In 1974 a New York Times post exposed the CIA for a covert program named Project MK-Ultra. What project MK-Ultra focused on was learning about the possibilities of mind control. Why would the CIA need to know about mind control?

Well for context the program actually was started in 1953, six years after the Cold War had begun. In summary, the Cold War was a national conflict between America and the Soviet Union, with its respective allies, because America feared the spread of communism after World War II. Allegedly, Russian, Chinese and North Korean forces were mind-altering and controlling American prisoners of war (POWs). The CIA’s reaction upon this questioned discovery was to mimic this with Project MK-Ultra.

The CIA wasn’t just focused on mind control. They wanted knowledge on both psychological warfare and torture as well as the possibilities of a truth serum like drug to use against enemy POW’s or suspected Soviet spies. The outcome was more than 150 highly illegal experiments that we know of. Government workers were employed to lure people back to disguised CIA safehouses where they were drugged with LSD and other drugs to be experimented on.

Though very few subjects consented, they were most likely to endure worse treatment than those who were baited into these traps. This was ironically named ‘Operation Midnight Climax’. Though a majority of documents from the project were ordered to be destroyed by the at the time Director of the CIA Richard Helms, remaining evidence shows that radiation, electroshock therapy, psychedelics and paralytic drugs were used.

The program was over twenty years long, ending in 1973 and was under investigation in 1975 by U.S. Congress and the Church Committee only after becoming exposed.

In retrospect, President Ford the following year issued the first Executive Order which banned drug related human experimentation without formal consent of that party, which was then changed to any sort of human experimentation needing formal consent soon after taken action by both President Carter and Reagan.

To conclude, I think it’s very important to expose the inhumane actions of our government. No matter the reason or purpose, this was clandestine for over twenty years and we still have no idea what the full extent of the atrocities or human rights violations that were committed.