In nineteen fifty-three, the CIA approved a covert program to develop mind control techniques using LSD, sensory deprivation, electroconvulsive therapy, and psychological manipulation — administered to thousands of unwitting American and Canadian citizens through hospitals, universities, and prisons. Most subjects were never told what had been done to them. In nineteen seventy-three, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all files destroyed. Twenty thousand documents survived by accident.

In this episode of 5 Minute Strange, we cover the full scope of Project MKUltra — the CIA chemist who ran it, the Canadian psychiatrist who erased his patients' personalities with CIA funding, the death of Frank Olson who fell from a New York hotel window after being secretly dosed with LSD, and the Senate hearing that brought part of the truth to light only because some files were misfiled in the wrong building. The rest was shredded.

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