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Congressional Task Force Exposes CIA's MK Ultra Mind Control Program and Systematic Cover-Up
A congressional task force holds a historic hearing on MK Ultra, the CIA's decades-long mind control program that subjected American citizens to LSD, electroshock, and psychological torture without consent. Witnesses Stephen Kinzer and Tom O'Neill present evidence of systematic cover-up, including CIA Director Richard Helms' destruction of records in 1973, ongoing experiments at universities and prisons, and potential connections to high-profile cases including Charles Manson and Jack Ruby. The hearing reveals how 149 sub-projects operated across 80 institutions, and questions whether modern versions of mind control programs continue today using advanced technology.
The Crimes and Cover-Up of MK Ultra
Project MK Ultra was not merely a policy failure or an overzealous program that spiraled out of control. It was a deliberate, systematic governmental operation that subjected American citizens to LSD, electroshock, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and psychological torture without their knowledge or consent. This continued for 20 years on American soil, funded by American taxpayer dollars, and authorized by the highest levels of the U.S. intelligence apparatus.
When the program ended, the men who ran it did not cooperate with investigators. They did not come forward. Instead, they committed another crime: they destroyed evidence. In January 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms, preparing to leave office, personally ordered the destruction of MK Ultra records. A CIA official document states: "Over my stated objectives, the MK Ultra files were destroyed by the order of DCI Mr. Helms shortly before his departure from office."
A separate internal account confirms that Helms telephoned Dr. Sidney Gottlieb directly and instructed him to destroy "all files pertaining to drug research and associated activities." Gottlieb complied—four people spent an entire day tearing and burning 152 files. Then Gottlieb had his personal papers destroyed by his secretary before he retired. The head of the CIA Records Center protested the destruction in writing, but he was overruled.
This constituted obstruction of justice and criminal destruction of federal records. Yet neither individual was ever charged with a crime. Helms received a $2,000 fine for lying to Congress about an unrelated matter and collected his government pension until he died. Gottlieb retired to rural Virginia and wrote poetry. No one went to prison. No victim was ever formally compensated by the government for the harm caused.
The Accidental Discovery
By 1975, the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission had established through sworn testimony and the surviving 1963 Inspector General report that MK Ultra existed and that the CIA had run a program of human experimentation on unwitting Americans. The scope and detail of what we know today is largely because of an accident.
In 1977, an archivist diligently complying with a FOIA request discovered seven boxes of MK Ultra financial records that had been misfiled and escaped the bonfire. Those seven boxes included the names of institutions, sub-projects, researchers who participated, and specific operations the CIA had funded. Without them, the vast majority of MK Ultra would only be a rumor, just as Helms and Gottlieb intended.
Those seven boxes revealed that MK Ultra comprised at least 149 sub-projects, operated across more than 80 institutions, and involved 185 non-government researchers. They revealed that the CIA covertly contributed $375,000 to a hospital research wing, approved directly by DCI Allen Dulles with Richard Helms' concurrence, so the agency could use unwitting patients as experimental subjects in what their own documents called a "hospital safe house."
Crimes Against Humanity
The CIA's own Inspector General said in his 1963 classified report that the program had exceeded the agency's legal charter and that covert testing on unwitting subjects placed the rights and interests of U.S. citizens in jeopardy. The program ran for a decade after that assessment, and the agency ignored their own watchdog.
Administering drugs to people without their knowledge or consent, subjecting humans to psychological torture, and using prisoners and hospital patients as non-consenting research subjects—these are crimes against humanity. The Central Intelligence Agency committed them, and then the Director of the CIA ordered the destruction of evidence.
Stephen Kinzer's Testimony on Sydney Gottlieb
Stephen Kinzer, author of "Poisoner in Chief: Sydney Gottlieb and the CIA's Search for Mind Control," provided detailed testimony about the chemist who directed MK Ultra. In 1951, the CIA hired Gottlieb and directed him to launch what became MK Ultra. Gottlieb believed that in order to implant a new mind into someone's brain, you first had to destroy the mind that was already there.
In its search for ways to destroy a human mind and body, MK Ultra conducted the most extreme experiments on human beings ever carried out by a U.S. government agency. By any standard, they qualify as medical torture. These experiments took place in prisons, clinics, and safe houses in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Officers of MK Ultra were authorized to travel to foreign countries, preferably those under formal or informal U.S. occupation, and ask the local CIA station to provide them with "expendables"—human beings who would not be missed if they disappeared. Gottlieb had what amounted to a license to kill issued by the U.S. government. Neither the number of MK Ultra victims nor the number of those who were experimented to death is known.
Operation Midnight Climax and Institutional Experiments
One of the most disturbing revelations concerned Operation Midnight Climax, where the CIA established safe houses that functioned as brothels. American citizens were lured to these locations, dosed with hallucinogens without their knowledge, and filmed during sex acts. There was no pretense of scientific experimentation—the person watching behind the one-way mirror was reportedly a drug officer sitting on a portable toilet and drinking cocktails.
Documents indicate that Sydney Gottlieb himself used to fly from Washington to inspect the project regularly and always asked that women be provided for him. No CIA officers were ever prosecuted for these crimes.
Institutional experiments were equally horrific. At the federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky, a group of African-American inmates was segregated and fed what were described in the protocol as "double, triple, and quadruple doses of LSD every day for 77 days." What happened to them remains unknown—whether they survived, whether they ever found out what was given to them, whether they thought they were going crazy.
Tom O'Neill's Investigation: Charles Manson and Dr. Jolly West
Tom O'Neill, author of "Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the 60s," spent over 20 years investigating connections between MK Ultra and high-profile criminal cases. His research led him to Dr. Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West, one of the most influential psychiatrists in America and a key MK Ultra contractor.
In 1977, West was named in a front-page New York Times story alleging that the CIA had used American universities, hospitals, and prisons as secret laboratories for experiments involving LSD on unwitting human subjects. West vigorously denied the allegations, insisting he had refused because LSD was too dangerous and that he limited all his research to animals.
However, O'Neill discovered correspondence between West and Sydney Gottlieb in West's papers at UCLA. The letters began in 1953, just two months after CIA Director Allen Dulles authorized MK Ultra, while West was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where he was chief psychiatrist at the base hospital.
In his first letter to Gottlieb, West proposed conducting experiments on unwitting human subjects, including military personnel, prisoners, and psychiatric patients at the base hospital. He outlined experiments that could have been written by Josef Mengele—using LSD in combination with hypnosis to induce confusion, amnesia, and specific mental disorders in people who would remember nothing of their interaction with him afterward.
West sought to develop techniques to extract true information and implant false information in unwilling subjects, and to alter the attitudes and beliefs of "previously loyal individuals"—in other words, to completely switch their allegiance from one group or leader to another. He wrote that "these experiments must eventually be put to test in practical trials in the field."
Gottlieb's response was enthusiastic: "My good friend, I had been wondering whether your apparent rapid and comprehensive grasp of our problems could possibly be real. You have indeed developed an admirably accurate picture of exactly what we are after." West replied that there was "no more vital undertaking conceivable in these times."
The Missing Report and Memory Replacement
O'Neill found a 14-page report that West wrote in 1956, just three years after he contracted with the CIA. In the report, West described administering LSD and other drugs in conjunction with hypnosis on unwitting human subjects. Then he made a remarkable claim: he announced that he had learned how to replace true memories with false memories in people without their knowledge.
West wrote: "It has been found to be feasible to take the memory of a definite event in the life of an individual and through hypnotic suggestion bring about the subsequent conscious recall to the effect that this event never actually took place, but that a different fictional event actually did occur."
If West's report was accurate, this was not the failure agency officials described in 1977. It was the central ambition of the MK Ultra operation—the means of gaining the ability to seize control of a person's perceptions, memories, and ultimately their behavior.
But there was one more discovery. In the National Security Archives at George Washington University, the official repository of the CIA's MK Ultra records released to Congress after the 1977 hearings, O'Neill found a different version of West's 1956 report. The original paper had been replaced by a four-page summary that did not exist in West's files and appeared to have been written by someone else.
West's claims about replacing memories were gone. In their place was a theoretical discussion of LSD and dissociative states. The version supplied to Congress concluded that the effects of LSD and similar drugs on dissociative states had "never been studied." Passages describing West's own experiments, including detailed descriptions of using LSD to "speed the induction of the hypnotic state and deepen the trance in subjects," had been removed.
The Charles Manson Connection
O'Neill's investigation into how Charles Manson, a barely literate ex-con, acquired the ability to persuade ordinary young people to murder complete strangers led him to discover that from the moment Manson was released from federal prison in 1967, he violated his parole and was immediately put under the supervision of a federal parole officer who gave him leniency as he gathered his followers, gave them drugs, and dominated them.
This happened under the watchful eye of a parole officer named Roger Smith, who was also doing drug research at the same clinic where Jolly West had established a base of operations. All the way until 1969, when Manson finally ordered the murders that he was later convicted of, he had been arrested repeatedly for escalating crimes including petty thievery, car theft, rape, attempted murder, and drug possession. Each time, not only wasn't he prosecuted, his parole wasn't violated.
The federal government in some capacity enabled Manson to do what he did and flourish until these crimes happened. O'Neill makes a case that it was part of an operation called CHAOS, also with the CIA, created to neutralize what the government believed was a revolution happening in America in the 1960s, beginning with the anti-war movement and the Black Panther militancy movement.
The Jack Ruby Case
In 1967, when Manson transformed into the cult leader we know today, he and his followers were receiving free medical care at a clinic in San Francisco where West had established operations for a research project. Years later, West inserted himself into another notorious case—the Jack Ruby case.
Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, West psychiatrically examined Jack Ruby in prison for murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy. West examined Ruby alone in his jail cell with no other psychologist present. After the examination, West announced that in the preceding 48 hours, Ruby had suffered an acute psychotic break from which he would never recover.
