---
category: "City"
tags:
  - Place
  - MKULTRA
  - CIA
  - Prison
summary: "California medical facility where MKULTRA experiments were conducted on inmates, and where SLA leader Donald DeFreeze was recruited by CIA psychological warfare specialist Colston Westbrook."
location: Vacaville, California
created: 2026-06-03
updated: 2026-06-03
---
The California Medical Facility, located in Vacaville, [[California]], was a state prison facility where [[MKULTRA]] experiments were conducted on inmates. The prison served as a ready population of involuntary subjects for behavioral modification experiments during the period when the [[CIA]] and the [[U.S. Army|Army]] were actively testing drugs, hypnosis, and psychological conditioning techniques.[^1]

### Notable Inmates and Operations

[[Donald DeFreeze]], the future leader of the [[Symbionese Liberation Army]], was imprisoned at Vacaville during the time of the MKULTRA experiments. At the prison, DeFreeze came under the tutelage of [[Colston Westbrook]], a CIA psychological warfare specialist who ran the Black Cultural Association at the facility. DeFreeze obtained early release from Vacaville by performing a "favor" for prison authorities, a reference to submitting to psychiatric experiments. After his release, DeFreeze formed the SLA, which conducted a campaign of political violence in California that served to discredit left-wing movements.[^1]

[[Charles Manson]] was also incarcerated at Vacaville during periods when MKULTRA experiments were being conducted on inmates. Manson was released from [[Terminal Island]] federal penitentiary on March 21, 1967, the same year the CIA launched [[Operation CHAOS]]. His parole officer [[Roger Smith]] was based at the [[Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic]], adjacent to operations run by [[Louis Jolyon West|Dr. Louis Jolyon West]], the MKULTRA Subproject 43 chief. The question of whether Manson was a product of CIA mind control experiments has been the subject of sustained independent investigation, with researchers concluding there was a "good likelihood" of such a connection.[^2] After his conviction for the Tate-LaBianca murders, Manson served part of his sentence at Vacaville. Manson's programming techniques, which included high doses of [[LSD]] and hypnotism applied to turn flower children into killers, paralleled known CIA methods.[^1][^2]

### Footnotes

[^1]: Curt Rowlett, "Project Mind Kontrol: Did the U.S. Government Actually Create Programmed Assassins?," Steamshovel Press #16, 1998.
[^2]: Tom O'Neill with Dan Piepenbring, *Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties*. Little, Brown and Company, 2019.