The Cia Mind Control History Essay

Is the Central Intelligence Agency currently using illegal mind control techniques to alter our way of thinking. Probably, to examine this issue more thoroughly we only need to look back to the last time they were caught doing so: Project MKUltra in 1953-1973.

Project MKUltra, first known as Project BLUEBIRD then Project ARTICHOKE, was an illegal, undercover operation by the CIA that began in the 1950’s, they officially ended it in 1973 but many believe it still goes on today. This operation was headed by Sidney Gottlieb (Woo). Information was released to the public during the time of the Watergate scandal; most likely so the nation would pay less attention to such an important issue. The mission of Project MKUltra was to use military personnel, American citizens, Canadian citizens, and CIA employees as unwilling test subjects for mental manipulation experimentation. Some of the victims were drug addicts, prostitutes, and mental patients (Woo). Operation Midnight Climax was a mission where drug-addicted prostitutes brought men from local bars to various CIA safe houses for the administration of LSD (Lee). There is even evidence of children being kidnapped from neighborhoods and used for experimentation. The tests included various forms of torture and the administration of mind altering drugs. They wanted to learn how to erase memories, alter personalities, bring out deep confessions, and alter the mind in every way imaginable. This was around the time of the Cold War so one supposed goal was to use these techniques against spies from other countries during times of war. The director of the CIA at the time of these events was Allen Dulles.

So where did the idea of brainwashing and mind control come from? Operation Paperclip was another program of the CIA that began a few years before MKUltra, it was approved by President Truman in 1946. They used Operation Paperclip after World War Two to recruit scientists from Nazi Germany for use in the United States (Walker). They believed that if they did not bring these scientists into America and keep them contained then the Soviet Union would use them against us. They brought in about 600 of Hitler’s top ‘mind scientists’. They studied various forms of torture and brainwashing; many of these men were identified as war criminals during the Nuremberg Trials (Walker). These mind scientists were placed by the CIA into colleges and universities to experiment with various mind control techniques. The United States saw Hitler’s plan to take over the world with mind control, this plan was then implemented and used by American scientists. So in essence, the Nazis were never defeated, they simply moved from Germany to America.

During the times of the Cold War it was very important that no secret American information was revealed to the Soviets. One of the primary goals of MKUltra was to wipe clean everything that undercover Americans had known so it would not be revealed to the enemy. They also used these tests to reveal information from the enemy or potential enemy. Many American soldiers who were thought to be suspicious for any reason were given cigarettes laced with marijuana before their interrogations. They even tried to manipulate Soviet spies to work for the United States by altering their minds, thoughts, and beliefs. The Central Intelligence Agency believed that they could program someone to perform tasks that they normally wouldn’t, tasks that would be detrimental to the individual but helpful to the CIA. They experimented with many drugs in the hopes of finding a ‘truth drug’; to our knowledge, no such drug has been found as of yet (Lee).

There are many theories regarding what some of these top secret tests were really used for. It is not preposterous to believe that the CIA brainwashes individuals and uses them as pawns to carry out some sort of “master plan.” The Manchurian Candidate was a 1959 novel by Richard Condon. It is about a young man from an important political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin. This idea may not be so fictional after all, Project MKUltra was essentially the CIA’s search for their very own Manchurian Candidate. Throughout time there have probably been many of these Manchurian Candidates programmed to commit crimes and take the fall. One of these potential pawns was a man named Sirhan Sirhan, he was convicted for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. His attorney, Lawrence Teeter believed that he was mind-controlled and linked it back to MKUltra (Goldman). Sirhan admitted to the murder during the trial but a few years later said he had no recollection of doing so (Goldman). Multiple Eyewitnesses said that there was a second gunman (Goldman).

A more recent and well documented example of the Manchurian Candidate was James Holmes. He is the man who shot up a theatre in Aurora, Colorado earlier this year during the premier of “The Dark Knight Rises.” He was a college student studying neuroscience and it is believed this was how he was brainwashed to go on a killing spree about a week before a new gun-control law was passed. Much of the original Project MKUltra testing took place at colleges and universities. The unemployed student with thousands of dollars worth of guns, ammunition and explosives in his house dyed his hair red and posed as The Joker, a character from the film. After his shooting spree, he was apprehended by police and taken into custody. The next day in court, Holmes appeared to be in some sort of trance, almost as if he didn’t even know where he was. Holmes had no criminal record prior to this incident other than a parking ticket.

A couple of things seem odd about this case. First, James Holmes was a college student with limited assets and no known motive, where did he get enough money for all of the weapons and body armor? Perhaps it was all provided by the CIA. He also had a booby trapped house which he told the police about (Sinmaz). There is no reasonable explanation as to why he would massacre countless individuals and then warn the police about his booby trapped house.

James Holmes did not have a motive but the Central Intelligence Agency did, this shooting came just days before a new gun control law was passed. If you want guns to be more restricted to the public, what better way than to send a seemingly psychotic man in to shoot up a theater? They wanted to prove that just about anyone can go crazy and kill people if firearms are readily available. The goal was to scare people into allowing the government to have more control over them. Holmes’ mother confirmed that the police had the right person and said nothing more about the matter. Holmes, much like Sirhan, claimed to have no recollection and didn’t know why he was in prison.

Then, just last week, Steven Unruh came into the fold. Unruh is an inmate who claimed to have a conversation with James Holmes by shouting to him from another cell (McLaughlin). He says that he talked Holmes out of suicide; He also says that Holmes told him he was programmed by an evil therapist to commit the crime (McLaughlin). Unruh stated that Holmes seemed remorseful for what he had done and that he felt like he was in a video game when he was doing it. Unruh said that he heard James Holmes slamming into the wall and that’s how they started the alleged four hour conversation, Holmes was indeed taken to a hospital after injuries that resulted from bashing his head into a wall. The parallels between Holmes and Sirhan are countless; both events also had eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen accomplices.

