April 17, 2019 • 43 mins
The rumors spread for decades: Somewhere in the US, our own government was conducting dangerous, heinous and illegal experiments on citizens from all walks of life. This conspiratorial tale seemed set to remain little more than an urban legend -- until, that is, intrepid reporters and members of Congress managed to expose MKULTRA, the insidious series of experiments run by the Central Intelligence Agency with almost no oversight. In the decades since the revelation, MKULTRA has been featured in countless works of fiction, documentaries and more. But what exactly was it? Join the guys as they separate the MKULTRA fact from fiction.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. What's your Name? My name is Matt,
my name is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined,
as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decond.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. This
is an episode that we've received numerous requests for, and
(00:45):
Matt if I if I recall correctly, and at least
the two of us, we were both surprised that we
had not done this yet. Is that is that accurate? Yeah,
We're having many echoes of videos such as the Project Artichoke,
several parts series that we made in the past, and
we've mentioned mk ultras so many times on this show
just as a throwaway mention of mind to control. Whenever
(01:06):
we bring something even closely related that or kind of
related to mind control, we always joke I'm gultra, right right,
but we've never put it all in one thing. So
here it is m kaultra one oh one. For a
lot of us listening today, It's true that there has
been a war going on somewhere on the planet for
every moment of your life. Not all wars are created equal,
(01:28):
of course, Some are fought out in the open, massive
waves of soldiers crashing against one another in the blood
and the dirt. Others, of course, are fought through proxies,
where it's where foreign powers turn a third nation or
country into a battleground and mercenaries disguised as student activists
or freedom fighters kill one another while the people who
live there look on helplessly. Others, of course, are fought
(01:51):
surreptitiously in the shadows, kind of a spy versus spy thing.
And if you were born after World War Two, that
means you were live during what we call the Cold War,
this long running ideological hegemonic conflict between the USSR and
the West. Most mainstream thought will tell us that this
Cold War ended with the fall of the Soviet Union,
(02:13):
although some people will quietly assure you this war continues
today and a lot of those people under some people
are Russian pointing that out, yeah, and or just people
who work in the state Department and perhaps those as well. Yeah,
so intelligence agencies on both sides of the Cold War
(02:34):
tried to get any sort of edge they could better technology,
better access to resources, better propaganda displays like getting into space,
landing on the moon, or I was thinking about digging
a giant hole and going as far as you can
into the Earth, just as a fun thing to say, Yeah,
we dug the biggest hole. What's up? I know, I
know Russia has done that. Yes, that's true. That is
(02:56):
a true story. There's another aspect that we don't talk
about as much, perhaps as we should, which is gaining
better control over people, regardless of where they live or
what they do. In today's episode, as as you said,
is ultimately about that last idea, how do you best
control people? The CIA pursued this question through a series
(03:16):
of programs collectively known today as m k Ultra. Here
are the facts. Actually, no, we have to skip it
for this one. Here's where it gets crazy straight to crazy.
Yeah dang, so, here here are the two days you
need to know. But then there's a third one and
it sounds complicated, but it just means from at least
(03:36):
nine to nineteen sixty four. Officially, wrapping all the way
up in nineteen seventy three, the CIA used various front
companies and the like to conduct at it at times
illegal experiments on unwitting human subjects. And this included exposure
of things like illegal drugs, LSD, other chemicals, and a
large dollop of what we would consider to be social manipulation.
(04:00):
Absolutely in the aims of these programs all varied and
they ran the gamut, but they also shared a common
theme to explore previously unexploited ways of influencing human behavior.
Can we actually brainwash someone? Can we genuinely hypnotize someone?
Can we make them tell the truth? Or can we
implant some series of future actions in their mind? False memories?
(04:26):
Uh Manchurian candidate, I was going to say, I didn't
want to say it. Oh did I spoil it? It's okay,
we're gonna talk about it. Trigger word, assassins, ladies in
polka dot dresses. There we go, inception style dream exploration.
And for years and years and years and years and years,
(04:47):
rumors about this kind of nefarious activity floated around in
the counterculture of America. The mainstream largely dismissed it until
the seventies when a New York Times journalist named Seymour
her who will be familiar to longtime listeners of Stuff
they Don't Want You to Know, published a story in
nineteen seventy four detailing how the CIA conducted non consensual
(05:09):
drug experiments and illegal spine operations domestically on US citizens.
Would later come to find that Canadians were victimized as well. Uh,
the the spook squad flew out of the country to
experiment on some folks they consider representative of a communist block.
So this allegation hits in the nineteen seventies, as we said,
(05:34):
with the New York Times publishing it. But the problem
here is that this is a newer chapter in a
very long story. When we talk about truth serums and
the attempts to discover one, we go all the way
back to nineteen sixteen, right, oh yeah, way way way back,
and that's when the that's the first time that scope
(05:56):
mean is seen to be like having an effect on
a human and ultimately scope of me is something that's
used to I guess as a truth serum, is used
as a true truth serum. But back in nineteen sixteen
is when it is first seen. Then you can jump
all the way to nineteen thirty one when you see
um sodium pentethal, which is the thing we've discussed before
(06:16):
the official truth serum, but never actually tried. Yeah, yeah,
that we know of, right, Oh, that I know of. Uh.
And then since ninety two on the US government has
been interested in this kind of stuff, right, especially originally
under General William Wild Bill Donovan. So this this stuff
(06:40):
has occurred, it's just most people didn't know about it
to one degree or another. What makes complete sense anytime
you are at war and you've got an enemy combatant
and you if you could inject something into that combatant
and then get the coordinates of where the rest of
his battalion is or something, I mean done, end of story.
You're gonna do that absolutely. And in his article, Hirsch
(07:03):
also talks about how they managed to bring these details
about him k Ultra to light. It looks legit. His
sources are right, He's walked through the process. You can
see chain of custody for all the stuff he found,
and then primarily he found it through a government mistake.
This was never meant to be discovered, but the discovery
(07:25):
resulted in calls for an investigation. Eventually, even Congress paid attention,
which is unusual for Congress. They held a hearing on
this in the famous Church Committee, and they had Senate hearings, Uh,
just a little bit later, that's right. The later hearings
only occurred after a fo I Freedom of Information Act
(07:45):
request uncovered a cash of twenty thousand documents that were
related to Project m k Ultra. And according to that report,
mk Ultra was meant to develop, to the words of
the report, developed a capability in the covert use of
by iological and chemical materials. Pretty vague, um doesn't really
tell you what they were going forward covert secret use
(08:07):
of some biological or chemical materials, but to what end um,
But what they're referring to was mind control efforts, and
they started in earnest In under the name of Project Bluebird.
I've been talked about pretty extensively on the show. More
back on the video days. I would say, right, yeah, yeah,
we I think we mentioned Bluebird when we made the
Arctic Joke videos. And there are a whole bunch of
(08:30):
those code names that we can get into maybe a
little later, But Bluebird was a a big one, and
Bluebird was reactionary, right. Yeah, it was in reaction to
the quote bizarre conduct of a cardinal by the name
of men Zenti at his trial in Budapest when he
confessed to treason. He clearly in their in their minds,
(08:53):
he clearly appeared to have had brainwashing techniques applied to him.
He confessed the stuff he Demoli shriably did not and
could not have done. He claimed that he was going
to topple this one regime to bring in I guess capitalism,
and then he was going to supplant the United States
after it was a one world government and become the
(09:14):
supreme authority of the country himself. It was very, very strange,
but yeah, they they thought they have done something to
this guy's mind, and we need to be able to well,
the way they phrases, we need to be able to
stop it, or we need to know what they're doing.
What they really meant is we need to have that capability.
(09:34):
So they started contemplating behavior control for offensive purposes. They
were at least partially motivated by fear that China and
the Soviet Union had already made significant breakthroughs in this field.
I was either probably terrified of that yeah. And here's
the thing. Although it sounds like a rationalization at this point,
(09:54):
the c I A History vindicated them. They were they
were correct. The Soviet Union had been conducting wholly independent
research along the same lines, with a lot of extra
parapsychological stuff thrown in, and they had a decades long
jump on Uncle Sam. All in all, as far as
we know, they spend at least a billion dollars. It's
still even more enigmatic than mk ulture. We don't know
(10:17):
when it ended, but we know they called it psychotronics.
