MK-Ultra: The Covert Operation That Tried Using LSD For Mind Control
CIACIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb created and ran the covert operation code-named MK-Ultra.
In the 1950s, the CIA began to suspect that some American POWs returning from imprisonment during the Korean War had been brainwashed. Fearful that the Soviet Union had a headstart on developing mind control technology, the agency launched their own program code-named MK-Ultra.
For over a decade, MK-Ultra sought to harness a mind control drug. According to NPR, MK-Ultra director Sidney Gottlieb believed that that drug could be LSD, so he spent $24,000 buying up the world’s supply.
This covert operation took place in the United States and abroad and involved 80 institutions and 185 researchers, according to Smithsonian Magazine, though many didn’t know that they were involved in a CIA-drug experiment. Indeed, MK-Ultra often targeted “people who could not fight back,” like prisoners, drug addicts, sex workers, and terminal cancer patients.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesPoet Allen Ginsberg, seen here advocating for marijuana use in 1965, tried LSD for the first time as part of MK-Ultra.
MK-Ultra experiments varied. One, dubbed Operation Midnight Climax, lured men into a brothel, dosed them with LSD, and observed their behavior from behind a two-way mirror. Others involved prisoners, like mob boss Whitey Bulger. He claims that in 1957, he was given LSD every day for a year after volunteering for an experiment that sought to find a cure for schizophrenia.
And some relied on volunteers, like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest author Ken Kesey and poet Allen Ginsberg. According to NPR, both found the experience pleasurable and spread the word about LSD to their friends.
The program officially ended in the 1960s, and most records relating to MK-Ultra were destroyed in 1973 — though some still exist. That said, this covert operation had a definite effect on American counterculture.
MK-Ultra may not have unlocked the secrets to mind control — as far as we know — but it did change society by introducing LSD to Americans.
