From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome back to the show. What's your Name? My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined, as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. This is an episode that we've received numerous requests for, and Matt if I if I recall correctly, and at least the two of us, we were both surprised that we had not done this yet. Is that is that accurate? Yeah, We're having many echoes of videos such as the Project Artichoke, several parts series that we made in the past, and we've mentioned mk ultras so many times on this show just as a throwaway mention of mind to control. Whenever we bring something even closely related that or kind of related to mind control, we always joke I'm gultra, right right, but we've never put it all in one thing. So here it is m kaultra one oh one. For a lot of us listening today, It's true that there has been a war going on somewhere on the planet for every moment of your life. Not all wars are created equal, of course, Some are fought out in the open, massive waves of soldiers crashing against one another in the blood and the dirt. Others, of course, are fought through proxies, where it's where foreign powers turn a third nation or country into a battleground and mercenaries disguised as student activists or freedom fighters kill one another while the people who live there look on helplessly. Others, of course, are fought surreptitiously in the shadows, kind of a spy versus spy thing. And if you were born after World War Two, that means you were live during what we call the Cold War, this long running ideological hegemonic conflict between the USSR and the West. Most mainstream thought will tell us that this Cold War ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, although some people will quietly assure you this war continues today and a lot of those people under some people are Russian pointing that out, yeah, and or just people who work in the state Department and perhaps those as well. Yeah, so intelligence agencies on both sides of the Cold War tried to get any sort of edge they could better technology, better access to resources, better propaganda displays like getting into space, landing on the moon, or I was thinking about digging a giant hole and going as far as you can into the Earth, just as a fun thing to say, Yeah, we dug the biggest hole. What's up? I know, I know Russia has done that. Yes, that's true. That is a true story. There's another aspect that we don't talk about as much, perhaps as we should, which is gaining better control over people, regardless of where they live or what they do. In today's episode, as as you said, is ultimately about that last idea, how do you best control people? The CIA pursued this question through a series of programs collectively known today as m k Ultra. Here are the facts. Actually, no, we have to skip it for this one. Here's where it gets crazy straight to crazy. Yeah dang, so, here here are the two days you need to know. But then there's a third one and it sounds complicated, but it just means from at least nine to nineteen sixty four. Officially, wrapping all the way up in nineteen seventy three, the CIA used various front companies and the like to conduct at it at times illegal experiments on unwitting human subjects. And this included exposure of things like illegal drugs, LSD, other chemicals, and a large dollop of what we would consider to be social manipulation. Absolutely in the aims of these programs all varied and they ran the gamut, but they also shared a common theme to explore previously unexploited ways of influencing human behavior. Can we actually brainwash someone? Can we genuinely hypnotize someone? Can we make them tell the truth? Or can we implant some series of future actions in their mind? False memories? Uh Manchurian candidate, I was going to say, I didn't want to say it. Oh did I spoil it? It's okay, we're gonna talk about it. Trigger word, assassins, ladies in polka dot dresses. There we go, inception style dream exploration. And for years and years and years and years and years, rumors about this kind of nefarious activity floated around in the counterculture of America. The mainstream largely dismissed it until the seventies when a New York Times journalist named Seymour her who will be familiar to longtime listeners of Stuff they Don't Want You to Know, published a story in nineteen seventy four detailing how the CIA conducted non consensual drug experiments and illegal spine operations domestically on US citizens. Would later come to find that Canadians were victimized as well. Uh, the the spook squad flew out of the country to experiment on some folks they consider representative of a communist block. So this allegation hits in the nineteen seventies, as we said, with the New York Times publishing it. But the problem here is that this is a newer chapter in a very long story. When we talk about truth serums and the attempts to discover one, we go all the way back to nineteen sixteen, right, oh yeah, way way way back, and that's when the that's the first time that scope mean is seen to be like having an effect on a human and ultimately scope of me is something that's used to I guess as a truth serum, is used as a true truth serum. But back in nineteen sixteen is when it is first seen. Then you can jump all the way to nineteen thirty one when you see um sodium pentethal, which is the thing we've discussed before the official truth serum, but never actually tried. Yeah, yeah, that we know of, right, Oh, that I know of. Uh. And then since ninety two on the US government has been interested in this kind of stuff, right, especially originally under General William Wild Bill Donovan. So this this stuff has occurred, it's just most people didn't know about it to one degree or another. What makes complete sense anytime you are at war and you've got an enemy combatant and you if you could inject something into that combatant and then get the coordinates of where the rest of his battalion is or something, I mean done, end of story. You're gonna do that absolutely. And in his article, Hirsch also talks about how they managed to bring these details about him k Ultra to light. It looks legit. His sources are right, He's walked through the process. You can see chain of custody for all the stuff he found, and then primarily he found it through a government mistake. This was never meant to be discovered, but the discovery resulted in calls for an investigation. Eventually, even Congress paid attention, which is unusual for Congress. They held a hearing on this in the famous Church Committee, and they had Senate hearings, Uh, just a little bit later, that's right. The later hearings only occurred after a fo I Freedom of Information Act request uncovered a cash of twenty thousand documents that were related to Project m k Ultra. And according to that report, mk Ultra was meant to develop, to the words of the report, developed a capability in the covert use of by iological and chemical materials. Pretty vague, um doesn't really tell you what they were going forward covert secret use of some biological or chemical materials, but to what end um, But what they're referring to was mind control efforts, and they started in earnest In under the name of Project Bluebird. I've been talked about pretty extensively on the show. More back on the video days. I would say, right, yeah, yeah, we I think we mentioned Bluebird when we made the Arctic Joke videos. And there are a whole bunch of those code names that we can get into maybe a little later, But Bluebird was a a big one, and Bluebird was reactionary, right. Yeah, it was in reaction to the quote bizarre conduct of a cardinal by the name of men Zenti at his trial in Budapest when he confessed to treason. He clearly in their in their minds, he clearly appeared to have had brainwashing techniques applied to him. He confessed the stuff he Demoli shriably did not and could not have done. He claimed that he was going to topple this one regime to bring in I guess capitalism, and then he was going to supplant the United States after it was a one world government and become the supreme authority of the country himself. It was very, very strange, but yeah, they they thought they have done something to this guy's mind, and we need to be able to well, the way they phrases, we need to be able to stop it, or we need to know what they're doing. What they really meant is we need to have that capability. So they started contemplating behavior control for offensive purposes. They were at least partially motivated by fear that China and the Soviet Union had already made significant breakthroughs in this field. I was either probably terrified of that yeah. And here's the thing. Although it sounds like a rationalization at this point, the c I A History vindicated them. They were they were correct. The Soviet Union had been conducting wholly independent research along the same lines, with a lot of extra parapsychological stuff thrown in, and they had a decades long jump on Uncle Sam. All in all, as far as we know, they spend at least a billion dollars. It's still even more enigmatic than mk ulture. We don't know when it ended, but we know they called it psychotronics. Psychotronics that's a cool name, and as a record store in my hometown and called Psychotronic Records. Whoa Soviet front, Dude, watch it's very small. I don't know where they would hid. Maybe it's subterrane the base always the basement with Russians. Well, that's a that is a great video. A couple of videos we've made and uh, I think an episode we did a full episode on that didn't the psychotronics all if not, it's coming soon and that was