Psychotronics that's a cool name, and as a record store
in my hometown and called Psychotronic Records. Whoa Soviet front, Dude,
watch it's very small. I don't know where they would hid.
Maybe it's subterrane the base always the basement with Russians. Well,
that's a that is a great video. A couple of
(10:39):
videos we've made and uh, I think an episode we
did a full episode on that didn't the psychotronics all
if not, it's coming soon and that was fascinating because
it's looking into everything, right. It was it was like Stargate,
Like Project Stargate was almost to the United States where
we're looking at psychic soldiers and all that stuff outside
(11:00):
of just truth serums and LSD and effects of the mind,
right right. It's interesting because in the US these were
more compartmentalized. Um like when Nolan I interviewed Russell Target
earlier and he he was talking a little bit about
Project Stargate that was not related to im K culture.
It's an important difference in ka Ultra is how can
(11:21):
we control the mind? And and uh it Stargate is
more about what we would consider psychic or superpowers. They
also said that we have to understand these techniques because
we need to defend ourselves against people who might not
be as restrained in the use of these tactics as
(11:42):
we are. So we're learning how to do evil stuff
because we're very good boys. That's that's sort of the logic.
I mean, I I get it, but you can see
where it's I don't want to say disingenuous, but convenient. Sure,
like definitely see that. So that's what they describe. Where's
(12:04):
the line? Why? Why is this? You know who cares? Well? Yeah?
But who what's too far? Right? I mean, if you're
already doing this stuff, where at what point do you
say Okay, we shouldn't do that anymore. Um, let's look
at that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
(12:24):
I mean, it's a good question. There's nothing wrong with
secret government projects legally speaking, as we listen to this episode,
no matter where you're listening, where you're located, or where
what you can sider your home country, we can virtually
guarantee you that they are up to something and it
is occurring in secret because it's meant to protect the government,
the employees of the government, and citizens of the country.
(12:47):
You know, let me call it national secrecy. The problem
here is that despite that that theory and practice, secrecy
is often used to hide acts that would be crimes
if anybody in the country committed them. The CIA was
doing stuff that we give people, uh life in prison
with no parole, Oh for sure. I mean let's like,
(13:11):
let's say, for instance, that we catch a wild hair
and we go around sneaking drugs in people's food here
in pont City Market. If we got caught, we'd go
to court. Those rules are just different when it comes
to government sanctioned acts. We would go to court and
probably just go straight to jail, straight to hail. Yeah,
(13:34):
and and well again, and we're kind of like joking
about it in a way, but this is exactly what
the Central Intelligence Agency did. No, oh, absolutely, they put
stuff in people, and they those people had no idea.
Only two years after the program was officially approved, the
project was already having just serious issues with a thing
(13:57):
we've mentioned here before that happens in a lot of
big projects with a lot of money, even here at
our job, especially here at our job, Mission creep, oh,
mission creep, where just that one little thing that you're
supposed to be doing ends up turning into all these
other things and spreading all the way out to the
edges of the desk. So the scope of experimentation expanded,
(14:20):
and it was they were trying to find, well, let's
just let's call this discovery of the following materials and methods,
including those which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
That sounds nice, So make you more drunk, more quickly,
more severely. Yeah, that's nice, Which will render the induction
of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness. Okay, I
(14:44):
can see why you're going to use that in some interrogation,
which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation,
torture and coercion during interrogation, and so called brainwashing. Oh,
so privation is what the what the hell is that?
We just we we talked about this a little bit
off air. So privation is the act of depriving people
(15:08):
of basic human necessities food, clothing, water, shelter, air, I guess,
but not for too long. And um, you pointed out
all that that's pretty weird language wise, linguistically, that's weird. Well, well,
I said it is. So is privation like the opposite
of deprivation, which would be extremely to give people stuff?
(15:30):
But no, no, it is. How did you put it then?
What I would? It's just it's to deny them, to
deprive the Yeah, I got you. This is just it's
got really complicated. Man, this isn't even the rabbit hole
for today. Alien here we are. I'm feeling privd of
(15:52):
a direction, so let's keep doing this. They're also looking
for that which will produce amnesia for events proceeding and
during their use, So a drug or some their substance
that would do that. Uh, that which will produce shock
and confusion for extended periods of time and capable of
surreptitious use. Wow, this sounds like just the best stuff
(16:14):
ever that which will produce physical disablement such as paralysis
of the legs, acute anemia, etcetera. Essentially prescribed or they're
describing roal hypnol or um some other drug with amnesia. Uh.
And then let's see according to the Hearing Report, eighty
(16:36):
six universities or institutions were involved. Eighties six universities or
institutions and one hundred and eighty five non government researchers
and assistance worked on these these projects. What and then
we have another quote here. It says physicians, toxicologists and
other specialists and mental and narcotics. Mental and narcotics were
(16:59):
lured into mk ULTRA through the provision of grants that
were made under ostensible research foundation auspices, thereby concealing the
CIA's interest from the specialists institution. So what are we
saying here. It's what we said at the top. They're
concealing that they are actually doing this. That is the
(17:19):
c i A with their tentacles going into these other
institutions essentially getting money and researching stuff that they're going
to use in the field. Right, But they don't think
they're working for the CIA. They think they're working for,
like the American Foundation of totally legitimate benevolence. Oh, the
you mean the specialists and the Toxic College, other people
(17:40):
who are working with the drugs and the methods. They
don't know exactly, So it's the CIA. Like again, it's
like the Black Tar or the Black Goo and X files.
It's just like seeping in finding its way and infecting
people without knowing it. The Pink Slime and Ghostbusters too,
very similar. A voice for both good or sen she goo.
(18:01):
So for members of Congress, this was just s op
standard operating procedures. CIA had not inherently crossed the line
by conducting these experiments in secret by lying to the
scientists or the researchers. Instead, they crossed the line when
they didn't inform volunteers. This was also, you know, this
(18:25):
is taking place right after Watergate, so distrust of the
government is at an even higher mainstream level than before.
So in his opening remarks during the hearing, Senator Edward
Kennedy described mk ultra as on extends of tasting of
experimentation program which included Covart drug tests, and on on
(18:47):
wedding citizen's at all social levels, high and law, Native
Americans and foreign Several of these tests include the administration
of the last day to unwdding subjects on social situations.
What I did there, you guys, was Fred Gwen from
pet Cemetery. That's That's the closest thing Barry her. Oh
(19:10):
did you guys? In the trailer for the new one,
they don't say the soil is sour anymore. They say
the soil is bad. Yeah, was like, oh, I heard
it's really good, but it's quite good, all right. So
what he means by this and that? Off off air,
Matt Night did try me a little bit. I don't know.
As long as you didn't feel bullied, we were. It
(19:31):
was just a great voice. I didn't feel bullied at all.
I never feel bullied by you guys. Awesome. I always
feel big up good guys. I mean, I think you're
the new Kennedy for for the show. But but he's
making a good point. Despite despite our compatriots mallifluous and
beautiful re enactment, there, Kennedy was saying stuff that that
(19:55):
had substance and presented a clear and present ethical danger.
There were not medical professionals around for a lot of
this dosing. The CIA agents doing this and their proxies
were not doctors. Often at least one person went to
the hospital, probably more. Two people definitely died, a fellow
named Frank Olsen who was involved as a non civilian,
(20:19):
and Harold Blower. But the testing continued, and when we
say two people died, we mean at least two people.
We really don't know how many deaths or injuries can
be attributed to this program, because it's also hard to
really tell how long the program had been going on
outside of the official numbers, and how long it continued,
(20:41):
right right, Just the stuff we know, again is from
that Freedom of Information Act. Will will explore this in
a second. But let's let's walk through what they were
actually doing with them k Ultra. They weren't in many ways.
It was as dirty as the Tuskegee experiments. Uh, some
people may see even a little worse. They went to
(21:02):
twelve hospitals that we know of, and testing was testing
was conducted on patients who had various forms of terminal cancer.
They were they were not coming back. It was time
to make your peace, not time to pursue other options
of treatment. And this meant that we can we can
assume safely that whatever those experiments the cancer patients were
(21:26):
part of we're doing to the human body, it was
going to have long term detrimental, possibly fatal effects. And
the deal was simple. It was the devil's bargain, the
CIA's proxies. You know, um doctor uh every man good
name comes in from the Society of regular business and says,
(21:47):
I will pay the medical bills for these terminal cancer patients.
