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This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. A window smashes on the 10th floor of the Statler Hilton Hotel on 7th Avenue, New York. It's 2.30 a.m. on a chilly November morning in 1953. Directly following, a man's body hits the Manhattan pavement below. The doorman of the hotel stills in shock.
before running into the lobby, screaming, "We've got a jumper!" Moments later, the night manager emerges from the front doors. He rushes to the side of the man laying on the ground in agonizing pain. The man, only clad in his undershirt and shorts, tries to utter something, but it comes out as an unintelligible murmur. A few breaths later, he dies. The night manager surveys the scene. He looks up at the hotel and sees a curtain flapping out of a window.
This would be room 1018A. Police storm the room not too long later, guns drawn. At first, they see nothing but an open window. However, when they peer into the en suite, there's another man sat there, head in his hands. He says he was sleeping when it happened. He heard a noise and then woke up. A suicide, it was determined. No further investigation. The man's name was Frank Olson, a biological and chemical scientist.
It wasn't until 1975, however, that disturbing truths emerged surrounding his death. It was revealed that Olsen, as well as the other man staying in his hotel room, Robert Lashbrook, were from a select few of CIA operatives that ran a highly secretive operation called MK-ULTRA. This top-secret operation experimented with the drug LSD for the purpose of mind control.
The CIA admitted that, shortly before his death, Olson himself was unwittingly spiked with the drug by his own colleagues. Did Frank Olson really take his own life that frosty early morning in 1953? Or was there a nefarious intention behind his fall? Perhaps something in the interest of national security.
Beginning in the 1950s, the CIA's notorious mind control program knew no bounds. Classified documents and modern investigation tell of terrible atrocities carried out in the name of national interest. Using the brand new drug LSD, they sought to completely destroy subjects' minds, only to rebuild them for their own purpose.
It's outrageous to think that a state-sanctioned program existed globally to exploit and poison people. In many cases, there were people that died and lives were irreparably damaged. This is a real part of history. This really did happen. It's pretty horrifying. It really goes against the grain of everything that we think is acceptable in America.
You're listening to Forbidden History, the podcast series that explores the past's darkest corners, sheds light on the lives of intriguing individuals, and uncovers the truth buried deep in history's most controversial legacies. This is CIA Mind Control Declassified. The foothills of the Alps are the birthplace of the CIA's mind control program.
Just outside Munich, Germany, lie the remnants of Dachau, the Nazis' longest-running concentration camp. It was here that a campaign of human experimentation using mind-altering drugs began. To begin our investigation is historian Dominic Selwood.
Nazi doctors and scientists conducted a horrific amount of experimentation on human subjects in the death camps, at Auschwitz and particularly at Dachau. Some of these were aimed at understanding what a human body could tolerate, so for military purposes, traumatic injuries. But others were looking into the mind and mind control.
Unveiling the awful details of these experiments is Dr. Luke Daly-Grove from the University of Central Lancashire. The Nazis conducted all sorts of horrible experiments on concentration camp prisoners. They put people in large tubs of ice water to see how long it could take them to die. They put people in high altitude chambers.
They even put a drug called mesculin, which has got hallucinogenic properties in people's drinks. One eyewitness from Dachau said that the mesculin experiments were conducted to try and eliminate the will of the person examined. To the relief of Dachau's prisoners, in 1945, the camp was liberated by US soldiers. Soon after World War II officially ended, a trial was run to convict Nazi doctors of their terrible crimes.
Some were imprisoned and even executed, but astonishingly, many evaded these trials and went off scot-free. They were protected and, in some way, were even rewarded by the United States government.
Author and historian Lynn Picknett tells us more. At the end of the Second World War, there was something called Operation Paperclip, where a great many German scientists were invited over to the United States. They shared their knowledge, their scientific discoveries, their research, and basically took root in the States. To benefit from the knowledge of Nazi science, and to also keep it out of Soviet hands.