fascinating because it's looking into everything, right. It was it was like Stargate, Like Project Stargate was almost to the United States where we're looking at psychic soldiers and all that stuff outside of just truth serums and LSD and effects of the mind, right right. It's interesting because in the US these were more compartmentalized. Um like when Nolan I interviewed Russell Target earlier and he he was talking a little bit about Project Stargate that was not related to im K culture. It's an important difference in ka Ultra is how can we control the mind? And and uh it Stargate is more about what we would consider psychic or superpowers. They also said that we have to understand these techniques because we need to defend ourselves against people who might not be as restrained in the use of these tactics as we are. So we're learning how to do evil stuff because we're very good boys. That's that's sort of the logic. I mean, I I get it, but you can see where it's I don't want to say disingenuous, but convenient. Sure, like definitely see that. So that's what they describe. Where's the line? Why? Why is this? You know who cares? Well? Yeah? But who what's too far? Right? I mean, if you're already doing this stuff, where at what point do you say Okay, we shouldn't do that anymore. Um, let's look at that right after a quick word from our sponsor. I mean, it's a good question. There's nothing wrong with secret government projects legally speaking, as we listen to this episode, no matter where you're listening, where you're located, or where what you can sider your home country, we can virtually guarantee you that they are up to something and it is occurring in secret because it's meant to protect the government, the employees of the government, and citizens of the country. You know, let me call it national secrecy. The problem here is that despite that that theory and practice, secrecy is often used to hide acts that would be crimes if anybody in the country committed them. The CIA was doing stuff that we give people, uh life in prison with no parole, Oh for sure. I mean let's like, let's say, for instance, that we catch a wild hair and we go around sneaking drugs in people's food here in pont City Market. If we got caught, we'd go to court. Those rules are just different when it comes to government sanctioned acts. We would go to court and probably just go straight to jail, straight to hail. Yeah, and and well again, and we're kind of like joking about it in a way, but this is exactly what the Central Intelligence Agency did. No, oh, absolutely, they put stuff in people, and they those people had no idea. Only two years after the program was officially approved, the project was already having just serious issues with a thing we've mentioned here before that happens in a lot of big projects with a lot of money, even here at our job, especially here at our job, Mission creep, oh, mission creep, where just that one little thing that you're supposed to be doing ends up turning into all these other things and spreading all the way out to the edges of the desk. So the scope of experimentation expanded, and it was they were trying to find, well, let's just let's call this discovery of the following materials and methods, including those which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol. That sounds nice, So make you more drunk, more quickly, more severely. Yeah, that's nice, Which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness. Okay, I can see why you're going to use that in some interrogation, which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation, and so called brainwashing. Oh, so privation is what the what the hell is that? We just we we talked about this a little bit off air. So privation is the act of depriving people of basic human necessities food, clothing, water, shelter, air, I guess, but not for too long. And um, you pointed out all that that's pretty weird language wise, linguistically, that's weird. Well, well, I said it is. So is privation like the opposite of deprivation, which would be extremely to give people stuff? But no, no, it is. How did you put it then? What I would? It's just it's to deny them, to deprive the Yeah, I got you. This is just it's got really complicated. Man, this isn't even the rabbit hole for today. Alien here we are. I'm feeling privd of a direction, so let's keep doing this. They're also looking for that which will produce amnesia for events proceeding and during their use, So a drug or some their substance that would do that. Uh, that which will produce shock and confusion for extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use. Wow, this sounds like just the best stuff ever that which will produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etcetera. Essentially prescribed or they're describing roal hypnol or um some other drug with amnesia. Uh. And then let's see according to the Hearing Report, eighty six universities or institutions were involved. Eighties six universities or institutions and one hundred and eighty five non government researchers and assistance worked on these these projects. What and then we have another quote here. It says physicians, toxicologists and other specialists and mental and narcotics. Mental and narcotics were lured into mk ULTRA through the provision of grants that were made under ostensible research foundation auspices, thereby concealing the CIA's interest from the specialists institution. So what are we saying here. It's what we said at the top. They're concealing that they are actually doing this. That is the c i A with their tentacles going into these other institutions essentially getting money and researching stuff that they're going to use in the field. Right, But they don't think they're working for the CIA. They think they're working for, like the American Foundation of totally legitimate benevolence. Oh, the you mean the specialists and the Toxic College, other people who are working with the drugs and the methods. They don't know exactly, So it's the CIA. Like again, it's like the Black Tar or the Black Goo and X files. It's just like seeping in finding its way and infecting people without knowing it. The Pink Slime and Ghostbusters too, very similar. A voice for both good or sen she goo. So for members of Congress, this was just s op standard operating procedures. CIA had not inherently crossed the line by conducting these experiments in secret by lying to the scientists or the researchers. Instead, they crossed the line when they didn't inform volunteers. This was also, you know, this is taking place right after Watergate, so distrust of the government is at an even higher mainstream level than before. So in his opening remarks during the hearing, Senator Edward Kennedy described mk ultra as on extends of tasting of experimentation program which included Covart drug tests, and on on wedding citizen's at all social levels, high and law, Native Americans and foreign Several of these tests include the administration of the last day to unwdding subjects on social situations. What I did there, you guys, was Fred Gwen from pet Cemetery. That's That's the closest thing Barry her. Oh did you guys? In the trailer for the new one, they don't say the soil is sour anymore. They say the soil is bad. Yeah, was like, oh, I heard it's really good, but it's quite good, all right. So what he means by this and that? Off off air, Matt Night did try me a little bit. I don't know. As long as you didn't feel bullied, we were. It was just a great voice. I didn't feel bullied at all. I never feel bullied by you guys. Awesome. I always feel big up good guys. I mean, I think you're the new Kennedy for for the show. But but he's making a good point. Despite despite our compatriots mallifluous and beautiful re enactment, there, Kennedy was saying stuff that that had substance and presented a clear and present ethical danger. There were not medical professionals around for a lot of this dosing. The CIA agents doing this and their proxies were not doctors. Often at least one person went to the hospital, probably more. Two people definitely died, a fellow named Frank Olsen who was involved as a non civilian, and Harold Blower. But the testing continued, and when we say two people died, we mean at least two people. We really don't know how many deaths or injuries can be attributed to this program, because it's also hard to really tell how long the program had been going on outside of the official numbers, and how long it continued, right right, Just the stuff we know, again is from that Freedom of Information Act. Will will explore this in a second. But let's let's walk through what they were actually doing with them k Ultra. They weren't in many ways. It was as dirty as the Tuskegee experiments. Uh, some people may see even a little worse. They went to twelve hospitals that we know of, and testing was testing was conducted on patients who had various forms of terminal cancer. They were they were not coming back. It was time to make your peace, not time to pursue other options of treatment. And this meant that we can we can assume safely that whatever those experiments the cancer patients were part of we're doing to the human body, it was going to have long term detrimental, possibly fatal effects. And the deal was simple. It was the devil's bargain, the CIA's proxies. You know, um doctor uh every man good name comes in from the Society of regular business and says, I will pay the medical bills for these terminal cancer patients. And all we have to do, you know, in in addition to all the top notch medicines were already exposing them to, will exp them to this other experimental medicine, and