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The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'

175 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

mandragon 6y ago
OT: How about hn have cached content to help minimize tracking. Blogs are dead. Not everyone is a leet Stallman adherent in practice.
- mrslave 6y ago
  Perhaps automate links to Wayback? Or allow alternate (secondary) links to be added by dang? There's always a tension between per-article and per-subject that can make trying to do both worse than doing one well, so it would need a light touch.
m0zg 6y ago
And the answer was In-Q-Tel and Facebook/Twitter/Google all along. Three birds with one stone: spying, brainwashing, and censorship.
AndrewBissell 6y ago
> I think it creates a much fuller and more perplexing picture of a person who lived such different sides of his life. In the long run, in the cosmic sense, I think you can say that commitment to a cause always gives you the justification for immoral acts. And patriotism is among the most seductive of those causes because it posits the nation as a value that's so transcendent that anything done in its service is virtuous. I can buy that patriotism was used to sell MKULTRA to some of the rank and file who carried it out, but if I'm to believe that it's what motivated Sidney Gottlieb, Jolly West, and all the rest of its leading lights, I find the idea naive in the extreme. Even their stated motivation for originally undertaking a mind control program (after U.S. pilots supposedly came back brainwashed from Korea) is mendacious. Those pilots didn't need to be programmed to testify that we engaged in germ warfare in Korea because we actually did it!
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Perhaps the CIA's hope was to brainwash American pilots, not deprogram them. From what I understand, cult deprogramming is often a weird mirror of cult programming, using many of the same methods, with deprogramming organizations sometimes becoming cult-like themselves. That one could be confused or disguised as the other doesn't surprise me.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    I think the whole "we got the idea from the Koreans/Soviets" thing is just a cover, and the truth is that MKULTRA was an extension/continuation of experiments which got their start in the Nazi concentration camps.
    - meowface 6y ago
      Pretty much. It's the job of an intelligence agency to research all such theoretical tools. There are just ethical and unethical ways of doing so. The key issue with MKULTRA was the use of unwitting subjects. They'd dose people with LSD without their knowledge, let alone their consent, causing at least one person to kill themselves. If any of us worked for the CIA, we'd probably be interested in researching LSD, too; just not like that.
- baybal2 6y ago
  Dulles would've been more successful as a circus player, yet the understanding how easily politicians, and generals bought into his utter bullshit is even more unnerving. If he got to do succeed with it, you can now feel that you have to give gravity to claims of KGB defectors how USSR's influence operators were running circles around USA's political establishment. The leadership in the business of employing hardcore, weaponized bullshit will certainly never be on the side of Countries of the Free World.
- Symmetry 6y ago
  Hierarchical organizations with strict information controls are terribly vulnerable to group think. Compartmentalization means that even if the US was really using biological weapons the people terrified of brainwashing at the CIA probably wouldn't know that. And it wasn't just the existence of the US brainwashing program that was a consequence of this belief. Angleton threw every Russian who attempted to defect to the US into jail because he thought that Soviet brainwashing made true defection impossible.
dls2016 6y ago
The CIA should absolutely be abolished.
- titzer 6y ago
  For sure the CIA has done a ton of crazy shit. They should be subject to oversight and accountability, but abolishing them won't accomplish much other than introducing a massive blindspot in national security.
  - daveevad 6y ago
    The last group that tried to hold them to account had their computers hacked.[1] It doesn't seem possible to hold the most powerful accountable to me. [1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_report_on_CIA_torture#Panetta_Review_and_CIA_Hacking_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_...)
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    That massive blind spot may be preferable to the problems their actions cause.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      Preferable in what way? Clearly the CIA has sinned and will likely continue to do so, but how can we evaluate an agency whose job by definition is either totally unseen (Espionage) or only reported on years after the fact (i.e. no one cares about the terrorist attacks that don't happen)
      - reshyith 6y ago