And all we have to do, you know, in in
addition to all the top notch medicines were already exposing
them to, will exp them to this other experimental medicine,
and then we'll close the doors and turn off the
lights and just see what happens. Right, And they may
have glowed because we're typing radiation exposure for some of
(22:11):
the terminal patients, but yeah, like any something that was
probably going to kill them harder or faster than the cancer.
And in the and they conducted experiments and prisons as well,
and this one, for some reason bothers me even more so.
In the prisons, the mentally ill, specifically described as criminal
sexual psychopaths, were also subjected to experiments, they are considered expendable.
(22:35):
I guess in somewhere maybe there was there was a
benefit to their mental state, like they were trying to
like trigger them even further to break. It's a good question. Yeah,
I don't know. Um So, while prisons were informed of
the broad strokes of one experiment or another or another,
and while they some of you know, they did volunteer. Uh,
they did so when they were promised access to their
(22:56):
addictive drug of choice, which, as we know from even
just watching films, you know, a junkie will do just
buy anything for their fix. Right. Is it consent if
a person who is in the depths of heroin or
opioid withdrawal is offered opium or heroin? Like are they
(23:19):
saying yes, I don't know, So it's user is said
at the very least. Yeah, absolutely, and manipulative and borderline.
It's it's not not borderline definitely on ethical that's breaking. Yeah,
in any kind of controlled medical tests or any kind
of clinical trial, that would you know, you can't that
that throws your data out the window. That's not that one, right,
(23:41):
That's why you don't see more those situations in studies
on you know, but the fad diets or social media usage.
So so let's get to uh, let's get to some
of the things that we put in place after World
War Two. Right, the Cold War is not counted as
a war, so these things are not counted as war crimes. However,
(24:05):
they clearly violate the Nuremberg Code, which the entire imperfect
world approves of. As a result of the findings, President
Ford and then President Carter and then President Reagan all
issued orders banning all future human experimentation without consent by
government agencies and even kicked back a little bit of
(24:30):
a little bit of make it Right money to the
people that were inarguably harmed by the test. Just the
people that were inarguably demonstrably harmed. A lot of people
fell through the cracks. This sounds like it could be
an expose in the halls of Congress, right. Just the
wheels of justice grind slow but exceedingly fine, a very
go team moment right way of your flags. Uh, feel
(24:53):
proud to be an American. But the problem is that
this only scratches the surface. That's why this ultra one
oh one you see before that article comes out in
the New York Times and years before the congressional hearings,
the CIA has an internal purge in three when you
Matt earlier said, it officially wrapped up. The CIA director
(25:15):
at the time, Richard Helms, ordered all of the documents
related to anything associated with any mk ultra program to
be destroyed. This means even today, we still do not
know everything that happened, and the hints that we get,
the little tantalizing scraps are even more disturbing. It's a
sinking shame and we're gonna learn about it right after
(25:38):
a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy, kip,
double crazy, double crazy. We we know that there were
other experiments, we don't know how many, and we don't
know the details of all of them. But here's just
(26:00):
a whitman sampler of the sort of stuff that they involved. Electroshock,
harassment techniques for quote offensive use, gas propelled sprays and aerosols,
has assassination delivery systems. This begins to get wrapped up
in because these committees were also looking at stuff like
the CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Oh yeah, can
(26:22):
we talk about what you said? Harassment techniques for offensive
use really fast. Yeah, a lot of times, or maybe
you've heard of this before, something called gang stalking or
some of these other things. I can imagine that's where
a lot of those feelings arise, or the beliefs that
something like that is happening to you, just from that
(26:44):
one little thing, the the concept that the CIA was
truly researching at one point harassment techniques for offensive use.
They really were doing it. No, we know the gang
stalking can sometimes sound a little bit tinfoil hattie for people,
but they they were purposely doing it, and the idea
is to push someone further and further into a paranoid state. Yes,
(27:08):
and it works alright. So scientists were also greenlit for
research involving radiation and paramilitary devices and materials. Isn't that
nice looking into radiation? Yeah, that's good. And going back
to your point in all that you said about the
the vague language here paramilitary devices and materials. M hmm,
(27:32):
that's pretty It could be anything. Yeah, it could be
those crazy Air Force coffee mugs that are so expensive.
Have you heard about these? That was apparently a line
item in the Air Force budget for like a hundreds
of thousands of dollars for these like high tech coffee
mugs that had built in warmers, and apparently they're very fragile,
so they had to replace them. A bunch people would
drop them on the planes and they would just shatter
(27:54):
and then so that, you know, waste not, want not
Uncle Sam boy. It's like that old sorry about the
three hammer. Right. So what we do know is that
at least one hundred and forty nine of the m
K Ultra subprojects had some kind of connection with research
into behavioral modification, drug acquisition and testing or administering drugs
(28:22):
on the sly yeah for for for all kinds of things,
including what you said before again been assassination delivery systems.
What does that mean? Assassination delivery a gun that would
be one or you know some some type of yeah,
(28:43):
like you combine them. But I love the I love
the the banality of that, you know what I mean? Absolutely,
they do have some poetic language in here, though. We
have lists of different projects. They had six projects that
were intentionally meant to test unwitting subjects, eight with hypnosis.
(29:04):
Two of those used drugs, seven that just used drugs.
Four here's the poetry that used the quote Magician's art
the magician's arm art art, and specifically in that one,
it's about finding a way to get probably a chemical
into someone's drink, or into someone's food, or into someone's
body in a way that they don't know. Right, this
(29:26):
is dangerous through a magician's art, through a magician's off
close magic. Ye, you just got darted totally, which you know,
just from the use of that phrase. I don't mean
that belittle the horrible things that happened, but just from
the use of that phrase, doesn't it sound like one
of the CIA people really, which is just a repressed magician. Yeah,
(29:49):
fan of magic. That's right. They wouldn't let him in
the magic Castle. What is it called the Magician's Castle?
The magic Castle? The magic I have yet to go myself.
I have to be in. I did. There's there's there
there's a loophole where you can go and get a
commemorative photo or something like that, like one one day. Yeah,
it's like a sort of like open house at at
at elementary school. You know. Lauren Vogelbaum went, she had
(30:12):
an end, Yeah, with some kind of fancy actor. I
don't trust stage magicians. It's one of my few prejudices well,
do you recall that our buddy Russell Targ had fascination
with stage magic, which I found very interesting considering that
a lot of people, you know, attribute some of the
techniques of stage magicians to cold reading and is to
(30:36):
fake being psychic. I'm not. I don't think that's what
Targ is about, but I do think it's interesting that
he his mind kind of started going down that path
through a false way and then ultimately found its way
to a more true way what he perceives what he
perceives to be as a true way. It's it's interesting.
That's a derail too much, But I you know, how
(30:57):
you can be intellectually aware of something but then a
emotionally degrees opposed to it or vice versa. Right, Like,
intellectually I understand that stage magicians are normal human beings
who get up and have jobs and they're not evil
or you know, like I have all these stereotypes about them. Emotionally,
(31:18):
I can't get over it. Yeah, I feel monstrous about it,
and I apologize to any stage magicians, Uh listening to
the show, Please don't send me videos of your stuff.
Oh my gosh, So you understand like the whole the
whole category everything about it. I don't know why you
whenever they like David Copperfield as a kid, I'm okay
(31:39):
with mentalists, you know, like Darren Brown. For some reason,
it's okay. And just like pull out the cards and
they make me tap on stuff. It's something must have
happened to me. You don't like people to ask you
to do stuff either, Ben, who likes people to ask you?
If it's all in the way you ask, it's all
the way you ask, that's true. I agree. But you know,
if if I just walked up to when I said, Ben,
(32:01):
tap on this deck of cards with two fingers, you
would probably punch me. I would. I would punch you
because now I would know where's coming from. You look
at me. Askance though, I'll tell you that yes, it
would be would be very very distrusting in the very
least you touch it with three fingers. It would be
like if it would be like if somebody if if
mad Orrai came up to you and we're like, hey man,
open this bag and we had hidden a birden there,
(32:24):
like that's not cool. If you guys could see me
out there in podcast, my eyes just went wide, like
a couple of saucers. I have nightmares sometimes that there's
a bird under my covers. We will never do that, thanks, guys.