The U.S. government provided the scientists with a new life in the States, all on taxpayer money. They actively hushed up their pasts and put them to work on various Cold War projects, from chemical weaponry to the space race. But this also included Nazi medical scientists. To expand is psychiatrist Colin Ross. There's a man named Albertus Struhcolt who did research
real atrocity-level experimentation that resulted in people dying during the Second World War. He was brought over to Texas, a library is named after him, and he's regarded as the founder of aviation medicine. The intelligence gained from Nazi scientists via Operation Paperclip led to huge advances in the fields of rocketry and aeronautics. But the CIA also pursued clandestine research into mind control. It all began in 1950,
just five years after the end of World War II, when the Cold War suddenly heated up. The West found itself at war against communism in Korea. Author and historian Tony McMahon provides the details.
During the Korean War, many American soldiers who were shot down by communist forces over Korea subsequently made public confessions saying that they'd been engaging in germ warfare, that they dropped anthrax and plague onto the civilian populations. Now, that was something hotly denied by the Americans, and they accused the Koreans of using Soviet and Chinese brainwashing methods
And you can see the anxiety in the United States about this whole issue in Hollywood movies like The Manchurian Candidate and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. So the official story of why the CIA got into mind control was that it was defensive and reactive to brainwashing by the communist Chinese. Despite the US government's apparent justifiable reasons for delving into research on mind control,
the reality of the history doesn't quite add up. The Korean War began in June of 1950, but the first CIA mind control program, Blue Bird, was signed into effect by the director of the CIA in April of 1950, so three months before the start of the Korean War. Clearly there was mind control operations and programs active in the Second World War.
and before the Korean War. An important point to get across is that some CIA agents reasoned that even if the Soviets hadn't yet got a mind-controlling drug, they could get one in future, which meant that America had to have one first to better protect Americans and to help win the Cold War. With an incredibly special insight into this history is former CIA operative Lindsey Moran.
The Cold War was completely defined by mutual paranoia and competition between the Soviets and the United States. And we saw this in the space race, we saw this in the missile program, and we also saw it in their intelligence services, mind control, and using drugs as mind control programs. Inspired by the studies of World War II Nazi scientists,
A number of projects were started by the CIA to explore the usefulness of a number of drugs. The most ambitious of these projects became known as MK-ULTRA. Of all the drugs tested by the CIA, one new synthetic chemical compound stood out from all the others: lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD.
So LSD was discovered by accident late 30s, early 40s by a chemist at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland. His name was Albert Hoffman. So he was doing research on ergo alkalides, which are rye fungus. He got one on his fingers and
licked his finger and went on the first LSD trip. - LSD is the great psychedelic drug. It's a psychoactive substance that basically gives you hallucinations, which can be heavenly and can be hellish. - It intensifies sensory perceptions, emotions, and thoughts.
These particular properties led the CIA to thinking that it might be useful for mind control, for making people believe things, for making people forget things, or for making people do things without knowing it and possibly forgetting who it was who told them to do it. The CIA decided to use LSD because they essentially saw it as a way to destroy someone's mind. And the thinking was,
If we can destroy a person's mind, we can perhaps build it back to our liking or control it. And the man chosen by the CIA to lead research into this incredible new drug was Sidney Gottlieb.
Sidney Gottlieb was essentially the CIA's top chemist. He was in charge of the mind control program, and he's been referred to since as the CIA's poisoner-in-chief. So here we have an American Jew who's using the same methodology that Nazi scientists used to experiment on prisoners in Dachau with seemingly no qualms about it.
In the early 1950s, the CIA bought the world's entire supply of LSD from Sandoz Pharmaceutical for $240,000. The scope of the mind control program soon grew exponentially. MKUltra was a super secret program. Very few individuals knew about it. And it very quickly got completely out of hand.
