MK/ULTRA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000100570008-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 13, 2007
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: February 12, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
PROGRAM Jack Anderson Confidential STATION WJLA-TV
Syndicated
DATE February 12, 1983 7:30 P.M. CITY Washington, D.C.
MK/Ultra
JACK ANDERSON: Two decades ago, the Central
Intelligence Agency carried out secret experiments on thousands
of American citizens. The purpose was to discover ways to
control human behavior. The super-secret program used unwitting
victims as living test tubes for bizarre mind-altering drugs.
The CIA called the project MK/Ultra.
Now, for the first time, some of the victims have
stepped forward. They're former inmates of Atlanta federal
penitentiary, where they were given LSD and other drugs as part
of the MK/Ultra program. Now they're suing the CIA for lying to
them about the true purposes of the experiments, also for the
mental damage they say they suffered from the drug sessions.
Last week I sent my associate John Lee Anderson to
investigate their story. He traveled to Georgia, Florida, and
Kentucky. He interviewed the men involved in the sordid CIA
experiment. This is what they told him.
RUSSELL KIRK: After 1960, I was just -- I didn't even
know what I was doing at times. And it had to be what they gave
me in '57 and '58, 'cause I never, never took any drugs before.
ANDERSON: Farrell Kirk was one of the CIA's
unsuspecting human guinea pigs. He was used as a living medical
mixing bowl. What happened to him? He was driven to repeated
suicide attempts.
KIRK: I got very depressed because I knew something was
wrong and I couldn't figure out what it was. And it was just
like a voice was telling me, you know, I just soon be dead as to
be in this shape or predicament.
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JOHN LEE ANDERSON: So you slashed your wrists?
KIRK: I did. And they took and sewed me up and brought
me back and put me in the hole. And I begged them not to put me
in the hole. They asked me why did I do it. I said I don't
know. And I said I just felt like I didn't want to live any
longer. And he said, "Well, we've got to put you in there for
safe-keeping.
J.L. ANDERSON: With your teeth.
KIRK: Yeah. And when I passed out -- when they opened
the door to check, I just feel out, and they went and gave me a
blood transfusion. They put me in a straitjacket then. And when
they took me out of the straitjacket, I tried to hang myself with
the blanket. And I very nearly suc -- I almost succeeded more
with the blanket than I did with the razor blade.
ANDERSON: Kirk is not the only one affected by the drug
test. His fellow plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the CIA
complain of long-term aftereffects.
JAMES KNIGHT: I go off occasionally. And I've had loss
of memory real bad. Several years [unintelligible], some of the
experiences that I had while I was on LSD, some of them will
come back to me.
ANDERSON: James Knight is back in prison on a parole
violation. He comes from a long line of moonshiners. He was
doing time for this offense when he participated in the Atlanta
LSD experiments. Like Kirk, Knight says the effect was to turn
him violent.
KNIGHT: I was a bootlegger when I started, and I never
been in no crime of violence or anything like that. And I got
convicted. And I've cut several since then and pistol-whipped
two or three since then. And it's just changed -- it's just
changed me altogether. In fact, no longer than September I was
on furlough and I went home and I beat my wife real bad.
J.L. ANDERSON: And you never did this before the
experiments.
KNIGHT: No, I've never done anything like that before.
J.L. ANDERSON: You attribute it to the LSD experiments.
KNIGHT: Certainly I do.
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ANDERSON: Justice Department lawyers handling the CIA's
defense refused to be interviewed. They also counseled defense
witnesses against speaking to us. But Dr. Lawrence Bryan did
come forth. He's a clinical psychologist who worked in the
Atlanta prison at the time of the experiment. He did the
psychological screening tests of the prisoners who took part in
the LSD project.
J.L. ANDERSON: Do you believe, as a psychologistand as
a person who was there at the time when these experiments were
conducted, that their claim is justified, that of damages for
physical and mental harm done to them as a result of these
experiments?
DR. LAWRENCE BRYAN: I cannot see that there was any
harm that they sustained. They certainly did not tell me about
any harm, either during the project or any time later on.
ANDERSON: This story may never have become known but
for the efforts of John Marks. He's an intelligence expert and
author of the definitive book on the CIA's attempts to control
human behavior. Marks spoke to us about the CIA's reasons for
the MK/Ultra project.
JOHN MARKS: There was an age-old dream in the
intelligence business about making people do things against their
will, to give you information, to perform acts that they didn't
want to perform. And the CIA secretly was looking for a pill or
a ray or some technique, a panacea, if you will, which would
allow them to manipulate people against their will.
What the CIA was doing in Atlanta was trying out LSD on
people, on a captive population. But mainly, the CIA was looking
for the effect that it would have on certain personality types.
J.L. ANDERSON: Is there punishment that can be meted
out to them? Should there be?
MARKS: Well, there's a standard of medical testing
which the United States Government established at Nuremberg in
1945 because there had been Nazi experimentation on prisoners in
concentration camps during the war. And that standard was very
basic. It said that you could not do medical experiments on
people against their will. They had to give their consent and
they had to understand what they were consenting to. And we, as
a country, executed Nazi doctors who had violated that standard.
Three or four years later, by 1950, our own government
was doing those same kinds of experiments on unwitting subjects.
ANDERSON: How many men had their lives ruined by the
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CIA's secret tests? We may never know.
On February 14th, a pre-trial hearing will be held in
Atlanta to determine whether the case can go to the trial court.
The CIA's defense? That the statute of limitations has run out.
In other words, our government is trying to evade responsibility
through legal technicalities.
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