Further reading for MK ULTRA
Poisoner in Chief by Stephen Kinzer
OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence by R. Harris Smith
MK ULTRA was a decades-spanning umbrella project organized by the CIA and carried out during The Cold War by a shadowy network of research outfits who sought to, among many expected outcomes, weaponize LSD to facilitate mind control and better methods of interrogation. In the name of national security, the CIA carried out many projects under the MK ULTRA umbrella that experimented on American citizens without their consent and, most of the time, without their knowledge.
This is the big one. You have the Church Committee’s findings on this project to thank for the direction that conspiracy theory took in the latter half of the twentieth century. Its reality is not the high-flying conspiracy theory that modern crazies make it out to be, however. Though, it is on par with the sort of experimentation that the Nazis performed in concentration camps during The Holocaust, it produced no known successes but did result in psychological research that could be put to use in other places. For the most part, it was a heinous battery of torture carried out on American citizens that shattered many people and ended many lives out of the CIA’s sheer terror and paranoia at the thought of being outdone by the Soviet Union.
The usual conspiracy theory specimens that turn up in headlines today, like Qanon,, Project Monarch, and even bonkers stories like The Montauk Project wouldn’t have the legs and staying power that they do if the CIA hadn’t carried this one out in the first place.
Episodes: 482-486
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