I don't want to freak you out. Did a bird
hurt me? Is that what you're gonna ask? Don't look
under the desk right now? Okay, that's this is being
(32:47):
This is mean, and I'm sorry your face was so
genuine and scared that I'm sorry. I feel like the
c I A right, Okay, it's okay, man, And that's
what we just did. We did a thought experiment to
let you know how the c I must feel after
being taken to task for a lot of this stuff,
and how quickly it got out of control because they
were also dosing one another at some point. It was
(33:09):
just for frenzies, like Smitty, he's tripping balls? What is
your stage magic? Now? Oh wait, he's going outside on
the balcony. Oh that's interesting. Ones that does that? Of
course happened, right, yes, yes, Frank Olsen specifically, he was
a biochemist at a lab that was conducting those LSD
(33:30):
experiments for the government. And the story is still very
murky today. I think it's mentioned in the Netflix series Wormwood. So,
according to uncle sam Ulsen, knowingly ingested LSD and then
because it affected him in an adverse way, he eventually
took his own life by jumping from his hotel room
(33:54):
on the thirteenth floor of a New York City hotel,
and you know, he died. However, his family and numerous
people don't buy the story. They say that he was
dosed without his consent uh, and that he would never
have committed suicide, that he did not have nascent suicidal tendencies.
They say he was murdered because he knew too much.
(34:17):
The US government gave them a settlement of seventy thousand
dollars in nineteen seventy five. But yeah, wait, wait, wait, wait,
his body's exhumed and the coroner sees head injuries and
he says, wait, Olsen was knocked unconscious before his death.
How do you figure that out that long afterwards after
(34:42):
you fell from a really high height. I don't know.
I totally hear you. That is crazy, though, right, yes, yeah,
it's it's strange and questions remain. And it's also I
hate to say, man, but it's extremely possible that he
was killed and was a cover up because ultra is
the top above top secret level classification for projects at
(35:04):
this time. And this leads us to, you know, the
big question. Surely one day there's gonna be justice. Not
so fast. Yeah, a lot of the sciencests involved honestly
had no idea what they were actually doing. That they
were working for the CIA. They knew they were administering something,
they knew they were maybe doing it a little surreptitiously,
but they didn't understand that it was this kind of
(35:27):
this kind of thing, right, And they, along with the
CIA assets, are legally immune at this point from consequences
of their actions. Can you believe that that's that's true? Seriously? Yep,
they're immune. And and here's why. There are two lawsuits
related to mk Ultra that made it as far as
the freaking Supreme Court, and the court found in favor
of the government twice. Both times. Yeah, the court held
(35:53):
in a case called CIA versus Sims that the names
of institutions and researchers who participated in Project in k
Ultra were exempt from revelation under the Freedom of Information
Act because the CIA needed to protect its intelligence sources. Again,
national security. Just throw that up anywhere and you're good
(36:15):
to go. And then also here's a case called United
States versus Stanley, and the court held that this serviceman
someone he was working with them who had volunteered for
a chemical weapons experiment. Let's call it that a chemical
weapons experiment. This guy was actually tested with LSD. And
this guy was barred from bringing a claim under the
(36:37):
this thing called the Federal Tort Claims Act. And uh,
what has a tourt been? A tort is essentially when
someone does something bad to you, a bad action. So
Towart law is the area of law that protects people
from bad acts of others. Historically speaking, citizens in the
US cannot sue states because of the concept of sovereign unity.
(37:00):
Can't just sue this state because there are very specific
concepts of constraints or situations where you can do that.
And the f t c A or Federal Tort Claims
Act federal statute that allows private parties to sue the
US in a federal court for most of these torque
cases committed by people acting on behalf of the US.
(37:24):
It's a little bit illegalis but but that's it. He um,
he was Stanley was attempting to attempting to sue, but
it was kicked out because it was not because he
was he was not allowed to use the Federal Tort
Claims Act. Okay, that makes sense. National security, national security,
(37:45):
national security twice eight seven. So that's almost where we
are now today. MK Ultra is firmly enshrined in the
world of conspiracy lore, their fictional programs like Wormwood. There
are documentaries, There are books ranging from fiction inspired by
this to maybe more fringe research that the authors will
(38:08):
tell you it is true, dull sorts of films that
explore aspects of the program or use it as a
jumping off point for speculation. But like any piece of folklore,
and I would argue there's a lot of folklore around
him Cultra, there is an arguable grain of truth inside
the story, and that leaves us with some burning, disturbing questions. First,
what happened? That's the easiest question to answer. We will
(38:30):
not know, we cannot know, we will never know, we
refuse to know. We shut our eyes in the nearest
to the truth. Well, not that the first. We just can't.
We can't know because it's going to be sealed. Because
they destroyed thousands and thousands of things and When I
say sealed, I mean in a tomb essentially of its
own burnt up carbon. Yeah, we're in We're in deathbed
(38:52):
confession territory. That's where that's that those will be the
best sources of this second question in a little depressing
Did any of this stuff actually work? Yeah, some of it,
some of it obviously, most of it didn't. Some of
it did, some of it did, right. Yeah, And again
we're not really sure what we'll find unless some some
(39:13):
of those experiments that they were doing are just redone
a lot um. But I guess, I guess the big
thing is that they never at least two our understanding,
they never got a true truth serum as close as
scope I mean, and some of these other things can
get you. There's no true injectable that we know. Now.
(39:35):
I'll tell you everything. My fears, my social security. One
of my feet is larger than the other. It makes
me uncomfortable. I I'm Edward Kennedy, and uh, some of
the biggest drugs that I've been doing lately are the
L S d L. You also kind of got a
little Peter Griffin, I got, I got a Peter to Jesus.
(39:57):
So it's It's true they ever found that silver bullet
truth serum. So far as we know, the data they
got was of limited use if you think about it,
because they didn't have solid methodology and a lot of
these experiments, they did not have ideal monitoring conditions, and
at some point they just uh had a Lord of
(40:20):
the Flyes situation, you know what I mean. Big Think
has a great quote on this. They argue that the
program may ultimately have been counterproductive. They say mk Ultra
might have been counterproductive because the counterculture was given access
to LSD through these experiments. That's true, and they proceeded
to run in the opposite direction with it. John Lennon
(40:42):
went so far as to mock the CIA in an interview,
noting they must always remember to thank the CIA and
the Army for LSD. That's what people forget. Oh my god,
it's the young Michael Kine. I'm sorry. They invented a
state to control people, and what they did would give
us freedom. Wow. Okay, all right, Lennon, John Lennon, I mean,
(41:03):
let's that's Michael King. Thanks. But yeah, he's making a
good point, right, Yeah, they gave us LSD, but they
didn't give us what what did What didn't they give us?
They didn't give us shrooms? True? They they did? I
don't know, Yeah, I don't know. They didn't. They didn't
disclose a lot of the findings. And that's that's the
(41:26):
scariest question. Most importantly, what's happening now? You have to
ask yourself listening to this. Would a government genuinely completely
stop this sort of research if an aspect of it worked.
Has there at any point, and and forget forget the
relatively young experiment known as the United States, In the
(41:49):
course of human civilization, has there been something that was
an amazing technique or technology that gave one empire the
edge over the others that they stopped for sueing and
not being rhetorical? I would love to hear of one example. Yeah,
send us your examples if you've got them, please. You
can find us on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook.
