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Aug 28, 26 tweets

The Complete Illustrated Guide to MK-ULTRA (part 1)

A thread 🧵 of EVERYTHING you need to know about MK-ULTRA Mind Control, from Paranoid American

After WW2, the US focused on a cold war and eventual space race with Russia.

Relieved Hitler was dead, they weren't as concerned with other Nazi war criminals.

In 1945, a military operation called Operation Paperclip secretly imported thousands of Nazi scientists and their families into the United States, to continue their work on rocket propulsion.

But Nazi research wasn't limited to just rocket science.

Nazi scientists were also researching psychological and bio-chemical warfare.

Including cruel experiments focused on erasing and implanting memories via torture, hypnosis and various drugs.

The US continued these programs, eventually under the name MK-ULTRA.

Test subjects were unwitting military enlistees and government employees.

1947, Project CHATTER: US Navy tests on recruits to find the perfect interrogation drug based on Nazi research found at the Dachau concentration camp.

Drugs included heroin, marijuana, sodium pentothal, mescaline and scopolamine.

On April 20th, 1950: CIA launches Operation BLUEBIRD, focused on a new phenomenon being reported by POWs known as "brainwashing."

We were worried our enemies could make people do and say things against their will through forms of "mind control."

April 3rd, 1953: BLUEBIRD was rebranded as MKULTRA, a massive program with hundreds of subprojects, all ultimately focused on controlling human behavior.

This same year the CIA purchased the entire world supply of a new drug, LSD.

In 1951, a small town in south France reported a mass hallucination affecting 250 people, of which 50 had to be institutionalized, and 7 died.

While initially blamed on food poisoning, research later uncovered this was part of a CIA field test dubbed Project SPAN.

1953: MKULTRA Subproject 3 "Operation Midnight Climax" opened up safehouses in San Francisco and New York City.

The goal was to observe how normal people reacted in real-world situations.

Subjects were tempted with sex, bribes and blackmail after being unknowingly dosed with LSD among other drugs.

Everything was recorded from behind a one-way mirror by George Hunter White.

By the early 60s, the CIA was studying and recruiting in prisons and universities.

Subjects included mobster Whitey Bulger (Emory 1957), unabomber Ted Kaczynski (Harvard 1959-62) and counter-culture icon Timothy Leary (Harvard 1960).

Ken Kesey (author) and Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead) both volunteered for the same MKULTRA study at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital in 1959.

This study included LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, AMT and DMT.

1961: US Army begins testing LSD in Western Europe and Germany under the name “Operation Third Chance.”

By 1962 a similar program “Operation Derby Hat” expands into Asia and Hawaii.

1963: CIA agent John K. Vance calls MKULTRA "distasteful and unethical." As a result, the CIA claims to halt testing and begin scaling back the project.

Of course, the cat was well out of the bag and 1964 saw the introduction of LSD into popular and counter-culture.

1965: US Army Chemical Corps and CIA start a program named MKSEARCH to develop new biological weapons.

Split into subprojects MKOFTEN and MKCHIKWIT with a simple goal: "test the behavioral and toxicological effects of certain drugs on animals and humans."

MKULTRA had subprojects for everything. Subproject 136 focused on ESP (ExtraSensory Perception) with research into multiple personalities and hypnosis.

101: Biophysics of the Nervous System.
106 Electrodes.
123-124: African Attitude Studies.
137: Handwriting Analysis.
139: Bird Diseases.

MK-ULTRA Subproject 142: stimulation of brain electrodes in bulls, monkeys & cats using a “Stimoceiver” invented by Dr. Jose Delgado.

There have been rumors of similar projects run by a Dr. Ivor Browning involved triggering the "pleasure center" of a donkey via radio frequency dubbed the "electronic carrot."

Multiple MK-ULTRA subprojects studied children at home and abroad.

Subproject 102: Adolescent Gangs (University of Oklahoma).

Subproject 103: Children's Summer Camps.

Countless ways to assassinate Fidel Castro were also included under MKULTRA. Poisoned and exploding cigars, fountain pens and conch shells. Wetsuits lined with bacteria.

Spraying his TV studio with LSD, soaking his shoes in thallium to make his beard fall off. There was even an effort for obtaining his hand print for chiromancy (palm reading).

The mafia was even contracted to put poison into a chocolate milkshake, Castro's favorite. It failed when the pill was accidentally destroyed in a freezer.

"If surviving assassination attempts were an olympic event, I would win the gold medal." - Fidel Castro

November 22, 1963, 12:30 PM: John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, TX.

This began what to be known as "The Kennedy Curse." Like opening a cursed tomb, shining light on the skeletons in the CIA's closet can lead to tragedy.

JFK's brother, Robert F. Kennedy, was killed 5 years later on June 5, 1968 by a man named Sirhan Sirhan.

November 2006: BBC presents proof that three CIA officers were present the night of the RFK assassination.

Chief of Maritime Operations Gordon Campbell, Chief of JMWAVE Operations David Morales, and Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations George Joannides.

Sidney Gottlieb ran MKULTRA under the orders of Allen Dulles. Upon retirement, he was awarded the CIA's highest honor, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.

A user of LSD himself, expert in poisons, and obsessed with the esoteric and occult, he also earned the nicknames "Dirty Trickster" and "Black Sorcerer."

An analysis on all covens operating in the US. Sorcery courses were funded at USC, with CIA carefully studying classes on fertility rites and raising the dead.

MK-ULTRA Subproject 121: Yoruba Witch Doctor Study conducted by Dr. Raymond Prince from McGill University, focused on studying African mysticism, rituals and poisons.

1973: Watergate is in the news, and public scrutiny is at an all-time high.

Richard Helms (CIA director) orders all "MK" project files to be destroyed.

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