MK-ULTRA: A Macabre History of LSD and Mind Control

Sidney Gottlieb was, on the surface, a devoted family man. He lived with his wife, a former missionary, and their four children in a converted slave cabin on a 15-acre farm. He woke every morning at 5:30 to milk his goats. He grew and donated trees to hospitals, helped run a leper hospital in India, and taught barn dancing to his local community.

However, Gottlieb was also the embodiment of a dark magician. Drawing inspiration from Nazi war criminals, he oversaw some of the CIA’s most inhumane experiments under MK-ULTRA. Notably, he introduced LSD to the CIA as a potential tool for mind control. 

When people think about the history of LSD, the hippie movement – freedom, peace, and love – typically comes to mind. Yet, just as Gottlieb’s gentle public persona clashed with his secret work, the drug holds a much more sinister past.

To understand MK-ULTRA, one must understand the political landscape of the 1950s. 

After WWII, U.S. intelligence grew worried that the communist superpowers had developed powers of brainwashing. Such paranoia was fuelled by the Korean War, in which American prisoners had made confessions against their country, refused repatriation, and even participated in communist propaganda. 

As well as North Korea, intelligence was also concerned that the Soviet Union had begun developing tools for communist coercion. Soviet scientists began researching parapsychology, including telepathy, in the 1920s. There was also intel they’d recovered data from Nazi human experiments and could be using it to develop their psychological weaponry. 

And so begins the psychological arms race. Alongside a race to advance nuclear weapons, the U.S. sought to create the most effective tools for psychological manipulation and control. 

On August 20, 1951, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched Project BLUEBIRD. Its mission: To “utilize the polygraph, drugs, and hypnotism to attain the greatest results in interrogation techniques.” Its goal: Make prisoners and hiding communists “sing like a bird.”

BLUEBIRD began in Japan, where the first human subjects – likely suspected double agents – were given a combination of sodium amytal, benzedrine, and picrotoxin against their will, along with a polygraph (lie detector test). With the records destroyed, the outcomes are unknown, but the research team reported success. 

Experiments grew to include different combinations of drugs, including barbiturates, amphetamines, and scopolamine (a deliriant that induces memory loss and confusion). Their purposes went beyond interrogation, as the CIA began attempts to induce amnesia and create new identities, personalities, and false memories in unwilling subjects. 

As well as drugs, the researcher teams utilised hypnosis techniques, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and sensory deprivation. By blocking their subjects' access to light, sound, and human contact – for up to weeks at a time – the CIA attempted to essentially “break people” to a point where they’d comply.

In 1951, BLUEBIRD developed into Project Artichoke. The experiments went further, investigating whether someone could be made to perform an assassination against their will. 

A CIA memo states:

Because the SUBJECT is a heavy drinker, it was proposed that the individual could be surreptitiously drugged through the medium of an alcoholic cocktail at a social party, ARTICHOKE [presumably, hypnosis] applied and the SUBJECT induced to perform the act of attempted assassination at some later date.  All the above was to be accomplished at one involuntary uncontrolled social meeting.

In 1953, Artichoke eventually developed into MK-ULTRA. This was more ambitious and better funded than Artichoke, with a budget of $25 million (approximately $300 million in today’s financial equivalent). Over 140 programs were conducted, each exploring a different aspect of behavioural control, and at least 80 institutions were involved. Many of whom weren’t actually aware that they were working for the CIA. 

In 1943, some years prior to Artichoke, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman ingested 200 micrograms of LSD-25. He’d initially developed the research chemical to help improve circulation and respiration. While it didn’t prove useful for intended medical use, he discovered an altered state of consciousness that would radically change culture, psychiatry, and politics. It would also become a key part of the CIA's most grisly operations. 

Hoffman’s clinic, Sandoz Laboratories, began researching LSD for various psychiatric uses: psychosis, neuroticism, alcoholism, and more. As LSD reached the public sphere, Gottlieb became interested in its potential as a “truth serum” and a means for behavioural control. He was made head of MK-ULTRA's chemical division, and funded many experiments involving LSD, including a series he’d initiated himself.

Operation Midnight Climawx was a personal subproject of Gottlieb. It involved setting up safe houses across San Francisco and New York that looked like normal apartment buildings, but were furnished with one-way mirrors. The CIA hired prostitutes to lure men back into these buildings and slip them LSD. Agents would watch from behind the mirrors, taking notes, as the confused men had sex. Despite essentially useless data, Midnight Climax ran for a whole decade. 

George Hunter White, who helped run the project, wrote a letter thanking Gottlieb for the opportunity.

 “I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest? Pretty good stuff, Brudder,” he said.

As well as LSD, Gottlieb initiated experiments using other psychedelic drugs, including psilocybin and mescaline (which had also been used by Nazi doctors in war crime experiments). His division gave these drugs to people without their consent, often targeting groups less able to make any public noise, such as prisoners and psychiatric patients. 

Such patients included those at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, who were given a host of research chemicals based on mescaline as “experimental treatments.” Little did the patients, and often doctors, know that their responses would be used as data for MK-ULTRA. These compounds frequently had underresearched safety data, and one patient died as a result.  

Experiments on inmates included those at the Narcotics Farm in Lexington, which functioned as a prison as well as a rehabilitation and research centre. Around the time of MK-ULTRA, scientists had become interested in the potential of LSD to treat addiction. As such, the farm was a perfect gateway to investigating the drug in a closed container, where rules of ethical research could be easily bent. 