then we'll close the doors and turn off the lights and just see what happens. Right, And they may have glowed because we're typing radiation exposure for some of the terminal patients, but yeah, like any something that was probably going to kill them harder or faster than the cancer. And in the and they conducted experiments and prisons as well, and this one, for some reason bothers me even more so. In the prisons, the mentally ill, specifically described as criminal sexual psychopaths, were also subjected to experiments, they are considered expendable. I guess in somewhere maybe there was there was a benefit to their mental state, like they were trying to like trigger them even further to break. It's a good question. Yeah, I don't know. Um So, while prisons were informed of the broad strokes of one experiment or another or another, and while they some of you know, they did volunteer. Uh, they did so when they were promised access to their addictive drug of choice, which, as we know from even just watching films, you know, a junkie will do just buy anything for their fix. Right. Is it consent if a person who is in the depths of heroin or opioid withdrawal is offered opium or heroin? Like are they saying yes, I don't know, So it's user is said at the very least. Yeah, absolutely, and manipulative and borderline. It's it's not not borderline definitely on ethical that's breaking. Yeah, in any kind of controlled medical tests or any kind of clinical trial, that would you know, you can't that that throws your data out the window. That's not that one, right, That's why you don't see more those situations in studies on you know, but the fad diets or social media usage. So so let's get to uh, let's get to some of the things that we put in place after World War Two. Right, the Cold War is not counted as a war, so these things are not counted as war crimes. However, they clearly violate the Nuremberg Code, which the entire imperfect world approves of. As a result of the findings, President Ford and then President Carter and then President Reagan all issued orders banning all future human experimentation without consent by government agencies and even kicked back a little bit of a little bit of make it Right money to the people that were inarguably harmed by the test. Just the people that were inarguably demonstrably harmed. A lot of people fell through the cracks. This sounds like it could be an expose in the halls of Congress, right. Just the wheels of justice grind slow but exceedingly fine, a very go team moment right way of your flags. Uh, feel proud to be an American. But the problem is that this only scratches the surface. That's why this ultra one oh one you see before that article comes out in the New York Times and years before the congressional hearings, the CIA has an internal purge in three when you Matt earlier said, it officially wrapped up. The CIA director at the time, Richard Helms, ordered all of the documents related to anything associated with any mk ultra program to be destroyed. This means even today, we still do not know everything that happened, and the hints that we get, the little tantalizing scraps are even more disturbing. It's a sinking shame and we're gonna learn about it right after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy, kip, double crazy, double crazy. We we know that there were other experiments, we don't know how many, and we don't know the details of all of them. But here's just a whitman sampler of the sort of stuff that they involved. Electroshock, harassment techniques for quote offensive use, gas propelled sprays and aerosols, has assassination delivery systems. This begins to get wrapped up in because these committees were also looking at stuff like the CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Oh yeah, can we talk about what you said? Harassment techniques for offensive use really fast. Yeah, a lot of times, or maybe you've heard of this before, something called gang stalking or some of these other things. I can imagine that's where a lot of those feelings arise, or the beliefs that something like that is happening to you, just from that one little thing, the the concept that the CIA was truly researching at one point harassment techniques for offensive use. They really were doing it. No, we know the gang stalking can sometimes sound a little bit tinfoil hattie for people, but they they were purposely doing it, and the idea is to push someone further and further into a paranoid state. Yes, and it works alright. So scientists were also greenlit for research involving radiation and paramilitary devices and materials. Isn't that nice looking into radiation? Yeah, that's good. And going back to your point in all that you said about the the vague language here paramilitary devices and materials. M hmm, that's pretty It could be anything. Yeah, it could be those crazy Air Force coffee mugs that are so expensive. Have you heard about these? That was apparently a line item in the Air Force budget for like a hundreds of thousands of dollars for these like high tech coffee mugs that had built in warmers, and apparently they're very fragile, so they had to replace them. A bunch people would drop them on the planes and they would just shatter and then so that, you know, waste not, want not Uncle Sam boy. It's like that old sorry about the three hammer. Right. So what we do know is that at least one hundred and forty nine of the m K Ultra subprojects had some kind of connection with research into behavioral modification, drug acquisition and testing or administering drugs on the sly yeah for for for all kinds of things, including what you said before again been assassination delivery systems. What does that mean? Assassination delivery a gun that would be one or you know some some type of yeah, like you combine them. But I love the I love the the banality of that, you know what I mean? Absolutely, they do have some poetic language in here, though. We have lists of different projects. They had six projects that were intentionally meant to test unwitting subjects, eight with hypnosis. Two of those used drugs, seven that just used drugs. Four here's the poetry that used the quote Magician's art the magician's arm art art, and specifically in that one, it's about finding a way to get probably a chemical into someone's drink, or into someone's food, or into someone's body in a way that they don't know. Right, this is dangerous through a magician's art, through a magician's off close magic. Ye, you just got darted totally, which you know, just from the use of that phrase. I don't mean that belittle the horrible things that happened, but just from the use of that phrase, doesn't it sound like one of the CIA people really, which is just a repressed magician. Yeah, fan of magic. That's right. They wouldn't let him in the magic Castle. What is it called the Magician's Castle? The magic Castle? The magic I have yet to go myself. I have to be in. I did. There's there's there there's a loophole where you can go and get a commemorative photo or something like that, like one one day. Yeah, it's like a sort of like open house at at at elementary school. You know. Lauren Vogelbaum went, she had an end, Yeah, with some kind of fancy actor. I don't trust stage magicians. It's one of my few prejudices well, do you recall that our buddy Russell Targ had fascination with stage magic, which I found very interesting considering that a lot of people, you know, attribute some of the techniques of stage magicians to cold reading and is to fake being psychic. I'm not. I don't think that's what Targ is about, but I do think it's interesting that he his mind kind of started going down that path through a false way and then ultimately found its way to a more true way what he perceives what he perceives to be as a true way. It's it's interesting. That's a derail too much, But I you know, how you can be intellectually aware of something but then a emotionally degrees opposed to it or vice versa. Right, Like, intellectually I understand that stage magicians are normal human beings who get up and have jobs and they're not evil or you know, like I have all these stereotypes about them. Emotionally, I can't get over it. Yeah, I feel monstrous about it, and I apologize to any stage magicians, Uh listening to the show, Please don't send me videos of your stuff. Oh my gosh, So you understand like the whole the whole category everything about it. I don't know why you whenever they like David Copperfield as a kid, I'm okay with mentalists, you know, like Darren Brown. For some reason, it's okay. And just like pull out the cards and they make me tap on stuff. It's something must have happened to me. You don't like people to ask you to do stuff either, Ben, who likes people to ask you? If it's all in the way you ask, it's all the way you ask, that's true. I agree. But you know, if if I just walked up to when I said, Ben, tap on this deck of cards with two fingers, you would probably punch me. I would. I would punch you because now I would know where's coming from. You look at me. Askance though, I'll tell you that yes, it would be would be very very distrusting in the very least you touch it with three fingers. It would be like if it would be like if somebody if if mad Orrai came up to you and we're like, hey man, open this bag and we had hidden a birden there, like that's not cool. If you guys could see me out there in podcast, my eyes just went wide, like a couple of saucers. I have nightmares sometimes that there's a bird under my covers. We will never do that, thanks, guys. I don't want to freak you out. Did a bird hurt me? Is that what you're gonna ask? Don't look under the desk right