Ninetoes vs MKUltra

Ninetoes looks at government experiments on citizens with MKUltra. Here is what he found out, skeptics be warned!

Hey there, history lovers! It is your old pal, Ninetoes, coming to you from Ninetoes HQ. Today, I am looking at MKUltra, the series of experiments conducted by the CIA on American citizens. I have coffee in my system and my thinking cap on, so let’s get to it!

MKUltra…the name is synonymous with evil doings. Everyone thinks they know all about it. Even my kid brings it up in conversation when he gets on a tear. Books have been written about it, and in my article on BZ testing in the US Army, I referenced it. So, I decided to do a bit of a dive into it.

From 1953-1973, the CIA ran an illegal operation in which it conducted experiments on American and Canadian citizens to find a way to erase someone’s memory and to control their mind. They used drugs, hypnosis, electroshock, and sensory deprivation. The operation’s name was MKUltra.

MKUltra’s origin goes back to the Truman administration with Project Bluebird, the original CIA-based mind control program. When Allen Dulles became the head of the CIA in 1951, he latched on to Project Bluebird, sent a memo to the senior officer overseeing the program, Frank Wisner, saying he wanted to explore “augmenting the usual interrogation methods by the use of drugs, hypnosis, shock, etc.” Under Dulles, the CIA opened prisons in West Germany and Japan where prisoners were experimented on with no oversight at all. The person who watched over these programs was General Walter Schrieber, who was the former general surgeon for the Nazi army and the man who approved experiments at Auschwitz and Dachau.

The driving force behind Project Bluebird under Dulles was his belief that the Soviet Union already had mind control tactics in which they could program people to make false confessions or even kill on command. Dulles pressed the urgency of Bluebird, and in August 1951, he expanded the research and renamed it Project Artichoke, with Sidney Gottlieb overseeing the operation.

Gottleib was a chemist who recently joined the CIA as its top drug expert. He and his team searched for a drug that would act as a truth serum and could control a person’s mind. They discovered that cocaine, heroin, and mescaline would not do the job, so they turned to LSD. In 1953, he spent $240,000 (close to $3 million in 2026) to buy the entire WORLD’S supply of the drug. Then, the CIA arranged for Eli Lilly and Company to replicate the formula so it could have an endless supply.

Gottleib then gave LSD out to hospitals, clinics, and other institutions (under the name of false organizations so they would not know it was connected to the CIA) to test the effects on patients. The drug was also used on prisoners, people experiencing addiction, and mentally ill people (as one CIA officer put it, “those who could not fight back”). Others who participated came from a veritable who’s who of the counterculture movement, including Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, and several members of The Grateful Dead.

The program was named MKUltra in April 1953. It got the name from the previous program being intensified and expanded to reflect the “ultra-sensitive” nature of its new program. Over the next decade, the program expanded to include 149 subprojects across 80 institutions, 44 universities and colleges. Up to 185 researchers were involved in one way or another.

Despite the size of the operation, it still worked under absolute secrecy. At any given time, only six people knew what the program was actually about. This gave Gottleib unchecked power. He was never expected to formally report on his work. This being said, it was discovered that the program never produced the effect Dulles was looking for. Gottleib learned through his experiments that it was possible to destroy the human mind but not reprogram it. By the end of 1963, going into 1964, the program wound down and was renamed yet again to MK-SEARCH.

Richard Helms became the director of the CIA in 1966. He was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1972, he was called into President Richard Nixon’s office and was told he was going to be replaced. Before Helms left office, he called Gottlieb in, and they decided the files for MKUltra needed to be destroyed to avoid public outrage and possible prosecution. The chief of the CIA records center hesitated, so Gottleib went there himself to ensure it would be taken care of. Seven boxes of documents were shredded, but not all of them.

Other files dealing with the program were discovered. In a 1974 article for the New York Times, reporter Seymour Hersh revealed the existence of MKUltra. The government investigations were held, but in the end went nowhere because of the evidence that was destroyed. None of the researchers involved were ever investigated.

Darren “Ninetoes” Perdue is a book and media reviewer. When he is not reading, he is watching true crime shows, cooking for his family, or working on a plan for universal domination. If you see him on his porch, say hi. He does not bite…much.

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing, nor do the views or opinions of Crystal Lake necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or its staff. Thank you for understanding.