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Comment by Fnoord | Hacker News Reader

> The Black Vault’s biggest score to date may be its material related to MKUltra, a top-secret CIA project that involved dozens of mind-control experiments on US citizens and others. [..]

Why would this be the biggest score (title doesn't reflect it)? Was this the first documentation regarding MKULTRA/ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD?

For those interesting in CIA's attempts to explore New Age (e.g. apply "remote viewing") I can recommend the documentary The Men Who Stare At Goats [1]. There's also a Hollywood adaptation of it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats

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I assume the CIA leaks mkultra and related stuff to keep the crazies busy and troll other countries.

There's also patents for seemingly impossible technology filed by the Navy.

Except MKULTRA was part of CIA’s “family jewels” —- indeed, it was so infamous that a cover letter to the DCI suggested they not familiarize themselves with the program in order to maintain plausible deniability. And MKULTRA was only part of a set of equally concerning operations, such as its progenitors, BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE, or Project OFTEN, which collaborated with pharmaceutical firms to uncover drugs too risky for release that might have covert applications (and which were then tested on unwitting military personnel).

While CIA certainly uses disinformation for a variety of reasons, this doesn’t obviate the fact that the agency has been — largely if not quite entirely in the past — a very, very amoral actor.

  > a very, very amoral actor

A criminal syndicate, perhaps?

I have to wonder about the extent to which the CIA really believed this was possible, or if it was more along the lines of "well sure, it sounds batshit, but the Soviets are doing it and if there really is something to it, we don't want to be behind in the game."

When one has infinite funding and no ethical oversight, the pit really is bottomless.

Mkultra seems pretty plausible to me, at least with the science they had at the time. LSD was making huge waves in the psychiatric community, and many humint objectives like interrogation and brainwashing are inherently applied psychology. LSD was a breakthrough tool that laid the psyche bare, if only they could discover how to harness it.

Combine that with amoral thinking about the cold war and "greater good" and it's understandable, yet reprehensible, that they dosed prisoners and johns in brothels.

It's funny you mention that, because the first thing that crosses my mind, whenever I run across stuff like this, is that the people who perpetrated these things were probably nice polite folks who had friends, got along with their neighbors, were kind to their families, and held the door open for people when they went to the supermarket.

And then they went to work every morning and played their part in monstrous endeavors that—on coming to light—make the rest of us question our faith in humanity.

I don't doubt that some people who wind up doing these things are legitimately sociopathic. But I also have a disturbing suspicion that many of them were probably normal, and bought into the idea that drugging and blackmailing some random person played a role in defending America. What matters more—some lowlife from the streets, or national security? Sacrifices have to be made, etc.

Pretty much every atrocity I know of—while spearheaded by evil people—relied heavily on the ability of normal, decent people to rationalize what they were doing.

It's more likely, given the CIA's provenance, that the initial idea came from the Nazi prison camp experiments.

It would be poetically just if people who constantly lie lost the ability to discern the truth.

If someone has a slightly more rigorous justification for the notion I would be happy to hear it.

Sidney Gottlieb, the chemist (not to say poisoner) who oversaw a lot of CIA’s dirty work, must have believed in what he was doing, because he lived long enough to regret it (and turn to advocating pacifism and good works).

Very hard to view this as some kind of genuine development of a conscience, given that he never corrected the perjury he committed during the Congressional testimony for which he was granted blanket immunity for his role in MKULTRA.

They're probably a limited hangout.

You mean the crazies like you? RV is real. Look into it and try it

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788...

Ed Dames, Pat Price, Dean Radin

Or maybe you weren't saying you think it's false, and people who believe something you think is false are crazies....

Maybe you were saying, true or not, the leak is crazy fodder and trolling. I'm sure that's part of it....

But it did seem flippant, and I don't think you should be so flippant about a topic like MKULTRA.... wasn't that seriously harmful to lots of people?

The remote viewing stuff was a bit silly, but the MKUltra stuff included a lot of very unethical human experimentation. These two things are not really in the same category in terms of scandal.

People like to laugh about it, and the emphasis on the sillier aspects are, I think, intentional. They got up to some really nasty stuff.

