June 10, 2025 • 14 mins
What if mind control wasn’t just the stuff of sci-fi thrillers? In this chilling episode, we uncover the shocking truth behind real government-funded experiments that aimed to manipulate human thoughts and behavior. From the infamous MK-Ultra project to lesser-known psychological operations, we delve into declassified documents, survivor testimonies, and the dark intersection of science, secrecy, and control. Tune in for a gripping look at how far authorities have gone in the name of national security—and what might still be hidden from public view.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome back to the deep dive. Today. We're going beyond infographics,
really diving deep into something pretty unsettling.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, it's that whole story of the US government's secret
attempts to well understand and maybe even control the human mind.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Exactly. It gets talked about you see the infographics, but
the actual details, the stuff buried in the records, that's
where it gets truly disturbing.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Absolutely, it's complex, ethically just fraut, and that's putting it
mildly right.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So our mission here is to unpack that. Look at
the specifics, you know, the insights from projects like mk Ultra,
Project Artichoke, not just the what, but.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
The how, the why, and the human post that's critical.
We can't forget that part, definitely not. And to get
there you kind of have to picture the time early
Cold War, massive paranoia.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Fear of the Soviets, China, North Korea.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, especially these stories coming out of the Korean War
about you know, mind control being used on US prisoners
of war, whether true or exaggerated, the fear was real.
So it sparked this race, a desperate search really into
how human behavior works, how to manipulate it? Could they
copy these techniques, counter them, use them for spying, maybe
even turn foreign leaders. It was this plunge into the unknown,
(01:25):
and we need to.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Say it up front. The ethics here are just non existent.
This is an easy stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
To talk about, not at all but necessary, which brings
us to the projects themselves. Artichak kicked off around August
fifty one, then MK Ultra, which was actually a CIA
code name that officially started April fifty three.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
So fear was the engine trying to counter a perceived threat.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Pretty much. The materials strongly suggests it was a direct
reaction to those fears about what other countries might be doing.
They were chasing shadows, almost determined to get those capabilities themselves,
or at least become immune.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Who is pushing this any key names jump out?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well? CIA director Alan Dellas gave the order for mk Ultra,
But the guy really running the show, the hands on person,
was Sidney Gottlieb.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Gottlieb, I've seen him described as a chemist.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
A chemist, yeah, and sometimes described as the CIA's poison expert,
which tells you something. He was central to a lot
of the most controversial experiments.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And this is where it gets even darker. Isn't it
the link to earlier history.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, this is for me one of the most chilling parts.
It looks like mk Ultra wasn't starting fresh, it was
sort of picking up threads from some truly horrific earlier experiments.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
You mean Unit seven thirty one in Japan, Nazi concentration camps.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
That's what the documentation points to their reports suggesting the
CIA actually recruited people who'd worked in those.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Places, recruited them to learn their methods.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Seems so, to learn about things like, you know, mescaline
experiments the Nazis did at Dauchaw, or information on poison gases.
They were apparently tapping into that horrific knowledge base.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Wow, that connects post war US intelligence directly to access
war crime experimentation. That's staggering.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
It shows the lengths they were willing to go, and
Project Artist showed its stated goal was incredibly blunt.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
What was specifically the.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Records say it was to find out if someone could
be involuntarily made to carry out an attempted assassination.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Made to kill against their will exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
The phrasing is stark, do our bidding against his will
and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation.
That was the actual question they we're trying to answer.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
That's horrifying. Okay. So with that goal and driven by
this fear, what methods did they actually use? It wasn't
just one.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Thing, right so far from it. It was a huge,
almost scattered down approach anything that might break down or
control the mind. Drugs were definitely a big part, but
not the only part.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
LSD is the famous one. Yeah, mk ultra and LSD
seem linked in popular memory.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
It was definitely a focus, especially early on. Records show
the CIA bought up huge amounts of it. But look
at the list of other things they tried, barbiturates, amphetamines, heroin, morphine,
temisabin wow, mescaline, psilocybin, segalamine, marijuana, alcohol, sodium pentathal. I mean,
it goes on and on.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
So it wasn't just finding one magic drug.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
No, it was like a chemical toolkit they were trying
to build.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And how were these administered people signing up for studies?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Uh? No, that's the core ethical violation. The material talks
about surreptitious administration giving drugs to people who had no
idea to anyone. It seems like it people at all
social levels, the documents say, in everyday situations, maybe at
parties or even giving it to someone daily for weeks
on end. There's one report of an agent unknowingly kept
(04:42):
on LSD for seventy seven.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Days, seventy seven days without consent. The psychological fallout unimaginable.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Exactly, and they combined things too, like using a barbiturate
to knock someone out, then an amphetamine, using chemicals as
weapons basically for disorientation manipula.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Did they stick with LSD They.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Found it too unpredictable for reliable control apparently, so it
has shifted focus towards other things like super hallucinogens. BZ
was one, but LSD definitely stayed in the toolbox for
certain uses.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Okay, so beyond the drugs, what else? What were the
physical or psychological methods?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Equally brutal, if not more so. Electroshock therapy was used extensively,
but not like yeah, therapeutically yeah no. The reports described
shocks thirty or forty times normal levels, sometimes one after another.
