Did The CIA Really Spike People With LSD?

Have you ever heard the claim that the CIA dosed unknowing people with LSD?

It seems like a B-grade spy movie, yet … it’s totally true

When LSD entered the scene in the 1950s, it wasn’t just counterculture enthusiasts who took notice. Project MKUltra was a program that turned American citizens into unwitting participants in a series of experiments that sound more fiction than fact.

The end goal? Exploring the drug’s potential for mind control to counter perceived Soviet advances in brainwashing techniques.

The scope of MKUltra was astonishingly broad, involving over 150 human experiments across institutions that included universities, hospitals, and prisons. Some of the experiments were conducted using scientific methods on willing participants in universities or labs. But other operations went wild.

Under the guise of medical research, the CIA dosed individuals without their consent, seeking to understand how LSD could manipulate the mind. The CIA administered LSD to mental patients, prisoners, college students, prostitutes, and at least one young mother. The agency even spiked the drinks of its own agents, watching as colleagues stumbled through the hallucinogenic haze in the name of research.

MKUltra created the operation “Midnight Climax,” where the CIA turned San Francisco apartments into brothels and lured unsuspecting men with the promise of sex. Once inside, they were dosed with LSD, and their reactions were observed behind two-way mirrors.

Yet, for all its audacity, MKUltra yielded more horror stories than actionable intelligence. Frank Olson, a scientist working for the CIA, was unknowingly dosed with LSD. He suffered severe paranoia and psychological distress, shortly followed by his death from a fall out of a New York City hotel window. Officially ruled a suicide, suspicions linger that his death was a consequence of the LSD experiment gone awry.

The public revelation of MKUltra in the 1970s, primarily thanks to the Congressional Church Committee, exposed the CIA’s dark experiments. Americans weren’t happy, and it led to widespread condemnation and calls for reform. But the full extent of MKUltra still remains a mystery. Many documents were destroyed in a bid to erase the project’s legacy, leaving gaping holes in our understanding of what truly transpired.

It raises the real question: Does our government still do awful things under the banner of national security?

Ask me in twenty years.

Ken LaCorte is former Senior Vice President at Fox News. You can find him on Substack, YouTube and podcast, Elephants in Rooms.

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