capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.”
In January 1973, MKULTRA records were destroyed by Technical Services Division personnel acting on the verbal orders of Dr Sidney Gottlieb, Chief of TSD. Dr Gottlieb has testified, and former Director Helms has confirmed, that in ordering the records destroyed, Dr Gottlieb was carrying out the verbal order of then DCI Helms.
MKULTRA began with a proposal from the Assistant Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Helms, to the DCI, outlining a special funding mechanism for highly sensitive CIA research and development projects that studied the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior. The projects involved:
Research to develop a capability in the covert use of biological and chemical materials. This area involves production of various physiological conditions which could support present or future clandestine operations. Aside from the offensive potential, the development of a comprehensive ability in this field of covert chemical and biological warfare gives us a thorough knowledge of the enemy’s theoretical potential, thus enabling us to defend ourselves against a foe who might not be as restrained in the use of these techniques as we are.
MKULTRA was approved by the DCI on 13 April 1953 along the lines proposed by ADDP Helms.
Part of the rationale for the establishment of this special funding mechanism was its extreme sensitivity. The Inspector General’s survey of MKULTRA in 1963 noted the following reasons for this sensitivity:
a. Research in the manipulation of human behavior is considered by many authorities in medicine and related fields to be professionally unethical, therefore the reputations of professional participants in the MKULTRA program are on occasion in jeopardy.
b. Some MKULTRA activities raise questions of legality implicit in the original charter.
c. A final phase of the testing of MKULTRA products places the rights and interests of US citizens in jeopardy.
d. Public disclosure of some aspects of MKULTRA activity could induce serious adverse reaction in US public opinion, as well as stimulate offensive and defensive action in this field on the part of foreign intelligence services.
Over the ten-year life of the program, many “additional avenues to the control of human behavior” were designated as appropriate for investigation under the MKULTRA charter. These include radiation electroshock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment substances, and paramilitary devices and materials.
The research and development of materials to be used for altering human behavior consisted of three phases: first, the search for materials suitable for study; second, laboratory testing on voluntary human subjects in various types of institutions; third, the application of MKULTRA materials in normal life settings.
The search for suitable materials was conducted though standing arrangements with specialists in universities, pharmaceutical houses, hospitals, state and federal institutions, and private research organizations. The annual grants of funds to these specialists were made under ostensible research foundation auspices, thereby concealing the CIA’s interest from the specialist’s institution.
The next phase of the MKULTRA program involved physicians, toxicologists, and other specialists in mental, narcotics, and general hospitals, and in prisons. Utilizing the products and findings of the basic research phase, they conducted intensive tests on human subjects.
One of the first studies was conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health. This study was intended to test various drugs, including hallucinogenics, at the NIMH Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Kentucky. The “Lexington Rehabilitation Center,” as it was then called, was a prison for drug addicts serving sentences for drug violations.
The test subjects were volunteer prisoners who, after taking a brief physical examination and signing a general consent form, were administered hallucinogenic drugs. As a reward for participation in the program, the addicts were provided with the drugs of their addiction.
LSD was one of the materials tested in the MKULTRA program. The final phase of LSD testing involved surreptitious administration to unwitting nonvolunteer subjects in normal life settings by undercover officers of the Bureau of Narcotics acting for the CIA.
The rationale for such testing was “that testing of materials under accepted scientific procedures fails to disclose the full pattern of reactions and attributions that may occur in operational situations.”
According to the CIA, the advantage of the relationship with the Bureau was that
test subjects could be sought and cultivated within the setting of narcotics control. Some subjects have been informers or members of suspect criminal elements from whom the [Bureau of Narcotics] has obtained results of operational value through the tests. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the substances on individuals at all social levels, high and low, native American and foreign, is of great significance and testing has been performed on a variety of individuals within these categories.
A special procedure, designated MKDELTA, was established to govern the use of MKULTRA materials abroad. Such materials were used on a number of occasions. Because MKULTRA records were destroyed, it is impossible to reconstruct the operational use of MKULTRA materials by the CIA overseas; it has been determined that the use of these materials abroad began in 1953, and possibly as early as 1950.
Drugs were used primarily as an aid to interrogations, but MKULTRA/MKDELTA materials were also used for harassment, discrediting or disabling purposes. According to an Inspector General Survey of the Technical Services Division of the CIA in 1957—an inspection which did not discover the MKULTRA projects involving the surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting, nonvolunteer subjects—the CIA had developed six drugs for operational use and they had been used in six different operations on a total of thirty-three subjects. By 1963 the number of operations and subjects had increased substantially.
In the spring of 1963, during a wide-ranging Inspector General survey of the Technical Services Division, a member of the Inspector General’s staff, John Vance, learned about MKULTRA and about the project involving the surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting, nonvoluntary human subjects. As a result of the discovery and the Inspector General’s subsequent report, this testing was halted and much tighter administrative controls were imposed on the program. According to the CIA, the project was decreased significantly each budget year until its complete termination in the late 1960s.
Marilyn Monroe
By 1962 the career of screen goddess Marilyn Monroe was on a steep slide.
On 5 August 1962 Monroe was found dead by her housekeeper, Mrs Eunice Murray, from what appeared to be a massive overdose of Nembutal and chloral hydrate. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s court, bearing in mind Monroe’s mental health, returned a verdict of suicide.
The sad death of Marilyn Monroe might have remained lamented but uncontroversial had it not been for her fascinating choice of boyfriends in the last months of her life. One squeeze was John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America. When “Jack” tired of Monroe he passed her on to his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General. Monroe also took as a bedtime companion Sam Giancana, the Mafia boss who ran Crime America Inc. while JFK ran the orthodox economy.
Giancana wiretapped her house. So did Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa and J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. According to Hollywood private investigator Fred Otash, who carried out some of the wiretaps, the Monroe tapes “are probably the most interesting ever made—with the exception of Watergate”. There are rumours that the tapes turned throughout the evening of Monroe’s death and that what they reveal is a minute-by-minute record of Monroe’s murder.
Nearly all the “Monroe was Murdered” conspiracy theories home in on JFK. According to these accounts, Monroe had fallen in love with the president and had been led to believe, or had persuaded herself, that JFK was
