by John Lisle
Project Mind Control‘s John Lisle explains how something as classified as MKULTRA naturally attracts conspiracy theorists, and how the theories all began.
Few topics have caused more distrust in government than MKULTRA, the CIA’s secret project to develop methods of mind control. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, MKULTRA scientists subjected psychiatric patients to chemical comas, electric shocks, and sensory deprivation. They beamed microwaves into monkey brains, fed prisoners an experimental cocktail of illicit drugs, and hired prostitutes to dose unwitting johns with LSD. One scientist even implanted electrodes into dogs to steer their movements via remote control (it worked).
Many of today’s most prominent conspiracy theorists tout MKULTRA as the paragon of government abuse. For them, it proves their paranoia right; it validates their fears of the nefarious deep state. And they have a point. MKULTRA was undoubtedly illegal and unethical, as the CIA’s own inspector general admitted. Yet whenever these conspiracy theorists describe what happened under MKULTRA, they almost always distort the truth. Why? How did a true conspiracy become a false conspiracy theory?
The main answer lies with Sidney Gottlieb, the head of MKULTRA. Upon retiring from the CIA in 1973, he tossed most of the project’s files into an incinerator. Ever since, conspiracy theorists have treated MKULTRA like a blank canvas onto which they can paint their craziest conjectures. Maybe, they claim, it involved this or that celebrity. Maybe it involved sex slaves or lizard people. Maybe it involved ritually sacrificing young women at Bohemian Grove. Maybe it’s still going on. Without those files, who’s to say? Anything is possible.
Except contrary to what the conspiracy theorists may claim, MKULTRA isn’t a blank canvas. The irony is that we know more about it than almost any other secret project in history. Yes, Gottlieb destroyed most of the files, but thousands survived his purge. On top of that, Congress launched investigations. Journalists conducted interviews. Attorneys took depositions. Departments issued reports. Institutions released records. We even have the internal descriptions for 146 of the 149 subprojects that comprised MKULTRA.
We can’t know everything about MKULTRA, but we can know enough to form a good approximation of what it was, and an even better approximation of what it wasn’t. Here’s an analogy to illustrate the point. What shape is the Earth? A sphere, of course. But that’s not quite right. The Earth spins on its axis, causing the equator to bulge. So the Earth is actually an oblate spheroid. But that’s not quite right either. The Earth isn’t perfectly smooth. It has complicated topographical features—mountains, valleys, oceans, rivers, sand dunes, ice caps—that constantly change. We can’t know everything about the shape of the Earth, but we can know enough to form a good approximation of what it is (a sphere), and an even better approximation of what it isn’t (flat).
Unsurprisingly, those who distort MKULTRA and those who distort the shape of the Earth are often one in the same. After all, the best way to determine whether someone believes in a particular conspiracy theory is to determine whether they already believe in another one.
JOHN LISLE has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas, where he is now a professor of the history of science. His first book, The Dirty Tricks Department, tells the story of the scientists who developed secret weapons, documents, and disguises for the OSS during World War II. He has received research and writing awards from the National Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Physics, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His work has been published in Skeptic, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, and elsewhere.
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