Brave New World: Welcome Aboard

MK-Ultra was a CIA “mind control” project. Allen Dulles approved the project in April 1953, shortly after he had taken over the helm of CIA. Its mission was to counter similar efforts underway in the Soviet Union.

A few weeks later, in an unusual move, Dulles talked to a gathering of Princeton alumni about “brain warfare,” the world of MK-Ultra. His talk was subsequently published in U.S. News & World Report.

In his provocative talk, Dulles explained that the Russians were “now using brain-perversion techniques… so subtle and so abhorrent to our way of life that we have recoiled from facing up to them. ... The minds of selected individuals who are subjected to such treatment…are deprived of the ability to state their own thoughts. … new techniques wash the brain clean … and new thoughts [are introduced] which the victim, parrot-like, repeats. … Individuals so conditioned can merely repeat the thoughts which have been implanted in their minds by suggestion from outside. In effect the brain…becomes a phonograph playing a disc put on the spindle by an outside genius over which it has no control.”

MK-Ultra was a major project that involved hundreds of scientists and dozens of university and research laboratories in several countries. The objective, as set forth in 1955, was the development of “mind-altering” substances that could “cause mental confusion”, “promote illogical thinking”, “alter personality structure”, “diminish ambition and working efficiency”, “produce physical disablement”, “enhance the tendency of one person to become dependent upon another”, “promote a long-lasting euphoria”, and “induce an amnesia” respecting the events that happened while a person was under the influence of the “substance.”

Within three years, half a dozen such psychoactive drugs were approved for use in covert operations. Little else is known about what was accomplished.

In 1973, information that leaked out of the CIA triggered a series of Congressional hearings, most notably the Church, Pike, and Kennedy hearings. The leaked information revolved around a reported series of LSD experiments on unsuspecting people and the suspicious death of an under cover CIA biological warfare scientist, Frank Olson.

The CIA story that emerged during the hearings was that MK-Ultra experiments had been largely terminated in the mid-1960s because they judged the project fruitless. No information on the project was available because all records had been trashed at the direction of CIA director Richard Helms just prior to his leaving office at the end of January 1973. Presumably, nothing of significance had been achieved.

Later, following the submission of a Freedom of Information Act request, numerous boxes of old financial records and a few assorted memos were suddenly “found gathering dust” in the basement of the CIA and were turned over to the requestor, John Marks. He received sixteen thousand pages, which became the basis for his best selling book, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate that was published in 1978.

Marks’ book was very much in line with the CIA story. MK-Ultra was largely an embarrassment of rather amateurish experiments. There was no evidence that anything of substance was accomplished. Marks acknowledged that this was “ridiculous” but neither Kennedy nor any of the other investigators had put any pressure on the CIA to learn more about the content or accomplishments of MK-Ultra. Without such pressure, there was nothing a private citizen, like Marks, could do to learn more.

Marks also wrote that there was no indication in the intelligence released to him that the Soviets had ever accomplished anything of substance in their mind-control efforts.

In 1999 the Western world received its first authoritative insight into the massiveness of a top secret Soviet/Russian biological warfare (BW) R&D project.

Since 1975, U.S. officials had denied the existence of such a Soviet/Russian project, which would have violated relevant arms control treaties. U.S. officials also denied that any such efforts that might be underway could hardly be viewed as significant.

Much to their chagrin, in 1999 a Soviet scientist who worked on the top secret BW project, known as BIOPREPARAT, defected. His message was simple: there was a top secret Soviet BW R&D project, it was massive, and its accomplishments were extremely significant.

Three years later, in 1992, another Soviet scientist, Col. Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, defected. Dr. Alibekov was the deputy chief of BIOPREPARAT. Dr. Alibekov confirmed the previous defector’s testimony and provided extensive details on BIOPREPARAT: 30,000 technical personnel, dozens of very large facilities, underground complexes, and over a dozen containment labs for working on the most dangerous agents, each one over 100 times larger than the two U.S. P-4 containment labs.

In 1999, Alibekov, having adopted a new name, Ken Alibek, published his memoirs, Biohazard, in which he described BIOPREPARAT and his experiences following his defection to the United States. This was the first comprehensive account of the Soviet/Russian secret work.

Equally important was Alibek’s account of the response of U.S. intelligence and policy specialists to what he knew. No one in the U.S. intelligence and policy communities was interested either in the actual Soviet/Russian BW capabilities that had been developed or in the Russian work in genetic engineering to make even more devastating BW weapons. He explained that the “Americans believed Russia’s biological weaponry no longer constituted a significant threat.” The American experts had reached this conclusion without their even knowing the nature of the Russian threat or where it was headed!

