The_Info_Web/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Massachusetts Institute of Technology.md

aliases	category	start	location	tags	summary	created	updated	relations
MIT M.I.T. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	Private Organization	1861	Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA	Organization Academic University CENIS MKULTRA InstrumentationLaboratory LincolnLaboratory VelaIncident JeffreyEpstein	Cambridge university whose Center for International Studies appears in MKULTRA Subproject 90 and 1953 CIA UFO planning, which divested the Draper laboratory in 1973 and took Jeffrey Epstein's money after 2008.	2026-10-05	2026-10-09	type with role start fn contractor_to Central Intelligence Agency Center for International Studies, MKULTRA Subproject 90 1958-11 20 type with reverse role fn employed_by Jack P. Ruina true professor of electrical engineering; chairman of the 1979 to 1980 Vela panel 27 type with reverse role fn employed_by Seth Lloyd true professor of mechanical engineering 30 type with reverse role fn head_of James Killian true president; first chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board 26 type with reverse role start end fn funded Jeffrey Epstein true ten donations totaling 850,000 dollars, 2002 to 2017 2002 2017 30 type with role start end fn contractor_to State Department Project Troy study of Soviet jamming and political warfare, reporting to the Secretary of State (October 1950 to February 1951) 1950-10 1951-02 5 type with reverse role start fn funded Central Intelligence Agency true Center for International Studies; CIA money reported 1951, $300,000 reported 1967 1951 10 type with reverse role start fn employed_by Max Millikan true economist; first director of the Center for International Studies (February 1952) 1952-02 5

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its name appears in CIA records through the Center for International Studies (CENIS), in Project MKUltra, in the Agency's 1952 and 1953 planning for a scientific panel on unidentified flying objects, and through the Instrumentation Laboratory and Lincoln Laboratory; in the 1979 to 1980 VELA Satellite panel chaired by Jack P. Ruina; and in the 2020 report on Jeffrey Epstein's donations.

The 1953 CIA approach on unidentified flying objects

In the Agency's account of its role in the study of unidentified flying objects, Gerald K. Haines wrote that H. Marshall Chadwell "urged Smith to establish an external research project of top-level scientists to study the problem of UFOs," and the notes to the account cite a memorandum for the record by Philip G. Strong of the Office of Scientific Intelligence, "Meeting with Dr. Julius A. Stratton, Executive Vice President and Provost, MIT and Dr. Max Millikan, Director of CENIS," in which, in Strong's words, "it will probably be necessary to secure the full backing of DCI in order that a scientific review of this problem may be laid on." A memorandum of October 2, 1952 over the signature of Chadwell states that "Dr. Julius A. Stratton, Vice President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has indicated to CIA that such a group could be constituted at that Institute. Similarly, Project Lincoln, the Air Force's air defense project at MIT, could be charged with some of these responsibilities."¹ Strong's memorandum for the record is dated December 3, 1952, and the meeting took place the previous morning; Stratton named "Alfred Hill" as the best man to head the group.² Chadwell's letter to Stratton as Provost is dated January 27, 1953.³ The panel that met in January 1953 was the Robertson Panel, chaired by H. P. Robertson of the California Institute of Technology.⁴

The Center for International Studies

The center grew out of Project Troy, the study that MIT convened in October 1950 for the State Department on Soviet jamming of American broadcasts and on wider political warfare.⁵ Daniel Bessner writes that CENIS "emerged from Project TROY," and that James Killian, pleased with the outcome, organized a second phase of four research initiatives, one of which concerned a State Department-funded institute similar to the one Donald Marquis had recommended in Annex 11 of the Troy report.⁵ The center began operating in the fall of 1951, and in February 1952 Max Millikan, an economist who had spent a year at the CIA, accepted the offer to serve as its first director.⁵ The center's own history states that it "was founded in 1951 in response to the Cold War struggles between the United States and the Soviet Union," and that in 1952 "a young MIT economist named Max F Millikan became the Center's first director."⁶ Bessner reports that Millikan asked a Ford Foundation official, Gaither, for funds soon after arriving, that Hans Speier then visited Millikan in February 1952 and "convinced him otherwise" about the center's scope, and that the Ford trustees granted CENIS $875,000 in the spring of 1952.⁵ The Church Committee's Book I describes a research institute at a major American university that the CIA helped establish in 1951 and funded for more than a decade, at the request of Under Secretary of State James E. Webb. The report does not name the institute.⁷ The Ford Foundation's annual report for fiscal 1965 lists a grant of 400,000 dollars to MIT for the Harvard-M.I.T. Joint Center for Urban Studies.⁸