Ruby had been declared competent to stand trial in his first trial by a panel of eight psychiatrists. This psychotic break lasted until his death in 1967. Two months after West examined him, Ruby testified for the first and only time to the Warren Commission. The testimony had to be halted because he was babbling incoherently, telling counsel Arlen Specter that "they were cutting off the arms and legs of children in Albuquerque and El Paso."
On the Warren Commission was Allen Dulles, the former CIA director who authorized and ran MK Ultra until he was fired by President Kennedy. The liaison to the committee for the CIA was Richard Helms, who was a direct supervisor of Jolly West. They knew who West was, what he was capable of, and what they had paid him to do—including inducing mental disorders in people. This was never disclosed to the commission as far as anyone knows.
The Failed Congressional Investigation
At the end of the 1977 hearings, Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Daniel Inouye, who were the co-chairs, demanded that there be an investigation to find out who were the perpetrators, where the experiments were conducted, and most importantly, to locate victims, compensate them, notify them (because many didn't even know they'd been experimented on), and give them lifetime medical care.
President Jimmy Carter and Attorney General Griffin Bell said the federal government would begin an investigation. That never happened. Instead, the CIA created something called the Victim's Task Force to investigate itself. It was a two-man investigation to locate victims, and they only looked for people who had been experimented on in the safe houses. They completely avoided institutional experimental programs at hospitals.
O'Neill interviewed both investigators before they passed away. They confirmed they completely avoided institutional experimental programs at hospitals including Oklahoma City Hospital, Lackland Air Force Base Hospital, the Lexington Addiction Center, Holmesburg Prison, Vacaville Prison, and universities all over the country including Yale and other Ivy League universities.
A criminal investigation was also supposed to start into Gottlieb's destruction of the records, announced by the Department of Justice. O'Neill interviewed Griffin Bell and asked him what happened to all those investigations and efforts to locate victims. Bell said, "It just must have fallen through the cracks."
Operation Paperclip and Nazi Connections
Operation Paperclip brought over 1,600 German scientists into the United States government after World War II, including individuals who had conducted human experimentation in concentration camps. The CIA and military were aware of their backgrounds and recruited them anyway.
Kurt Blome, who was the chief of biological weapons development for the Nazi government, came to work for the CIA. So did Walter Schreiber, who was the surgeon general of the Nazi army. Kinzer found what he believes might be the first secret CIA prison or black site—a chalet in Germany where MK Ultra officers, working side by side with Nazis, carried out gruesome experiments that were continuations of the experiments those Nazis had been conducting just a few years earlier down the road.
These experiments were happening after the Nuremberg trials, so the CIA would have known that these were crimes against humanity. Kinzer looked for any episode in which the Nuremberg doctrines were posted on the wall in some MK Ultra or CIA office but was never able to find any indication that those Nuremberg principles were ever consulted, much less obeyed.
A memo that Chancellor Konrad Adenauer received is on the record, warning that American operations were going on in Germany. Kinzer spoke to people who lived in the area, and they all understood what was happening. Some had cooperated with an investigation by a German magazine, Der Spiegel, that called the house the "CIA torture center." The article said there were deaths, but the number is not known.
Modern Implications and Continuing Questions
The task force raised questions about whether some new incarnation of MK Ultra exists today. When the main phase of MK Ultra drew to a close in the early 1960s, Sydney Gottlieb concluded that it had failed—that there is no such thing as mind control. Even if he was right at that time, in the many decades since, there have been enormous advances in cyber technology, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience.
Covert agencies may have access now to tools for mind control that Sydney Gottlieb could not even have imagined. It may well have been true in 1963 that mind control is a myth, but whether it's still true is uncertain. That question of whether mind control might now be possible under new circumstances has presumably occurred to scientists who work for secret services, including our own.
Witnesses suggested that in the modern age, perhaps radio waves and drugs are not necessary to control people's minds. We have such collaboration between advertising, propaganda, press, and social media that certain opinions are marginalized and real debate is frustrated because people are not given access to full amounts of information. That's a way of controlling the minds of populations that doesn't even require sophisticated electronic or psychopharmacological means.
The Path Forward
The task force has a chance to connect the past to the future. A renewed effort to find MK Ultra documents from the 1950s and to fill out the redactions of those that have been released might shed new light on how the CIA operated during that period. It could also inform a new inquiry into whether any mind control projects are now underway inside the U.S. security apparatus.
The committee announced plans to follow up with the CIA director regarding full declassification of the MK Ultra files, including newly found records that were located and are in the process of being declassified. These records specifically pertain to a forgery program that was housed under MK Ultra.
The committee also announced plans to follow up with the German government regarding potential burial sites of MK Ultra victims in Germany, with the goal of identifying victims and notifying their families to correct the historical wrongdoings of the government.
The American people deserve a complete and truthful record. The victims and their families deserve acknowledgment, accountability, and justice. This Congress has a constitutional obligation to ensure that full declassification is not delayed any longer and to make sure that the CIA never does this again.
Video Transcript
force on declassification of federal
secrets will come to order. Welcome
everyone. Without objection, the chair
may declare a recess at any time. I
recognize myself for the purpose of
making an opening statement.
This hearing is about the crimes
committed by the Central Intelligence
Agency against the American citizens and
the decades of secrecy used to conceal
them. The American people deserve a
complete and truthful record. The
victims and their families deserve
acknowledgement, and this Congress has a
constitutional obligation to ensure that
full declassification is not delayed any
longer. Project MK Ultra was not a
policy failure or an overzealous program
that got out of hand. It was a
deliberate systematic governmental
operation that subjected American
citizens, prisoners, hospital patients,
veterans, ordinary people to LSD,
electroshock, hypnosis, sensory
deprivation, psychological torture
without their knowledge or consent. This
went on for 20 years on American soil,
funded by American taxpayer dollars, and
authorized by the very top of US
intelligence apparatus. And this
program, when it did end, the men who
ran it did not cooperate with
investigators. They did not come
forward. They committed another crime.
They destroyed evidence.
The documents this task force has
reviewed are unambiguous. In January
1973, the director of the CIA, Richard
Helms, prepared to leave office. He
personally ordered the destruction of
MKlra records. The CIA official document
in writing states, "Over my stated
objectives, the MK Ultra files were
destroyed by the order of DCI Mr. Helms
shortly before his departure from
office. A separate internal account
confirms that Helms telephoned Dr.
Gotautle directly and instructed him to
destroy quote all files pertaining to
drug research and associated activities.
Gotautle completed compi compiled four
people spent an entire day tearing
burning down 152 files. Then Gotlib had
his personal papers destroyed by his
secretary before he retired. The head of
the CIA owned records center protested
the destruction in writing, but he was
overruled.
That is obstruction of justice. That is
criminal destruction of federal records.
And neither individuals were ever
charged with a crime for it. Helms
received a $2,000 fine for lying to
Congress about an unrelated manner and
collected his government pension until
he died. Got retired in rural Virginia
and wrote poetry. No one went to prison.
No victim was ever formally compensated
by the government for the harm that they
caused. By 1975, the Church Committee
and the Rockefeller Commission had
already established through sworn
testimony and the surviving 1963
Inspector General report that MK Ultra
existed and that the CIA had run a
program of human experimentation on
unwitting Americans. The scope and
detail of what we know today is largely
because of an accident. In 1977, an
archivist diligently comp complying with
a foyer request discovered seven boxes
of MKlra financial records that had been
misfiled and escaped the bonfire.
Those seven boxes included the names of
institutions, the name of sub projects,
the researchers who particip who
participated, the specific operation
that the CIA had funded, and without
them, the vast majority of MK Ultra
would only be a rumor, just as Helms and
Gotautle intended.
Those seven boxes revealed the MK Ultra
comprised at least 149 sub projects,
operated across more than 80
institutions, and involved 185
non-government researchers.
They revealed that the CIA covertly
contributed $375,000
to a hospital research wing, which was
approved directly by DCI Alenolus, which
Richard Helms um concurrence. So the
agency could use unwitting patients as
experimental subjects in what their own
documents called a hospital safe house.
The CIA owns inspector general said in
1963 his classified report concluded
that the program had exceeded the
agency's legal chapter and covert
testing on unwitting subjects placed the
rights and interests of US citizens in
jeopardy. The program ran for a decade
that we know of and they ignore ignored
their own watchdog.
Let me be clear what I believe that we
are dealing with here. Administering
drugs to people without their knowledge
or consent, subjecting humans to
psychological torture and using
prisoners and hospital patients as
nonconenting research subjects. These
are crimes against humanity. The Central
Intelligence Agency committed them and
then the director of the CIA was ordered
or was ordering the destruction of
evidence. Today we will hear from two
witnesses who have spent years
unraveling the cover up that our
government ordered. Steven Kzer
documented the life and crimes of Sydney
Glatley in his uh book prisoner of chief
and Tom O'Neal spent over 20 years
investigating what the CIA buried and
what they obscured that in my mind
constitutes some of the worst notorious
crimes against humanity in the 20th
century. Their persistence in the
research in this hearing is possible
simply because they are patriots. The
American people deserve the complete
record. The victims and their families
deserve acknowledgement, accountability,
and justice. And this Congress has a
constitutional obligation to make sure
that the CIA never does this again. Um,
with that, I'm going to be opening up
first questions and I'll hold my
question to the end to Representative
Berles. Before I do pass it, I did want
to just note a few weeks ago, we did
receive reports. Um there was some back
and forth regarding the CIA and ODI
pertaining to new MKL boxes that were
discovered. Uh myself and Representative
Berles did go down to Langley. We did
meet with the CIA and the CIA is
currently in the process of
declassifying
uh newly found documentation. although
the documents and um I feel comfortable
enough to share it here pertain
specifically to a forgery program that
was being housed under MK Ultra. So as
soon as those files are released, we
will be putting out notification with
your help to also comb through some of
the newly released documents, but I did
want to give you a quick update. Um
without further ado, I would like to
represent Representative or I would like
to now recognize Representative Eric
Berles for his questions.
