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The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control
- zyxzevn 7y agoInterview with Stephen Kinzer (On Ripple Effect Podcast) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2-Z77BhI1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2-Z77BhI1c
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- AndyMcConachie 7y agoThere's nothing in that article that we didn't already know. It seems like this is only getting attention now because someone wrote a book. Is there some new revelation in this book that makes it worth reading?
- en-us 7y agohttps://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- AndyMcConachie 7y agoI'm not making fun of anyone. I'm interested in what's new in this book. MKULTRA is old news. Surely there must be something new in this book that previous books haven't covered. What is it?
- Synaesthesia 7y agoI don't think many people know the full extent of the MKULTRA programs, especially the attempts at mind control, brainwashing, dosing people with psychedelics unknowningly, extensive torture with drugs, experimentation on prisoners and stuff. Some of it approaches the Nazi experiments in just the sheer immorality of it all.
- marnett 7y agoI agree no one knows "the full extent", and I do not think we ever will. A lot of information is out there though - available as far back as the late 80s. A lot of this came out when Harold Blauer's [0] sued the U.S. government [1] for testing drugs on him without anyone's consent when he was institutionalized for depression. The drug tests were covered up for 22 years... I'm happy to see some headlines to hopefully inform some more folks, but you really have to go digging for this stuff intentionally to get to juicy details. If you are interested in doing so, I recommend picking up Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Blauer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Blauer [1] https://apnews.com/2e5220ecb195844edacfbffdb0a37a5a https://apnews.com/2e5220ecb195844edacfbffdb0a37a5a
- en-us 7y agoThe making fun part doesn't apply, but my point is that just because this isn't new to you doesn't mean it is something "everyone knows". So when you say "There's nothing in that article that we didn't already know" it is both incorrect and dismissive of those who haven't learned of this yet.
- Yuval_Halevi 7y ago"During the early period of the Cold War, the CIA became convinced that communists had discovered a drug or technique that would allow them to control human minds. " When I read it I actually tried to imagine how it was to live back then and to act based on rumors. It was a crazy time to be a secret agent that's for sure
- ableal 7y agoA good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing
- maskull 7y agoI imagine there is still a lot of action based on rumors. Absolute truth is hard to come by.
- Synaesthesia 7y agoThe CIA is so ideologically brainwashed themselves that they end up doing things like this, they often can't see the simple truth right in front of them.
- caseysoftware 7y agoThe US just finished a multi-year investigation into rumors fueled by a dossier created with rumors. People don't change, just the people involved.
- bananocurrency 7y agothis is an interesting way of looking at things -- to compare the potential discovery of mind control to the investigation of a long time grifter. Your phrasing almost makes it seem as if there is just as much truth to each "rumour".
- qwerty456127 7y agoThis is weird. I can hardly imagine how can LSD be used to control somebody rather than to free him. Every single time I've taken LSD (or other psychedelics) it felt great. The first time I have taken it I've also experienced sense of beauty and love so deep and extatic I could not previously imagine, another sense I've experienced deeply was how absurd violence, as well as pride and hatred are. It also helped me to realize non-duality and mindfulness so now I fear neither death nor imprisionment, let alone ridiculous verbal manipulations. Nevertheless I haven't became a hippie, I still maintain my hygiene and do my job. It is also a well-known fact LSD doesn't work the next day you take it and you have to rest for about a weak before you can repeat the trip (but, to be honest, I am to mention I haven't checked this myself).
- platoscubicle 7y agoWith a high enough dose of LSD, your current models of the world break down. Maybe the CIA was trying to imprint new reality tunnels for people during this vulnerable point in the trip.
- o-__-o 7y agoMemories are fleeting depending on a host of chemical balances, life changes, and other external factors. You can impress new thoughts on certain people without much effort. Gaslighting is a great example of imprinting new realities. On a greater scale, Your mind differentiates reality from non-reality with dreams. When your trip becomes indistinguishable from dreams, your mind is left pulling apart the pieces and making sense of everything. Traumatic events and major life changes can also leave your mind in a similar state. I’ve been doing experiments with my wife to “inject” a different time in her head when I come to bed. My results are mixed during the moment, but she claims to everyone I come to bed at the time I’ve injected. I’m sure in a more controlled environment with patients one could “inject” anything that seems plausible to the naked eye
- qwerty456127 7y agoDoesn't the eye loose the habit of beinh naked and considering whatever it encounters plausible given some experience with psychedelics and meditation? A major point of spiritual training is to stop taking perception and thoughts serious.