As he settled into his new life in the United States, Alibek continued to monitor Russian activities as best he could by reading the Russian technical and scientific journals. In the process he was able to identify several developments with serious implications because of their relevance to R&D programs he knew existed. He tried to find someone in the U.S. government who was interested in his findings but could not.

The actual advice he was given tells the story: “I was cautioned by [U.S.] government officials against speaking out too bluntly against Russia. Even if I was right, they argued, there was no point in pushing Moscow further than it was willing or able to go.” One U.S. official told Alibek, “Perhaps there are questionable activities going on, but for the moment, diplomacy requires us to keep silent.” When Alibek tried to explain the importance of monitoring certain activities, he was told that all work in Russia should be assumed to be peaceful in the absence of a compelling reason to suspect otherwise. Alibek could not believe his ears.

If not for Alibek’s book Biohazard, the realities of Soviet/Russian BW, particularly their use of advanced technologies, would still be hidden in intelligence safes and denied by top-level U.S. and Russian officials.

Most significant, as it relates to this article, there still would be no confirmation respecting the “F” projects: what they are, how they came into being, and the threat they represent – not just to U.S. security but to people of power and influence in business, finance, commerce, science and technology, religion, politics, and governments around the world.

Soon after he was made deputy director of BIOPREPARAT, Alibek learned that one of his scientists, who was regarded as a pharmacological genius, was working full time on an activity that was so secret that even the head of BIOPREPARAT, Alibek himself, was not authorized access. This piqued his interest. He set about to learn what he could.

Try as he did, Alibek was unable to learn very much because of its extreme secrecy. But, what he did learn was the key to bringing the pieces of an extremely important puzzle into place. What he learned takes us all the way back to the KGB program that had so worried Allen Dulles in 1953 and about which the CIA was silent in the mid-1970s when MK-Ultra was trashed by Congress and the news media.

In brief, Alibek learned that this pharmacological genius on his staff was working on a project whose secret home was in the Ministry of Health. He learned the name of the KGB project – FLEYTA. Its mission was to develop psychotropic chemical and biological substances that could alter mood and change human behavior. The drugs were for use by the KGB agents in “special operations.”

Secret projects were identified by special code words, Alibek explained, “Words beginning with F [such as FLEYTA] … were assigned to chemical weapons and to psychotropic, or behavior-altering, biological and chemical agents.” The overall project was massive and involved numerous facilities and research laboratories. Like BIOPREPARAT, it had experienced a major expansion beginning in the early 1970s. Alibek also learned to be very careful about asking too many questions because, as his boss advised, “Sometimes people disappear.”

The only known source of detailed information on the “F” projects in the West was Gen. Maj. Jan Sejna. He defected from Czechoslovakia to the United States in 1968. Since then, he has been a highly reliable source of information on Communist political and intelligence operations of the highest sensitivity.

Gen. Sejna was unique because of his high position within Communist decision-making hierarchy, his prodigious memory, and his close associations with hundreds of other top Communist leaders. He held more than a dozen sensitive positions, including first secretary of the Party at the Ministry of Defense, chief of staff to the Minister of Defense, and de facto head of the Defense Council secretariat. The Defense Council was above the Politburo in matters affecting defense, intelligence, counterintelligence, foreign policy, and the economy.

Sejna’s knowledge of the Soviet mind-control efforts was especially detailed and expansive because Czechoslovakia, a very important satellite in the Soviet empire, had worked with the Soviets in mind-control drug development, testing, and actual operations beginning in the late 1940s. Sejna was personally active in the planning, decision-making, and monitoring of these activities from the time that he took over as chief of staff to the Minister of Defense in 1957 until his defection in 1968.

The Soviet/Russian program in mind control went back to 1928. They wanted to control people’s minds and believed chemistry held many keys. But, progress was slow. The turning point was the year after WWII when the Soviet program began to leap-frog ahead, thanks to their capture of German and Italian scientists who were also working on mind control.

Yes, Sejna explained, the Mindszenty confession was the effect of first generation drugs. These drugs were also what were used to induce the confessions of many Communist leaders – including well-known Czech Communists. They were also used on American Korean War POWs. First generation “friendship” drugs developed in the Czech Air Force Scientific Labs were the drugs used on American POWs that caused them to denounce America’s democracy and praise North Korea’s communism in front of cameras. These films found their way into newsreels that were widely shown across the United States in the mid-1950s.

