Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) is intensifying her campaign to force the declassification of CIA documents related to Project MKUltra, alleging this week that the agency removed records from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The task force she chairs on declassifying federal secrets is preparing to hold hearings on the program, which ran from 1953 to the early 1970s.
MKUltra was a clandestine CIA operation that explored mind control, interrogation techniques, and behavioral modification using drugs, electric shocks, hypnosis, and sensory deprivation. According to the New York Times, the program involved 80 institutions across the United States, including 44 colleges and universities. The Cold War effort tested potential truth serums and knockout drops, most famously LSD and a substance referred to as K.
Human Subjects: Criminals and Cancer Patients
Testimonies from a 1977 Senate hearing revealed that the CIA used vulnerable populations as test subjects. Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner said 8,000 documents showed experiments on “criminal sexual psychopaths” in state hospitals and terminal cancer patients. The Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy documented that 142 people labeled “criminal-sexual psychopaths” were confined at Michigan’s Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Other subjects were forced to listen to looped tapes for up to 20 hours a day, even during drug-induced sleep, with speakers placed under pillows.
Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron, a psychiatrist at McGill University’s Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, led research on “psychic driving,” aimed at reprogramming personalities. His work was funded by MKUltra.
Georgetown University Link
A top-secret 1954 memo from the George Washington University archives indicates the CIA considered using Georgetown University Medical School as a testing site for terminal cancer patients under the guise of a biological and chemical warfare program. The CIA funneled $375,000 through a covert medical fund called the Geschikter Foundation for Medical Research. While Turner said no testing occurred there, former Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-Pa.) concluded after reviewing CIA documents that tests did take place on campus, though university officials may not have known the agency was involved.
For more on how government agencies have handled classified materials, read about Trump’s executive order expanding retirement access, which touches on federal transparency issues.
Destruction and Survival of Records
In 1973, during the Watergate scandal, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of MKUltra files. However, more than 20,000 documents survived due to misfiling, according to the Harvard paper and a report from El País. Still, questions remain about how many participants and institutions were aware of the CIA’s involvement. Former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) urged Turner in 1977 to inform all subjects of their use.
Luna’s task force is now seeking to locate these documents. On Wednesday, she accused the CIA of confiscating records from the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. The lawmaker, who chairs the House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, said late last month that a hearing on MKUltra files is imminent. For context on the task force’s broader work, see Luna’s House task force schedules May hearing on CIA’s MKUltra mind control program.
The push for transparency comes as other declassification efforts are underway. Meanwhile, a University of Pennsylvania study on GLP-1 drug side effects highlights how scientific research can have unintended consequences, echoing the ethical concerns of MKUltra.