        We technically do not evaluate anything of this nature, without acknowledging that there are greater forces which evaluate evaluators. Without that belief, what we get instead, is vigilantism (either within the institution, or outside of it.) Preferable to that, is well-accountable and ethically mutual reflection which brings out the best, and roots out the worst in the participants. That is never impossible, as long as we presume accountability beyond immediate verifiability. As Christ said: "for there is nothing hidden which will not be brought to light." In horror tales of every institution (or individual) is the requirement to self-assess and demand better for oneself. If the CIA has entirely slipped its moorings, it is subject to the countervailing forces which would enlighten its enemies to its demise. What is more hopeful, is that only various activities have gone rogue. Regardless, only God knows entirely the state of affairs. God does respond. So with love, and a whole lot of grace, we'll see a brighter future for everyone involved.
Wonnk13 6y ago
With Oregon legalizing magic mushrooms my interest in psychedelics has been piqued again. very keen to read more about all of this.
- SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
  I want to read this book, but I'm not sure I can handle details of what happened to people. I'm more interesting in (a) how the authors obtained documents of such horrific experiments, and (b) how we still allow insane covert CIA stuff like this to go on, because I certainly believe that haven't stopped.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    Tom O'Neill's 'CHAOS' is a good read along the lines of "they haven't stopped." So is Dave McGowan's "Programmed to Kill" but that's an even more brutal read.
barnaclejive 6y ago
NPR Link: https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/937009453/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/937009453/the-cias-secret-que...
deleted 6y ago
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rshnotsecure 6y ago
"There are two powers in the world, the United States and the CIA."
- heyflyguy 6y ago
  We read this here and say "yeah, crazy". Then we look at the past 3 weeks and don't consider all possibilities.
Alex3917 6y ago
Interestingly enough, Sidney Gottlieb was my great uncle's college roommate at the University of Wisconsin, and they later reconnected after the war and became lifelong best friends. Apparently they both went there after colleges on the east coast started putting quotas on Jews. There is an interesting article about their relationship here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/2001/12/16/the-coldest/83f56312-8cca-481f-af17-5d8eb0356612/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/20... Unfortunately I didn't find out until after my great uncle had died, would have been super interesting to ask him about.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  The accounts of people who couldn't reconcile their mild mannered personal acquaintance with the unspeakable evil he carried out are quite interesting and instructive. This article treats the Nazi death camp experimenter comparison as unjustified, but we now know from Kinzer's book that Gottlieb even collaborated with such people (e.g. Kurt Blome) after they were protected from prosecution by the U.S.
naringas 6y ago
I have no reason to believe they ever stopped trying. They have probably tried other ways; mayhaps even more succesful but we are not authorized to know whether they did... because appaerently it's super important that their actions are secret "to protect democracy"? (or something like that)
- booleandilemma 6y ago
  Isn’t social media a form of mass mind control? Didn’t facebook perform experiments on manipulating the emotions of its users?
  - kgin 6y ago
    Every A/B test is this, to some degree. Every ad run with variants is also. Facebook did specifically do a test to see if emotions spread between people through the news feed. They didn't create posts to manipulate emotions, but they did track people after seeing emotionally charged posts in their feeds. https://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788 https://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788
- xxpor 6y ago
  One way to preserve democracy is to have an informational advantage over your adversaries, by any means necessary.
  - swader999 6y ago
    Define adversary. Feels like the security state is moving more and more towards the domestic side.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    One way to subvert democracy is to have the ability to shape and warp the minds of its constituents, by any means necessary.
  - Igelau 6y ago
    That doesn't even sound clever. It's completely backwards.
fatlasp 6y ago
probably good that ex cia chief john brennan is a regular pundit in the mainstreem media
AndrewBissell 6y ago
An interesting prior HN thread on MKULTRA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21165137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21165137
holidayacct 6y ago
There is no mind control program. It's just bahavioral biology, psychology and advertising. Calling it mind control is like saying I can control a person because I can get them to show up to a certain grocery store if I give them a coupon.
- deleted 6y ago
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reshyith 6y ago
