Brainwashing, drugging, torture... CIA Human Experiments "No Lower Limit"

In 1975, then-U.S. President Ford met with the families of Olson, one of the victims of the MKUltra program. (Source: Bettmann Archive)

Recently, a documentary "Finding Yourself" broadcast by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) revealed the "black history" of a human experiment secretly funded by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1960s. In this decades-long human experiment, 311 Danish children were unknowingly used as subjects for schizophrenia studies. The DR also disclosed that when people tried to access the relevant materials, the Glostrup Psychiatric Center in Denmark, which stored some of the research materials, began to destroy the documents. In fact, this shocking children's experiment is just the tip of the iceberg of human experimentation in the United States.

For more than 20 years, from the 1950s to the 1970s, the United States also launched the "MKUltra Program," which attempted to achieve mind control, or "brainwashing." The program contains more than 100 human experiments, and the cruelty of the methods is eerie. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian and other media outlets have reported on the horrific scandal.

Americans believe that mind control technology is promising, can be used to control human minds, train spies and defend against detection in other countries, and of course, as a means of torture to effectively obtain intelligence. To this end, the CIA has carried out experiments at home and abroad, known as the "MKUltra Project". MK is the code name for the CIA Technical Services, while Ultra means top secret. To conduct the research, the C.I.A. secretly supported more than 80 agencies to conduct experiments, including universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies.

"Brainwashing" sounds somewhat magical, but how does the CIA plan to do it? American journalist Stephen Kinzer, who has long studied the MKUltra program and is the author of "Chief Poisoner: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Seeking Mind Control," revealed in an interview with NPR that Sidney Gottlieb, the program's director, believes that "brainwashing" should be done in two steps: First, you must destroy the existing ideology of the subjects; second, You have to find a way to insert new ideas into the blanks that form. However, the second step has not made much progress, and the first step of research has done a lot.

In order to destroy existing ideas and achieve the goal of controlling the other party's spirit, the CIA did everything it could. The use of the drug is considered an effective means of achieving mental control. Among them, the colorless, odorless, odorless, but amazingly potent hallucinogen LSD has undoubtedly become the main role. The Guardian reported that Gottlieb wanted to know what dose of LSD a person could take at most, and whether he would eventually break through the limit and completely destroy the person's spirit. The CIA has offered LSD to mentally ill people, prisoners, prostitutes, drug addicts because they are "irresistible people," and The New York Times also documented a case of a Mentally Ill person in Kentucky who took LSD for 174 consecutive days.

In addition, the experiment also targeted ordinary people who did not know it. According to a document from a 1977 U.S. Senate hearing, the CIA opened several "brothels" in its own safe houses, drugged those who were lured in, and installed double-sided mirrors and miniature microphones in the houses to facilitate observing each other's behavior, obtaining intelligence, and satisfying their curiosity. And, in order to explore the effects of LSD on different types of people, the CIA also secretly useSD in normal environments on uninformed, involuntary subjects, such as mixing LSD into alcohol and cigarettes, and the subjects covered all levels. In fact, even CIA employees were subject to experimentation. According to The Guardian, Frank Olson, a CIA scientist uneasy about his job, was secretly drugged by Gottlieb and died in a hotel a few days later. However, these dangerous experiments did not bring much valuable data to the CIA, and the effects of LSD were considered "uncontrollable."

In addition to LSD, the CIA has also tried other drugs, including heroin, morphine, and mescarline. Kinzer told NPR that during World War II, the German Nazis experimented with the hallucinogen Meskalin at Dachau, one of its three central concentration camps, and the CIA hired Nazi doctors to guide them in exploring the drug's role in mind control. The CIA also invited Nazi doctors to Fort Detrick in the United States to teach CIA officials about Sarin gas, who wanted to know how long it would take for a sarin gas to kill a person. Kinzer said, "MKUltra is essentially a continuation of the work of the Japanese and Nazi concentration camps. ”

The MKUltra program is not just happening in the Continental United States. To avoid criminal prosecution, the C.I.A. has also set up secret detention centers overseas, where it conducts more extreme experiments. Kinzer told NPR that the bases were located in Germany, Japan, and the Philippines, where CIA officials, after arresting enemy agents or suspects, or even just "people who could be sacrificed," sent them to these secret detention centers and tortured them in various ways to try to break them down completely. According to the Washington Post, in 1954, a squad was sent overseas to conduct experiments on individuals who could "represent communist countries."

In terms of results, the MKUltra program was rather unsuccessful. Some of the subjects lost their memory, some became vegetative, and even if someone did confess, the authenticity of the testimony could not be verified. The investment in the experiment was enormous, and according to documents from the 1977 Senate hearing, the MKUltra program cost millions of dollars. MKUltra's personnel have not been punished for life. The U.S. government even apologized "as a last resort," and in 1975, the family of olsen, a CIA scientist who had fallen to his death after being drugged, planned to file a lawsuit against the C.I.A., and then-President Ford received the family and apologized. In fact, the U.S. government wanted to cover up the past, and when the scandal was uncovered, the CIA immediately ordered the destruction of the documents, most of which had disappeared. Therefore, it is impossible to determine how many people were tortured and how many people died in this plan.

The evils hidden in the MKUltra program are not just the past tense. The United States now has more than 200 biological laboratories in 25 countries and regions around the world, and in 2020, Ukrainian political parties accused the United States of human experiments in biological laboratories in Ukraine. How many more sins have not been exposed? The possible hidden circumstances behind this are extremely frightening to ponder.

(Text/He Suosi)

Column Editor-in-Chief: Gu Wanquan Zhang Wu Text Editor: Song Yanlin

Source: Author: Overseas Network