{"id":240293,"date":"2023-07-31T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=240293"},"modified":"2023-07-27T06:15:10","modified_gmt":"2023-07-27T05:15:10","slug":"new-files-reveal-mkultras-terrifying-reach-ethnic-bioweapons-mind-control-and-disturbing-experiments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/07\/new-files-reveal-mkultras-terrifying-reach-ethnic-bioweapons-mind-control-and-disturbing-experiments\/","title":{"rendered":"New Files Reveal MKUltra\u2019s Terrifying Reach: Ethnic Bioweapons, Mind Control and Disturbing Experiments"},"content":{"rendered":"

25 Jul 2023 – In a groundbreaking investigation<\/a>, renowned anthropologist Orisanmi Burton<\/a> has blown the lid off a dark chapter in CIA history. Classified Agency files, recently obtained through Freedom of Information laws, expose shocking ties between the infamous MKULTRA program and nightmarish experiments on prisoners of color within the United States.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Illustration by MintPress News<\/p><\/div>\n

Burton\u2019s findings expose MKULTRA\u2019s sinister mission to develop psychological warfare and behavioral manipulation tactics specifically aimed at people of color under the guise of \u201ccounterinsurgency.\u201d Unbelievably, these barbaric trials were conducted during a turbulent era when numerous U.S. government agencies relentlessly sought to crush the civil rights movement, and prisons brimmed with political radicalism.<\/p>\n

This disturbing revelation puts the CIA\u2019s actions into sharp focus, revealing a ruthless bid to quell Black resistance<\/a> both on the streets and behind bars. But it doesn\u2019t stop there. Burton\u2019s disclosures raise urgent and profound questions about the far-reaching impact of these operations\u2014both in the past and, unsettlingly, even today.<\/p>\n

Among the most haunting questions is whether the Agency actively pursued a race-specific mind control weapon\u2014an idea that strikes at the very core of ethical and moral boundaries.<\/p>\n

As the nation grapples with this revelation, one thing is certain: Burton\u2019s expos\u00e9 demands answers and accountability for the harrowing atrocities committed in the name of national security. The truth must be unveiled, and justice served for those who suffered under the relentless grip of MKULTRA\u2019s clandestine horrors.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Graphic by MintPress News<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cPenetration of Defenses\u201d<\/h2>\n

Of the many medical research facilities abused by the CIA for the purposes of MKULTRA, Allan Memorial Institute, a psychiatric hospital in Montreal, Quebec, looms perhaps the largest and most darkly.<\/p>\n

It was here that from 1957-1964, the Agency secretly operated the program\u2019s \u201cSubproject 68\u201d under the leadership of notorious psychiatrist Ewen Cameron, the Institute\u2019s founder. Cameron sought to \u201cdepattern\u201d minds via a technique known as \u201cpsychic driving.\u201d It entailed drugging unconsenting, unwitting patients with incapacitating cocktails of psychedelic substances, then subjecting them to electric shocks while they listened to hours of recorded, looped audio.<\/p>\n

Cameron hoped to render his subjects\u2019 minds a blank slate onto which new behaviors, thoughts, memories, and personalities could be surreptitiously imposed from the outside. It also served the purpose of interrogation. In a 1958 edition of the journal \u201cPsychoanalytic Quarterly,\u201d he boasted<\/a> this technique could be used for \u201cpenetration of defenses, elicitation of hitherto inaccessible material [\u2026] changing of attitudes and setting up a dynamic implant.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Disturbing Nexus: The Rockefeller Connection<\/h2>\n

Fast forward to 1966, when then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, whose family foundation played a central role<\/a> in the establishment of Cameron\u2019s Institute, initiated a chilling partnership. Consultants from McGill University\u2014the Institute\u2019s parent\u2014were brought in to conduct \u201cresearch\u201d on the \u201ccriminally insane\u201d in New York\u2019s prisons. Officially, the mission was to find innovative methods to deter recidivism and understand the causes of criminality through \u201cexperimental studies<\/a>.\u201d But was there more to this collaboration than met the eye?<\/p>\n