- lerie 7y agopeople still think this is news?
- 5trokerac3 7y ago“I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.” - Alexander Acosta Who cares what the CIA did 60 years ago? Why isn't NPR reporting on what they may be doing now?
- gotts 7y agoI believe that some people definitely care about what their secret services did 60 years ago. I find these archives very useful in understanding how they operate and what methods that use. 60 years later but are they now that different than before? Some things don't change.
- markus_zhang 7y agoI think it's more or less the "We don't benefit if we give that to the public but we have to spend a lot of time double checking so maybe we just don't do it" mindset.
- zyxzevn 7y agoAnything that the CIA is doing now is protected with "national security". They can do it with anything they are related to. Former CIA Officer Kevin Shipp [explains how this works and how it is completely misused](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQouKi7xDpM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQouKi7xDpM)
- 2mc84j395hn663h 7y agoBecause finding out that the research on "mind control" continued would be a big scandal, and in the past journalists like Gary Webb and Michael Hastings, who uncovered scandals about the CIA, did not to end well. Probably the CIA didn't kill them, but I'm convinced it contributed to mess up their life enough to disrupt their work. Intelligence agencies around the world consider themselves, rightfully or not, guardians of national interests. If a journalist works to uncover stories that could damage them, she/he may be end up being considered a threat not only to the agency, but also to national interests and that would put she/he at risk. Since there are not enough structures in place to let unjust behaviors on the part of intelligence to be scrutinized, researching on such things is not something I would do without also expecting ill-fated consequences.
- mcurtis 7y agoI'm sure most people in power weren't taking this research seriously even 60 years ago, when it was running.
- rmilejczz 7y agoIdk how you can be so sure of then when we were actively researching little green men from space as a threat to national security around the same time. The US govt has engaged in some pretty outlandish “research”
- cf141q5325 7y agoThe criminals doing it took it serious, the atrocities were real and the list of victims whos lives they ruined is rather long. Once people hear MK ULTRA they think about staring at goats and LSD but the darker story behind it is the research on sensory deprivation, on torture to break involuntary subjects more reliably. From the school of Americas to Guantanamo to by now most regimes across the world, they all have to thank those "pioneers" of modern torture. The Canadian Dr Cameron who got the funding for his work on psychic driving through MKUltra isnt mentioned in the article but his work on the subject cant be described as anything but monstrous. edit: "A Question of Torture" by Alfred W. McCoy is a good book on the subject.
- Synaesthesia 7y agoThat's correct. The CIA have actually learned the best form of torture is psychological torture and mastered that.
- DoctorOetker 7y agoon the NPR site, it offers me text only version, but then the relevant article is not in the short displayed list of articles. does anyone know the "sId" code? an example URL of the text only site: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=759523615 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=759523615
- sgift 7y agohttps://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=758989641 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=758989641
- DoctorOetker 7y agomay I enquire what steps you took to procure this link?
- sgift 7y agoProbably GDPR related - I always get a decision page when I open NPR which has a link to the text version and one to the normal version (+the "and you accept all our tracking" disclaimer).
- DoctorOetker 7y agome too, but when I click for the text version 9 times out of 10 it doesn't bring me to the article but to a page with links to some of the recent articles that often does not include the originally referenced article
- JetSpiegel 7y agoIt's right after the date on the URL
- DoctorOetker 7y agothanks!
- Mindwipe 7y agoThere's a book called Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control by Dominic Streatfeild that goes into this topic well if people are interested. (And by well I mean takes a fairly sceptical view that they ever really got anywhere, and generally makes the case that the CIA ended up so desperate to counter perceived Russian abilities that they really stopped asking if any of the people they were hiring in this area were either total con-men or just completely nuts.)
- ghobs91 7y agoThe Netflix show Stranger Things was loosely based on this. It was originally going to be called "Montauk" and take place on Long Island, as there were conspiracies of mind control, time travel, and other experiments going on at Montauk Air Force base.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- senorjazz 7y agoNever understood they experimented with LSD, I would have though to unpredictable, something like scopolamine would have had better effects. It is often used in South America to control their victims as if all there free will is gone. It is highly effective in small doses (not LSD small but still quite small), the victim is often taking to the ATM and told to take out the money which they do willingly. Never tried it myself, but the wife had it used on her when a student, luckily she had only about $15 in her bank account at the time, but says it is like being in a dazed / dream like state where you just go through the motions
- eof 7y agoWell LSD was very new at the time. Additionally people’s perceptions are drastically changed while on LSD, and those perceptions are highly variable based on set and setting of the trip. Seems a very good candidate to me to get people to believe something they wouldn’t have otherwise.