A letter of November 1, 1951 from Gordon Gray of the Psychological Strategy Board describes Stratton, then MIT's provost, as director of the Center.⁹

Time of February 24, 1967 reported "directly and without masquerade" "$300,000 to finance M.I.T.'s topflight Center for International Studies," and that "Until last spring, M.I.T. continued to accept agency funds, then terminated the contract 'for practical, not moral reasons.'"¹⁰ Patrick Oster reported in the Washington Post of September 11, 1977 that the center "was set up in 1951 with CIA money," and that a 1958-59 study of Soviet scientists as potential agent recruits by Anthony J. Wiener, then affiliated with the center, was paid through the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology as part of "Project MK-ULTRA."¹¹

Hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Internal Security Subcommittee on State Department passport regulations include testimony by Andreas Lowenfeld of the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser that he had been connected with the Center for International Studies at MIT in 1951 and 1952 and that "they had some kind of contract with the CIA," though "I never formally worked for them." Asked by the subcommittee's counsel, Sourwine, whether he knew that the Center "was a CIA operation," Lowenfeld answered: "I was never formally told, but it became apparent." Asked whether Walt Rostow was in charge, he said: "He was acting, I guess, and then Mr. Millikan came."¹²

A Philadelphia Inquirer clipping in agency files states that on April 26 Max Millikan, director of the MIT Center of International Studies, said the college would reluctantly drop research contracts with the CIA because they were "subject to misinterpretation."¹³ A letter of April 21, 1971 to Richard Helms on the center's letterhead, from a writer whose name is redacted in the copy, states that MIT "adopted a policy that rejected the extremists demands to refuse contracts from intelligence agencies, but which did insist that any such contracts be overt and avowed," and that "It was the CIA and not the university which declined to continue relations on such terms."¹⁴

A draft speech by the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence for delivery at Harvard in February 1986 stated that Max Millikan, an "MIT economist," had "organized the economic intelligence effort" of the Agency, as part of its account of academic recruitment from 1941 onward.¹⁵ Haines's account of the 1952 and 1953 UFO planning names Millikan as director of the Center in 1953.

In a statement made in 1954 for the Atomic Energy Commission hearings on J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance, Killian described "an earlier project, known as Project Lexington, carried out by the Atomic Energy Commission under contract with M.I.T.," and named Walter Whitman as its director.¹⁶ Bessner describes LEXINGTON as an Air Force summer study of a nuclear-powered airplane.¹⁷ Lexington Project Report 175, "Polonium-Powered Aircraft for Military Purposes," by A. R. Kaufmann of MIT, is dated September 28, 1948.¹⁸ Killian's statement also describes a 1952 summer study of the Lincoln Laboratory, whose recommendations went to the Department of Defense on strengthening defenses against air attack.¹⁶

MKULTRA Subproject 90

A CIA notification list of institutions connected with MKULTRA subprojects carries the entry "Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies, Cambridge, Mass. 02139" with the notation "Subproject 90." The list reproduces a statement MIT asked to be supplied to persons receiving notice: "The activity conducted at MIT involved a study of the scientist in the" (country name redacted) "to produce a descriptive model of the type likely to come in contact with Americans. The project was conducted by a guest of MIT and neither administered nor funded through MIT."¹⁹

