. So in August of 2018, I started a GOFUNDME campaign to help raise the $425.80 that the CIA required to release the 4,358 additional pages. I was told I needed to pay for them because they did not fit the scope of my original request in the late 1990s. After extensive media coverage about my “FOIA Battle” that was covered by Vice News / Motherboard, Newsweek and many other outlets, the funds were raised in a matter of days…. Fast forward to the end of October 2018. I received a box from the CIA… I read their letter (available here). In short, the CIA changed their story yet again. – John Greenwald, The Black Vault, CIA MKULTRA / Mind Control Collection (Declassified Documents): The Missing Pages
Professionals Who Conducted Immoral Experiments
Many of the following professionals are named by Dr. Colin A. Ross here and/or Carol Rutz here, and most are named in numerous survivor and investigative reports.
* Abramson, Dr. Harold, Cornell
* Baldwin, Dr. Maitland, neurosurgeon, National Institutes of Health
* Cameron, Dr. D. Ewen, first chairman of the World Psychiatric Association, president of the American and Canadian psychiatric associations
* Estabrooks, George, psychologist whose specialty was hypnosis, Colgate College, Rhodes scholar
* Geschicter, Dr. Charles, University of Richmond
* Gottlieb, Dr. Sidney, head chemist of MKUltra
* Hamilton, Dr. James, Stanford
* Hoch, Dr. Paul
* Hyde, Dr. Robert in Boston
* Lilly, John C.
* Mengele, Dr. Josef
* Orne, Dr. Martin, Harvard
* Osgood, Dr. Charles, University of Illinois
* Pfeiffer, Dr. Carl, pharmacologist, Emory
* Rogers, Dr. Carl, University of Wisconsin
* West, Louis Jolyon, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oklahoma and later at UCLA
* Wolff, Dr. Harold, Cornell
Resources
1. Allen, Kristy (MK Ultra survivor) International Tribunal for Natural Justice — Judicial Commission Report, April 2018 — 1 hour video testimony
2. Blumsohn, Dr. Aubrey, Scientific Misconduct Blog — LSD and the corruption of medicine (Part I): Invention and the beginnings of MK-ULTRA
3. Barnett, Fiona (MK Ultra survivor) Australian Victim of CIA Child Trafficking, Ritual Abuse & MK-ULTRA Mind Control — 1 hour 14 min video testimony
4. Bulger, James “Whitey” (MK Ultra survivor) ozy.com — I Was a Guinea Pig for CIA Drug Experiments
5. Central Intelligence Agency — FOIA Documents
6. CSGlobe — CIA The Secrets of Mind Control
7. Faris, Nick, Montreal Gazette — Montreal doctor ruined hundreds of lives with CIA-funded ‘depatterning’ treatment, victims say
8. Greenewald Jr., John, theblackvault.com — Declassified CIA documents including an 85-page searchable index
9. Nofil, Brianna, History.com — The CIA’s Appalling Human Experiments With Mind Control
10. O’Brien, Cathy (MK Ultra / Monarch survivor) and Mark Phillips — Presentation at The Grenada Forum, October 1996 — 2 hour video testimony
11. Rutz, Carol (MK Ultra / Monarch survivor) — A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on Our Children and Other Innocent People — 2001 book
12. Scheflin, Dr. Alan — The Mind Manipulators: A Non-fiction Account — 1978 book
13. Serena, Katie, allthatsinteresting.com — Project MKUltra And The CIA Plot To Defeat The Soviets With Mind Control
14. St. Clair, Jeffrey and Alexander Cockburn, Counter Punch — The CIA’s House of Horrors: the Abominable Dr. Gottlieb
15. Taylor, Brice (MK Ultra / Monarch survivor) — Brice Taylor Exposes Mind Control & Her Handlers — 20 min video testimony
16. Thompson, Elizabeth, CBC News — Federal government quietly compensates daughter of brainwashing experiments victim
17. Walia, Arjun, Collective Evolution — MK Ultra: CIA Admits Behavioral Engineering on Humans
18. Walia, Arjun, Collective Evolution — MK Ultra Survivor Shares the Details of Her Experience
Mockingbird
Summary
* Subversion of the free press by using CIA spies as journalists in order to control the public debate.
Highlights
* Unlike the other programs here, there has been no official confirmation of this particular project name. However, whether using the code name or not, there is extremely strong whistleblower testimony and investigative journalism reporting on the CIA’s infiltration of the media. (See below.)
* Operation Mockingbird began as an “alleged CIA project that recruited journalists to write fake stories promoting government ideas while dispelling communist ones,” expanding later “in order to influence foreign media as well.” (source)
* Ex-CIA whistleblower Kevin Shipp testifies here that the “CIA has a direct, established contract with the mainstream media.”
