Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Project MK ULTRA

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

After the end of World War II, the newly created Central Intelligence Agency investigated anything and everything which could give the US an advantage in the Cold War. They looked into anything and everything which might possibly give their side an edge, even if it might have seemed ridiculous on face. One such idea was mind control. Learn more about Project MK Ulta on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After the end of World War II, the newly created Central Intelligence Agency investigated anything and everything, which could give the United States an advantage in the Cold War. That included investigating UFOs and levitation, as well as creating exploding cigars for Fidel Castro. One such idea was Mind Control. Learn more about Project MK Ultra on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time. to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thulein podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by Scotty Vest. You don't have to be in the CIA or be a spy to want to keep the items you carry with you a secret. Simply not broadcasting out to the rest of the world what you're carrying is often the best form of security. If you don't want to flaunt your smartphone, tablet, or e-reader, you can carry and hide all of your equipment in your Scotty Vest gear.

You can get 15% off your next order by going to scottyvest.com and using coupon code Everything Everywhere, all one word, at checkout. After the end of World War II, the Americans uncovered various Nazi experiments which were carried out at concentration camps. Among the various experiments which were carried out, they found evidence of Nazi attempts to engage in controlling human minds. It was later discovered that the Japanese engaged in the same sort of research on prisoners in Manchuria. It wasn't the highest priority after the war, but it was something that researchers and officials in the government took note of.

The concept came into the public consciousness after a 1950 article written by Edward Hunter, titled, Brainwashing Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party. It was the first use of the word brainwashing in the English language, and it also linked the concept to the Chinese Communist Party. The idea of controlling human minds came to the forefront of the attention of the government during the Korean conflict. Of the 7,200 American prisoners of war, a full 5,000 of them signed confessions of war crimes and denounced the United States government. One of them was Colonel Frank Schwabble, who confessed to taking part in germ warfare, even though such a program never took place during the war. At the end of hostilities, 21 of the POWs refused to return to the United States.

This had the American military and intelligence services worried. If the communists did have some sort of mind control technology, how could they defend their soldiers and agents against it? Also, if it was possible, could they use it to turn Soviet agents? To investigate this in 1953, the CIA, under the orders of Director Alan Dulles, created Project M.K. Ultra. The project would be a continuation of what they learned from captured German and Japanese documents from after the end of World War II. Their mission was an investigation into, quote, the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior, unquote. The project was headed by Dr. Stanley Gottlieb. He had a Ph.D. in chemistry and was the poison specialist for the CIA. The M.K part was the abbreviation for projects under the CIA Technical Services staff.

The ultra part came from the name for the highest level of classified intelligence during World War II. The first order of business was figuring out what happened to. the POWs under Chinese control. The answers most researchers came up with was simple and straightforward. They were tortured. There wasn't any secret mind control drug that was used. It was just plain old-fashioned torture. The focus of MK Ultra quickly moved from the immediate concerns of Korean War POWs

to the use of chemicals for altering human brains and behavior. One of the biggest focuses of experimentation and research was on a chemical discovered in the 1940s known as lysurgic acid diethylamide, or LSD. Early in the project, the CIA purchased the entire supply of LSD in the United States. They also investigated numerous other techniques in areas such as hypnosis, the ability to enhance the effects of alcohol, and the ability to deaden the effects of alcohol, the ability for people to withstand torture,

and the ability to mentally torture people. To this extent, M.K. Ultra wasn't so much a program as it was a catch-all for a whole host of different CIA experiments. While the program was technically under the director of the CIA, for the most part, there was no oversight because the director didn't want to have any knowledge about what was going on. The problem with M.K. Ultra wasn't that the American government was involved in any of these experiments per se. There are all sorts of clinical trials done on pharmaceuticals and other psychological techniques. The problem was with how they went about conducting the experiments. Many, if not most of the experiments conducted by the CAA were done without the consent or knowledge of the people being experimented on.

Experiments were conducted on prisoners, and people in mental institutions were experimented on without any consent of themselves or their families. Heroin addicts were promised heroin in return for taking part in LSD experiments. They set up brothels in CIA safe houses so they could blackmail the customers who came in and then ran experiments on them in return for keeping their secret. Even when they did have volunteers, the volunteers almost never knew what they were getting themselves into. One patient in a Kentucky mental hospital was administered LSD for 174 straight days. CIA employees were given LSD without their knowledge. In one such case in 1953, a CIA employee named Frank Olson was given a drink on a retreat spiked with LSD. A few days later, he jumped out of a window in a hotel in New York.

The family received $750,000 in a settlement in 1970, and a personal apology from President Gerald Ford and then director William Colby. The experiments were also conducted in foreign countries and collaborations with governments there. There were known experiments conducted in Canada, Japan, Germany, and the Philippines. The program was significantly curtailed in 1964 and more so in 1967. Richard Helms, who was originally Sydney Gottlieb's direct superior at the CIA in the early 50s, was eventually named the director of the CIA in 1966, and in the early 1970s. and in the early 1970s, it was clear he was going to be removed as director.

Without Helms' support, Gottlieb knew that his work would probably not be supported as well. Helms ordered all of the documents on MK Ultra to be destroyed in 1973. The MK. Ultra program broke numerous laws, and even if some people might be sympathetic to the program on national security grounds, most people would consider that the use of Americans as guinea pigs without their knowledge or consent in drug experiments would be too much. In 1974, the New York Times revealed the program in an expose, and in 1975, Congress convened the Church Committee, headed by Representative Frank Church, to investigate the matter.

They didn't get very far. The vast majority of the documents were destroyed, and most of the people who were called in to testify had problems remembering specifics, including the director of the program, Sidney Gottlieb. In 1977, a trove of M.K. Ultra documents were discovered because they were filed incorrectly. They were mostly financial documents, but, you know, but, you know, it underscored just how extensive the program was, far more so than was revealed in the 1975

congressional hearings. The sad thing is, after all the money and the experiments and unwitting victims, the CIA learned next to nothing. The fact that the CIA did in fact have a program that dealt with mind control has provided ammunition for conspiracy theorists for decades. Whenever someone's actions can't be explained or someone does something out of character, It can always be blamed on CIA mind control and MK Ultra. Films like the Manchurian candidate, which used as inspiration the same stories of Korean War POWs, have cemented the idea into the public imagination that mind control is real. Gottlieb himself ultimately considered the program to have been a failure.

He believed there were two parts to mind control. The first part was breaking down and destroying the mind. The second part was replacing it with something else. They became very good at the first part and made no advances at all on the latter. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James McAlla. The associate producer is Thor Thompson. Remember to leave a five-star review to get your review read on the show. They can be left at Apple Podcasts, Podcasts, Podcast Republic, or wherever you listen to the show.

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