Key Takeaways
- Operation Midnight Climax was a CIA experiment in San Francisco from the 1950s to 1960s testing the effects of LSD and sex on men’s behavior.
- The experiment was part of the larger MKULTRA program aimed at developing mind-control capabilities.
- The CIA used prostitutes to lure men to a wired bordello for surveillance, but the unethical program was terminated in 1967.
From the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, men in San Francisco who patronized prostitutes ran the risk of becoming unwitting participants in a clandestine CIA experiment. It was designed to test whether the combination of sex and the hallucinogenic drug LSD might influence the men to reveal information that the government wanted. What information, nobody is really sure.
The experiment, known as Operation Midnight Climax inside the CIA, was part of a larger research program code-named MKULTRA. The agency launched MKULTRA out of worries that the Soviet Union had developed a mind-control drug.
CIA officials had observed the vacant gaze and trance-like behavior of Hungarian cleric Cardinal József Mindszenty at a show trial in Budapest in 1949. They were convinced that his confession had been extracted with chemicals, according to a 1977 New York Times article and decided that the U.S. needed to have similar capabilities.
Hellbound and Down 