Introducing historian and archaeologist Peggy Brunache. We'll never know the full scope of how many people were involved in the MKUltra program. We certainly know that there were volunteers that knew what they were getting into, but there were also people who were coerced into it
and unfortunately so many more that had no clue that they were being dosed. At one stage the MKUltra team, they decide that in order to test the true effects of LSD they have to do it unwittingly. And so you have this remarkable situation where at the height of the Cold War CIA agents are actually putting LSD in their morning coffee cups and tripping out. There's many ways that we know that all of this
science fiction sounding stuff is true. The Freedom of Information Act liberated all these documents back in the 70s. It's fully, fully, fully documented.
by the CIA. And it describes in great detail implanting electrodes in people's brains, using hypnosis, using all kinds of different chemicals for the purpose of controlling somebody's mind. Thousands of people were knowingly and unknowingly dosed with LSD by the CIA in the 1950s.
This project was so pervasive, some of the biggest celebrities of the time were involved. Some famous volunteers to take LSD were Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. But this LSD dosing also had negative consequences for many of its participants, including psychosis and suicide.
MKUltra might have also played a part in the creation of the criminal mind of one of America's most dangerous men, the gangster James "Y.T." Bulger. Investigating on the streets of New York is former CIA operative Lindsey Moran.
Whitey Bulger claimed that when he was imprisoned, he was dosed with LSD every single day for several weeks, and that this caused him to nearly irrecoverably lose his mind. If we didn't know that the MKUltra program existed, we might not believe these accounts, but each of these accounts is fairly credible. And the fact that so many famous people were caught up in it
begs the question, how many ordinary people were caught up in it? Bulger experienced night terrors and wrote in his diaries that LSD almost pushed him over the edge. After his first stint in prison, where he alleged he was dosed with LSD, he went on to commit a series of gang-related violent crimes and became the infamous crime boss we recognize today.
Some jurors who convicted him for these crimes at the time, now knowing about the LSD experiments, feel guilt for doing so, believing the government had a lot more to answer for when it came to his actions.
Hello, I'm Violet Manners and welcome to Hidden Heritage, the podcast that brings you inside Great Britain's favourite destinations. From the same team that brought you the number one history podcast, Duchess, Hidden Heritage will uncover the fascinating stories behind the UK's brightest, shining hidden gems.
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We will share the untold and unique stories that celebrate UK heritage, from landmarks to architecture, artefacts to myths and legends. Hidden Heritage will highlight a side of British history you have never seen before. I'm your host, Violet Manners, and founder of HeritageX, and I invite you all to join us on this exciting journey. This is Hidden Heritage. You can find Hidden Heritage wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Including and beyond Whitey Bulger, the CIA's limits to human experimentation knew no bounds. The CIA really had very few limits on who they chose to use as the subjects in their trials. People in prisons, people in hospitals and mental asylums, even men visiting brothels. Little oversight within the establishment led to some very unsavory side projects.
This location here, 81 Bedford Street in the West Village in New York City, was actually home to one of the CIA's most secretive, most nefarious, and perhaps little-known missions. It was called Operation Midnight Climax. They gave unwitting Americans doses of LSD, and it coupled the drugs with sex.
They used this as a safe house, and they basically had the prostitutes go out, bring their johns back, and they would watch everything that happened, including the sex. Operation Midnight Climax was essentially the brainchild of two people: the CIA's main chemist, Sid Gottlieb,
and also this guy named George Hunter White, a completely out-of-control character. Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent George Hunter White was said to be more interested in indulging in the CIA-supplied drug stash than conducting scientific research.
Operation Midnight Climax has to be one of the most bizarre episodes in this whole mind control saga. I mean, it's a completely ridiculous idea to use prostitutes to lace their clients' drinks with LSD and to have scientists behind a mirror gawping at all of this. I mean, really, this is voyeurism. This isn't science.
Starting from the mid-1950s, Operation Midnight Climax would run for around a decade with little to no credible results. But spurred on by Cold War paranoia and claims of communist brainwashing, the CIA would continue to undertake a variety of unethical experiments in its quest for mind control.
