MK-Ultra: The Covert Operation That Tried Using LSD For Mind Control
CIACIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb created and ran the covert operation code-named MK-Ultra.
In the 1950s, the CIA began to suspect that some American POWs returning from imprisonment during the Korean War had been brainwashed. Fearful that the Soviet Union had a headstart on developing mind control technology, the agency launched their own program code-named MK-Ultra.
For over a decade, MK-Ultra sought to harness a mind control drug. According to NPR, MK-Ultra director Sidney Gottlieb believed that that drug could be LSD, so he spent $24,000 buying up the world’s supply.
This covert operation took place in the United States and abroad and involved 80 institutions and 185 researchers, according to Smithsonian Magazine, though many didn’t know that they were involved in a CIA-drug experiment. Indeed, MK-Ultra often targeted “people who could not fight back,” like prisoners, drug addicts, sex workers, and terminal cancer patients.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesPoet Allen Ginsberg, seen here advocating for marijuana use in 1965, tried LSD for the first time as part of MK-Ultra.
MK-Ultra experiments varied. One, dubbed Operation Midnight Climax, lured men into a brothel, dosed them with LSD, and observed their behavior from behind a two-way mirror. Others involved prisoners, like mob boss Whitey Bulger. He claims that in 1957, he was given LSD every day for a year after volunteering for an experiment that sought to find a cure for schizophrenia.
And some relied on volunteers, like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest author Ken Kesey and poet Allen Ginsberg. According to NPR, both found the experience pleasurable and spread the word about LSD to their friends.
The program officially ended in the 1960s, and most records relating to MK-Ultra were destroyed in 1973 — though some still exist. That said, this covert operation had a definite effect on American counterculture.
MK-Ultra may not have unlocked the secrets to mind control — as far as we know — but it did change society by introducing LSD to Americans.
Operation PBSuccess: The CIA-Led Coup In Guatemala To Protect United Fruit
Wikimedia CommonsWorkers hauling bananas at a United Fruit plantation in Guatemala.
By 1953, the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita Brands International) had a problem. For decades, they’d controlled 42 percent of Guatemala’s land, taking advantage of the country’s dependence on the banana to support its economy. But a democratically elected leader promised to usurp their dominance, so United Fruit reached out to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the CIA for help.
With Eisenhower’s approval, the CIA developed Operation PBSuccess — a covert operation that would displace Guatemala’s democratically elected leader, Jacobo Árbenz, with one supported by the United States, Carlos Castillo Armas, through a coup d’état.
The coup began on June 18, 1954. To ensure its success, the CIA set up a radio station called the “Voice of Liberation.” According to The Washington Post, it spread disinformation and fear by broadcasting messages like: “It is not true that the waters of Lake Atitlan have been poisoned. At our command post here in the jungle we are unable to confirm or deny the report that Castillo Armas has an army of 5,000 men.”
National ArchivesCarlos Castillo Armas, the CIA-backed leader of Operation PBSuccess, arriving in Guatemala City.
With American pilots bombing strategic points in Guatemala City and panic running rampant in the capital, Árbenz quickly gave up. Just nine days into the covert Operation PBSuccess, the democratically elected leader of Guatemala resigned, sought asylum at the Mexican embassy and fled the country.
Though the United States declared the coup a “victory” for democracy over communism, it certainly wasn’t a victory for many people in Guatemala. Political instability surged following Armas’s seizure of power, triggering a bloody and devastating civil war from 1960 until 1996.
Indigenous Maya, many of whom had joined the “Guerrilla Army Of The Poor” to resist the new Guatemala government, were especially persecuted. Some 200,000 were slaughtered in what many refer to today as a “Silent Holocaust” or the “Guatemalan Genocide.”
