Lysergamides Was It All Just A Hallucination? The CIA's Secret LSD Experiments

[red22]

Brittanny Grant, Spring 2015

For my senior thesis project, I researched the CIA's LSD experiments on unwitting human subjects in the 1950s and early 1960s. I asked why the CIA carried out these experiments, what the impact on the victims was, and how the CIA was able to get away with breaking the law in this egregious way. These government-funded experiment were code-named MKULTRA. My thesis is that the CIA conducted these experiments as part of the American's Cold War struggle with world communism. This is also the reason why they were able to get away with these tests. The fallout for the human test subjects was often negative. It was not until the early 1970s, when American's distrust in the government was at an all time high, due to the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, that these experiments would come to the attention of the public. The congressionally appointed Church Commission researched the evidence, held hearings, and set up committees to monitor the treatment of human test subjects, all in order to prevent anything like this from happening again.

Full text: https://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/senior_theses/13/

 

[iom]

[...]

The congressionally appointed Church Commission researched the evidence, held hearings, and set up committees to monitor the treatment of human test subjects, all in order to prevent anything like this from happening again.

You mean like waterboarding in the War on Terror? How many people were criminally charged and/or convicted for the multitude of abuses that occurred under MK Ultra? How many people were criminally charged and/or convicted for torture (waterboarding) in the War on Terror era? I believe the answers are, respectively, zero and zero.

Forgive me but while the CIA may have gone woke, I'm not aware of anyone even being demoted or fired as a consequence of the terrible acts that were committed. Guantanamo Bay prison is still operating and still has inmates who haven't even been charged with a crime, going for over 20 years now. Some were picked up as kids. This was made possible in large part because of Dick Cheney's massive reforms which he pushed through Congress literally the day after the 9/11 terror attacks. The torturing started soon after. Unlike last time, the Congressional hearings on the revelations of torture led to no legal reforms whatsoever, and in fact, Congress and the president in power have consistently worked to enhance the secret capabilities of the CIA and security state. (This despite the apparent extreme political polarization since the Obama years.)

So now we're *really* in the dark as to what's going on. Officially MK Ultra was a failure, but of course most of the records and reports remain secret, and there is every reason to believe that insights were retained and put to use in other programs. And let's be clear about the intended purpose of Mk Ultra: to control people. The CIA does primarily two things: analysis and operations. Analysis is the acquisition of information and consideration of information which may be public or may be obtained through spies or contacts. Operations is the application of such information to effect great change (overthrow governments, start wars, create/destroy popular movements), albeit covertly. A large amount of propaganda originates from the CIA for example, which essentially affects everyone. The CIA also infiltrates organizations and political interest groups---everything from trade unions to clubs to criminal organizations to various corporations (especially media and social media), groups of activists of all stripes and ideologies, etc. There they may seek to influence or to sabotage activities within the group or redirect their energy toward another target. CIA also focuses on individuals who can be made "useful"---celebrities can be encouraged to popularize certain views. Assassins can be encouraged, manipulated, and assisted to carry out targeted killings. And so on. Drugs undoubtedly are used as tools in many such operations, but we hear nothing about such things these days, and if we did, chances are the journalist would be arrested and/or have to flee to a country outside the "West". I miss the old days when we were more free.

 

[HeadphonesandLSD]

MK Ultra never ended. Just watch a television for a few minutes if you don't believe me.

I'll read this paper tomorrow. But I doubt the author has gone too far down the rabbit hole. The CIA didn't just supply the drugs for the movement(s) of the 1960s. They supplied the music, idols and philosophy too.

 

[Viraldrome]

Why wouldn't the CIA create a pro war youth movement? I still don't see the benefit to them creating hippy movement. Like it sounds good from a tinfoilers perspective. Why would they want 10s of thousands of people tuning in and dropping out? They want the opposite of that. I think you will find most giant conspiracies with hundred of people eventually come to light. Yeah if you send five guys to whack the president of some banana Republic you might be able to keep it quiet, but it strains my belief that hundreds and hundred of people participated in conspiracies 60 years ago and zero proof or evidence ever came to light.

The testing of psychedelics was super damaging but read into the testing of the deliriants that are classified as chemical weapons now, they fucked some people over for life with that shit. Good read:

Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten: A Personal Story of Medical Testing of Army Volunteers with Incapacitating Chemical Agents During the Cold War (1955-1975)
Book by James S. Ketchum