In 1957, under Khrushchev, the Soviet mind-control project was redirected. In the past, its focus had been internal security; for example, counterintelligence and confessions. In the future, its focus would be support to Soviet foreign policy: to influence foreign officials and people of power and influence and to discredit those who stood in the way.

Progress was swift and in 1964, the head of the International Department, Boris Ponamarev, whose departmental was in charge of foreign policy, would be made a co-director of the drug program. Over the next few years developments in mind-control drugs and in advanced work in chemical and biological warfare agents generally had progressed to the point where, by 1966, the Soviets would concluded that chemical and biological weapons and mind-control drugs were the most important weapons of the future, not nuclear weapons.

It was at this juncture that a major 20-year development program was initiated. Its goal was to develop entirely new families of qualitatively different chemical and biological weapons. This was when the massive Soviet expansion of BW (BIOPREPARAT) and CW R&D began. At that time, the mind-control portion was extracted out and put exclusively under the control of the KGB. It is likely that mind-control drugs were used on members of the Soviet hierarchy in propelling KGB director Andropov to the position of General Secretary in 1981. Otherwise, it would have been most unlikely for the head of the KGB to have become General Secretary, which is the top boss in the Communist system. It would follow that the drugs likely were also responsible for the immense growth of KGB power and influence through the USSR-to-Russia transition and beyond.

The variety of capabilities already achieved by 1968 can be seen in the various colloquial names that were used in informal discussions among appropriately cleared officials. As indicated earlier, there were drugs that were used to get people, such as Cardinal Mindszenty, to confess crimes. In a slightly different direction, there was a family of drugs that would “loosen the tongue.” These were used to enable people to talk freely on subjects they would never otherwise have openly discussed.

Certain drugs were used to induce friendship and cooperation. These, as in most cases, were used in conjunction with proper prompting by intelligence psychology specialists. One of their earliest uses was to turn enemies into friends. Several drugs, used in combination, were used to facilitate cooperation on the part of adversaries in diplomatic negotiations.

In a different vein, there are several families of drugs that worked more or less by themselves and that were designed to cause leaders to “self destruct.” Examples include drugs to cause people to become very aggressive, induce confusion, inhibit the decision-making process, and cause people to state what is on their mind without thinking about the consequences, a sure-fire recipe for enabling a politician to self-destruct.

There were also drugs designed to be used against collections or groups of people. One example is a drug to be dispersed up-wind that would destabilize people and promote chaotic behavior. Individuals would change, first exhibiting the characteristics of people who had consumed too much alcohol, then becoming boisterous drunks, and then just going crazy. This may seem outlandish, until you consider actual examples of such situations, such as that experienced in Pont-Saint-Esprit, a small French village on the Rhone River, in 1951 when hundreds of respectable citizens started going berserk one evening.

Another family of drugs disrupted one’s ability to think rationally and logically and still another demoralized people and gave them a defeatist attitude or sense of hopelessness.

The list is impressive, frightening, and disturbingly long. Of particular interest is the similarity between many of these Soviet achievements and the MK-Ultra substance objectives set forth in 1955 described at the beginning of this article.

These Soviet achievements were not just wish lists or development priorities. These drugs were all in operational use by the time of Sejna’s defection. The aggressive drug was given to a Czech Air Force general that the Soviets wanted to eliminate. It was administered at lunch. Following lunch, he ignored the bad weather, and jumped in his plane to fly to a meeting in Prague. He crashed in route. End of problem.

A loosen-the-tongue drug was given to a British banker by Bulgarian intelligence. This was how the head of Bulgaria, Tudor Zivkov, learned in advance about the British decision to devalue the pound. As Zivkov explained to Sejna over lunch when asked about the source of the information, “We are very conservative. I do not have to recruit a bank president. It is enough for him to have dinner with me. I just sit back and let him tell me about the British plans.”

Loosen-the-tongue drugs became a often-used tool in scientific espionage. The Czech and Soviet scientists would recommend to their intelligence services what data or techniques they needed to know and would help identify the experts in the West who would be good sources of information. Intelligence specialists would analyze the situation, identify the best sources of information (targets), and find a convenient conference to which the American or European target scientist would be invited. They would also identify an East European scientist who spoke the right language and could understand what was being said. They then arranged for that East European scientist to be invited to the same conference. Intelligence operators would accompany the East European scientist to the same meeting, manipulate the Western scientist into joining them in an informal dinner, and then slip the appropriate pill to the target scientist. The conversation would proceed during dinner and the information would flow. The best thing about this pill is that the target would not remember what was said the next day.

