Back in 1953, Allen Dulles then-director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched a program that had the intended purpose of identifying methods for controlling human behaviour. It had been recently discovered that Russia was testing the drug bulbocapnine, which was believed to affect an individual’s willpower, making it easier to extract information. In addition, U.S. prisoners of war in North Korea were being administered LSD as a method for interrogation. The U.S. became desperate to come up with their own method for extracting information, and influencing the will of others.

The program was called MK-Ultra, and in the years that followed, thousands of people would be experimented on. Most without knowledge or consent. The experiments included brain surgeries, electroshock therapies, the effects of hypnosis, and of course the administering of LSD—often without the individual’s knowledge.

The vast majority of the people who were experimented on were prisoners and patients at psychiatric institutions. Some of the more famous recipients of the experiments included South Boston mob-boss, James “Whitey” Bulger, as well as Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber.

That being said, prisoners weren’t the only ones being experimented on. The CIA often conducted experiments on their own employees. In fact, during the 1950s and early 60s, it became something of an occupational hazard for people who worked at CIA headquarters in Langley to become unwittingly dosed with LSD.

One of those employees, was a bacteriologist by the name of Frank Olson. While at a CIA retreat, Olson was administered LSD without his knowledge. After becoming increasingly paranoid, he was sent to be treated by a CIA psychologist in New York. On November 28, 1953, Olson died after either jumping, or falling from a 13th-floor window. His death was initially ruled a suicide, but was later changed to an accidental death. However, there has been much speculation that Olson was pushed out of the window by the CIA.

The program wasn’t limited to the U.S. either. Thousands of psychiatric patients here in Canada were also involved in the experiments. Many of them taking place at Montreal’s Allen Memorial Institute and St Jean De Dieu insane asylum, now Louis-Hyppolite Lafontaine Hospital.

Most of the researchers involved had no idea that they were being funded by the CIA. The agency frequently used front operations to mask where money was coming from. Though top researchers at these institutions, like Allen Memorial’s Dr. Ewen Cameron, were very much aware of the CIA’s involvement.

In 1973 the program was officially halted, and all of the documentation was ordered destroyed by then-director Richard Helms preventing any future investigations into the program from ever understanding the full scope of the experiments. Much of what is known about the program today stems largely from the victim’s accounts.

In the years that have followed, numerous lawsuits have been brought against both the U.S. and Canadian governments by victims and their families. Typically, these have been settled out of court with nondisclosure agreements attached to them, preventing the victims from ever speaking publicly about their experiences.

There has never been a full accounting of what happened during Project MK-Ultra, or the number of victims who were experimented on. And, neither governments have ever apologized for the program, or for the damage it inflicted.  

If we as a country hope to maintain any kind of credibility on the global stage as we lecture others over human rights abuses, then it might be a good idea to start addressing some of our own.  

Kris Brabant is a professional writing student at Algonquin College. He is a history junky, who is fascinated by all things strange, creepy and generally unsettling.