Answers to the questions on my CP handout

Of Artichokes, Nazis and Sleepers.

The Culture Days are over and now we are unstoppably heading towards the great KGP. However, I have decided to take some time to answer the questions that are on the bottom of the handout of my presentation, since I think that they are really interesting and worth looking at. As it says on the handout, I unfortunately couldn’t include them in my presentation because of the strict time limit. Now, let’s get started!

First of all, I hope you still remember my topic, Project MKUltra. Just for a short overview, it was an illegal human research program run by the CIA during the Cold War with the purpose of the study of mind control, interrogation methods and behavior modification in which the CIA abused unwitting American citizens as test subjects by for example surreptitiously drugging them with LSD in order to examine how it alters their behavior. 

Further aspects upon which I stumbled across during my research are outlined in the questions:

• What do the Nazis have to do with Project MKUltra/ Project Artichoke?
  
• What is the FOIA and what role did it play during the revelation?
• What is the connection between the movie The Manchurian Candidate and MKUltra?
• What is psychic driving and how did Dr. Cameron induce the vegetable state in the subjects?
• Were any public lawsuits that were filed against the US government subsequent to the investigations successful?

Human experiments in Buchenwald

1. After WWII there was a race between American and Soviet intelligence agencies for German scientists (mainly rocket scientists and technicians) and their expertise, with the main purpose of denying exactly that to the enemy. The Office of Strategic Services (one of the predecessors of the CIA) for example established Operation Paperclip, trough which they transferred these former Nazi-scientists to America. They created false employment and political biographies in order to “bleach” them of their Nazism and then employed them for research. The most famous of the sometimes Paperclip Boys called scientists would be Wernher von Braun, a rocket scientist.However, the OSS was also interested in Nazi physicians (= Ärzte; don’t mix it up with physicist which is Physiker in German) and their unethical human experiments. Especially after the Allies freed the concentration camps and were confronted with these gruesome experiments, both from reports of detainees as well as from remains, the agents of the OSS have shown interest. Sadly they did not only see which atrocities the camp physicians have inflicted on the inmates but rather what one can generally inflict on someone.
   
   To cut a long story short, some of these camp physicians were prevented by the OSS from a sentence by the Medical Nuremberg Trials and were then allowed to continue with their experiments for Project Artichoke and other covert operations (including chemical and biological warfare) under the protection of the OSS (later the CIA).
   One of these camp physicians would be Kurt Blome who experimented with plague vaccines and nerve gases on concentration camp prisoners and after WWII was employed by the CIA. However, since he was denied a visa for the USA, his research took place in Germany (but still for Project Artichoke)



2. FOIA stands for Freedom of Information Act and was issued in 1967. It is a freedom of information law and allows the disclosure of documents by the US government and agencies like the CIA. However, over the years, it was often limited.
   
   As I have said in my presentation, the majority of MKUltra related documents was destroyed in 1973 by order of then-CIA director Richard Helms, which made the first investigations difficult for they had to rely largely on the sworn testimony of participants. This was in 1975. In 1977, though, they found a new record of MKUltra in form of 20,000 documents (which is still not very much for such a project) which were back then incorrectly stored in a financial records building and thus survived the destruction. This led to the Senate hearings in which most of what we know about MKUltra today was revealed. These documents were incidentally discovered subsequent to a FOIA request.




3. In The Manchurian Candidate two US-American soldiers were brainwashed during the war in Kuwait and featured with implants. They were manipulated and made unwitting sleepers which are normal people who have a normal life until they are “activated” usually by a trigger word or phrase, in order to for example kill somebody or execute something. After being “activated”, they don’t have a will of their own anymore and just obey.
   
   During Project Artichoke and MKUltra they tried to create such sleepers and researched on how to possibly manipulate/brainwash someone in this way and how to make them respond to such a trigger word. They didn’t use implants though of course, but tried the programming of multiple personalities with electroshock therapies etc.
   
   Here’s the trailer of The Manchurian Candidate with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep just in case you’re interested:
   
   
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGqiVOqxpOo
   
   
4. Psychic driving is a special and extraordinarily vicious brainwashing method introduced and researched by Dr. Ewen Cameron (a renowned psychiatrist who was president of the Canadian, American and World Psychiatric Associations and by the way one of the scientific heads of MKUltra – here you can see which dimensions it had, just unbelievable). 
   It works in two stages as following: Firstly he induced a vegetable (or vegetative) state in the subject trough a combination of massive amounts of electroconvulsive shock, drug-induced coma and sensory deprivation. Once being in that state they were usually unable to feed
   
   themselves, to state even basic information like name, location, the date etc. and incontinent of stool and urine. Subsequently, they were exposed to hundreds of hours of tape loops (tapes that are played continuously) played to them trough earphones, special helmets or speakers in the isolation room. Usually, they were also administered muscular paralytic drugs to restrain them for and during the procedure. Psychic driving purposed to “reprogram” the subject in order to get control of them (or for example to make them a sleeper – see question number 3). 
   
   Here's a short video about Psychic Driving if you are interested (sadly I can't post it directly since Blogger is on the blink ... again):
    
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCEh9VltC2E
   
   
5. After the revelation there were indeed filed public lawsuits against the US government and the CIA. However, these lawsuits were almost always dismissed and not successful.  Nevertheless, the government had to financially compensate several plaintiffs trough court order, out-of-court settlement or even acts of Congress, like the compensation of Frank Olson’s family. He was an US Army scientist who worked for the CIA on biological warfare and committed suicide (reportedly) after having been surreptitiously drugged together with nine other scientists during a conference. His case is probably the most famous of MKUltra.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Well, I hope I could give you a nice answer to all the questions and hopefully you will remember MKUltra as one of the dark chapters of American history.
If you have by any chance more questions about this topic, then by all means write them in the comments and I will try to answer them as soon as possible.
But for now, have a nice weekend and don’t forget: 

NEVER LEAVE YOUR DRINK IN THE CLUB UNATTENDED – OR A CIA ASSET MIGHT COME AND DRUG YOU!