Anyone not familiar with the program would do well to spend a couple minutes on the summary:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

And of course it served as the template for how to deal with the Abu Ghraib fallout:

   Given the CIA's purposeful destruction of most records, its failure to follow informed consent protocols with thousands of participants, the uncontrolled nature of the experiments, and the lack of follow-up data, the full impact of MKUltra experiments, including deaths, may never be known.

One of the crazier projects https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Midnight_Climax

That is an absolute bombshell of a story and I'd guess that the vast majority of people have never heard of it but would be horrified if they did. It sounds like they even blackmailed the people.

Holy goddamn. I never heard of that.

This is one of those moments when I started to feel shock and horror shifting towards disbelief, and then remembered that this is the CIA and of course they did stuff like that because who would stop them?

One of those little examples of how journalism really is one of the last bulwarks between the country we want to think we are and the country we very easily could be.

The Church committee[1] in '75 did some good work to reign in the worst of the intelligence communities work. Most of that has been undone by now though.

The CIA's work on LSD wasn't the worst thing going on and - surprisingly to me - the intelligence agencies were far from the worst. Eg, there was a Sloan-Kettering Institute researcher who injected live cancer cells into unwitting humans through out the 1950s and 60s[2]. Or in 1952 a Detroit Hospital administered radioactive iodine to premature babies, and fed it via a tube to healthy non-premature babies. Or the doctor who administered 100 or more rads of radiation after forging consent forms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

If you think that's horrifying, let me introduce you to Dr. Jolly West and the Jimmy Shaver case:

https://theintercept.com/2019/11/24/cia-mkultra-louis-jolyon...

Highly recommend Tom O'Neill's 'CHAOS' for some of the new details he dug up on MKULTRA. The rumor mill has it that he is working on a new book exploring its potential ties to the RFK assassination, the Grateful Dead, and the Jonestown massacre.

On the subject of the Jonestown/MKULTRA links, also check out this interview with an aide to Congressman Leo Ryan (who was killed when he went to investigate in Guyana): https://twitter.com/gumby4christ/status/1289361962917191681

The fringes of this material gets wild and significantly less credible really fast. It is very important to stick to the hard facts when dealing with government wrongdoing or you open yourself up to the “conspiracy theory” thought stopper charge.

Wild conspiracy theories help cover up actual conspiracy and malfeasance.

The stuff you are referencing is definitely not impossible, but it’s unproven and likely unprovable and is mixed in with a lot of trash. We have enough documented stuff about the government meddling with the counterculture (e.g. COINTELPRO) that we don’t need to make shit up or chase phantoms.

> Wild conspiracy theories help cover up actual conspiracy and malfeasance.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you believe the principal actors in the publicly known and acknowledged aspects of MKULTRA were not held to account because of 'wild conspiracy theories' which had little traction outside fringe newsletters in the 1970s when MKULTRA came to some semblance of public light? Do you believe the general public would be more aware and educated about these abuses if not for the existence of those theories?

There's nothing outside hard facts in any of what Tom O'Neill has printed, so you can save your charges that I am "making shit up" or "chasing phantoms." The idea that he is exploring connections to the other historical events I mentioned is so far just rumor, but rumor to which O'Neill himself has lent some credence on his own Twitter page: https://twitter.com/chaosmansonbook/status/12990091441424179... https://twitter.com/chaosmansonbook/status/12990005775952486...

Everyone already knows the standard narrative line that "MKULTRA was a temporary, discontinued, and largely unsuccessful program, which like COINTELPRO was ended (we promise!) when documentary evidence of it was brought to light." I don't see how informed, fact-based speculation that there may be more to it than that does anything to 'cover up' or absolve the people involved.

That's nothing; look at what they did in Canada:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_experiments

'The Men Who Stare at Goats' points out that the whole "haha they're making them listen to the Barney song, that drives me crazy when my kids make me put it on too!" was probably a cover for more sinister interrogation or even mind control techniques being explored with music blasted at prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Surely just a coincidence that the cult leader of ISIS was at that same prison ....

I can certainly see someone being radicalized to the point of delusional psychosis by being victimized in this way.

There was actually some truth to remote viewing working in very specific scenarios. Operationally is a different story though.

