Saturday, July 23, 2022: 6:00 pm (Little Theatre): Project MKULTRA has become a modern mythology about the creation of mind controlled agents called Manchurian candidates. Misinformation and disinformation has obscured the project’s research that was to understand the security of humans’ mind/brain in brain warfare. The modus operandi was “research and development of materials capable of producing behavioral or physiological change in humans.” From 1953 to 1964, witting and unwitting researchers performed 149 sub-projects covertly funded through cutouts at 86 North American institutions. In 1975, Project MKULTRA was declassified. The controversial human experimentations were reviewed by U.S. President Ford and the U.S. Congress, but in 1973 CIA Director Helms had the records shredded.

The method to crack Project MKULTRA sub-projects’ identities using open source intelligence is detailed in this presentation. First, redacted indexes from the congressional review organize the large declassified CIA data-set of surviving financial records. Next, society documents from cutout granting agencies trace funding from Project MKULTRA sub-projects to researchers. Then, funding acknowledgments to cutouts in academic publications reveal a complete research cycle. Finally, a cracked index of Project MKULTRA sub-projects shows confirmed, and unconfirmed but known, participant identities.

The cracked index’s percentage of completion is analyzed against indexes from The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate” by John Marks in 1978 and The CIA Doctors by Dr. Colin A. Ross in 2006. An art infographic displays the sub-projects’ identities and academic publications. The cracked index produced through acknowledgments to cutouts shows an accurate history of brain warfare research and development in Project MKULTRA, different than the modern mythology.

Josh Patrick “Peon” Paulton

Alannah Clamp