We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

Newly declassified CIA files have shed light on the extent of the agency’s notorious MKUltra program, a series of mind control experiments conducted during the Cold War era.

On December 23, the National Security Agency (NSA) declassified a total of 20 documents spanning over 1,200 pages, shedding light on covert CIA activities conducted between 1953 and 1964.

This covert initiative involved a staggering 144 projects that explored the use of drugs, psychological torture, and sensory manipulation to alter human behavior.

CIA Deputy Director Allen Dulles spearheaded the initiative, justifying it as a response to perceived threats from Soviet and Chinese psychological warfare programs.

Former CIA Deputy Director Allen Dulles

According to a report by the Daily Mail, the documents reveal that the CIA subjected both ordinary Americans and targeted individuals—including prisoners, CIA, Army, and mental health patients—to psychological torture and hazardous drug experiments under the pretext of safeguarding national security.

The experiments included the administration of LSD, induced sleep, electroshock therapy, and a sinister practice known as “psychic driving,” which involved prolonged exposure to repetitive, pre-recorded messages while under the influence of drugs. The goal? To reprogram human minds.

The response from CIA’s Technical Services Section (TSS) Chemical Division lists 17 “materials and methods” that the Chemical Division was working to develop, including:

  • substances that “promote illogical thinking,”
  • materials that would “render the induction of hypnosis easier” or “enhance its usefulness,”
  • substances that would help individuals to endure “privation, torture and coercion during interrogation” and attempts at ””brainwashing.”
  • “materials and physical methods” to “produce amnesia” and “shock and confusion over extended periods of time,”
  • substances that would “produce physical disablement, including paralysis,
  • substances that “alter personality structure” or that “produce ‘pure’ euphoria with no subsequent let-down,”
  • and a “knockout pill” for use in surreptitious druggings and to produce amnesia, among other things.

In its pursuit of control, the agency partnered with pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly, which produced LSD on a massive scale. Safehouses, dubbed “black sites,” were established in urban areas to conduct experiments away from public scrutiny.

James “Whitey” Bulger, notorious crime boss, claimed he was one of the eight test subject for the CIA’s MKUltra program in 1957, enduring experiments that left him and fellow inmates in panic and paranoia. (Credit: Getty Images)

Daily Mail reported:

Gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, a former organized crime boss, was used as a test subject in 1957 while an inmate at the Atlanta penitentiary.

He explained he was one of eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state while in MKUltra.

‘Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent,’ Bulger penned.

‘We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a camera change into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane.’

The National Security Archive (NSA) said in a statement: ‘The CIA conducted terrifying experiments using drugs, hypnosis, isolation, sensory deprivation, and other extreme techniques on human subjects, often US citizens, who frequently had no idea what was being done to them or that they were part of a CIA test.

‘These records also shed light on an especially dark period in the history of the behavioral sciences in which some of the top physicians in the field conducted research and experiments usually associated with the Nazi doctors who were tried at Nuremberg.’

One notable aspect of MKUltra was “Operation Midnight Climax,” where the CIA established safehouses in San Francisco and New York. In these locations, prostitutes on the agency’s payroll lured clients who were then secretly administered LSD without their consent, while CIA operatives observed and recorded their behavior from behind one-way mirrors.

In 1973, as public distrust in government reached a boiling point post-Watergate, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of MKUltra records.

However, some documents survived, and their exposure during the Church Committee hearings in 1975 ignited a national scandal. The revelations led to widespread public outrage and the creation of intelligence oversight committees.

You can read the file below:

You can read the rest of the 20 documents HERE.