Just think about that kind of assault. Then there was
sleep deprivation, sometimes for extreme periods, or the opposite, keeping
people drugged almost comatose for up to sixty days. Sensory
(05:37):
deprivation isolation standard tactics to break someone down.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I've also read about psychic driving and deep patterning. Those
terms sound ominous.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
They are psychic driving. It involved putting people, often in
drug induced chromas for months and just playing recorded messages
over and over, like brainwashing, trying to drill messages into
their heads, sometimes the same phrase repeated half a minas
million times. Depatterning was linked using extreme drugs and electroshock
to try and wipe the mind clean, reduce it to
(06:07):
a childlike state so they.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Could rebuild it, reprogram it.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
That seems to have been the horrifying idea, make them
blank slates, then implant new instructions. Hypnosis was another area.
Early fifty studies looked at creating anxieties, messing with memory,
making people vulnerable. Artichokes specifically researched using hypnosis for amnesia, and.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
The records mention other abuse too.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
They're quite clear verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, even
things like dislocating limbs. It wasn't research. It was tortured
disguised as research aimed at control.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Which brings us to the victims who are they subjecting
to this.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
This is where it gets truly sickening. The records confirm
unwitting American and Canadian citizens, not just foreign spies or
something no included. CIA's own employees sometimes dose without knowing
military personnel, doctors, government agents, but also deliberately vulnerable groups, prostitutes, prisoners,
(07:03):
people in mental institutions.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Why them.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Some documents actually referred to them as expendable.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Expendable just tools to be used and discarded.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
That phrase says it all, doesn't it. And this wasn't
just one secret lab. It was spread out over thirty
universities and institutions across the US and Canada. Hospitals, prisons, clinics,
hidden plain sights.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Sometimes any particular place stand out in the records.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
The Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal that was Subprojects sixty eight,
run by doctor Donald Ewen Cameron. A lot of the
really extreme stuff, the depatterning, the psychic driving, happened there.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Angular patients, people who.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Came in for things like anxiety depression. They ended up
in these experiments without any.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Idea, so seeking help and getting that. Yes.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Fort Detrick and Maryland was another hub, and chillingly that's
where some reports say Nazi doctors were brought in to
lecture CIA.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Officers, reinforcing that connection again exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
And there's mention of secret detention sites too, black sites
in Europe and East Asia in the early fifties West Germany, Japan,
the Philippines, places where they could conduct torture and experiments
on captives, perhaps to avoid scrutiny back home. It was systemic, targeted.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And global, just devastating. What happened to the people who
went through this. The long term effects.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Horrific, often permanent. The material is blunt. People left emotionally crippled,
suffering permanent.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Effects like what specifically.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Urinarian continence, severe amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting family,
sometimes thinking their interrogators were their parents, deep psychological disorders,
emotional instability, trauma, suicidal thoughts, just shattered lives.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
The individual's stories are heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
They really are. Salarliko went in for depression, got massive
LSD doses, said he felt his bones melting, health destroyed,
left with his words a piece.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Of a rag to live, just completely broken.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Robert Logi went for leg pain, ended up with electroshock,
psychic driving LSD said his brain, felt virtually paralyzed with drugs,
haunted by it decades later, couldn't trust doctors. Yeah, doctor
Mary Morrow, a physician herself, sought help for depression, got
excessive electro shock other treatments. She said, she lost her identity,
felt trapped in a deep black hole, heard confusing voices,
(09:15):
suffered permanent brain damage, called her life afterwards misery.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
It's hard to even comprehend that level of violation.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
And Esther Schreyer, after depatterning incontinent mute, couldn't remember basic
things like how to boil water. They succeeded in breaking
down her mind, all right. And Frank Olsen, the civilian scientist,
dosed secretly with LSD.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
He died right. The official story was suicide.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Officially an alleged suicide jumping from a window, but the
context strongly suggests his death was directly linked to the experiment.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
So with all this horror, this damage, what about accountability?
