Tag: korean war

CIA Ran MK-ULTRA Experiments on Prisoners of War in U.S. Custody, Declassified Docs Confirm

Korean prisoners of war in the 1950s were subjected to early MK-ULTRA experiments while in American custody, according to recently declassified CIA documents which confirm these experiments for the first time.

The only reporting that previously referenced Koreans being used as guinea pigs for these experiments was journalist John Marks’s landmark 1979 book, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate.” Using CIA documents, Marks traced the now-infamous MK-ULTRA project to its start, when it was known as Project Bluebird. In the book, Marks describes how, in October 1950, 25 unnamed North Korean POWs were chosen as the first test subjects to receive “advanced” interrogation techniques, with the overt goal of “controlling an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation.”

While MK-ULTRA is best known for its invasive experimentation — like LSD dosing and torture — the documents confirm Korean POWs were the unwitting subjects of less splashy attempts at mind control, like being subjected to polygraph tests, with plans for other invasive testing.

The declassified documents, which the National Security Archive released between December 2024 and April 2025, are available through a special collection titled “CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments and MK-ULTRA.” The National Security Archive website states that the collection “brings together more than 1,200 essential records on one of the most infamous and abusive programs in CIA history.”

The first reference to “Project Bluebird” in the NSA’s collection is an office memorandum from April 5, 1950. Addressed to CIA Director Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, the document lays out the project’s goals, required training, and budget, all while emphasizing that knowledge of Project Bluebird “should be restricted to the absolute minimum number of persons.”

The memo includes detailed plans for interrogation teams trained to utilize the polygraph, various drugs, and hypnotism “for personality control purposes.” These teams were to be made up of three people: a doctor (ideally a psychiatrist), a hypnotist, and a polygraph technician. The memo clarifies that while the doctor and technician would need to undergo approximately five months of training, the Inspection and Security Staff’s own department hypnotist could be made available immediately. In a later memo from February 2, 1951, there are inquiries into acquiring six “hypospray” devices: experimental instruments designed to covertly inject sedatives through the skin via “jet injection.” There’s a request to investigate modification of a “tear gas pencil” and other “devices of unestablished action,” such as the “German ‘Scheintot’ [sic] (appearance of death) pistol.”

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How the Korean War gave birth to the CIA’s first paramilitary unit

This little-known story from the Korean War has a bit of everything – action, excitement, special operations troops, the CIA, and more. It all started the day North Korea invaded South Korea. The invasion took both General MacArthur and the newly formed CIA by surprise, neither of whom had any strategic or tactical warfare plans for the Peninsula.

MacArthur famously disliked civilian agencies working in his theater. He had stonewalled the OSS during World War II in the Pacific and didn’t want a bunch of spies in suits setting up shop in Korea. However, the CIA had a line of agents working in North Korea and was a valuable source of information. It helped that several members of the CIA had come from the Army that fought in World War II. With MacArthur’s blessing, the CIA sent George Aurell to aid in the war through paramilitary and special operations efforts. 

Still, the situation between MacArthur and the CIA was tense, and it wasn’t until CIA director and retired Army General Walther Bedell Smith – who had been MacArthur’s chief of staff at one point – came to Tokyo that the schism was healed. The two hammered out the CIA’s purview and came to an agreement: MacArthur wouldn’t interfere with the Agency if it established an Escape and Evasion plan for downed United Nations pilots.

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FBI File: Bacteriological Warfare

This FBI file relates to bacteriological warfare. It contains investigative information gathered over several decades. Significant portions of the file have been redacted or entirely withheld due to security or privacy concerns, using exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Reports detail the use of bacteriological weapons in the Korean War, allegedly by U.S. forces, as claimed by various organizations in China and North Korea. Chinese trade unions and women’s organizations made appeals to international bodies to denounce and act against these actions .

Some sections include accounts of individuals suspected of being involved in subversive activities or espionage. For instance, John T. Brady alleged bacteriological warfare conducted in Illinois, raising concerns about potential German agents during World War II. Further investigation found Brady had a neurotic obsession with disease and that his claims were largely unfounded .

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CIA Intercepts Suggest U.S. Lied About Biological Weapon Use During Its War On Korea

During the early 1950s War on Korea the U.S. used biological weapons against North Korea and China. Bombs designed to spread leaflets were filled with plague infested rats and dropped on Korean towns. Various infecting insects were released. Leaflets were contaminated with small pox and then distributed. Several local epidemics were caused by these attacks.

The program was a continuation of one which a special unit of the Imperial Japanese Army had developed during the second world war. Unit 731 and its leaders were not indicted for the war crimes they had committed during the war but integrated into the U.S. biological warfare program.

The Soviet Union and China made political noise about the use of biological weapons but the U.S. stoically denied that it ever used such weapons. U.S. pilots, shot down and imprisoned by the North Korean forces, admitted that they had dropped such bombs. The U.S. then falsely alleged that the pilots had been tortured and must have lied. This led to demands to train all pilots to resist torture measures:

Since World War II the U.S. Airforce and Navy had established training courses in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) for pilots that might be captured by enemies. During these courses interrogations were staged to provide realistic training. After the Korea War anti-torture training was added. Torture of “prisoners” was “simulated” with the trainees. Decades later, during the war of terror and on Iraq, the CIA hired two psychologists from the SERE training staff as “behavioral science consultants” to teach its agents how to use torture on prisoners. The absolutely inhuman and dangerous methods those SERE “experts” devised proliferated to the U.S. military which, together with the CIA, used them on alleged enemy combatants in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other places.

Now back to the War on Korea. The Chinese and Soviets sponsored the International Scientific Commission (ISC) headed by one of the foremost British scientists of his time, Sir Joseph Needham, to investigate the use of biological weapons during the war. Three years ago we wrote about its report:

For a long time the commission’s report and its appendices with the witness statements were suppressed and not available online. Jefferey Kay, a psychologist and author living in northern California, dug them up and recently published them (recommended) on the web for the first time. You can read them here:

Sir Joseph Needham was blacklisted by the U.S. during the McCarthy anti-communist campaign.

Needham’s investigations have since been confirmed by other scholars investigating the general case.

Now Jeffrey Kaye has dug up additional documents which confirm the other reports of U.S. germ attacks on North Korea and China. Interestingly these documents are from the CIA.

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