The studies, Ganzfeld experiments, said once you learn if you were right or not, your skill improves a little. For some reason young students from Julliard had the highest scores. The test was 4 possible pictures iirc and you must guess the picture another person is looking at.

In a meta-analysis over 25 Ganzfeld experiments, where the design enabled the test subject to guess right in 25 percent of the cases, the overall hit rate was 37 percent. The odds for this to happen by chance is about a trillion to one, clearly showing that there has to exist something else than coincidence that enables the test subjects to perceive the telepathically transferred image. When artistically gifted musicians from the Julliard School in New York City were tested, they were even able to produce a hit rate as remarkable as 75 percent. [24,36,44]

In a meta-analysis of 653 formal sessions and 126 nonformal sessions of remote viewing, conducted at Princeton University from 1976 to 1999, the overall results gave a significant result with odds against chance of 33 million to one that it was possible for an individual to receive sensory impressions from a distant location. [38-43]

24. Radin, D., Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, New York, United States of America, 2006.

36. Honorton, C., “Meta-analysis of psi ganzfeld Research: A Response to Hyman,” Journal of Parapsychology 49 (1985): 51–91. 1. 38. Jahn, R. G., & Dunne, B. J., “Information and Uncertainty in Remote Perception Research,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 17 no. (2) (2003): 207–41. 39. Jahn, R. G., & Dunne, B. J., “The PEAR Proposition,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 19 no. (2) (2005): 195–245. 40. Puthoff, H. E., “CIA-initiated Remote Vviewing at Stanford Research Institute,” Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies, Summer, 2001: 60–67. 41. Targ, R., “Remote-Viewing Replication: Evaluated by Concept Analysis,” Journal of Parapsychology 58 (1994): 271–84. 42. Targ, R., Limitless Mind: A guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2004. 43. Utts, J. M., An Assessment of the evidence of psychic functioning. JSE 10:3-30, 1996. Accessed October 17, 2013, http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_10_1_utts.p....

44. Schlitz, M. J., & Honorton, C., “Ganzfeld psi Performance Within an Artistically Gifted Population,” J Am Soc Psych Res 86 (1992): 83–98. Accessed November 20, 2013, http://media.noetic.org/uploads/files/Ganzfeld_Juliard_Study....

Has there been recent research on this? It'd be interesting to see if seeing the person's face matters, or how far they are, or what traits the more gifted have other than a talent for music.

Seeing faces doesn't matter, there are other ways to create an association to get on target. Distance doesn't matter. Some people are more naturally talented. But since it's relatively unknown there are probably lots of very talented people out there who have no idea they have talent.

You can check out the Applied precognition project. this group brings together many of the well-known and prominent researchers and I suppose former government practitioners. and also permits I think members of public to get involved in regular taskings.

This is absolutely crazy.

Rather than watching the goats movie which is pretty bullshit, search the CIA library for "CENTER LANE SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAM" which was the DIA's remote viewing, remote influence program utilizing psychoenergetics.

It resulted in at least "3 intelligence community firsts", was rated by Joint Chiefs of Staff as producing intelligence qualitatively the same as other sources, and (even tho it continued long after) until 1983 50% of the collection missions produced actionable intelligence while 85% had accurate target information.

So it's neither "silly", nor for "crazies" nor disparagingly "New Age". But it requires critical and unbiased thinking to engage with it without falling into the "feel good" trap of baseless ridicule.

The program developed methods and training for remote collection and influence, and the CIA reading room has an abundance of formerly SAP classified information about this, which I think is just crazy that it has been released, but it has.

To people reacting like this is made up...you can sit there in your armchair and feel better by telling yourself this has to be bogus, because that's what you've been told to think, or you can discover the information that's been put in front of you but not widely publicized if you can escape your trained bias. This is an incredible story.

But what is a plausible mechanism of action for this? I think that’s why people assume it is bullshit.

Speaking as someone who has seen evidence that remove viewing actually works, put simply: we don't know. But it certainly implies that we don't know everything about the universe and how it works.

I would also point out that any non-obvious technical advancement wouldn't have a plausible mechanism of action, until we learn enough to figure it out.