These drugs were also a good source of blackmail and political intelligence. They were, for example, used on U.S. Congressional staff and U.S., U.K., and Canadian political and labor delegations visiting Czechoslovakia. Under the influence of the drugs, the visitors would talk freely about the problems in their parties and predilections of their bosses. The interesting aspect of some of these drugs was that they could be administered to a whole group – three or four in a delegation – and everyone would become more talkative. The skeletons just came tumbling out of the closet as everyone tried to outdo his colleagues.

Cooperation and friendship drugs were used to influence various international organizations, such as the World Peace Council, the Fifteen Nation Disarmament Group, and the International Atomic Energy Agency. They were often used against their allies in negotiations. Sejna related several operations against the North Vietnamese who were often in Prague seeking increased military assistance. The North Vietnamese were always very closed mouth about their plans, until fed the right drugs, then the information the Czechs wanted flowed freely. Sejna recalled with a laugh how the Vietnamese would cave in during troublesome negotiations after the doses of selected drugs were increased. The Vietnamese would noticeably discard their stern attitudes and agree to the Czech position. They would then return to Hanoi and catch hell from their superiors for being such poor negotiators.

One of the friendship drugs often used to turn Russian enemies into allies worked as follows. The Czechs would invite the problem individual to a one- or two-week conference in Czechoslovakia, which was not considered the “enemy.” The requisite friendship drug would be administered to the individual, usually at breakfast, for two days. Over the next several days, drugs would be administered and intelligence specialists unknown to the target individual would be constantly in his presence, pushing ideas and concepts all designed to lead the individual away from the problems he had with the Russians and to insert exactly the opposite perspective. Within four or five days the individual, such as the President of Finland, would no longer be harboring hostile views of the Russians. He was the perfect “new man,” tolerant and usually quite accepting.

As one might expect, there were problems from time to time. Occasionally, a drug would backfire and could give rise to embarrassing situations. This is why there was considerable attention placed to develop drugs that could serve as a type of antidote and other operational devices, such as the use of alcohol to mask a bad reaction to “one of the little pills.” Additionally, in important operations, there was usually a skilled medical intelligence operator present to attend to such problems.

By the late sixties, the accomplishments in the Russian program, of which the preceding examples are a small sample, may be somewhat difficult for some to accept, especially those not skilled in the devices of modern day neuropharmacology. Technically, however, they are all very realistic. As explained by Dr. John Saunders, Provost of the University of California Medical School at San Francisco, in a 1961 “Control of the Mind” symposium, “There is – especially among thoughtful physicians – a deep sense of disquiet … Here at our disposal, to be used wisely or unwisely, are an increasing array of agents that manipulate human beings…It is now possible to act directly on the individual to modify his behavior instead of, as in the past, indirectly through modification of the environment.” This is even more the case when the conditions of the development program in the Soviet Union are understood. These conditions included 1) the availability of world-class scientists, 2) first call on medical facilities, 3) ready access to skilled pharmacologists, including those in Western Europe, and of great importance 4) an unlimited supply of human guinea pigs, including American POWs, with no restrictions respecting their use.

Frightening? You bet. Allen Dulles in 1953 was quite right when he expressed his concern over developments “so subtle and so abhorrent to our way of life that we have recoiled from facing up to them.”

That this is still the case is easily seen today. As one stops and thinks back, numerous examples of people who seem to have changed their attitudes following an extended visit to the Soviet Union or Russia come to mind. Questions respecting politicians who were uncharacteristically frank and, thus, had their careers shortened, also are raised. So many questions emerge that one has to guard against giving too much credit to the possible use of “F” project drugs.

With this knowledge as a base, many questions arise. Consider the vexing problem of terrorism we face today. We need to recognize both the potential and the hand-in-glove fit of data respecting the Middle East and terrorism. How does one explain the irrational hatred of so many Islamic leaders and young people? How does one explain the unbelievably high success rate of suicide bombers?

As it turns out, the Soviets had a program dating back to the 1920s to penetrate all the major religions and especially their seminaries and teaching centers, which was the main road taken to turn church doctrines and ideologies in ways that would serve to support Soviet foreign policy. This program was immensely successful and its results can be seen in today’s problems affecting several major Western religions.

Sejna further explained that the Soviets had been most effective in penetrating the Islamic religion, recruiting their leaders, and in organizing terrorist movements. The PLO, which was mainly a Soviet surrogate, is one of the best examples. Mind-control drugs were widely used in these efforts. It is almost inconceivable that they did not play a role in infusing Islamic religious leaders with their irrational hatred of the United States, which was also a major characteristic of the Soviet doctrine, and in forging the most reliable stable of suicide bombers. This was by no means a “first.” The Japanese used mind-control drugs on their WWII suicide bombers and a variety of drugs were used to promote tremendously aggressive behavior in the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. In other words, the possible use of mind-control drugs needs to be considered as we try to better understand the “enemy” and plan our strategy for waging war on terrorism.