- bowcoy 7y agoThey experimented with a wide array of drugs, including LSD, fish poison, and Scopolamine. At first, the CIA was predominantly concerned with (aerosol) weaponization and investigating if dosing an unwitting agent, diplomat, or soldier with LSD could be used to extract secrets. Later they became interested in the counter culture of the 60s (and making sure the Russians were not turning a new generation against its own society/military). https://fightingmonarch.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/human-drug-testing-by-the-cia-1977.pdf https://fightingmonarch.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/human-dr... > Among the drugs illegally used by CIA against American citizens are (a) hypnotic sedatives such as amobarbital, aprobarbital, butabarbital sodium, chloral hydrate, methotrimeprazine hydrochloride, midazolam hydrochloride, paraldehyde, pentobarbital, pentobarbital sodium, quazepam, secobarbital sodium, sodium pentobarbital, temazepam, triazolam, and zolpidem tartrate, (b) hypnotics like demerol, desoxyn (combined with sodium pentothal), methyprylon, and pentothal acid, and (c) memory blockers such as acetylcholine, BZ, and scopolamine. https://patents.google.com/patent/US4858612A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US4858612A/en > A method and apparatus for simulation of hearing in mammals by introduction of a plurality of microwaves into the region of the auditory cortex is shown and described. A microphone is used to transform sound signals into electrical signals which are in turn analyzed and processed to provide controls for generating a plurality of microwave signals at different frequencies. The multifrequency microwaves are then applied to the brain in the region of the auditory cortex. By this method sounds are perceived by the mammal which are representative of the original sound received by the microphone. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol5no2/html/v05i2a09p_0001.htm https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig... > Only a handful of cases in which scopolamine was used for police interrogation came to public notice, though there is evidence suggesting that some police forces may have used it extensively. 2, 16 One police writer claims that the threat of scopolamine interrogation has been effective in extracting confessions from criminal suspects, who are told they will first be rendered unconscious by chloral hydrate placed covertly in their coffee or drinking water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_serum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_serum > The United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) experimented with the use of mescaline, scopolamine, and marijuana as possible truth drugs during World War II. They concluded that the effects were not much different from those of alcohol: subjects became more talkative but that did not mean they were more truthful. Like hypnosis, there were also issues of suggestibility and interviewer influence. Cases involving scopolamine resulted in a mixture of testimonies both for and against those suspected, at times directly contradicting each other.
- 2mc84j395hn663h 7y agoOnly tangentially related since the following is not about "mind control" but about "psychological control". Seems like in 2007 CIA was still interested in that. This is an extract from the section "Special Handling" in [1]: #+BEGIN_QUOTE A well-trained espionage recruiter will search for vulnerable targets. Professional intelligence officers are trained to "spot" outward signs of trouble in a person's history or behavior -- such as tumultuous relationships or frequent job changes -- and to evaluate the deeper, more enduring psychological dysfunctions that may be at the root of the problems. These professional recruiters are trained do deploy sophisticated psychological control techniques matched to the vulnerabilities they have detected in order to manipulate, apply pressure, or induce a person to commit espionage. Some intelligence services do not limit themselves to exploiting pre-existing problems, but may actively foster crises to enhance the target's susceptibility to recruitment. Common forms of such aggressive pursuit and manipulation of targets include emotional or sexual entrapment and financial manipulation through increasing the target's level of debt. A psychologically vulnerable target's grandiosity, sense of being above the rules, or vengeful impulses can all be manipulated in the service of recruitment. #+END_QUOTE What I found interesting was that the same terminology ("psychological control", "handler") was used also by stratfor's Friedman in the stratfor leaks [2]. [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0001407031.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3QAe64n0JhVjmMuutjXvLPVlZJ_MGS_kK8iFFxZLhOKmM0HWlWuU9xmxs https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0001407031.... [2] https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=202526&fbclid=IwAR2_vz-3g4foV3eO1DWhYTJ5Z8ZsF6aLXnQbkgUMAWYaJOxFYIeuGNV9ckg https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=202526&fbc...
- yters 7y agoWhy would the government take any of these woo topics so seriously? Is there some kind of factual basis they are using, something concrete that would suggest there is merit? I'm doubtful it's based on complete conjecture and wishful thinking, but maybe you give people enough money and enough leeway and they'll just research oddball stuff.
