32:45
1953. At approximately 2:30 a.m., a man breaks out of a closed window in a room on the 13th floor of the Statler Hotel and falls to the sidewalk, where he is crushed to death. His name was Dr. Frank Olson. Olson was a scientist at the. A few days before his death, his behavior changed dramatically. He became paranoid and fell into a deep depression. The official version was suicide. But there was something Olson's wife and three children didn't know. Nine days before his death, Olson attended a field meeting with several colleagues and Central Intelligence Agency employees. During the meeting, the men drank a bottle of alcohol. Olson did not know that a CIA scientist had secretly laced the
bottle with LSD. And Olson wasn't the only person who was used as an unknowing test subject. For years, the CIA conducted secret experiments using psychedelic drugs, hypnosis, and psychological manipulation. Some of the participants were volunteers. Others didn't even realize they were part of an experiment. The program eventually encompassed over 100 separate research projects involving universities, hospitals, prisons, and even prostitutes who worked in CIA secret apartments. Its goal was to find out whether it was possible to hack, manipulate, or even control the human mind. If America's enemies have experimented with mind control, does that justify the And should we even allow the government to experiment on people without their knowledge in the name of
national security? And how much of the truth about MKUltra was lost when the CIA destroyed most of the program's records? Marine Corps veteran and filmmaker, and in today's episode of Forgotten History, we'll try to answer these questions. The beginning of the most difficult 26 days in the history of the Marine Corps With faith in our armed forces. The 36th President of the United States died this afternoon. Go there, there are children and women here, and they are canceling it. To understand why the CIA created MKUltra, we have to go back to the early years of the Cold War. After the end of World War II,
the United States and the Soviet Union became the world's two dominant superpowers. The military alliance quickly disintegrated, and by the late 1940s both sides were embroiled in an increasingly aggressive struggle for military, political, and technological superiority. Then, in 1949, two events greatly increased American fears of communist expansion. The Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American nuclear monopoly. That same year, Mao Zedong's communist forces defeated the Nationalist government in China. The following year, communist North Korea invaded South Korea, starting the Korean War. During the conflict, American prisoners of war appeared in communist propaganda broadcasts, denouncing the United States, criticizing
the war, and in some cases confessing to crimes they did not commit. When American prisoners began returning home, intelligence officials wanted to know how it happened. The term " brainwashing" entered the American lexicon, describing the ability of communist interrogators to break a prisoner's personality and replace his beliefs with new ones. The CIA took this possibility seriously. But when American intelligence studied communist interrogation methods, they found no evidence of the existence of a mysterious drug or scientific technique capable of controlling the human mind.
Instead, communist interrogators relied mainly on isolation, sleep deprivation, threats, and humiliation. In some cases, These methods could be extremely effective in breaking down resistance. Prisoners could be pressured into signing false confessions or cooperating with their captors, but this was not the same as mind control. The irony was that while the CIA was looking for a communist mind control weapon that apparently didn't exist, it began trying to create its own. In 1950, the agency approved a secret program known as Project Blue Bird to research
interrogation techniques and ways to influence human behavior. The following year, Blue Bird was expanded and renamed Project Artichoke. But on April 13, 1953, CIA Director Allen Dulles approved a new and much more ambitious program to covertly study chemical, biological, and psychological methods of influencing human behavior. The program was called MK Ultra. Responsibility for this project was placed with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. Gottlieb was a chemist who had joined the CIA 2 years earlier. Quiet and unassuming, he was not at all like the man who would later lead some of the agency's most controversial experiments. MK Ultra became a vast umbrella program that
included research conducted at universities, pharmaceutical companies, and private researchers. A significant portion of the money was intentionally hidden. The CIA used foundations and other intermediaries to finance researchers, sometimes allowing scientists to conduct experiments without even realizing that the intelligence agency was ultimately paying for their work. MK Ultra explored hypnosis, electroshock, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, and a wide range of drugs that could aid in interrogation by reducing resistance, inducing amnesia, or increasing suggestibility. But one drug quickly caught the agency's attention more than the others. LSD.