As the 50s wore on, the CIA enlisted more and more institutions into the MKUltra project, both in the US and abroad. There was a wide range of institutions who contracted under MKUltra. And this includes leading universities like
Tulane, Harvard, Yale, and so on, many leading psychiatrists and psychologists, all cleared at top secret. For many of the MKUltra experiments, the CIA chose people who would be almost powerless for revenge, people who, if they talked, most people wouldn't believe them anyway. So these are people like prostitutes, drug addicts, and even mental patients. And in this sort of selective reasoning, there are horrible echoes of the selective nature of Nazi terror.
Soon, the MKUltra project would spread beyond America's borders and become an international scheme of brainwashing. One of the most respected scientists to take part in the international experiments was the Scottish-born psychiatrist Ewan Cameron. Colin Ross, MD, author of The CIA Doctors, and historian Dominic Selwood describe his disturbing legacy.
Ewan Cameron was at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He contracted with the Canadian government and with the CIA. He was part of the team that went over and interviewed Nuremberg doctors. His experiments were on psychic driving and de-patterning.
From 1957 to 1964, Cameron worked in the MK Ultra program and he was particularly focused on LSD, convulsives and administering electroshock therapy at many times the normal and the safe dosage. But one thing he's still really known for is inventing the psychic driving technique of torture. And he did that by putting people into comas for days, weeks or in some cases even months.
And while the victim was in a coma, playing white noise or repeated sentences at them over and over and over again. And in several cases, this resulted in complete and permanent mental breakdown. So the purpose of Ewan Cameron's experiments was to wipe out a person's memories. And it's obvious why the CIA would be interested in that. And it's massively unethical, destructive treatment.
What's absolutely shocking is that this was really happening. These weren't theories on a blackboard. People like Cameron were taking real people, often people who were just checking in to a medical facility because they had anxiety or postnatal depression, and they were being put into comas and having their minds destroyed. And this was being done on the American taxpayer's dollar.
One person who I interviewed, she went to the Allen Memorial Institute at Montreal when she was 25 for sort of minor to mild depression. And she gave her 102 ECT treatments from May to September. And in each of those treatments, she got six times the normal dose of electricity. And her memories were from age 25 back to birth permanently wiped out.
couldn't feed herself, didn't know her name, the year, where she was, didn't recognize her family members. It was published in mainstream journals. Everybody looked the other way. He was this important leading guy.
It shouldn't be a surprise to any of us that so many conspiracy theories swirl around the topic of mind control and particularly around the CIA because this is a real part of history. This really did happen. It's pretty horrifying and it really goes against the grain of everything that we think is acceptable in America.
Inevitably, the Cavalier experiments undertaken by Sidney Gottlieb and his underlings would have continuing dire consequences, including the fate of one of their own, a scientist named Frank Olson. Former CIA operative Lindsey Moran knows all too well what the agency is capable of doing in the interests of national security.
Frank Olson was a bio-weapons scientist and he was actually doing top secret work for the CIA. On 19th of November 1953, Frank Olson is at a work retreat with his CIA colleagues in the woods of Maryland and just after dinner in the evening, the men share a bottle of Cointreau which Sidney Gottlieb had actually spiked with LSD.
Olsen returned home and appeared despondent to his family, telling them that he had made a terrible mistake. Reluctantly, he agreed to go to New York with his colleagues to see a psychiatrist.
So Frank Olson was given this LSD and it kind of understandably blew his mind, both prior to the retreat and even during and after the retreat.
Frank Olson was expressing misgivings about the programs he was involved with with the CIA. And these were super top secret programs. So it had become evident that Frank Olson was a problem. He was essentially a dissident. And he expressed openly to this small core group of people that he didn't want to do this anymore. He actually asked to quit.
Some argue that Frank Olson's grave misgivings about his involvement in this secretive program would seal his fate. Days after he asked to quit, he reluctantly agreed to travel to New York City to be examined by one of the agency's recommended physicians. It's here, outside the Hotel Pennsylvania, known then as the Statler-Hilton Hotel, where Frank Olson would meet an untimely death.
