For the first time ever, the inside story of the CIA's secret torture program, MKULTRA, with never-before-revealed information, including testimony from the victims themselves and much more.
Notorious spymaster and chemist Sidney Gottlieb headed the CIA's assassination attempts and mind-control program, known as Project MKUltra, in the 1950's and '60's. This project was an illegal human experiments program to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used to force confessions through psychological torture. MKUltra used high doses of psychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals without the subjects' consent as well as electroshocks, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture.
For the first time ever, this book tells the inside story of MKULTRA from the firsthand perspective of those who perpetrated it. Major previously untold revelations gleaned from court depositions and declassified material include:
* How Gottlieb recruited scientists for MKULTRA and secretly funded experiments through cutout organizations.
* How the perpetrators of MKULTRA justified their actions.
* The problems with the CIA's system of oversight, which allowed MKULTRA to continue even after it had ended in the death of a subject.
* The method by which the CIA attempted to assassinate Patrice Lumumba.
* How and why Gottlieb and Richard Helms, the Director of Central Intelligence, destroyed the MKULTRA files upon retiring from the CIA.
Furthermore, this book will be the first to describe the aftermath of MKULTRA and the stories of the victims' dogged pursuit of justice, even when the CIA tried to frustrate their every move, from pressuring witnesses not to talk to invoking obscure sections of the U.S. code to stall a trial. JOHN LISLE has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas, where he is now a professor of the history of science. His first book, The Dirty Tricks Department, tells the story of the scientists who developed secret weapons, documents, and disguises for the OSS during World War II. He has received research and writing awards from the National Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Physics, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His work has been published in Skeptic, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, and elsewhere