Lysergic acid diethylamide was synthesized in Switzerland by chemist Albert Hoffman in 1938. Five years later, Hoffmann accidentally ingested a small amount of the substance and discovered its extraordinary psychological effects. LSD was almost unlike anything incredibly small dose could radically alter a person's perception of reality for many hours. To the CIA, these opportunities seemed enormous. Can LSD act as a truth serum or break a prisoner's resistance during interrogation? The CIA also wanted to know if it was possible to make an enemy official behave irrationally, cause enough confusion to erase confidential information, or administer a drug without the subject noticing. There was only one way
to answer these questions: human experiments. Some MK Ultra subjects knew they were participating in the research. Others- no. CIA officers even began secretly giving LSD to each other, believing that the drug needed to be tested on unsuspecting people in real-world conditions. The consequences could be unpredictable. In November 1953, Dr. Gottlieb attended a retreat at a lodge on Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, with a small group of CIA and Army personnel. Among them was Dr. Frank Olson, the bioweapons scientist whose death we mentioned at the beginning of this episode. During the meeting, Gottlieb secretly slipped LSD into a bottle of alcohol.
Only after all the men had consumed the drug were they informed that there was an additive in the drink. For Olson, the experience proved devastating. Over the following days, his mental state deteriorated. He became withdrawn and increasingly convinced that something was seriously wrong with him. The CIA became so concerned that they sent Olson to New York for psychiatric treatment. The next day, he was to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and CIA chemist Robert Lashbrook was assigned to accompany him.
Two men shared a room on the 13th floor of the Statler Hotel. At approximately 2:30 a.m., Olson fell through a closed window and crashed to his death. He was 43 years old. Olson's wife and children were unaware that just 9 days earlier, the CIA had secretly given him LSD. They only learned the truth more than 20 years later. Despite Olson's death, the CIA's interest in LSD did not fade. Their experiments with LSD soon extended beyond laboratories and government personnel. Agency officials wanted to know how the drug would affect people in real- life situations, especially if they were unaware that they were being tested. To do this, the CIA turned
to an unexpected partner-the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the predecessor to the current Drug Enforcement Administration. One of the agents recruited for this program was George Hunter White. White was an experienced counternarcotics agent who also worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Operating under the pseudonym Morgan Hall, he helped the CIA carry out one of the strangest operations in the history of American intelligence. It became known as Operation Midnight Climax. Beginning in the 1950s, the CIA established secret apartments in New York and San Francisco where drugs could be tested on unsuspecting people outside of laboratory conditions. The apartment
was decorated with red curtains and black velvet. The rooms were equipped with hidden microphones and recording equipment, as well as a surveillance mirror that allowed White and other observers to see what was happening inside without being noticed The CIA then recruited prostitutes to bring unsuspecting men to the apartment. Once inside, the men's drinks were secretly laced with LSD and other substances. From behind the mirror, White recorded the effects of drugs. The CIA wanted to know if drugs could lower a person's inhibitions, especially when combined with sex, alcohol, or drugs, and if it was possible to secretly drug and manipulate an enemy agent so that he would never realize what had happened. The prostitutes themselves were also questioned about
sexual behavior and how sex could be used in intelligence operations. But the operation increasingly blurred the line between intelligence research and something far more disturbing. White reportedly sat behind a mirror, sipping a martini, watching the experiments unfold. Years later, he described his involvement, writing that he worked enthusiastically because it was "fun, fun, fun." The CIA has crossed an extraordinary line. MK Ultra was no longer simply an intelligence agency studying whether mind control was United States government secretly gave powerful drugs to its own citizens just to see what would happen.
MK Ultra money also went into prisons, hospitals, and psychiatric facilities, where researchers had access to a much easier-to- control population. At the Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Kentucky, researchers studied the effects of LSD and other drugs on prisoners and patients, including the effects of repeated or prolonged exposure. But some of the most disturbing experiments took place outside the United States. At the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, Canada, Dr. Donald Cameron was developing a radical theory of the human mind. Cameron was one of the world's most prominent psychiatrists and later became president of both the American Psychiatric Association and the World Psychiatric Association. Cameron believed that some
forms of mental illness could be treated by destroying existing patterns of thought and behavior and then rebuilding the patient's personality from scratch. He called the first part of this process depatterning." His patients were subjected to long periods of medicated sleep and extremely intense electroconvulsive therapy. The goal was to create such severe impairment of memory and learned behavior that patients could be reduced to a state close to that of a child. Some patients were confused about where they were. Others reportedly lost the ability to recognize familiar people, use the toilet without assistance, or remember significant parts of their lives. After the patient's existing patterns were destroyed, Cameron attempted to create new ones. He called this
technique mental driving. The recorded messages were played repeatedly to patients for hours, sometimes while under heavy sedation or in conditions of partial isolation from external stimuli. The same message could be repeated thousands of times. Cameron hoped that by disrupting existing patterns and repeatedly exposing the patient to carefully selected affirmations, healthier patterns of thinking and behavior could eventually be established. The CIA saw something different in this. If Cameron could destroy a person's existing behavioral patterns and replace them with new ones, intelligence officers wondered if the same techniques could find application in interrogation and psychological warfare.
Beginning in 1957, the CIA secretly funded Cameron's research as part of Subproject 68 of the MK-Ultra program. But Cameron apparently didn't know who was actually paying the bills. The money came through an organization called the Society for the Study of Human Ecology, which served as a financial intermediary for the CIA. Cameron had already begun developing his theories before the CIA money arrived, and there is no hard evidence that the CIA ordered him to carry out these procedures. The people who went through these experiments were psychiatric patients who had come to the
Allan Memorial Institute for medical treatment. They did not declare their participation in secret US intelligence programs. They had no idea that the CIA was interested in what they were doing to them. For some, the effects lasted long after their hospital stay. Patients and their families faced severe memory loss, psychological trauma, and the loss of basic abilities they had before receiving treatment from Cameron. Experiments have not proven that a person's personality can simply be erased or rebuilt according to someone's wishes. After years of LSD experiments, the CIA still had the question of where it all started.
Is it really possible to control the human mind? The answer, apparently, is negative. LSD proved to be a particularly frustrating interrogation tool. The effects of the drug were unpredictable. One person could become relaxed and talkative. Another could become paranoid, confused, or completely incapable of conveying useful information. More importantly, a person under the influence of a powerful drug does not necessarily tell the truth. The objects could hallucinate, mix reality with fantasy, or simply tell the interrogator what he wanted to hear. Ultimately, the CIA concluded that there was no reliable "truth serum" capable of forcing someone to reveal accurate information. The
same problem applied to the broader goal of controlling human behavior. Drugs could impair reasoning ability. And excessive psychological pressure could certainly break someone. But breaking a person is not the same as controlling them. There is no credible evidence that MK Ultra succeeded in creating the " programmable" human that was later depicted in books and films. Someone whose identity could be erased, replaced, and activated on command to carry out assassinations or other missions. CIA's own experiments were scientifically questionable. Later congressional investigations revealed that agents who monitored secret LSD experiments often had no scientific training.