The released file on MKULTRA Subproject 90 consists of nineteen documents dated from October 1958 to November 1960. A memorandum of September 17, 1958 (SR/6-58-541) from a requesting component asked the Technical Services Staff's Chemical Division to undertake research on a prototype of a male scientist aged 35 to 45, a "professional 'comer'" who in youth had been "an idealist" who became "critically disillusioned" in his early twenties and who "has repressed and rationalized his doubts and opposition sentiments," and for guidance on "the most effective way or ways in which repressed and rationalized anti-regime motivations may be aroused or, more properly, re-activated." A second part of the request asked what criteria could be developed for spotting and assessing persons who are "inner emigration" or "alienated" as "potential agent recruits" and how their development should be conducted. A memorandum for the record on the subproject, titled "A Study of the Scientist in the" (country name redacted), states that its purposes were "(a) to produce a descriptive model of scientists who are likely to come into contact with Americans, and (b) to specify methods and strategies for evaluating and influencing such scientists." A grant from a foundation cutout (name redacted) was to be made to "an independent investigator," with cover that the grant was for "interest in the psychological, sociological, cultural, and political determinants of individuals occupying critical roles within various societies"; accounting for the funds was to follow the procedures established for "grants to unwitting agents." The cost for a year from November 1, 1958 was $12,000, obligated on November 18, 1958.²⁰

The file contains a foundation's letters of 1958 and 1959 on payments to a fellowship holder, a letter of September 19, 1960 noting that the final payment of $9,500 had been made a year earlier and that the promised report was overdue, and an accounting dated November 18, 1960 of disbursements of $8,803.36 against $9,500, including a ten-month fellowship of $6,500.²¹ The released documents redact the name of the investigator and of the foundation.

MIT's 1979 committee report

An Interim Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on MIT and the Intelligence Agencies, chaired by Kenneth Hoffman and published in Tech Talk in 1979, stated that "we do not think that any member of the MIT community should (knowingly) act as an agent for an intelligence organization," and discussed gray areas of briefing, recruitment and surveillance of foreign members of the community. The editors of the newsletter that reprinted excerpts, in a note preserved in CIA files, wrote that CIA Director Stansfield Turner "has made it clear that the CIA will not honor the standards set up by a university," a statement they connected to Harvard's earlier guidelines.²²

The special laboratories

The Instrumentation Laboratory, founded by Charles Stark Draper, and Lincoln Laboratory developed missile guidance and air defense systems. In November 1968 graduate students formed the Science Action Coordinating Committee, which planned a protest at Kresge Auditorium for March 4, 1969, with a call for a research stoppage; its poster noted that MIT was "the country's 14th largest military contractor for research, development and testing," singled out the "special labs," and stated that Lincoln Laboratory and the Instrumentation Laboratory accounted for more than half of MIT's budget. About 50 faculty members formed the Union of Concerned Scientists, and MIT President Howard Johnson appointed the Pounds Panel to review both laboratories. Johnson announced in 1970 that MIT would divest the Instrumentation Laboratory, renamed the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, no later than July 1, 1973, and the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. was formed as an independent nonprofit on July 1, 1973. According to MIT's alumni magazine, after the divestment MIT also set up an executive committee to review the operation of the laboratories and moved all classified research off campus to Lincoln Laboratory.²³

In 1969 MIT President Howard W. Johnson formed a Review Panel on Special Laboratories, chaired by Dean William F. Pounds, to examine the relationship between MIT and the Lincoln Laboratory and the Instrumentation Laboratory. The panel was asked "to evaluate the implications that the laboratories have for the Institute in its prime responsibility for education and research."²⁴

The CIA's reading room holds a Lincoln Laboratory Technical Memorandum, No. 35 of July 30, 1953, by F. A. Rodgers on the sensitivities of pre- and post-detection integrators, marked restricted and declassified in 2014.²⁵

Advisory boards

The Congressional Research Service history of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board lists James R. Killian Jr., president of MIT, as the board's chairman from early 1956 until 1958 and again among the members appointed in 1961, when he was identified as chairman of the MIT Corporation.²⁶

The Vela panel

The Ad Hoc Panel Report on the September 22 Event of 1980 was prepared by a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy panel chaired by Ruina, "an MIT professor," according to the National Security Archive.²⁷ Seymour Hersh wrote in The Samson Option that in late 1979 Ruina, a professor of electrical engineering and director of MIT's Defense and Arms Control Studies Program, was involved in preparing a federally funded MIT report assessing the foreign availability of components for short-range ballistic missiles.²⁸ The National Security Archive's posting of the papers of Gerard C. Smith lists State Department telegrams of February 1980 that "dismissed information from MIT professor Jack Ruina, gained from an Israeli visiting fellow at MIT, concerning a possible Israeli connection to the 22 September event."²⁹

