The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

by Jon E. Lewis

  Whether the CIA ever succeeded in programming its own Manchurian Candidate will probably never be publicly known, although hypnotized killers are alleged to have been used in the murders of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther Ling, John Lennon and Israeli premier Yitzchak Rabin, while Jonestown is frequently cited as an MK-ULTRA brainwashing factory.

  Sometime in 1972 CIA director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of the bulk of the MK-ULTRA files because of a “burgeoning paper problem”. Despite Helms’s timely action, there was enough of a paper trail left for the New York Times to blow the whistle on the project in 1974. Following the Congressional Church Committee (see below) and the Rockefeller Commission, President Ford prohibited similar projects by the CIA. Compensation was paid to a number of MK-ULTRA victims and their kin.

  One stone, however, was left unturned. Among those paid compensation by the US government was the family of Dr Frank Olson, who committed suicide in 1953 by jumping from the tenth floor of New York’s Hotel Statler after taking LSD at the behest of Gottlieb. Olson’s son, Eric, was not so easily bought off, and decided to investigate his father’s death. An examination of Olson’s exhumed body found marks to the skull consistent with repeated attack from behind. At this New York assistant attorney Steve Saracco took up the case and subpoenaed CIA director William Colby as a witness. Colby was found shortly afterwards floating dead in a river. Olson Jr believes his father’s death was murder, not suicide, the motive being the elimination of a researcher who had become opposed to Gottlieb’s gruesome experiments. Again the definitive answer lies in Richard Helms’s shredder.

  The CIA experimented on human subjects to develop methods of mind control: ALERT LEVEL 10

  Further Reading

  Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams, 1985

  John Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control, 1989

  Gordon Thomas, Journey into Madness: The True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse, 1989 http: //www.frankolsonproject.org

  DOCUMENT: FROM THE CHURCH COMMITTEE REPORT

  94TH CONGRESS, 2D SESSION SENATE REPORT NO. 94–755

  FOREIGN AND MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

  BOOK I

  FINAL REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE TO STUDY GOVERNMENTAL OPERATION WITH RESPECT TO INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES

  XVII. Testing and Use of Chemical and Biological Agents by the Intelligence Community

  Under its mandate, the Select Committee has studied the testing and use of chemical and biological agents by intelligence agencies. Detailed descriptions of the programs conducted by intelligence agencies involving chemical and biological agents will be included in a separately published appendix to the Senate Select Committee’s report. This section of the report will discuss the rationale for the programs, their monitoring and control, and what the Committee’s investigation has revealed [ab]out the relationships among the intelligence agencies and about their relations with other government agencies and private institutions and individuals.

  Fears that countries hostile to the United States would use chemical and biological agents against Americans or America’s allies led to the development of a defensive program designed to discover techniques for American intelligence agencies to detect and counteract chemical and biological agents. The defensive orientation soon became secondary as the possible use of these agents to obtain information from, or gain control over, enemy agents became apparent.

  Research and development programs to find materials which could be used to alter human behavior were initiated in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These experimental programs originally included testing of drugs involving witting human subjects, and culminated in tests using unwitting, nonvolunteer human subjects. These tests were designed to determine the potential effects of chemical or biological agents when used operationally against individuals unaware that they had received a drug.

  The testing programs were considered highly sensitive by the intelligence agencies administering them. Few people, even within the agencies, knew of the programs and there is no evidence that either the executive branch or Congress were ever informed of them. The highly compartmented nature of these programs may be explained in part by an observation made by the CIA Inspector General that, “the knowledge that the Agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its missions.”

  The research and development program, and particularly the covert testing programs, resulted in massive abridgments of the rights of American citizens, sometimes with tragic consequences. The deaths of two Americans can be attributed to these programs; other participants in the testing programs may still suffer from the residual effects. While some controlled testing of these substances might be defended, the nature of the tests, their scale, and the fact that they were continued for years after the danger of surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting individuals was known, demonstrate a fundamental disregard for the value of human life.

  The Select Committee’s investigation of the testing and use of chemical and biological agents also raises serious questions about the adequacy of command and control procedures within the Central Intelligence Agency and military intelligence, and about the relationships among the intelligence agencies, other governmental agencies, and private institutions and individuals. The CIA’s normal administrative controls were waived for programs involving chemical and biological agents to protect their security. According to the head of the Audit Branch of the CIA, these waivers produced “gross administrative failures.” They prevented the CIA’s internal review mechanisms (the Office of General Counsel, the Inspector General, and the Audit Staff) from adequately supervising the programs. In general, the waivers had the paradoxical effect of providing less restrictive administrative controls and less effective internal review for controversial and highly sensitive projects than those governing normal Agency activities.