now? Okay, that's this is being This is mean, and I'm sorry your face was so genuine and scared that I'm sorry. I feel like the c I A right, Okay, it's okay, man, And that's what we just did. We did a thought experiment to let you know how the c I must feel after being taken to task for a lot of this stuff, and how quickly it got out of control because they were also dosing one another at some point. It was just for frenzies, like Smitty, he's tripping balls? What is your stage magic? Now? Oh wait, he's going outside on the balcony. Oh that's interesting. Ones that does that? Of course happened, right, yes, yes, Frank Olsen specifically, he was a biochemist at a lab that was conducting those LSD experiments for the government. And the story is still very murky today. I think it's mentioned in the Netflix series Wormwood. So, according to uncle sam Ulsen, knowingly ingested LSD and then because it affected him in an adverse way, he eventually took his own life by jumping from his hotel room on the thirteenth floor of a New York City hotel, and you know, he died. However, his family and numerous people don't buy the story. They say that he was dosed without his consent uh, and that he would never have committed suicide, that he did not have nascent suicidal tendencies. They say he was murdered because he knew too much. The US government gave them a settlement of seventy thousand dollars in nineteen seventy five. But yeah, wait, wait, wait, wait, his body's exhumed and the coroner sees head injuries and he says, wait, Olsen was knocked unconscious before his death. How do you figure that out that long afterwards after you fell from a really high height. I don't know. I totally hear you. That is crazy, though, right, yes, yeah, it's it's strange and questions remain. And it's also I hate to say, man, but it's extremely possible that he was killed and was a cover up because ultra is the top above top secret level classification for projects at this time. And this leads us to, you know, the big question. Surely one day there's gonna be justice. Not so fast. Yeah, a lot of the sciencests involved honestly had no idea what they were actually doing. That they were working for the CIA. They knew they were administering something, they knew they were maybe doing it a little surreptitiously, but they didn't understand that it was this kind of this kind of thing, right, And they, along with the CIA assets, are legally immune at this point from consequences of their actions. Can you believe that that's that's true? Seriously? Yep, they're immune. And and here's why. There are two lawsuits related to mk Ultra that made it as far as the freaking Supreme Court, and the court found in favor of the government twice. Both times. Yeah, the court held in a case called CIA versus Sims that the names of institutions and researchers who participated in Project in k Ultra were exempt from revelation under the Freedom of Information Act because the CIA needed to protect its intelligence sources. Again, national security. Just throw that up anywhere and you're good to go. And then also here's a case called United States versus Stanley, and the court held that this serviceman someone he was working with them who had volunteered for a chemical weapons experiment. Let's call it that a chemical weapons experiment. This guy was actually tested with LSD. And this guy was barred from bringing a claim under the this thing called the Federal Tort Claims Act. And uh, what has a tourt been? A tort is essentially when someone does something bad to you, a bad action. So Towart law is the area of law that protects people from bad acts of others. Historically speaking, citizens in the US cannot sue states because of the concept of sovereign unity. Can't just sue this state because there are very specific concepts of constraints or situations where you can do that. And the f t c A or Federal Tort Claims Act federal statute that allows private parties to sue the US in a federal court for most of these torque cases committed by people acting on behalf of the US. It's a little bit illegalis but but that's it. He um, he was Stanley was attempting to attempting to sue, but it was kicked out because it was not because he was he was not allowed to use the Federal Tort Claims Act. Okay, that makes sense. National security, national security, national security twice eight seven. So that's almost where we are now today. MK Ultra is firmly enshrined in the world of conspiracy lore, their fictional programs like Wormwood. There are documentaries, There are books ranging from fiction inspired by this to maybe more fringe research that the authors will tell you it is true, dull sorts of films that explore aspects of the program or use it as a jumping off point for speculation. But like any piece of folklore, and I would argue there's a lot of folklore around him Cultra, there is an arguable grain of truth inside the story, and that leaves us with some burning, disturbing questions. First, what happened? That's the easiest question to answer. We will not know, we cannot know, we will never know, we refuse to know. We shut our eyes in the nearest to the truth. Well, not that the first. We just can't. We can't know because it's going to be sealed. Because they destroyed thousands and thousands of things and When I say sealed, I mean in a tomb essentially of its own burnt up carbon. Yeah, we're in We're in deathbed confession territory. That's where that's that those will be the best sources of this second question in a little depressing Did any of this stuff actually work? Yeah, some of it, some of it obviously, most of it didn't. Some of it did, some of it did, right. Yeah, And again we're not really sure what we'll find unless some some of those experiments that they were doing are just redone a lot um. But I guess, I guess the big thing is that they never at least two our understanding, they never got a true truth serum as close as scope I mean, and some of these other things can get you. There's no true injectable that we know. Now. I'll tell you everything. My fears, my social security. One of my feet is larger than the other. It makes me uncomfortable. I I'm Edward Kennedy, and uh, some of the biggest drugs that I've been doing lately are the L S d L. You also kind of got a little Peter Griffin, I got, I got a Peter to Jesus. So it's It's true they ever found that silver bullet truth serum. So far as we know, the data they got was of limited use if you think about it, because they didn't have solid methodology and a lot of these experiments, they did not have ideal monitoring conditions, and at some point they just uh had a Lord of the Flyes situation, you know what I mean. Big Think has a great quote on this. They argue that the program may ultimately have been counterproductive. They say mk Ultra might have been counterproductive because the counterculture was given access to LSD through these experiments. That's true, and they proceeded to run in the opposite direction with it. John Lennon went so far as to mock the CIA in an interview, noting they must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD. That's what people forget. Oh my god, it's the young Michael Kine. I'm sorry. They invented a state to control people, and what they did would give us freedom. Wow. Okay, all right, Lennon, John Lennon, I mean, let's that's Michael King. Thanks. But yeah, he's making a good point, right, Yeah, they gave us LSD, but they didn't give us what what did What didn't they give us? They didn't give us shrooms? True? They they did? I don't know, Yeah, I don't know. They didn't. They didn't disclose a lot of the findings. And that's that's the scariest question. Most importantly, what's happening now? You have to ask yourself listening to this. Would a government genuinely completely stop this sort of research if an aspect of it worked. Has there at any point, and and forget forget the relatively young experiment known as the United States, In the course of human civilization, has there been something that was an amazing technique or technology that gave one empire the edge over the others that they stopped for sueing and not being rhetorical? I would love to hear of one example. Yeah, send us your examples if you've got them, please. You can find us on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook. You can visit our Facebook friend page. I call it that because it's just some awesome people there. Thank you for being a friend folks. That's right, it's called here's where it gets crazy. Join up and let's discuss these kind of things. You can post directly there or just talk to people. Whatever you want to do. If you don't want to do that stuff, you can give us a call. We are one eight three three S T d W y t K. Leave a message. It's a three minute max, but you can leave multiples. So do what you gotta do and it might be on the air if you if you don't want to be named on the air, or you want any other stipulations, just specifically say it, because when when you leave a message, we may use it on the air. One last thing before we go, just a knowing kulture is not lost in the past. In December of eighteen, just last year, as we record this, declassified documents revealed include at a letter to an unidentified doctor discussing work on six dogs made to run, turn and stop via remote control and brain implants. That's where they were in the sixties and maybe if they could do that to a dog then or we're at least we're attempting to and then these experiments continued. Are they controlling mission control? Paul Decan right now, that's the big question. Send us an email. We are conspiracy at i heeart podcast network dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome back to the show. What's your Name? My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined, as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. This is an episode that we've received numerous requests for, and Matt if I if I recall correctly, and at least the two of us, we were both surprised that we had not done this yet. Is that is that accurate? Yeah, We're having many echoes of videos such as the Project Artichoke, several parts series that we made in the past, and we've mentioned mk ultras so many times on this show just as a throwaway mention of mind to control. Whenever we bring something even closely related that or kind of related to mind control, we always joke I'm gultra, right right, but we've never put it all in one thing. So here it is m kaultra one oh one. For a lot of us listening today, It's true that there has been a war going on somewhere on the planet for every moment of your life. Not all wars are created equal, of course, Some are fought out in the open, massive waves of soldiers crashing against one another in the blood and the dirt. Others, of course, are fought through proxies, where it's where foreign powers turn a third nation or country into a battleground and mercenaries disguised as student activists or freedom fighters kill one another while the people who live there look on helplessly. Others, of course, are fought surreptitiously in the shadows, kind of a spy versus spy thing. And if you were born after World War Two, that means you were live during what we call the Cold War, this long running ideological hegemonic conflict between the USSR and the West. Most mainstream thought will tell us that this Cold War ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, although some people will quietly assure you this war continues today and a lot of those people under some people are Russian pointing that out, yeah, and or just people who work in the state Department and perhaps those as well. Yeah, so intelligence agencies on both sides of the Cold War tried to get any sort of edge they could better technology, better access to resources, better propaganda displays like getting into space, landing on the moon, or I was thinking about digging a giant hole and going as far as you can into the Earth, just as a fun thing to say, Yeah, we dug the biggest hole. What's up? I know, I know Russia has done that. Yes, that's true. That is a true story. There's another aspect that we don't talk about as much, perhaps as we should, which is gaining better control over people, regardless of where they live or what they do. In today's episode, as as you said, is ultimately about that last idea, how do you best control people? The CIA pursued this question through a series of programs collectively known today as m k Ultra. Here are the facts. Actually, no, we have to skip it for this one. Here's where it gets crazy straight to crazy. Yeah dang, so, here here are the two days you need to know. But then there's a third one and it sounds complicated, but it just means from at least nine to nineteen sixty four. Officially, wrapping all the way up in nineteen seventy three, the CIA used various front companies and the like to conduct at it at times illegal experiments on unwitting human subjects. And this included exposure of things like illegal drugs, LSD, other chemicals, and a large dollop of what we would consider to be social manipulation. Absolutely in the aims of these programs all varied and they ran the gamut, but they also shared a common theme to explore previously unexploited ways of influencing human behavior. Can we actually brainwash someone? Can we genuinely hypnotize someone? Can we make them tell the truth? Or can we implant some series of future actions in their mind? False memories? Uh Manchurian candidate, I was going to say, I didn't want to say it. Oh did I spoil it? It's okay, we're gonna talk about it. Trigger word, assassins, ladies in polka dot dresses. There we go, inception style dream exploration. And for years and years and years and years and years, rumors about this kind of nefarious activity floated around in the counterculture of America. The mainstream largely dismissed it until the seventies when a New York Times journalist named Seymour her who will be familiar to longtime listeners of Stuff they Don't Want You to Know, published a story in nineteen seventy four detailing how the CIA conducted non consensual drug experiments and illegal spine operations domestically on US citizens. Would later come to find that Canadians were victimized as well. Uh, the the spook squad flew out of the country to experiment on some folks they consider representative of a communist block. So this allegation hits in the nineteen seventies, as we said, with the New York Times publishing it. But the problem here is that this is a newer chapter in a very long story. When we talk about truth serums and the attempts to discover one, we go all the way back to nineteen sixteen, right, oh yeah, way way way back, and that's when the that's the first time that scope mean is seen to be like having an effect on a human and ultimately scope of me is something that's used to I guess as a truth serum, is used as a true truth serum. But back in nineteen sixteen is when it is first seen. Then you can jump all the way to nineteen thirty one when you see um sodium pentethal, which is the thing we've discussed before the official truth serum, but never actually tried. Yeah, yeah, that we know of, right, Oh, that I know of. Uh. And then since ninety two on the US government has been interested in this kind of stuff, right, especially originally under General William Wild Bill Donovan. So this this stuff has occurred, it's just most people didn't know about it to one degree or another. What makes complete sense anytime you are at war and you've got an enemy combatant and you if you could inject something into that combatant and then get the coordinates of where the rest of his battalion is or something, I mean done, end of story. You're gonna do that absolutely. And in his article, Hirsch also talks about how they managed to bring these details about him k Ultra to light. It looks legit. His sources are right, He's walked through the process. You can see chain of custody for all the stuff he found, and then primarily he found it through a government mistake. This was never meant to be discovered, but the discovery resulted in calls for an investigation. Eventually, even Congress paid attention, which is unusual for Congress. They held a hearing on this in the famous Church Committee, and they had Senate hearings, Uh, just a little bit later, that's right. The later hearings only occurred after a fo I Freedom of Information Act request uncovered a cash of twenty thousand documents that were related to Project m k Ultra. And according to that report, mk Ultra was meant to develop, to the words of the report, developed a capability in the covert use of by iological and chemical materials. Pretty vague, um doesn't really tell you what they were going forward covert secret use of some biological or chemical materials, but to what end um, But what they're referring to was mind control efforts, and they started in earnest In under the name of Project Bluebird. I've been talked about pretty extensively on the show. More back on the video days. I would say, right, yeah, yeah, we I think we mentioned Bluebird when we made the Arctic Joke videos. And there are a whole bunch of those code names that we can get into maybe a little later, But Bluebird was a a big one, and Bluebird was reactionary, right. Yeah, it was in reaction to the quote bizarre conduct of a cardinal by the name of men Zenti at his trial in Budapest when he confessed to treason. He clearly in their in their minds, he clearly appeared to have had brainwashing techniques applied to him. He confessed the stuff he Demoli shriably did not and could not have done. He claimed that he was going to topple this one regime to bring in I guess capitalism, and then he was going to supplant the United States after it was a one world government and become the supreme authority of the country himself. It was very, very strange, but yeah, they they thought they have done something to this guy's mind, and we need to be able to well, the way they phrases, we need to be able to stop it, or we need to know what they're doing. What they really meant is we need to have that capability. So they started contemplating behavior control for offensive purposes. They were at least partially motivated by fear that China and the Soviet Union had already made significant breakthroughs in this field. I was either probably terrified of that yeah. And here's the thing. Although it sounds like a rationalization at this point, the c I A History vindicated them. They were they were correct. The Soviet Union had been conducting wholly independent research along the same lines, with a lot of extra parapsychological stuff thrown in, and they had a decades long jump on Uncle Sam. All in all, as far as we know, they spend at least a billion dollars. It's still even more enigmatic than mk ulture. We don't know when it ended, but we know they called it psychotronics. Psychotronics that's a cool name, and as a record store in my hometown and called Psychotronic Records. Whoa Soviet front, Dude, watch it's very small. I don't know where they would hid. Maybe it's subterrane the base always the basement with Russians. Well, that's a that is a great video. A couple of videos we've made and uh, I think an episode we did a full episode on that didn't the psychotronics all if not, it's coming soon and that was fascinating because it's