Epstein donations, 2002 to 2020

The report of the law firm Goodwin Procter to the Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation, dated January 10, 2020, found that between 2002 and 2017 Epstein made ten donations to MIT totaling $850,000, nine of them after his 2008 conviction, totaling $750,000, to support the MIT Media Lab ($525,000) or Professor Seth Lloyd ($225,000); that Lloyd received a personal gift of $60,000 in about 2005 or 2006 not recorded by MIT, and "purposefully failed to inform MIT that Epstein, a convicted sex offender, was the source" of $100,000 in 2012; that in 2013 General Counsel R. Gregory Morgan, Vice President for Resource Development Jeffrey Newton and Executive Vice President Israel Ruiz approved accepting Epstein's donations to support Joi Ito and the Media Lab on condition that they remain small and unpublicized; that Epstein made at least nine campus visits between 2013 and 2017 unknown to President L. Rafael Reif; and that the decision was "the result of collective and significant errors in judgment." Ito resigned on September 7, 2019.³⁰

Footnotes

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1. H. Marshall Chadwell, memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence, "Flying Saucers," October 2, 1952, Tab A paragraph 5, CIA reading room document 0005515933. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0005515933 ↩︎

2. Philip G. Strong, memorandum for the record, "Flying Saucers," December 3, 1952, CIA-RDP81R00560R000100020007-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0005515940 ↩︎

3. H. Marshall Chadwell to Dr. Julius A. Stratton, January 27, 1953, CIA reading room document 0005515714. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0005515714 ↩︎

4. Haines, Gerald K. "CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90," Studies in Intelligence (1997), sections "Early CIA Concerns, 1947-52" and "The Robertson Panel, 1952-53," text and notes 24, 25 and 36. https://sgp.fas.org/library/ciaufo.html ↩︎

5. Daniel Morris Bessner, "The Night Watchman: Hans Speier and the Making of the American National Security State" (PhD diss., Duke University, 2013), p. 255 (CENIS, Troy origin, Killian's second phase, Millikan's appointment), and p. 256 and notes 107 to 109 (Gaither, Speier's February 1952 visit, the $875,000 grant), citing Donald L. M. Blackmer, The MIT Center for International Studies: The Founding Years, 1951 to 1969 (2002), as cited there. https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/232a76ac-f2d8-4827-99fe-50b3b109fa6c/content. ↩︎

6. MIT Center for International Studies, "History" (Origins of the Center). https://cis.mit.edu/history ↩︎

7. U.S. Senate, "Final Report, Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence," S. Rept. 94-755 (1976), section "Covert Use of Academic and Voluntary Organizations," subsection "CIA Use of Private Foundations, Pre-1967," item (1), describing the unnamed institute established in 1951 at the request of Under Secretary of State James Webb. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_I.pdf ↩︎

8. Ford Foundation, "Annual Report 1965" (fiscal year ended September 30, 1965), grant tables, entry for Massachusetts Institute of Technology, $400,000, under the Harvard-M.I.T. Joint Center for Urban Studies. https://www.fordfoundation.org/media/2435/1965-annual-report.pdf ↩︎

9. Gordon Gray, Psychological Strategy Board, letter to Allen Dulles, November 1, 1951. CIA reading room, CIA-RDP80R01731R003300410041-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80r01731r003300410041-0 ↩︎

10. Time, February 24, 1967, CIA reading room document CIA-RDP84-00161R000400210135-8 (passage on the center). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp84-00161r000400210135-8 ↩︎

11. Patrick Oster, "CIA Envisioned Soviet Scientists as U.S. Agents," Chicago Sun-Times, reprinted in the Washington Post, September 11, 1977, p. A-9, CIA reading room document CIA-RDP88-01315R000400460003-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88-01315r000400460003-8 ↩︎

12. U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Internal Security Subcommittee, hearings on State Department security and passport regulations, part 3, testimony of Andreas F. Lowenfeld (p. 331), extracts in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP75-00149R000400560007-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75-00149r000400560007-3 ↩︎

