From the archive · A retrospective
The CIA Drugged Americans. Then It Destroyed the Files.
MKULTRA’s surviving paperwork exposes a vast research network, unwitting subjects and a chemist worried about what his testimony might cost him.
By the time Congress began asking the right questions about the CIA’s drug experiments, Richard Helms had ordered most of the files destroyed. The agency had experimented on people who had never agreed to participate. It would now struggle to say precisely what it had done to them.
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Most original files were destroyed; the institutional totals are not counts of knowing participants. The recovered records cannot provide a complete victim count.
Sources & further reading
- Project MKULTRA: Senate joint hearing, August 3, 1977CIA
- The Top Secret Testimony of CIA’s MKULTRA Chief, 50 Years LaterNational Security Archive / released records
- Academic papers reveal how a CIA-funded mind-control program came to AustraliaABC Australia