looking into everything, right. It was it was like Stargate, Like Project Stargate was almost to the United States where we're looking at psychic soldiers and all that stuff outside of just truth serums and LSD and effects of the mind, right right. It's interesting because in the US these were more compartmentalized. Um like when Nolan I interviewed Russell Target earlier and he he was talking a little bit about Project Stargate that was not related to im K culture. It's an important difference in ka Ultra is how can we control the mind? And and uh it Stargate is more about what we would consider psychic or superpowers. They also said that we have to understand these techniques because we need to defend ourselves against people who might not be as restrained in the use of these tactics as we are. So we're learning how to do evil stuff because we're very good boys. That's that's sort of the logic. I mean, I I get it, but you can see where it's I don't want to say disingenuous, but convenient. Sure, like definitely see that. So that's what they describe. Where's the line? Why? Why is this? You know who cares? Well? Yeah? But who what's too far? Right? I mean, if you're already doing this stuff, where at what point do you say Okay, we shouldn't do that anymore. Um, let's look at that right after a quick word from our sponsor. I mean, it's a good question. There's nothing wrong with secret government projects legally speaking, as we listen to this episode, no matter where you're listening, where you're located, or where what you can sider your home country, we can virtually guarantee you that they are up to something and it is occurring in secret because it's meant to protect the government, the employees of the government, and citizens of the country. You know, let me call it national secrecy. The problem here is that despite that that theory and practice, secrecy is often used to hide acts that would be crimes if anybody in the country committed them. The CIA was doing stuff that we give people, uh life in prison with no parole, Oh for sure. I mean let's like, let's say, for instance, that we catch a wild hair and we go around sneaking drugs in people's food here in pont City Market. If we got caught, we'd go to court. Those rules are just different when it comes to government sanctioned acts. We would go to court and probably just go straight to jail, straight to hail. Yeah, and and well again, and we're kind of like joking about it in a way, but this is exactly what the Central Intelligence Agency did. No, oh, absolutely, they put stuff in people, and they those people had no idea. Only two years after the program was officially approved, the project was already having just serious issues with a thing we've mentioned here before that happens in a lot of big projects with a lot of money, even here at our job, especially here at our job, Mission creep, oh, mission creep, where just that one little thing that you're supposed to be doing ends up turning into all these other things and spreading all the way out to the edges of the desk. So the scope of experimentation expanded, and it was they were trying to find, well, let's just let's call this discovery of the following materials and methods, including those which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol. That sounds nice, So make you more drunk, more quickly, more severely. Yeah, that's nice, Which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness. Okay, I can see why you're going to use that in some interrogation, which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation, and so called brainwashing. Oh, so privation is what the what the hell is that? We just we we talked about this a little bit off air. So privation is the act of depriving people of basic human necessities food, clothing, water, shelter, air, I guess, but not for too long. And um, you pointed out all that that's pretty weird language wise, linguistically, that's weird. Well, well, I said it is. So is privation like the opposite of deprivation, which would be extremely to give people stuff? But no, no, it is. How did you put it then? What I would? It's just it's to deny them, to deprive the Yeah, I got you. This is just it's got really complicated. Man, this isn't even the rabbit hole for today. Alien here we are. I'm feeling privd of a direction, so let's keep doing this. They're also looking for that which will produce amnesia for events proceeding and during their use, So a drug or some their substance that would do that. Uh, that which will produce shock and confusion for extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use. Wow, this sounds like just the best stuff ever that which will produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etcetera. Essentially prescribed or they're describing roal hypnol or um some other drug with amnesia. Uh. And then let's see according to the Hearing Report, eighty six universities or institutions were involved. Eighties six universities or institutions and one hundred and eighty five non government researchers and assistance worked on these these projects. What and then we have another quote here. It says physicians, toxicologists and other specialists and mental and narcotics. Mental and narcotics were lured into mk ULTRA through the provision of grants that were made under ostensible research foundation auspices, thereby concealing the CIA's interest from the specialists institution. So what are we saying here. It's what we said at the top. They're concealing that they are actually doing this. That is the c i A with their tentacles going into these other institutions essentially getting money and researching stuff that they're going to use in the field. Right, But they don't think they're working for the CIA. They think they're working for, like the American Foundation of totally legitimate benevolence. Oh, the you mean the specialists and the Toxic College, other people who are working with the drugs and the methods. They don't know exactly, So it's the CIA. Like again, it's like the Black Tar or the Black Goo and X files. It's just like seeping in finding its way and infecting people without knowing it. The Pink Slime and Ghostbusters too, very similar. A voice for both good or sen she goo. So for members of Congress, this was just s op standard operating procedures. CIA had not inherently crossed the line by conducting these experiments in secret by lying to the scientists or the researchers. Instead, they crossed the line when they didn't inform volunteers. This was also, you know, this is taking place right after Watergate, so distrust of the government is at an even higher mainstream level than before. So in his opening remarks during the hearing, Senator Edward Kennedy described mk ultra as on extends of tasting of experimentation program which included Covart drug tests, and on on wedding citizen's at all social levels, high and law, Native Americans and foreign Several of these tests include the administration of the last day to unwdding subjects on social situations. What I did there, you guys, was Fred Gwen from pet Cemetery. That's That's the closest thing Barry her. Oh did you guys? In the trailer for the new one, they don't say the soil is sour anymore. They say the soil is bad. Yeah, was like, oh, I heard it's really good, but it's quite good, all right. So what he means by this and that? Off off air, Matt Night did try me a little bit. I don't know. As long as you didn't feel bullied, we were. It was just a great voice. I didn't feel bullied at all. I never feel bullied by you guys. Awesome. I always feel big up good guys. I mean, I think you're the new Kennedy for for the show. But but he's making a good point. Despite despite our compatriots mallifluous and beautiful re enactment, there, Kennedy was saying stuff that that had substance and presented a clear and present ethical danger. There were not medical professionals around for a lot of this dosing. The CIA agents doing this and their proxies were not doctors. Often at least one person went to the hospital, probably more. Two people definitely died, a fellow named Frank Olsen who was involved as a non civilian, and Harold Blower. But the testing continued, and when we say two people died, we mean at least two people. We really don't know how many deaths or injuries can be attributed to this program, because it's also hard to really tell how long the program had been going on outside of the official numbers, and how long it continued, right right, Just the stuff we know, again is from that Freedom of Information Act. Will will explore this in a second. But let's let's walk through what they were actually doing with them k Ultra. They weren't in many ways. It was as dirty as the Tuskegee experiments. Uh, some people may see even a little worse. They went to twelve hospitals that we know of, and testing was testing was conducted on patients who had various forms of terminal cancer. They were they were not coming back. It was time to make your peace, not time to pursue other options of treatment. And this meant that we can we can assume safely that whatever those experiments the cancer patients were part of we're doing to the human body, it was going to have long term detrimental, possibly fatal effects. And the deal was simple. It was the devil's bargain, the CIA's proxies. You know, um doctor uh every man good name comes in from the Society of regular business and says, I will pay the medical bills for these terminal cancer patients. And all we have to do, you know, in in addition to all the top notch medicines were already exposing them to, will exp them to this other experimental medicine, and then we'll close the doors and