(42:10):
You can visit our Facebook friend page. I call it
that because it's just some awesome people there. Thank you
for being a friend folks. That's right, it's called here's
where it gets crazy. Join up and let's discuss these
kind of things. You can post directly there or just
talk to people. Whatever you want to do. If you
don't want to do that stuff, you can give us
a call. We are one eight three three S T
d W y t K. Leave a message. It's a
(42:33):
three minute max, but you can leave multiples. So do
what you gotta do and it might be on the
air if you if you don't want to be named
on the air, or you want any other stipulations, just
specifically say it, because when when you leave a message,
we may use it on the air. One last thing
before we go, just a knowing kulture is not lost
in the past. In December of eighteen, just last year,
(42:56):
as we record this, declassified documents revealed include at a
letter to an unidentified doctor discussing work on six dogs
made to run, turn and stop via remote control and
brain implants. That's where they were in the sixties and
maybe if they could do that to a dog then
or we're at least we're attempting to and then these
(43:18):
experiments continued. Are they controlling mission control? Paul Decan right now,
that's the big question. Send us an email. We are
conspiracy at i heeart podcast network dot com. Stuff they
(43:48):
don't want you to know is a production of iHeart
Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. What's your Name? My name is Matt,
my name is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined,
as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decond.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. This
is an episode that we've received numerous requests for, and
(00:45):
Matt if I if I recall correctly, and at least
the two of us, we were both surprised that we
had not done this yet. Is that is that accurate? Yeah,
We're having many echoes of videos such as the Project Artichoke,
several parts series that we made in the past, and
we've mentioned mk ultras so many times on this show
just as a throwaway mention of mind to control. Whenever
(01:06):
we bring something even closely related that or kind of
related to mind control, we always joke I'm gultra, right right,
but we've never put it all in one thing. So
here it is m kaultra one oh one. For a
lot of us listening today, It's true that there has
been a war going on somewhere on the planet for
every moment of your life. Not all wars are created equal,
(01:28):
of course, Some are fought out in the open, massive
waves of soldiers crashing against one another in the blood
and the dirt. Others, of course, are fought through proxies,
where it's where foreign powers turn a third nation or
country into a battleground and mercenaries disguised as student activists
or freedom fighters kill one another while the people who
live there look on helplessly. Others, of course, are fought
(01:51):
surreptitiously in the shadows, kind of a spy versus spy thing.
And if you were born after World War Two, that
means you were live during what we call the Cold War,
this long running ideological hegemonic conflict between the USSR and
the West. Most mainstream thought will tell us that this
Cold War ended with the fall of the Soviet Union,
(02:13):
although some people will quietly assure you this war continues
today and a lot of those people under some people
are Russian pointing that out, yeah, and or just people
who work in the state Department and perhaps those as well. Yeah,
so intelligence agencies on both sides of the Cold War
(02:34):
tried to get any sort of edge they could better technology,
better access to resources, better propaganda displays like getting into space,
landing on the moon, or I was thinking about digging
a giant hole and going as far as you can
into the Earth, just as a fun thing to say, Yeah,
we dug the biggest hole. What's up? I know, I
know Russia has done that. Yes, that's true. That is
(02:56):
a true story. There's another aspect that we don't talk
about as much, perhaps as we should, which is gaining
better control over people, regardless of where they live or
what they do. In today's episode, as as you said,
is ultimately about that last idea, how do you best
control people? The CIA pursued this question through a series
(03:16):
of programs collectively known today as m k Ultra. Here
are the facts. Actually, no, we have to skip it
for this one. Here's where it gets crazy straight to crazy.
Yeah dang, so, here here are the two days you
need to know. But then there's a third one and
it sounds complicated, but it just means from at least
(03:36):
nine to nineteen sixty four. Officially, wrapping all the way
up in nineteen seventy three, the CIA used various front
companies and the like to conduct at it at times
illegal experiments on unwitting human subjects. And this included exposure
of things like illegal drugs, LSD, other chemicals, and a
large dollop of what we would consider to be social manipulation.
(04:00):
Absolutely in the aims of these programs all varied and
they ran the gamut, but they also shared a common
theme to explore previously unexploited ways of influencing human behavior.
Can we actually brainwash someone? Can we genuinely hypnotize someone?
Can we make them tell the truth? Or can we
implant some series of future actions in their mind? False memories?
(04:26):
Uh Manchurian candidate, I was going to say, I didn't
want to say it. Oh did I spoil it? It's okay,
we're gonna talk about it. Trigger word, assassins, ladies in
polka dot dresses. There we go, inception style dream exploration.
And for years and years and years and years and years,
(04:47):
rumors about this kind of nefarious activity floated around in
the counterculture of America. The mainstream largely dismissed it until
the seventies when a New York Times journalist named Seymour
her who will be familiar to longtime listeners of Stuff
they Don't Want You to Know, published a story in
nineteen seventy four detailing how the CIA conducted non consensual
(05:09):
drug experiments and illegal spine operations domestically on US citizens.
Would later come to find that Canadians were victimized as well. Uh,
the the spook squad flew out of the country to
experiment on some folks they consider representative of a communist block.
So this allegation hits in the nineteen seventies, as we said,
(05:34):
with the New York Times publishing it. But the problem
here is that this is a newer chapter in a
very long story. When we talk about truth serums and
the attempts to discover one, we go all the way
back to nineteen sixteen, right, oh yeah, way way way back,
and that's when the that's the first time that scope
(05:56):
mean is seen to be like having an effect on
a human and ultimately scope of me is something that's
used to I guess as a truth serum, is used
as a true truth serum. But back in nineteen sixteen
is when it is first seen. Then you can jump
all the way to nineteen thirty one when you see
um sodium pentethal, which is the thing we've discussed before
(06:16):
the official truth serum, but never actually tried. Yeah, yeah,
that we know of, right, Oh, that I know of. Uh.
And then since ninety two on the US government has
been interested in this kind of stuff, right, especially originally
under General William Wild Bill Donovan. So this this stuff
(06:40):
has occurred, it's just most people didn't know about it
to one degree or another. What makes complete sense anytime
you are at war and you've got an enemy combatant
and you if you could inject something into that combatant
and then get the coordinates of where the rest of
his battalion is or something, I mean done, end of story.
You're gonna do that absolutely. And in his article, Hirsch
(07:03):
also talks about how they managed to bring these details
about him k Ultra to light. It looks legit. His
sources are right, He's walked through the process. You can
see chain of custody for all the stuff he found,
and then primarily he found it through a government mistake.
This was never meant to be discovered, but the discovery
(07:25):
resulted in calls for an investigation. Eventually, even Congress paid attention,
which is unusual for Congress. They held a hearing on
this in the famous Church Committee, and they had Senate hearings, Uh,
just a little bit later, that's right. The later hearings
only occurred after a fo I Freedom of Information Act
(07:45):
request uncovered a cash of twenty thousand documents that were
related to Project m k Ultra. And according to that report,
mk Ultra was meant to develop, to the words of
the report, developed a capability in the covert use of
by iological and chemical materials. Pretty vague, um doesn't really
tell you what they were going forward covert secret use
(08:07):
of some biological or chemical materials, but to what end um,
But what they're referring to was mind control efforts, and
they started in earnest In under the name of Project Bluebird.
I've been talked about pretty extensively on the show. More
back on the video days. I would say, right, yeah, yeah,
we I think we mentioned Bluebird when we made the
Arctic Joke videos. And there are a whole bunch of
(08:30):
those code names that we can get into maybe a
little later, But Bluebird was a a big one, and
Bluebird was reactionary, right. Yeah, it was in reaction to
the quote bizarre conduct of a cardinal by the name
of men Zenti at his trial in Budapest when he
confessed to treason. He clearly in their in their minds,
(08:53):
he clearly appeared to have had brainwashing techniques applied to him.
He confessed the stuff he Demoli shriably did not and
could not have done. He claimed that he was going
to topple this one regime to bring in I guess capitalism,
and then he was going to supplant the United States
after it was a one world government and become the
(09:14):
supreme authority of the country himself. It was very, very strange,
but yeah, they they thought they have done something to
this guy's mind, and we need to be able to well,
the way they phrases, we need to be able to
stop it, or we need to know what they're doing.
What they really meant is we need to have that capability.
(09:34):
So they started contemplating behavior control for offensive purposes. They
were at least partially motivated by fear that China and
the Soviet Union had already made significant breakthroughs in this field.
I was either probably terrified of that yeah. And here's
the thing. Although it sounds like a rationalization at this point,
(09:54):
the c I A History vindicated them. They were they
were correct. The Soviet Union had been conducting wholly independent
research along the same lines, with a lot of extra
parapsychological stuff thrown in, and they had a decades long
jump on Uncle Sam. All in all, as far as
we know, they spend at least a billion dollars. It's
still even more enigmatic than mk ulture. We don't know
(10:17):
when it ended, but we know they called it psychotronics.
Psychotronics that's a cool name, and as a record store
in my hometown and called Psychotronic Records. Whoa Soviet front, Dude,
watch it's very small. I don't know where they would hid.