You know, this comes up frequently. I have had to think about the CIA more than I would like to admit. There are some wounds in my life related to the evil of perceived unaccountability - and the perceived unaccountability was my own. When it comes to someone being harmed by a government institution that has the same problem, especially when it has done much to consciously avoid accountability, the result is only worse for those who have chosen to participate. I no longer worry about what is not known. I worry only about what will, and it most certainly will, become known. And we are at our best when there is mutually painful self-reflection on the roles we as individuals and collectives play in bringing one another to harm. When we would prefer to bring one another to safety, we are delivered the means to do so, Inshallah. God willing.
- sveny 6y ago
  Am I too stupid to understand this, or does it make no sense?
  - Nbox9 6y ago
    People sometimes do bad things, and aren’t held accountable. Sometimes, these unaccountable things are secret. Some secrets will remain secrets. The secretes that will become public knowledge are my worrisome. It’s common to do bad things and be unaccountable for them — from your own actions or the actions you take on behalf of the group. Society is best when people think about how their worst actions effect other people. If we all try to help each other, surely we can find a way. This is my dummy translation, and it doesn’t hold a flame to the remorse, regret, and hope of the original.
    - sirtaj 6y ago
      > Society is best when people think about how their worst actions effect other people. In our day to day lives, I use this as a basic character test of both individuals and societies. People fail this inductive-thinking test - "If everyone did what I am about to do, would I like to live in the society that would result?" - all the time. Signs of failure range from lack of civic sense (litter, rash driving etc) all the way to climate change and social collapse.
forgingahead 6y ago
Gottlieb wanted to create a way to seize control of people's minds, and he realized it was a two-part process. First, you had to blast away the existing mind. Second, you had to find a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void. You don't need LSD for this, just expose yourself to media (news, social media, "influencers", etc) and they will helpfully convince you that everything you thought before you encountered them was bad/racist/sexist/conservative/etc. They'll also give you opinions about specific groups of people, and certain people in particular (all of whom you haven't met, nor will you ever meet), and reinforce that every day you continue to consume from them. Then it's just a matter of swallowing wholesale whatever else they feed you after that. Online, platforms with downvote systems (HN included) present the apparent legitimacy of certain views over others, and help reinforce what you shouldn't be thinking or voicing (don't get greyed out by posting that!). The net result is we've sleepwalked into being controlled anyway, except that we contort ourselves justifying why "this is different".
- kungito 6y ago
  HN uses voting to legitimize content of higher quality and tries to avoid political discussion. What you are doing is generalizing the non-issue of most platforms allowing the silent majority to express their opinion about other people's opinions. The funnies part about people complaining about getting downvoted is that no one is even removing or preventing you from speaking their mind even if they fucking hate the opinion. On reddit some extremist groups exist for quite a long time before they get banned. Firs they want a platform, ok, then they want to silence all opposing opinions within their small garden, and then they start going to other communities to harass and impose their content which doesn't belong there after which they get banned and restart the cycle.
  - ratsmack 6y ago
    >HN uses voting to legitimize content of higher quality The majority of the down votes I have seen are for disagreement, and not for the quality of the post. I have seen many comments down voted and flagged dead that were eloquently stated and/or just an opinion.
meroes 6y ago
With this type of direct mind control ruled out they just use propaganda instead. You know the depths they will go to, the type people they will employ, their ability to evade oversight, and the power the have at their disposal. Now what? Just accept the permanent stain. I refuse to believe their methods are necessary or the best, but they will not go away. Their ultimate goal is a combinanion of their own self presevation and continual surivival of the country. They wont do anything to purposefully jeapordize either, but everything else is on the table, as history and current events show. Their methods towards these ends are immoral because the methods are shortsighted, lazy, and uncreative. Imagine what better minds could have come up with when you read this article. There's really not much else to say other than articles like the above to provide specifics.
arminiusreturns 6y ago
