The CIA’s Quest for Mind Control : Piecing Together Project MK-Ultra and its Princeton Connections, Part I (Allen W. Dulles, Class of 1914)

By Annabel Green ’26

Note: This is the first of a two-part series. The two parts have been published simultaneously. This first post concerns MK-Ultra as a whole and the involvement of Allen W. Dulles, Class of 1914. The second post, which delves deeper into the history MK-Ultra on Princeton University’s campus, can be found on the University Archives blog.

Introduction

The story of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s Project MK-Ultra is still patchy. Yet what has been uncovered reveals an abysmal narrative of human exploitation at the hands of the CIA. From this, questions of CIA ethics and whether to prioritize possible global threats over human consent arise. We see the mingling of different governmental and educational circles, leading many to ask whether these two spheres should interact.

Some of the documentation has been preserved in the American Civil Liberties Union Records (MC001) at Mudd Library.

Frank Olson

At around 2:30am on November 28, 1953, Frank Olson, a CIA officer and civilian employee of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, fell through a 10th-floor hotel window to his death at the Statler Hilton Hotel in New York City. Olson’s death was initially reported as a suicide. After investigation, it was reported that Frank Olson had been, unbeknownst to him, fed LSD through a drink. When the details of Dr. Frank Olson’s drug-related death were made public, so was the CIA’s top-secret program going under the cryptonym “MK-Ultra.”

The Umbrella of MK-Ultra

MK-Ultra was a covert umbrella project which ultimately apportioned funds to 149 sub-projects. MK-Ultra’s primary phase involved the employment of federal institutions, hospitals, pharmaceutical houses, and specialists, with the intent of finding new substances for the CIA’s brainwashing aspirations. The second phase, commencing in 1955, involved an informal arrangement with individuals in the Bureau of Narcotics. In this phase, the program administered substances and methods to unsuspecting U.S. citizens. Other than unwitting subjects, the project also broadened its reach to involve test subjects who had volunteered to participate, although some were coerced.

In a 1977 letter sent to the Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Daniel K. Inouye, the former head of the CIA Stansfield Turner outlined the 149 sub projects. In the letter, the CIA places the various activities of the sub-projects into 15 categories, seen in the list on the right.

The Dawn of the CIA’s Top-Secret Program 

The CIA’s top-secret MK-Ultra program was the hybrid of two trends of the mid- to late-twentieth century: drug experimentation and communist ideology propagation. During this time, LSD had a certain novelty and exoticism which both interested and terrified the CIA. Simultaneously, from 1953 to 1961, American lawyer and Princeton graduate Allen Welsh Dulles (Class of 1914) served as the director of the CIA. During this time, some of the CIA’s leading projects surrounding the Cold War took place. Upon Dulles’ appointment as CIA director, Western anxieties were mounting, both over communist ideologies and over the ability for these ideologies to be propagated through “mind-control” tactics such as brainwashing. Dulles was concerned with mind control, both because of its use in mass indoctrination as well as because it deprived an individual of autonomy over their own thoughts and decision making. Dulles feared that the Soviets were in the battle for “men’s minds.”

The CIA believed that MK-Ultra would reveal a procedure or drug that could – when administered to an interrogee – free that person’s mind of its rational inhibitions, hence giving the interrogator access to and control over the mind of the person being interrogated. Initially launched as a counterattack to Soviet mind-control attempts, MK-Ultra morphed into a yearslong expanse of 149 sub projects relating to behavioral modification, drugs, and toxins. While in operation, the Project involved illicit scientific procedures which later troubled the American public when revealed. MK-Ultra found its way into institutions, including Princeton, which further raised concerns surrounding how, or if, higher education should allow CIA activity within its sphere.

Soon before the approval of MK-Ultra, Dulles had condemned the Soviet’s brain warfare as antithetical to American values. Nevertheless, the CIA joined the battle on April 3, 1953 when Dulles approved the mind-control program which would involve the “covert use of biological and chemical materials.”

Attempted Destruction of MK-Ultra Evidence

Before delving into the details of MK-Ultra which have been, at least partially, pieced together, it is important to lay out the attempted and partial destruction of MK-Ultra’s trail of evidence. In 1973, the records of MK-Ultra, formerly held in the Records Center, were ordered to be destroyed by former CIA Director Richard Helms in hopes of erasing planning and approval of test programs.  Destruction of drug-related files was authorized by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, an American chemist and head of MK-Ultra. Files were destroyed some time during January 1973 and the Chief of the Records Center protested the destruction of those files on 2 February 1973.

Despite efforts to erase any trace of the program, information had escaped destruction and was discovered among CIA financial records because the information was filed under “budgetary” and “fiscal” titles instead of “project” titles. Based on  recovered material, we know that the program involved 185 non-government researchers and assistants as well as 80 institutions. These institutions either conducted MK-Ultra-related work or were affiliated with individuals involved. The list of institutions included 44 colleges or universities, 15 research foundations or chemical or pharmaceutical companies and the like, 12 hospitals or clinics (in addition to those associated with universities), and 3 penal institutions.

Covert CIA Program is Partially Uncovered

In September of 1975, the Rockefeller Commission on CIA Activities as well as the Church Committee investigated the destruction of CIA records relating to drugs and toxins. The investigation was conducted in response to reports that the CIA had engaged in illegal domestic activities. Donald  F. Chamberlain, Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency, ordered a search for records related to LSD experimentation undertaken by the CIA. 

On August 3, 1977, CIA Director Stansfield Turner acknowledged the existence of MK-Ultra and testified before a joint session of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a health subcommittee, about recently discovered documents. During the 1977 joint session testimony, Turner told Congress that he was “horrified” by the secret drugging of citizens and said the Agency would try to learn subjects’ identities and consider the government’s responsibility toward them. While evaluations indicated some operational value in the tests, scientific controls were absent, in addition to the basic ethical problem.

The CIA was particularly concerned with keeping the operations of MK-Ultra hidden from both enemy forces as well as the American public. The CIA’s Inspector General wrote in 1957 that, “The knowledge that the Agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its mission.”

Unwitting Testing is Suspended

First to be banned from MK-Ultra’s procedural repertoire was experimentation on non-consenting individuals. Following the 1963 inspection, unwitting testing was suspended due to the tests’ immoral lack of consent. The 1963 investigation was conducted by the CIA Office of Inspector General, an independent overseer of the Agency. At the time of the inspection, testing on unwitting individuals was supported by the Technical Services Division (now known as the Office of Technical Service) doctrine. The doctrine determined that testing of materials under legal scientific procedures would not reveal the “full pattern of reactions that may occur in operational situations.” So, in an attempt to get authentic results, experiments on unwitting individuals, as opposed to participants, were deemed suitable for the mission’s goals. Other aspects of the program continued, though they experienced annual decreases in funding until the phasing out of MK-Ultra in the late 1960s. 

Conclusion

With Project MK-Ultra, the CIA deceived the American public at every turn, sacrificing both human decency and consent, in order to join what the CIA believed to be the battle for people’s minds. The attempted destruction of any evidence from the Project was the CIA’s next deception. Our fragmented understanding of the CIA’s quest for mind control thus remains almost as elusive as when it began. 

To see what I uncovered about the CIA’s secret experiments on the campus of Princeton University, please read my post on the University Archives blog.

Sources:

Allen W. Dulles Papers (MC019)

American Civil Liberties Union Records (MC001)

Office of the Vice President for Public Affairs Records (AC217)

Papers of Princeton

Project MKUltra, the CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification: Joint Hearing Before the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, 95th Cong. (1977).