It's a puzzle I would certainly like to figure out. But it's also a puzzle with far-reaching implications for both physics and society. It would have massive implications for privacy, and even calls free will into question. (If it's possible to remote-view the future, is that just one possible future, or is it /the/ predetermined future?).

You know what? On second thought, even having seen it work, I would be more comfortable staying in denial and assuming it's bullshit. (And THAT is why all this is classified.)

Exactly, except for your last sentence I totally agree. I wish this was a more widely held view. How interesting would it be to build devices that interact with this effect, among other benefits that could come from research and wide use.

I don't know if there's classified accepted theories about how this works, but I think there's no public info that has been supported by science.

Your last sentence I think it's maybe a factor why it's classified... But I think the fact that this is a weapon and intelligence source must be the main one. But given that, why would there be so much unclassified from center lane? I think it only makes sense logically if they have a countermeasure... Which is super interesting in itself.

About the future I don't think it changes it or affects free will as much as people think and not more than anything else. For instance say you're driving down the highway and you're trying to get to some place and what can you do you don't have a map you can just read the signs and try and make the right turn offs and then find your way there. But if I stop your car and give you a GPS suddenly you know exactly how to get there and maybe the information is not always accurate but it's better than not having a map at all. It lets you see down the highway and down the path much further than if you didn't have that augmented information. I think this ability is just like that. Did the GPS change your future because it told you that there's traffic up ahead or this particular route is going to be quicker than this other route or does it mean you don't have free will because it showed you the correct turn off starts here and you then take it, whereas if you didn't have this GPS you were going to miss it.

I think every creature needs to have some idea of the future in front of it so I think everybody's always getting some sort of model of or information about their possible futures and they're making choices with regard to that.... does that information or them having choices mean that the future is predetermined or there's multiple paths...I think that's a separate maybe philosophical question. But I think all that this kind of ability does is augment and provide more information about those possibilities. I don't think it's fundamentally changes the game on the question of free will or predetermination.

I have my own theory about how it works. That there's the informational field, which contains all information about everything that ever exists, and you can tune into, and query this. I think there's quantum structures in our brains that are transceivers to access this. I wonder what's the overlap between consciousness and this informational field.... And is the informational field encoded in particles/fields we can already detect, or something else.

Well, to be honest my last sentence was a bit tongue-in-cheek. I truly do want to know why and how it all works. I'm just not comfortable with the idea that anyone with the know-how to do this can invade my privacy, and there's nothing I can do about it.

And I'm not comfortable with the idea that a skilled enough person can use remote viewing to predict the future with near-100% accuracy. Firstly, it just doesn't seem fair. :) Secondly, it makes me question my own free agency in the world. For example, imagine I remote-view your future 5 years from now. Today you might scoff, thinking it's likely to be bullshit. But imagine that ALL my predictions eventually come true. It would feel like the exact opposite of the butterfly effect... as if the moment I viewed your future, it was "observed" and thus became reality. Every decision that you make (or anyone in your life makes) was, from the moment of my prediction, set in stone. I would like to think that the world doesn't work like that... but strangely enough, that's what I've experienced.

That's really interesting. Does predicting it alter the path and fix it more than if you didn't know? I suppose you can always, "choose against" once knowing... But i think most people can relate they have moments of free will and moments where they felt out of control, such as suddenly overcome with emotion in the moment and said or did something they might not have had they thought more. Interesting, I wonder if no matter how far you try to run from your "fate", these little moments of "giving in to temptation" drag you back to the predicted path... Who knows

Anyway, I'm really curious to know the story and details of what happened. If you don't feel like sharing here, you could email me if you still wanted to tell it :)

I don't understand how consciousness works and I can't say I have first hand experienced your consciousness, but I don't assume your having consciousness is bullshit... I suppose because you're a person... and I can see the effects of your consciousness.

It's not actually a documentary, more like a loose semi fictional adaption of a book.

He's talking about the 2004 documentary series on TV.

Thanks, yes I was. I haven't read the book.

The documentary was broadcasted on Channel 4, part 1 of 3 series, "Crazy Rulers of the World (2004)". You can probably find it in some torrent.

Ingo Swann [1] is perhaps one of the more notorious remote viewers. Worth looking into him, and his experiments.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingo_Swann

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