In December 2024, the National Security Archive at George Washington University published a new scholarly collection titled “CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments and MKULTRA,” bringing together more than 1,200 essential records on one of the most infamous programs in CIA history.
Under code names including MKULTRA, BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE, the CIA conducted terrifying experiments using drugs, hypnosis, isolation, sensory deprivation, and other extreme techniques on human subjects — often U.S. citizens who had no idea they were part of a government test.
“Most LSD obtained by the CIA comes from the Eli Lilly Company,” reveals a 1953 memo from the newly released collection, documenting the pharmaceutical giant’s role as the agency’s chief supplier of the psychoactive chemical.
One document describes “successful application of narco-hypnotic integrations” on subjects who were given heavy dosages of sodium pentothal and Desoxyn, leaving them with little to no memory of interrogation sessions. CIA safehouses in New York and San Francisco were used to covertly dose unsuspecting citizens with LSD.
The collection was published 50 years after Seymour Hersh’s New York Times investigation first brought MKULTRA abuses to light. Many documents were destroyed in 1973 on the orders of CIA Director Richard Helms, making this newly compiled archive an invaluable resource.