Did anyone face consequences?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
That's another tragic part of the story. Most of the
mk Ultra records intentionally destroyed in nineteen seventy three, destroyed
by whom ordered by the CIA director at the time,
Richard helms. It was against regulations, but it happened.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Well.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Cover up seems like a panic move. Yeah, to protect
the agency, protect careers. It makes getting the full picture
almost impossible now.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
But some things came out later. Investigations.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yes, the Church Committee, the Rockefeller Commission in the seventies
exposed parts of it. They recommended compensation for victims, but
prosecutions No, none happened for the victims largely left to suffer.
Some tried suing, like Canadian patients from the Allen Memorial,
faced huge legal hurdles trying to prove the link. Decades later,
the US Supreme Court even ruled against one Army sergeant involved,
(10:39):
citing military discipline despite the clear ethical violations. Yeah. Though
the dissenting justices specifically brought up the Nuremberg Code, the
rules against involuntary human experimentation set after World War II,
saying victims absolutely should be compensated, but systemically accountability just failed.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
It's a grim picture, and it connects to broader idea
like psychological warfare.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Absolutely, cy war or psyops is about influencing how people think,
feel behave to achieve strategic aims, often without physical force.
Mk ultra fits right in trying to manipulate leaders, breakdown individuals,
counter perceived mind control. That's turning the mind into a battlefield,
and it's.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Part of that larger awful history of unethical human experiments globally.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Definitely the lack of consent, targeting the vulnerable, causing harm
or death. You see echoes in the Nazi experiments Unit
seven thirty one, but also later things like the Tuskegee
Syphilist study in the US, the Guatemala std experiments, some
drug trials. Mk Ultra is a really prominent, disturbing American
example focused squarely on mind manipulation. It highlights that pattern
(11:47):
of ends justify the means, trampling human rights for perceived
knowledge or advantage.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Which unfortunately feeds into some modern conspiracy theories that still circulate. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
The idea you sometimes hear online that celebrities are being
mind cure controlled today using mk ultra techniques.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
That they're puppets and weird behavior is proof. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
The theory claims they're being used to push agendas, and
any strange moment caught on camera a glitch is evidence
of the programming breaking down.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
But the actual history the science it tells a different story, a.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Very different one. What the mk ultra research actually showed
and what neuroscience tells us is that true mind control,
like overwriting someone's free will completely making them a puppet,
isn't really feasible. The brain's too complex.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Influence maybe manipulation, sure, but not total control like a
ropot exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
You can push, persuade, maybe coerce to a degree, but
that absolute control, the science isn't there. And those celebrity
glitches there are much simpler, sadly plausible explanations. Pressure of fame,
immense pressure, constant scrutiny, no privacy, exhaustion, losing control over
your own life. These are known intense stressors.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
You mentioned examples like Katie Perry collapsing from exhaustion, Britney
spears is public struggles often following intense personal crises.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Right, we know severe psychosocial stress can trigger serious psychological issues,
even psychotic symptoms. That's a documented reality for some under
extreme pressure. It's a far more likely explanation for strange
behavior than a secret government mind control program carrying on
from the seventies.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
So the conspiracy theory grabs onto the real horror of
mk ultra. But misses the actual limitations and realities.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Precisely, it misunderstands what mk Ultra actually tried and often
failed to do, and it ignores the very real, documented
psychological toll of extreme fame. It ends up trivializing both
the historical victims and the current struggles of real people.
You know. It speaks more to how people process information
and maybe distrust institutions today.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
It twists a genuine, horrific history into something sensationalized and
ultimately inaccurate. Well put, okay, let's try to wrap up
this deep dive beyond infographics. We've looked into this really
dark chapter. Ka Ultra artichoke driven by fear borrowing from
horrific past experiments, unleashing brutal techniques on unwitting people.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, and the consequences We're devastating and lasting lives ruined,
and the cover up, the lack of real accountability. It
raises huge questions about government secrecy, power, research ethics, and
just how vulnerable people can be.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
It's heavy, heavy stuff, hard to look at, but important
not to turn away from.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Absolutely, and maybe the thought to leave everyone with is this,
considering this history, this documented secret attempt to manipulate minds
and behavior. What does that really tell us about how
important it is to think critically, to question the information
we get, especially now in this age where everyone seems
to be trying to shape our perceptions online offline. How
(14:44):
do you draw the line between influence and manipulation in
your own life.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
That's a crucial question, definitely something at CHE want. Thank
you for joining us for this deep dive.
