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Comment by hluska | Hacker News Reader

There's something really off about this story.

The CIA apparently launched MK Ultra because they were concerned that the Soviet Union had developed a powerful mind control drug. They had to keep up so they launched their own program to do research on mind control drugs.

If that's true and this was a weapon's program instead of some people with security clearances saying "Let's party dudes", wouldn't they have actually tried to control people's minds?

In this case, you've got a US Marshall who went from a Christmas Party to a robbery over the course of a bad trip. If you wanted a proof of concept that you could make a well connected Soviet official do something, how much better of a poc can you come up with?

I know this sounds conspiratorial and it is, but the CIA giving people LSD without their knowledge is a true conspiracy theory. I'm having a lot of trouble believing they'd just get people high, let them wander San Francisco and see what happens.

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I highly recommend the 2017 Netflix documentary "Wormwood", which is a 6 hour interview with Eric Olson, the son of Frank Olson. In 1953 Frank Olson jumped out of a hospital window after he got secretly dosed with LSD by his CIA/DOD co-workers. That's how far back CIA and LSD and MKULTRA goes. We still don't know what really happened or why. It's classified top secret. But Frank Olson's son describes a pretty crazy scene in 1953, with spooks working for DoD secret chemical and biowar programs involving LSD for research on involuntary American test subjects. This was still the 50's era where the Pentagon tested A-bombs in the desert and invited crowds to watch from a distance, in order to test radiation exposure on live people. Then the CIA guys started tasting their own supply and partying with LSD. Then they gave LSD to Frank Olson in a drink. There is still a massive classified history of CIA using LSD as a bioweapon. I hope we get to see it someday.

I’d love to be able to see it and again, at risk of spreading false conspiracy theories, I can’t figure out why they haven’t declassified it yet. I mean, the DoD has practically admitted they don’t control the skies. How much worse could the MK Ultra documents be??

I suspect that the answer is “much worse.” This makes Get Smart seem like a documentary about the best case intelligence scenario…

I wonder how many initiatives were created solely on the basis that "the enemy are doing it or already have it". I can't help but think the soviets spent a lot of time trolling the US into creating exactly what they wanted. Even if it was just to waste time. This is proably still ongoing.

> This is proably still ongoing.

Of course it is, he/she/it/they said.

It’s terrifying to think how much doomsday technology we’re amassing out of the fear the enemy might have it. Add that in to scared people and a system capable of giving people LSD without their knowledge. It turns out that giving primates weapons of mass destruction was an unbelievable mistake.

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