
The CIA’s human experiments with mind control (2017) - 1cvmask
https://www.history.com/mkultra-operation-midnight-climax-cia-lsd-experiments
======
kace91
Visiting the Stasi museum in Berlin is a nice eye opener for how subtle some
intelligence work can be. You can see files describing acts like surrounding a
specific person with potential dates that ghost him or "friends" that will
treat him badly just to make the the person depressed and reduce their will to
be politically active.

Lots of what you see there would be considered delusions of a paranoid person
if someone claimed to be the target of it nowadays.

I'm convinced the only reason it stands out is that it's relatively weird to
see a fallen government's intelligent files, since one that's still standing
would never let you see them.

~~~
drummer
Are these files describing tactics of the Stasi also available online?

~~~
kace91
I found some interesting information available for free in a link from the
museum's website. Check the "english publications" section at the bottom, the
second link in particular is quite interesting:

[https://www.bstu.de/en/education/publications/](https://www.bstu.de/en/education/publications/)

------
eth0up
Something that should be, but isn't, essential high school curriculum:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States)

I remember seeing the faces of incredulity on fellow (college) students during
a presentation of this, that is, until they were challenged with compelling
citation. Then things changed a bit.

To relegate such activity to a permanent place in the past assumes a very
hokey fundamental change in human nature, or, commits a very naive faith to
regulation and transparency.

------
ncmncm
We really know only what they have chosen to let us know; and much of what we
think we know is false. Getting people to believe falsehoods about the
programs was a big part of them, and it worked way better that they had hoped.

Jon Ronson's book _Men Who Stare at Goats_ is a terrifying exploration of what
these programs were really about.

Make no mistake, these programs were prototypes for still-ongoing attacks on
the American public.

~~~
jariel
"these programs were prototypes for still-ongoing attacks on the American
public."

Needs evidence.

~~~
rmrfstar
One of many examples [1]. These tactics would be familiar to the Romans. They
are as old as the hills.

They are apparently common enough that HBGary proposed a collaboration with
Palantir to use them against Glenn Greenwald [2].

[1] [https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-
manipulation/](https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/)

[2]
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110209/22340513034/leake...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110209/22340513034/leaked-
hbgary-documents-show-plan-to-spread-wikileaks-propaganda-bofa-attack-glenn-
greenwald.shtml)

~~~
nl
These aren't mind control at all!

Saying "the intelligence community is horrible" isn't the same as "these
programs were prototypes for still-ongoing [mind control] attacks on the
American public."

~~~
rmrfstar
We don't really know what took place in the "mind control" program, as the
records were systematically destroyed [1].

One plausible interpretation is that these were mainly efforts in _coercive_
control, rather than Hollywood style "mind control". We have extensive records
of comparable efforts in East Germany [2], and it is reasonable to suspect
that the American programs followed a similar thread of "research". Why
wouldn't they? The tactics were apparently very successful.

If you buy that argument, then the cited examples are logical successors. It
is very easy to dismiss "mind control" programs as a weird vestige of a bygone
era, but I think it is unlikely that institutions drew no durable lessons from
them.

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-
intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-
intelligence/kent-csi/vol44no4/html/v44i4a07p_0021.htm)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWjzT2l5C34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWjzT2l5C34)

~~~
nl
The article was specifically about MK-Ultra style mind control.

Saying there are _other_ ways to try to get people to do what they want -
especially at a population level as the OP claimed - is a completely different
proposition.

I've linked elsewhere to IARPA SHARP which is the closest thing to actual mind
control.

Do I think intelligence agencies try to manipulate public opinion by methods
similar to advertising agencies? Yes absolutely! Do I think this this is mind
control or anything resembling that? No, and I think it's important to note
that despite all the leaks (Snowden, Wikileaks, etc etc) there is no hints
that I'm wrong about this.

~~~
rmrfstar
The whole point of the comment is that we don't know what "MK-Ultra style mind
control" means because the records were destroyed. We can only make educated
guesses about what is likely to have survived the program.

If you think the guess is bad, that's fair. It's another thing to get hung up
on the semantics of "mind control".

------
rdtsc
> Though the MK-Ultra directors tried to convince the CIA’s independent audit
> board that the research should continue, the Inspector General insisted the
> agency follow new research ethics guidelines and bring all the programs on
> non-consenting volunteers to an end.

I would like to believe that CIA collectively found their moral compass,
learned their lesson, and that was just a dark page in its history. But given
its history afterwards, say what they did in South America, the torture
programs, etc., I just can't come to that conclusion.

So assuming their morality stayed at about the same level as before. How could
have they continued the programs if they wanted to?

1) Rename everything and not use MK-ULTRA label anymore. Find a way to
transfer all the useful stuff to a new program and file it under a different
label. Anyone looking for MK-ULTRA should not find anything if they went
searching later.