Welcome back to the deep dive. Today. We're going beyond infographics,
really diving deep into something pretty unsettling.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, it's that whole story of the US government's secret
attempts to well understand and maybe even control the human mind.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Exactly. It gets talked about you see the infographics, but
the actual details, the stuff buried in the records, that's
where it gets truly disturbing.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Absolutely, it's complex, ethically just fraut, and that's putting it
mildly right.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So our mission here is to unpack that. Look at
the specifics, you know, the insights from projects like mk Ultra,
Project Artichoke, not just the what, but.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
The how, the why, and the human post that's critical.
We can't forget that part, definitely not. And to get
there you kind of have to picture the time early
Cold War, massive paranoia.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Fear of the Soviets, China, North Korea.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, especially these stories coming out of the Korean War
about you know, mind control being used on US prisoners
of war, whether true or exaggerated, the fear was real.
So it sparked this race, a desperate search really into
how human behavior works, how to manipulate it? Could they
copy these techniques, counter them, use them for spying, maybe
even turn foreign leaders. It was this plunge into the unknown,
(01:25):
and we need to.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Say it up front. The ethics here are just non existent.
This is an easy stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
To talk about, not at all but necessary, which brings
us to the projects themselves. Artichak kicked off around August
fifty one, then MK Ultra, which was actually a CIA
code name that officially started April fifty three.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
So fear was the engine trying to counter a perceived threat.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Pretty much. The materials strongly suggests it was a direct
reaction to those fears about what other countries might be doing.
They were chasing shadows, almost determined to get those capabilities themselves,
or at least become immune.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Who is pushing this any key names jump out?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well? CIA director Alan Dellas gave the order for mk Ultra,
But the guy really running the show, the hands on person,
was Sidney Gottlieb.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Gottlieb, I've seen him described as a chemist.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
A chemist, yeah, and sometimes described as the CIA's poison expert,
which tells you something. He was central to a lot
of the most controversial experiments.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And this is where it gets even darker. Isn't it
the link to earlier history.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, this is for me one of the most chilling parts.
It looks like mk Ultra wasn't starting fresh, it was
sort of picking up threads from some truly horrific earlier experiments.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
You mean Unit seven thirty one in Japan, Nazi concentration camps.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
That's what the documentation points to their reports suggesting the
CIA actually recruited people who'd worked in those.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Places, recruited them to learn their methods.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Seems so, to learn about things like, you know, mescaline
experiments the Nazis did at Dauchaw, or information on poison gases.
They were apparently tapping into that horrific knowledge base.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Wow, that connects post war US intelligence directly to access
war crime experimentation. That's staggering.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
It shows the lengths they were willing to go, and
Project Artist showed its stated goal was incredibly blunt.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
What was specifically the.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Records say it was to find out if someone could
be involuntarily made to carry out an attempted assassination.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Made to kill against their will exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
The phrasing is stark, do our bidding against his will
and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation.
That was the actual question they we're trying to answer.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
That's horrifying. Okay. So with that goal and driven by
this fear, what methods did they actually use? It wasn't
just one.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Thing, right so far from it. It was a huge,
almost scattered down approach anything that might break down or
control the mind. Drugs were definitely a big part, but
not the only part.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
LSD is the famous one. Yeah, mk ultra and LSD
seem linked in popular memory.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
It was definitely a focus, especially early on. Records show
the CIA bought up huge amounts of it. But look
at the list of other things they tried, barbiturates, amphetamines, heroin, morphine,
temisabin wow, mescaline, psilocybin, segalamine, marijuana, alcohol, sodium pentathal. I mean,
it goes on and on.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
So it wasn't just finding one magic drug.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
No, it was like a chemical toolkit they were trying
to build.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And how were these administered people signing up for studies?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Uh? No, that's the core ethical violation. The material talks
about surreptitious administration giving drugs to people who had no
idea to anyone. It seems like it people at all
social levels, the documents say, in everyday situations, maybe at
parties or even giving it to someone daily for weeks
on end. There's one report of an agent unknowingly kept
(04:42):
on LSD for seventy seven.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Days, seventy seven days without consent. The psychological fallout unimaginable.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Exactly, and they combined things too, like using a barbiturate
to knock someone out, then an amphetamine, using chemicals as
weapons basically for disorientation manipula.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Did they stick with LSD They.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Found it too unpredictable for reliable control apparently, so it
has shifted focus towards other things like super hallucinogens. BZ
was one, but LSD definitely stayed in the toolbox for
certain uses.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Okay, so beyond the drugs, what else? What were the
physical or psychological methods?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Equally brutal, if not more so. Electroshock therapy was used extensively,
but not like yeah, therapeutically yeah no. The reports described
shocks thirty or forty times normal levels, sometimes one after another.