Maybe it's subterrane the base always the basement with Russians. Well,
that's a that is a great video. A couple of
(10:39):
videos we've made and uh, I think an episode we
did a full episode on that didn't the psychotronics all
if not, it's coming soon and that was fascinating because
it's looking into everything, right. It was it was like Stargate,
Like Project Stargate was almost to the United States where
we're looking at psychic soldiers and all that stuff outside
(11:00):
of just truth serums and LSD and effects of the mind,
right right. It's interesting because in the US these were
more compartmentalized. Um like when Nolan I interviewed Russell Target
earlier and he he was talking a little bit about
Project Stargate that was not related to im K culture.
It's an important difference in ka Ultra is how can
(11:21):
we control the mind? And and uh it Stargate is
more about what we would consider psychic or superpowers. They
also said that we have to understand these techniques because
we need to defend ourselves against people who might not
be as restrained in the use of these tactics as
(11:42):
we are. So we're learning how to do evil stuff
because we're very good boys. That's that's sort of the logic.
I mean, I I get it, but you can see
where it's I don't want to say disingenuous, but convenient. Sure,
like definitely see that. So that's what they describe. Where's
(12:04):
the line? Why? Why is this? You know who cares? Well? Yeah?
But who what's too far? Right? I mean, if you're
already doing this stuff, where at what point do you
say Okay, we shouldn't do that anymore. Um, let's look
at that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
(12:24):
I mean, it's a good question. There's nothing wrong with
secret government projects legally speaking, as we listen to this episode,
no matter where you're listening, where you're located, or where
what you can sider your home country, we can virtually
guarantee you that they are up to something and it
is occurring in secret because it's meant to protect the government,
the employees of the government, and citizens of the country.
(12:47):
You know, let me call it national secrecy. The problem
here is that despite that that theory and practice, secrecy
is often used to hide acts that would be crimes
if anybody in the country committed them. The CIA was
doing stuff that we give people, uh life in prison
with no parole, Oh for sure. I mean let's like,
(13:11):
let's say, for instance, that we catch a wild hair
and we go around sneaking drugs in people's food here
in pont City Market. If we got caught, we'd go
to court. Those rules are just different when it comes
to government sanctioned acts. We would go to court and
probably just go straight to jail, straight to hail. Yeah,
(13:34):
and and well again, and we're kind of like joking
about it in a way, but this is exactly what
the Central Intelligence Agency did. No, oh, absolutely, they put
stuff in people, and they those people had no idea.
Only two years after the program was officially approved, the
project was already having just serious issues with a thing
(13:57):
we've mentioned here before that happens in a lot of
big projects with a lot of money, even here at
our job, especially here at our job, Mission creep, oh,
mission creep, where just that one little thing that you're
supposed to be doing ends up turning into all these
other things and spreading all the way out to the
edges of the desk. So the scope of experimentation expanded,
(14:20):
and it was they were trying to find, well, let's
just let's call this discovery of the following materials and methods,
including those which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
That sounds nice, So make you more drunk, more quickly,
more severely. Yeah, that's nice, Which will render the induction
of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness. Okay, I
(14:44):
can see why you're going to use that in some interrogation,
which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation,
torture and coercion during interrogation, and so called brainwashing. Oh,
so privation is what the what the hell is that?
We just we we talked about this a little bit
off air. So privation is the act of depriving people
(15:08):
of basic human necessities food, clothing, water, shelter, air, I guess,
but not for too long. And um, you pointed out
all that that's pretty weird language wise, linguistically, that's weird. Well, well,
I said it is. So is privation like the opposite
of deprivation, which would be extremely to give people stuff?
(15:30):
But no, no, it is. How did you put it then?
What I would? It's just it's to deny them, to
deprive the Yeah, I got you. This is just it's
got really complicated. Man, this isn't even the rabbit hole
for today. Alien here we are. I'm feeling privd of
(15:52):
a direction, so let's keep doing this. They're also looking
for that which will produce amnesia for events proceeding and
during their use, So a drug or some their substance
that would do that. Uh, that which will produce shock
and confusion for extended periods of time and capable of
surreptitious use. Wow, this sounds like just the best stuff
(16:14):
ever that which will produce physical disablement such as paralysis
of the legs, acute anemia, etcetera. Essentially prescribed or they're
describing roal hypnol or um some other drug with amnesia. Uh.
And then let's see according to the Hearing Report, eighty
(16:36):
six universities or institutions were involved. Eighties six universities or
institutions and one hundred and eighty five non government researchers
and assistance worked on these these projects. What and then
we have another quote here. It says physicians, toxicologists and
other specialists and mental and narcotics. Mental and narcotics were
(16:59):
lured into mk ULTRA through the provision of grants that
were made under ostensible research foundation auspices, thereby concealing the
CIA's interest from the specialists institution. So what are we
saying here. It's what we said at the top. They're
concealing that they are actually doing this. That is the
(17:19):
c i A with their tentacles going into these other
institutions essentially getting money and researching stuff that they're going
to use in the field. Right, But they don't think
they're working for the CIA. They think they're working for,
like the American Foundation of totally legitimate benevolence. Oh, the
you mean the specialists and the Toxic College, other people
(17:40):
who are working with the drugs and the methods. They
don't know exactly, So it's the CIA. Like again, it's
like the Black Tar or the Black Goo and X files.
It's just like seeping in finding its way and infecting
people without knowing it. The Pink Slime and Ghostbusters too,
very similar. A voice for both good or sen she goo.
(18:01):
So for members of Congress, this was just s op
standard operating procedures. CIA had not inherently crossed the line
by conducting these experiments in secret by lying to the
scientists or the researchers. Instead, they crossed the line when
they didn't inform volunteers. This was also, you know, this
(18:25):
is taking place right after Watergate, so distrust of the
government is at an even higher mainstream level than before.
So in his opening remarks during the hearing, Senator Edward
Kennedy described mk ultra as on extends of tasting of
experimentation program which included Covart drug tests, and on on
(18:47):
wedding citizen's at all social levels, high and law, Native
Americans and foreign Several of these tests include the administration
of the last day to unwdding subjects on social situations.
What I did there, you guys, was Fred Gwen from
pet Cemetery. That's That's the closest thing Barry her. Oh
(19:10):
did you guys? In the trailer for the new one,
they don't say the soil is sour anymore. They say
the soil is bad. Yeah, was like, oh, I heard
it's really good, but it's quite good, all right. So
what he means by this and that? Off off air,
Matt Night did try me a little bit. I don't know.
As long as you didn't feel bullied, we were. It
(19:31):
was just a great voice. I didn't feel bullied at all.
I never feel bullied by you guys. Awesome. I always
feel big up good guys. I mean, I think you're
the new Kennedy for for the show. But but he's
making a good point. Despite despite our compatriots mallifluous and
beautiful re enactment, there, Kennedy was saying stuff that that
(19:55):
had substance and presented a clear and present ethical danger.
There were not medical professionals around for a lot of
this dosing. The CIA agents doing this and their proxies
were not doctors. Often at least one person went to
the hospital, probably more. Two people definitely died, a fellow
named Frank Olsen who was involved as a non civilian,
(20:19):
and Harold Blower. But the testing continued, and when we
say two people died, we mean at least two people.
We really don't know how many deaths or injuries can
be attributed to this program, because it's also hard to
really tell how long the program had been going on
outside of the official numbers, and how long it continued,
(20:41):
right right, Just the stuff we know, again is from
that Freedom of Information Act. Will will explore this in
a second. But let's let's walk through what they were
actually doing with them k Ultra. They weren't in many ways.
It was as dirty as the Tuskegee experiments. Uh, some
people may see even a little worse. They went to
(21:02):
twelve hospitals that we know of, and testing was testing
was conducted on patients who had various forms of terminal cancer.
They were they were not coming back. It was time
to make your peace, not time to pursue other options
of treatment. And this meant that we can we can
assume safely that whatever those experiments the cancer patients were
(21:26):
part of we're doing to the human body, it was
going to have long term detrimental, possibly fatal effects. And
the deal was simple. It was the devil's bargain, the
CIA's proxies. You know, um doctor uh every man good
name comes in from the Society of regular business and says,
(21:47):
I will pay the medical bills for these terminal cancer patients.
