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The Black Vault: A FOIA obsessive’s UFO-filled empire
- Fnoord 6y ago> The Black Vault’s biggest score to date may be its material related to MKUltra, a top-secret CIA project that involved dozens of mind-control experiments on US citizens and others. [..] Why would this be the biggest score (title doesn't reflect it)? Was this the first documentation regarding MKULTRA/ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD? For those interesting in CIA's attempts to explore New Age (e.g. apply "remote viewing") I can recommend the documentary The Men Who Stare At Goats [1]. There's also a Hollywood adaptation of it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats
- api 6y agoThe remote viewing stuff was a bit silly, but the MKUltra stuff included a lot of very unethical human experimentation. These two things are not really in the same category in terms of scandal.
- _jal 6y agoPeople like to laugh about it, and the emphasis on the sillier aspects are, I think, intentional. They got up to some really nasty stuff. Anyone not familiar with the program would do well to spend a couple minutes on the summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra And of course it served as the template for how to deal with the Abu Ghraib fallout: Given the CIA's purposeful destruction of most records, its failure to follow informed consent protocols with thousands of participants, the uncontrolled nature of the experiments, and the lack of follow-up data, the full impact of MKUltra experiments, including deaths, may never be known.
- breakbread 6y agoOne of the crazier projects https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Midnight_Climax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Midnight_Climax
- hnmonkey 6y agoThat is an absolute bombshell of a story and I'd guess that the vast majority of people have never heard of it but would be horrified if they did. It sounds like they even blackmailed the people.
- csilverman 6y agoHoly goddamn. I never heard of that. This is one of those moments when I started to feel shock and horror shifting towards disbelief, and then remembered that this is the CIA and of course they did stuff like that because who would stop them? One of those little examples of how journalism really is one of the last bulwarks between the country we want to think we are and the country we very easily could be.
- nl 6y agoThe Church committee[1] in '75 did some good work to reign in the worst of the intelligence communities work. Most of that has been undone by now though. The CIA's work on LSD wasn't the worst thing going on and - surprisingly to me - the intelligence agencies were far from the worst. Eg, there was a Sloan-Kettering Institute researcher who injected live cancer cells into unwitting humans through out the 1950s and 60s[2]. Or in 1952 a Detroit Hospital administered radioactive iodine to premature babies, and fed it via a tube to healthy non-premature babies. Or the doctor who administered 100 or more rads of radiation after forging consent forms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States#1950s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...
- AndrewBissell 6y agoIf you think that's horrifying, let me introduce you to Dr. Jolly West and the Jimmy Shaver case: https://theintercept.com/2019/11/24/cia-mkultra-louis-jolyon-west/ https://theintercept.com/2019/11/24/cia-mkultra-louis-jolyon... Highly recommend Tom O'Neill's 'CHAOS' for some of the new details he dug up on MKULTRA. The rumor mill has it that he is working on a new book exploring its potential ties to the RFK assassination, the Grateful Dead, and the Jonestown massacre. On the subject of the Jonestown/MKULTRA links, also check out this interview with an aide to Congressman Leo Ryan (who was killed when he went to investigate in Guyana): https://twitter.com/gumby4christ/status/1289361962917191681 https://twitter.com/gumby4christ/status/1289361962917191681
- AndrewBissell 6y ago'The Men Who Stare at Goats' points out that the whole "haha they're making them listen to the Barney song, that drives me crazy when my kids make me put it on too!" was probably a cover for more sinister interrogation or even mind control techniques being explored with music blasted at prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Surely just a coincidence that the cult leader of ISIS was at that same prison ....
- api 6y agoI can certainly see someone being radicalized to the point of delusional psychosis by being victimized in this way.
