One of the Most Shocking CIA Programs of All Time: Project MKUltra
When the extent of the U.S. government’s domestic spying program was revealed this past summer, many were surprised and outraged: how could a government which so prizes liberty of its citizens covertly collect data on its own people?
Yet, sadly, this is not the first time Uncle Sam, without permission or notice, secretly gathered information on its people and wasn’t even close to the greatest atrocity. For that, there are numerous other examples such as when the government intentionally poisoned certain alcohol supplies they knew people would drink, killing over 10,000 American citizens and sickening many thousands others. (Despite this, the program continued for some time, though it was hotly debated in Congress when the death tolls started rolling in.)
One other such “interesting” program, was from 1953 to 1964, when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted dozens of experiments on the effects of biological and chemical agents on American citizens without their knowledge in Project MKUltra. These covert tests included subjecting the unwitting subjects to hallucinogenic drugs and other chemicals, among other things.
It is difficult to find official documents about this program; however, in 1976 and 1977, the U.S. Senate conducted investigations and even held a joint committee hearing on Project MKUltra, then published much of what was discovered; you will not believe what they found out.
MKULtra’s Purpose
According to the hearing report, the project was intended to “develop a capability in the covert use of biological and chemical materials.”[1] The motivation was also defensive, in that many were afraid during the Cold War that the Russians and Chinese had already developed weapons in this area. As the project’s proponents noted:
The development of a comprehensive capability in this field of covert chemical and biological warfare gives us a thorough knowledge of the enemy’s theoretical potential, thus enabling us to defend ourselves against a foe who might not be as restrained in the use of these techniques as we are.[2]
Officially authorized in 1953, by 1955, project creep had expanded the CIA’s authority under MKUltra to include the following:
Discovery of the following materials and methods [including those]:
- which will promote the intoxicating affect of alcohol;
- which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness;
- which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so called “brain-washing;”
- which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use;
- [which will produce] shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use; and
- which will produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc.[3]
LSD experiments
Senator Edward Kennedy dominated the hearing. In his opening remarks, he noted there was:
an “extensive testing and experimentation” program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens “at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign.” Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to “unwitting subjects in social situations.”[4]
For many of these drug tests, especially early on, there were “no medical personnel on hand either to administer the drugs or observe their effects.” Often, the randomly selected subjects had “become ill for hours or days, including hospitalization in at least one case.”[5]
Even more troubling, some of the tests proved lethal, but that did not stop the CIA from continuing their experimentation:
The deaths of two Americans can be attributed to these programs; other participants in the testing programs may still suffer from the residual effects. . . . The fact that they were continued for years after the danger of surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting individuals was known, demonstrate fundamental disregard for the value of human life.[6]
One of these lives belonged to Dr. Frank Olson, himself a researcher with the U.S. Army who studied “developing techniques for offensive use of biological weapons . . . [and] biological research for the CIA.”[7]
Along with a group of 9 other such scientists, he attended a conference in a cabin at Deep Creek Lake, Maryland in November 1953. Once there, ironically, CIA operatives spiked the researchers’ Cointreau with LSD. Only after the scientists had finished their drinks were they informed that they had been drugged.[8]
Most of the researchers handled the experience well and had no aftereffects, but not Dr. Olson. He never recovered from the ordeal and shortly after the experiment, began to show “symptoms of paranoia and schizophrenia.”[9]
Dr. Olson’s superior and the CIA who ran the experiment arranged for him to get treatment in New York City. While spending the night in a hotel room with the CIA officer, and after requesting a wake-up call for the next morning, Dr. Olson somehow managed to fall to his death. As the CIA officer (Lashbrook) reported:
At approximately 2:30 a.m. Saturday, November 28, Lashbrook was awakened by a loud “crash of glass.” . . . . Olson “had crashed through the closed window blind and the closed window and he fell to his death from the window of our room on the 10th floor.”[10]
There is no indication that any investigation of foul play, particularly by the CIA officer (who was both responsible for the experiment and alone in the hotel room with Olson) was ever conducted.
