50 lines
5.2 KiB
Markdown
50 lines
5.2 KiB
Markdown
---
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created: 2025-07-22
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updated: 2025-07-22
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title: Project MKUltra
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tags:
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- program
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- CIA
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- mindcontrol
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- experimentation
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- Mind_Control
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- Psychology
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- Cold_War
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- 1950s
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- 1960s
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- 1970s
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description: Project MKUltra was a top-secret, illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
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category: "Historical Program"
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summary: "Project MKUltra was a top-secret, illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency."
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start: 1953
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end: 1973
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---
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[[Project MKUltra]] was a top-secret, illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]. It involved the use of various methods, including drugs like LSD, hypnosis, and other psychological manipulation techniques, to develop mind-control capabilities. The program sought to discover effective methods of controlling human behavior to create brainwashed operatives capable of carrying out objectives unwittingly, thereby obtaining perfect operational security in human intelligence assets, particularly assassins.[^1][^2]
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### Human Use Experimentation and Remote Viewing
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In the context of the *Remote Viewers* narrative, the history of such experimentation meant that the [[STARGATE PROJECT|Grill Flame]] program, which involved human subjects in remote viewing, had to involve the informed consent of its participants and approval and oversight by the Army's human use review board. This was a direct consequence of the controversies surrounding programs like MKUltra.[^1]
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### Subproject 136 and Child Experimentation
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In August 1961, Subproject 136 of the MKUltra program received approval for funding under the title Experimental Analysis of Extrasensory Perception. The project objective statement revealed that the subproject agenda included, at least in part, the induction of dissociative states in children through drugs and hypnosis to create multiple personalities. Researchers understood that such states could be induced in children through trauma, leading to the development of alternative personalities, which aligned with MKUltra's broader mandate.[^2]
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Correspondence published in the British Journal of Psychiatry indicated that children had been used in these experiments with little ethical consideration. [[George H. Estabrooks]], a prominent figure in hypnotherapy, applied to the National Institute of Mental Health in 1959 for funding of a proposed study titled Hypnotism in Juvenile Delinquency. This institute had functioned as a cutout used to fund MKUltra research into prospective methods of mind control, some involving children. Estabrooks wrote in his study proposal of the especially high levels of susceptibility children had to hypnotic techniques, noting that while one out of five adults were good hypnotic subjects, four out of five children fell into this category.[^2]
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Estabrooks claimed in a 1971 article published in Science Digest to have successfully created multiple personalities through hypnotic techniques in officers of the US Army's intelligence division during World War II. While it remains unclear whether Estabrooks was directly involved with MKUltra, his research interests and claims aligned closely with the program's objectives.[^2]
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### Records Destruction and Congressional Investigation
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In 1973, DCI [[Richard Helms]] ordered the destruction of MKULTRA files before the Watergate-era congressional investigations could reach them. The destruction was extensive enough that the Church Committee's investigation was significantly hampered. A cache of approximately 20,000 documents survived only because they had been misfiled in a financial records annex rather than with the main program files; these were discovered during a 1977 FOIA search and formed the basis of the Senate Health Subcommittee hearings in August 1977 ("Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification"), which are the primary published government record of the program. Helms was questioned about the records destruction during congressional proceedings.[^3]
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### Aftermath and Legacy
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MKUltra officially ended in 1973. One theory suggests that when the program concluded, certain elements within the CIA continued this line of inquiry off the books, turning from academics to alternative lifestyle communities, pedophile rings, and cults as conduits to carry out trauma-based mind control research. Evidence of overlap between these elements appeared in the 1987 case of [[The Finders]].[^2]
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The program's dark history, particularly its controversial studies on servicemen in the 1950s and 1960s, led to strict regulations regarding "human use experimentation" in the military.[^1]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
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[^2]: Dovey, S. (2023). Eye of the Chickenhawk. United States: Thehotstar.
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[^3]: "Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification." Joint Hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, 95th Congress, 1st Session, August 3, 1977. U.S. Government Printing Office. Marks, John. *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control*. Times Books, 1979.
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