Artichoke
The name of the program
The Artichoke is a kenning that was combined of two words: artificial and shock. As a part of the personality modification the program implies the wide usage of electroshock together with the drug induced coma and consumption of LSD, and other substances.
Artichoke
Initially known as Project Bluebird, Project Artichoke officially arose on August 20, 1951, and was operated by the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence. The primary goal of Project Artichoke was to determine whether a person could be involuntarily made to perform an act of attempted assassination. The project also studied the effects of hypnosis, forced addiction to (and subsequent withdrawal from) morphine, and other chemicals, including LSD, to produce amnesia and other vulnerable states in subjects. Project Artichoke was succeeded by Project MKUltra, which began in 1953.
Project Artichoke was a mind control program that gathered information together with the intelligence divisions of the Army, Navy, Air Force and FBI. In addition, the scope of the project was outlined in a memo dated January 1952 that asked, "Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?"
Project Artichoke was the Central Intelligence Agency's secret code name for carrying out in-house and overseas experiments using LSD, hypnosis and total isolation as forms of physiological harassment for special interrogations on human subjects. At first agents used cocaine, marijuana, heroin, peyote and mescaline, but they increasingly saw LSD as the most promising drug. The subjects who left this project were fogged with amnesia, resulting in faulty and vague memories of the experience. In 1952, LSD was increasingly given to unknowing CIA agents to determine the drug's effects on unsuspecting people. One record states that an agent was kept on LSD for 77 days. Artichoke researched the potential of dengue fever and other diseases. A declassified Artichoke memo read: "Not all viruses have to be lethal… the objective includes those that act as short-term and long-term incapacitating agents."
The CIA disputed which department would take over the operation. Finally, it was decided that an agent from the CIA research staff, former U.S. Army brigadier general Paul F. Gaynor, would oversee it. The CIA sought to establish control over what it perceived as the "weaker" and "less intelligent" segments of society, or for potential agents, defectors, refugees, prisoners of war and others. A CIA report states that if hypnosis succeeded, assassins could be created to assassinate "a prominent [redacted] politician or if necessary, [an] American official." The overseas operations took place in locations throughout Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia and the Philippines. Teams were assembled to manage these operations and they were told to "conduct at the overseas bases operational experiments utilizing aliens as subjects."
Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?
Artichoke's Project Memo.
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Project Artichoke was the Central Intelligence Agency's secret code name for carrying out in-house and overseas experiments using LSD, hypnosis and total isolation as forms of physiological harassment for special interrogations on human subjects. At first agents used cocaine, marijuana, heroin, peyote and mescaline, but they increasingly saw LSD as the most promising drug. The subjects who left this project were fogged with amnesia, resulting in faulty and vague memories of the experience. In 1952, LSD was increasingly given to unknowing CIA agents to determine the drug's effects on unsuspecting people. One record states that an agent was kept on LSD for 77 days. Artichoke researched the potential of dengue fever and other diseases. A declassified Artichoke memo read: "Not all viruses have to be lethal… the objective includes those that act as short-term and long-term incapacitating agents."
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The CIA disputed which department would take over the operation. Finally, it was decided that an agent from the CIA research staff, former U.S. Army brigadier general Paul F. Gaynor, would oversee it. The CIA sought to establish control over what it perceived as the "weaker" and "less intelligent" segments of society, or for potential agents, defectors, refugees, prisoners of war and others. A CIA report states that if hypnosis succeeded, assassins could be created to assassinate "a prominent politician or if necessary, American official." The overseas operations took place in locations throughout Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia and the Philippines. Teams were assembled to manage these operations and they were told to "conduct at the overseas bases operational experiments utilizing aliens as subjects."
Experiments in Death Camps
During the early 1940s, Nazi scientists working in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau conducted interrogation experiments on human subjects. Substances such as barbiturates, morphine derivatives, and hallucinogens such as mescaline were employed in experiments conducted on Pole, Czech, Jewish, Soviet and other nationalities' prisoners of war which aimed to develop a truth serum which would, in the words of one laboratory assistant to Dachau scientist Kurt Plötner, "eliminate the will of the person examined." The CIA project was a continuation of these earlier Nazi experiments, citing the numerous German scientists who were hired to work for the U.S. as part of Operation Paperclip. American interest in drug-related interrogation experiments began in 1943, when the Office of Strategic Services began developing a "truth drug" that would produce "uninhibited truthfulness" in an interrogated person. In 1947, the United States Navy initiated Project CHATTER, an interrogation program which saw the first testing of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25) on human subjects. In 1950, 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, 1951. Directed and overseen by brigadier general Paul F. Gaynor, the objective of Artichoke was to determine whether an individual could be made to involuntarily perform an act of attempted assassination. Morphine, mescaline and LSD were all administered on unknowing CIA agents in an attempt to produce amnesia in the subjects. In addition, Project Artichoke aimed to employ certain viruses such as dengue fever as potential incapacitating agents.
Mind Control
One of the main objectives of the project was the use of drugs, hardware and psychoactive substances for mind control. After the Watergate scandal, the project materials were reportedly destroyed. This seems unlikely, since the data from the death experiments previously "destroyed" in the death camps ended up in the archives and became sources of data for their full legal successors.
Mental Health
The common characteristic of all CIA programs and death camp killings is one thing. All the experiments that were conducted within the framework of these projects and the methods of killing and violence used were later recorded as symptoms of "schizophrenia." The mere mention of the fact that methods of killing or violence researched by the CIA or actively used in the death camps were used against a person was enough to be recorded as "schizophrenic." Thus, it is easy to formulate who a schizophrenic is: a person who was subjected to CIA experiments, survived the death camps or Operation Rainhard.
Sex, Drugs, and Video
The project was headed by Sidney Gottlieb but began on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles on April 13, 1953. Its aim was to develop mind-controlling drugs for use against the USSR. The CIA wanted to use similar methods on their own captives, and was interested in manipulating foreign leaders with such techniques, devising several schemes to drug Fidel Castro. It often conducted experiments without the subjects' knowledge or consent. In some cases, academic researchers were funded through grants from CIA front organizations but were unaware that the CIA was using their work for these purposes. The project attempted to produce a perfect truth drug for interrogating and to explore other possibilities of mind control. Subproject 54 was the Navy's top-secret "Perfect Concussion" program, which was supposed to use sub-aural frequency blasts to erase memory. Most MKUltra records were destroyed in 1973 by order of CIA director Richard Helms, so it has been difficult for investigators to gain a complete understanding of the more than 150 funded research subprojects sponsored by MKUltra and related CIA programs. The agency poured millions of dollars into studies examining ways to influence and control the mind and enhance its ability to extract information from resistant subjects during interrogation.
