Project MKUltra: The CIA’s Mind Control Operation

Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra), also called the CIA mind control program, is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, some of which were illegal.[1][2][3] Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations in order to weaken the individual and force confessions through mind control. The project was organized through the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the CIA and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories.[4] Code names for drug-related experiments were Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke.[5][6] The operation was officially sanctioned in 1953, reduced in scope in 1964 and further curtailed in 1967. It was officially halted in 1973. The program engaged in many illegal activities,[7][8][9] including the use of U.S. and Canadian citizens as its unwitting test subjects, which led to controversy regarding its legitimacy.[7](p74)[10][11][12] MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions. Techniques included the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, electroshocks,[13] hypnosis,[14][15] sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as other forms of torture.[16][17] The scope of Project MKUltra was broad, with research undertaken at more than 80 institutions, including colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies.[18] The CIA operated using front organizations, although sometimes top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA's involvement.[19] Project MKUltra was first brought to public attention in 1975 by the Church Committee of the United States Congress and Gerald Ford's United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States (also known as the Rockefeller Commission). Investigative efforts were hampered by CIA Director Richard Helms' order that all MKUltra files be destroyed in 1973; the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the relatively small number of documents that survived Helms's destruction order.[20] In 1977, a Freedom of Information Act request uncovered a cache of 20,000 documents relating to project MKUltra which led to Senate hearings later that year.[7][21] Some surviving information regarding MKUltra was declassified in July 2001. In December 2018, declassified documents included a letter to an unidentified doctor discussing work on six dogs made to run, turn and stop via remote control and brain implants.

Dealers in Death

Tying in neatly with President Roosevelt's request for legislation to take the profit out of war and with the current Senatorial investigation of the munitions industry, Dealers in Death, at the Criterion, presents the case histories of the world's leading armament manufacturers with incidental excursions, via the newsreels, into past wars, present preparations for wars and a grim forecast of what wars of the future may be like. The arms makers examined in the Dealers in Death documentary feature companies such as Vickers-Armstrong, Skoda, Krupp, Remington, and Colt. Newsreel footage is used as a counterpoint to the investigation of deals made among the companies to prolong the fighting. The reality of war and the devastation of the battlefields emphasize the sinister and cynical nature of the munitions industry.

Hearts and Minds

The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient. Hearts and Minds is an Academy Award winning documentary about the Vietnam War directed by Peter Davis. The film's title is based on a quote from President Lyndon B. Johnson: "the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there". The movie was chosen as Best Feature Documentary at the 47th Academy Awards presented in 1975. The film premiered at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. Commercial distribution was delayed in the United States due to legal issues, including a temporary restraining order obtained by one of the interviewees, former National Security Advisor Walt Rostow who had claimed through his attorney that the film was "somewhat misleading" and "not representative" and that he had not been given the opportunity to approve the results of his interview. After Columbia Pictures refused to distribute the picture, Bert Schneider and Henry Jaglom purchased back the rights and released the film in March 1975 through Warner Bros.

Combat America

In 1943 actor Clark Gable served as a Major in World War II, operating out of England's Royal Air Force station Polebrook (RAF Polebrook) as a member of the 351st Bomb Group. Gable flew five missions during his term, and was tasked with producing Combat America as a recruitment tool. He worked in partnership with unit members First Lieutenant Andrew McIntire, a former director of cinematography for MGM, additional camera operators Master Sergeants Robert Boles and Merlin Toti, and Hollywood scriptwriter John Lee Mahin. Together this team of seasoned industry professionals created an energetic and educational propaganda piece intended to motivate viewers to serve their country while doing the same themselves. Produced at a time when audience patriotism was at an all-time high, the film plays to the national desire to defend fellow man and country. Opening with footage of both civilians and servicemen looking to the sky in admiration of the fighter planes as they soar overhead, viewers are transported across seas for an inspirational look at the life of a bombardier. Featuring a playfully animated narration by Gable, we are walked through the process of gearing up for flight, from checking ammunition to assessing uniforms and safety gear. Gable gives a coaching voiceover as the planes take off, advising them on how to maneuver, take flight, and avoid crashing in a fiery blaze. Conversational moments with soldiers lend a personalized perspective to hum-drum aspects of serving, such as making small talk while cleaning their service weapons or chatting casually on the airfield. The action footage picks up when we join the bombardiers in the air, as they evaluate the enemy threat and plot their course of action. Gunners are shown on alert and ready at their turrets, acting promptly on the directive to fire. Culminating in a mass air-drop, the boys deliver their payloads and return to base. An adventurous and invigorating documentary, Combat America will hold great appeal to historical buffs and World War II enthusiasts. The film serves as a time capsule back to a fight that has not gone forgotten, allowing an unaltered depiction of the servicemen and weaponry of the time.

Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories

Concerned citizens seeking to learn more about the experiences of everyday Iraqis in a time when the U.S. led war with the Middle Eastern nation shows no end of slowing get an illuminating glimpse at the true damage that bombs can do as amateur filmmaker Mike Shiley interviews people on both sides of the conflict during a two month tour of the war-torn country. A man who has received no formal training as a filmmaker or a journalist, Shiley struck a deal with his local ABC affiliate to bring back stories from Iraq, printed up a homemade press pass, boarded an airplane, and donned his bullet-proof vest. The footage Shiley captured during his stay would provide a remarkably personal face to a war that has become disquietingly impersonal to the average American citizen. From the Sunni triangle to the Shiite-controlled south, Shiley puts himself directly in the line of fire on order to speak with soldiers and everyday citizens. For anyone who ever wondered just what it would be like to be an Iraqi citizen during this extended conflict, Shiley's film affords them the opportunity to receive a firsthand answer to their inquiries.

The Civil War: A Film by Ken Burns

War may be hell, but it can make for great television, as Ken Burns proves in his masterful 11-hour PBS series chronicling the deadliest war in American military history. The Civil War was a landmark TV event that held record numbers of viewers riveted to their screens and reinvented the documentary form. Taking full advantage of the fact that the Civil War was the first war to be captured extensively on camera, Burns synthesizes evocative archival photographs (among them, Matthew Brady's emblematic images of Union soldiers) with diverse and illuminating narrative voices. Well-known actors read diary entries, letters from the front, official dispatches, and speeches from the era. These voice-over readings convey the full range of human fears and hopes of those shaping and being shaped by the war, while an engaging group of historians (most notably Shelby Foote) provide historical perspective. The result is a seamless collage that illuminates, with quiet nobility, this most painful chapter in our nation's past. It's been said that history belongs to the victors; like Homer before him, Burns demonstrates that a major chunk of it belongs to the best storytellers.

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib

Award winning documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy explores the human and political consequences of one of the most bitter scandals of the war in Iraq in this feature. In the 1960's, a prison was built in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city west of Baghdad, and during the regime of Saddam Hussein it became a center of torture and abuse where political dissidents were subjected to agonizing punishment or death. Following the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, the prison was taken over by American military authorities, and was used as a holding facility for prisoners of war and suspected terrorists captured by U.S. forces. The prison's reputation as a site of widespread abuse rose again when journalists discovered photographs of Iraqi prisoners being tortured and humiliated in an ugly variety of ways by American soldiers, a scandal which had a major impact on international thinking about the war. Ghosts of Abu Ghraib offers an in-depth look at the story behind the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, featuring interviews with observers on both sides of the national divide. Ghosts of Abu Ghraib received its world premiere at the 2007.

No End in Sight

On March 19, 2003, forces from the United States and a handful of allied nations invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power. American military leaders expected the conflict to last no more than a few months, and President George W. Bush declared that major military operations were over less than two months later. However, Iraq soon became a dangerous quagmire for American forces, and near the end of 2006, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, one of the key architects of America's strategy in Iraq, resigned from office due to public outcry and Bush declared he was "rethinking" his plan of attack in Iraq as the nation sank into civil war, with U.S. troops the frequent targets of attacks on both sides.

Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience

Writing about experience necessarily sanitizes it, theorizes Sangjoon Han, a Korean-American soldier who fought in Iraq and is one of many articulate talking heads in Richard E. Robbins’s documentary Operation Homecoming. Built around the firsthand recollections of soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the film is a spinoff from an anthology of essays, e-mail messages, poems and letters compiled by the National Endowment for the Arts and published by Random House. Mr. Han’s Aftermath, a fictional composite of several events, is one of the strongest and most sophisticated contributions. Written from the dual perspectives of a fleeing Iraqi farmer and an American soldier who shoots him after repeatedly shouting at him to stop, it reaches a tragically absurd conclusion in which the American treats the farmer whose vital organs were piled on top of him with an IV. As you absorb the most graphic images of combat and how it changes people in these works written by soldiers but read by nine actors, sanitize is not a word that comes to mind. The best pieces portray combat as such a heightened sensory experience that it demands to be written about, and they suggest that war can turn ordinary men who wouldn't think of keeping diaries into latter-day Hemingways.

Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre

This war can not have witnesses. It can not have witnesses because it is based on lies. The Americans have permitted only embedded journalists to go to Fallujah. Despite that, for example the image of the marine that shoots the wounded and unarmed warrior inside the Fallujah Mosque has gone out. And exactly because this image has gone out, we do not know how, and because it has circulated all over the world, the NBC journalist that has recorded it has been immediately expelled from the embedded body. Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre is a documentary film by Sigfrido Ranucci and Maurizio Torrealta which first aired on Italy's RAI state television network on November 8, 2005. The film documents the use of weapons that the documentary asserts are chemical weapons, particularly the use of incendiary bombs, and alleges indiscriminate use of violence against civilians and children by military forces of the United States of America in the city of Fallujah in Iraq during the Fallujah Offensive of November 2004.

I Know I'm Not Alone

This film came out of the director's frustration with watching the nightly news and hearing generals, politicians and pundits, explaining the political and economic cost of the war in the Middle East, without ever mentioning the human cost. He wanted to hear about the war by the people affected by it most: doctors, nurses, poets, artists, soldiers, and his personal favorite, musicians. Michael Franti, world-renowned musician and human rights worker, travels to Iraq, Palestine and Israel to explore the human cost of war with a group of friends, some video cameras and his guitar. A compelling soundtrack, visual and musical montages and Franti's intimate voiceovers make the film speak to the MTV, X, Y & Z generations, as well as the baby-boomers. A true armchair travel film pulling the audience into these war zones in the company of Michael's guitar, eloquence and wit - you feel the humanity, artistic resilience and sometimes horrific experience of what it's like to live under the bombs and military occupation. With its guerrilla style footage captured in active war zones, the documentary is unlike the many academic and politically driven pieces in the marketplace, instead offering the audience a sense of intimate travel and the opportunity to hear the voices of everyday people living, creating and surviving under the harsh conditions of war and occupation..

Invisible Children

Without having seen the suffering in Northern Uganda, I'm appalled frankly, it's a moral outrage to see thousands of children that have been abducted, that are maltreated, that go through the most horrendous torture by the rebel movement and also the same groups now being neglected, to some extent, by the whole international community. I can not find any other part of the world having an emergency at the scale of Uganda with so little international attention. What started out as a film-making adventure in Africa, transformed into much more, when the three young American’s (Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole) original travels took a divine turn, and they found themselves stranded in Northern Uganda. They discovered children being kidnapped nightly from their homes and subsequently forced to become fight as child soldiers. This film is dedicated to exposing this tragic, and amazingly untold story. Even at this moment, in Uganda, Children as young as 8 are methodically kidnapped from their homes by a rebel group called the “Lord’s Resistance Army” (LRA). The abducted children are then desensitized to the horror of brutal violence and killing, as they themselves are turned into vicious fighters. Some escape and hide in constant fear for their lives. Most remain captive, and grow to maturity with no education other than life “in the bush” and fighting in a guerrilla war. Of the many ramifications that a 20 -year-long war can cause, the film “Invisible Children: Rough Cut” highlights what the community refers to as “NIGHT COMMUTERS.” We watch thousands of children “commute” out of fear, from their villages to nearby towns each night in order to avoid the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) abductions. They sleep in public places, vulnerable, and without supervision.

Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance... it is the illusion of knowledge. A thought-provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other film ever produced on the conflict - Occupation 101 presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never ending controversy and dispels many of its long-perceived myths and misconceptions. The film also details life under Israeli military rule, the role of the United States in the conflict, and the major obstacles that stand in the way of a lasting and viable peace. The roots of the conflict are explained through first-hand on-the-ground experiences from leading Middle East scholars, peace activists, journalists, religious leaders and humanitarian workers whose voices have too often been suppressed in American media outlets. The film covers a wide range of topics - which include - the first wave of Jewish immigration from Europe in the 1880's, the 1920 tensions, the 1948 war, the 1967 war, the first Intifada of 1987, the Oslo Peace Process, Settlement expansion, the role of the United States Government, the second Intifada of 2000, the separation barrier and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as well as many heart wrenching testimonials from victims of this tragedy.

Enemy Image

When Baghdad exploded under bombs, television chose to bring us fireworks. But does this distant and spectacular image tell us what is really happening on the ground, how it feels or what it means? Television has the means to take us anywhere and show us anything. It can bring us the physical experience of war with all its' horrors, like no other medium, and yet the image of American war on television is disembodied, bloodless, and unreal. The invasion of Iraq was the most closely documented war ever fought. Lasting only 800 hours, it produced 20,000 hours of video, but those images were tightly controlled, producing a monolithic view of combat sanitized and controlled by the Pentagon. Enemy Image traces the ways us television has covered war, starting with Vietnam in the 1960s and shows how the military has devised ever-improving means of ensuring the American public never again has the real face of combat beamed directly into their living rooms. Comparing footage of Vietnam, including rarely-seen material shot in North Vietnam, to coverage of Iraq and using extensive interviews with veteran war correspondents and news anchors, Mark Daniels demonstrates how television that once revealed the truth is now increasingly used to hide it.