Go ahead. Um, without objection,
Representative Perry and Representative
Higgins from Louis, uh, Pennsylvania,
Louisiana is waved on to the committee
for the purpose of questioning the
witnesses at today's subcommittee
hearing.
>> I need the opening statement. Yeah. And
I'd like to now recognize Dr. Kzer and
the witnesses for the opening
statements. I have to swear them in.
Steven Kzer is a historian, journalist,
and author of Poisoner and Chief, Sydney
Gotautle and the CIA's Search for Mind
Control. Um, Tom O'Neal is an
investigative journalist who authored
Chaos. Charles Manson, the CIA and the
Secret History of the 60s, and Elizabeth
Ganexi, did I say that right, ma'am?
Janexi is an independent consultant and
former senior program officer at the
National Institute of Health. We look
forward to hearing what you have to say
today on this important subject.
Pursuant to committee rules 9G, the
witnesses will please stand and raise
their right hand.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the
testimony that you're about to give is
the truth, the whole truth, and the
nothing nothing but the truth? So help
you, God.
Let the record show that the witnesses
answered in the affirmative. Thank you.
You may now take your seat.
We appreciate you being here today. Let
me remind the witnesses that we have
read your opening statements and it will
appear in full record in the um in full
in the hearing record. Please limit your
oral statements to 5 minutes. However,
if it does go over, we will not be
gobbling you out. As a reminder, please
press the button on the microphone in
front of you so that it is illuminated
and members can hear you. When you begin
to speak, the light in front of you
again will turn green. After four
minutes, the light will turn yellow. And
the red when the red light comes on,
that means that your five minutes has
expired. and we will ask you to please
wrap it up. I would now like to
recognize Stephen Kinszer for his
opening statement.
>> Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. Uh
let me begin by expressing my gratitude
to this task force for confronting the
enormous issue of overclassification of
government documents and the culture of
secrecy that enables it. I'm especially
gratified by your interest in MK Ultra,
the project the CIA carried out through
the 1950s in an attempt to find the
secret of mind control. MK Ultra was one
of the most secret government programs
in American history. The chemist who
directed it, Sydney Gotautle, lived in
total anonymity.
My book, Poisoner and Chief, may be the
most complete account of MK Ultra that
exists in public, but I'm painfully
aware that I have discovered only a
small portion of what MK Ultra was and
what Sydney Gotautle did. In 1951, the
CIA hired Gotautle and directed him to
launch what became MK Ultra. Godly
believed that in order to find a way to
implant a new mind into someone's brain,
you first had to find a way to destroy
the mind that was in there already.
In its search for ways to destroy a
human mind and body, MK Ultra conducted
the most extreme experiments on human
beings that have ever been carried out
by a US government agency. By any
standard, they qualify as medical
torture. These experiments took place in
prisons, clinics, and safe houses in the
United States, in Europe, in Asia, and
even in Latin America.
Officers of MK Ultra were authorized to
travel to foreign countries, preferably
those under formal or informal US
occupation, and ask the local CIA
station to provide them with
expendables,
human beings who would not be missed if
they disappeared.
Gotautle had what amounted to a license
to kill issued by the US government.
Neither the number of MK Ultra victims
nor the number of those who were
experimented to death is known.
Gotautleb as a result of this license to
kill might have been the most powerful
unknown American of the 20th century.
Some information about MK Ultra spilled
out during the 1970s, but senior CIA
officers had intentionally let Gotautle
operate without supervision. So they
were able to claim that they knew
nothing about his excesses. This was a
way for the CIA to deny its
institutional role in MK Ultra and to
portray it misleadingly as the product
of one man's sadism or excessive zeal.
Investigating MK Alter is challenging
because when God got and his mentor
Richard Helms left the CIA in 1973, they
illegally ordered that its records be
destroyed.
Soon afterwards, under DCI Stansfield
Turner, a CIA analyst, as you pointed
out, Madame Chairman, discovered a catch
of MK Ultra documents hidden among
financial records. Turner credited that
analyst with doing a very diligent job
of Sherlock Holmesing.
Uh that same diligence I believe could
bring results today. Uh one of the great
mysteries of MK Ultra has to do with the
death in 1953 of an MK Ultra scientist
Frank Olsen who had announced his
intention to quit the project. His
plunge from a New York hotel
uh room was described in the press as
the suicide of an army scientist. He was
not an army scientist. He worked for the
CIA and evidence suggests that uh his
death may have not have been a suicide.
So there could be hidden documents that
could illuminate this case.
I would also point out that in addition
to searching for unknown documents, this
committee could do a tremendous service
by simply asking for the end of
redactions on the documents that we now
have. There are reams of documents about
MK Ultra that have heavy sections
redacted. In the 1970s, this was
justified by the argument that it had
only been 20 years since these terrible
things had happened and revealing
details might affect national security.
Now, 70 years have passed. That argument
can no longer be valid. So, I would urge
this committee to try to fill out all
the blank spaces in the documents that
we have because we know that is there.
Uh this task force could also consider
trying to determine whether some new
incarnation of MK Ultra exists today.
When the main phase of MK Ultra drew to
a close in the early 1960s,
Sydney Gutle concluded that it had
failed. Uh that in fact there is no such
thing as mind control.
Even if he was right, however, he may
have been right only at that time.
In the many decades since then, there
have been enormous advant advances in
cyber technology, in artificial
intelligence, in neuroscience.
Covert agencies may have access now to
tools for mind control that Sydney Godly
could not even have imagined. It may
well have been true in 1963
that mind control is a myth, but whether
it's still [snorts] true is uncertain.
Uh, and that question of whether mind
control might now be possible under our
new circumstances is something that has
presumably occurred to scientists who
work for secret services, including our
own.
This task force has a chance to connect
the past to the future. A renewed effort
to find MK Ultra documents from the
1950s and to fill out the redactions of
those that have been released might shed
new light on how the CIA operated during
that period. It could also inform a new
inquiry into whether any mind control
projects are now underway inside the US
security apparatus
that might help prevent the emergence of
a 21st century MK Ultra that could be
even more destructive than the original.
Thank you.
>> Thank you m very much Dr. Kzer. Um I now
recognize Tom O'Neal for his opening
statement.
Oh, sorry. Should I start over?
Thank you, Chairwoman uh Luna and
members of the committee. It's a
privilege to be here today. Almost 50
years ago, the last congressional
hearings into MK Ultra took place just a
short walk from here in the Dirks Senate
Office Building. At those hearings
convened in August and September of
1977,
representatives of the CIA told Congress
and the American people that its 25-year
effort to control human behavior had
been a colossal failure
because I believe Congress was never
told the truth about what this program
actually achieved. In fact, I believe
the agency misled Congress in 1977 when
it characterized MK Ultra as a failure.
My name is Tom O'Neal and in 1999 I was
accepted I accepted a magazine
assignment to write a story about
murders committed by a group of hippies
called the Manson family. For those
unfamiliar with this horrific episode of
American history, in the summer of 1969,
four young people acting on the orders
of a cult leader named Charles Manson,
went to the home of movie director Roman
Palansky and murdered everyone they
found there, including his eight and a
halfmon pregnant wife, the actress
Sharon Tate. The victims were complete
strangers to the to their killers.
The following night, Manson's followers
murdered another couple in the same
grizzly fashion.
At the time I accepted the assignment,
I'd never heard of MK Ultra, and I
wouldn't for another two years after I'd
missed countless deadlines, lost the
assignment, and fall fallen down a
nightmarish rabbit hole trying to answer
the question I couldn't quite shake. How
had Manson, a barely literate ex-con,
acquired the ability to persuade
ordinary young people to murder complete
strangers simply because he had told
them to. The pursuit of that answer, the
pursuit of the answer to that question
led me to Dr. Lewis Jolian West, known
to his friends as Jolly.
Wes was one of the most influential
psychiatrists in America. During his
career, he crossed paths with some of
the most controversial events of the
20th century, including the Patty Hurst
kidnapping case and the aftermath of the
John F. Kennedy assassination
investigation.
In 1977, [clears throat]
Wes was one of seven academic
researchers named in a front page New
York Times story alleging that the CIA
had used American universities,
hospitals, and prisons as secret
laboratories for experiments involving
LSD and other drugs on unwitting human
subjects. West vigorously denied the
allegations. He acknowledged that the
agency had approached him but insisted
he had refused because he said LSD was
too dangerous and unpredictable to be
used on humans. He added that he limited
all of his research with LSD to animals.
The revelations in the Times led
directly to the congressional hearings
held later that year. West denials,
however, were effective. He was never
investigated
and his name never came up at the
hearings. I'll spare you the long and
tedious story of how my Manson reporting
led to West led me to West except to say
that I eventually learned that in 1967
when Manson transformed into the cult
leader we are familiar with today, he
and his followers were receiving free
medical care at a clinic in San
Francisco where West had established a
base of operations for a research
project he was conducting nearby.
After becoming intrigued by the
allegations against West, I learned that
UCLA, his last academic home, had
inherited his paper following his death
in 1999.
Nearly two months and more than 200
boxes later, I found the proverbial
needle in a hay stack, correspondence
between West and Dr. Sydney Gotautle,
the architect of MK Ultra.
The letters begin in 1953, just two
months after CIA director Alan Dulles
authorized the program and while West
was stationed at the Lackland Air Force
Base in San Antonio, Texas, where he was
chief chief psychiatrist at the base
hospital. In his first letter to
Gotautle, West proposed conducting
experiments on unwitting human subjects,
including military personnel, prisoners,
and psychiatric patients at the base
hospital. He then outlined the
experiments themselves in six more pages
that could have been written by Joseph
Mangallay.
