Author: Pedro Martínez
Essay
PROYECT MK-ULTRA Project MKUltra sometimes referred to as CIA’s mind control program; they made human experiments, they tortured and created problems with foreigner people, U.S.A civilians and Russian spies, some of the problems were diseases and violations of human rights, the goal was search of techniques for Cold War. Before this project, some precursor’s experiments were made by the Nazi’s Scientifics. As a result, they began MKUltra; a small amount of members of the government knew its existence. The CIA made this program for Cold War causing and making experiments and tortures; they made goals for this project, they thought this would be a good excuse for mind control experiments but they don’t imagined the damages and the consequences they would create, abusing civilians and making experiments with LSD. The program began in the early 1950’s, was officially sanctioned in 1953, the meaning of MKUltra; MK is a cryptonym for secret programs, followed by the word Ultra which had previously been used to designate the most secret classification of WWII intelligence, the project was sponsored by the agency’s Technical Services Staff. In 1945 the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency was established and given direct responsibility for Operation Paperclip a precursor experiment, the program recruited former Nazi scientists after several programs, they created MKUltra. Headed by Sidney Gottlieb, The project was started on the order of CIA by director Allen Welsh Dulles on April 13, 1953. Its aim was to develop mind-controlling drugs, as well as, use this against the soviet bloc in Cold War. Most MKUltra records were deliberately destroyed in 1973 by order of Richard Helms, of then CIA director; it has been difficult, if not impossible, to investigate and understand of the more than 150 sub-projects sponsored by MKUltra and related programs. 11
Author: Pedro Martínez
MKUltra was concerned with the research and development of chemical biological and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior. One of the experiments was to develop mind-controlling drugs to use against soviets, they use mind control techniques on U.S war prisoners. The scope of MKUltra effort, Subproject 54, was the Navy’s top secret “Perfect Concussion” program, which was supposed to use sub-aural frequencies, blasts to erase memory. However, the program was never carried out. Some of the tortures were sensory deprivation, drugs, isolation, etc; this made the human body to get at max resistance, they used physical methods to create harm, shocks, confusion, paralysis and mental confusion, they used a lot of substances to knockout the body; the objective was develop effective methods of torture and interrogation for information. The early effort of MKUltra involved the testing of Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), first synthesized in 1938. CIA operatives wanted to know if foreign intelligence agents could defect against their will. Subjects the least likely to “put up a fight” were chosen; LSD would also be administered to doctors, military personnel, CIA agents, and members of the general public, most cases without their knowledge. On the other hand, there were allegations that scientists, hire and then drugging to prostitutes; the few subjects who did volunteer were usually singled out for the more extreme experiment. The Watergate scandal in 1972 would start to bring major government impropriety to the public’s attention; Richard Helms ordered the cancellation of MKUltra and the immediate destruction of all documents and files.
12
From my perspective MKUltra was a huge project from CIA with the goal of search of interrogation techniques in Cold War, causing a lot of consequences to third persons and violations of human’s rights. At the end of project the director of CIA, made the call to destroy all documents linked to all MKUltra projects, but nevertheless the damage was already done. Tortures and experiments were made with a lot of people, a lot of programs were created, approximately more than 150 sub-projects, most of this were funded by institutions, colleges and universities. This project made a lot of damages, some of this irreversible to people, they killed humans for research, those persons were U.S.A civilians; for this experiments they created problems with some members of the government causing this project to shut down. All secrets and evil projects have an end, it doesn’t matter if you don’t say the truth or try to cover up something, experiments, tortures and other inhuman things, at the end this will be known by someone and my opinion this project is a crime against humanity not recognized around the world.