For twenty years, the CIA secretly conducted experiments in mind control and psychological manipulation.
Launched in 1953, the highly controversial program lasted until 1973 and involved the use of mind-altering drugs, extreme procedures and invasive techniques to control and manipulate individuals – often without their knowledge or consent.
When details of the program were revealed by The New York Times in the 1970s, the CIA faced widespread condemnation for abuse of power and violations of basic human rights.
Now, 50 years later, the National Security Archive has released an extensive collection of documents and files related to MKULTRA and several other similar CIA programs.
“Under code names such as MKULTRA, BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE, the CIA conducted terrifying experiments using drugs, hypnosis, isolation, sensory deprivation and other extreme techniques on human subjects, often American citizens, who often had no idea what was being done to them. or whether they were part of a CIA test,” the archive said.
The newly released materials shed light on numerous disturbing practices, including the creation of CIA “interrogation teams” that used “the polygraph, drugs and hypnosis” to brainwash individuals. Other documents describe experiments in which federal prisoners were given extremely high doses of mind-altering substances to observe their effects.
“It is a story of secrecy – perhaps the most infamous cover-up in the Agency’s history,” the archive wrote.
“It is also a history marked by near-total impunity at the institutional and individual level for countless abuses committed over decades – not during interrogations of enemy agents or in situations of war, but during ordinary medical treatment, in prison hospitals, addiction clinics and youth detention centers , and in many cases led by top figures in the behavioral sciences.”
The full set of documents is now available to the public the website of the National Security Archive.