13. Philadelphia Inquirer clipping, headline "Penn Denies Campus Has CIA Agents," CIA reading room document CIA-RDP73-00475R000401020013-7. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp73-00475r000401020013-7 ↩︎

14. Letter dated April 21, 1971, on Center for International Studies letterhead, 30 Wadsworth Street, Cambridge, CIA reading room document CIA-RDP80B01086A000900210009-2. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80b01086a000900210009-2 ↩︎

15. CIA, memorandum for the record, "DDI Speech on CIA and the University," February 1986, with draft speech ("Harvard speech" of February 3, 1986), CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP88G01332R000800990018-7. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88g01332r000800990018-7 ↩︎

16. James R. Killian, Jr., affidavit in the 1954 Atomic Energy Commission personnel security hearings on J. Robert Oppenheimer, as quoted in an article reproduced in CIA reading room document CIA-RDP64B00346R000200100018-4. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp64b00346r000200100018-4 ↩︎

17. Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 237 and note 40. Killian's 1954 affidavit, cited in the note above, gives the sponsor as the Atomic Energy Commission. ↩︎

18. A. R. Kaufmann, Lexington Project Report 175, "Polonium-Powered Aircraft for Military Purposes" (MIT, September 28, 1948), OSTI ID 969802. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/969802 ↩︎

19. Central Intelligence Agency, "MKULTRA Institution Notifications," list of institutions and subproject numbers, CIA Reading Room document 00020476 (also posted at https://archive.org/details/brief-summaries-of-cia-mkultra-subprojects), page listing the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies, and the statement MIT requested. ↩︎

20. CIA, "MKULTRA Subproject 90," memorandum of November 18, 1958 approving the subproject, memorandum for the record on the project's purposes, and memorandum SR/6-58-541 of September 17, 1958, "Requirement for Research Support," CIA Reading Room document 00017493. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00017493 ↩︎

21. Same document as note 5 (foundation letters of November 17, 1958, March 2, 1959 and September 1, 1959; letter of September 19, 1960; accounting of November 18, 1960). ↩︎

22. "The CIA on American Campuses: Massachusetts Institute of Technology," editor's note and excerpts from the Interim Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on MIT and the Intelligence Agencies (Tech Talk, vol. 23, no. 30, 1979), reprinted in a Center for National Security Studies newsletter of May 1979, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP88-01315R000300550015-6. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88-01315r000300550015-6 ↩︎

23. Draper Laboratory, "Origins of Charles Stark Draper and His Laboratory" (https://www.draper.com/media-center/featured-stories/detail/25851/origins-of-charles-stark-draper-and-his-laboratory); "A Slight Rebellion off Mass Ave.," MIT Technology Review, August 19, 2014 (https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/08/19/171719/slight-rebellion-off-mass-ave/amp/). ↩︎

24. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Standing Committee on Special Laboratories records, 1969 to 1972, American Institute of Physics, catalog entry, https://history.aip.org/catalog/icos/262.html ; and Report of the President 1969, report of the Vice President for Special Laboratories, pp. 675 to 676 (panel chaired by Dean William F. Pounds), https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/160053 ↩︎

25. Rodgers, F. A. "The Relative Sensitivities of Pre- and Post-Detection Integrators," MIT Lincoln Laboratory Technical Memorandum No. 35, July 30, 1953, CIA-RDP67B00341R000400080001-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp67b00341r000400080001-8 ↩︎

26. Congressional Research Service, "The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board: An Historical Perspective (1955-1975)," 1975, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP02T06251R000900290008-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp02t06251r000900290008-0 ↩︎

27. Richelson, Jeffrey, ed., "The Vela Incident: South Atlantic Mystery Flash in September 1979 Raised Questions about Nuclear Test," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, December 8, 2016. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-12-06/vela-incident-south-atlantic-mystery-flash-september-1979-raised-questions-about-nuclear-test ↩︎

28. Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991, chapter 20. ↩︎

29. Same briefing book as note 12, item list for the Gerard C. Smith papers. ↩︎

30. Goodwin Procter LLP. Report Concerning Jeffrey Epstein's Interactions with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. January 10, 2020, Introduction, Executive Summary and Findings 1 to 5. https://facultygovernance.mit.edu/sites/default/files/20200121GoodwinProcterReport.pdf ↩︎