Rachel: An American Conscience

I’ve been here for about a month and half now and this is definitely the most difficult situation that I have ever seen. In the time that I have been here, children have been shot and killed. On the 30th of January, the Israeli military bulldozed the two largest water wells, destroying over half of Rafah’s water supply. Ever few days, if not everyday, houses are demolished here.. so I feel like what I am witnessing here is a very systematic destruction of peoples’ ability to survive and that is incredibly horrifying. Yahya Barakat, who teaches at Al-Quds University, told The Washington Report that he began work on the documentary the instant he learned that Corrie had been crushed to death by an Israeli-driven Caterpillar bulldozer. This documentary offers rare footage of Rachel talking to a camera and describing Israeli human rights violations against a Palestinian civilian population. The film opens with grim images of dinosaur-like Caterpillar bulldozers turning urban Rafah into a garbage pile of destroyed buildings. It continues with interviews of Rachel's fellow International Solidarity Movement volunteers, and concludes with comments from her parents

The Killing of Kashmir

I would soon learn the security forces and the militants take who they want, they torture, and they kill. Caught in the middle are the people of Kashmir. More than 60,000 people, mostly innocent civilians, have died in the 15-year conflict. Half a million Indian troops are stationed in Kashmir, fighting Pakistani-funded militants who slip across the border to attack the troops but also to terrorize the local population into giving them shelter and assistance. While both governments talk of peace, Unreported World reveals that, on the ground, very little has changed. For the local villagers life is a cycle of militant violence and government repression. The team arrive in Srinagar to find Indian police have just violently beaten a group of women who are protesting about the detention of two men and a woman for alleged links to pro-Pakistan militants. Two sisters tell Jordan that around 25 masked troops from a Special Operations Group had burst in through the window and grabbed their father, mother and uncle. The children are terrified that their parents may join the 8,000 people who international human rights groups say have "disappeared" after being taken away by the security forces over the last 15 years.

USS Liberty Dead in the Water

On June 8, 1967, US Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty was suddenly and brutally attacked on the high seas in international waters by the air and naval forces of Israel. The Israeli forces attacked with full knowledge that this was an American ship and lied about it. Survivors have been forbidden for 40 years to tell their story under oath to the American public. This USS Liberty Memorial web site tells their story and is dedicated to the memory of the 34 brave men who died. After surveilling USS Liberty for more than nine hours with almost hourly aircraft over flights and radar tracking, the air and naval forces of Israel attacked our ship in international waters without warning. USS Liberty was identified as a US naval ship nine hours before the attack by Israeli reconnaissance aircraft and continuously tracked by Israeli radar and aircraft thereafter. Sailing in international waters at less than five knots, with no offensive armament, our ship was not a military threat to anyone. The Israeli forces attacked without warning and without attempting to contact us. Thirty four Americans were killed in the attack and another 174 were wounded. The ship, a $40 Million Dollar state of the art signals intelligence platform, was later declared unsalvageable and sold for scrap.

Beyond Treason

Department of Defense documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act expose the horrific underworld of the disposable army mentality and the government funded experimentation upon US citizens conducted without their knowledge or consent. Is the United States knowingly using a dangerous battlefield weapon banned by the United Nations because of its long-term effects on the local inhabitants and the environment? Explore the illegal worldwide sale and use of one of the deadliest weapons ever invented. Was Gulf War Illness actually predicted by the DoD before hand? Why are thousands of our men and women in uniform dying? Why won't the mainstream media report this story? Beyond the disclosure of black-ops projects spanning the past six decades, Beyond Treason also addresses the complex subject of Gulf War Illness. It includes interviews with experts, both civilian and military, who say that the government is hiding the truth from the public and they can prove it.

War Photographer

A film about the American photographer James Nachtwey, about his motivation, his fears and his daily routine as a war photographer. If we believe Hollywood pictures, war photographers are all hard-boiled and cynical old troopers. How can they think about 'exposure time' in the very moment of dread? Swiss author, director and producer Christian Frei followed James Nachtwey for two years into the wars in Indonesia, Kosovo, Palestine... Christian Frei used special micro-cameras attached to James Nachtwey's photo-camera. We see a famous photographer looking for the decisive moment. We hear every breath of the photographer. For the first time in the history of movies about photographers, this technique allowed an authentic insight into the work of a concerned photo-journalist.

Deir Yassin Remembered

Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover. In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage.