M.K. UltraINTRODUCTION
Today, I will expose the main caracteristics of the MK Ultra project, also known as the "MK Ultra", code name used to design a CIA project which lasted from 1950 to 1970. The aim of this project was to manipulate mentally some people by using psychotropic substances injections.
I. TITLE AND ORIGINSThe project's intentionally oblique CIA cryptonym is made out of the digraph MK, meaning that the project was sponsored by the agency'sTechnical Services Division, followed by the word ULTRA (which had previously been used to designate the most secret classification of World War II intelligence). A precursor of the MK-ULTRA program began in 1945 when the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency was established and given direct responsibility for Operation Paperclip. Operation Paperclip was a program to recruit former Nazi scientists. Some of these scientists studied torture and brainwashing, and several had just been identified and prosecuted as war criminals during the Nuremberg Trials. Headed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the MK-ULTRA project was started on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles on April 13, 1953, largely in response to Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind-control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war in Korea. The CIA wanted to use similar methods on their own captives. The CIA was also interested in being able to manipulate foreign leaders with such techniques, and would later invent several schemes to drug Fidel Castro.
Experiments were often conducted without the subjects' knowledge or consent.[16] In some cases, academic researchers being funded through grants from CIA front organizations were unaware that their work was being used for these purposes.
In 1964, the project was renamed MK-SEARCH. The project attempted to produce a perfect truth drug used to question suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War, and generally to explore any other possibilities of mind control. Because most MK-ULTRA records were deliberately