And all we have to do, you know, in in
addition to all the top notch medicines were already exposing
them to, will exp them to this other experimental medicine,
and then we'll close the doors and turn off the
lights and just see what happens. Right, And they may
have glowed because we're typing radiation exposure for some of
(22:11):
the terminal patients, but yeah, like any something that was
probably going to kill them harder or faster than the cancer.
And in the and they conducted experiments and prisons as well,
and this one, for some reason bothers me even more so.
In the prisons, the mentally ill, specifically described as criminal
sexual psychopaths, were also subjected to experiments, they are considered expendable.
(22:35):
I guess in somewhere maybe there was there was a
benefit to their mental state, like they were trying to
like trigger them even further to break. It's a good question. Yeah,
I don't know. Um So, while prisons were informed of
the broad strokes of one experiment or another or another,
and while they some of you know, they did volunteer. Uh,
they did so when they were promised access to their
(22:56):
addictive drug of choice, which, as we know from even
just watching films, you know, a junkie will do just
buy anything for their fix. Right. Is it consent if
a person who is in the depths of heroin or
opioid withdrawal is offered opium or heroin? Like are they
(23:19):
saying yes, I don't know, So it's user is said
at the very least. Yeah, absolutely, and manipulative and borderline.
It's it's not not borderline definitely on ethical that's breaking. Yeah,
in any kind of controlled medical tests or any kind
of clinical trial, that would you know, you can't that
that throws your data out the window. That's not that one, right,
(23:41):
That's why you don't see more those situations in studies
on you know, but the fad diets or social media usage.
So so let's get to uh, let's get to some
of the things that we put in place after World
War Two. Right, the Cold War is not counted as
a war, so these things are not counted as war crimes. However,
(24:05):
they clearly violate the Nuremberg Code, which the entire imperfect
world approves of. As a result of the findings, President
Ford and then President Carter and then President Reagan all
issued orders banning all future human experimentation without consent by
government agencies and even kicked back a little bit of
(24:30):
a little bit of make it Right money to the
people that were inarguably harmed by the test. Just the
people that were inarguably demonstrably harmed. A lot of people
fell through the cracks. This sounds like it could be
an expose in the halls of Congress, right. Just the
wheels of justice grind slow but exceedingly fine, a very
go team moment right way of your flags. Uh, feel
(24:53):
proud to be an American. But the problem is that
this only scratches the surface. That's why this ultra one
oh one you see before that article comes out in
the New York Times and years before the congressional hearings,
the CIA has an internal purge in three when you
Matt earlier said, it officially wrapped up. The CIA director
(25:15):
at the time, Richard Helms, ordered all of the documents
related to anything associated with any mk ultra program to
be destroyed. This means even today, we still do not
know everything that happened, and the hints that we get,
the little tantalizing scraps are even more disturbing. It's a
sinking shame and we're gonna learn about it right after
(25:38):
a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy, kip,
double crazy, double crazy. We we know that there were
other experiments, we don't know how many, and we don't
know the details of all of them. But here's just
(26:00):
a whitman sampler of the sort of stuff that they involved. Electroshock,
harassment techniques for quote offensive use, gas propelled sprays and aerosols,
has assassination delivery systems. This begins to get wrapped up
in because these committees were also looking at stuff like
the CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Oh yeah, can
(26:22):
we talk about what you said? Harassment techniques for offensive
use really fast. Yeah, a lot of times, or maybe
you've heard of this before, something called gang stalking or
some of these other things. I can imagine that's where
a lot of those feelings arise, or the beliefs that
something like that is happening to you, just from that
(26:44):
one little thing, the the concept that the CIA was
truly researching at one point harassment techniques for offensive use.
They really were doing it. No, we know the gang
stalking can sometimes sound a little bit tinfoil hattie for people,
but they they were purposely doing it, and the idea
is to push someone further and further into a paranoid state. Yes,
(27:08):
and it works alright. So scientists were also greenlit for
research involving radiation and paramilitary devices and materials. Isn't that
nice looking into radiation? Yeah, that's good. And going back
to your point in all that you said about the
the vague language here paramilitary devices and materials. M hmm,
(27:32):
that's pretty It could be anything. Yeah, it could be
those crazy Air Force coffee mugs that are so expensive.
Have you heard about these? That was apparently a line
item in the Air Force budget for like a hundreds
of thousands of dollars for these like high tech coffee
mugs that had built in warmers, and apparently they're very fragile,
so they had to replace them. A bunch people would
drop them on the planes and they would just shatter
(27:54):
and then so that, you know, waste not, want not
Uncle Sam boy. It's like that old sorry about the
three hammer. Right. So what we do know is that
at least one hundred and forty nine of the m
K Ultra subprojects had some kind of connection with research
into behavioral modification, drug acquisition and testing or administering drugs
(28:22):
on the sly yeah for for for all kinds of things,
including what you said before again been assassination delivery systems.
What does that mean? Assassination delivery a gun that would
be one or you know some some type of yeah,
(28:43):
like you combine them. But I love the I love
the the banality of that, you know what I mean? Absolutely,
they do have some poetic language in here, though. We
have lists of different projects. They had six projects that
were intentionally meant to test unwitting subjects, eight with hypnosis.
(29:04):
Two of those used drugs, seven that just used drugs.
Four here's the poetry that used the quote Magician's art
the magician's arm art art, and specifically in that one,
it's about finding a way to get probably a chemical
into someone's drink, or into someone's food, or into someone's
body in a way that they don't know. Right, this
(29:26):
is dangerous through a magician's art, through a magician's off
close magic. Ye, you just got darted totally, which you know,
just from the use of that phrase. I don't mean
that belittle the horrible things that happened, but just from
the use of that phrase, doesn't it sound like one
of the CIA people really, which is just a repressed magician. Yeah,
(29:49):
fan of magic. That's right. They wouldn't let him in
the magic Castle. What is it called the Magician's Castle?
The magic Castle? The magic I have yet to go myself.
I have to be in. I did. There's there's there
there's a loophole where you can go and get a
commemorative photo or something like that, like one one day. Yeah,
it's like a sort of like open house at at
at elementary school. You know. Lauren Vogelbaum went, she had
(30:12):
an end, Yeah, with some kind of fancy actor. I
don't trust stage magicians. It's one of my few prejudices well,
do you recall that our buddy Russell Targ had fascination
with stage magic, which I found very interesting considering that
a lot of people, you know, attribute some of the
techniques of stage magicians to cold reading and is to
(30:36):
fake being psychic. I'm not. I don't think that's what
Targ is about, but I do think it's interesting that
he his mind kind of started going down that path
through a false way and then ultimately found its way
to a more true way what he perceives what he
perceives to be as a true way. It's it's interesting.
That's a derail too much, But I you know, how
(30:57):
you can be intellectually aware of something but then a
emotionally degrees opposed to it or vice versa. Right, Like,
intellectually I understand that stage magicians are normal human beings
who get up and have jobs and they're not evil
or you know, like I have all these stereotypes about them. Emotionally,
(31:18):
I can't get over it. Yeah, I feel monstrous about it,
and I apologize to any stage magicians, Uh listening to
the show, Please don't send me videos of your stuff.
Oh my gosh, So you understand like the whole the
whole category everything about it. I don't know why you
whenever they like David Copperfield as a kid, I'm okay
(31:39):
with mentalists, you know, like Darren Brown. For some reason,
it's okay. And just like pull out the cards and
they make me tap on stuff. It's something must have
happened to me. You don't like people to ask you
to do stuff either, Ben, who likes people to ask you?
If it's all in the way you ask, it's all
the way you ask, that's true. I agree. But you know,
if if I just walked up to when I said, Ben,
(32:01):
tap on this deck of cards with two fingers, you
would probably punch me. I would. I would punch you
because now I would know where's coming from. You look
at me. Askance though, I'll tell you that yes, it
would be would be very very distrusting in the very
least you touch it with three fingers. It would be
like if it would be like if somebody if if
mad Orrai came up to you and we're like, hey man,
open this bag and we had hidden a birden there,
(32:24):
like that's not cool. If you guys could see me
out there in podcast, my eyes just went wide, like
a couple of saucers. I have nightmares sometimes that there's
a bird under my covers. We will never do that, thanks, guys.