Universities, Prisons and Hospitals Conducted Experiments
In the hearing, Senator Kennedy noted that many otherwise respectable institutions were fraudulently incorporated into MKUltra projects:
What we are basically talking about is . . . the perversion and corruption of many of our outstanding research centers in this country, with CIA funds, where some of our top researchers were unwittingly involved in research sponsored by the Agency in which they had no knowledge of the background or the support for[11]
According to the hearing report, “eighty-six universities or institutions were involved,”[12] and “185 non-government researchers and assistants” worked on these projects.[13] “Physicians, toxicologists, and other specialists in mental [and] narcotics” were lured into MKUltra through the provision of grants that were “made under ostensible research foundation auspices, thereby concealing the CIA’s interest from the specialist’s institution.”[14]
For some of the 12 hospitals that participated in Project MKUltra, tests were conducted on terminal cancer patients – presumably because the experiments were anticipated to have long-lasting detrimental, if not lethal, effects.[15]
Sadly, to get the hospitals (and perhaps the patients) to agree to these experiments, the CIA often paid the institution. For example, Subproject 23, authorized in August 1955, worked as follows:
The project engineer . . . authorized the contractor to pay the hospital’s expenses of certain persons suffering from incurable cancer for the privilege of studying the effects of these chemicals during their terminal illnesses.[16]
Likewise, many of the experiments conducted at the three prisons were done secretly: “We also know now that some unwitting testing took place on criminal sexual psychopaths.” [17]
Not all testing was done unwittingly, although that did not make it any more ethical. For example, in a prison experiment conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health Addiction Research Center at the Lexington Rehabilitation Center (a prison for convicted drug addicts), prisoners who volunteered to participate in a hallucinogenic drug experiment were promised (and received) doses of “the drug of their addiction.”[18]
Miscellaneous Other Experiments
An unknown number of other experiments in “such areas as effects of electro-shock, harassment techniques for offensive use . . [and] gas propelled sprays and aerosols” to be used as “assassination delivery systems” were also being conducted.[19]
In addition, MKUltra scientists were authorized to research “additional avenues to the control of human behavior” including “radiation . . .[and] paramilitary devices and materials.”[20]
Heinous Covert Experiments: By the Numbers
Project MKUltra consisted of 149 subprojects “many of which appear to have some connection with research into behavioral modification, drug acquisition and testing or administering drugs surreptitiously,”[21] including as follows:
- “6 subprojects involving tests on unwitting subjects were conducted.”
- 8 subprojects involving hypnosis, including 2 that also used drugs were performed.
- 7 subprojects included the use of drugs or chemicals.
- 4 subprojects used “magician’s art . . . e.g., surreptitious delivery of drug-related materials.”
- 9 subprojects studied sleep research (read: deprivation) and psychotherapy’s influence on behavior.
- 6 subprojects studied the effects on human tissue of “exotic pathogens and the capability to incorporate them in effective delivery systems.”[22]
The CIA Lost or Destroyed All Records of Project MKUltra
Sadly, but not surprisingly, almost no records remain of the 10 years of covert activity. As Senator Kennedy noted:
Perhaps most disturbing of all was the fact that the extent of experimentation on human subjects was unknown. The records of all these activities were destroyed in 1973, at the instruction of then CIA Director Richard Helms.[23]
Notably, however, some records were overlooked during the CIA’s destruction because new records were found in 1977, as noted by Senator Kennedy:
We believed that the record, incomplete as it was, was as complete as it was going to be. Then one individual, through a Freedom of Information request, accomplished what two U.S. Senate committees could not. He spurred the agency into finding additional records . . . . The records reveal a far more extensive series of experiments than had previously been thought.[24]
Nonetheless, these records still leave an incomplete record of the program.
No Accountability
Two lawsuits arising out of MKUltra activities made it to the Supreme Court, but both protected the government over citizen’s rights:
In 1985, the Court held in CIA vs. Simms that the names of the institutions and researchers who participated in Project MKUltra were exempt from revelation under the Freedom of Information Act due to the CIA’s need to protect its “intelligence sources.”
In 1987, in United States v. Stanley, the Court held that a serviceman who had volunteered for a chemical weapons experiment, but who was actually tested with LSD, was barred from bringing a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Obama seeks $100M to unlock mysteries of the brain
Story highlights
- “There is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked,” Obama says
- The initiative aims to help find ways to prevent, treat and cure brain disorders
- President Obama promised more funding for such studies in his State of the Union address
- Federal research agencies will work with private partners
President Barack Obama on Tuesday unveiled a $100 million initiative to unlock the “enormous mystery” of the human brain in hopes of boosting the understanding and treatment of brain disorders.
“What if computers could respond to our thoughts? Or language barriers could come tumbling down? Or if millions of Americans were suddenly finding new jobs in these fields — jobs we haven’t even dreamt up yet because we chose to invest in this project? That is the future we are imagining. That is what we are hoping for,” the president said in an event in the East Room of the White House.
The initiative, dubbed Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, or BRAIN, “aims to help researchers find new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent brain disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury,” the White House said in a release issued in advance of the event.
“There is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked,” Obama said, “and the BRAIN Initiative will change that by giving scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action and better understand how we think and how we learn and how we remember. And that knowledge could be — will be — transformative.”
