A congressional task force on June 30 held a hearing to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) MKULTRA program, a covert Cold War project that subjected unwitting subjects to drugs, hypnosis and psychological experimentation.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), chair of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, called the experiments "crimes against humanity," according to a report by Russia Today (RT). She added that victims and their families deserve "acknowledgement, accountability and justice."
Witnesses testified that previous congressional investigations in the 1970s failed to uncover the full scope of the program, that victims were never compensated and that many records remain hidden or were destroyed. The hearing marks the first formal congressional reexamination of MKULTRA in nearly 50 years, according to officials.
Background: MKULTRA's Secret History
MKULTRA was a covert CIA project running from 1953 to the early 1970s that used methods including LSD dosing, sensory deprivation, electroshock and hypnosis on unwitting American and Canadian citizens. Over 1,200 pages of declassified documents released in January 2025 revealed the full extent of the experiments, according to a report on NaturalNews.com.
The program officially ended in 1963, but then-CIA Director Richard Helms and MKULTRA chief Sidney Gottlieb ordered the destruction of most files in the 1970s as congressional scrutiny intensified. Steven Hassan wrote in his book "Combating Cult Mind Control" that in 1975, the Senate Church Committee – formally the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities – launched an investigation into MKULTRA.
However, this probe was derailed by CIA strategies, including leaks about attempted assassinations of foreign leaders. The committee was unable to go beyond discoveries already made by private researchers, Hassan wrote. Witnesses at the June 30 hearing said the Church Committee's promises to identify and compensate victims were never fulfilled.
Testimony: New Evidence Challenges Official Narrative
Author Tom O'Neill, who wrote "CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties," presented correspondence between Gottlieb and psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West that he said outlined plans for experiments on "unwilling subjects," including military members, psychiatric patients and prisoners. O'Neill told lawmakers the letters read like "a page torn from the research notebook of Josef Mengele," according to the RT report.
The documents show West proposed using LSD and hypnosis to induce amnesia, extract information and alter loyalties, with funding disguised and institutional links concealed. O'Neill argued that the CIA's longstanding claim that MKULTRA was a "colossal failure" should be reexamined. The correspondence suggests the program was a systematic effort to develop practical methods of psychological control, he said.
Journalist Stephen Kinzer, author of "Poisoner in Chief," told the panel that thousands of overlooked documents may still exist among the CIA's financial records. Kinzer said an agency analyst previously discovered such files, and "that same diligence could bring results today."
Unresolved Cases: Shaver and Olson
O'Neill linked the 1954 case of Jimmy Shaver, a U.S. Air Force serviceman who was executed for the murder of a child, to West's experiments. Shaver had been under West's psychiatric care at an Air Force hospital before the crime and afterward had no memory of the event, O'Neill testified.
West later served as the court-appointed psychiatric expert at Shaver's trial. O'Neill said the case illustrates how MKULTRA experiments may have produced "programmed" subjects whose actions remain unexplained.
Kinzer raised questions about the 1953 death of Army scientist Frank Olson, who fell from a New York hotel window while working for the CIA. "Evidence suggests that his death may not have been a suicide," Kinzer told lawmakers, according to RT.
Olson had been involved in MKULTRA and had reportedly expressed moral reservations about the program before his death. Both cases, witnesses said, demonstrate the difficulty of determining the full human toll of MKULTRA experiments, which may have killed or harmed an unknown number of subjects.
Conclusion: Could MKULTRA Still Exist?
Kinzer warned the task force that advances in neuroscience, artificial intelligence and cyber technology could enable new forms of mind control far beyond what Gottlieb imagined. "Covert agencies may have access to tools for mind control that Gottlieb could not have imagined," Kinzer said, urging Congress to investigate whether "some new incarnation of MKULTRA exists today," according to the RT report. He said revisiting the program's history could help prevent a 21st-century version that "could be even more destructive than the original."
Luna announced she had visited CIA headquarters, where officials told her previously unseen MKULTRA records are being prepared for declassification. The task force pledged to complete the work that previous investigations left unfinished.
"The American people deserve the complete record," Luna said. Whether the new effort succeeds may depend on how many records remain locked inside the agency's archives.
References
- Kevin Hughes. "Declassified MKULTRA documents reveal decades of CIA mind control experiments on unwitting citizens." NaturalNews.com. January 15, 2025.
- "The Devils Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and Americas Secret Government."
- Steven Hassan. "Combating Cult Mind Control: The #1 Best-Selling Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults."
- "‘Crimes against humanity’: The CIA’s sickest secret may finally be exposed." RT. July 5, 2026.
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