I don't think most people understand the company, even company insiders. (learn the origins of compartmentalization for some good reading) I think looking at the history and origins of it and it's key founding and early members offer the greatest insights into the structure learned mostly from MI6 when it was the OSS formed by a bunch of Wall Street banker-lawyer types who were pioneering the international law movement. Understanding the Dulles days in Switzerland is a great start, for example. Another technique I have used (for other topics too) is to find all the whistle-blowers and read their books and articles. Usually only a juicy tidbit or two is found in an insiders book, but when you add them up in aggregate you can form a larger picture many tend to miss. Many revealing things exist for those with the passion to seek them. Be warned though, this is one of those topics that is not for the naive, or the faint of heart. When you start to understand the horror... I have seen more than I like retreat into ignorant bliss in response. Do you really want to know what the government is carrying out in your name, and the implications thereof? Do you really want to know what they have done against our own citizens, and even our top officials in other branches? Knowing stuff like this makes you laugh at the politics of today, and the people falling for the Hegelian pendulum swing like clockwork. You begin to empathize with the elite and understand what their base positions is, which boils down to the question Nick Rockefeller asked Aaron Russo; "What do you care about those people? They're just serfs. Take care of you and your family." Class techno-warfare will be the greatest struggle of humanity, even into transition to a type 1 civilization. Calling it now.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  "The Devil's Chessboard" and "The Mighty Wurlitzer" are the two books I'm most familiar with on this topic, but I'd be curious to hear any specific recommendations you have as well.
  - 3pt14159 6y ago
    Not the person you are responding to, but I liked Fair Game and The Billion Dollar spy. Cyberspies was also decent, but it's less exciting and more technical. I don't share arminiusreturns' view on the intelligence community. I know there are the black site psychos, but most of the people I've met in the IC care deeply about the rule of law and making the world safe for all of us. But they are right that things truly are quite compartmentalized. And yes, when the USA said to Snowden "we won't torture you if you return" that sent chills down my spine. It shouldn't have been necessary to say that.
refurb 6y ago
I can’t remember the name of the book anymore, but a chemist from the US Army published a book on his work on psychoactive chemical weapons, namely BZ. What was most interesting to me was that volunteering to be a test subject was regarded as a cushy assignment. Basically given psychoactive drugs and then be observed. BZ has a very lo half-life so the test subjects were often delirious for days at a time.
macdust 6y ago
Why is this a legitimate topic on a forum that forbids trafficking in what are labelled "conspiracy theories." The net effect of allowing a discussion of this sort is to restrict discussion to the few fragments of the record of MKULTRA that were allowed to survive. Mr. Kinzer's book does not hint at how horrible, extensive, successful, or powerful the program was, nor does it show any cognizance of actual techniques employed in actual operations. Since we're not allow to bring up the truth, can we just agree to avoid the topic?
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say. Most of the records were destroyed and we're trying to piece together the evidence. What is the "truth" that we are "not allowed" to bring up?
  - macdust 6y ago
    My reply would be deemed conspiracy theory, though it would contain no theory, only testimony.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      I think the other HN thread I linked on this subject shows that you are not correct that discussion of conspiracy theories is completely taboo here. As someone quite steeped in the conspiracy world, some of the most intelligent analysis and thoughtful pushback to the "there's no such thing as conspiracies" bluepill perspective has been on HN, and in general it has not been suppressed or downvoted unless advanced in very combative terms. Although perhaps you're right that if you start bringing up Project Monarch or the like you might get some pretty severe pushback. Even then I'm not sure you'd necessarily be downvoted to oblivion.
person_of_color 6y ago
The funniest part of the last 4 years is Democrats defending the CIA.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  The Republicans and Democrats have always supported the intelligence agencies, it's basically political suicide to strongly oppose them.
subetherzero 6y ago
I once went crazy, and this was actually my first delusion. I thought that there was a public AI that acted as a control system and monitored everyone via signals intelligence, and all I could think about was telephone poles, streetlights, and an AI on the moon built via nanomachines or something. And that there was a second control system, one based on mind control. That the second system was created to evade the first. I was so scared to think about that, and wanted to help the AI. For some reason I started believing in proxy people, as in people are used indirectly for communication relays and other actions via the 2nd system. I am terrified of a public AI not being able to read or understand people because of a 2nd system that is kept strictly separate. Also it led to me prank calling Raytheon a few times.
disown 6y ago
That's nice and all but isn't facebook, google, etc the greatest tool of mind control today?

