For many Americans, the 1950s were a docile decade. In U.S. history books, the period is mostly portrayed as a mellow, orderly one, especially in light of the social upheavals that followed in the 1960s. But for the Central Intelligence Agency, the I Like Ike years were packed with adventure and action, much of it conducted outside of the publics view. Few programs were sheltered with more secrecy than the Agencys mind control experiments, identified together with the code-name MKULTRA.Concerned about rumors of communist brainwashing of POWs during the Korean war, in April 1953 CIA Director Allen Dulles authorized the MKULTRA program, which would later become notorious for the unusual and sometimes inhumane tests that the CIA financed. Reviewing the experiments five years later, one secrecy-conscious CIA auditor wrote: Precautions must be taken not only to protect operations from exposure to enemy forces but also to conceal these activities from the American public in general. The knowledge that the agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles.Though many of the documents related to MKULTRA were destroyed by the CIA in 1972, some records relating to the program have made it into the public domain. And the work of historians, investigative reporters, and various congressional committees has resulted in the release of enough information to make MKULTRA one of the most disturbing instances of intelligence community abuse on record. As writer Mark Zepezauer puts it, the surviving history is nasty enough.The most notorious MKULTRA experiments were the CIAs pioneering studies of the drug that would years later feed the heads of millions: lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. The CIA was intrigued by the drug and harbored hopes that acid, or a similar drug, could be used to clandestinely disorient and manipulate target foreign leaders. (The Agency would co...
