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MK-Ultra (1953–1973)

The CIA drugged people without their knowledge — and called it research.

MK-Ultra was a secret CIA programme that experimented with mind control techniques, most notoriously using LSD. Test subjects included prisoners, hospital patients, and ordinary people who had no idea what was being done to them. Some were given psychedelic drugs repeatedly. Others were subjected to sensory deprivation, electroshock, and psychological torture. Several people were permanently damaged. At least one died.

The programme ran for twenty years. When it was finally shut down in 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the files destroyed. But a clerical accident left some financial records intact, and those documents led to a Congressional investigation in 1977. The testimony was damning. The agency had funded experiments at universities, hospitals, and prisons across the country, often through front organisations so the institutions themselves didn't know the CIA was behind it.

MK-Ultra matters because it shows what happens when an institution operates without oversight and convinces itself the ends justify the means. These weren't rogue agents — this was an authorised programme with budget lines and progress reports. The people running it believed they were protecting national security. The people underneath them were treated as disposable.

The next time someone says "the government would never do that," remember: they did, for two decades, and almost got away with hiding it forever.

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