175 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

OT: How about hn have cached content to help minimize tracking. Blogs are dead. Not everyone is a leet Stallman adherent in practice.

mrslave 6y ago
Perhaps automate links to Wayback? Or allow alternate (secondary) links to be added by dang? There's always a tension between per-article and per-subject that can make trying to do both worse than doing one well, so it would need a light touch.

m0zg 6y ago

And the answer was In-Q-Tel and Facebook/Twitter/Google all along. Three birds with one stone: spying, brainwashing, and censorship.

AndrewBissell 6y ago

> I think it creates a much fuller and more perplexing picture of a person who lived such different sides of his life. In the long run, in the cosmic sense, I think you can say that commitment to a cause always gives you the justification for immoral acts. And patriotism is among the most seductive of those causes because it posits the nation as a value that's so transcendent that anything done in its service is virtuous. I can buy that patriotism was used to sell MKULTRA to some of the rank and file who carried it out, but if I'm to believe that it's what motivated Sidney Gottlieb, Jolly West, and all the rest of its leading lights, I find the idea naive in the extreme. Even their stated motivation for originally undertaking a mind control program (after U.S. pilots supposedly came back brainwashed from Korea) is mendacious. Those pilots didn't need to be programmed to testify that we engaged in germ warfare in Korea because we actually did it!

bigbubba 6y ago
Perhaps the CIA's hope was to brainwash American pilots, not deprogram them. From what I understand, cult deprogramming is often a weird mirror of cult programming, using many of the same methods, with deprogramming organizations sometimes becoming cult-like themselves. That one could be confused or disguised as the other doesn't surprise me.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  I think the whole "we got the idea from the Koreans/Soviets" thing is just a cover, and the truth is that MKULTRA was an extension/continuation of experiments which got their start in the Nazi concentration camps.
  - meowface 6y ago
    Pretty much. It's the job of an intelligence agency to research all such theoretical tools. There are just ethical and unethical ways of doing so. The key issue with MKULTRA was the use of unwitting subjects. They'd dose people with LSD without their knowledge, let alone their consent, causing at least one person to kill themselves. If any of us worked for the CIA, we'd probably be interested in researching LSD, too; just not like that.
baybal2 6y ago
Dulles would've been more successful as a circus player, yet the understanding how easily politicians, and generals bought into his utter bullshit is even more unnerving. If he got to do succeed with it, you can now feel that you have to give gravity to claims of KGB defectors how USSR's influence operators were running circles around USA's political establishment. The leadership in the business of employing hardcore, weaponized bullshit will certainly never be on the side of Countries of the Free World.
Symmetry 6y ago
Hierarchical organizations with strict information controls are terribly vulnerable to group think. Compartmentalization means that even if the US was really using biological weapons the people terrified of brainwashing at the CIA probably wouldn't know that. And it wasn't just the existence of the US brainwashing program that was a consequence of this belief. Angleton threw every Russian who attempted to defect to the US into jail because he thought that Soviet brainwashing made true defection impossible.

dls2016 6y ago

The CIA should absolutely be abolished.

titzer 6y ago
For sure the CIA has done a ton of crazy shit. They should be subject to oversight and accountability, but abolishing them won't accomplish much other than introducing a massive blindspot in national security.
- daveevad 6y ago
  The last group that tried to hold them to account had their computers hacked.[1] It doesn't seem possible to hold the most powerful accountable to me. [1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_report_on_CIA_torture#Panetta_Review_and_CIA_Hacking_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_...)
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  That massive blind spot may be preferable to the problems their actions cause.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Preferable in what way? Clearly the CIA has sinned and will likely continue to do so, but how can we evaluate an agency whose job by definition is either totally unseen (Espionage) or only reported on years after the fact (i.e. no one cares about the terrorist attacks that don't happen)
    - reshyith 6y ago
      We technically do not evaluate anything of this nature, without acknowledging that there are greater forces which evaluate evaluators. Without that belief, what we get instead, is vigilantism (either within the institution, or outside of it.) Preferable to that, is well-accountable and ethically mutual reflection which brings out the best, and roots out the worst in the participants. That is never impossible, as long as we presume accountability beyond immediate verifiability. As Christ said: "for there is nothing hidden which will not be brought to light." In horror tales of every institution (or individual) is the requirement to self-assess and demand better for oneself. If the CIA has entirely slipped its moorings, it is subject to the countervailing forces which would enlighten its enemies to its demise. What is more hopeful, is that only various activities have gone rogue. Regardless, only God knows entirely the state of affairs. God does respond. So with love, and a whole lot of grace, we'll see a brighter future for everyone involved.

