A newly released collection of over 1,200 documents sheds light on the CIA’s controversial MKULTRA mind control program.
Published Monday by the National Security Archive and ProQuest, this compilation provides a deeper look into one of the agency’s most infamous operations.
The release comes half a century after Seymour Hersh’s New York Times investigation exposed the abuses of the program, according to the Archive.
The collection was also unveiled 70 years after pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Company began supplying the CIA with LSD, the Archive noted.
Conducted in the 1950s, MKULTRA sought to explore methods of mind control.
However, according to the Archive, much of the original documentation was destroyed by then-CIA Director Richard Helms and Sidney Gottlieb, head of the agency’s Technical Services Staff.
Gottlieb later led the CIA’s Technical Services Division.
The Archive revealed that the new collection includes records that survived the CIA’s effort to purge documents tied to the program.
The agency’s experiments on behavior and mind control extended beyond MKULTRA, also operating under projects BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE.
The collection, titled CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments, and MKULTRA, primarily comprises Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents compiled by former State Department official John Marks.
“The MKULTRA program was shut down more than 40 years ago, and declassified information about the program is publicly available on CIA.gov,” a CIA spokesperson said.
Despite the CIA’s attempts to conceal these activities, the remaining documents paint a disturbing picture of efforts to manipulate and reprogram the human mind.
“Despite the Agency’s efforts to erase this hidden history, the documents that survived this purge and that have been gathered together here present a compelling and unsettling narrative of the CIA’s decades-long effort to discover and test ways to erase and re-program the human mind,” the Archive wrote in its report.
One 1950 document details a request to approve Project BLUEBIRD, where interrogators sought to use polygraphs, drugs, and hypnosis to enhance interrogation techniques, according to Document Two.
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Another memo, Document Six, outlines Project ARTICHOKE, which involved drugging and hypnotizing suspected Russian agents. This included inducing a “complete hypnotic trance.”
The records further reveal that the CIA used philanthropic organizations as fronts for MKULTRA experiments.
Georgetown University Hospital, for instance, was reportedly used for such purposes, as outlined in Document 11.
A memo from the CIA’s Technical Services Staff reflects discussions between agency officials, including Director Allen Dulles, about whether using Georgetown University Hospital for experiments justified the expense.
The document lists “materials and methods” under development, such as substances promoting “illogical thinking and impulsiveness” and others designed to simulate reversible disease symptoms for deception purposes.
The files also mention attempts to create “physical methods of producing shock and confusion” and substances capable of altering personalities or incapacitating individuals covertly.
Not all CIA personnel supported the program. Some officers raised ethical concerns, particularly about MKDELTA, a subproject aimed at operationalizing MKULTRA techniques.
According to Document 16, moral objections from officers hindered progress.
A meeting memo reveals that Gottlieb and Helms defended the continuation of MKULTRA’s “unwitting testing” on U.S. citizens.
However, senior officials like Inspector General John Earman and Deputy Director Gen. Marshall Carter criticized the tests’ unwitting nature and the subpar state of testing facilities, according to Document 17.
Another document outlines Gottlieb’s admission that around 40 unwitting tests were conducted by federal narcotics agent George White in CIA safehouses.
These tests explored LSD’s use in interrogation and its potential to provoke unpredictable behavior.
The collection also includes legal documents related to lawsuits from victims like Velma Orlikow.
Orlikow was a patient at the Allan Memorial Institute in Canada, where CIA-funded psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron conducted experiments during the 1950s and 60s.
According to the Archive, MKULTRA operated with approval from the highest levels of government but lacked proper oversight.
The program’s existence only became widely known during the Church Committee’s investigation into intelligence operations in 1975.