turn off the lights and just see what happens. Right, And they may have glowed because we're typing radiation exposure for some of the terminal patients, but yeah, like any something that was probably going to kill them harder or faster than the cancer. And in the and they conducted experiments and prisons as well, and this one, for some reason bothers me even more so. In the prisons, the mentally ill, specifically described as criminal sexual psychopaths, were also subjected to experiments, they are considered expendable. I guess in somewhere maybe there was there was a benefit to their mental state, like they were trying to like trigger them even further to break. It's a good question. Yeah, I don't know. Um So, while prisons were informed of the broad strokes of one experiment or another or another, and while they some of you know, they did volunteer. Uh, they did so when they were promised access to their addictive drug of choice, which, as we know from even just watching films, you know, a junkie will do just buy anything for their fix. Right. Is it consent if a person who is in the depths of heroin or opioid withdrawal is offered opium or heroin? Like are they saying yes, I don't know, So it's user is said at the very least. Yeah, absolutely, and manipulative and borderline. It's it's not not borderline definitely on ethical that's breaking. Yeah, in any kind of controlled medical tests or any kind of clinical trial, that would you know, you can't that that throws your data out the window. That's not that one, right, That's why you don't see more those situations in studies on you know, but the fad diets or social media usage. So so let's get to uh, let's get to some of the things that we put in place after World War Two. Right, the Cold War is not counted as a war, so these things are not counted as war crimes. However, they clearly violate the Nuremberg Code, which the entire imperfect world approves of. As a result of the findings, President Ford and then President Carter and then President Reagan all issued orders banning all future human experimentation without consent by government agencies and even kicked back a little bit of a little bit of make it Right money to the people that were inarguably harmed by the test. Just the people that were inarguably demonstrably harmed. A lot of people fell through the cracks. This sounds like it could be an expose in the halls of Congress, right. Just the wheels of justice grind slow but exceedingly fine, a very go team moment right way of your flags. Uh, feel proud to be an American. But the problem is that this only scratches the surface. That's why this ultra one oh one you see before that article comes out in the New York Times and years before the congressional hearings, the CIA has an internal purge in three when you Matt earlier said, it officially wrapped up. The CIA director at the time, Richard Helms, ordered all of the documents related to anything associated with any mk ultra program to be destroyed. This means even today, we still do not know everything that happened, and the hints that we get, the little tantalizing scraps are even more disturbing. It's a sinking shame and we're gonna learn about it right after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy, kip, double crazy, double crazy. We we know that there were other experiments, we don't know how many, and we don't know the details of all of them. But here's just a whitman sampler of the sort of stuff that they involved. Electroshock, harassment techniques for quote offensive use, gas propelled sprays and aerosols, has assassination delivery systems. This begins to get wrapped up in because these committees were also looking at stuff like the CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Oh yeah, can we talk about what you said? Harassment techniques for offensive use really fast. Yeah, a lot of times, or maybe you've heard of this before, something called gang stalking or some of these other things. I can imagine that's where a lot of those feelings arise, or the beliefs that something like that is happening to you, just from that one little thing, the the concept that the CIA was truly researching at one point harassment techniques for offensive use. They really were doing it. No, we know the gang stalking can sometimes sound a little bit tinfoil hattie for people, but they they were purposely doing it, and the idea is to push someone further and further into a paranoid state. Yes, and it works alright. So scientists were also greenlit for research involving radiation and paramilitary devices and materials. Isn't that nice looking into radiation? Yeah, that's good. And going back to your point in all that you said about the the vague language here paramilitary devices and materials. M hmm, that's pretty It could be anything. Yeah, it could be those crazy Air Force coffee mugs that are so expensive. Have you heard about these? That was apparently a line item in the Air Force budget for like a hundreds of thousands of dollars for these like high tech coffee mugs that had built in warmers, and apparently they're very fragile, so they had to replace them. A bunch people would drop them on the planes and they would just shatter and then so that, you know, waste not, want not Uncle Sam boy. It's like that old sorry about the three hammer. Right. So what we do know is that at least one hundred and forty nine of the m K Ultra subprojects had some kind of connection with research into behavioral modification, drug acquisition and testing or administering drugs on the sly yeah for for for all kinds of things, including what you said before again been assassination delivery systems. What does that mean? Assassination delivery a gun that would be one or you know some some type of yeah, like you combine them. But I love the I love the the banality of that, you know what I mean? Absolutely, they do have some poetic language in here, though. We have lists of different projects. They had six projects that were intentionally meant to test unwitting subjects, eight with hypnosis. Two of those used drugs, seven that just used drugs. Four here's the poetry that used the quote Magician's art the magician's arm art art, and specifically in that one, it's about finding a way to get probably a chemical into someone's drink, or into someone's food, or into someone's body in a way that they don't know. Right, this is dangerous through a magician's art, through a magician's off close magic. Ye, you just got darted totally, which you know, just from the use of that phrase. I don't mean that belittle the horrible things that happened, but just from the use of that phrase, doesn't it sound like one of the CIA people really, which is just a repressed magician. Yeah, fan of magic. That's right. They wouldn't let him in the magic Castle. What is it called the Magician's Castle? The magic Castle? The magic I have yet to go myself. I have to be in. I did. There's there's there there's a loophole where you can go and get a commemorative photo or something like that, like one one day. Yeah, it's like a sort of like open house at at at elementary school. You know. Lauren Vogelbaum went, she had an end, Yeah, with some kind of fancy actor. I don't trust stage magicians. It's one of my few prejudices well, do you recall that our buddy Russell Targ had fascination with stage magic, which I found very interesting considering that a lot of people, you know, attribute some of the techniques of stage magicians to cold reading and is to fake being psychic. I'm not. I don't think that's what Targ is about, but I do think it's interesting that he his mind kind of started going down that path through a false way and then ultimately found its way to a more true way what he perceives what he perceives to be as a true way. It's it's interesting. That's a derail too much, But I you know, how you can be intellectually aware of something but then a emotionally degrees opposed to it or vice versa. Right, Like, intellectually I understand that stage magicians are normal human beings who get up and have jobs and they're not evil or you know, like I have all these stereotypes about them. Emotionally, I can't get over it. Yeah, I feel monstrous about it, and I apologize to any stage magicians, Uh listening to the show, Please don't send me videos of your stuff. Oh my gosh, So you understand like the whole the whole category everything about it. I don't know why you whenever they like David Copperfield as a kid, I'm okay with mentalists, you know, like Darren Brown. For some reason, it's okay. And just like pull out the cards and they make me tap on stuff. It's something must have happened to me. You don't like people to ask you to do stuff either, Ben, who likes people to ask you? If it's all in the way you ask, it's all the way you ask, that's true. I agree. But you know, if if I just walked up to when I said, Ben, tap on this deck of cards with two fingers, you would probably punch me. I would. I would punch you because now I would know where's coming from. You look at me. Askance though, I'll tell you that yes, it would be would be very very distrusting in the very least you touch it with three fingers. It would be like if it would be like if somebody if if mad Orrai came up to you and we're like, hey man, open this bag and we had hidden a birden there, like that's not cool. If you guys could see me out there in podcast, my eyes just went wide, like a couple of saucers. I have nightmares sometimes that there's a bird under my covers. We will never do that, thanks, guys. I don't want to freak you out. Did a bird hurt me? Is that what you're gonna ask? Don't look under the desk right now? Okay, that's this is