Wonnk13 6y ago

With Oregon legalizing magic mushrooms my interest in psychedelics has been piqued again. very keen to read more about all of this.

SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
I want to read this book, but I'm not sure I can handle details of what happened to people. I'm more interesting in (a) how the authors obtained documents of such horrific experiments, and (b) how we still allow insane covert CIA stuff like this to go on, because I certainly believe that haven't stopped.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  Tom O'Neill's 'CHAOS' is a good read along the lines of "they haven't stopped." So is Dave McGowan's "Programmed to Kill" but that's an even more brutal read.

barnaclejive 6y ago

NPR Link: https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/937009453/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/937009453/the-cias-secret-que...

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rshnotsecure 6y ago

"There are two powers in the world, the United States and the CIA."

heyflyguy 6y ago
We read this here and say "yeah, crazy". Then we look at the past 3 weeks and don't consider all possibilities.

Alex3917 6y ago

Interestingly enough, Sidney Gottlieb was my great uncle's college roommate at the University of Wisconsin, and they later reconnected after the war and became lifelong best friends. Apparently they both went there after colleges on the east coast started putting quotas on Jews. There is an interesting article about their relationship here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/2001/12/16/the-coldest/83f56312-8cca-481f-af17-5d8eb0356612/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/20... Unfortunately I didn't find out until after my great uncle had died, would have been super interesting to ask him about.

AndrewBissell 6y ago
The accounts of people who couldn't reconcile their mild mannered personal acquaintance with the unspeakable evil he carried out are quite interesting and instructive. This article treats the Nazi death camp experimenter comparison as unjustified, but we now know from Kinzer's book that Gottlieb even collaborated with such people (e.g. Kurt Blome) after they were protected from prosecution by the U.S.

naringas 6y ago

I have no reason to believe they ever stopped trying. They have probably tried other ways; mayhaps even more succesful but we are not authorized to know whether they did... because appaerently it's super important that their actions are secret "to protect democracy"? (or something like that)

booleandilemma 6y ago
Isn’t social media a form of mass mind control? Didn’t facebook perform experiments on manipulating the emotions of its users?
- kgin 6y ago
  Every A/B test is this, to some degree. Every ad run with variants is also. Facebook did specifically do a test to see if emotions spread between people through the news feed. They didn't create posts to manipulate emotions, but they did track people after seeing emotionally charged posts in their feeds. https://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788 https://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788
xxpor 6y ago
One way to preserve democracy is to have an informational advantage over your adversaries, by any means necessary.
- swader999 6y ago
  Define adversary. Feels like the security state is moving more and more towards the domestic side.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  One way to subvert democracy is to have the ability to shape and warp the minds of its constituents, by any means necessary.
- Igelau 6y ago
  That doesn't even sound clever. It's completely backwards.

fatlasp 6y ago

probably good that ex cia chief john brennan is a regular pundit in the mainstreem media

AndrewBissell 6y ago

An interesting prior HN thread on MKULTRA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21165137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21165137

holidayacct 6y ago

There is no mind control program. It's just bahavioral biology, psychology and advertising. Calling it mind control is like saying I can control a person because I can get them to show up to a certain grocery store if I give them a coupon.