* In the late 1960’s there were “a slew of articles published” about Operation Mockingbird. (source)
* Carl Bernstein (who uncovered the Watergate scandal) spent six months investigating the relationship between the CIA and the media culminating in a 1977 cover story in Rolling Stone entitled The CIA and the Media: How America’s Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered it Up.
* Bernstein’s investigation exposed more than 400 American journalists doubling as CIA operatives, including reporters for The New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, CBS and Time Inc.
* “Journalists were reportedly blackmailed and threatened into this network.” (source)
Reports
In 1948 Frank Wisner was appointed director of the… espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on “propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures…” Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic American media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham (Washington Post) to run the project within the industry. Graham himself recruited others who had worked for military intelligence during the war. This included James Truitt, Russell Wiggins, Phil Geyelin, John Hayes and Alan Barth. Others like Stewart Alsop, Joseph Alsop and James Reston, were recruited from within the Georgetown Set. According to Deborah Davis, the author of Katharine the Great (1979): “By the early 1950s, Wisner ‘owned’ respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles.” – Spartacus Educational, Operation Mockingbird
The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets. – U.S. Congress Committee Report, 1976
[Investigative journalism] led to a series of congressional investigations done in the 1970s [in] the U.S. Senate and named the Church Committee. The Church Committee investigations looked into government operations and potential abuses by the CIA, the NSA, the FBI and the IRS. In 2007, around 700 pages of documents from the 1970’s were declassified and released by the CIA in a collection called ‘The Family Jewels.’ The files all surrounded the investigations and scandals pertaining to agency misconduct during the 1970’s. There was only one mention of Operation Mockingbird… Though declassified documents show that this type of operation occurred, it’s never been officially confirmed as the title of Operation Mockingbird. Thus, it’s also never been officially discontinued. – Kara Goldfarb, allthatsinteresting.com, Inside Operation Mockingbird: The CIA’s Plan to Infiltrate the Media
A senator who was the object of the [CIA’s] lobbying later said: “From the CIA point of view this was the highest, most sensitive covert program of all…. It was a much larger part of the operational system than has been indicated.” – Carl Bernstein, Rolling Stone, How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency
Resources
1. Archive.org — Full Text of “Final Report of the Sect Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activity, United States Senate”
2. Bernstein, Carl, Rolling Stone (reprinted on carlbernstein.com) — How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up
3. Bird’s Eye View — Evaluating the Mainstream Media
4. The Black Vault — Declassified Documents: Operation Mockingbird
5. Goldfarb, Kara, allthatsinteresting.com — Inside Operation Mockingbird: The CIA’s Plan to Infiltrate the Media
6. Spartacus Educational — Operation Mockingbird
7. Ulfkotte, Dr. Udo (former German newspaper editor) — Testimony: How the CIA Buys the News Media — 13 min video
8. Ulfkotte, Dr. Udo — Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys the News — 2017 book
9. WantToKnow.info — Operation Mockingbird: The CIA’s Operation Mockingbird Manipulated Media
Northwoods
Summary
* U.S. Military operation to trick the American public and international community into supporting a war by attacking and killing innocent U.S. citizens and blaming it on terrorism.
Highlights
* In 1962, Operation Northwoods was approved in writing by the Pentagon Joint Chiefs (the top generals of each branch of the U.S. armed forces) and submitted to the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
* It proposed tricking the public into supporting a war with Cuba by attacking and killing innocent U.S. citizens and blaming it on terrorism.
* The proposal included blowing up a US ship and hijacking planes to create a false pretext for war.
* “The only reason the plans weren’t implemented is that the Kennedy administration rejected the plans.” (source)
Reports
A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.
Incidents to establish a credible attack:
(1) Start rumors (many). Use clandestine radio.
(2) Land friendly Cubans in uniform “over-the-fence” to stage attack on base.
(3) Capture Cuban (friendly) saboteurs inside the base.
(4) Start riots near the base main gate (friendly Cubans).
(5) Blow up ammunition inside the base: start fires.
(6) Burn aircraft on air base (sabotage).
(7) Lob mortar shells from outside of base into base.
(8) Capture assault teams approaching from the sea or vicinity of Guantanamo City.
(9) Capture militia group which storms base.
(10) Sabotage ship in harbor; large fires – naphthalene.
(11) Sink ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock-victims.
– Operation Northwoods declassified documents (source)
Resources
1. The National Security Archive — Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962
2. Ruppe, David, ABC News — U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War with Cuba
3. wantotoknow.info — Operation Northwoods
Paperclip / Overcast
Summary
* After World War II, the U.S. government secretly brought more than 1,000 Nazi war criminals to the U.S., without punishment or accountability. They provided the Nazis with aliases and powerful, influential positions in the U.S. government, military, and intelligence, and other organizations.