Using LSD in combination with hypnosis,
Westperos inducing confusion, amnesia,
and specific mental disorders in people
who would remember nothing of their
interaction with him afterward. He
sought to develop techniques to extract
true information and implant false
information in unwilling subjects and to
alter the attitudes and beliefs of quote
previously loyal individuals. In other
words, to completely switch their
allegiance from one group or leader to
another. But it was that sentence but it
was another sentence at the end of that
letter that stopped me cold. These
experiments, he wrote, must eventually
be put to test in practical trials in
the field.
Gotautle's response could hardly have
been more enthusiastic. My good friend,
he wrote, I had been wondering whether
your apparent rapid and comprehensive
grasp of our problems could possibly be
real. You have indeed developed an
admirably accurate picture of exactly
what we are after. West replied that
there was no more vital undertaking
conceivable in these times. There was
another document in West papers that had
even more significant implications. It
was a 14-page report that West wrote in
1956, just three years after he
contracted with the CIA.
In the report, West described
administering LSD and other drugs in
conjunction with hypnosis on unwitting
human subjects. And then he made a
remarkable claim. He announced that he
had learned how to replace true memories
with false memories. than people without
their knowledge. In other words, he
clarified, it has been found to be
feasible to take the memory of a
definite event in the life of an
individual and through hypnotic
suggestion bring about the subsequent
conscious recall to the effect that this
event never actually took place, but
that a different fictional event
actually did occur. If West report was
accurate, this was not the failure
agency officials described in 1977.
Quite the opposite. It was in fact the
central ambition of the MK Ultra
operation, the means of gaining the
ability to seize the control of a
person's perceptions, memories, and
ultimately their behavior. But there was
still one more discovery, and this time
I found it in the National Security
Archives at George Washington
University. the official repository of
the CIA's MK Ultra records, which were
released to Congress after the 1977
hearings. In those holdings was a
different versions of West 1956 report.
The original paper had been replaced by
a four-page summary that did not exist
in West files and appears to have been
written by someone else. He his claims
about replacing memories were gone. in
their place was a theoretical discussion
of LSD and disassociative states. The
versions supplied to Congress concluded
that the effects of LSD and similar
drugs on disassoci disassociative states
had, and I'm quoting, never been
studied. Never been studied. In the
original report, Wes discusses
observations from his own experiments,
including detailed descriptions of using
LSD to, as he wrote, speed the induction
of the hypnotic state and deepen the
trans in subjects. Those passages have
been removed in the report turned over
to Congress. The discrepancy could not
have been more stark.
Nearly 50 years ago, another
congressional committee believed it had
been given the truth about MK Ultra. It
had not. In conclusion, I respectfully
submit that these records, some newly
available, and others that remained
outside the government's disclosure for
decades, weren't a thorough
re-examination of what the program
accomplished, what Congress was told,
and what may still remain hidden. I'm
happy to provide the documents I've
referenced today and I've provided many
additional details in my written
testimony.
>> Thank you, Mr. O'Neal. I now recognize
Elizabeth Janexi for her opening
statement.
>> Chairman Luna, and distinguished members
of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify today. I'm a
health research scientist with a
master's and doctoral degrees in
psychology from the George Washington
University. I spent 22 years from 2003
to 2025 as a scientific program official
at the National Institutes of Health,
managing more than $132 million in
health research grants and co-authoring
18 federal funding programs. I left the
NIH in April of 2025. I'm here today
because what is happening to NIH right
now is not reform. It is the replacement
of scientific judgment with political
control.
For 80 years, US federal investment in
biomedical research produced outcomes
that no private market would have
funded. Heart disease is the leading
cause of death in the United States. NIH
funded research on blood pressure,
cholesterol, and smoking drove a 56%
decline in heart disease between 1950
and 1996.
Cancer has been transformed. treatments
for breast, lung, prostate, and
childhood cancers along with
immunotherapies that converted
previously fatal diagnoses into
manageable conditions traced directly to
NIH funded research.
HIV AIDS were a death in a death
sentence in 1981. No pharmaceutical
company saw a profitable market for
treatment. NIH ran the trials that no
one else would run. The result was
antiretroviral therapy and preexposure
prophylaxis.
Global AIDS deaths have fallen 80 54%
since 2010.
Rare diseases that affect 30 million
Americans get studied at the NIH because
no market will fund that research.
Every dollar that's appropriated to the
National Institutes of Health generates
$246
in economic output. NIH supported work
contributed to 354 of the 356 new drugs
that the FDA approved between 2010 and
2019.
Cutting the funding source of that
pipeline does not slow it. It ends it.
The proposed OM federal financial
assistance rule would give political
appointees authority to terminate funded
grants at any time without cause,
including ongoing clinical trials with
enrolled patients.
This is not a hypothetical.
NIH has already terminated or frozen
thousands of grants, including hundreds
of ongoing clinical trials since January
2025,
concentrated in infectious disease,
vaccine, and health disparities
research. This proposed rule will make
that authority permanent.
The NIH director has eliminated the
merit score thresholds that once
protected peer review and political
appointees are right now overriding
peerreview outcomes to screen grants for
alignment with administrative pri
priorities.
The proposed OM rule will also severely
restrict international research.
We're managing an H5N1 blue bird flu
outbreak that has more than 70
documented human cases. We recently
concluded a hivirus response that
required CDC scientists working
alongside Argentine counterparts.
The current Ebola outbreak in the
Democratic Republic of Congo is now the
third largest on record and is outpacing
containment efforts. This rule will
curtail exactly that kind of cooperation
that we need.
NIH lost 1,112
uh 12 PhD trained workers from 2025 to
early 26.
More than half of the NIH institutes
right now are operating without
permanent scientific leadership. The
majority of its advisory councils
required by statute to provide
independent oversight have lost more
than half of their members.
The fundamental choice before this
Congress is between a system where
scientists
make scientific judgments through
accountable processes and one where
political appointees make those calls
instead.
That choice will determine whether the
next breakthroughs in cancer,
Alzheimer's, antibiotic resistance, and
pandemic defense will happen here,
somewhere else, or perhaps not at all. I
urge this committee to support a joint
resolution of disapproval to block the
proposed OM financial assistance rule.
that authority to replace peer review
with political approval has not been
granted by Congress. Dr. Janowski, your
time's expired. I'll be now going to
myself for questioning. Thank you,
ma'am.
>> Um, my first question is for Mr. O'Neal.
>> MK Naomi, the joint CIA Army program
that ran parallel with MK Ultra at Fort
Dietrich appears to have been run with
deliberate minimal documentation. Um,
army records on special operations
division have apparently been destroyed.
In your investigation, what did you
learn about MK Naomi? And do you believe
its activities were even more serious
than what we know about MK Ultra?
>> I'm sorry, I didn't learn anything about
those operations. I kept my focus mostly
on Dr. West and his work. I do know that
the only reason I found the documents I
found was because Dr. West accidentally
left them in his papers and he probably
did that because he corresponded with
Gotautle under Gotautle's assigned alias
which was Sherman Griffford and he
addressed all his mail to a post office
box here and false cop corporation.
>> Thank you Mr. I'm just going to real
quick go to Dr. Kzer. Are you aware of
anything that exists with MK and Naomi
in your research? And if you could
please press the button. My
understanding
my understanding of MK Naomi is that it
was a joint project between the military
and the CIA. And there's a big
difference because the MK Ultra project
was aimed at seizing control of the
minds of individuals.
The army was interested in something
different which was trying to use
biological agents in warfare against
entire populations. So MK Naomi is the
place where these two goals over
overlapped.
>> Um and that was um the 1953 Frank Olsen
death. Was that in a way tied to that
from some chatter that we had seen in
>> exactly what the motivation was behind
the decision about Frank Olsen if there
was such a decision is unknown.
>> Uh my next question is also for you sir.
Operation Paperclip brought over 1,600
German scientists into the United States
government after World War II, including
individuals who had conducted human
experimentation in concentration camps.
The CIA military were aware of their
backgrounds and recruited them. Anyways,
in your research, did you find direct
documentation between paperclip
scientists and the development of
Mkiltra's experimental protocols,
specifically the use of masculine
hypnosis and se sensory deprivation,
which were techniques also documented at
DACA?
>> Absolutely. Uh Kurt Blma, who was the
chief of biological weapons development
for the Nazi government, came to work
for the CIA. So did Walter Shriber, who
was the surgeon general of the Nazi
army. Uh I can just tell a brief story.
When I was researching my book, I found
what I think might be the first secret
CIA prison or black site. It's a nice
chalet in Germany. And the guy who now
owns it took me into the basement. He
said these were the cells where the MK
Ultra officers working side by side with
Nazis
uh carried out those gruesome
experiments which were actually just
continuations
of the experiments that those Nazis had
been conducting just a few years earlier
right down the road.
>> Just for timeline and clarification,
these experiments were happening after
the Nermberg trials, correct? So the CIA
would have known that these were crimes
against humanity.
>> [snorts]
>> I looked for an episode in which the
Nuremberg doctrines were posted on the
wall in some MK Ultra or CIA office and
I was never able to find any indication
that those Nuremberg principles ever
were even consulted much less obeyed.
>> Thank you. Uh my next question would be
for either witness to comment Dr. Ker or
Mr. O'Neal. Um both witnesses have
written about the psy psychiatrist Lewis
um Jolly West. Sydney got who ran MK
Ultra program for the CI hired West as a
contractor to conduct research for sub
project 43 combining hypnotism drugs and
sensory deprivation to create
disassociative states in which to quote
Mr. Kzer in his book Poisoner and Chief
the human mind could be pulled away from
its moorings. Following the
assassination of President John F.
Kennedy West psychiatrically examined
Jack Ruby then in prison for murdering
the president accused of the
assassination Lee Harvey Oswald uh the
assassin accused um of murdering
President Kennedy Lee Harvey Oswald. A
report emerged from West examination
said that Ruby had suffered a acute
psychotic break. Can you explain why Dr.