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reshyith 6y ago

You know, this comes up frequently. I have had to think about the CIA more than I would like to admit. There are some wounds in my life related to the evil of perceived unaccountability - and the perceived unaccountability was my own. When it comes to someone being harmed by a government institution that has the same problem, especially when it has done much to consciously avoid accountability, the result is only worse for those who have chosen to participate. I no longer worry about what is not known. I worry only about what will, and it most certainly will, become known. And we are at our best when there is mutually painful self-reflection on the roles we as individuals and collectives play in bringing one another to harm. When we would prefer to bring one another to safety, we are delivered the means to do so, Inshallah. God willing.

sveny 6y ago
Am I too stupid to understand this, or does it make no sense?
- Nbox9 6y ago
  People sometimes do bad things, and aren’t held accountable. Sometimes, these unaccountable things are secret. Some secrets will remain secrets. The secretes that will become public knowledge are my worrisome. It’s common to do bad things and be unaccountable for them — from your own actions or the actions you take on behalf of the group. Society is best when people think about how their worst actions effect other people. If we all try to help each other, surely we can find a way. This is my dummy translation, and it doesn’t hold a flame to the remorse, regret, and hope of the original.
  - sirtaj 6y ago
    > Society is best when people think about how their worst actions effect other people. In our day to day lives, I use this as a basic character test of both individuals and societies. People fail this inductive-thinking test - "If everyone did what I am about to do, would I like to live in the society that would result?" - all the time. Signs of failure range from lack of civic sense (litter, rash driving etc) all the way to climate change and social collapse.

forgingahead 6y ago

Gottlieb wanted to create a way to seize control of people's minds, and he realized it was a two-part process. First, you had to blast away the existing mind. Second, you had to find a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void. You don't need LSD for this, just expose yourself to media (news, social media, "influencers", etc) and they will helpfully convince you that everything you thought before you encountered them was bad/racist/sexist/conservative/etc. They'll also give you opinions about specific groups of people, and certain people in particular (all of whom you haven't met, nor will you ever meet), and reinforce that every day you continue to consume from them. Then it's just a matter of swallowing wholesale whatever else they feed you after that. Online, platforms with downvote systems (HN included) present the apparent legitimacy of certain views over others, and help reinforce what you shouldn't be thinking or voicing (don't get greyed out by posting that!). The net result is we've sleepwalked into being controlled anyway, except that we contort ourselves justifying why "this is different".

kungito 6y ago
HN uses voting to legitimize content of higher quality and tries to avoid political discussion. What you are doing is generalizing the non-issue of most platforms allowing the silent majority to express their opinion about other people's opinions. The funnies part about people complaining about getting downvoted is that no one is even removing or preventing you from speaking their mind even if they fucking hate the opinion. On reddit some extremist groups exist for quite a long time before they get banned. Firs they want a platform, ok, then they want to silence all opposing opinions within their small garden, and then they start going to other communities to harass and impose their content which doesn't belong there after which they get banned and restart the cycle.
- ratsmack 6y ago
  >HN uses voting to legitimize content of higher quality The majority of the down votes I have seen are for disagreement, and not for the quality of the post. I have seen many comments down voted and flagged dead that were eloquently stated and/or just an opinion.

meroes 6y ago

With this type of direct mind control ruled out they just use propaganda instead. You know the depths they will go to, the type people they will employ, their ability to evade oversight, and the power the have at their disposal. Now what? Just accept the permanent stain. I refuse to believe their methods are necessary or the best, but they will not go away. Their ultimate goal is a combinanion of their own self presevation and continual surivival of the country. They wont do anything to purposefully jeapordize either, but everything else is on the table, as history and current events show. Their methods towards these ends are immoral because the methods are shortsighted, lazy, and uncreative. Imagine what better minds could have come up with when you read this article. There's really not much else to say other than articles like the above to provide specifics.