being This is mean, and I'm sorry your face was so genuine and scared that I'm sorry. I feel like the c I A right, Okay, it's okay, man, And that's what we just did. We did a thought experiment to let you know how the c I must feel after being taken to task for a lot of this stuff, and how quickly it got out of control because they were also dosing one another at some point. It was just for frenzies, like Smitty, he's tripping balls? What is your stage magic? Now? Oh wait, he's going outside on the balcony. Oh that's interesting. Ones that does that? Of course happened, right, yes, yes, Frank Olsen specifically, he was a biochemist at a lab that was conducting those LSD experiments for the government. And the story is still very murky today. I think it's mentioned in the Netflix series Wormwood. So, according to uncle sam Ulsen, knowingly ingested LSD and then because it affected him in an adverse way, he eventually took his own life by jumping from his hotel room on the thirteenth floor of a New York City hotel, and you know, he died. However, his family and numerous people don't buy the story. They say that he was dosed without his consent uh, and that he would never have committed suicide, that he did not have nascent suicidal tendencies. They say he was murdered because he knew too much. The US government gave them a settlement of seventy thousand dollars in nineteen seventy five. But yeah, wait, wait, wait, wait, his body's exhumed and the coroner sees head injuries and he says, wait, Olsen was knocked unconscious before his death. How do you figure that out that long afterwards after you fell from a really high height. I don't know. I totally hear you. That is crazy, though, right, yes, yeah, it's it's strange and questions remain. And it's also I hate to say, man, but it's extremely possible that he was killed and was a cover up because ultra is the top above top secret level classification for projects at this time. And this leads us to, you know, the big question. Surely one day there's gonna be justice. Not so fast. Yeah, a lot of the sciencests involved honestly had no idea what they were actually doing. That they were working for the CIA. They knew they were administering something, they knew they were maybe doing it a little surreptitiously, but they didn't understand that it was this kind of this kind of thing, right, And they, along with the CIA assets, are legally immune at this point from consequences of their actions. Can you believe that that's that's true? Seriously? Yep, they're immune. And and here's why. There are two lawsuits related to mk Ultra that made it as far as the freaking Supreme Court, and the court found in favor of the government twice. Both times. Yeah, the court held in a case called CIA versus Sims that the names of institutions and researchers who participated in Project in k Ultra were exempt from revelation under the Freedom of Information Act because the CIA needed to protect its intelligence sources. Again, national security. Just throw that up anywhere and you're good to go. And then also here's a case called United States versus Stanley, and the court held that this serviceman someone he was working with them who had volunteered for a chemical weapons experiment. Let's call it that a chemical weapons experiment. This guy was actually tested with LSD. And this guy was barred from bringing a claim under the this thing called the Federal Tort Claims Act. And uh, what has a tourt been? A tort is essentially when someone does something bad to you, a bad action. So Towart law is the area of law that protects people from bad acts of others. Historically speaking, citizens in the US cannot sue states because of the concept of sovereign unity. Can't just sue this state because there are very specific concepts of constraints or situations where you can do that. And the f t c A or Federal Tort Claims Act federal statute that allows private parties to sue the US in a federal court for most of these torque cases committed by people acting on behalf of the US. It's a little bit illegalis but but that's it. He um, he was Stanley was attempting to attempting to sue, but it was kicked out because it was not because he was he was not allowed to use the Federal Tort Claims Act. Okay, that makes sense. National security, national security, national security twice eight seven. So that's almost where we are now today. MK Ultra is firmly enshrined in the world of conspiracy lore, their fictional programs like Wormwood. There are documentaries, There are books ranging from fiction inspired by this to maybe more fringe research that the authors will tell you it is true, dull sorts of films that explore aspects of the program or use it as a jumping off point for speculation. But like any piece of folklore, and I would argue there's a lot of folklore around him Cultra, there is an arguable grain of truth inside the story, and that leaves us with some burning, disturbing questions. First, what happened? That's the easiest question to answer. We will not know, we cannot know, we will never know, we refuse to know. We shut our eyes in the nearest to the truth. Well, not that the first. We just can't. We can't know because it's going to be sealed. Because they destroyed thousands and thousands of things and When I say sealed, I mean in a tomb essentially of its own burnt up carbon. Yeah, we're in We're in deathbed confession territory. That's where that's that those will be the best sources of this second question in a little depressing Did any of this stuff actually work? Yeah, some of it, some of it obviously, most of it didn't. Some of it did, some of it did, right. Yeah, And again we're not really sure what we'll find unless some some of those experiments that they were doing are just redone a lot um. But I guess, I guess the big thing is that they never at least two our understanding, they never got a true truth serum as close as scope I mean, and some of these other things can get you. There's no true injectable that we know. Now. I'll tell you everything. My fears, my social security. One of my feet is larger than the other. It makes me uncomfortable. I I'm Edward Kennedy, and uh, some of the biggest drugs that I've been doing lately are the L S d L. You also kind of got a little Peter Griffin, I got, I got a Peter to Jesus. So it's It's true they ever found that silver bullet truth serum. So far as we know, the data they got was of limited use if you think about it, because they didn't have solid methodology and a lot of these experiments, they did not have ideal monitoring conditions, and at some point they just uh had a Lord of the Flyes situation, you know what I mean. Big Think has a great quote on this. They argue that the program may ultimately have been counterproductive. They say mk Ultra might have been counterproductive because the counterculture was given access to LSD through these experiments. That's true, and they proceeded to run in the opposite direction with it. John Lennon went so far as to mock the CIA in an interview, noting they must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD. That's what people forget. Oh my god, it's the young Michael Kine. I'm sorry. They invented a state to control people, and what they did would give us freedom. Wow. Okay, all right, Lennon, John Lennon, I mean, let's that's Michael King. Thanks. But yeah, he's making a good point, right, Yeah, they gave us LSD, but they didn't give us what what did What didn't they give us? They didn't give us shrooms? True? They they did? I don't know, Yeah, I don't know. They didn't. They didn't disclose a lot of the findings. And that's that's the scariest question. Most importantly, what's happening now? You have to ask yourself listening to this. Would a government genuinely completely stop this sort of research if an aspect of it worked. Has there at any point, and and forget forget the relatively young experiment known as the United States, In the course of human civilization, has there been something that was an amazing technique or technology that gave one empire the edge over the others that they stopped for sueing and not being rhetorical? I would love to hear of one example. Yeah, send us your examples if you've got them, please. You can find us on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook. You can visit our Facebook friend page. I call it that because it's just some awesome people there. Thank you for being a friend folks. That's right, it's called here's where it gets crazy. Join up and let's discuss these kind of things. You can post directly there or just talk to people. Whatever you want to do. If you don't want to do that stuff, you can give us a call. We are one eight three three S T d W y t K. Leave a message. It's a three minute max, but you can leave multiples. So do what you gotta do and it might be on the air if you if you don't want to be named on the air, or you want any other stipulations, just specifically say it, because when when you leave a message, we may use it on the air. One last thing before we go, just a knowing kulture is not lost in the past. In December of eighteen, just last year, as we record this, declassified documents revealed include at a letter to an unidentified doctor discussing work on six dogs made to run, turn and stop via remote control and brain implants. That's where they were in the sixties and maybe if they could do that to a dog then or we're at least we're attempting to and then these experiments continued. Are they controlling mission control? Paul Decan right now, that's the big question. Send us an email. We are conspiracy at i heeart podcast network dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.