Frank Olson, at 2:30 in the morning, plunged to his death right here. The night manager of the hotel came out, and Frank Olson was still alive at this point and was trying to mumble a few words that the night manager couldn't understand, and then Frank Olson died. But the night manager knew that something was amiss. If you look at the rooms in this hotel,
They're actually very small. There would be no way that someone could get enough of a running start to dive and crash through the glass window and fall to his death. Even if he opened the door and got a running start down the hallway, it's just virtually impossible. It doesn't make any sense. I'm strongly convinced that Frank Olson was pushed out of the hotel room
and it was not a suicide. And the reason that was done is he was threatening to become a whistleblower. He was directly involved in all kinds of chemical experimentation, chemical warfare. I think the evidence is such that
But one could say, yeah, Frank Olsen was murdered. The CIA agents then proceeded to cover up the circumstances of Frank Olsen's death in public, although privately they admitted that LSD had triggered his death. Frank Olsen's loving wife and children had to wait until 1975 to discover that the CIA had actually given him LSD. The CIA has never admitted having a hand in Frank Olsen's death.
Yet over 20 years later, in 1975, the Olson family received apologies from CIA Director William Colby and President Ford, as well as $750,000 in compensation. I can sympathize greatly with Frank Olson, having worked for the CIA myself.
The Central Intelligence Agency is not now and never has been a place appropriate for someone who has a strong moral compass.
It's a place where you have to be comfortable operating in the gray. Frank Olson was deeply uncomfortable with a lot of the things that the CIA and the U.S. government was doing. If you have moral qualms or misgivings about the work you're doing, you should probably keep them to yourself, because nothing good will come of it for your career or, as we saw in the case of Frank Olson, for your life.
The vast majority of files related to MK-ULTRA were destroyed when the project was dissolved. But that didn't stop the truth leaking to the public.
President Ford in the 70s came down hard on what he discovered about the CIA using LSD and other really dodgy techniques for basically playing with people's minds, in some cases destroying people's minds. So officially such things are no longer legal. There's a whole series of projects which just were brought to an end administratively and then
It was all just shut down by the director of the CIA, Richard Helms. But that's not believable. There must have been subsequent projects with different names that we don't know about. When it comes to MKUltra, so many questions remain unanswered. When somebody asks me, do you think this is ongoing? My basic answer is, I don't know for a fact. But what I do know for a fact is Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.
Those are organized interrogation programs using a lot of pretty destructive, unethical tactics, like electric shock to the person, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, sexual humiliation.
All of these are elements of enhanced interrogations that have traced probably back 2,000 years, but certainly back to MKUltra. Militaries and governments are always researching, always trying to find the next edge in combat and intelligence to give them the advantage.
But these days, the research is much more likely to be into automation and AI than it is to be pumping soldiers or spies full of drugs. With all of the experimentation of the MKUltra program, the CIA really didn't succeed in any of its aims. So one could say that the program was almost entirely for naught.
Although you potentially could credit the CIA with being the harbinger of the age of free love and drugs and LSD really found its foothold. There was a massive amount that obviously we don't know. The person in charge of MKLTRA, Sidney Gottlieb, who I talked to briefly on the phone once,
He told me an interesting thing, which was there was another unit within the CIA in parallel to his conducting mind control research, which has not been identified or declassified at all. We may never know the whole truth about the MKUltra program, but we do know, however, that it affected the lives of thousands, and that most likely there are many more stories that will never be told.
Unless more files are declassified or more information comes to light, we will only ever know fragments of one of the 20th century's darkest eras. What would it have been like to work for the CIA during these clandestine years? For a deep dive into the life of CIA operative Frank Olson, listen to our extra episode, Forbidden Fruit, available soon on all your favorite podcast platforms.
This is an audio production by Like A Shot Entertainment. Presented by Bridget Lappin. Executive Producers Danny O'Brien and Henry Scott. Story Producer Maddie Bowers. Assistant Producer Alice Tudor. Thank you for listening.