From a secret U.S Air Force project to build a flying saucer to a now-famous World War II-era research program that produced the first atomic bombs, below are 10 declassified military and CIA secrets. 13 million CIA records were declassified and posted online a few weeks agothe result of a 2014 lawsuit filed by journalists seeking access to documents of historic value. [2] In 1958, the Corps released 600,000 mosquitoes in Avon Park, Florida. Cameron had been hoping to correct schizophrenia by erasing existing memories and reprogramming the psyche. Evidence indicates that SNOWDEN had access to the classified documents in question; accessed those documents; and, subsequently, provided those documents to media outlets without authorization and in violation of U.S. The mosquitoes were released from ground level in Savannah, Georgia and then recovered using traps baited with dry ice. [1] Chemical Corps personnel participating in the tests were not volunteers and were not informed of the tests. [32], The project began during a period of what English journalist Rupert Cornwell described as "paranoia" at the CIA, when the U.S. had lost its nuclear monopoly and fear of communism was at its height. [3] E23s malfunctioned during testing and the fleas were released into the aircraft where they bit the pilot, bombardier and an observer. All rights reserved. But I think most people when they think about it will say that you will get better intelligence if the intelligence agencies don't operate in an unexamined fashion. [61], Some subjects' participation was consensual, and in these cases they appeared to be singled out for even more extreme experiments. [21], Edward Lee Howard, David Henry Barnett, both field operations officers sold secrets to Russia. Later, From left: William Picketing, James Van Allen, and German scientist Wernher von Braun brandish a model of the first American satellite Explorer 1, on January 31, 1958. Kinzer gives evidence of the continuation of a Nazi agenda, citing the CIA's secret recruitment of Nazi torturers and vivisectionists to continue experimenting on thousands of subjects, and Nazis were brought to Fort Detrick, Maryland, to instruct CIA officers on the lethal uses of sarin gas. At the beginning of the 2009 comedy, The Men who Stare at Goats, there is a disclaimer that some of the plot elements are based on real events.It doesn't say which but some new information about a secret CIA program was declassified last year. "When historical information is no longer sensitive, we take seriously our responsibility to share it with the American people.". [87] A few days before his death, Frank Olson quit his position as acting chief of the Special Operations Division at Detrick, Maryland (later Fort Detrick) because of a severe moral crisis concerning the nature of his biological weapons research. [66] Mdecins Sans Frontires criticized the CIA for endangering and undermining trust in medical workers[67] and The New York Times reported that the CIA's action had increased resistance to vaccination programs in Pakistan. Its free. The National Intelligence Daily for December 29, 1989, was first declassified by the CIA on June 3, 1999. "80 Institutions Used in CIA Mind Studies: Admiral Turner Tells Senators of Behavior Control Research Bars Drug Testing Now". Under this guise, engineers built a network of underground buildings and tunnels, including living quarters, a kitchen, a recreation hall, infirmary, laboratories, supply rooms, a communications center and a nuclear power plant. The explosion created a mushroom cloud that stretched 40,000 feet (12,200 m), and the bomb's explosive power was equivalent to more than 15,000 tons of TNT. The mission of the secret armies was simple: Prepare for a potential communist takeover and lead an armed resistance should such a takeover occur. It is unknown whether any useful DNA was acquired from the program, but it was deemed not successful. Find Your Calling with a Career at CIA. It often conducted experiments without the subjects' knowledge or consent. These research funds were sent to Cameron by a CIA front organization, the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, and as shown in internal CIA documents, Cameron did not know the money came from the CIA. It ends now. [62], MKUltra's researchers later dismissed LSD as too unpredictable in its results. The project became the basis for several movies, such as "The Manchurian Candidate" and "The Men Who Stare at Goats.". [60] According to Stephen Kinzer, Olson had approached his superiors some time earlier, doubting the morality of the project, and asked to resign from the CIA. Several other proposals were included within Operation Northwoods, including real or simulated actions against various U.S. military and civilian targets. [3], The E14 was designed to hold 100,000 fleas and the E23 was designed to hold 200,000 fleas but the E23 failed in over half of the preliminary Big Itch tests. Sidney Gottlieb, who had retired from the CIA two years previously and had headed MKUltra, was interviewed by the committee but claimed to have very little recollection of the activities of MKUltra. "Director Panetta did brief us two weeks agoI believe it was on the 24th of June and, as had been reported, did tell us that he was told that the vice president had ordered that the program not be briefed to the Congress. The official mendacity only became public after Barlow sued the US Department of Defense for wrongful termination. This category contains the known or alleged operations of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States . Copyright 2023 InsideHook. Allegations by Director Panetta indicate that details of a secret counterterrorism program were withheld from Congress under orders from former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Funding for MKSEARCH commenced in 1965, and ended in 1971. [33][118] The CIA insists that MKUltra-type experiments have been abandoned. In March 1968, American soldiers murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians in the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai, according to accounts of the massacre that describe harrowing killings of at least 300 women, children and elderly people. CIA spokesman George Little said that he could