Mapping the brain: Top brain scientist is ‘philosopher at heart’
Obama said he will seek the $100 million funding in the budget he sends to Congress next week. In an environment where both parties are seeking significant spending cuts, the expenditure faces an uncertain reception.
In his remarks, Obama said the funding would be in line with a promise he made earlier this year to increase levels of research.
In his State of the Union address in February, he said, “If we want to make the best products, we also have to invest in the best ideas,” and alluded to scientists “mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s.”
The money to study the brain would support research by the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation.
The research would involve both federal research agencies and private partners.
A major goal is to reveal “how individual brain cells and complex neural circuits interact at the speed of thought,” the White House said.
Brain map seeks to unlock mysteries of the mind
“Our ultimate objective is a deep understanding of the human brain and its understanding,” said Arati Prabhakar, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, in a conference call with reporters.
In the same call, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said that “advances in tech which are coming along very quickly make it possible to take a look at what’s happening in the brain,” and the research “leads us to believe we can accomplish something very dramatic.”
The hope is that these new technologies will lead to insights into how the brain processes information and how it is linked to behavior.
“We aim through this ambitious project to try to unravel these mysteries,” Collins said.
Here is an article on CDC doctor lying in front of Congress how there was no connection between Thimerosol (Mercury) and Autism:
CDC Caught Hiding Data Showing Mercury in Vaccines Linked to Autism
Health Impact News Editor Comments
In a press release issued last year, one that almost no mainstream media sources have bothered to report, it was announced that Dr. Brian Hooker had finally received documents from the CDC through a Freedom of Information Act that revealed the CDC had access to data linking Thimerosal in vaccines to autism, non-organic sleep disorders, and speech disorders.
Two members of Congress helped Dr. Hooker draft his letter to the CDC, after having spent nearly 10 years submitting over 100 Freedom of Information Acts to no avail.
This information was completely blacked out of the mainstream media.
This information is very damaging to the CDC, which has stated for years that there are no studies linking the mercury of Thimerosal in vaccines to autism. You can watch for yourself in the video below the most recent testimony given by the CDC in the November 2012 Congressional Hearing on Autism, where they claim there are no studies linking Thimerosal to autism. Thimerosal is still used today in the flu shot that is administered to pregnant women and infants.
Watch more video highlights of this Congressional hearing on Autism here. Outside of C-SPAN, it was mostly ignored in the mainstream media back in November of 2012.
The mainstream media’s official position regarding vaccines and autism has been that it has been “proven that there is no link”, and Dr. Andrew Wakefield is used as the standard scapegoat being presented as a “disgraced doctor” who supposedly got caught fabricating his study. Of course, Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s study has been replicated in at least 28 other studies, and no case has ever been won against Dr. Wakefield in a court of law. Litigation is still pending, and one of the doctors who was a co-author in the study has been completely exonerated in the U.K.
Yet, the man who supposedly conducted studies for the CDC proving that vaccines do not cause autism, is a wanted criminal for stealing millions of dollars from the CDC, and is still on the run from the law. But that story is seldom, if ever, reported in the mainstream media. (See: CDC Vaccine Link to Autism Scandal: The Wrong Man was Condemned)
To understand the autism-vaccine debate one must look outside of the heavily Big Pharma funded mainstream media, such as this report by Emmy Award winning journalist Ben Swann:
The Canary Party has also produced an excellent video, narrated by Rob Schnieder:
Vaccine Industry Watchdog Obtains CDC Documents That Show Statistically Significant Risks of Autism Associated with Vaccine Preservative Thimerosal
Biochemist Brian Hooker, scientific advisor to A Shot of Truth, reveals CDC knew of risks for over a decade.
For nearly ten years, Brian Hooker has been requesting documents that are kept under tight wraps by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). His more than 100 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests have resulted in copious evidence that the vaccine preservative Thimerosal, which is still used in the flu shot that is administered to pregnant women and infants, can cause autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Dr. Hooker, a PhD scientist, worked with two members of Congress to craft the letter to the CDC that recently resulted in his obtaining long-awaited data from the CDC, the significance of which is historic. According to Hooker, the data on over 400,000 infants born between 1991 and 1997, which was analyzed by CDC epidemiologist Thomas Verstraeten, MD, “proves unequivocally that in 2000, CDC officials were informed internally of the very high risk of autism, non-organic sleep disorder and speech disorder associated with Thimerosal exposure.”