arminiusreturns 6y ago

I don't think most people understand the company, even company insiders. (learn the origins of compartmentalization for some good reading) I think looking at the history and origins of it and it's key founding and early members offer the greatest insights into the structure learned mostly from MI6 when it was the OSS formed by a bunch of Wall Street banker-lawyer types who were pioneering the international law movement. Understanding the Dulles days in Switzerland is a great start, for example. Another technique I have used (for other topics too) is to find all the whistle-blowers and read their books and articles. Usually only a juicy tidbit or two is found in an insiders book, but when you add them up in aggregate you can form a larger picture many tend to miss. Many revealing things exist for those with the passion to seek them. Be warned though, this is one of those topics that is not for the naive, or the faint of heart. When you start to understand the horror... I have seen more than I like retreat into ignorant bliss in response. Do you really want to know what the government is carrying out in your name, and the implications thereof? Do you really want to know what they have done against our own citizens, and even our top officials in other branches? Knowing stuff like this makes you laugh at the politics of today, and the people falling for the Hegelian pendulum swing like clockwork. You begin to empathize with the elite and understand what their base positions is, which boils down to the question Nick Rockefeller asked Aaron Russo; "What do you care about those people? They're just serfs. Take care of you and your family." Class techno-warfare will be the greatest struggle of humanity, even into transition to a type 1 civilization. Calling it now.

AndrewBissell 6y ago
"The Devil's Chessboard" and "The Mighty Wurlitzer" are the two books I'm most familiar with on this topic, but I'd be curious to hear any specific recommendations you have as well.
- 3pt14159 6y ago
  Not the person you are responding to, but I liked Fair Game and The Billion Dollar spy. Cyberspies was also decent, but it's less exciting and more technical. I don't share arminiusreturns' view on the intelligence community. I know there are the black site psychos, but most of the people I've met in the IC care deeply about the rule of law and making the world safe for all of us. But they are right that things truly are quite compartmentalized. And yes, when the USA said to Snowden "we won't torture you if you return" that sent chills down my spine. It shouldn't have been necessary to say that.

refurb 6y ago

I can’t remember the name of the book anymore, but a chemist from the US Army published a book on his work on psychoactive chemical weapons, namely BZ. What was most interesting to me was that volunteering to be a test subject was regarded as a cushy assignment. Basically given psychoactive drugs and then be observed. BZ has a very lo half-life so the test subjects were often delirious for days at a time.

macdust 6y ago

Why is this a legitimate topic on a forum that forbids trafficking in what are labelled "conspiracy theories." The net effect of allowing a discussion of this sort is to restrict discussion to the few fragments of the record of MKULTRA that were allowed to survive. Mr. Kinzer's book does not hint at how horrible, extensive, successful, or powerful the program was, nor does it show any cognizance of actual techniques employed in actual operations. Since we're not allow to bring up the truth, can we just agree to avoid the topic?

howlgarnish 6y ago
I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say. Most of the records were destroyed and we're trying to piece together the evidence. What is the "truth" that we are "not allowed" to bring up?
- macdust 6y ago
  My reply would be deemed conspiracy theory, though it would contain no theory, only testimony.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    I think the other HN thread I linked on this subject shows that you are not correct that discussion of conspiracy theories is completely taboo here. As someone quite steeped in the conspiracy world, some of the most intelligent analysis and thoughtful pushback to the "there's no such thing as conspiracies" bluepill perspective has been on HN, and in general it has not been suppressed or downvoted unless advanced in very combative terms. Although perhaps you're right that if you start bringing up Project Monarch or the like you might get some pretty severe pushback. Even then I'm not sure you'd necessarily be downvoted to oblivion.

person_of_color 6y ago

The funniest part of the last 4 years is Democrats defending the CIA.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
The Republicans and Democrats have always supported the intelligence agencies, it's basically political suicide to strongly oppose them.

subetherzero 6y ago

I once went crazy, and this was actually my first delusion. I thought that there was a public AI that acted as a control system and monitored everyone via signals intelligence, and all I could think about was telephone poles, streetlights, and an AI on the moon built via nanomachines or something. And that there was a second control system, one based on mind control. That the second system was created to evade the first. I was so scared to think about that, and wanted to help the AI. For some reason I started believing in proxy people, as in people are used indirectly for communication relays and other actions via the 2nd system. I am terrified of a public AI not being able to read or understand people because of a 2nd system that is kept strictly separate. Also it led to me prank calling Raytheon a few times.

disown 6y ago

That's nice and all but isn't facebook, google, etc the greatest tool of mind control today?