Human Experimentation.
Documented programs of experimentation on human subjects, often without consent. 24 case files in the archive.
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MK-Ultra: The CIA's Twenty-Year Mind-Control Program
What the surviving documents prove, what was destroyed before disclosure, and what's still classified about the agency's experiments on civilians, soldiers, and prisoners from 1953 to 1973.
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Project ARTICHOKE: The CIA Interrogation Program That Became MK-Ultra
A 1950-1953 CIA program of chemical, hypnotic, and physical interrogation research, run out of the Office of Security under Morse Allen and absorbed into MKULTRA in April 1953.
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Project Stargate
The two-decade military-intelligence engagement with parapsychology, from SRI's Targ and Puthoff through the AIR report that ended the program in 1995.
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The Tuskegee Syphilis Study
The US Public Health Service's forty-year experiment on 600 Black men in Macon County, Alabama. Penicillin became standard care in 1947 and was deliberately withheld.
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Project BLUEBIRD (1950-1951)
Authorized April 20, 1950 under DCI Hillenkoetter and the Office of Security; renamed ARTICHOKE in August 1951.
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The Plutonium Files (1945-1947)
18 Manhattan Project-era patients injected with plutonium without informed consent at Strong Memorial, University of Chicago, UCSF, and Oak Ridge.
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The Edgewood Arsenal Experiments (1948-1975)
The US Army Chemical Corps' three-decade program of chemical-warfare-agent and incapacitating-drug testing on ~7,000 soldier-volunteers. LSD, BZ, VX.
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Operation Midnight Climax (1954-1965)
The CIA MK-Ultra subproject run out of safe houses in San Francisco and New York. George Hunter White's prostitute-procured operation; clients dosed with LSD; CIA officers observed through one-way mirrors.
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Project MKNAOMI: The CIA's Biological and Toxin Weapons Stockpile
The 1953-1970 CIA-Army program at Fort Detrick to develop, store, and deliver biological agents and toxins. Nixon's 1969 renunciation, the retained shellfish toxin discovered in 1975, and the Church Committee dart-gun display.
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Project MKSEARCH: MK-Ultra's Successor Program
The 1964-1973 CIA program that continued MK-Ultra's research under Sidney Gottlieb. Its subprograms MKOFTEN and MKCHICKWIT, the January 1973 destruction of the records, and the 1977 financial-record recovery.
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The Guatemala Syphilis Experiments (1946-1948)
The US Public Health Service deliberately infected prisoners, soldiers, psychiatric patients, and sex workers with STDs without consent. Discovered by Susan Reverby in 2010; Obama's apology; the 2011 'Ethically Impossible' report.
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The Holmesburg Prison Experiments (1951-1974)
Dr. Albert Kligman's dermatological and chemical testing on Philadelphia inmates. The Dow dioxin studies, Army chemical-agent trials, Allen Hornblum's 'Acres of Skin,' and the 2022 University of Pennsylvania apology.
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Operation Whitecoat (1954-1973)
The US Army biological-defense program in which ~2,300 Seventh-day Adventist conscientious objectors volunteered as test subjects at Fort Detrick under informed consent. Q fever, tularemia, the Eight Ball; no participant died.
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Operation Sea-Spray (1950)
The US Navy's covert release of Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii over San Francisco to test a biological attack on a city. The Stanford infection cluster, the death of Edward Nevin, the 1977 disclosure, and Nevin v. United States.
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Operation LAC / Large Area Coverage (1957-1958)
The US Army Chemical Corps' largest open-air test, dispersing zinc cadmium sulfide tracer from aircraft across the continent. Particles detected 1,000+ miles downwind; the cadmium concern; the 1997 National Research Council review.
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Project SHAD (1962-1973)
The Project 112 tests that exposed Navy ships and sailors to chemical and biological agents and simulants to study vulnerability. Crews often not informed; the 2000-2003 DoD disclosure; the 2007 Institute of Medicine health study.
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Project 4.1 (1954)
The AEC's medical study of the Marshall Islanders exposed to Castle Bravo thermonuclear-test fallout. The 15-megaton yield, the contamination of Rongelap, the thyroid-disease toll, and the contested research-versus-care question.
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The Fernald State School Experiments (1946-1953)
MIT and Harvard researchers fed radioactive tracers to disabled boys at a Massachusetts state school via a 'Science Club,' with misleading consent letters. Funded by the AEC and Quaker Oats; the 1993-94 disclosure and 1998 settlement.
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Project Sunshine (1953-)
The AEC program to measure strontium-90 fallout accumulation in human bone, which covertly collected human remains worldwide, many from deceased infants without family consent. The Libby 'body snatching' remark and the 1995 ACHRE findings.
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The Hanford Releases and the Green Run (1949)
The Hanford plutonium plant's radioactive releases, including the December 1949 Green Run intentional release of iodine-131 over eastern Washington. The downwinders, the 1986 FOIA release, and the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study.
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The Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Experiments (1944-1956)
Illinois inmates deliberately infected with malaria to test antimalarial drugs for the WWII effort. The University of Chicago and Army involvement, Nathan Leopold's participation, and the program's invocation at the Nuremberg doctors' trial.
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The Death of Frank Olson (1953)
The Army biological-warfare scientist who fell from a New York hotel window in 1953, nine days after the CIA dosed him with LSD under MK-Ultra. The suicide ruling, the 1975 disclosure, the 1994 exhumation suggesting homicide, and the unresolved manner of death.
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Project Pandora (Moscow Signal)
The 1960s US research program into the Moscow Signal, the low-level microwave radiation the Soviets beamed at the US Embassy in Moscow. The bioeffects experiments, the eavesdropping-versus-mind-effects debate, and the health questions that echo into the Havana Syndrome era.
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Sidney Gottlieb: The CIA's Poisoner in Chief
The CIA chemist who directed MK-Ultra, dosed Frank Olson, built the poisons for Castro and Lumumba, and shredded the records in 1973 - and the federal court that held the destruction against him.