Just think about that kind of assault. Then there was
sleep deprivation, sometimes for extreme periods, or the opposite, keeping
people drugged almost comatose for up to sixty days. Sensory
(05:37):
deprivation isolation standard tactics to break someone down.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I've also read about psychic driving and deep patterning. Those
terms sound ominous.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
They are psychic driving. It involved putting people, often in
drug induced chromas for months and just playing recorded messages
over and over, like brainwashing, trying to drill messages into
their heads, sometimes the same phrase repeated half a minas
million times. Depatterning was linked using extreme drugs and electroshock
to try and wipe the mind clean, reduce it to
(06:07):
a childlike state so they.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Could rebuild it, reprogram it.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
That seems to have been the horrifying idea, make them
blank slates, then implant new instructions. Hypnosis was another area.
Early fifty studies looked at creating anxieties, messing with memory,
making people vulnerable. Artichokes specifically researched using hypnosis for amnesia, and.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
The records mention other abuse too.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
They're quite clear verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, even
things like dislocating limbs. It wasn't research. It was tortured
disguised as research aimed at control.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Which brings us to the victims who are they subjecting
to this.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
This is where it gets truly sickening. The records confirm
unwitting American and Canadian citizens, not just foreign spies or
something no included. CIA's own employees sometimes dose without knowing
military personnel, doctors, government agents, but also deliberately vulnerable groups, prostitutes, prisoners,
(07:03):
people in mental institutions.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Why them.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Some documents actually referred to them as expendable.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Expendable just tools to be used and discarded.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
That phrase says it all, doesn't it. And this wasn't
just one secret lab. It was spread out over thirty
universities and institutions across the US and Canada. Hospitals, prisons, clinics,
hidden plain sights.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Sometimes any particular place stand out in the records.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
The Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal that was Subprojects sixty eight,
run by doctor Donald Ewen Cameron. A lot of the
really extreme stuff, the depatterning, the psychic driving, happened there.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Angular patients, people who.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Came in for things like anxiety depression. They ended up
in these experiments without any.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Idea, so seeking help and getting that. Yes.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Fort Detrick and Maryland was another hub, and chillingly that's
where some reports say Nazi doctors were brought in to
lecture CIA.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Officers, reinforcing that connection again exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
And there's mention of secret detention sites too, black sites
in Europe and East Asia in the early fifties West Germany, Japan,
the Philippines, places where they could conduct torture and experiments
on captives, perhaps to avoid scrutiny back home. It was systemic, targeted.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And global, just devastating. What happened to the people who
went through this. The long term effects.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Horrific, often permanent. The material is blunt. People left emotionally crippled,
suffering permanent.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Effects like what specifically.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Urinarian continence, severe amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting family,
sometimes thinking their interrogators were their parents, deep psychological disorders,
emotional instability, trauma, suicidal thoughts, just shattered lives.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
The individual's stories are heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
They really are. Salarliko went in for depression, got massive
LSD doses, said he felt his bones melting, health destroyed,
left with his words a piece.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Of a rag to live, just completely broken.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Robert Logi went for leg pain, ended up with electroshock,
psychic driving LSD said his brain, felt virtually paralyzed with drugs,
haunted by it decades later, couldn't trust doctors. Yeah, doctor
Mary Morrow, a physician herself, sought help for depression, got
excessive electro shock other treatments. She said, she lost her identity,
felt trapped in a deep black hole, heard confusing voices,
(09:15):
suffered permanent brain damage, called her life afterwards misery.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
It's hard to even comprehend that level of violation.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
And Esther Schreyer, after depatterning incontinent mute, couldn't remember basic
things like how to boil water. They succeeded in breaking
down her mind, all right. And Frank Olsen, the civilian scientist,
dosed secretly with LSD.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
He died right. The official story was suicide.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Officially an alleged suicide jumping from a window, but the
context strongly suggests his death was directly linked to the experiment.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
So with all this horror, this damage, what about accountability?