Under MK-ULTRA, prisoners at the farm were given LSD and other psychedelics, unwittingly, as an “addiction treatment.” Sometimes this would involve heavy drugging for days and weeks. Prisoners were  “paid” for their research participation with addictive drugs, like opiates, and they would be closely observed through excruciating periods of withdrawal. 

While this particular thread of experimentation was somewhat inhumane, early psychedelic research at the Narcotics Farm must be credited. As the first-of-its-kind institute, the farm helped lay the groundwork for alcoholics anonymous (AA) and the developing psychedelic-assisted therapy treatments of today. 

As well as marginalised groups, CIA agents were also drugged by their colleagues against their will. 

In one famous case, CIA biochemist Frank Olsen had his drink spiked with LSD, along with several other agents, in a work retreat in Maryland. Olson soon after jumped to his death from the 13th floor of the Statler Hotel. Purportedly, his death occurred as an extreme adverse reaction to LSD, and the CIA later awarded the Olsen family a $750,000 settlement along with a formal apology. 

However, Olsen’s case may be more grave than an adverse drug reaction. In the 90s, an autopsy of Olsen’s body found no broken glass on his body, despite allegedly jumping out of a closed window, and a hole in his head that came from the butt of a gun. 

Multiple colleagues shared that Olson had begun questioning the morality of MK-ULTRA and that he wanted to leave CIA work. As a potential whistleblower, some believe Olsen’s death was, in fact, a case of murder. 

“The LSD story appears to have been concocted in an attempt to not only cover up the real circumstances behind Olson’s death but also discredit the 1960s counter-culture which promoted LSD as a consciousness-raising drug,” wrote journalist Jeremy Kuzmarov.

Despite the myriad of experiments, MK-ULTRA was ultimately unsuccessful. The program found that LSD and drugs and methods could certainly destroy a human mind. Yet they couldn’t enforce the intended restructuring of thought and belief.

“No effective knockout pill, truth serum, aphrodisiac, or recruitment pill was known to exist,” wrote Gottlieb in a 1960s memo. 

This failure to achieve the objective, along with increasing political distrust, eventually led to the shutdown of the whole MK-ULTRA program. In 1972, burglars were caught trying to break into public offices on behalf of Nixon’s political campaign, triggering a wave of investigations into government agencies, including the CIA. At-risk of exposure, Richard Helms – the CIA director – ordered all MK-ULTRA files to be destroyed. Gottlieb drove to the facility in person and oversaw the shredding of seven boxes of progress reports. 

However, a batch of misfiled records survived. In 1974, journalist Seymour Hersh published a major exposé revealing that the CIA had conducted illegal experiments on U.S. citizens. 

This prompted the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee to demand documents from the CIA. These documents, along with testimony from former CIA officials, revealed the existence of more than 100 secret subprojects.

New information continues to surface through declassified documents today, but the full scope of MK-ULTRA today remains unknown. Historians and investigators are still piecing together details from fragments: budget files, letters, progress reports, and personal accounts.

MK-ULTRA has been the focus of many investigative pieces, films, and books. Yet, it’s not the only lucrative operation that involved LSD. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, Porton Down, the UK’s chemical and biological defence facility, carried out a series of experiments on military personnel to study the effects of LSD and other psychoactive substances. Officially, the experiments were said to aim at developing defensive measures against enemy chemical attacks, but some have suggested the research may have been more focused on offensive applications. Service members were given LSD without their knowledge, sometimes mixed into water or food, and then asked to perform tasks or participate in simulated military exercises.

Don Webb, a former airman, was 19 when he volunteered to participate in the experiments. He was led to believe the research was to find a cure for colds, yet he ended up being given LSD at least twice a week against his will. In a Guardian article, he recollected having nightmarish hallucinations that lasted a long time.

“[I saw] walls melting, cracks appearing in people's faces ... eyes would run down cheeks, Salvador Dali-type faces ... a flower would turn into a slug,” he said.

Like MK-ULTRA, the experiments at Porton Down weren’t exactly valuable in the context of combat. While it proved capable of disrupting behaviour, its effects were unpredictable and varied widely between individuals. In fact, many found the experience bemusing.

“With one man climbing a tree to feed the birds, the troop commander gave up, admitting he could no longer control himself or his men. He himself then relapsed into laughter,” says the narrator of a video about the experiments.

In a similar vein to Porton Down, participants of the MK-ULTRA experiments often found the LSD to be more bizarre than anything relevant to political coercion. In some cases, they even found it pleasurable.

“The drug had a definite effect on the group to the point that they were boisterous and laughing, and they could not continue the meeting or engage in sensible conversation," Gottlieb recalled from a CIA meeting where the agents took LSD themselves.

Since MK-ULTRA, studies have shown that LSD and other psychedelics increase a state of entropy in the brain: a condition where brain activity becomes less predictable. Rather than inducing a state of control, on a neurological level, they somewhat decrease the capacity for control. It was perhaps for this reason that LSD never proved valuable for MK-ULTRA. 

The experiments did, however, highlight the value of set and setting – the user's environment and mindset. MK-ULTRA subjects were often given LSD in stressful, coercive situations, and many were already psychologically vulnerable, leading to severe panic, confusion, and distress. In stark contrast, young people and creatives of the 1960s approached LSD intentionally, often at parties or in nature, where supportive surroundings allowed for mind-expanding, sometimes profoundly transformative experiences. 

The contrast between these outcomes underscores a key lesson from MK-ULTRA: the effects of psychedelics are shaped as much by context as by the drug itself.

Martha is one of our community bloggers here at Chemical Collective. If you’re interested in joining our blogging team and getting paid to write about subjects you’re passionate about, please reach out to Sam via email at [email protected]