The Legend of MK Ultra ; How Not to Conduct an Experiment

Asiket Singh Dhillon  

Mind control, aliens and secrets to unlocking the universe, these are some of the most commonly held theories regarding the covert experiments sanctioned by the CIA in in 1953. It was meant as a tool to forcefully defect soviet spies to the United States in an attempt to gain advantage during over the course of the Soviet era leading up to the Cold War. They attempted this by attempting to synthesize a ‘truth serum’ which would render the affected individual incapacitated to the point of delirium and thus not being in a state which would allow fabrication or lying.

The project began in 1953 with the CIA extensively testing psychoactive drugs, mainly LSD and its effect on individuals. Initially, the tests were restricted to criminals, prostitutes and homeless individuals. This was probably due to the fact that they couldn't in any way fight or refuse. Since the beginning the project lacked guidelines, and with no rulebook to follow the CIA gave itself the authority to test the effects on whomever they deemed fit.

Sidney Gottleib realized that there were differences in the way the drug was applied in laboratory conditions and real life. Therefore, he decided it would be in the best interest of the project to randomly provide LSD dosage to individuals without any form of consent. So proliferous was the problem that ‘surprise trips’ became a fairly common occurrence within CIA employees.

Barring the blatant violation of uninformed testing as set by the Nuremberg Trials, there was no specific reaction that the researches were studying. To put into perspective, they randomly assigned an individual to be provided with spiked beverages, and simply observed their reaction to the drug. Knowing fully well the health hazards that followed.

Dr. Frank Olson was one such unfortunate and unsuspecting test subject, being his first exposure to LSD he went into a manic episode followed by deep depression. He later jumped to his death. This still did not deter the CIA from continuing it’s testing.

Ethical violations were not just restricted to uncontrolled testing and uninformed testing; several moral ethics were violated as well as the project was not only restricted to the effect of drugs in interrogation. Attempts were also made to create chemicals which would reduce the effect of torture and interrogation techniques on individuals. They brutally tortured individuals and exposed them to various kinds of abuse. The extent of the violations was so gross that children were exposed to the drug and then sexually abused repeatedly to study the effects that the drug had.

What finally stopped the testing was a 1974 report published by The New York Times which alleged that the CIA had conducted illegal experiments on US citizens. This prompted a large outcry against the administration and a committee was formed to investigate these claims. The committee headed by Frank Church came to be known as the Church Committee. All that was left to find for the Church Committee were financial documents regarding the project which had not been destroyed earlier during the ‘purge’ ordered in 1973 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

The lack of extensive documentation as well as the testimony of alleged subjects mixed with the grotesque nature of these experiments led rise to popular conspiracy theories in pop culture. Movies such as the Pineapple Express (2008), Jason Bourne series and their film adaptations are based on individuals who were put under extreme duress by MKUltra as ‘sleeper agents’.

The reality of what happened during those years in the CIA remains unclear. The few stories that can be corroborated and analyzed reveal a grotesque reality of the nature of the tests, far worse than what their references portray.