Washington, July 5 (IANS) A congressional hearing this week renewed scrutiny of the CIA's Cold War-era MKULTRA programme, with lawmakers and expert witnesses alleging that the agency secretly used universities, hospitals, prisons and other institutions across the United States to conduct mind-control experiments on unwitting human subjects while concealing the full extent of the programme for decades.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee's Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets heard testimony from historian Stephen Kinzer and investigative journalist Tom O'Neill, who argued that key aspects of the CIA's programme remain hidden because many records were deliberately destroyed or remain heavily redacted.
Opening the hearing, Task Force Chair Anna Paulina Luna said Project MKULTRA "was not a policy failure or an overzealous programme that got out of hand."
"It was a deliberate, systematic governmental operation that subjected American citizens, prisoners, hospital patients, veterans, ordinary people to LSD, electroshock, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, psychological torture without their knowledge or consent," she said.
Luna alleged that then-CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of MKULTRA files before leaving office in 1973, calling it "obstruction of justice" and "criminal destruction of federal records." She also disclosed that she and Representative Eric Burlison had recently visited CIA headquarters after learning that additional MKULTRA records had been discovered.
"The CIA is currently in the process of declassifying newly found documentation," Luna said, adding that the records relate to "a forgery programme that was being housed under MKULTRA."
Kinzer, author of Poisoner in Chief, testified that the programme extended across prisons, clinics and safe houses in the United States and overseas.
"In its search for ways to destroy a human mind and body, MKULTRA conducted the most extreme experiments on human beings that have ever been carried out by a US government agency," he said. "By any standard, they qualify as medical torture."
He said surviving records show that MKULTRA "comprised at least 149 subprojects" involving "more than 80 institutions" and "185 non-government researchers."
Kinzer urged Congress to seek the removal of remaining redactions from declassified files.
"Now 70 years have passed. That argument can no longer be valid," he said. "I would urge this committee to try to fill out all the blank spaces in the documents that we have."
O'Neill, author of Chaos, told lawmakers he believed previous congressional investigations had not been given a complete account of the programme.
"I believe Congress was never told the truth about what this programme actually achieved," he said. "I believe the agency misled Congress in 1977 when it characterised MKULTRA as a failure."
He testified that his research uncovered correspondence between psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West and Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA scientist who led MKULTRA, discussing experiments involving LSD, hypnosis and unwitting human subjects.
According to O'Neill, documents he found described efforts to "extract true information and implant false information in unwilling subjects" and to alter "the attitudes and beliefs of previously loyal individuals."
Lawmakers repeatedly questioned the witnesses about allegations that universities, hospitals, prisons and military facilities were used to conduct covert experiments through CIA-funded front organisations. O'Neill identified institutions including the Lexington Addiction Centre, Lackland Air Force Base Hospital, Holmesburg Prison, Vacaville Prison and several universities as locations linked to research discussed during the hearing.
Both witnesses called for renewed efforts to identify victims and release additional records. O'Neill noted that a promised federal investigation following the 1977 hearings never fully materialised, while Kinzer urged Congress to pursue remaining classified files and remove redactions from those already released.
Project MKULTRA was launched by the CIA in 1953 during the Cold War to explore interrogation techniques, behavioural modification and mind control. Public knowledge of the programme emerged in the 1970s after investigations by the Church Committee and other congressional inquiries uncovered evidence of secret human experimentation.
Many operational files were destroyed in 1973 on the orders of then-CIA Director Richard Helms, leaving investigators to reconstruct the programme largely from surviving financial records that were accidentally preserved. The hearing marked a renewed congressional effort to examine those records and press for further declassification.
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