Was the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump earlier this month part of a secret CIA program involving brainwashed killers? That’s the claim being made by some far-right accounts on X, but the U.S. intelligence agency is taking the unusual step of directly and forcefully denying the claims.
When it was revealed in the 1970s that the CIA had tried to develop a mind-manipulation program called MKUltra, it sounded like the most absurd conspiracy theory around. Unfortunately, it turned out to be true, even if the suggestive results of the program–and potential for creating Manchurian Candidate-like killers–have been exaggerated in the subsequent decades.
But MKUltra has become quite a meme in the 2020s, with many conspiracy theorists jumping into the fray after Trump was shot at by a 20-year-old during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. The shooter was identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks who acted alone. But some people on social media are trying to claim Crooks was somehow trained by the CIA under an MKUltra program to go after Trump.
“What if US President Joe Biden’s ‘mean tweets’ triggered Thomas Matthew Crooks?” one X account that goes by the name Real Global News tweeted a couple days after the shooting. “Yes like an #MKUltra test subject. I dont want to go into conspiracy theories here but the CIA did mind control experiments like the #ManchurianCandidate. Wait for the trigger before acting.”
Another account with the handle @MJTruthUltra tweeted “MKUltra anyone?” with a list of supposedly suspicious claims about Crooks and the way local police handled the investigation into the assassination attempt against Trump.
The CIA, for its part, decided to push back very publicly against these claims, something the agency doesn’t often do when weird conspiracy theories are floating around on the internet.
“These claims are utterly false, absurd, and damaging,” a CIA spokesperson told Gizmodo on Thursday. “The CIA had no relationship whatsoever with Thomas Crooks. Regarding MKULTRA, the CIA’s program was shut down more than 40 years ago, and declassified information about the program is publicly available on CIA.gov.”
Hellbound and Down 