---
born: 1918-09-29
category: Scientists & Researchers
created: 2026-06-03
died: 1970-02-09
location: Washington, D.C.
summary: NIH neurosurgeon who became a CIA consultant conducting sensory deprivation
  experiments combined with lobotomies on apes and radio frequency brain stimulation
  research under MKULTRA and MKSEARCH.
tags:
- Person
- CIA
- MKULTRA
- MKSEARCH
- SensoryDeprivation
updated: 2026-06-03
---

Dr. Maitland Baldwin was a brain surgeon at the National Institutes of Health who performed extreme experiments for the [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/). In 1955, [Morse Allen](/people/morse-allen/) of [ARTICHOKE](/programs/project-bluebird-and-project-artichoke/) contacted Baldwin after he conducted a sensory deprivation experiment in which an Army volunteer stayed in the "box" for 40 hours until he kicked his way out after, in Baldwin's words, "an hour of crying loudly and sobbing in a most heartrending fashion." The experiment convinced Baldwin that isolation could break any man. He told Allen that beyond six days, deprivation would almost certainly cause irreparable damage. Baldwin agreed that if the Agency could provide cover and subjects, he would perform "terminal type" experiments. An Agency medical officer finally shot down the project as "immoral and inhuman," suggesting those pushing it might want to "volunteer their heads for use in Dr. Baldwin's 'noble' project."[^1]

### Continued CIA Work

After Allen was pushed aside by [MKULTRA](/programs/project-mkultra/), the new TSS team hired Baldwin as a consultant. According to one of them, he was full of bright ideas on how to control behavior, but they were wary because he was such an "eager beaver" with an obvious streak of "craziness." Under TSS auspices, Baldwin performed lobotomies on apes and then put them in [Sensory Deprivation](/concepts/sensory-deprivation/), presumably in the same box he had built at NIH. He discussed with outside consultants how lobotomized patients reacted to prolonged isolation. In one experiment, he beamed radio frequency energy directly at the brain of a chimpanzee. In another, he cut off one monkey's head and tried to transplant it to the decapitated body of another. Baldwin used $250 in Agency money to buy his own electroshock machine and did unspecified work at a TSS safehouse that caused the CIA to pay $1,450 for renovation and repair.[^2]

Baldwin continued under [MKSEARCH](/programs/mksearch/) as Subproject 1, maintaining his relationship with TSS throughout the 1960s.[^2]

[^1]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*, Chapter 8.
[^2]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*, Chapter 12.