In 1947, the United States Navy initiated Project CHATTER, an interrogation program which saw the first testing of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25) on human subjects. Īmerican interest in drug-related interrogation experiments began in 1943, when the Office of Strategic Services began developing a "truth drug" that would produce "uninhibited truthfulness" in an interrogated person. American historian Stephen Kinzer argues that the CIA project was a "continuation" of these earlier Nazi experiments, citing the numerous German scientists who were hired to work for the U.S. Substances such as barbiturates, morphine derivatives, and hallucinogens such as mescaline were employed in experiments conducted on Jews and Russian prisoners of war which aimed to develop a truth serum which would, in the words of one laboratory assistant to Dachau scientist Kurt Plötner, "eliminate the will of the person examined".
Origin of the project ĭuring the early 1940s, Nazi scientists working in the death camps of Auschwitz and Dachau conducted interrogation experiments on human subjects. Some surviving information about MKUltra was declassified in 2001.īackground Sidney Gottlieb approved of an MKUltra sub-project on LSD in this June 9, 1953, letter. In 1977, a Freedom of Information Act request uncovered a cache of 20,000 documents relating to MKUltra, which led to Senate hearings. Investigative efforts were hampered by CIA Director Richard Helms's order that all MKUltra files be destroyed in 1973 the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the small number of documents that survived Helms's order. MKUltra was revealed to the public in 1975 by the Church Committee of the United States Congress and Gerald Ford's United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States (the Rockefeller Commission). The CIA operated using front organizations, although some top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA's involvement. : 74 MKUltra's scope was broad, with activities carried out under the guise of research at more than 80 institutions aside from the military, including colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies. and Canadian citizens as unwitting test subjects. The program engaged in illegal activities, including the use of U.S. It was organized through the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. MKUltra was preceded by Project ARTICHOKE. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions, such as the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals without the subjects' consent, electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken people and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra) was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Not to be confused with Edgewood Arsenal human experiments.
0 kommentar(er)