\"An
An inmate at a New York Department of Corrections facility engages in an experiment as part of \u201ca diagnostic and treatment program for persistent offenders convicted of felonies, and to conduct research related to the causes of crime.\u201d<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Coincidentally\u2014or perhaps not\u2014the same period saw a disturbing trend emerge. Black Americans expressing revolutionary views were increasingly labeled as suffering from severe mental health conditions. Psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl\u2019s groundbreaking work<\/a>, \u201cThe Protest Psychosis,\u201d uncovered how medical research articles began portraying \u201cNegro men\u201d as having a uniquely dangerous form of schizophrenia compared to their \u201cWhite\u201d counterparts.<\/p>\n

Come 1968, the American Psychiatric Association\u2019s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders underwent an alarming update, adding \u201chostility\u201d and \u201caggression\u201d as prominent symptoms of schizophrenia. The implications were profound: civil rights activists daring to resist were at risk of being diagnosed and institutionalized. Prisoners refusing to bend to oppressive jail regimes could be conveniently labeled as \u201ccriminally insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Playground for Disturbing Experiments<\/h2>\n

Nestled 25 miles from New York\u2019s northern border with Quebec, the infamous Dannemora State Hospital for the Criminally Insane took center stage in Rockefeller\u2019s ominous initiative. At the helm of this partnership was Canadian psychiatrist Bruno Cormier, a longtime clinician at the Allan Memorial Institute during the 1950s and 60s. Together with the notorious Ewen Cameron, they hatched a chilling plan for a \u201cPilot Centre for Juvenile Delinquency\u201d\u2014a place that would delve into the darkest corners of human behavior.<\/p>\n

The envisioned center<\/a> would include laboratories \u201cfor psychological studies, for work in genetics, for endocrinological investigations, for sociological studies.\u201d Cormier was particularly keen for the institution to \u201cbring light on behavioral problems\u201d and \u201cbridge the research gap between juvenile delinquency and adult criminality.\u201d Dannemora State Hospital represented an opportunity to achieve these objectives via other means.<\/p>\n

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Exhibit P-50 | Cormier\u2019s proposed center for the study of juvenile delinquency included \u201cnontraditional\u201d methods of approaching detainee delinquency, including studying their genetics.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By 1969, McGill consultants, under the guise of \u201ctraining,\u201d had transformed prison guards into practitioners of hypnosis and aversion therapy techniques. One grim \u201ctherapy\u201d session was subsequently sketched<\/a> by an observer:<\/p>\n

Correctional officers [became] therapists. It is an admirable undertaking to make them semi-professionals, but I have seen these former correctional officers practice aversion therapy with prisoners. The prisoners start gagging as they retrace the steps of their crimes. The scene was quite revolting both for those who watched and those who took part, yet there is still no evidence that anybody has been cured.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 1990, Dr. Douglas Lipton, director of the Narcotic and Drug Research Institute, exposed Dannemora\u2019s chilling mission to obliterate inmates\u2019 identities and mold them into obedient pawns. In testimony to Congress, he laid bare<\/a> the devastating efficacy of these efforts, which left an indelible mark on the lives of those they ensnared.<\/p>\n

Behind closed doors, Bruno Cormier reached out to every prison warden in New York state, urging them to send their most hardened offenders to become subjects of this wicked venture. The wardens were more than willing to comply, eager to rid themselves of their most problematic inmates.<\/p>\n

Assembling a group of 50 of the most troubled souls\u2014described by Dr. Lipton as \u201cthe worst group you had ever seen\u201d\u2014the Allan team subjected them to a year of MKULTRA torture. The torment they endured stripped them down to their very cores, leaving them vulnerable to resocialization attempts bordering on mind-altering manipulation.<\/p>\n

A year after being released from Dannemora, following a year of treatment, just two had returned to the facility. The rest, it seems, had been successfully reduced to \u201cblank slates\u201d, as Cameron originally sought, and their minds successfully reprogrammed from the ground up. Dr. Lipton concluded:<\/p>\n

What it does is it takes you back to kind of a kindergarten level and then brings you back up.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cBehavior Modification for Political Ends\u201d<\/h2>\n

Echoes of Cameron\u2019s infamous \u201cpsychic driving\u201d likewise emerged in the disturbing research of McGill psychologist Ernest G. Poser. Delving into patient reactions under methohexitone-induced sleep and cross-cultural differences in pain tolerance, Poser\u2019s chilling methods didn\u2019t spare inmates, and they were subjected to unimaginable horrors in the name of research.<\/p>\n

