Project MKUltra [ a ] was a human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U. Central Intelligence Agency CIA to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken individuals and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. Project MKUltra began in and was halted in MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions, such as the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs especially LSD and other chemicals without the subjects' consent.
Additionally, other methods beyond chemical compounds were used, including electroshocks , [ 3 ] hypnosis , [ 4 ] [ 5 ] sensory deprivation , isolation, verbal and sexual abuse , and other forms of torture. Investigative efforts were hampered by CIA Director Richard Helms 's order that all MKUltra files be destroyed in ; the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the small number of documents that survived Helms's order.
During the early s, Nazi scientists working in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau during World War II conducted interrogation experiments on human subjects. Substances such as barbiturates , morphine derivatives, and hallucinogens such as mescaline were employed in experiments conducted on Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and other nationalities' prisoners of war. American interest in drug-related interrogation experiments began in , when the Office of Strategic Services began developing a "truth drug" that would produce "uninhibited truthfulness" in an interrogated person.
In , the Central Intelligence Agency under the direction of general Walter Bedell Smith initiated a series of interrogation projects involving human subjects, beginning with the launch of Project Bluebird, officially renamed Project Artichoke on August 20, Gaynor , the objective of Artichoke was to determine whether an individual could be made to involuntarily perform an act of attempted assassination.
In addition, Project Artichoke aimed to employ certain viruses such as dengue fever as potential incapacitating agents. It often conducted experiments without the subjects' knowledge or consent. The project attempted to produce a perfect truth serum for interrogating suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War and to explore other possibilities of mind control.
