A congressional hearing to examine the CIA’s secretive mind-control program has been set for this month.
Florida Rep Anna Paulina Luna announced on Wednesday that the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets will hold a hearing on the Cold War-era MKUltra program on May 13.
The CIA’s MKUltra program, conducted from 1953 to 1964, aimed to develop procedures and drugs for interrogations, weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.
Luna had pushed to restart congressional hearings on the matter in February, citing a Daily Mail article that reported a newly surfaced document on mind-control experiments had been placed in the CIA’s reading room the year before.
The renewed focus has placed the CIA’s MKUltra program back under the microscope, particularly its use of drugs, hypnosis and psychological testing on human subjects, as well as the death of one of its scientists.
Dr Frank Olson, a biological warfare scientist, was covertly dosed with LSD at a meeting and died nine days later after falling out of his hotel room in New York City, which was declared a suicide – although some people, including family members, believe he was murdered.
A total of 144 projects were carried out under MKUltra during that period, highlighting the vast scale of the CIA’s secret experimentation program.
One such document from 1956 detailed how the CIA considered testing the substances on foreign nationals, but ultimately concluded that ‘unwitting testing on American citizens must be continued.’
Hellbound and Down 