This is the collection where the conspiracy theory is the documented history. Across the mid-twentieth century, U.S. agencies ran experiments on human subjects — often without consent, sometimes without their knowledge — in the name of national security and medical research. These files aren't built from rumor; they're built from the Church Committee hearings, the 1994–95 Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, declassified CIA memos, and named investigative books. The job here is the opposite of debunking: it's establishing exactly how far the real record goes, so the true cases aren't diluted by the invented ones.
Most of what's known survived deliberate destruction. Richard Helms ordered the MK-Ultra files destroyed in 1973; the program is reconstructable today largely because a cache of financial records was misfiled and survived, surfacing under a 1977 FOIA request. The radiation experiments came to light through Eileen Welsome's reporting and the ACHRE investigation President Clinton ordered in 1994. The pattern matters: in almost every case below, the public knows because an oversight body or a journalist forced the disclosure — not because the agency volunteered it.
That also sets the limit of honesty on this collection. Where the documents establish a program, we state it plainly. Where later claims outrun the record — the "modern MK-Ultra" theories, the assumption that every unsolved harm was an experiment — we flag the line between the two.
The CIA's mind-control program (1953–1973): LSD on unwitting subjects, the death of Frank Olson, Helms's destruction order, and what the surviving budget files actually prove.
The 40-year U.S. Public Health Service study (1932–1972) that withheld treatment from 399 Black men with syphilis to observe the disease — and reshaped medical-consent law.
The Manhattan-era injections of plutonium into unsuspecting hospital patients — CAL-1, Albert Stevens, and the human radiation experiments the 1994 ACHRE review finally documented.
Every published file, grouped by program type. Each links to the full case.
Two failures are possible with this subject, and they're opposite. One is to wave the whole thing away as tinfoil — which the Church Committee and ACHRE records make untenable. The other is to treat every subsequent harm as a secret continuation of these programs, which the evidence doesn't support. AnomalyDesk holds the middle: the documented programs are reported at full weight, with real names, dates, and consequences; the extrapolations beyond the record are labeled as claims. Operation Whitecoat is included deliberately — a study run with informed consent — because the contrast is what makes the violations in the others legible.