Highlights
* Originally called Operation Overcast.
* In the mid 1940’s, President Truman authorized Project Paperclip, a program designed to harness German scientific intelligence for the benefit of the U.S. military and to deny access to the Soviet Union.
* “A 1999 report to the Senate and the House said ‘between 1945 and 1955, 765 scientists, engineers, and technicians were brought to the US under Paperclip and similar programs.” (source) Most other sources put the number much higher, often at around 1,600. (source)
* While the original authorization forbade the recruitment of Nazis, this directive was bypassed and eventually eliminated. Many ardent Nazis and war criminals who had participated in murderous medical experiments on human subjects in concentration camps were brought to the U.S. and given powerful positions. These included Major General Dr. Walter Schreiber, the surgeon general of the Third Reich and others who had worked alongside Adolf Hitler including Otto Ambros, Walter Dornberger and Wernher von Braun, who eventually became direct of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
* “Under Operation Paperclip, the scientists who helped the Third Reich wage war continued their weapons-related work for the U.S. government, developing rockets, chemical and biological weapons.” (source)
Reports
Declassified documents from the U.S. National Archives prove that through Operation Paperclip, the CIA, NASA, and many other branches of government provided aliases for top Nazi scientists to enter and be employed by the U.S., even though many of these had committed heinous war crimes. – wanttoknow.info, Operation Paperclip: Nazi Scientists Secretly Brought to US After WWII
The American government worked closely with Nazi war criminals and collaborators, allowing many of them to live in the United States after World War II. – New York Times, Jan. 30, 2005
The program was governed out of an office in the elite ‘E’ ring of the Pentagon. The Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) was created solely and specifically to recruit and hire Nazi scientists and put them on weapons projects and in scientific intelligence programs within the army, navy, the air force, the CIA, and other organizations. – Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip
Resources
1. Central Intelligence Agency — Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program to Bring Nazi Scientists to America
2. Horowitz, Leonard — In Lies We Trust: The CIA, Hollywood and Bioterrorism — 2 hour 30 min video documentary
3. Jacobsen, Annie — Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America — 2014 book
4. Schumm, Laura, History.com — What was operaton Paperclip?
5. wanttoknow.info — Operation Paperclip: Nazi Scientists Secretly Brought to US After WWII
Phoenix
Summary
* Sadistic torture and murder of innocent people.
Highlights
* Also called the Phung Hoang Program.
* Created by the CIA in 1967 during the Vietnam War to target the Viet Cong.
* Used assassination, kidnapping and torture to target civilians who supported the Viet Cong. (source)
* Darius Rejali’s research of the CIA’s records found that for every Viet Cong agent who was killed almost 5 innocent people were killed. (source)
* Reports include the program’s teams using rape, gang rape, rape using snakes, rape followed by murder, “the water treatment” and other forms of torture with most people dying during torture or being killed later. (source)
* Rejali describes the case of detainee Vhuyen Van Tai, who was subjected to electro-torture, water torture, beatings, stress positions, sleep deprivation and confinement in a freezing refrigerated room for two years. (source)
Reports
Although Phoenix was run and ostensibly controlled by the Saigon government, the CIA funded and administered it… The various Phoenix field forces… went to the villages and hamlets and attempted to identify the named individuals and “neutralize” them. Those on a list were arrested or captured for interrogation, or if they resisted, they were killed. – Global Security.org, Phoenix 1967-1971
As the program supported capturing as many VC members and suspects as possible so that they could question them, more and more people were added to the ‘blacklist.’ The normal procedure of capturing people on the ‘blacklist’ would involve going into a village, grabbing a bystander and demanding the location of a ‘target’ person. As most people were so afraid that they could not speak, [they] would put a sandbag over the ‘informant’s’ head, adding holes for him or her to be able to see. They would then put a ‘commo’ wire over the person’s neck to use as a leash and drag him or her through the village, asking the person to shake his head when the unit passed the target’s house. – Alan Rohn, thevitenamwar.info, The Controversy of the Phoenix Program
Resources
1. Denton-Borhaugh, Kelly, The Morning Call — U.S. Phoenix Program in Vietnam War offers lessons for today
2. Global Security.org — Phoenix 1967-1971
3. Miller, Edward, NY Times — Behind the Phoenix Program
4. Myers, Barbara, The Nation — The Secret Origins of the CIA’s Torture Program and The Forgotten Man Who Tried to Expose It
5. Rejali, Darius — Torture and Democracy — 2009 book
6. Rohn, Alan, thevietnamwar.info — The Controversy of the Phoenix Program
7. RT.com — Video (11 min) — Interview with Douglas Valentine, author of The CIA as Organized Crime
8. Russo, Anthony — “The first person to… blow the whistle on U.S. torture during the Vietnam War” (source)
9. Schwartz, Jon, The Intercept — “It Would Have Been Un-American Not to Do It”: Anthony Russo, The Forgotten Whistleblower
10. Stockwell, John CIA Officer — Video (1 min) — Testimony about sadistic torture paid and propped up” by the CIA in a CIA safeshouse
11. Thomas, Marshall — Monarch: The New Phoenix Program — 2007 book
12. Valentine, Douglas — The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World — 2017 book
13. Valentine, Douglas — The Phoenix Program — 2016 book
Tuskegee Experiment
Summary
* Doctors for the U.S. government recruited unwitting subjects through lies and bribery and then conducted inhumane research on them. The doctors withheld treatment, watching the victims suffer the effects of untreated syphilis, including blindness, insanity and death.