not confirm if CIA computers were used to make the changes, claiming that "the agency always expects its computer systems to be used responsibly. [1][2], The primary purpose for Operation Paperclip was U.S. military advantage in the SovietAmerican Cold War, and the Space Race. The base, which was kept secret from the Danish government, operated for seven years. [44] They spent an estimated $10 million or more, roughly $87.5 million adjusted for inflation. [13][23] Some surviving information about MKUltra was declassified in July 2001. [16], On October 4, 2001, a secret arrangement was made in Brussels, by all members of NATO. While the classic show likely stretched the truth a little to its favor, declassified historical documents do note that the location has been used to test military vehicles and weapons. If you think the government has too much power these days, just see what the CIA was up to in the 50s and 60s. [39], In 2014, The New York Times reported that "In the decades after World War II, the C.I.A. [1][2] In a 1975 Pentagon Inspector General's report, the military maintained Top Hat was not subject to the guidelines requiring approval because it was a "line of duty" exercise in the Chemical Corps. Since 1995, the Agency has released over 30 million pages as a result of Executive Orders, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Privacy Act, and mandatory declassification reviews. June 28, 2007 and Tim Weiner, United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories, United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Unethical human experimentation in the United States, Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, Category:Central Intelligence Agency operations, "One of the Most Shocking CIA Programs of All Time: Project MKUltra", "The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief'", "Dialogue Sought With Professor In CIA Probe", "Statement of Director of Central Intelligence Before Subcommittee On Health And Scientific Research Senate Committee on Human Resources", "PROJECT BLUEBIRD | CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov)", "Advisory on Human Radiation Experiments, July 5, 1994, National Security Archives, retrieved January 16, 2014", "Project MKUltra, the Central Intelligence Agency's Program of Research into Behavioral Modification. Later admitting to the wiretapping, the CIA said 40,000 hours of telephone conversations were recorded. Secret writing document oneSecret writing document twoSecret writing document threeSecret writing document fourSecret writing document fiveSecret writing document six, Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room. If only Sarah Palin had been around in the 50s, she wouldve been all over this top-secret program. Testing and Use of Chemical and Biological Agents by the Intelligence Community, List of MKULTRA Unclassified Documents including subprojects, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MKUltra&oldid=1133962574. ", "The Legacy of the CIA's Secret LSD Experiments on America", "Cloak and Dropper The Twisted History of the CIA and LSD", " " "", "Cruel science: CIA torture and U.S. foreign policy", "CIA Funded Experiments On Danish Orphans For Decades", "Huge C.i.a. The same NID was released again on December . "The whole committee was stunned. In 1977, during a hearing held by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to look further into MKUltra, Admiral Stansfield Turner, then Director of Central Intelligence, revealed that the CIA had found a set of records, consisting of about 20,000 pages,[78] that had survived the 1973 destruction orders because they had been incorrectly stored at a records center not usually used for such documents. Thanks to the Intelligence Communitys persistence, CORONA resulted in one of the largest declassification projects in American history. The CIA has also been accused of a lack of financial and whistleblower controls which has led to waste and fraud. Declassified Army and CIA Manuals. [4] As a result, the remaining Big Itch tests were conducted using only the smaller capacity E14. Almost no other site has garnered as much attention from conspiracy theorists and UFO-enthusiasts as Area 51, a remote desert tract near Groom Lake in Nevada, roughly 83 miles (134 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas. "[5], Extraordinary rendition is the apprehension and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another.[6]. For more on the program, read this declassified document here. Its purpose was to develop, test, and evaluate capabilities in the covert use of biological, chemical, and radioactive material systems and techniques of producing predictable human behavioral and/or physiological changes in support of highly sensitive operational requirements. Project Grudge was a short-lived program launched in 1949 to study unidentified flying objects. Cameron was also a member of the Nuremberg medical tribunal in 19461947. The Central Intelligence Agency today declassified the United States Government's six oldest classified documents, dating from 1917 and 1918. law. One subject of army drug experimentation, James Stanley, an army sergeant, brought an important, albeit unsuccessful, suit. Project 1794 was canceled in December 1961 after tests suggested the flying saucer design was aerodynamically unstable and would likely be uncontrollable at high speeds (let alone supersonic speeds). [1][2][3][4] It began in 1953 and was halted in 1973. ", "Operation Paperclip was a secret program of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) largely carried out by Special Agents of Army CIC, in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, such as Wernher von Braun and his V-2 rocket team, were taken from Germany to America for U.S. government employment, primarily between 1945 and 1959. [77] However, it contained little detail. If this principle is violated, the very least that society can do is to see that the victims are compensated, as best they can be, by the perpetrators. [41], CIA documents suggest that they investigated "chemical, biological, and radiological" methods of mind control as part of MKUltra. [85] On 28 November 2012, the Olson family filed suit against the U.S. federal government for the wrongful