Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, April 13, 1953, CIA Director Alan Dulles authorized a secretive program that would come

to be one of the most controversial in CIA history, an effort to use humans as guinea pigs for research into mind-altering drugs.

The program was known as MK Ultra, and the details and scandals are basically what you'd expect from a secretive

government program that is testing LSD and other drugs on unwitting subjects.

Some really wild stuff in here and here to discuss as always are

Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello.

Hey Jody.

Hey there.

So Kelly, you know, LSD, as people know was developed in a lab. It is a synthetic drug. A lot of the early stories about

LSD are of the people who were making it, sort of testing it on themselves. That's how you test the effects of a synthetic drug. So what is different

when the government starts to get in on this testing?

Oh man, I mean the first thing I need to say is consent matters. Consent matters.

And to that in your purposes matter as well.

The way the government is using these subjects,

these subjects are unwilling.

And so they have not given permission for the government to use them in this way.

And furthermore, the reason behind their drug testing or drug use is so that they can develop all kinds of different techniques of mind control to use on foreign enemies.

So how can we use hypnosis or trip people out or drug people up to get them to forget

certain memories or drug people up in order to get them to become sort of like mental robots, you know, that do the government's bidding.

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