  The security of the programs was protected not only by waivers of normal administrative controls, but also by a high degree of compartmentation within the CIA. This compartmentation excluded the CIA’s Medical Staff from the principal research and testing program employing chemical and biological agents.

  It also may have led to agency policymakers receiving differing and inconsistent responses when they posed questions to the CIA component involved.

  Jurisdictional uncertainty within the CIA was matched by jurisdictional conflict among the various intelligence agencies. A spirit of cooperation and reciprocal exchanges of information which initially characterized the programs disappeared. Military testers withheld information from the CIA, ignoring suggestions for coordination from their superiors. The CIA similarly failed to provide information to the military on the CIA’s testing program. This failure to cooperate was conspicuously manifested in an attempt by the Army to conceal their overseas testing program, which included surreptitious administration of LSD, from the CIA. Learning of the Army’s program, the Agency surreptitiously attempted to obtain details of it.

  The decision to institute one of the Army’s LSD field testing projects had been based, at least in part, on the finding that no long-term residual effects had ever resulted from the drug’s administration. The CIA’s failure to inform the Army of a death which resulted from the surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting Americans, may well have resulted in the institution of an unnecessary and potentially lethal program.

  The development, testing, and use of chemical and biological agents by intelligence agencies raises serious questions about the relationship between the intelligence community and foreign governments, other agencies of the Federal Government, and other institutions and individuals. The questions raised range from the legitimacy of American complicity in actions abroad which violate American and foreign laws to the possible compromise of the integrity of public and private institutions used as cover by intelligence agencies.

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  4. MKULTRA

  MKULTRA was the principal CIA program involving the research and development of chemical and biological agents. It was “concerned with the research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.”

  In January 1973, MKULTRA records were destroyed by Technical Services Division personnel acting on the verbal orders of Dr Sidney Gottlieb, Chief of TSD. Dr Gottlieb has testified, and former Director Helms has confirmed, that in ordering the records destroyed, Dr Gottlieb was carrying out the verbal order of then DCI Helms.

  MKULTRA began with a proposal from the Assistant Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Helms, to the DCI, outlining a special funding mechanism for highly sensitive CIA research and development projects that studied the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior. The projects involved:

  Research to develop a capability in the covert use of biological and chemical materials. This area involves production of various physiological conditions which could support present or future clandestine operations. Aside from the offensive potential, the development of a comprehensive ability in this field of covert chemical and biological warfare gives us a thorough knowledge of the enemy’s theoretical potential, thus enabling us to defend ourselves against a foe who might not be as restrained in the use of these techniques as we are.

  MKULTRA was approved by the DCI on 13 April 1953 along the lines proposed by ADDP Helms.

  Part of the rationale for the establishment of this special funding mechanism was its extreme sensitivity. The Inspector General’s survey of MKULTRA in 1963 noted the following reasons for this sensitivity:

  a. Research in the manipulation of human behavior is considered by many authorities in medicine and related fields to be professionally unethical, therefore the reputations of professional participants in the MKULTRA program are on occasion in jeopardy.

  b. Some MKULTRA activities raise questions of legality implicit in the original charter.

  c. A final phase of the testing of MKULTRA products places the rights and interests of US citizens in jeopardy.

  d. Public disclosure of some aspects of MKULTRA activity could induce serious adverse reaction in US public opinion, as well as stimulate offensive and defensive action in this field on the part of foreign intelligence services.

  Over the ten-year life of the program, many “additional avenues to the control of human behavior” were designated as appropriate for investigation under the MKULTRA charter. These include radiation electroshock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment substances, and paramilitary devices and materials.

  The research and development of materials to be used for altering human behavior consisted of three phases: first, the search for materials suitable for study; second, laboratory testing on voluntary human subjects in various types of institutions; third, the application of MKULTRA materials in normal life settings.

  The search for suitable materials was conducted though standing arrangements with specialists in universities, pharmaceutical houses, hospitals, state and federal institutions, and private research organizations. The annual grants of funds to these specialists were made under ostensible research foundation auspices, thereby concealing the CIA’s interest from the specialist’s institution.

  The next phase of the MKULTRA program involved physicians, toxicologists, and other specialists in mental, narcotics, and general hospitals, and in prisons. Utilizing the products and findings of the basic research phase, they conducted intensive tests on human subjects.

  One of the first studies was conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health. This study was intended to test various drugs, including hallucinogenics, at the NIMH Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Kentucky. The “Lexington Rehabilitation Center,” as it was then called, was a prison for drug addicts serving sentences for drug violations.

  The test subjects were volunteer prisoners who, after taking a brief physical examination and signing a general consent form, were administered hallucinogenic drugs. As a reward for participation in the program, the addicts were provided with the drugs of their addiction.

  LSD was one of the materials tested in the MKULTRA program. The final phase of LSD testing involved surreptitious administration to unwitting nonvolunteer subjects in normal life settings by undercover officers of the Bureau of Narcotics acting for the CIA.

