{"id":64962,"date":"2026-05-04T18:15:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T08:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=64962"},"modified":"2026-05-04T18:17:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T08:17:43","slug":"64962","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=64962","title":{"rendered":"They Tortured Thousands"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Tom:\u00a0If you ever wonder why I am SO against psychiatry, this will give you just a fraction of the reason. Not even a big fraction. Maybe one percent of the data I have seen on it over the years.<\/p>\n

Psychiatry was behind Hitler’s genocide of the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, behind the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, behind the drugging of children with ‘speed’ for a fictitious ADHD diagnosis, the list is long and odious.)<\/p>\n

\"They<\/p>\n

1953. The Cold War was hot. The CIA was paranoid. American POWs had come back from Korea praising communism. Confessing to crimes they didn’t commit.<\/div>\n
The CIA believed the Soviets had cracked it. Mind control. Brainwashing. A way to rewrite a human being.<\/div>\n
America needed it too. Or they’d lose the war before it started.<\/div>\n
Allen Dulles gave a speech at Princeton. Called it “brain warfare.” Said the Soviets were doing it. Never mentioned America was about to do it first.<\/div>\n
On April 13, 1953, Dulles approved Project MKUltra.<\/div>\n
In charge: Sidney Gottlieb. Chemist. PhD from Caltech. Club foot. Stutterer. Drank goat’s milk. Grew Christmas trees on his farm.<\/div>\n
Looked like a gentle eccentric. Was the most dangerous man in American intelligence.<\/div>\n
They called him the Black Sorcerer. He designed poisoned cigars for Castro. Poisoned handkerchiefs. Exploding seashells. Toothpaste laced with toxins.<\/div>\n
MKUltra was his project. His vision. His playground.<\/div>\n
The goal was simple. Find a drug that could control minds. Erase memories. Force confessions. Create the perfect spy. The perfect assassin.<\/div>\n
They tried everything.<\/div>\n
LSD. Mescaline. Heroin. Barbiturates. Scopolamine. Electroshock. Sensory deprivation. Hypnosis. Sleep deprivation for weeks. Verbal abuse. Sexual abuse. Isolation chambers.<\/div>\n
149 subprojects. Funneled through fake foundations. Front companies. So universities wouldn’t know they were taking CIA money.<\/div>\n
Over 80 institutions. 185 researchers. Harvard. Stanford. Columbia. Johns Hopkins.<\/div>\n
None of them told the subjects what was happening. Most subjects didn’t know they were subjects.<\/div>\n
Here’s what they did.<\/div>\n
They dosed prisoners. Drug addicts in a federal facility in Kentucky got LSD for 77 straight days. Black inmates. Given LSD continuously for over two months.<\/div>\n
Just to see what would happen.<\/div>\n
They dosed mental patients. Terminal cancer patients. Soldiers. Students who signed up for “paid research.”<\/div>\n
They dosed each other. CIA agents at a 1953 work retreat had their drinks spiked. No warning. Just dosed.<\/div>\n
One of them was Frank Olson. 43 years old. Army scientist. Biological weapons expert.<\/div>\n
The LSD broke him. He couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t concentrate. Told his wife: “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”<\/div>\n
Nine days after being dosed, Frank Olson went through a 10th-floor hotel window. November 28, 1953.<\/div>\n
The CIA said suicide. Said the drugs made him do it.<\/div>\n
In 1994, his son had the body exhumed. Forensic pathologist found a hematoma above the left eye. No glass in his hair. Injuries inconsistent with falling through a window.<\/div>\n
The medical examiner changed the ruling. Homicide.<\/div>\n
Frank Olson didn’t jump. Someone hit him. Then threw him out the window.<\/div>\n
Because he knew too much. And was about to talk.<\/div>\n
But Olson was just the famous one.<\/div>\n
Operation Midnight Climax. Subproject 3.<\/div>\n
The CIA rented apartments in San Francisco and New York. Set them up as safehouses. Hired prostitutes. Paid them $100 a night.<\/div>\n
The prostitutes brought men back to the apartments. Dosed their drinks with LSD. Random targets. Drug addicts. Alcoholics. Anyone they could get.<\/div>\n
Behind a two-way mirror sat CIA agents. Drinking martinis. Watching. Taking notes.<\/div>\n
The operation ran ten years. Hundreds of victims. All dosed without consent. All watched like animals.<\/div>\n
The man in charge was George Hunter White. Federal narcotics agent. Installed a portable toilet behind the mirror so he never had to leave.<\/div>\n