- aSockPuppeteer 6y agoThere was actually some truth to remote viewing working in very specific scenarios. Operationally is a different story though. The studies, Ganzfeld experiments, said once you learn if you were right or not, your skill improves a little. For some reason young students from Julliard had the highest scores. The test was 4 possible pictures iirc and you must guess the picture another person is looking at. In a meta-analysis over 25 Ganzfeld experiments, where the design enabled the test subject to guess right in 25 percent of the cases, the overall hit rate was 37 percent. The odds for this to happen by chance is about a trillion to one, clearly showing that there has to exist something else than coincidence that enables the test subjects to perceive the telepathically transferred image. When artistically gifted musicians from the Julliard School in New York City were tested, they were even able to produce a hit rate as remarkable as 75 percent. [24,36,44] In a meta-analysis of 653 formal sessions and 126 nonformal sessions of remote viewing, conducted at Princeton University from 1976 to 1999, the overall results gave a significant result with odds against chance of 33 million to one that it was possible for an individual to receive sensory impressions from a distant location. [38-43] 24. Radin, D., Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, New York, United States of America, 2006. 36. Honorton, C., “Meta-analysis of psi ganzfeld Research: A Response to Hyman,” Journal of Parapsychology 49 (1985): 51–91. 1. 38. Jahn, R. G., & Dunne, B. J., “Information and Uncertainty in Remote Perception Research,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 17 no. (2) (2003): 207–41. 39. Jahn, R. G., & Dunne, B. J., “The PEAR Proposition,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 19 no. (2) (2005): 195–245. 40. Puthoff, H. E., “CIA-initiated Remote Vviewing at Stanford Research Institute,” Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies, Summer, 2001: 60–67. 41. Targ, R., “Remote-Viewing Replication: Evaluated by Concept Analysis,” Journal of Parapsychology 58 (1994): 271–84. 42. Targ, R., Limitless Mind: A guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2004. 43. Utts, J. M., An Assessment of the evidence of psychic functioning. JSE 10:3-30, 1996. Accessed October 17, 2013, http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_10_1_utts.pdf http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_10_1_utts.p.... 44. Schlitz, M. J., & Honorton, C., “Ganzfeld psi Performance Within an Artistically Gifted Population,” J Am Soc Psych Res 86 (1992): 83–98. Accessed November 20, 2013, http://media.noetic.org/uploads/files/Ganzfeld_Juliard_Study_Journal_of_American_Society_for_Psychical_Research_1992.pdf http://media.noetic.org/uploads/files/Ganzfeld_Juliard_Study....
- keanebean86 6y agoI assume the CIA leaks mkultra and related stuff to keep the crazies busy and troll other countries. There's also patents for seemingly impossible technology filed by the Navy. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a30645682/navy-ufo-patents-compact-fusion-reactor-inventor/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a30645682...
- HillRat 6y agoExcept MKULTRA was part of CIA’s “family jewels” —- indeed, it was so infamous that a cover letter to the DCI suggested they not familiarize themselves with the program in order to maintain plausible deniability. And MKULTRA was only part of a set of equally concerning operations, such as its progenitors, BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE, or Project OFTEN, which collaborated with pharmaceutical firms to uncover drugs too risky for release that might have covert applications (and which were then tested on unwitting military personnel). While CIA certainly uses disinformation for a variety of reasons, this doesn’t obviate the fact that the agency has been — largely if not quite entirely in the past — a very, very amoral actor.
- davisr 6y ago> a very, very amoral actor A criminal syndicate, perhaps?
- csilverman 6y agoI have to wonder about the extent to which the CIA really believed this was possible, or if it was more along the lines of "well sure, it sounds batshit, but the Soviets are doing it and if there really is something to it, we don't want to be behind in the game." When one has infinite funding and no ethical oversight, the pit really is bottomless.
- sterlind 6y agoMkultra seems pretty plausible to me, at least with the science they had at the time. LSD was making huge waves in the psychiatric community, and many humint objectives like interrogation and brainwashing are inherently applied psychology. LSD was a breakthrough tool that laid the psyche bare, if only they could discover how to harness it. Combine that with amoral thinking about the cold war and "greater good" and it's understandable, yet reprehensible, that they dosed prisoners and johns in brothels.
