Project MK-ULTRA: The CIA's 20-Year Mind-Control Program
LSD on civilians, electroshock on children, hypnosis-induced assassins. Most of the files were destroyed. We only know what survived.
From 1953 to 1973, the CIA ran 162 sub-projects under the umbrella of MK-ULTRA - a program designed to find a reliable method of mind control. Subjects included prison inmates, mental patients, prostitutes (recruited via a CIA-run brothel in San Francisco called Operation Midnight Climax), soldiers, and unwitting members of the public dosed with LSD without their consent.
The program's director, sidney Gottlieb, ordered all files destroyed in 1973. A clerical error left 20,000 documents in a financial records vault. They were released in 1977 after FOIA lawsuits.
What we know happened: Frank Olson, an Army biochemist, was secretly dosed with LSD at a CIA retreat in 1953. Nine days later he went out a 13th-floor window in Manhattan. The CIA called it suicide. His son had his body exhumed in 1994; forensic evidence indicated blunt-force trauma before the fall. The CIA settled with the family.
What we don't know: Everything Gottlieb burned.