At a certain point we cannot just continue to ignore the facts and shrug these tragedies off as coincidences. There is a bigger plan being brought to fruition by the CIA and the truth needs to be told. It is very plausible that both Sirhan Sirhan and James Holmes are innocent men who were programmed to commit crimes they didn’t want to commit and then take the fall for the real criminals. It has also been found that Lee Harvey Oswald’s behavior was consistent with that of a supposed Manchurian Candidate, this may be a stretch but it cannot be ruled out.

One of the main components of this program was the administration of LSD (Lee). LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, is a drug that alters the mind and skews the user’s perception of reality as well as other effects that vary by user. This drug was used to see if they could change the allegiance of Russian spies, among other reasons.

The CIA recruited Donald Ewen Cameron, a Scottish psychiatrist, to be the leader for much of the research. His experiments consisted of administering enough drugs to mental patients to induce a coma for a few weeks and then playing tape loops of repetitive sounds and noises. These tape loops played nonstop and destroyed the individual’s thinking patterns. When the individual could no longer think in a conventional manner it made them susceptible to brainwashing. Essentially, their minds would be broken down and then built back up in whatever way the CIA or Dr. Cameron thought to be fitting. Many of these patients forgot who they were and some of them even forgot how to talk. Cameron also used various forms of intense electroshock. His experiments took place in Montreal, Canada at McGill University from around 1957 to 1960.

There were many deaths because of MKUltra. Harold Blauer was a psychiatric patient who was unwittingly given 5 injections of a drug being tested by the CIA. He died upon the fifth injection. James Thornwell was given LSD during interrogations, he was also isolated and deprived of sleep. Classified documents went missing and Thornwell became a suspect. It is believed that Thornwell was one of the first individuals to receive LSD as part of an interrogation as opposed to testing (Faber). He was later discharged for psychological disorders and there were no charges brought against him in terms of the missing documents (Faber). Thornwell had since run through two marriages and many jobs, he said he couldn’t concentrate had nightmares and felt isolated.

Frank Olson was one of the most well-known victims. He was unknowingly given LSD a week before he was believed to have jumped out of a thirteenth story hotel window (Frommer). Olson already had suicidal tendencies and it was believed that he jumped out of the window due to a psychotic episode triggered by the LSD. A second autopsy revealed that Olson was most likely knocked unconscious and then pushed out of the window (Frommer). This could very well be because he planned to release information of this illegal government operation. There was an investigation into the possibility of a homicide; however, due to the CIA’s large influence and power there was not enough evidence found. In 1975, the family of Frank Olson took a $750,000 settlement from the United States government and the issue was dissolved (Frommer). Nine victims of Project MKUltra sued the government in 1980, each victim received $100,000 in compensatory damages.

All of these experiments were highly illegal and immoral. This was clearly an important event in American history so why do we not hear about it more often, you ask? It’s very simple, the CIA controls the media. This can be traced back to yet another top secret CIA operation known as Operation Mockingbird.

Operation Mockingbird began in the 1950s; this campaign was headed by a man named Frank Wisner. The goal of Operation Mockingbird was to control what was released to the general public by foreign and domestic media sources (Louise). Wisner was in control of a plethora of significant members of multiple newspapers and television stations. In addition to not allowing important government matters to become public Operation Mockingbird served as another sort of brainwashing for American citizens, the CIA used its control of the media to promote their own views to the public (Louise). Whatever the CIA did wrong would have little to no consequences because the media would never divulge the scandals to the general public. Some of the CIA’s budget went towards bribing newspaper officials and people in charge of television stations. Reporters were on a payroll from their employers and the CIA. In 1976 George H. W. Bush was the Director of the CIA; he stated that there would be no more paid relationships with members of the media and the CIA, but that they would welcome the unpaid cooperation of these individuals. All that this means is that they will keep these efforts secret until they are uncovered again sometime in the future.

Perhaps the man to blame for all of these events and the apparent corruption of the Central Intelligence Agency is Allen Welsh Dulles. Dulles created Project MKUltra and oversaw Operation Mockingbird; he was the Director of Intelligence from 1953-1961, during both operations. Dulles’ CIA career finally ended abruptly after the Bay of Pigs episode in April 1961.

The Central Intelligence Agency is a very large government agency with a lot of influence and money. Our tax dollars fund these types of operations and when there is corruption, very little can be done because of their large stature and overwhelming influence. For the calendar year of 2012 the CIA has an astronomical budget of $55 billion. It is very possible that they have used multiple Manchurian Candidates to coerce the general public into allowing such a large budget. This money is used to fund operations like MKUltra and Mockingbird.

In terms of responsibility, the Central Intelligence Agency answers to multiple oversight committees and the president. Normal citizens will never know about much of the corruption that goes on behind the scenes. Ironically, if Project Mockingbird is still secretly in existence we are indirectly paying the media to suppress the details of where our money is going.

It is 2012 and technologies have advanced beyond our comprehension. There is a very strong chance that these practices still occur on a larger scale. Nobody may ever know how many large-scale events have happened due to mind control. At this point, there may be no limit to what their manipulation is capable of. It is truly terrifying to consider the idea that the CIA can turn a human into a robot and make them carry out whatever task they feel necessary.

There is very little that can be done to stop these efforts, but the first step is to educate ourselves. The CIA does not want us to know about these experiments and wants us to believe that they do not still go on today. They do, in all likelihood, still go on and we need to be wary of this corrupt organization.