Though they may sound like science fiction and though the CIA tried to deny them for years, the mind-control experiments of project MK Ultra were all too real. For more than a decade at the height of the Cold War, CIA researchers abused helpless subjects in some of the most disturbing experiments in history.
Convinced that the Soviet Union had developed mind-control capabilities, the CIA tried to do the same with MK Ultra starting in 1953. What followed was an expansive program undertaken across 80 institutions, universities, and hospitals. Each one carried out torturous experiments, including electrocution, verbal and sexual abuse, and dosing subjects with massive quantities of LSD.
What’s more, these experiments often used unwitting subjects who were left with permanent psychological damage.
Unsurprisingly, the CIA conducted the project with the utmost secrecy, even giving it multiple code names. And when it finally ended in the 1970s, most of the records pertaining to it were destroyed on the orders of the director of the CIA himself — that is, all but a small misfiled cache accidentally left intact.
