Project MKUltra

Project MKUltra was a top-secret, illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the CIA. It involved the use of various methods, including drugs like LSD, hypnosis, and other psychological manipulation techniques, to develop mind-control capabilities. The program sought to discover effective methods of controlling human behavior to create brainwashed operatives capable of carrying out objectives unwittingly, thereby obtaining perfect operational security in human intelligence assets, particularly assassins.¹²

Human Use Experimentation and Remote Viewing

In the context of the Remote Viewers narrative, the history of such experimentation meant that the Grill Flame program, which involved human subjects in remote viewing, had to involve the informed consent of its participants and approval and oversight by the Army's human use review board. This was a direct consequence of the controversies surrounding programs like MKUltra.¹

Subproject 136 and Child Experimentation

In August 1961, Subproject 136 of the MKUltra program received approval for funding under the title Experimental Analysis of Extrasensory Perception. The project objective statement revealed that the subproject agenda included, at least in part, the induction of dissociative states in children through drugs and hypnosis to create multiple personalities. Researchers understood that such states could be induced in children through trauma, leading to the development of alternative personalities, which aligned with MKUltra's broader mandate.²

Correspondence published in the British Journal of Psychiatry indicated that children had been used in these experiments with little ethical consideration. George H. Estabrooks, a prominent figure in hypnotherapy, applied to the National Institute of Mental Health in 1959 for funding of a proposed study titled Hypnotism in Juvenile Delinquency. This institute had functioned as a cutout used to fund MKUltra research into prospective methods of mind control, some involving children. Estabrooks wrote in his study proposal of the especially high levels of susceptibility children had to hypnotic techniques, noting that while one out of five adults were good hypnotic subjects, four out of five children fell into this category.²

Estabrooks claimed in a 1971 article published in Science Digest to have successfully created multiple personalities through hypnotic techniques in officers of the US Army's intelligence division during World War II. While it remains unclear whether Estabrooks was directly involved with MKUltra, his research interests and claims aligned closely with the program's objectives.²

Aftermath and Legacy

MKUltra officially ended in 1973. One theory suggests that when the program concluded, certain elements within the CIA continued this line of inquiry off the books, turning from academics to alternative lifestyle communities, pedophile rings, and cults as conduits to carry out trauma-based mind control research. Evidence of overlap between these elements appeared in the 1987 case of The Finders.²

The program's dark history, particularly its controversial studies on servicemen in the 1950s and 1960s, led to strict regulations regarding "human use experimentation" in the military.¹