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	2026-10-05	type with role start fn contractor_to Central Intelligence Agency Center for International Studies, MKULTRA Subproject 90 1958-11 5 type with reverse role fn employed_by Jack P. Ruina true professor of electrical engineering; chairman of the 1979 to 1980 Vela panel 11 type with reverse role fn employed_by Seth Lloyd true professor of mechanical engineering 14 type with reverse role fn head_of James Killian true president; first chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board 10 type with reverse role start end fn funded Jeffrey Epstein true ten donations totaling 850,000 dollars, 2002 to 2017 2002 2017 14

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 "Strong believed that in order to undertake such a review they would need the full backing and support of DCI Smith." The notes also cite a letter from Chadwell to Stratton of January 27, 1953. The panel that met in January 1953 was the Robertson Panel, chaired by H. P. Robertson of the California Institute of Technology.¹

The Center for International Studies

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."²

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.³ Haines's account of the 1952 and 1953 UFO planning names Millikan as director of the Center in 1953.

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."⁴

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, 1958.⁵

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 $6,500.⁶ 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.⁷

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.⁸

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 2014.⁹

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.¹⁰

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.¹¹ 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.¹² 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."¹³

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, 2019.¹⁴

Footnotes

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1. 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 ↩︎

2. 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 ↩︎

3. 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 ↩︎

4. 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. ↩︎

5. 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 ↩︎

6. 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). ↩︎

7. "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 ↩︎

8. 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/). ↩︎

9. 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 ↩︎

10. 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 ↩︎

11. 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 ↩︎

12. Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991, chapter 20. Sole source for the passages so cited on the MIT missile-components report. ↩︎

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

14. 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 ↩︎