That 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.
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.
The 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.
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.
The fringes of this material gets wild and significantly less credible really fast. It is very important to stick to the hard facts when dealing with government wrongdoing or you open yourself up to the “conspiracy theory” thought stopper charge.
Wild conspiracy theories help cover up actual conspiracy and malfeasance.
The stuff you are referencing is definitely not impossible, but it’s unproven and likely unprovable and is mixed in with a lot of trash. We have enough documented stuff about the government meddling with the counterculture (e.g. COINTELPRO) that we don’t need to make shit up or chase phantoms.
> Wild conspiracy theories help cover up actual conspiracy and malfeasance.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you believe the principal actors in the publicly known and acknowledged aspects of MKULTRA were not held to account because of 'wild conspiracy theories' which had little traction outside fringe newsletters in the 1970s when MKULTRA came to some semblance of public light? Do you believe the general public would be more aware and educated about these abuses if not for the existence of those theories?
Everyone already knows the standard narrative line that "MKULTRA was a temporary, discontinued, and largely unsuccessful program, which like COINTELPRO was ended (we promise!) when documentary evidence of it was brought to light." I don't see how informed, fact-based speculation that there may be more to it than that does anything to 'cover up' or absolve the people involved.