- sharot4 7y agoBy "woo" topic you mean "mind control"? I like to do a thought experiment. If mind control is possible, will the CIA want to use it? If the CIA uses mind control, will they tell you about it? If they say that the program was a failure and was shut down, are they telling the truth? I recommend taking a look into a thing called "trauma-based mind control". It may alter your way of thinking. Or it may not.
- yters 7y agoWell, there is certainly is a kind of mind control used by many ideologies. So, ideology based mind control certainly happens. Also, hypnotic mind control is possible to some degree. I guess it depends on what is meant by mind control, because some forms are very common and not at all controversial.
- razakel 7y agoIt's simple: if the Soviets have it, we should too. I'd point you in the direction of Jon Ronson's The Men Who Stare At Goats for more detail (the book is non-fiction, but the movie is fiction).
- pseingatl 7y agoFormer CIA mind control projects: Ted Kaczyinski Charles Manson
- calibas 7y agoI find it odd that people make such a big deal about the failed "mind control" programs, while ignoring the ones that were disturbingly successful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Delgado https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Rodr%C3%ADgue...
- Synaesthesia 7y agoThey were “mind control” but also torture and interrogation techniques. Some very disturbing and immoral experiments like dosing people unknowingly, torturing people with them, playing loops repeatedly etc.
- dr_dshiv 7y agoYes! Great reference. I mean, a hell of a lot of fundamental research is beyond ethics. Maybe the CIA has an island somewhere?
- yters 7y agoInteresting, wonder if we could modulate the electric grid and influence the emotions of a nation?
- 2mc84j395hn663h 7y agoSome doctors (many disagree) speculate that microwave weapons are the "prime suspect" in Cuba's [1] and China's [2] embassy attacks in the recent years. What struck me in the article was Frey's: “Based on what I know, it will remain a mystery.” I am skeptic on the fact that it was specifically microwaves (but also on the hypothesis it was crickets [3]), but who knows? From what we know whole-nation influence trough electrical grid seems far-fetched, but if trough EM radiation you could trigger action potentials in the auditory system, maybe it would be possible to do that to the limbic system as well. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/science/sonic-attack-cuba-microwave.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/science/sonic-attack-cuba... [2] https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/more-americans-in-china-say-theyre-victims-of-mysterious-health-attacks/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/more-americans-in-ch... [3] https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/canada-halves-diplomatic-staff-in-cuba-after-another-mysterious-brain-injury/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/canada-halves-diplom...
- anentropic 7y agore same book and topics, some different details pulled out: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/06/from-mind-control-to-murder-how-a-deadly-fall-revealed-the-cias-darkest-secrets https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/06/from-mind-co...
- jonplackett 7y agoAdmittedly unrelated but... I love that this link has a “decline tracking cookies and just give me plain text version of the site”
- saagarjha 7y agoIt doesn't look like this is an option for American readers, unfortunately :(
- kd3 7y agoInteresting that the CIA imported LSD. I thought they were just Cocaine Importing Agency. I guess we can expect anything from Criminals In Action.
- RaceWon 7y ago> I thought they were just Cocaine Importing Agency. No not at all--[1] Viet Nam was all about protecting the Opium Poppy... kinda like "we" do in Afghanistan now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_trafficking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffi...
- yters 7y agoDid they research news media and social media?
- JetSpiegel 7y ago> Whitey Bulger was one of the prisoners who volunteered for what he was told was an experiment aimed at finding a cure for schizophrenia. As part of this experiment, he was given LSD every day for more than a year. He later realized that this had nothing to do with schizophrenia and he was a guinea pig in a government experiment aimed at seeing what people's long-term reactions to LSD was. Essentially, could we make a person lose his mind by feeding him LSD every day over such a long period? Can a mind be destroyed but continue to have self-awareness to realize it was being treated as a guinea pig? Does the experiment proved it was all BS?
- sandinmytea 7y agoIt's grim, what will happen to the ones who thought they had this all locked-up. The use of otherwise forbidden topics is especially poignant. The secrets of ancient techniques are inadmissible practically everywhere, thanks to the disturbing involvement of so many sworn oaths against their best interests. As a recipient of their methodology, I can say there's sadly no good results for them in the near future, since what they've been doing produces counter- effects which will both expose, identify them and their various exchanges, records, and put them under the exact same circumstances.