West in particular was chosen to conduct
an examination of Jack Ruby alone in his
jail cell with no other psychologist
present uh present?
be happy to uh West inserted himself
into the case when Ruby was the day of
the shooting, the day after the
shooting, rest approached the judge in
the preliminary hearings and asked to be
uh assigned to the case. He was refused
by the judge. After Ruby was convicted
at his first trial, uh an associate of
West, uh Dr. Yubert Winston Smith, who
was a psychiatrist and an attorney, took
over Ruby's defense for his appeal, and
he had already discussed uh appointing
Ruby to the case, or excuse me, West to
the case. Uh, and as you said, West
examined Ruby alone at the jail cell and
emerged to announce that in the
preceding 48 hours, he had had a psych
acute psychotic break from which he
would never recover. He had been deare
declared competent to stand trial in his
the first time by a panel of I think
eight psychiatrists. Uh this psychotic
break lasted until his death in 1967.
Two months after uh West examined him.
Ruby testified for the first time and
only time to the Warren Commission and
it was the first time he ever publicly
was supposed to say what his reasons
were for shooting Oswald.
the uh testimony had to be halted
because he was babbling incoherently.
And as Arlland Spectre, who was a
counsel to the commission, wrote in his
memoirs, he pulled him aside and said
that they were uh cutting off the arms
and legs of children in Albuquerque and
El Palo and uh he said he was making no
sense whatsoever. Rub uh West in his
letters to Gotley from 1953
discussed experiments where he would
induce specific mental disorders in
people without their awareness. A year
before the Kennedy assassination, he
publicly spoke in Oklahoma City and
talked about his LSD experiments
inducing psychiatric breaks and
psychosis in people with the use of LSD
with of course later contradicted what
he told the New York Times when he said
he never used LSD in animal
experimentation.
>> What an interesting connection. Um I
have I'm out of time, but I'll be now
recognizing Mr. Berles from Missouri for
five minutes.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for
your diligent work on this and um
hopefully we will hear back from the CIA
on those those boxes of documents that
uh have so many questions about. Um
m Mr. K, Dr. Kzer and um Mr. O'Neal, the
CIA recruit created MK Ultra in 1953
supposedly out of fear that the Soviet
Union and China had developed mind
control capabilities.
Um, let me go back a little bit further.
So, one of my questions has to do with
the event that happened in 1951 in
August in France. There was a bakery
that um I guess the people that lived in
that community. Over 250, some say 300
people were poisoned from the bread. It
was determined that that was LSD that
was um that was that was causing
all of these people to hallucinate.
Some people died. Is there any
connection, Dr. Kzer, to that event? And
was that the was that something that
either inspired the MK Ultra program or
the ENK MK Naomi program or is that
something that we we were involved in
even that early on?
I would turn that question back to you.
I don't think anybody really knows the
full story of what happened at that time
in that town in France. Uh that the
United States could have been involved
that uh this could have been part of
what was then called operation
artichoke, the predecessor for MK Ultra
seems to me not beyond the realm of
possibility. Um there's a lot of overlap
between the air enzyme that is the uh
basis of LSD and certain rye and uh
wheat funguses that can be used in
breads. Um was that something
intentional? Was it something the
Americans were involved in? Uh I have my
suspicions but uh just based on my
background as a journalist I don't
operate on suspicions. So uh I would
love to see more investigation of that
episode.
Um my next question has to do with once
the program began
um I think one of the one of the most
shocking um things that we've determined
is that is the operation midnight climax
that occurred in the early 1950s60s
um where the CIA had safe houses it and
there was um I say Dr. Kinszer. I mean,
this obviously this is extremely
disturbing
um behavior that was happening where you
had American citizens who were being who
were being lured into these like brothel
and then dosed with um a hallucinogenic
and then filmed during their sex acts.
Was there
were there any was there anyone
prosecuted for this for these crimes?
No, there have been no prosecutions for
any crime related to MK Ultra as far as
I know. Uh the to me the remarkable
aspect of that uh Operation Midnight
Climax was that there wasn't even the
pretense of scientific experimentation.
The person watching behind the one-way
mirror was a grossly overweight drug
officer sitting on a portable toilet and
drinking cocktails out of a pitcher.
there was nobody there that was a
scientist or somebody who understood
sexual behavior or human psychology. So,
uh there was no science involved in it
at all. I can add a little footnote.
When I was researching Poisoner and
Chief, I came across a document in which
uh one of the officers involved in
setting up that program, Operation
Midnight Climax said that Sydney
Gotautle himself used to fly from
Washington out to inspect the project
regularly and always asked that women be
provided for him.
>> So, uh
>> that was my next question. Do you think
that the agents were involved in the
sexual encounters? Well, and could that
have actually been the reason why the
bordello was opened? There was no
prospect of any serious scientific
result out of that project given the
personnel who were overseeing it. So,
uh, those CIA officers particularly got
involved in overseeing operation
midnight climax uh, certainly were able
to take advantage of what it offered.
>> Thank you. And my my last question
first, I want to say thank you to Mr.
O'Neal, the book Chaos. I checked it out
from the Library of Congress. Um, and
greatly appreciate your work there. Um,
I was intrigued by one of the statements
that you made based on your research
that the MK Ultra program they were
actually successfully able to replace
memories. And because of that, I'm
wondering if, and Dr. Kzer, you can
chime in if you if you have any
knowledge of this. Did the program
continue? And do you think that the
program in some aspect is still
continuing today?
Uh you're asking if the program
continued after 1973 when it was uh
halted supposedly. Uh I honestly that's
a question I'm asked at almost every
appearance I do. Is it happening today?
Did it continue? I don't know. I can't
imagine that it didn't though because
the technology that they
worked to establish over 20 25 years and
spent more money on than any operation
the CIA had ever conducted was
successful. Uh I imagine it's being
used. I have no evidence of it being
used. So it's a complete assumption.
>> I I would just add that um one of the
letters uh to which Mr. O'Neal referred
uh contains a quote from Mr. Gotautle
saying that these [music] experiments
were necessary quote in these times. I
think it's important to put yourself
back in that mindset where the United
States felt that it was under such
overwhelming threat that the loss of a
few lives or a few hundred lives was a
small price to pay. Commitment to a
great cause is one of the most
fundamental uh justifications for
committing immoral acts and patriotism
is among the most noble of causes. It
can be twisted and it can be used as an
excuse to carry out research under the
guise that this is simply research we're
doing to protect ourselves against
others. And I think that is a mindset
that may still be active in some parts
of our government.
>> Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, Madam
Chair. My time is expired. I yield back.
>> Thank you, Mr. Berles. I now recognize
myself. Uh, thank you to the witnesses
for coming today to testify about MK
Ultra. Um, Dr. Janexi, you said you
worked for the NIH. Is that correct?
>> That is correct.
>> And you left in 2025.
>> That is correct. I noticed uh during
your opening statement that you had
nothing to say about the uh content of
this hearing being about MK Ultra. Your
statement seemed to be based more on
your issues with this administration's
attempt to reform and reign in the NIH.
Is that a fair assessment of your
opening statement?
My opening statement was talking about
the the uh destruction of the NIH and
cancellation of grants and political
control of the NIH.
>> Would would you deny that the NIH had
involvement in uh the funding of the
Wuhan lab?
>> I don't have any knowledge about any
funding related to the Wuhan lab.
So, are you denying that the NIH
>> I'm I'm basically here to talk about
what's happening right now at the NIH
and how we really should be letting
science be driven by scientists and not
by politicians
>> because that's how we fund cures and
make health progress. Well, with all due
respect, ma'am, do you find it ironic
that for years we were told to trust the
science and then in the aftermath we've
all found out that
most of what we were told during COVID
was a complete lie and it wasn't
scientific at all.
>> The number one thing that I think that
we're doing to destroy trust in American
science right now is is cancelling
clinical trials in the middle of those
clinical trials. This does incredible
harm to the patients who are receiving
experimental treatments and it really
destroys the trust that we have in how
do we recruit patients for future trials
if they are knowing that their trials
could just be simply canled for
political reasons.
>> I don't think anybody up here would deny
that there's never been anything good
that's come out of the NIH and that you
guys have done some good work. But you
just brought up trust. Do you think the
NIH has a trust problem based on how
they handled COVID?
>> No, I do not. I think that that the NIH
is beloved by the American people
because we know about the advances in
human health and cancer treatments and
heart disease and diabetes and all of
the health gains that the research has
produced.
>> Well, I think you're wrong, ma'am. I
think that the public has a serious
mistrust issue with the NIH. Do you do
you deny that the NIH tried to cover up
the origin of CO?
>> I'm not here to testify about that.
That's not my area of science. I have no
knowledge of that.
Are you do you believe that the NIH
supported masking and social distancing
when there was really no science to
support that?
>> What I'm more concerned about is what's
happening right now to destroy the
biomedical research institute of that
has been the envy of the world and right
now we're seeding our leadership in
biomedical research to China. That's
what's happening right now. What about
covering up harmful side effects of
vaccines and the role that the NIH has
played in that? What do you have to say
about that? Ma'am,
>> the US history of human subject
protection has evolved greatly. Numerous
research improprieties from the 50s to
the 70s in the United States, including
the Tuskegee syphilis study, forced
Congress to establish formally federal
mandated rules.
>> You know what I'm asking you about? I'm
asking you about how NIH handled CO.
Obviously, this is supposed to be a
hearing about MK Ultra, but when you
gave your opening statement, and I don't
even know why you were called to this
hearing because you didn't offer
anything about MK Ultra, but since you
are here and you're going to defend NIH,
I'm going to call you out on it.