  The rationale for such testing was “that testing of materials under accepted scientific procedures fails to disclose the full pattern of reactions and attributions that may occur in operational situations.”

  According to the CIA, the advantage of the relationship with the Bureau was that

  test subjects could be sought and cultivated within the setting of narcotics control. Some subjects have been informers or members of suspect criminal elements from whom the [Bureau of Narcotics] has obtained results of operational value through the tests. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the substances on individuals at all social levels, high and low, native American and foreign, is of great significance and testing has been performed on a variety of individuals within these categories.

  A special procedure, designated MKDELTA, was established to govern the use of MKULTRA materials abroad. Such materials were used on a number of occasions. Because MKULTRA records were destroyed, it is impossible to reconstruct the operational use of MKULTRA materials by the CIA overseas; it has been determined that the use of these materials abroad began in 1953, and possibly as early as 1950.

  Drugs were used primarily as an aid to interrogations, but MKULTRA/MKDELTA materials were also used for harassment, discrediting or disabling purposes. According to an Inspector General Survey of the Technical Services Division of the CIA in 1957 – an inspection which did not discover the MKULTRA projects involving the surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting, nonvolunteer subjects – the CIA had developed six drugs for operational use and they had been used in six different operations on a total of thirty-three subjects. By 1963 the number of operations and subjects had increased substantially.

  In the spring of 1963, during a wide-ranging Inspector General survey of the Technical Services Division, a member of the Inspector General’s staff, John Vance, learned about MKULTRA and about the project involving the surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting, nonvoluntary human subjects. As a result of the discovery and the Inspector General’s subsequent report, this testing was halted and much tighter administrative controls were imposed on the program. According to the CIA, the project was decreased significantly each budget year until its complete termination in the late 1960s.

  MARILYN MONROE

  By 1962 the career of screen goddess Marilyn Monroe was on a steep slide. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot were behind her, while the filming of the so-so Something’s Got to Give had been delayed and derailed by Monroe’s own erratic behaviour. She had recently been divorced from her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller. She was going down into a vortex of depression, drink and barbiturates.

  On 5 August 1962 Monroe was found dead by her housekeeper, Mrs Eunice Murray, from what appeared to be a massive overdose of Nembutal and chloral hydrate. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s court, bearing in mind Monroe’s mental health, returned a verdict of suicide.

  The sad death of Marilyn Monroe might have remained lamented but uncontroversial had it not been for her fascinating choice of boyfriends in the last months of her life. One squeeze was John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America. When “Jack” tired of Monroe he passed her on to his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General. Monroe also took as a bedtime companion Sam Giancana, the Mafia boss who ran Crime America Inc. while JFK ran the orthodox economy.

  Giancana wiretapped her house. So did Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa and J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. According to Hollywood private investigator Fre
d Otash, who carried out some of the wiretaps, the Monroe tapes “are probably the most interesting ever made – with the exception of Watergate”. There are rumours that the tapes turned throughout the evening of Monroe’s death and that what they reveal is a minute-by-minute record of Monroe’s murder.

  Nearly all the “Monroe was Murdered” conspiracy theories home in on JFK. According to these accounts, Monroe had fallen in love with the president and had been led to believe, or had persuaded herself, that JFK was going to leave Jackie for her. Monroe may even have become pregnant by him. When JFK dumped her she threatened to go public and “blow the lid off Washington”. Any such eruption would have ended JFK’s career. Needless to say, JFK needed Monroe silent. Permanently.

  As did Bobby Kennedy. Sloughed off by JFK, Monroe fell into a passionate relationship with his brother, who likewise found Monroe emotionally demanding and indiscreet. Her constant calls to his office and home jeopardized both his professional and his personal life. Moreover, RFK, in some braggardly pillow talk, had illuminated Monroe about the CIA’s attempts to kill Castro, leaving her in possession of state secrets which might end up being exposed in her proposed planned lid-lifting.

  No one has seriously suggested that JFK took a literal hand in Monroe’s demise, yet numerous witnesses place RFK at Monroe’s bungalow on the eve of her death. According to James Hall, an ambulance driver, he [Hall] arrived at Monroe’s house to find the star reviving from a drug coma; at this point bystanding RFK persuaded Monroe’s psychiatrist, Dr Ralph Greenson, to inject the star with a lethal dose of Nembutal. This would explain one of the puzzles in Monroe’s autopsy report: her stomach was devoid of tablet residue, despite the empty pill bottles around her corpse. In another version of Bobbydunnit, the Attorney General ordered the FBI to kill Monroe in order to save the Kennedys’ careers; of course J. Edgar Hoover was only too pleased to do so because it gave him a stranglehold on the White House.