MKULTRA returns to Congress
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna chaired a House Oversight Task Force hearing on the declassification of federal secrets, and the subject was MKULTRA, the CIA program that ran from 1953 to 1973. Lawmakers heard testimony about LSD, psychological torture, electroshock, hypnosis, and sensory deprivation used on unwitting people that included hospital patients, prisoners, veterans, and American citizens. Luna called the program crimes against American citizens and said the real scandal is not only what the CIA did, but how long Congress was kept in the dark. Bureaucracies love to talk about transparency right up until someone asks for the actual papers.
The records that went up in smoke
Luna said CIA Director Richard Helms personally ordered MKULTRA records destroyed in 1973 as he left office. Sidney Gottlieb and his team spent a full day burning 152 files, then had Gottlieb’s personal papers destroyed as well. The head of the CIA’s records center objected in writing and was overruled, which is a neat reminder that internal objections often work like a note taped to a shredder. Luna said that was obstruction of justice and criminal destruction of federal records. No one went to prison, and no victims received formal compensation. The agency later described MKULTRA as a failure, which is one way to say the paperwork was a disaster and the ethics were worse.
Forty boxes and the oversight fight
Former CIA officer and whistleblower James Erdman III testified that about 40 boxes of sensitive records were removed from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence during declassification review efforts. Luna said the CIA is also working to declassify newly discovered documents tied to what she described as a previously unknown forgery program. She and House Oversight Chairman James Comer sent a preservation letter demanding that the records be preserved and returned, after Luna said the MKULTRA documents had been requested by her task force. She later said the incident was not a raid, but the removal still raised obvious questions about whether the CIA is willing to follow lawful oversight when the answer might be inconvenient.
Germany, black sites, and the question that will not go away
Luna also said she is looking into disturbing allegations of a CIA facility in Germany where MKULTRA victims were allegedly tortured. A witness at the hearing claimed to have identified what may have been a secret prison or black site tied to the experiments, and Luna said she plans to reach out to the German government for help, including possible law enforcement involvement to locate and identify victims. Erdman added a line that should worry anyone who still thinks the story ended in the 1970s: ‘I don’t believe that the research stopped.’ Historical documents cited at the hearing described how hypnotic suggestion could be used to replace a real memory with a false one without the subject knowing it. When a program can hide records for decades, the public has every reason to wonder what else was filed under ‘not our problem.’
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