The subjects often returned to their normal lives within a few hours, making any further observation impossible. In other words, after secretly drugging people without their consent, the CIA often failed to obtain scientifically useful information from the experiments. By the 1960s, enthusiasm for using LSD as a secret intelligence weapon began to wane. Additionally, within the CIA itself, there was growing concern about the legality and morality of the experiments being conducted on unsuspecting CIA Inspector General inspected MK-Ultra. This review raised serious questions about testing drugs on people who never consented to participate. The most controversial experiments began to be scaled back, although behavioral and chemical studies continued in
subsequent programs. By the early 1970s, the MK-Ultra program was largely closed. But one problem remained. The records have been preserved. In January 1973, outgoing CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of the MK-Ultra files. Sidney Gottlieb, who oversaw the program for most of its existence, was involved in carrying out this order. The time was not chosen by chance. The Watergate scandal was beginning to expose abuses of power, and the CIA faced increasing scrutiny for activities that could have become extremely shameful if they had become Operational files describing individual MK-Ultra experiments, the identities of many participants, and the results of most of the research have disappeared. For a while, it seemed that
most of the detailed history of MK-Ultra had disappeared with them. But the CIA's secrets began to be revealed. In December 1974, the New York Times reported that the CIA was conducting illegal activities on United States soil. These revelations have sparked several major government investigations. President Gerald Ford created the Rockefeller Commission to investigate CIA activities inside the United States. Congress launched its own investigation under the leadership of Senator Frank Church. The Church Committee uncovered an extraordinary catalogue of intelligence abuses, including surveillance of citizens, assassination plots, and drug experiments on people without their knowledge. But investigators trying to reconstruct the
MK Ultra picture faced a huge obstacle. The files no longer existed. Then, in 1977, someone found something that shouldn't have existed. Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, a CIA employee examined records held at the agency's archives center. There he discovered seven boxes of MK Ultra documents. They survived the 1973 destruction order, largely because they were financial records that were kept separate from the program's operational files. The surviving documents contained thousands of pages of material relating to the funding and
administration of MK Ultra. And suddenly, investigators received something they had never had before -documentary evidence. The recordings revealed the vast scope of the program. This discovery led to new Senate hearings in August 1977. CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner admitted that the agency could not even determine how many people were used as test subjects. The records kept were simply not complete enough. And this remains one of the biggest problems in understanding MK Ultra today. The identities of many subjects have been lost. The details of many experiments and the results of most of the research have been lost. And in some cases, we may not even know exactly what was done.
MKUltra became one of the most shameful examples of government secrecy and abuse of power in American history. It has also become the basis for countless conspiracy theories involving everything from programmed killers to. Many of these claims remain unproven, but most of the operational records of MKUltra were deliberately destroyed, making it impossible to ascertain the full extent of what actually happened. Which brings us back to Dr. Frank Olson. For decades, Olson's death was officially ruled a suicide following a psychological breakdown he suffered after being secretly given LSD. Eventually, his family became convinced that there was another explanation.
They believed that Olson had become increasingly concerned about the classified biological warfare and interrogation programs in which he was involved, and may have been considering resigning. He was a man who had access to the most secret secrets of the US government and could become a security threat. This claim has never been proven. However, President Gerald Ford personally met with Olson's family and apologized on behalf of the United States government. Congress later approved a $750,000 compensation payment to the family Then in 1994, Olson's family secured the exhumation of his body. A forensic examination revealed injuries that raised serious questions about the initial version of his death. Investigators
found significant trauma to Olson's skull, including damage above his left eye, which members of the expert panel believe may have occurred before the body hit the ground. They also found no evidence of some of the cuts from broken glass described after his death, despite claims that Olson had been thrown out of a hotel window. Forensic expert James Starr concluded that the evidence strongly pointed to murder. These findings prompted the Manhattan District Attorney's Office to reopen the case, but no charges were ever filed, and the investigation did not prove that Olson was murdered.
His family's lawsuit, which alleged that his death was a CIA assassination attempt, was ultimately dismissed on legal grounds, without establishing whether their claims were true. So, was Frank Olson the tragic victim of a reckless CIA experiment, or was his death linked to secrets the government feared he might reveal? More than 70 years later, we still do n't know. And maybe we'll never know. This is perhaps the most important lesson of MK Ultra. A government operating in secret can convince itself that extraordinary actions are justified by extraordinary threats. But when the same government destroys evidence of what happened,
future generations are forced to try to determine where documented history ends and conspiracy theory begins. In the case of MK Ultra, this boundary may never be fully understood. Share your thoughts on MK Ultra in the comments below. Thank you for watching "Forgotten History." Please like, share, and subscribe. If you have any comments or ideas for the show, we would love to hear them. Thank you again.