2) Next, just like with torture programs, maybe migrate overseas?. Pay some
brutal dictator somewhere, maybe blackmail him if there is any dirt on them,
borrow some facilities, buy all the local police chiefs and so on.

3) Another avenue is contractors. There is a whole world of "contractors"
which do all the dirty and illegal stuff the official intelligence agencies
don't want to do. Give the programs some generic sounding names, outsource
everything, and then through the back-channels tell the "researchers" what
really to work on. Once results come in, file them as something else,
compartmentalized so only a few people have access to them.

------
ganzuul
Link redirects to a local front-page for me.

------
drummer
Watch the documentary "State of mind"
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=g2sJPSzG4fw](https://youtube.com/watch?v=g2sJPSzG4fw)

------
baybal2
Allen Dulles was a rare nutjob, it was only thanks to the chaos of interwar
period he got such prominence

~~~
fit2rule
Well, that and Operation Paperclip...

------
Melting_Harps
Did anyone catch the JRE podcast with Tom O'Neill [1], he was there detailing
his findings and research on his book on Charles Manson and the Family and
subsequently finding many of the associated links between Intelligence and
Military agencies and personnel that were involved with MK ULTRA and other
programs.

Its quite the rabbit hole; I personally couldn't care less about the Manson
family cult, as a kid I heard all about the scary hippy acid BS only to see
them buying houses with their NIMBY tactics and driving gas guzzling SUVS in
the 21st Century. Neither extremes turned out to be be true about those
boomers, and instead all we got was a bland and trite form of entrenched
entitlement in this country.

However, being a proponent of psychedelic use for medicinal and therapeutic
purposes for many current epidemics, I wanted to hear what he had to say.

I ended up getting the audiobook, but haven't started it yet as I'm finishing
a final project for one of my classes.

But what was said so far on the podcast has been intriguing. Especially as the
CIA released the redacted files in common limited hangout fashion, but what
Tom did was go even deeper over the course of 20 YEARS and managed to get
files that revealed how Graduate students, police and military men were used
in a wide-spread network in clandestine operations to either conduct, observe,
monitor the experiments of test subjects in their targeted studies/experiments
or be experimented on in order to refine a technique to achieve a desired
result.

Its not clear to me if Manson and his crazy murders were intended to be used
to solely discredit the psychedelic, anti-war or black movements of that
period, but given what we saw with the Occupy Movement it is most definitely
an effective tool in their arsenal to quell dissent that can be used if/when
needed.

Either way, the tarnished reputation of psychedelics and its legitimate
psychologists/researchers has been a bane for Humanity but a successful boon
for Big Pharma. So inexorably tying LSD to Manson makes sense if you want to
outlaw a currently researched substance with positive clinical trials,
especially when Tom's research reveals he may have been a subject himself as
he had a series of unwarranted releases from arrest or jail and state
appointed relationships with MK Ultra program operatives.

I'm just MAPS has been able to reignite the legitimacy and utility of these
class of drugs again after all these years.

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J36xPWBLcG8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J36xPWBLcG8)

~~~
justforyou
>> but given what we saw with the Occupy Movement

Care to elaborate?

~~~
pstuart
A couple examples below. The key thing is that they won: The occupy movement
was effectively neutered.

    
    
      https://www.globalresearch.ca/infiltration-of-occupy-part-i-infiltration-to-disrupt-divide-and-mis-direct-are-widespread-in-occupy/29493
      https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

~~~
Melting_Harps
> A couple examples below. The key thing is that they won: The occupy movement
> was effectively neutered.

That's just what was documented, I did a project with one of the more active
and vocal members of Occupy LA, he pulled a few of the major occupations that
got him in quite a bit of trouble. And on TV in one of the spectacles, but
ultimately left him disillusioned in the end.

Anyhow, he had stories about how they had a few 'squats' throughout where they
would stay to plan things out, both for LA as well as NY, and they had to stop
letting people in because so many were turning out to be CI for the police.
The survailence economy was also starting to become widespread as Wifi enabled
phones were also starting to become common, but here is another article
detailing the FBI's tactics [1] in dragnet surveillance as well as brazen
overt tactics. Hell, the damn Federal Reserve even had a hand in the
surveillance program against Occupy at one point!

When confronted what some accepted in return for it many said the police would
give them drugs or alcohol, or cash which if you're a severally depressed
millennial with 10-100ks of student debt and no job prospects, and recently
evicted out of your home, living on the street/car (with now deep
psychological trauma) the why/hows become pretty obvious. On a Human level,
that's just incredibly sad and exploitative behaviour of people in vulnerable
positions.

