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The Buried Record
Off Limits AmericaDeclassified EditionFile No. 0531
Medical & Experiments

Dosed Without Consent

For two decades, the CIA fed LSD and worse to Americans who never agreed to anything. The program had a name: MKUltra.

In 1953 the CIA launched a secret program to learn how to control the human mind. It was called MKUltra, and for the next two decades its researchers dosed prisoners, hospital patients, soldiers, and ordinary citizens with LSD and other drugs — most of whom never knew they were part of an experiment.

The Chemist

The program was run by a CIA chemist named Sidney Gottlieb. Under his direction, MKUltra spread across more than 150 subprojects funneled through universities, hospitals, and prisons. In one operation, agents lured men to safe houses, secretly dosed them, and watched through one-way glass to study the effects.

Exhibit A — The scope Records point to 150+ subprojects across hospitals, prisons, and campuses, with subjects who were never told and never asked to agree.

The point was control. The subjects were never asked.

The Shredding

In 1973, as scrutiny grew, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the MKUltra files destroyed. Most were. What the public knows survived almost by accident — a misfiled box of financial records discovered in 1977, which forced the program into the open at Senate hearings.

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No one went to prison. The vast majority of the people who were dosed were never identified, and never will be.

The Verdict Is Yours

You've Seen the File.

A government agency drugged its own citizens for twenty years, then shredded the proof. A rogue program — or the system working as designed?

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Poisoner in Chief
Want to go deeper?

Poisoner in Chief — Stephen Kinzer

The definitive account of Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA's hunt for mind control.

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