When the results of the Verstraeten study were first reported outside the CDC in 2005, there was no evidence that anyone but Dr. Verstraeten within the CDC had known of the very high 7.6-fold elevated relative risk of autism from exposure to Thimerosal during infancy. But now, clear evidence exists. A newly-acquired abstract from 1999 titled, “Increased risk of developmental neurologic impairment after high exposure to Thimerosal containing vaccine in first month of life” required the approval of top CDC officials prior to its presentation at the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) conference. Thimerosal, which is 50% mercury by weight, was used in most childhood vaccines and in the RhoGAM® shot for pregnant women prior to the early 2000s.
The CDC maintains there is “no relationship between Thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism rates in children,” even though the data from the CDC’s own Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) database shows a very high risk. There are a number of public records to back this up, including this Congressional Record from May 1, 2003. The CDC’s refusal to acknowledge thimerosal’s risks is exemplified by a leaked statement from Dr. Marie McCormick, chair of the CDC/NIH-sponsored Immunization Safety Review at IOM. Regarding vaccination, she said in 2001, “…we are not ever going to come down that it [autism] is a true side effect….” Also of note, the former director of the CDC, which purchases $4 billion worth of vaccines annually, is now president of Merck’s vaccine division.
Dr. Hooker’s fervent hope for the future: “We must ensure that this and other evidence of CDC malfeasance are presented to Congress and the public as quickly as possible. Time is of the essence. Children’s futures are at stake.” A divide within the autism community has led to some activists demanding that compensation to those with vaccine-injury claims be the top priority before Congress. Dr. Hooker maintains that prevention, “protecting our most precious resource – children’s minds,” must come first. “Our elected officials must be informed about government corruption that keeps doctors and patients in the dark about vaccine risks.”
Referring to an organization that has seen its share of controversy this past year, Dr. Hooker remarked, “It is unfortunate that SafeMinds issued a press release on my information, is accepting credit for my work and has not supported a worldwide ban on Thimerosal.”
Brian Hooker, PhD, PE, has 15 years experience in the field of bioengineering and is an associate professor at Simpson University where he specializes in biology and chemistry. His over 50 science and engineering papers have been published in internationally recognized, peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Hooker has a son, aged 16, who developed normally but then regressed into autism after receiving Thimerosal-containing vaccines.
Dr. Brian Hooker’s investigative research is sponsored by the Focus Autism Foundation.
The Focus Autism Foundation is dedicated to providing information to the public that exposes the cause or causes of the autism epidemic and the rise of chronic illnesses – focusing specifically on the role of vaccinations. To learn more, visit focusautisminc.org.
A Shot of Truth is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization and educational website sponsored by Focus Autism.
AutismOne is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that provides education and supports advocacy efforts for children and families touched by an autism diagnosis. To learn more, visit autismone.org.
Read the Full Press Release Here.
Vaccine Epidemic
– See more at: http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/cdc-caught-hiding-data-showing-mercury-in-vaccines-linked-to-autism/#sthash.n350GiC4.dpuf
Vaccine Injury Lawyers
Anapol Schwartz obtains substantial compensation in vaccine court on behalf of people who suffered rare vaccine reactions.
The attorneys believe vaccine reaction victims and their families deserve first-rate legal representation.
Larry Cohan is nationally-recognized for his history of success representing injured clients. For decades, he has been obtaining multimillion-dollar settlements as a vaccine injury lawyer on behalf of victims and their families from across the country.
Larry was named a Top 100 Lawyer in Pennsylvania by Super Lawyers®, and he was voted 2013 Lawyer of the Year in Mass Tort and Class Actions by Best Lawyers®. Larry has served in leading roles in many complex cases, and he has forged new law in both the trial and appellate court levels in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Washington D.C.
David Carney is an active member of the Vaccine Injury Petitioner’s Bar Association. He has achieved great success in the firm’s vaccine practice by obtaining compensation for injured people as well as families of patients who died from complications.
As a vaccine injury lawyer, David has successfully obtained numerous six-figure settlements in cases involving Gardasil, flu, chicken pox, DTaP, hepatitis and MMR vaccines that have been linked to conditions such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, lupus, brachial neuritis, encephalopathy and others.
In 2013, Larry and David obtained $9 million with a lifetime payout of $40 million on behalf of a boy diagnosed with encephalitis caused by a chicken pox vaccine.
Legal Help at No Cost to You
Get the personal attention you deserve from a qualified vaccine injury lawyer as you recover from your injuries. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) in Washington, D.C. will pay for attorneys’ fees and other legal costs if certain minimum requirements are met. Time is limited to file a claim, so contact Larry and David immediately.
Speaking with a vaccine injury lawyer today will help you take the first step toward preserving your legal rights and obtaining compensation.
Call today: (888) 217-5151
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