Did anyone face consequences?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
That's another tragic part of the story. Most of the
mk Ultra records intentionally destroyed in nineteen seventy three, destroyed
by whom ordered by the CIA director at the time,
Richard helms. It was against regulations, but it happened.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Well.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Cover up seems like a panic move. Yeah, to protect
the agency, protect careers. It makes getting the full picture
almost impossible now.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
But some things came out later. Investigations.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yes, the Church Committee, the Rockefeller Commission in the seventies
exposed parts of it. They recommended compensation for victims, but
prosecutions No, none happened for the victims largely left to suffer.
Some tried suing, like Canadian patients from the Allen Memorial,
faced huge legal hurdles trying to prove the link. Decades later,
the US Supreme Court even ruled against one Army sergeant involved,
(10:39):
citing military discipline despite the clear ethical violations. Yeah. Though
the dissenting justices specifically brought up the Nuremberg Code, the
rules against involuntary human experimentation set after World War II,
saying victims absolutely should be compensated, but systemically accountability just failed.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
It's a grim picture, and it connects to broader idea
like psychological warfare.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Absolutely, cy war or psyops is about influencing how people think,
feel behave to achieve strategic aims, often without physical force.
Mk ultra fits right in trying to manipulate leaders, breakdown individuals,
counter perceived mind control. That's turning the mind into a battlefield,
and it's.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Part of that larger awful history of unethical human experiments globally.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Definitely the lack of consent, targeting the vulnerable, causing harm
or death. You see echoes in the Nazi experiments Unit
seven thirty one, but also later things like the Tuskegee
Syphilist study in the US, the Guatemala std experiments, some
drug trials. Mk Ultra is a really prominent, disturbing American
example focused squarely on mind manipulation. It highlights that pattern
(11:47):
of ends justify the means, trampling human rights for perceived
knowledge or advantage.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Which unfortunately feeds into some modern conspiracy theories that still circulate. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
The idea you sometimes hear online that celebrities are being
mind cure controlled today using mk ultra techniques.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
That they're puppets and weird behavior is proof. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
The theory claims they're being used to push agendas, and
any strange moment caught on camera a glitch is evidence
of the programming breaking down.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
But the actual history the science it tells a different story, a.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Very different one. What the mk ultra research actually showed
and what neuroscience tells us is that true mind control,
like overwriting someone's free will completely making them a puppet,
isn't really feasible. The brain's too complex.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Influence maybe manipulation, sure, but not total control like a
ropot exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
You can push, persuade, maybe coerce to a degree, but
that absolute control, the science isn't there. And those celebrity
glitches there are much simpler, sadly plausible explanations. Pressure of fame,
immense pressure, constant scrutiny, no privacy, exhaustion, losing control over
your own life. These are known intense stressors.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
You mentioned examples like Katie Perry collapsing from exhaustion, Britney
spears is public struggles often following intense personal crises.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Right, we know severe psychosocial stress can trigger serious psychological issues,
even psychotic symptoms. That's a documented reality for some under
extreme pressure. It's a far more likely explanation for strange
behavior than a secret government mind control program carrying on
from the seventies.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
So the conspiracy theory grabs onto the real horror of
mk ultra. But misses the actual limitations and realities.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Precisely, it misunderstands what mk Ultra actually tried and often
failed to do, and it ignores the very real, documented
psychological toll of extreme fame. It ends up trivializing both
the historical victims and the current struggles of real people.
You know. It speaks more to how people process information
and maybe distrust institutions today.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
It twists a genuine, horrific history into something sensationalized and
ultimately inaccurate. Well put, okay, let's try to wrap up
this deep dive beyond infographics. We've looked into this really
dark chapter. Ka Ultra artichoke driven by fear borrowing from
horrific past experiments, unleashing brutal techniques on unwitting people.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, and the consequences We're devastating and lasting lives ruined,
and the cover up, the lack of real accountability. It
raises huge questions about government secrecy, power, research ethics, and
just how vulnerable people can be.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
It's heavy, heavy stuff, hard to look at, but important
not to turn away from.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Absolutely, and maybe the thought to leave everyone with is this,
considering this history, this documented secret attempt to manipulate minds
and behavior. What does that really tell us about how
important it is to think critically, to question the information
we get, especially now in this age where everyone seems
to be trying to shape our perceptions online offline. How
(14:44):
do you draw the line between influence and manipulation in
your own life.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
That's a crucial question, definitely something at CHE want. Thank
you for joining us for this deep dive.
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