Would The CIA Harm Us... American Civilians? Operation Midnight Climax

A few days ago I let loose with a provocative and kind of random tweet based on something I was reading about the post World War II American national security state in Glen Yeadon's book Nazi Hydra In America. I sometimes forget not everyone has read that book. So this little tweet dialogue ensued:


Operation Midnight Climax was part of a CIA mind-control research program after the U.S. started importing hundreds of Nazi "scientists who had been experimenting on human beings in concentration camps. According to Wikipedia, this project "consisted of a web of CIA-run safehouses in San Francisco, Marin, and New York. It was established in order to study the effects of LSD on unconsenting individuals. Prostitutes on the CIA payroll were instructed to lure clients back to the safehouses, where they were surreptitiously plied with a wide range of substances, including LSD, and monitored behind one-way glass. Several significant operational techniques were developed in this theater, including extensive research into sexual blackmail, surveillance technology, and the possible use of mind-altering drugs in field operations.

... News of the story began to leak following a landmark story by New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh on illegal CIA domestic surveillance. This report triggered Senate Subcommittee hearings which investigated MKULTRA, and brought Operation Midnight Climax to light.

I found an old report from 1977 in Time, slightly minimizing the magnitude of what the U.S. government was doing. Let's take a look at some of what Yeadon had to say that inspired my little tweet:

Just as the immigration of Nazis and war criminals into the US involved the use of several projects of which Paperclip is the most widely known such is the case of MK-Ultra. There were 149 sub projects under MK-Ultra. The use of drugs for truth serum and for mind control were conducted under a bewildering list of Project or Operations.

...Army documents suggest there is a contingency plan to use BZ [aka, Buzz or Quinuclidinyl benzilate] as a domestic civilian riot control method. STP, PCP and hundreds of other drugs were tested for use in mind control and as incapacitating agents.

Most research involved LSD. The Army tested LSD on approximately 1,500 military personnel in the mid-1960s. Soldiers were not the only guinea pigs used by the CIA. The list of expendables: war prisoners, prostitutes, sexual psychopaths, prison inmates, certain war objectors, mentally retarded people, the elderly, terminally ill patients, schizophrenics, drug addicts, foreigners, and, of course, any other man, woman or child who fit the need.

...Besides being illegal, such testing [Operation Midnight Climax] without subjects' informed consent is a violation of the Nuremberg code, a set of ethical principles regarding experiments with human subjects and other medical research, which guided the Nuremberg Tribunal.

No idea if the Brits recently used-- or even have-- any of these mind control drugs. No doubt a pissed off right-wing prime minister-- who had to interrupt his Tuscan vacation and hurry home-- wouldn't hesitate for a moment to use them. And now he isn't hesitating to kick arrested suspects' families out of their homes. His coalition partners, the Liberal-Democrats are starting to get a little nervous that they're hooked up with an increasingly dangerous sociopath and that their party could well be headed for extinction. The party's business secretary, looking to the underlying causes of the anti-Austerity riots that shook Britain last week, wants to impose a wealth, or mansion, tax, in the form of a capital gains tax, on properties valued at over £1 million. Their Conservative partners, like the Republicans here, will never go for it. In fact they are committed to lowering taxes on the rich which ramping up the Austerity regime that is convulsing the country. Does this sound familiar?

Speaking on BBC Radio 4, [Chancellor of the Exchequer George] Osborne said there was "not much point" in having a tax that raised scant funds but that served to drive businesses out of Britain.

Osborne said: "I've said with the 50p rate I don't see that as a lasting tax rate for Britain because it's very uncompetitive internationally, and people frankly can move. What is it actually raising? It's only been in operation for a year, this tax, put in place by the last government."

Another Lib-Dem MP, Simon Hughes, who represents a district in South London, Old Southwark, hit hard by rioting last week, penned a column for The Guardian Sunday, Profits must no longer go to the few at the top. It probably wasn't very well-received by anyone at or near the top, particularly not David Cameron. Hughes called for "a fundamental shift in the politics of the last 30 Conservative and Labour years which have sacrificed people's jobs and security in the name of efficiency, and then seen the profits go only to the few at the top."

We must now focus on the redistribution of wealth. But this will not succeed by means of greater hand-outs. Financial benefits must seek to engage people positively. The redistribution of hope and opportunity means the redistribution as well as the creation of work. Co-operative and mutual businesses and social enterprise should be prioritised. The private sector, like the public sector, should not be allowed to get away with obscene pay ratios and bonuses. All employers should be required to consider how they can increase employment and training, by themselves or with others.

Where communities are unable to provide work the government must be prepared to intervene.

A responsible economy is necessary for a responsible society. Building local, regional and national economies which provide the opportunity for all to participate in for fair reward will build much stronger communities. This will counter the appeal of the gangs and the get-rich-quick merchants. Other people and activity must now capture the energies and abilities of a generation that has greater potential than any we have had before.

The Austerity the Republicans are demanding-- and to which Obama seems to be giving in to without any fight at all-- is what's infecting Britain and Greece and dozens of other countries on the verge of explosions. I just don't want to see anyone get hurt with all those experimental drugs.