- lsiebert 6y agoIt's not actually a documentary, more like a loose semi fictional adaption of a book.
- garmaine 6y agoHe's talking about the 2004 documentary series on TV.
- Fnoord 6y agoThanks, yes I was. I haven't read the book. The documentary was broadcasted on Channel 4, part 1 of 3 series, "Crazy Rulers of the World (2004)". You can probably find it in some torrent. Ingo Swann [1] is perhaps one of the more notorious remote viewers. Worth looking into him, and his experiments. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingo_Swann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingo_Swann
- browserface 6y agoRather than watching the goats movie which is pretty bullshit, search the CIA library for "CENTER LANE SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAM" which was the DIA's remote viewing, remote influence program utilizing psychoenergetics. It resulted in at least "3 intelligence community firsts", was rated by Joint Chiefs of Staff as producing intelligence qualitatively the same as other sources, and (even tho it continued long after) until 1983 50% of the collection missions produced actionable intelligence while 85% had accurate target information. So it's neither "silly", nor for "crazies" nor disparagingly "New Age". But it requires critical and unbiased thinking to engage with it without falling into the "feel good" trap of baseless ridicule. The program developed methods and training for remote collection and influence, and the CIA reading room has an abundance of formerly SAP classified information about this, which I think is just crazy that it has been released, but it has. To people reacting like this is made up...you can sit there in your armchair and feel better by telling yourself this has to be bogus, because that's what you've been told to think, or you can discover the information that's been put in front of you but not widely publicized if you can escape your trained bias. This is an incredible story.
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoBut what is a plausible mechanism of action for this? I think that’s why people assume it is bullshit.
- f02a 6y agoSpeaking as someone who has seen evidence that remove viewing actually works, put simply: we don't know. But it certainly implies that we don't know everything about the universe and how it works. I would also point out that any non-obvious technical advancement wouldn't have a plausible mechanism of action, until we learn enough to figure it out. It's a puzzle I would certainly like to figure out. But it's also a puzzle with far-reaching implications for both physics and society. It would have massive implications for privacy, and even calls free will into question. (If it's possible to remote-view the future, is that just one possible future, or is it /the/ predetermined future?). You know what? On second thought, even having seen it work, I would be more comfortable staying in denial and assuming it's bullshit. (And THAT is why all this is classified.)
- redis_mlc 6y agoOh look, HN's weekly UFO post. If anybody asks how HN has changed over the years, just tell them, "Now there's a weekly UFO post." Then judge them on their response.
- sterlind 6y ago> Back then, the turnaround time for a request was far quicker than it is now. “It’s really night and day,” he told me recently. It averaged, by Greenewald’s estimate, a couple of months before he heard an answer; today the wait is often measured in years. This is sad, and something we should be pushing back on hard. FOIA needs an SLA agencies can be held accountable to.
- motohagiography 6y agoI'd say this looks like a hit: "I asked Greenewald if he considers himself a journalist. After all, when he files foia requests, he does so under the news media category in order to get fee waivers." [...] "But Greenewald doesn’t identify that way. “Even though I write articles and interview people and get quotes, I’ve just never considered or labeled myself a journalist, simply because I didn’t do the formal schooling,” he said. " Cue a spiteful bill from those agencies for back waived fees and other means to take the site down or punish him with process. I hope the gofundme for his defense gets posted here too. :) I'm sure it's nothing.
- IncRnd 6y agoYou need to allow facebook.net in order for the page to scroll..... It is a UFO page...
- lgats 6y agoif you are having trouble scrolling: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Acjr.org%2Fspecial_report%2Fblack-vault-foia-john-greenewald.php&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS876US876&oq=cache%3Acjr.org%2Fspecial_report%2Fblack-vault-foia-john-greenewald.php&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.2655j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Acjr.o...