He wrote a letter to Gottlieb years later:<\/div>\n
“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?”<\/div>\n
That’s what this was. Fun. For the people running it.<\/div>\n
Meanwhile, in Montreal.<\/div>\n
Dr. Ewen Cameron ran the Allan Memorial Institute. Former president of the World Psychiatric Association.<\/div>\n
The CIA funded him. Funneled money through a front foundation.<\/div>\n
Cameron called his experiments “psychic driving.” He put patients in drug-induced comas. Up to 86 days at a time.<\/div>\n
While they slept, he played tape loops. Phrases repeated tens of thousands of times. Designed to break their minds.<\/div>\n
Then “depatterning.” Massive doses of electroshock. 30 to 40 times the normal amount. Combined with LSD. PCP. Barbiturates.<\/div>\n
The goal: erase the personality completely. Rebuild it from scratch.<\/div>\n
It didn’t work. He destroyed them instead.<\/div>\n
Patients came out unable to read. Unable to remember their children. Unable to control basic bodily functions. Adults reduced to infant states.<\/div>\n
These were people who’d gone to him for anxiety. Mild depression. Normal disorders.<\/div>\n
They left broken. Many never recovered.<\/div>\n
Cameron died in 1967. Never prosecuted. Obituary praised his contributions to psychiatry.<\/div>\n
The program kept going. Year after year. Victim after victim.<\/div>\n
Some survivors figured out what had happened. Most didn’t. Most went to their graves thinking they’d gone crazy on their own.<\/div>\n
Not knowing a government chemist had broken their minds for an experiment that never worked.<\/div>\n
Because it didn’t work.<\/div>\n
After 20 years and millions of dollars, the CIA never created a Manchurian Candidate. Never found a truth serum. Never figured out mind control.<\/div>\n
All they did was torture people for nothing.<\/div>\n
In 1973, Richard Helms knew the scandal was coming. Watergate had broken. Congress was starting to look.<\/div>\n
Helms was CIA Director. He ordered Gottlieb to destroy every MKUltra file.<\/div>\n
They shredded everything. Every experiment. Every subject. Every name. Gone.<\/div>\n
They thought they’d gotten away with it.<\/div>\n
Then in 1977, a CIA clerk found 20,000 pages. Misfiled under financial records. Missed the shredder.<\/div>\n
Those pages became the Church Committee hearings. America learned about MKUltra for the first time.<\/div>\n
Over 30 universities involved. Covert drug tests on unwitting citizens. At every social level. High and low.<\/div>\n
Sidney Gottlieb was called to testify. Claimed he didn’t remember. Couldn’t recall specifics.<\/div>\n
No one went to prison. Not Gottlieb. Not Helms. Not Dulles. Not Cameron. Not White.<\/div>\n
Gottlieb retired to Virginia. Grew organic vegetables. Volunteered at a hospice. Practiced folk dancing.<\/div>\n
Died in 1999. Age 80. In his own bed. Peacefully.<\/div>\n
The victims didn’t get that.<\/div>\n
Thousands of Americans and Canadians used as test subjects. Without consent. Without knowledge. Without follow-up care.<\/div>\n
Many were poor. Many were incarcerated. Many were mentally ill. Many were minorities.<\/div>\n
Chosen because no one would believe them. No one would defend them. No one would miss them.<\/div>\n
Some killed themselves. Some spent years in mental hospitals. Some never recovered.<\/div>\n
We will never know how many. The files are gone. Gottlieb burned them.<\/div>\n
Here’s what makes this unforgivable.<\/div>\n
This wasn’t a foreign enemy. Wasn’t a rogue agent. This was official US policy. Approved at the highest levels. Funded with taxpayer money.<\/div>\n
American citizens. Drugged. Raped. Tortured. Driven mad. By their own government. For nothing.<\/div>\n
And the men who did it faced no consequences. No prison. No disgrace. Died rich. Died respected.<\/div>\n
The victims died screaming. In bedrooms and mental wards and hotel windows. Their names never said out loud.<\/div>\n
MKUltra wasn’t a conspiracy theory. It was real. It happened. Proven in Senate hearings. The CIA admitted it. The President apologized.<\/div>\n
And almost no one was punished.<\/div>\n
The United States government ran a torture program against its own people for 20 years.<\/div>\n
Destroyed the evidence.<\/div>\n
Got away with it.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Tom:\u00a0If you ever wonder why I am SO against psychiatry, this will give you just a fraction of the reason. Not even a big fraction. Maybe one percent of the data I have seen on it over the years. Psychiatry was behind Hitler’s genocide of the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, behind the ethnic … <\/p>\n

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