Under an agreement reached with the Army in 1952, the Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick was to assist the CIA in developing, testing, and maintaining biological agents and delivery systems.…
Area 51 The Revealing Truth of Ufos, Secret Aircraft, Cover-Ups & Conspiracies
In addition to the CIA’s interest in using biological weapons and mind control against humans, it also asked the SOD to study use of biological agents against crops and animals. In its 1967 memorandum, the CIA stated: “Three methods and systems for carrying out a covert attack against crops and causing severe crop loss have been developed and evaluated under field conditions. This was accomplished in anticipation of a requirement which was later developed but was subsequently scrubbed just prior to putting into action.” The committee concluded with respect to MKNaomi that the project was “terminated in 1970.
On November 25, 1969, President Nixon renounced the use of any form of biological weapons that kill or incapacitate and ordered the disposal of existing stocks of bacteriological weapons. On February 14, 1970, the President clarified the extent of his earlier order and indicated that toxins— chemicals that are not living organisms but are produced by living organisms— were considered biological weapons subject to his previous directive and were to be destroyed. Although instructed to relinquish control of material held for the CIA by SOD, a CIA scientist acquired approximately 11 grams of shellfish toxin from SOD personnel at Fort Detrick which were stored in a little-used CIA laboratory where it went undetected for five years.”
Recognizing, however, that when it came to mind control and manipulation, MKUltra was the one project that more than any other was worth pursuing as part of its efforts to determine the extent to which the CIA had bent and broken the law and flouted the rights of citizens, the committee had far more to say on the operation.
Time and again, the committee returned to Project MKUltra. This was not surprising, as it was, after all, the principal CIA program involving the research and development of chemical and biological agents, and was, in the words of the committee, “concerned with the research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.”
The Inspector General’s survey of MKUltra in 1963 noted the following reasons for the profound level of sensitivity that surrounded the program: A. Research in the manipulation of human behavior is considered by many authorities in medicine and related fields to be professionally unethical; therefore the reputation of professional participants in the MKUltra program are on occasion in jeopardy.
B. Some MKUltra activities raise questions of legality implicit in the original charter.
C. A final phase of the testing of MKUltra products places the rights and interests of U.S. citizens in jeopardy.
D. Public disclosure of some aspects of MKUltra activity could induce serious adverse reaction in U.S. public opinion as well as stimulate offensive and defensive action in this field on the part of foreign intelligence services.
Over the at least ten-year life span of the program, many “additional avenues to the control of human behavior” were designated as being wholly appropriate for investigation under the MKUltra charter. These included “radiation, electroshock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment substances, and paramilitary devices and materials.”
This was a grim list
A 1955 MKUltra document provides a good example of the scope of the effort to understand the effects of mind-altering substances on human beings and lists those same substances as follows. In the CIA’s own words:
1. Substances that will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public.
2. Substances that increase the efficiency of mentation and perception.
3. Materials that will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
4. Materials that will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
5. Materials that will produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way so that they may be used for malingering, etc.
6. Materials that will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness.
7. Substances that will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture, and coercion during interrogation and so-called “brainwashing.”
8. Materials and physical methods that will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use.
9. Physical methods of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use.
10. Substances that produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc.
11. Substances that will produce “pure” euphoria with no subsequent let-down.
12. Substances that alter personality structure in such a way that the tendency of the recipient to become dependent upon another person is enhanced.
13. A material that will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning.
14. Substances that will lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men when administered in undetectable amounts.
15. Substances that promote weakness or distortion of the eyesight or hearing faculties, preferably without permanent effects.
16. A knockout pill that can surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis.
17. A material that can be surreptitiously administered by the above routes and that in very small amounts will make it impossible for a man to perform any physical activity whatsoever.
In other words, when it came to mind manipulation more than half a century ago, the CIA already had all bases covered. A special procedure, designated MKDelta, was established to govern the use of MKUltra materials when specifically utilized in overseas operations. Such materials were used on a number of occasions. According to the committee: “Because MKUltra records were destroyed, it is impossible to reconstruct the operational use of MKUltra materials by the CIA overseas; it has been determined that the use of these materials abroad began in 1953, and possibly as early as 1950.”
The committee expanded further: “Drugs were used primarily as an aid to interrogations, but MKUltra/MKDelta materials were also used for harassment, discrediting, or disabling purposes. According to an Inspector General Survey of the Technical Services Division of the CIA in 1957—an inspection which did not discover the MKUltra project involving the surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting, non-volunteer subjects—the CIA had developed six drugs for operational use and they had been used in six different operations on a total of thirty-three subjects. By 1963 the number of operations and subjects had increased substantially.”
Aside from the CIA, the committee learned that the Army was up to its neck in mind-control-related projects, too. In its 1977 report, the committee wrote: “There were three major phases in the Army’s testing of LSD. In the first, LSD was administered to more than 1,000 American soldiers who volunteered to be subjects in chemical warfare experiments. In the second phase, Material
Testing Program EA 1729, 95 volunteers received LSD in clinical experiments designed to evaluate potential intelligence uses of the drug. In the third phase, Projects Third Chance and Derby Hat, 16 unwitting non-volunteer subjects were interrogated after receiving LSD as part of operational field tests.” What of the post-MKUltra era, though: did the official world really cease its operations and destroy its files en masse in 1973 as had been alleged?
Probably not: in a 1977 interview, fourteen-year CIA veteran Victor Marchetti stated that the CIA’s claim that MKUltra was abandoned was nothing more than a “cover story.” As a final point on this issue, it’s important to note that most of the data we have on MKUltra comes from the 1950s and 1960s. The Lazar affair went down just a couple of years before the dawning of the 1990s. It’s entirely plausible that between the 1950s and the late 1980s, far more effective mind-altering technologies were perfected and were used on Lazar but without his knowledge.