Do you do you see now what I'm talking
about? When you say that the NIH doesn't
have integrity problems and trust
issues, did you hear the applause in
this room? That should tell you right
now that you're pretty tonedeaf to what
the public thinks about how the NIH
handled COVID and the cover up, not only
the funding of it, but the cover up
involved in the aftermath.
>> Can you acknowledge that?
>> I'm sorry. That's not that's not my
understanding.
>> Who's
Thank you. I want to um acknowledge Miss
Boowbert for the next round of
questioning.
>> Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and uh thank
you to um two of our witnesses who who
are here to actually talk on our subject
here today. Mr. Kzer. Um, in your book,
uh, Poisoner and Chief, uh, you describe
how Project MK Ultra was authorized by
CIA director Alan Dulles in April of
1953 as an umbrella program for research
into uh, the covert use of biological
and chemical materials uh, for mind
control and interrogation. what specific
geopolitical and intelligence concerns
uh particularly regarding alleged Soviet
and Chinese uh quote brainwashing and
Korean war prisoners uh drove this
authorization and and how did uh Cindy
um Gotautle's um unique background and
personality and worldwide view shape the
program's direction and methods and uh
ethical boundaries.
Um,
let me start by answering your second
question about Gotautle. Um, he was a
very different person from all of the
other CIA senior CIA officers of that
era. Most of them came from silver spoon
backgrounds. They went to the same prep
schools and the same Ivy League colleges
and belonged to the same yacht clubs and
worked for the same law firms and
international banks. Sydney Gotautley
was the son of Orthodox Jewish uh
refugees from central Europe. He had a
limp. Uh he had a stutter. He went to
Hebrew school. He was so different from
all of the other officers. And upon
reflection, I think this may have not
have been an accident. I think uh that
people at the CIA understood that
whoever had this job was going to be
doing some awful, terrible things. It
would be very bloody that they might
become known and it might be necessary
to blame it all on somebody. and they
didn't want to have to blame it all on
one of their own. So, Gotautle actually
became uh the person on whom everything
was blamed. In fact, when he testified
in secret here in this uh in Congress u
in the 1970s uh he complained that there
were documents on which various
signatures had been redacted but his
alone had remained. So uh is this again
is a way of uh diverting attention away
from the institutional responsibility of
the CIA and trying to blame it on one
crazy person. As for the international
situation at the time, I think it's very
important to understand this because
there is a sort of a parallel to today.
Uh the CIA misinterpreted several key
incidents in the world, including those
to which you referred the trial of the
uh Cardinal Meni and then the in Hungary
and then the return of Korean War
prisoners. Um neither of those episodes
really had to do with mind control, but
in the CIA they were interpreted that
way. And this gave the CIA a reason to
pretend that its research was purely
defensive. So I think when you consider
the world situation and the sense in
Washington that we're surrounded by
enemies that becomes a very dangerous
environment.
Conspiracy theories stem from the growth
of the covert sphere. There's a great
contradiction in American life that we
pretend to uphold certain principles at
home and abroad, but it's e evident to
many Americans that we actually operate
in opposition to those principles. and
we operate by secret and anti-democratic
means that contributes to suspicion of
government and the very existence of MK
Ultra proves that some of the wildest
fantasies about secret government
research are actually close to reality.
That makes the paranoid mindset seem
ever more rational.
>> Thank you. And I'm going to have to cut
off several of my questions now, but
that was very uh intriguing, so I wanted
you to continue. Um MK Ultra ultimately
uh encompassed at least 149 sub projects
and involving more than 80 institutions,
universities, hospitals, prisons,
pharmaceutical companies, often funded
uh through uh cutout foundations to
conceal CIA sponsorship. Um can you
detail how these um funding and
operational security mechanisms worked
in practice? And and then just another
subset if I don't get back to asking a
question. Did the CIA or government or
any of these entities ever say that what
they were doing with MK Ultra and mind
control were uh were productive or for
the betterment of humanity? Did they
ever make those claims?
>> Thank you. Um, as for your second
question, I'm not aware uh other than in
private uh communications that the CIA
ever uh claimed that it had made great
advances under MK Ultra because it
largely denied that MK Ultra ever
existed. Uh, as for the foundations,
yeah, these are uh the Sydney Godly
created a couple of bogus foundations.
They're called cutouts in CIA uh slang.
And these are foundations that appear to
be independent but actually are fully
funded and controlled by the CIA. It was
those foundations that approached
hospitals and clinics and asked them to
become involved in research particularly
into LSD. So many of the institutions
where these experiments took place did
not even realize that those foundations
were actually covers for the CIA.
>> Thank you very much. And um Madam Chair,
I yield.
>> Thank you. I now recognize
Representative Mace from South Carolina
for five minutes.
>> Uh thank you so much. Uh Dr. Janexi, uh
you work with the NIH, correct?
>> No, I am no longer affiliated with the
NIH.
>> When did you leave the NIH?
>> April of last year.
>> April of last year. Did you ever speak
with Anthony Fauci or any of your NIH
colleagues when you were there about the
NIH's role in funding the Wuhan
Institute of Viology or the development
of CO 19 virus?
>> No.
>> Um, do you believe that the NIH or Dr.
Fouchi lied to the American people about
COVID?
>> No.
>> Are you familiar with Dr. Fouch's
statements to Congress about COVID?
>> No.
>> You didn't watch any of Dr. Fouchi? You
worked at the NH and you didn't watch
any of Dr. Fouchi? I I did [snorts] not
work at NIAD.
>> Okay. Um do you think that uh do you
think the COVID shots harm American
citizens?
>> No, I do not.
>> Do you think that uh the COVID shots
cause turbo cancers?
>> No. Have you read any Do you know if the
NIH or NI aid uh track COVID shot
injuries
or cancers or anything harmful from
them? I am not aware of any harmful
tracking and this is not my area of
expertise. No.
>> What is your area of expertise?
>> I'm a research psychologist
and and I I did not work at NI AI.
>> And you're here for what reason?
>> I am here to testify about what is
happening to the NIH right now.
>> You're not here to testify about MK
Ultra.
I am not an MK Ultra expert. Why did the
dem send you here if you're not an MK
Ultra expert?
>> But I am an expert in human subjects
protection which is related and in the
conduct of of human subjects research.
>> Okay. Um but you don't know anything
about MK Ultra which is the purpose of
this hearing. All right. So I have a
couple questions for our witnesses who
are here to talk about MK Ultra. And
thank you gentlemen, Dr. Kenzer and Dr.
Mr. O'Neal. Um, what are some of the
worst abuses that you're aware of in the
MK Ultra program?
>> Uh, I can start by just naming I I'll
talk about one in particular that always
sticks in my mind. Um, in the federal
prison in Lexington, Kentucky, uh, a
group of African-American inmates was
segregated and fed what were described
in the protocol as double, triple, and
quadruple doses of LSD every day for 77
days.
>> Um,
>> did they all survive?
>> We have no idea what happened to them.
And this has stuck with me ever since I
wrote that book. What happened to them?
Did they ever find out what was given to
them? Did they think they were going
crazy? Did they I think if
>> Do you think we're still experimenting
on prisoners or people in prison today?
>> I don't have any information about that.
>> Okay.
>> Um I'm I'm hoping there'll be another
book about what's happening now.
>> What are some of the worst abuses in MK
Ultra?
>> Um there were many. Uh the Frank Olsen
case which was referenced earlier. uh
that was a murder. I don't believe that
was a suicide and the motivation
was because he was going to be a
whistleblower. He worked at the CIA. He
worked in the development of biological
weapons and he was planning to go public
uh and announce that the United States
government was using biological weapons
in in the Korean War. And uh also he was
going to talk or share what he knew
about MK Ultra experiments in including
lethal experiments and there's a
documented case.
>> How many um gentlemen how many people do
you think died through the MK Ultra
program or were murdered?
>> No idea.
>> If those who died largely were outside
the United States. Many people were
experimented to death in that safe house
in Germany that I visited. And people in
the neighborhood told me they knew what
was going on in that house and that
people who were experimented to death
are now buried in what used to be forest
plots that are now covered over.
>> Do you think the German government knew
what the US government was doing? You
think there was a partnership there or
knowledge? Yes, there is a memo that was
written by the German secret service to
Conrad Adenhau, the chancellor of
Germany, telling him American citizens
are being Americans are here capturing
citizens, capturing people and
conducting extreme experiments which are
in violation of German law and
Adenhauard decided to put that aside and
not to investigate.
>> I have one more question because I have
15 seconds. Is this a massive cover up
by the US government?
It's certainly a cover up of what
happened in the past,
>> Mr. O'Neal.
>> Oh, absolutely. Yes.
>> Thank you, and I yield back.
>> Thank you, Representative Mace. I now
recognize Mr. Perry from Pennsylvania
for 5 minutes.
>> Thank you, Chair. Uh, thanks to the
witnesses for being here. Uh, to Dr.
Kzer and Mr. O'Neal. I'm want to focus
on the information that we do have and
and things of that nature. Do we know of
Can you name the location? say the
prisons, the hospitals,
uh other institutions and the
cutouts as you described either one of
you folks described them that would be
familiar to us or the American people.
Can you name
>> Yeah, if I could begin just by saying at
the end of the 1977 hearings, Senator
Ted Kennedy and Senator Dan Daniel
Inuway who were the co-chairs demanded
that there be an investigation to find
out who were the perpetrators, where
were the experiments conducted, and most
importantly to find locate victims,
compensate them, notify them because
many didn't even know they'd been
experimented on, and give them lifetime
medical care. President Jimmy Carter and
uh Attorney General Griffin Bell said
the federal government will begin an
investigation. That never happened.
Instead, the CIA created something
called the victim's task force to
investigate itself. It was a twoman uh
investigation to locate victims and they
only looked for people who had been
experimented on in the safe houses. They
completely because I interviewed both of
them before they passed away. They
completely uh avoided institutional
experimental programs at the hospitals.
