MK Ultra - A mindblowing conspiracy

MK Ultra was established by the CIA in response to intelligence reports that Soviet scientists had already been successful in unlocking the minds of their citizens. As part of the notorious Operation Paperclip they began using experts who had worked for Hitler during the Nazi era.
While top secret German rocket scientists helped build the first atomic weapons, the mind control specialists that Hitler had used to create a nation of complicit drones began working on what would become the MK Ultra programme.

The project spawned numerous offshoots aimed at furthering the CIA's understanding of the human psyche. They used LSD to incite panic, electric shock treatment to change behaviour and sleep deprivation to induce a hypnotic state which left subjects suggestible to practically anything.

In a startlingly widespread conspiracy scores of universities, hospitals, medical centres and army training bases provided subjects for the macabre experiments.

Authorities maintain the MK Ultra project was wrapped up in the late 1960s. The full details of the terrifying CIA programme were unveiled before the US Congress as part of the Rockefeller Commission hearings in 1975, leaving the American public stunned at the lengths their leaders were prepared to go to.

For those obsessed with the murky world of government cover-ups MK Ultra is the glue that holds many theories together. With the CIA mastering the ability to control the public's thoughts and emotions through druggings and electronic pulse technology, they could achieve some of the seemingly impossible feats attributed to them by theorists.

That sort of power in the hands of a secretive agency could account for the myriad Machiavellian projects carried out over the past half a century.

Everything from the assassination of JFK to the terror attacks of 9/11 have been attributed by conspiracy theorists to individuals controlled by the government. Some have even linked the MK Ultra programme to horrific satanic ritual abuse of children allegedly carried out by senior members of the US establishment.

After showing such blatant disregard for the well-being of their own citizens by carrying out the experiments in the first place, what was to stop the CIA from using what they had learned to control and manipulate world events?

- Many modern day interrogation techniques and forms of torture can be traced back to the MK Ultra project. Sleep deprivation and druggings are still common tactics in forcing suspects to tell "the truth".

- The project was so controversial that CIA director Richard Helms destroyed all files relating to the experiments before the evidence could be put before congress. With no official record of exactly how far the tests went, the government's denials are hard to believe.

- Surviving files prove the intention of the experiments to create people who could be controlled. We only have the government's word for it that they did not succeed in creating brainwashed killers.

- De-classified documents show tests were carried out to produce assassins who were incapable of independent thought. Both Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan (Robert Kennedy's killer) claimed to be innocent men controlled by vicious bosses.

- Official papers show that the US government used ex-Nazi scientists to perfect methods of controlling the mind. These men would have been ideally placed to use their army of brainwashed citizens to carry out state-sponsored murder and terror.

- While hundreds of citizens have come forward to claim they were drugged and brainwashed as part of MK Ultra, the project has no proven links to any assassination plots and no evidence has been provided to show the US is still indulging in mind control.

- LSD and PCP are now used as recreational drugs, and were instrumental in the hippie culture which swept the nation in the late 1960s.

- Though drugging and sleep deprivation allowed scientists to experiment on the mind, there is no concrete proof that they were able to harness that power to control an individual's actions. After the drugs they were usually left with gibbering, mindless oafs who could barely move. Had their plans succeeded, surely the CIA could have ended the Cold War in the 60s, rather than allowing it to drag on indefinitely.

- In the cases of both RFK and JFK's assassinations the concept of a Manchurian candidate (or brainwashed gunman), was ruled out by at least three congressional investigations.

A fascinating conspiracy theory and a clear example of a brutally repressive US government going to extraordinary lengths to control its citizens. With all the files destroyed, we will never know just how far the experiments had progressed. If the CIA had indeed harnessed the power to control a person's mind and actions, then surely the best way to cover it up would be to come clean about the project and say that it was a failure. The idea that these projects might still be going on without our knowledge is a very credible conclusion based on the shadowy conspiracy of the MK Ultra project....