Chapter 4. Social Science
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4.4
Project MK-Ultra By Kate McAllister ’22 Beginning in the 1950s, Project MK-Ultra started as a seemingly guiltless research program of the United States’ Central Intelligence Program, but soon became secretive, unethical, and dangerous. As American soldiers returned from the Korean War, it was evident that some individuals had changed in unexplainable ways. It was as if soldiers had been “brainwashed” by the foreign “Communist brainwashers” — the Soviet Union, Korea, China — through the execution of mind control techniques [2]. Perplexed, the CIA director of the time, Allen Dulles, appointed Dr. Sidney Gottlieb to begin experimentation centered around behavior modification as means to understand mind control. The main goal was to master the execution of mind control so that the United States may manipulate foreign leaders through implementation of these techniques [5]. The research conducted by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb was supposed to be experimental. He was to introduce an intervention and then study the direct effects of said intervention. To do so, he would use intrusions such as electro-shock therapy, hypnosis, radiation, and a variety of drugs, toxins, and chemicals. Seemingly, this means of study was reliable, the “X,” an experimental intervention to the subject, would directly cause the “Y,” successful mind control. However, due to Gottlieb’s inability to implement research tactics such as random assignment, control groups, and a double-blind research design, his data collected became unreliable as well as unjustifiable. The projecting question arose: why were these sadistic experiments being conducted? The data was skewed, and the researcher was knowledgeable of his subjects and the data produced by them. These experiments became means of personal vindication which strayed far from their original intention. Dr. Gottlieb—the mad scientist who was free to objectify and control his subjects to the extreme. Although he experimented with many means of behavioral alteration, Dr. Gottlieb became heavily reliant upon the use of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, LSD. LSD affects the user through intensified thoughts, heightened emotions, and elevated sensory awareness. When ingested in high dosages, such effects may manifest as auditory or visual hallucinations. Gottlieb’s experiments became increasingly sadistic. They were no longer a means of identifying how “X” causes “Y,” for victims of Gottlieb experienced situations such as being locked in sensory deprivation chambers and restrained in a straitjacket while dosed with LSD [5]. Funded by many research centers and universities, Dr. Gottlieb conducted the majority of his experiments in American prisons. However, he also enacted secret experimentation in detention centers
throughout Europe and East Asia. By doing so, he was able to capture enemy agents and suspicious individuals and test his drug “potions” as means of escaping legal implications [1]. Despite his horrid secret behavior overseas, Gottlieb, overall, drew data from a range of test subjects. Some individuals freely volunteered, some were coerced through incentives to volunteer, and some were involved in experimentation without knowledge or consent [2]. Despite the presence of a small few who volunteered freely, the majority of his subjects were either given improper informed consent, not debriefed, or placed in great harm outside reason. Gottlieb wished to study reactions without the subject’s knowledge, and to do so, he placed fellow CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill patients and members of the general public in great danger of being drugged without knowledge [5]. James “Whitey” Bulgar, a seasoned criminal and victim of Project MK-Ultra, was dosed with LSD more than 50 times without his consent. In letters written by Bulgar, he notes he and fellow inmates were provided incentives in exchange for their participation. Not only were they incentivized through reduced jail time, but were additionally misinformed in the true nature of the research they were to take part in — they had been told they were taking part in medical research in finding a cure of schizophrenia [6]. Bulgar reports he experienced “hours of paranoia and feeling violent. We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares...I felt like I was going insane” [2]. Bulgar, following his participation in this study, began to turn to more harmful criminal activity—including murder. Some have begun to correlate this change in behavior with the awful treatment he experienced throughout this study. James “Whitey” Bulgar is just one case in which participants were harmed outside of reason, experimented upon without consent, and deceived about the nature of the study. Frank Olson, a United States Army biochemist and biological weapons researcher, died suddenly following his proclamation that he would leave the CIA. Seen as a security threat to the secret nature of MK-Ultra, Gottlieb arranged for Olson to be drugged with LSD. Frank Olson, ignorant to his participation, was dosed and as an individual previously diagnosed with suicidal tendcies, experienced a psychotic episode leading to his death [5]. In fear of a confidentiality breach, Dr. Gottlieb once again subjected an individual to experimentation without voluntary consent, ultimately leading to the death of Frank Olson.