And you're asking about the hospitals,
the Oklahoma City Hospital, Lackland Air
Force Base Hospital, the Lexington
Addiction Center, which Dr. Kinszer
referred to Holmesburg prison,
Vakavville prison, uh, universities all
over the country, uh, Yale, Ivy League
universities. None of those records had
there was a criminal investigation was
also supposed to start into Gotautle's
destruction of the records that had been
announced by the Justice Department. And
I interviewed Griffin Bell and asked him
what happened to all those
investigations and what happened to all
those efforts to locate victims. He
said, "It just must have fallen through
the cracks. So it was the DOJ that was
supposed to invest
>> DOJ the Department of Justice and they
just kept passing it off and passing it
off. Do
>> you know if the DOJ in their
investigation visited the places that
you've named?
>> No, absolutely not from
>> No, wait. Hold on a second. They didn't
or you don't know?
>> Oh, no. No. I asked the two men who who
did the investigation and they said all
we did was look into what happened at
the safe houses in San Francisco and New
York City in 1962. So it's is it
possible that information and document
documentation remains at the prisons,
the the uh treatment centers, the
universities where the these things were
conducted. Is that possible?
>> Yeah. Well, I found Dr. West records at
UCLA in his file. Uh hospital records
are really hard to get because of HIPPA
laws and prison records. The Bureau of
Prisons do have a lot. Um so yeah, it is
possible there's still documents buried
places. What were what were the age
what were the average ages if you know
of the people that were experimented on?
Were these children? Were these
middle-aged? Were they
>> Well, there were adolescent studies done
in um juvenile detention facilities and
um jails with kids who were 16, 17, 18
years old and at uh institutional
schools for wayward kids. the national
training school for boys here in
Washington DC had them. Um so it ranged
um from I think adolescent,
pre-adolescent,
you know, through um any age.
>> What if you could describe either one of
you the the
number of potential victims? If you
could make a if you could hazard a
guess. Is this
>> there were 149 programs that we know of
that were subcontracted outside of
>> 149 separate programs.
>> So So yeah, outside and that's what we
know of. Again, everything we know of is
minuscule compared to what was really
going on. So I mean that could have been
into the tens of thousands and I believe
that's another reason that nothing was
pursued because if those people were
compensated, it could have bankrupted.
Is there has there been any recent
attempt to find, locate, identify
victims of this?
>> Not that I know of.
>> I would just add that uh there's been
considerable progress in this regard in
Canada. Uh there was uh MK Ulta research
going on at a psychiatric hospital in
Canada and uh the Canadian government
has made a real effort to try to find
out who the victims were, also to
compensate them and uh to provide them
with medical treatment. So if we're
looking for an example of a place where
it was done better even though it was on
a much smaller scale, Canada would be a
place to look.
>> So other than embarrassment to the
federal government, maybe agencies
involved in particular individuals who
are probably likely deceased at this
point, what is the what what is the
reason for the mass redaction of the
information that we do have? Has has any
re reasoning been given?
I
>> shame.
>> I'm sorry.
>> Shame.
>> That's what I'm saying. Other than
embarrassment, but but I think it stands
to reason that probably the individuals
involved in conducting and authorizing
this activity are probably all deceased.
>> Sure.
>> At this point, is there any reason to
believe otherwise?
>> I make those arguments in my foyer
requests, but it doesn't get me
anywhere. I don't know about you, Dr.
Kendzer.
All right, time's expired. I'll give
>> Thank you, Representative Perry. I'm now
going to go to a second line of
questions. So, I'll be recognizing
myself um followed by I believe
Representative Bober and either of the
representatives if they'd like to join
in. Um I wanted to elaborate further,
Dr. Kinszer, what you had stated about
potentially there being bodies, the
locations, Germany, because I'm going to
reach out to the German government after
this to get the ball rolling on that if
that um is indeed the case. Can you just
elaborate further on what you were
hearing from people in that area, what
they were saying and then also to um
potential locations of bodies?
>> Uh first of all, the memo that
Chancellor Adenhauer received is on the
record. You can find that rec you can
find that memo warning that these
operations are going on. Um
I uh did speak to people who lived in
that area and uh they all understood
they had some of them had cooperated
with an investigation by a German
magazine despel uh that called that
house the CIA torture center and in that
article it said there were deaths but
the number is not known. So it was a
secret to us, but what we were doing in
that house was really not even a secret
to the people in the neighborhood. It
reminds me of the bombing of Cambodia.
It was a secret to us, but if you were
living in Cambodia, you would have known
about it. So I think there is uh
fruitful uh uh ground for research
looking into what happened in Germany
and seeing uh what can be found out
about these huge hugely destructive and
devastating projects that were
essentially systematic torture going on
in this house and who knows how many
others. Um just to confirm too when you
found the initial transcript with the
chancellor um or do correspondence um
was there a response from the US
government to the Germans?
>> No, the US government would possibly
have advised Adenau not to pursue it.
But I don't think would have even need
to be told that he would see it. He
would understand his close partnership
with the United States made it
impossible for him to criticize anything
the US was doing. Don't forget this was
not so long after the end of the second
world war. So uh no there was no u
effort by the United States ever to uh
reveal anything about what happened in
Germany. And in fact one of the foyer
requests that I made that was uh never
fulfilled and one that I would urge you
to pursue is what was Sydney got doing
during two years in Germany. He went to
Germany and went to live there as a case
officer. I was never able to find out
what did he do during two years in
Germany. There were huge numbers of MK
Ultra experiments going on in Germany,
including a number that were fatal. That
would be a very interesting catch of
documents to find.
>> We will definitely be following up. My
next question would be for either um Dr.
Kzer or Mr. O'Neal. Declassified CI
records have revealed that officers
deployed overseas have used US ID
funding as an official cover or USA ID
as an official cover for operational
work that had nothing to do with the
emission of USA ID i.e. humanitarian
aid, medical relief, etc. In some cases,
CIA officers operated under USID um
cover engaged in lethal activity in
places such as Vietnam running
assassination missions during the war
and country from 1965 to 1975. And since
MK Ultra seems to have found its origin
in drug experiments conducted on
prisoners overseas and first by the SS
in Nazi Germany and then by US
intelligence in camps captured from the
Germans, do you believe that USAD may
have been used overseas to in further
influence or further the MK Ultra, for
example, on prisoners of war? Since part
of USAD's mission was to administer
drugs to the poor and needy populations,
would the organization have abused its
mandate by poisoning foreign populations
or creating disassociative states for
interrogation or torture?
I can't speak directly to aid, but it's
certainly true that uh during this
period after the Second World War, the
United States was using
publicly announced and official US
government agencies to carry out covert
action. We now know, for example, that
5% of all the money appropriated for the
Marshall Plan was diverted for covert
activities. Um, a number of US agencies
uh were used as cover by covert
operatives and uh that aid could have
been one of them. Sounds very likely to
me
>> and the NIMH admitted to allowing itself
to be used for covert funding of MK
Ultra experiments in the 1970s when the
operation was disclosed.
>> Thank you. I now recognize
Representative Burchett for five
minutes.
>> Thank you, Chair Lighty. Thank you all
for being here. I I remembered when all
the talk about MK Ultra broke and then
they were talking about lawsuits and
there were lawsuits and CIA and the
federal government said that this didn't
exist and then they came back and said,
"Well, it does exist." And then uh but
we're not doing it anymore. I guess my
question to y'all first is which lie do
we do we believe?
Because
Thank you. Obviously,
there was an open bar before this thing
started. So, thank y'all. But, um, Dr.
Kendzer,
>> hit your mic, brother. You're not on the
mic. It's old CIA trick. I'm just
kidding. I put myself in the place of
one of those senior CIA officers, and
I'm thinking to myself, like the ones
back in the 1950s, well, other people
must be doing this. We'd be falling
behind if we don't do it. and nobody's
looking over our shoulders and that I
think is is your job. So I I think there
is a definite u air of urgency and total
secrecy. Um if the if any current
research is going on and if it's
conducted in any comparable level of
secrecy to the original MK Ultra, it's
very deeply secret.
>> One thing you said though, it's going to
be hard for Congress to act when they're
so dadgum compromised. Let's just be
honest. I mean, y'all are in the
business of of twisting ears and and
telling us things that we've done and
that that that sways a lot of people up
here. Somebody doesn't want to wreck a
marriage or their business or lose this
glamorous job that we have. Um, and so I
I I suspect that has a lot of play into
it. Sorry to interrupt you. I apologize.
All I mean to say is that I think if
there are such projects going on inside
the US government uh there there might
be a sense that uh we can do this
without any hostile supervision.
What are the possibilities that that
what we've learned in MK Ultra now that
it has advanced so much to algorithms
and and the computer and getting to
loners that some of these loners could
through this just mass
propagation of whatever you're doing
uh could cause someone to maybe take a
shot at a president.
I
>> I know there's a lot of speculation out
there about the uh Butler shooting and I
guess even the Charlie Kirk shooting. I
just hate to speculate um because I
don't know. I have no firsthand
knowledge whether those guys were
programmed through radio waves or
through their computer activity. So I
would never hazard a guess except to say
what I've already said that they
developed means that we've never been
told about many many years ago and I
imagine they've evolved to be much more
effective now. Let me interrupt you one
more time and I apologize again, but
don't you think that they could cast
this broad net through these algorithms
and other things and maybe they don't
know the exact person it's going to
affect, but they know what type of
person it's going to affect and they
know it's going to happen. And that way
they can they can't predict when it's
going to happen, but they think it will
happen. And then that way they can sort
of wash their hands of this whole thing
and say, "We didn't have anything to do
with But in effect, they really did
because they uh they put this out there
and they continue to put it out there to
whatever method you're talking about. Go
ahead, guys. I'm sorry, ma'am. If you
want to jump in.
>> She's with NIH.
>> Okay, doctor. Go ahead.