I don't want to freak you out. Did a bird
hurt me? Is that what you're gonna ask? Don't look
under the desk right now? Okay, that's this is being
(32:47):
This is mean, and I'm sorry your face was so
genuine and scared that I'm sorry. I feel like the
c I A right, Okay, it's okay, man, And that's
what we just did. We did a thought experiment to
let you know how the c I must feel after
being taken to task for a lot of this stuff,
and how quickly it got out of control because they
were also dosing one another at some point. It was
(33:09):
just for frenzies, like Smitty, he's tripping balls? What is
your stage magic? Now? Oh wait, he's going outside on
the balcony. Oh that's interesting. Ones that does that? Of
course happened, right, yes, yes, Frank Olsen specifically, he was
a biochemist at a lab that was conducting those LSD
(33:30):
experiments for the government. And the story is still very
murky today. I think it's mentioned in the Netflix series Wormwood. So,
according to uncle sam Ulsen, knowingly ingested LSD and then
because it affected him in an adverse way, he eventually
took his own life by jumping from his hotel room
(33:54):
on the thirteenth floor of a New York City hotel,
and you know, he died. However, his family and numerous
people don't buy the story. They say that he was
dosed without his consent uh, and that he would never
have committed suicide, that he did not have nascent suicidal tendencies.
They say he was murdered because he knew too much.
(34:17):
The US government gave them a settlement of seventy thousand
dollars in nineteen seventy five. But yeah, wait, wait, wait, wait,
his body's exhumed and the coroner sees head injuries and
he says, wait, Olsen was knocked unconscious before his death.
How do you figure that out that long afterwards after
(34:42):
you fell from a really high height. I don't know.
I totally hear you. That is crazy, though, right, yes, yeah,
it's it's strange and questions remain. And it's also I
hate to say, man, but it's extremely possible that he
was killed and was a cover up because ultra is
the top above top secret level classification for projects at
(35:04):
this time. And this leads us to, you know, the
big question. Surely one day there's gonna be justice. Not
so fast. Yeah, a lot of the sciencests involved honestly
had no idea what they were actually doing. That they
were working for the CIA. They knew they were administering something,
they knew they were maybe doing it a little surreptitiously,
but they didn't understand that it was this kind of
(35:27):
this kind of thing, right, And they, along with the
CIA assets, are legally immune at this point from consequences
of their actions. Can you believe that that's that's true? Seriously? Yep,
they're immune. And and here's why. There are two lawsuits
related to mk Ultra that made it as far as
the freaking Supreme Court, and the court found in favor
of the government twice. Both times. Yeah, the court held
(35:53):
in a case called CIA versus Sims that the names
of institutions and researchers who participated in Project in k
Ultra were exempt from revelation under the Freedom of Information
Act because the CIA needed to protect its intelligence sources. Again,
national security. Just throw that up anywhere and you're good
(36:15):
to go. And then also here's a case called United
States versus Stanley, and the court held that this serviceman
someone he was working with them who had volunteered for
a chemical weapons experiment. Let's call it that a chemical
weapons experiment. This guy was actually tested with LSD. And
this guy was barred from bringing a claim under the
(36:37):
this thing called the Federal Tort Claims Act. And uh,
what has a tourt been? A tort is essentially when
someone does something bad to you, a bad action. So
Towart law is the area of law that protects people
from bad acts of others. Historically speaking, citizens in the
US cannot sue states because of the concept of sovereign unity.
(37:00):
Can't just sue this state because there are very specific
concepts of constraints or situations where you can do that.
And the f t c A or Federal Tort Claims
Act federal statute that allows private parties to sue the
US in a federal court for most of these torque
cases committed by people acting on behalf of the US.
(37:24):
It's a little bit illegalis but but that's it. He um,
he was Stanley was attempting to attempting to sue, but
it was kicked out because it was not because he
was he was not allowed to use the Federal Tort
Claims Act. Okay, that makes sense. National security, national security,
(37:45):
national security twice eight seven. So that's almost where we
are now today. MK Ultra is firmly enshrined in the
world of conspiracy lore, their fictional programs like Wormwood. There
are documentaries, There are books ranging from fiction inspired by
this to maybe more fringe research that the authors will
(38:08):
tell you it is true, dull sorts of films that
explore aspects of the program or use it as a
jumping off point for speculation. But like any piece of folklore,
and I would argue there's a lot of folklore around
him Cultra, there is an arguable grain of truth inside
the story, and that leaves us with some burning, disturbing questions. First,
what happened? That's the easiest question to answer. We will
(38:30):
not know, we cannot know, we will never know, we
refuse to know. We shut our eyes in the nearest
to the truth. Well, not that the first. We just can't.
We can't know because it's going to be sealed. Because
they destroyed thousands and thousands of things and When I
say sealed, I mean in a tomb essentially of its
own burnt up carbon. Yeah, we're in We're in deathbed
(38:52):
confession territory. That's where that's that those will be the
best sources of this second question in a little depressing
Did any of this stuff actually work? Yeah, some of it,
some of it obviously, most of it didn't. Some of
it did, some of it did, right. Yeah, And again
we're not really sure what we'll find unless some some
(39:13):
of those experiments that they were doing are just redone
a lot um. But I guess, I guess the big
thing is that they never at least two our understanding,
they never got a true truth serum as close as
scope I mean, and some of these other things can
get you. There's no true injectable that we know. Now.
(39:35):
I'll tell you everything. My fears, my social security. One
of my feet is larger than the other. It makes
me uncomfortable. I I'm Edward Kennedy, and uh, some of
the biggest drugs that I've been doing lately are the
L S d L. You also kind of got a
little Peter Griffin, I got, I got a Peter to Jesus.
(39:57):
So it's It's true they ever found that silver bullet
truth serum. So far as we know, the data they
got was of limited use if you think about it,
because they didn't have solid methodology and a lot of
these experiments, they did not have ideal monitoring conditions, and
at some point they just uh had a Lord of
(40:20):
the Flyes situation, you know what I mean. Big Think
has a great quote on this. They argue that the
program may ultimately have been counterproductive. They say mk Ultra
might have been counterproductive because the counterculture was given access
to LSD through these experiments. That's true, and they proceeded
to run in the opposite direction with it. John Lennon
(40:42):
went so far as to mock the CIA in an interview,
noting they must always remember to thank the CIA and
the Army for LSD. That's what people forget. Oh my god,
it's the young Michael Kine. I'm sorry. They invented a
state to control people, and what they did would give
us freedom. Wow. Okay, all right, Lennon, John Lennon, I mean,
(41:03):
let's that's Michael King. Thanks. But yeah, he's making a
good point, right, Yeah, they gave us LSD, but they
didn't give us what what did What didn't they give us?
They didn't give us shrooms? True? They they did? I
don't know, Yeah, I don't know. They didn't. They didn't
disclose a lot of the findings. And that's that's the
(41:26):
scariest question. Most importantly, what's happening now? You have to
ask yourself listening to this. Would a government genuinely completely
stop this sort of research if an aspect of it worked.
Has there at any point, and and forget forget the
relatively young experiment known as the United States, In the
(41:49):
course of human civilization, has there been something that was
an amazing technique or technology that gave one empire the
edge over the others that they stopped for sueing and
not being rhetorical? I would love to hear of one example. Yeah,
send us your examples if you've got them, please. You
can find us on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook.
(42:10):
You can visit our Facebook friend page. I call it
that because it's just some awesome people there. Thank you
for being a friend folks. That's right, it's called here's
where it gets crazy. Join up and let's discuss these
kind of things. You can post directly there or just
talk to people. Whatever you want to do. If you
don't want to do that stuff, you can give us
a call. We are one eight three three S T
d W y t K. Leave a message. It's a
(42:33):
three minute max, but you can leave multiples. So do
what you gotta do and it might be on the
air if you if you don't want to be named
on the air, or you want any other stipulations, just
specifically say it, because when when you leave a message,
we may use it on the air. One last thing
before we go, just a knowing kulture is not lost
in the past. In December of eighteen, just last year,
(42:56):
as we record this, declassified documents revealed include at a
letter to an unidentified doctor discussing work on six dogs
made to run, turn and stop via remote control and
brain implants. That's where they were in the sixties and
maybe if they could do that to a dog then
or we're at least we're attempting to and then these
(43:18):
experiments continued. Are they controlling mission control? Paul Decan right now,
that's the big question. Send us an email. We are
conspiracy at i heeart podcast network dot com. Stuff they
(43:48):
don't want you to know is a production of iHeart
Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
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