CIA Experiments and the Birth of Counterculture

OA1057

We’re giving ourselves a break this week from Trump, the Supreme Court, and all things 2024 to indulge in one of Matt’s all-time favorite subjects: CIA mind control experiments! In this extra-carefully-researched episode, Matt breaks down the history of the federal government’s MKULTRA  program to fund research in brainwashing, mind control, and LSD on unsuspecting U.S. and (for some reason) Canadian citizens, as well as the inherent legal issues in trying to sue the CIA for something you can’t remember and for which most evidence has been destroyed. Why was the CIA funding a sadistic mad scientist in Montreal, and is there any hope of justice for the families of his victims today? 

BOOKS

1. Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control , Stephen Kinzer (2019)

2. The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: the CIA and Mind Control, John Marks (1979)(link goes to full text on CIA website)

3. The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government: David Talbot (2016)

4. CHAOS: The Truth Behind the Manson Murders, Tom O’Neill (2020)

LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

5. Orlikow v. United States, 682 F. Supp. 77 (D.D.C. 1988)

6. CIA v. Sims :: 471 U.S. 159 (1985)

7. “PROJECT MKULTRA, the CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification,” (transcript of joint Senate hearing)(8/3/1977)

8. Judgment dismissing former Deputy U.S. Marshall Wayne Ritchie’s claims against the CIA in Ritchie v. U.S. (N.D. CA 2005)

ARTICLES

9. ANATOMY OF A PUBLIC INTEREST CASE AGAINST THE CIA, Joseph Rauh and Jim Turner, Hamline Journal of Law and Public Policy (Fall 1990)

10. MK-ULTRA: Quebec high court says U.S. has immunity in Canada | Montreal Gazette (10/3/23) 

11. CIA Denies Conspiracy Theory That It Used MKUltra on Trump Shooter, Gizmodo.com (7/28/24)

12. “After Learning of Whitey Bulger LSD Tests, Juror Has Regrets,” PBS  (2/18/2020)

13. “Before He Was the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski was a CIA Mind Control Test Subject,” Washington Post (6/11/2023)

PODCASTS & DOCUMENTARIES

1. Brainwashed, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (2024)

2. Madness, WBUR (2020)

3. The Sleep Room: CIA-funded experiments on patients in Montreal hospital (1998) - The Fifth Estate (CBC)

4. Wormwood, Errol Morris, Netflix (2017)