His work frequently employed<\/a> \u201cdeceptive means and what seemed like torture instruments,\u201d including a blood pressure monitor \u201cwith sharp, hard rubber projections sewn into the pressure cuff,\u201d which he used to test a patient\u2019s \u201cpain tolerance.\u201d He was among the McGill specialists tasked with experimenting on inmates in New York state. In 1968, he probed<\/a> whether prisoners deemed \u201csociopaths\u201d suffered from an adrenaline deficiency, preventing them from learning cautionary lessons from \u201cfear-producing experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putting the theory to the test, Poser and his team injected inmates diagnosed as \u201csociopathic\u201d with adrenaline, then subjected them to electric shocks. One of his students was seemingly so swept up in the lack of ethical restrictions over their work they proposed<\/a> an experiment in which prisoners were strapped to electroconvulsive therapy devices and told they were taking part in a competition. The \u201closer\u201d would receive a shock at a level set by their opponent:<\/p>\n

Each subject will have 20 trials on which he will lose on a predetermined 50% of the trials, but which to him will apparently be random.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From September 9 to 13, 1971, a mass riot<\/a> broke out in New York state\u2019s notorious Attica prison. Inmates were motivated by abysmal conditions, including mass overcrowding, systemic violence, and racism. As U.S. historian Howard Zinn recorded<\/a>, \u201cPrisoners spent 14 to 16 hours a day in their cells, their mail was read, their reading material restricted, their visits from families conducted through a mesh screen, their medical care disgraceful, their parole system inequitable, racism everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The uprising was brought to an end by a blood-soaked massacre<\/a>, sanctioned personally by Nelson Rockefeller. Hundreds of New York State Police troopers, Bureau of Criminal Investigation personnel, deputy sheriffs, park police, and correctional officers stormed occupied areas of Attica through a smog of tear gas, indiscriminately opening fire on inmates with shotguns. In all, 33 died, and 85 were injured. Many prisoners who were not resisting, as well as individuals the rioters had taken hostage, were among them.<\/p>\n

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Left, inmates treat another inmate in a makeshift hospital in Attica\u2019s Cell Block D. Right, State troopers regain control of Attica following the \u201971 riot, leaving 43 dead. Photos | AP<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Conspicuously, New York\u2019s formal partnership with McGill ended almost immediately thereafter, and Dannemora State Hospital was rebranded as the Adirondack Correctional Treatment Education Center. In the manner of a hydra, though, it became home to a new behavior modification initiative \u2013 the Prescription (Rx) Program. In April 1972<\/a>, Walter Dunbar, New York\u2019s deputy corrections commissioner, said the initiative focused on prisoners who perpetrate \u201covert acts that incite, agitate, and provoke other inmates to militant, radical, and antisocial activities.\u201d As Orisanmi Burton writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cSuch statements link the program to plantation discourses that pathologize Black resistance, while implicating prison authorities in the use of behavior modification techniques for political ends: counterinsurgency.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBrainwashing Camps of Totalitarian Societies\u201d<\/h2>\n

In August 2022<\/a>, MintPress News <\/i>revealed how Black Americans were disproportionately targeted by the CIA\u2019s monstrous mind control machinations. Many MKULTRA trials appeared to have been expressly conducted to gauge potentially varying reactions to psychedelic drugs in Black and White participants. That the CIA had a specific \u2013 or greater \u2013 interest in the effect of certain substances on people of color, rather than the general civilian population, was an obvious suspicion.<\/p>\n

However, academic experts consulted by MintPress News <\/i>at the time were dismissive of that proposition. They argued MKULTRA\u2019s distinct racial character simply reflected the compositions of institutions targeted by the CIA, and concomitant a lack of value attached to Black test subjects by the Agency, and its assets within the medical community.<\/p>\n

Burton\u2019s findings strongly suggest that, far from merely focusing on people of color due to their profusion in prisons and medical centers, and racist contempt, the CIA did indeed seek to determine optimal drugs for targeting Black Americans, if not other ethnic groups.<\/p>\n