Another message is that there is no limit to the possibilities and implications of the foregoing. However, assessing the implications is a very difficult challenge for all the reasons so succinctly expressed by Allen Dulles and because of later efforts undertake by CIA and White House officials to hide both the nature of the CIA and Russian (and Chinese) mind-control programs and their horrendous accomplishments.

The use of behavior and mind-altering drugs is not a subject to be lightly dismissed. The implications are frighteningly serious, or might well be, to key people around the world in business, finance, politics, government, religion, and, yes, even to intelligence and national policy officials.

We're only scratching the surface.

I met a woman who says that she participated in this project. The big news wasn't about drugs and mind control, but rather it was the slave trade. She talked about how the military experiments on people who are sold as slaves on the black market. MK-Ultra project was also about developing diseases, and finding cures. She had been given countless diseases and vaccinations by bioengineers working in the project.

She says, "They trained us how to kill a person with sex" which didn't make any sense unless you think that a negociator is rendered ineffective through persuasion. Traditionally, before the drugs were developed, sexual persuasion was used to bend a person's mind. The bedroom is the best place to find out secrets. This stuff is not modern, its a very old military artform.

She said that the people she was working for were Nazi's straight out of Germany brought over in Project Paperclip. They even had furniture made out of human bones and skins from during the war.

The gross part of this is that these slavers are all over, operating closely connected to adoption industry, they buy american children, or children anywhere, and turn them into prostitutes, use them in mind control experiments, or sell them as meat on the black market. Eventually some of these people end up as agents working for military black projects.

The project still goes on. Seduction and female fifth columns have forever been an important part of espionage. Drugs and poisons and spells their chief weapon. In the Maleus Malificarum (The Witch's Hammer) There are plenty of midevil stories about witch's conspiracies to influence or overthrow the state using potions, incantations, and seduction.

War is a primordial form, that doesn't change much throughout history. Though tactics and technology change over time the basic strategy does not change.

By 1968, the year Sejna defected to the United States, there were over 20 families of mind-control drugs that had been developed and most of which were in operational use. For the most part, these drugs are not simply pills that can magically change attitudes or behavior. Rather, they are used in conjunction with carefully staged psychological operations. The drugs are “facilitators,” used more accurately to “influence” than to “control.” In some cases – for example, drugs used to cause depression or lack of motivation – act pretty much on their own. In general, however, they are better viewed as just a tool – albeit an important tool – used to make an operation go easier and have a greater likelihood of success. Another side to this is that the drugs themselves along with the psychological treatment will only work on an unsuspected and frankly open minded person(i.e. their sense of right and wrong changes rather than being set in stone). Any other would require considerable time and in the end cause major physical damage to the brain and central nervous system or not work at all. Such targets would be easier to kill and place some in their place that would be more susceptible. Dr. Douglas's new book "Betrayed" helps to highlight this aspect of friendship drugs.

By 1968, the year Sejna defected to the United States, there were over 20 families of mind-control drugs that had been developed and most of which were in operational use. For the most part, these drugs are not simply pills that can magically change attitudes or behavior. Rather, they are used in conjunction with carefully staged psychological operations. The drugs are “facilitators,” used more accurately to “influence” than to “control.” In some cases – for example, drugs used to cause depression or lack of motivation – act pretty much on their own. In general, however, they are better viewed as just a tool – albeit an important tool – used to make an operation go easier and have a greater likelihood of success.

Another side to this is that the drugs themselves along with the psychological treatment will only work on an unsuspected and frankly open minded person(i.e. their sense of right and wrong changes rather than being set in stone). Any other would require considerable time and in the end cause major physical damage to the brain and central nervous system or not work at all. Such targets would be easier to kill and place some in their place that would be more susceptible. Dr. Douglas's new book "Betrayed" helps to highlight this aspect of friendship drugs.

At that time, the mind-control portion was extracted out and put exclusively under the control of the KGB. It is likely that mind-control drugs were used on members of the Soviet hierarchy in propelling KGB director Andropov to the position of General Secretary in 1981. Otherwise, it would have been most unlikely for the head of the KGB to have become General Secretary, which is the top boss in the Communist system. It would follow that the drugs likely were also responsible for the immense growth of KGB power and influence through the USSR-to-Russia transition and beyond.

PUTIN = KGB. Do the math.

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