The Australian: Agency's Strangeloves altered mind of a girl aged 4 [ 28jun07 ]
Agency's Strangeloves altered mind of a girl aged 4
Robert Lusetich, Los Angeles correspondent
28jun07
EASILY lost, on page 425, in the mass of the CIA's notorious "Family Jewels" files is a short paragraph outlining "potentially embarrassing Agency activities".
"Experiments in influencing human behaviour through the administration of mind- or personality-altering drugs to unwitting subjects."
Of all the heinous acts committed by the CIA in the name of national security, these experiments, done on the agency's behalf by prominent psychiatrists on innocent victims - including children as young as four - may be the darkest.
"We have no answer to the moral issue," former director Richard Helms infamously said when asked about the nature of the projects.
The release of the Family Jewels documents revealed the CIA handsomely funded these real-life Dr Strangeloves and engaged pharmaceutical companies to help its experiments.
The agency appealed to Big Pharma to pass on any drugs that could not be marketed because of "unfavourable side effects" to be tested on mice and monkeys. Any drugs that passed muster would then be used, according to an internal memo, on volunteer US soldiers.
The Family Jewels files do not provide further detail into the numerous mind-control programs, such as MKULTRA, covertly propped up by the agency. In 1953, MKULTRA was given 6per cent of the total CIA budget without any oversight.
Only the tip of a large iceberg had been previously released by the CIA under Freedom of Information Act provisions.
Yesterday's acknowledgments will comfort those who have long campaigned for truth and restitution.
The nature of the experiments, gathered from government documents and testimony in numerous lawsuits brought against the CIA, is shocking, from testing LSD on children to implanting electrodes in victims' brains to deliberately poisoning people with uranium.
Agency's Strangeloves altered mind of a girl aged 4
Robert Lusetich, Los Angeles correspondent
28jun07
EASILY lost, on page 425, in the mass of the CIA's notorious "Family Jewels" files is a short paragraph outlining "potentially embarrassing Agency activities".
"Experiments in influencing human behaviour through the administration of mind- or personality-altering drugs to unwitting subjects."
Of all the heinous acts committed by the CIA in the name of national security, these experiments, done on the agency's behalf by prominent psychiatrists on innocent victims - including children as young as four - may be the darkest.
"We have no answer to the moral issue," former director Richard Helms infamously said when asked about the nature of the projects.
The release of the Family Jewels documents revealed the CIA handsomely funded these real-life Dr Strangeloves and engaged pharmaceutical companies to help its experiments.
The agency appealed to Big Pharma to pass on any drugs that could not be marketed because of "unfavourable side effects" to be tested on mice and monkeys. Any drugs that passed muster would then be used, according to an internal memo, on volunteer US soldiers.
The Family Jewels files do not provide further detail into the numerous mind-control programs, such as MKULTRA, covertly propped up by the agency. In 1953, MKULTRA was given 6per cent of the total CIA budget without any oversight.
Only the tip of a large iceberg had been previously released by the CIA under Freedom of Information Act provisions.
Yesterday's acknowledgments will comfort those who have long campaigned for truth and restitution.
The nature of the experiments, gathered from government documents and testimony in numerous lawsuits brought against the CIA, is shocking, from testing LSD on children to implanting electrodes in victims' brains to deliberately poisoning people with uranium.
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