Once the Rx Program was underway, prisons across New York \u2013 including Attica<\/a> \u2013 began eagerly applying its techniques to their inmates. This extended<\/a> to surreptitiously dosing them with uncertain substances, among other \u201cexperimental methods,\u201d for the purposes of \u201cpacification and control.\u201d A contemporary account of institutional maltreatment at Napanoch\u2019s Eastern Correctional Facility described how \u201cdrugs secretly placed in food turn prisoners into vegetables.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost all inmates there were transferred from other jails and promised \u201ceducational and vocational training\u201d once they arrived, but none ever materialized. Strikingly, \u201ca large percentage\u201d of them were considered to be politically conscious or \u201cagitators.\u201d<\/p>\n

One prisoner who suspected his food was being spiked with tranquilizers due to feeling chronic fatigue conducted a test, deliberately starving himself. He \u201cstarted feeling better immediately\u201d \u2013 \u201cthe drowsiness went away, and I felt stronger and more alert.\u201d Another compared the \u201csustained lethargy\u201d he experienced at the prison to his time at Dannemora.<\/p>\n

Suspiciously, too, prisoners were prohibited from drawing their own water from drinking fountains in the mess hall. They had to request it from guards, who would \u201calways go to a concealed kitchen area\u201d to retrieve the orders, which \u201cconsistently [tasted] different from tap water.\u201d<\/p>\n

From WWII Experiments to MKULTRA\u2019s Legacy<\/h2>\n

If the CIA was hunting for an ethnic bioweapon for the purposes of mind control, it was not alone in Washington. During World War II, the U.S. Army conducted grotesque chemical experiments<\/a> on its own Asian, Black, and Puerto Rican troops to test varying reactions to the same substances. U.S. citizens of Asian descent were explicitly chosen as proxies for Japan\u2019s civilian and military population to see how mustard gas and other heinous munitions would affect the enemy.<\/p>\n

The same thinking and dynamic, of course, applied to the Army\u2019s Black test subjects. Fast forward to November 1970<\/a>, and the in-house journal Military Review <\/i>published an article by geneticist Carl A. Larson titled \u201cEthnic Weapons.\u201d Approvingly noting \u201can enzyme deficiency in southeastern Asian populations\u201d made residents of the continent \u201csusceptible to a poison to which Caucasoids are largely adapted,\u201d he advocated exploring how other enzyme inhibitors, such as BZ and its chemical relative LSD, afflicted \u201cdifferent ethnic populations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1974, a government committee<\/a> slammed the Rx Program\u2019s \u201clogic and vision\u201d as evoking \u201cthe specter of the resocialization, rethinking, and brainwashing camps of totalitarian societies.\u201d The previous year, then-CIA director Richard Helms had ordered MKULTRA to be wound down and its entire file trail destroyed due to fears the Agency might be subject to official scrutiny in the wake of the Watergate scandal.<\/p>\n

Even though MKULTRA was officially dismantled, its cruel techniques lived on, as codified by CIA and U.S. military interrogation and torture doctrine. As MintPress News <\/i>reported<\/a> in April 2022, these malevolent methods were mercilessly applied at black sites and Guant\u00e1namo Bay, sowing the seeds of false testimony to justify the excesses of the War on Terror.<\/p>\n

The darkness of MKULTRA lingers still, calling for urgent answers and transparency. America\u2019s Black community deserves nothing less than the full extent of these operations exposed; culprits held accountable, and rightful compensation for survivors. As the shadows of the past stretch into the present, the demand for truth rings louder than ever, and justice becomes an undeniable imperative.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span> Republish our stories! <\/a> <\/strong> MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.<\/em><\/div>\n

Go to Original \u2013 mintpressnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25 Jul 2023 – Renowned anthropologist Orisanmi Burton exposes a dark chapter in CIA history. Classified Agency files obtained through Freedom of Information reveal ties between the infamous MKULTRA program and nightmarish experiments on prisoners of color in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":240295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,133,725,100,1650,2759,99,572,70],"class_list":["post-240293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-cia","tag-culture-of-violence","tag-direct-violence","tag-human-experiment","tag-prisons","tag-structural-violence","tag-torture","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240296,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240293\/revisions\/240296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}