What was MK-Ultra?
CIA researchers and scientists standing outside of a facility. (Wikimedia Commons)
MK-Ultra, you may have heard this word from a TikTok, but never understood what it means. Recently TikTok has been blowing up with conspiracy theories and people digging up declassified operations, such as MK-Ultra. Ever since MK-Ultra started blowing up, people have been left with the question, what was MK-Ultra?
In 1953, the United States was locked in the Cold War with the USSR. The US was doing anything they could to get valuable intelligence. The US Central Intelligence Agency, determined to perfect interrogation techniques, launched MK-Ultra.
MK-Ultra utilized results from the experiments conducted by Nazi scientists. Also, the CIA hired some of the Nazi scientists liberated from the Nuremberg Trials in Operation Paperclip.
MK-Ultra was a series of illegal human experiments on US citizens, by the CIA. According to multiple sources these involuntary experiments included, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, electroshocks, isolation, verbal abuse, sexual abuse and high doses of psychoactive drugs. These psychoactive drugs include but are not limited to, LSD, amphetamines, barbiturates, morphine, heroin, temazepam, mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, alcohol and sodium pentothal.
In a New York Times article, the author wrote, “Once Project MKUltra got underway in April 1953, experiments included administering LSD to mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts, and prostitutes – "people who could not fight back," as one agency officer put it. In one case, they administered LSD to a mental patient in Kentucky for 174 days.” The people who were subject to these experiments had no knowledge nor did they give consent to these experiments, violating the Nuremberg Code.
Along with experiments on Americans, experiments were also conducted on Canadians. These experiments, taking place in Montreal, were called The Montreal Experiments. Donald Ewen Cameron was the main person carrying out these experiments. Donald Cameron was paid $69,000 ($580,000 today) for carrying out these experiments from 1957 to 1964.
Cameron experimented with both psychoactive and paralytic drugs. Another experiment Cameron used was electroconvulsive therapy. Rather than using it at safe levels, Cameron’s experiments used up to forty times the normal power. Patients mostly suffered severe amnesia, forgetting most of if not their entire lives.
Frank Olson was a World War 2 veteran, having served as a captain in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps. Olson’s thesis adviser, Ira Baldwin, was contacted to become a director of a secret program to develop bio-weapons. Olson was requested to join Baldwin on this secret program. Olson accepted this offer and the two left for Fort Detrick. At Fort Detrick, Olson worked with ex-Nazi’s who secretly came to America through Operation Paperclip. After World War 2, Olson remained at Fort Detrick. He kept pursuing more atrocious experiments such as, Operation Harness and Operation Sea-Spray.
Frank Olson would eventually step down from his position at Detrick and join the CIA. In his time at the CIA, Olson would partially work on MK-Ultra. The scientists closest to MK-Ultra would go on a retreat at a cabin by Deep Creek Lake; from November 18, 1953 to November 20. At the retreat, a list of twelve participant names was presented, Olson being one of the names on that list. On Thursday evening of the retreat, Olson and a few others were given a “truth serum”, later to be revealed as LSD.
Everything about Frank Olson changed when he left that retreat. Olson would isolate himself from his family and was unable to do his work. On the Tuesday after the retreat, Olson came home and told his wife he was going to New York City for psychiatric treatment. Later that same day, Olson left for New York with another CIA chemist, Robert Lashbrook. Olson would stay at the Hotel Statler, now known as the Hotel Pennsylvania.
On a Saturday morning, at 2:00 am, Olson fell from a window onto the sidewalk below. The night time manager would later go on to say, "In all my years in the hotel business, I never encountered a case where someone got up in the middle of the night, ran across a dark room in his underwear, avoiding two beds, and dove through a closed window with the shade and curtains drawn."
The Olson family would receive $750,000 and a public apology from President Ford and the new CIA Director, William Colby, in 1975.
After the infamous Watergate scandal and the government mistrust that followed, CIA director, Richard Helms, ordered that all MK-Ultra documents be destroyed. Most of the documents were destroyed, meaning a more in depth investigation of MK-Ultra is impossible. Unless of course, there is a collection of more MK-Ultra documents. While most of the documents were destroyed, there are still about 20,000 declassified MK-Ultra documents.
Even though some documents survived, that doesn’t mean we knew about MK-Ultra immediately. In 1975, the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commision reported to the public for the first time about these illegal experiments. President Ford issued an executive order in 1976, prohibiting, “experiments with drugs on human subjects, except with the informed consent, in writing and witnessed by a disinterested party, of each such human subject." The Freedom of Information Act allowed the remaining documents to be used in the 1977 hearings about MK-Ultra. Lastly, the MK-Ultra documents were declassified in 2001.
It’s hard for most to believe that the US government was actually carrying out these illegal experiments. MK-Ultra was not the only atrocity the US government took part in. Many dismiss these types of events as mere conspiracy theories, assuming they’re total fiction rather than fact. It’s similar that similar operations are being conducted right now that we will have no knowledge of until decades later.