>> It sounds to me like you're describing
something like the Martin Luther King
assassination. The FBI didn't carry it
out, but it created such a climate just
denouncing King as the most dangerous
man in America and putting out all this
material about how he was helping
communists that they must have thought
it's going to filter down. Somebody will
take action and then we can say we
didn't have anything to do with it.
>> And James Earl Ray was a third rate
thief. He made an incredible shot. One
foot on a commode, one foot in a in a
bathtub
uh leaning out of a window basically.
And um the next day the um or that
afternoon all the shrubbery was cut in
front of the flop house he was staying
in. There's a lot on that one that will
never be discussed. I have some friends
that were there. So I guess I could I'm
on pretty close to firsthand knowledge.
But um yeah, I'm sorry. I'm probably
going to get audited when I walk out of
the room. I just I know it. So thank
you. Um chair lady, I yield back my four
seconds.
>> Thank you, Rep. B uh Rep Burchet. I
would like to now recognize
Representative Boowbert for five
minutes.
>> Thank you. And I I would love to let you
gentlemen um just talk some here, but
when when we're bringing up um
uh operations like uh Naomi and MK
Ultra, there's Operation Mockingbird
that was going on at the same time as MK
Ultra. And it really ties into uh what
Congressman Burchett was was talking
about with radio waves where where we
have these these um like a a van a van
diagram of uh individual people and the
military casting a broader net. Uh so
you have the radio waves, computer
activity, um the operation mockingb
bird, the programming that is taking
place. Um so what do you see in relation
to what was happening then and and what
we are seeing now? um that that could be
types of the same kind of programs and
even using direct energy weapons or the
like. Mr. O'Neal, you can begin.
>> I would just like to say one thing.
There was an objective outlined in the
early proposals for MK Altra to do
experimentation to see whether they
could do mass conversion, you know,
convert entire populations. I think that
had something to do with the France
incident that you were talking about
earlier. Um, again, today it's all
speculation, but um,
back then they were, um, trying to use
psychological
uh, means to see what you could how you
could influence people's thoughts. Um,
and Mockingbird played into that, which
if people don't know, that was where
they had uh CIA assets or co-opted
people in the media who would write
write basically propaganda and uh try to
control the thoughts and and and beliefs
of of the population to what the CIA
needed and um is it still going on
today? I I I would be surprised if it
wasn't.
>> Sure. I think we saw it even during
COVID with uh all of the NA NIH funding
that went uh to COVID um and and the
Wuhan lab and and then everything that
came out of that um trying to make
people believe in something that wasn't
there. M uh Dr. Kinsey uh Kzer uh do you
have anything on this?
>> I would say only that in the modern age
uh maybe radio waves and drugs are not
necessary to control people's minds. We
we have such a great advertising,
propaganda, press, social media
collaboration that certain opinions are
marginalized and real debate is
frustrated because people are not given
access to full amounts of information.
So that's a way of controlling the minds
of populations that doesn't even require
sophisticated electronic or
psychopharmarmacological
means.
anything else you'd like to add for our
next two minutes here that we haven't
maybe maybe you you have answers to
questions we haven't asked
>> I would just like to reiterate something
that I said in response to your earlier
question and that is that there's a
reason why conspiracy theories are so
widespread in America it has to do with
the disassociation between what we say
we are and do and what we really are and
do. This has become more and more clear
to more and more people. Therefore,
they're suspicious of uh nefarious
dealings by the US and they're also
suspicious of other things that aren't
nefarious at all. But there's just this
mentality that is created by the covert
sphere and that is what makes people
realize that things that used to seem
really far-fetched are not so
far-fetched after all.
>> Yes. Well, you know, Congress, we we
create these agencies and we even
provide their funding. We appropriate
that funding and then they are they come
before us often and are are too big uh
to even answer simple questions that we
have and and be held to account. And so,
uh, it it it does cause for a lot of
deceit, um, a lot of, um, doubt in the
American people and certainly within,
uh, us as members of Congress when these
agencies refuse to answer to us, the the
branch of government that actually
creates them and and provides their
funding. And then, of course, the
American taxpayer um, whose money is
being stolen uh, to fund all of their
programs and agencies. Uh so I think
that would be another reason um how
these uh conspiracy theories grow
because um government has grown so big
it won't answer to the people. Maybe
they just think the people are too dumb
to understand but certainly we want to
get answers to the people and I I
appreciate um you gentlemen for being
here today. Madam Chair, I yield.
>> Thank you, Representative Bobert.
Representative Berles, do you have any
further questions? Okay, I'd now
recognize Representative Berles for five
minutes.
>> Mr. O'Neal. Um, going back to
um Charles Manson and the Helter Skelter
incident, can can you explain how in the
world someone who is an illiterate mu
musician
um that seemed to be not exactly the
brightest person somehow became a cult
leader and and was able to,
you know, inspire all of all of these
individuals to do crazy things.
Unfortunately, I spent 20 years trying
to find out how that happened. And what
I was able to prove was that from the
moment Manson was released from federal
prison in 1967,
he violated his parole, went to the Bay
Area without permission and was immedi
immediately put under the supervision of
a federal parole officer who basically
gave him leniency as he gathered his
group of followers, gave them drugs, um,
dominated them, turned them into more or
less subservient robots who would do
anything he said. All that happened
under the watchful eye of a parole
officer named Roger Smith who was also
doing drug research at the same clinic
that Jolly West had set up his operation
to recruit subjects.
All the way until 1969 when Manson
finally ordered the murders that he was
later convicted of. He had been arrested
repeatedly for escalating
uh crimes beginning with petty thie p
thievery, stealing cars, and then rape,
attempted murder, drug possession. Each
time, not only wasn't he prosecuted, uh
his parole wasn't violated. So the
federal government
in some capacity enabled him to do what
he did and uh flourish until these
crimes happened. And in my book, I I
make a case and it's it's a theoretical
case that there it was part of an
operation called uh chaos, also with the
CIA that we haven't talked about today
because it really doesn't have anything
to do with drug research, but it was um
created to neutralize what the
government believed was a revolution
that was happening in America in the
60s, beginning with the uh anti-war
movement and then the black militancy
movement and the Panthers.
So, it's kind of a big stew of um a
cauldron of possibilities that Manson
emerged from all that uh when I don't
think he should have.
>> Yeah. It's it's fascinating that you
have an individual Jolly West who was
working with this parole officer
provide, you know, you think the parole
officer was making the connection so
that the drugs were then flowing
through. Well, the parole officer was at
the same time he was um supervising
Manson's parole running a research
project called the amphetamine research
project out of that clinic and that was
studying um amphetamines and violence
and drugs and group behavior and gangs
in the Bay Area. Um
>> and again, I I hate to speculate. I know
it sounds like a copout, but when you
see the tentacles that um cross paths
with Manson when he got to Los Angeles
as well, um I believe that he was co I
mean he was manipulated and at the very
least given freedom to do what he did
while he was being observed.
>> And then the same individual Jolly West
ends up
in Oklahoma in Oklahoma. Correct. So
that's where he was he operating out of
Oklahoma for during even this time with
Mr.
>> when he contracted with the CIA he was
at Lackland Air Force Base. Uh he was a
chief psychiatrist at the hospital. So
he began his experiments there. Um
a year after the letter that I quoted in
my statement where he was describing
what he wanted to do. Uh, a year later
on July 3rd, 1954,
a three-year-old girl was abducted and
um found later in a gravel pit uh
murdered
and next to a car that had been
abandoned. And the search party that
found the little girl's body was
approached by a man who was an airman at
the base. And he asked them where he was
and how he had gotten there. He was
arrested for the murder and um described
by the military officers who had him in
custody as being in a trance or days. He
didn't have any drugs in his system.
>> He didn't recognize his wife when she
was brought to see him. And at his trial
where Jolly West was his advising
psychiatrist who examined him
>> of course
>> um it emerged that he had actually been
being treated at the hospital at
Lackland in an experimental program to
cure his chronic debilitating migraine
headaches and he was executed four years
later
>> and then years later he ends up
volunteering
um for to to handle the Jack Ruby
>> Wes does. Yeah.
>> Right. Thank you. Thank you, Madam
Chair.
>> So, just before we wrap up, is it in
your expert opinion that Jack Ruby and
Manson were assets of the intelligence
agency specifically pertaining to MK
Ultra? Were they MK Ultra vict?
>> Yeah, theoretically, Manson I I've never
been able to prove. Absolutely. Jack
Ruby, I believe
this is something else. the Warren
Commission investigation. Uh on the
Warren Commission was Alan Dulles, the
former CIA director who authorized and
and ran MK Alter until he was fired by
President Kennedy. The liaison to the
committee for the CIA, who handled the
information coming from the CIA back and
forth to the Warren Commission was
Richard Helms, who was a direct
supervisor of Jolly West. They knew who
West was. They knew that um what Wes was
capable of and what they had paid him to
do and what he had reported to them that
he could do, including inducing um
mental disorders in people. Uh that was
never disclosed to the commission as far
as anyone knows. Uh so I believe that
West was put in there to keep Jack Ruby
from telling his story.
>> Um wow. Um in closing, I just want to
thank you all for being here today and
we will be following up Dr. Kinszer on
your request to fully redact um I'll be
following personally with the director
of the CIA um the Multilure files that
we do have. Also, as I noted earlier,
there will be more that will be
declassified um specifically pertaining
to newly found records that were located
in what we were discussing earlier. Um I
did also want to just state that for the
record in regards to what statements
were made earlier regarding the German
government, we will also be following up
on that. Um if there are indeed people
that were victims of this that have been
buried, we would like to know who those
people are and who their families are as
well um in order to correct the
historical wrongd doings of this
government. Um without further ado, I
would like to state that all members
have five legislative days within to
submit materials and additional written
questions for the witnesses that will be
then forward to them. If there are no
further business without objection, the
task force stands adjourned.
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