Personally, I never liked the Occupy movement; initially it seemed to show
promise (coordinated bank runs) but then it severally stagnated in the
demonstration phase and squandered its resources until it became irrelevant--
while many of its supporters mistook it for an extended Spring Break and
livecasting was in its infancy and becoming quite popular around that period
too--JustinTV was starting to get the attention of Google to become Twitch
around that time, too. In retrospect I wonder how much of that contributed to
the 'influencer' model we see now.

The Occupy movement could have done so much good if they took those motivated
people into places like Detroit and bought up sky scrapers or entire
neighborhood blocks to renovate and house them, and then participated in the
Urban gardening revolution and local economic resurgence and commerce that
took place with all the funds they had. I know this because I suggested it to
them as I hung out in their chat rooms back then and saw what was happening as
food deserts were becoming even more ubiquitous and saw the writing on the
wall. My personal transition into Environmentalism and Activism was occurring
at that time, too, so I recall it quite vividly.

My conclusions was that they simply had no plan and wanted to vent their
anger, which was well intended, but then it became a reason to just have fun
at night partying and not really mobilize for actual change.

Also, they were totally against my staunch (especially back then) An-
Cap/Crypto-Anarchist position, and I was probably seen as just another
'capitalist shill' so I'm not an apologist for them at all.

I was just highlighting the State's MO and how Tom's work details how some of
it was done in relation in his 20 years researching the Manson case and how it
related to a 'political' movement in recent History.

1: [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fbi-occupy-wall-
street_n_2410...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fbi-occupy-wall-
street_n_2410783)

~~~
lowdose
If Mr. Robot was about Occupy, what do you think the serie Home Coming was
about?

After reading Anna Jacobson books I wonder if it actually reflect reality.

~~~
Melting_Harps
> Mr. Robot was about Occupy

I'm a Mr. Robot fan, and a real fan of Kor's influence (an ex security guy at
Toyota!) on the show but I likely took a very different perspective from it
than most as I'm a crypto nerd.

To me the series was like a dramatization of Naomi Campbell's Shock Doctrine
[1] with very well portrayed hacks and exploits (I'm not a pen tester but some
OPESEC stuff was quite accurate). And their crypto stuff was actually well
developed and researched. And some hero vs villeins characters to keep things
going.

SPOILER ALLERT

The occupy overtones felt like a distraction, and a tired trope to me; the
masks were an obvious nod to the Guy Faux maskes representing Anonymous, but
beyond that I think it was rather lacking any real substance--Season 3's riot
at E-corp showed how quickly things escalate to violent mob-rule even against
the supposed protagonists. The redistribution of wealth via a hack against the
1%'s seemed forced and cobbled together because Sam wanted the ending to fit
that narrative and quite frankly it felt forcefully coaxed; whereas the mental
health, loneliness and substance abuse plot was very well paced and fleshed
out throughout the series.

I wasn't really satisfied with how that last hack drove the series end and how
the last 'hack' saved the World was rather ridiculous to me as result--and
this is from perhaps one of the most anti-nuclear voices on HN! And he
survived to see his plan triumph, because reasons we cannot and will not
explain beyond some far fetched off scene make-believe you will just have to
accept.

I've never seen Homeland; to be honest I don't really watch TV much as popular
shows feel boring to things that happen in the many sub-cultures and
communities I'm involved in. That guy from Occupy I mentioned before got me
into Mr. Robot at the end of season 1 but I didn't get into it much until the
E-Coin vs Bitcoin plot development in S2 and binged most of it until that
part.

Even during this lockdown I've been mainly re-watching/listening to old races,
concerts and DJ sets while I study and do stuff. I have like 5 audio books I'm
waiting to sink my teeth into so I'm afraid I won't get to see Home Coming
anytime, either. I'll check out the trailer, but that's rather glib
representation I imagine.

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGmB63TIHLY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGmB63TIHLY)

Edit: Saw trailer: eh, Black Mirror's Men Against Fire did that plot
brilliantly, and this seems like an elongated version of it. And what is Sam's
obsession with fish tanks?

PS: I don't think I've clarified my position with the Shock Doctrine; I agree
with Campbell's premise, but not her conclusion(s), as Free Market Capitalism
is not what is inserted in the 'window of operation' from the disaster/shock
to the system, but rather a very parasitic corporate plutocracy emerges in the
way Mussolini defined Fascism (the merging of State and Corporate power) is
what inserts itself in practice. Even Pricenton has defined the US as an
Oligarchy.

~~~
lowdose
I also thought the ending was subpar compared to the genius narrative twists
in the first two seasons of Mr Robot. I agree with your take on the system,
Eric Weinstein's latest podcast has some pretty interesting remarks about it.
The youtube video is not up yet so link to the specific portal episode

[https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/the-
portal/id146999956...](https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/the-
portal/id1469999563?l=en&i=1000471686956)