death of Frank Olson. [53] The House is expected to support the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Bill including a provision that would require the President to inform more than 40 members of Congress about covert operations. In a declassified CIA document outlining the details of Operation Belladonna, we can see the United States had already made contact with Ukrainian Nationalists that were keen to ally with the Americans against the USSR, primarily through influencing the development of the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR). [The 10 Craziest Military Experiments], In 1973, then-CIA director Richard Helms ordered that all documents from Project MK-ULTRA be destroyed, but a formal investigation into the program was launched several years later. ", "Under the guidelines, seven research projects involving chemical weapons and human subjects were submitted by the Chemical Corps for Secretary of the Army approval in August 1953. Dubbed Operation Crossroads, the test After retiring in 1972, Gottlieb dismissed his entire effort for the CIA's MKUltra program as useless. Communists led by Fidel Castro had taken power in Cuba in 1959, which aroused the concern of the US military due to the Cold War. "U.S. vets say there were human guinea pigs | ABC7 San Francisco | abc7news.com". While Area 51, which operates as a detachment of Edwards Air Force Base in neighboring California, has never been declared a covert base, the research and activities conducted there were some of the nation's most closely guarded secrets. !<-- Layton (2007), Whistle-Blower's Fight For Pension Drags On, The Washington Post -->, US Senate Report on CIA Detention Interrogation Program, European Parliament report of February 2007, United Nations Convention Against Torture, Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, Official reports by the U.S. Government on the CIA, U.S. intelligence involvement with German and Japanese war criminals after World War II, CIA transnational anti-crime and anti-drug activities, CIA's relationship with the United States Military, Classified information in the United States, Freedom of Information Act (United States), Title 32 of the Code of Federal Regulations, United States and state-sponsored terrorism, United States Department of Homeland Security, "Review of 'Legacy of Ashes: The History of CIA', "Renditions: Constraints Imposed by Laws on Torture", "Obama's War on Terror May Resemble Bush's in Some Areas", "Background Paper on CIA's Combined Use of Interrogation Techniques", "New CIA Docs Detail Brutal 'Extraordinary Rendition' Process", "Remarks of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Upon Her Departure for Europe, 5 December 2005", "Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool", "N.Y. billing dispute reveals details of secret CIA rendition flights", "Under Obama Administration Renditionsand Secrecy Around ThemContinue", "Resolution 1507: Alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states", Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, "Outsourcing Torture: The secret history of America's 'extraordinary rendition' program", "Afghan Base Hit by Attack Has Pivotal Role in Conflict", "Intelligence Reform is the President's Urgent Challenge", "A Bombshell on Pinochet's Guilt, Delivered Too Late", "Doctors Aided CIA Torture, Records Show", "CIA Made Doctors Complicit in Torture After 9/11, Report Says", "The Snowden Affair: Electronic Briefing Book No. Substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture, and coercion during interrogation and so-called "brain-washing". He was almost awarded thePresidential Medal of Freedom but was denied it because ofhis Nazi past. Fear of the enemy ran rampant among Americans, especially upon the sharp increase in PTSD in Korean POWs. Studies in Intelligence, March 2010 [76 Pages, 3.28MB] - The Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI) was founded in 1974 in response to Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger's desire to create within CIA an organization that could "think through the functions of intelligence and bring the best intellects available to bear . Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Second Revised Edition (2000): EBSCO. While Area 51 was not a top-secret base designed to study extraterrestrials, the U.S. Air Force did study the existence of UFOs. [11], Whilst the Obama administration has tried to distance itself from some of the harshest counterterrorism techniques, it has also said that at least some forms of renditions will continue. [3] When the cluster bombs reached 2,000 or 1,000 feet (600 or 300 m) the bomblets would drop via parachute, disseminating their vector. [74][75][76][77][78][79][80], In March 2017, WikiLeaks has published more than 8,000 documents on the CIA. ABC7. They told subjects they would extend their "trips" if they refused to reveal their secrets. His "driving" experiments consisted of putting subjects into drug-induced comas for weeks at a time (up to three months in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements. President Harry Truman launched this top-secret program after World War II to recruit scientists who had worked for Nazi Germany to develop stuff for the good guys. Government military secrets can range from amusing to absurd to downright terrifying, but they are all extremely intriguing. Based on results from monitoring equipment at 43 locations around the city, the Army determined that San Francisco had received enough of a dose for nearly all of the city's 800,000 residents to inhale millions of particles each day during the week of spraying. NPR Fresh Air. Substances which will produce "pure" euphoria with no subsequent let-down. cities. In 1987, the Supreme Court affirmed this defense in a 54 decision that dismissed Stanley's case: United States v. None of Cameron's personal records of his involvement with MKUltra survived because his family destroyed them after his death.[82][83]. Stanislaw Stankiewicz was a member of the ABN Central Committee. From September 20 to 27, 1950, the U.S. Navy released the pathogens off the shore of San Francisco. In December 1974, The New York Times alleged that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S. citizens, during the 1960s.