Highlights
* In 1932, doctors from the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) told 399 men with latent syphilis they were being treated for general ailments when in fact they were being unwittingly used in an inhumane research study.
* The men were only given placebos despite the fact that penicillin was the recommended treatment for syphilis.
* The participants were primarily sharecroppers, and many had never before visited a doctor; they had been recruited with fliers promising “colored people” special treatment for “bad blood” (a catchall term for a variety of ailments).
Reports
Hundreds of men — all black and many of them poor — signed up. Some of the men thought they were being treated for rheumatism or bad stomachs. They were promised free meals, free physicals and free burial insurance. – DeNeen L. Brown, The Washington Post, ‘You’ve got bad blood’: The horror of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment
PHS researchers convinced local physicians in Macon County not to treat the participants.. In order to track the disease’s full progression, researchers provided no effective care as the men died, went blind or insane or experienced other severe health problems due to their untreated syphilis. – Elizabeth Nix, History.com, Tuskegee Experiment: The Infamous Syphilis Study
Resources
1. Brown, DeNeen L, The Washington Post — ‘You’ve got bad blood’: The horror of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment
2. Nix, Elizabeth, History.com — Tuskegee Experiment: The Infamous Syphilis Study
Remedy, Reform & Citizen Protection
Covert Crimes
You might notice that much of the written evidence and congressional testimony is from years past. Does this imply that since these crimes were committed and uncovered that the corruption which made such horrors possible have been remedied?
There is no indication that this is so. While documentation may be harder to find, whistleblowers continue to report such crimes and FOIA requests continue to find evidence of cover-ups.
Instead of being reformed, the power systems that make such crimes possible have become more covert. In 2009, Princeton University Press published an 800-page book of research by Darius Rejali called Torture and Democracy. Rejali makes a number of points eminently clear, including:
* Victims who have marks of violence upon their bodies are treated entirely different from those who have no marks to show. Rejali writes:
A victim with scars to show to the media will get sympathy or at least attention, but the victims without scars do not have much to authorize their complaints to a skeptical public. A trial can focus on the specific damages of a beating – where did the blows allegedly fall?… But what precisely can a trial focus on with electric shocks that leave few marks?
* Thus, those who would abuse human rights are more likely to use stealthy means.
* As the evidence about these government programs shows, numerous covert techniques of torture and control have been in use for more than 50 years. Technological advancements have, of course, increased the availability of such tools.
* Rejali proves without a doubt that such stealthy means are MORE likely in a democracy due to a motivation to avoid evidence that overseers can use to hold them accountable.
Wherever citizens gather freely to review public power or name violent injustice, we are also more likely to see covert violence. In democracies, the police, military, and the secret services are constrained… and monitored. Officers, agents and soldiers who decide that brutality is required will put a premium on methods which cause suffering and intimidation without leaving much in the way of embarrassing long-term visible evidence of brutality.
Remedy & Reform
* Government officials have been entrusted by the public to act honorably.
* They have been granted authority and resources by American citizens.
* Thus, these inhumane crimes are an abuse of public trust.
* They are being done in our name, using our money and our resources.
* Remedy and reform is therefore only possible if we uphold our responsibility by revoking the power which has been abused, and holding the criminal actors accountable for their behavior.
There is a class of torture techniques that leaves few marks. Popular accounts sometimes characterize these techniques as “brainwashing’ or “sensory deprivation,” but there are many other techniques less well known… I call these techniques as a whole “clean tortures.” Citizens need to understand clearly what these techniques are, where they come from, and what they do. Being able to talk intelligently about these techniques is not simply a cognitive ability that promotes better research on torture, but a necessary civic skill. Citizens who cannot speak competently about cruelty are unable to protect themselves against tyranny and injustice. – Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy
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