The MK-ULTRA iceberg

[Ed Jewett]

So what is your point here?

John, who is this question directed to?

[David Guyatt]

[QUOTE=Ed Jewett;14309[/quote]

That is a heck of an article, and thanks for posting it.

I wonder how much of it is PR projections and how much is feasible?

It all seems like Mordred's wettest of wet dreams to me.

The object of the game is to produce machines—and the italics are his—“that truly know what they’re doing.

Excuse me but fuck! Mankind doesn't truly know what they're doing most of the time, so the prospect they can create machines that will achieve this seems seems exceedingly unlikely.

Those boys in Darpa must be drinking blood instead of coffee...

[Ed Jewett]

Yes, I quite agree, David, and the totality of the programs developed over the years in terms of bio-engineering especially of mind, of the militarization of neuroscience, the use of psychology and psychiatry for torture and political advantage and warfare, of the bio-engineering of food, of all this "super-soldier" stuff, is simply Cartesian thinking -- man has been given all this to play with by divine indication and the fact that he can think -- taken to its most evil extreme.

So, I'm not sure if this belongs in this thread or the one in which the theme is "the Empire [DARPA/CIA] goes to Hollywood" but apparently there's a new movie out soon that 'is all the rage'. You can watch the 3+ minute trailer here:http://www.avatarmovie.com/

Edited to add the opening "Y" clipped in the paste-up. :bebored:

[David Guyatt]

Thanks again Ed. That film has been extensively trailed on the TV here over the last few weeks. Good idea of the screenplay writer/s to call the new planet due to be exploited "Pandora".

Yup, it fits the future nicely, I think.

[John Bevilaqua]

So what is your point here?

John, who is this question directed to?

Somehow this partial posting got linked into the wrong thread completely as a standalone little snippet. This has happened once or twice to me before as well during my last 50+ postings. Can you just delete it? Thanks.

[Ed Jewett]

“Human Experiments of a Type Not Easily Justifiable on Medical-Therapeutic Grounds”

May 12th, 2010 Via: Wired:
More than 30 years after it was written, the Pentagon has released a memorandum detailing its involvement in the CIA’s infamous Cold War mind-control experiments.
…
The 17-page document (.pdf), “Experimentation Programs conducted by the Department of Defense That Had CIA Sponsorship or Participation and That Involved the Administration to Human Subjects of Drugs Intended for Mind-Control or Behavior-Modification Purposes,” was prepared in 1977 by the General Counsel of the Department of Defense and released on May 6 after a Freedom of Information Act request.
Most of the details have been revealed in earlier CIA papers. And if anything, the Pentagon’s recap is a reminder of how little the Department of Defense cops to knowing about the CIA projects.
Still, there are some tantalizing new details. Take the origins of MK-ULTRA, the notorious CIA program that dosed thousands of unwitting participants with hallucinogenic drugs.
Initially funded by the Navy, the project set out to study the effects of brain concussion. Soon after, scientists noted that a blow to the head prompted amnesia, leading to the pursuit of a drug-based technique to “induce brain concussion … without physical trauma.” Shortly thereafter, the project was transferred entirely to the CIA, because it involved “human experiments … not easily justifiable on medical-therapeutic grounds.”
Other programs, described briefly focused on mind control. MK-NAOMI was after “severely incapacitating and lethal materials … [and] gadgetry for their dissemination,” and MK-CHICKWIT was designed to “identify new drug developments in Europe and Asia,” and then “obtain samples.”
Edgewood Laboratories, where many of the programs were carried out, is also identified as having tested an incapacitating chemical on prisoners and military personnel without the agency’s approval. The drug, EA#3167, was “appl[ied] to the skin” of subjects using an adhesive tape.
Another program, MK-OFTEN, started as a study on dopamine. But the scope was soon expanded to evaluate ibogaine, a hallucinogen, and then several more drugs, in hopes of creating “new pharmacologically active drugs affecting the central nervous system [to] modify men’s behavior.”
And the Navy is reported to have “obtain[ed] heroin and marijuana” in an effort to develop speech-inducing drugs for use on defectors and prisoners of war. The drugs were eventually tested on 14 people: six volunteer research assistants, and eight unwitting Soviet defectors.
…
Not surprisingly, the released report also doesn’t address darker questions that persist about the specifics of the CIA projects. Last year, a group of vets sued the agency for illnesses and trauma caused by the “diabolical and secret [MK-ULTRA] testing program,” which they allege included experiments with nerve gas, psychochemicals, and brain implants.
Posted in Mind Control

[Ed Jewett]

…
The 17-page document (.pdf),

Can this be saved to disk or server?

[Magda Hassan]

Can this be saved to disk or server?

Done.

[Ed Jewett]

Thank you, Magda. It struck me as something that ought to hang around long enough for folks to get a good look at it.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Ed and Magda - thank you for your efforts in making this document available on DPF.

It's worth remembering that CIA director Richard Helms destroyed all the "MK-ULTRA" (in the broad umbrella sense) documents that his apparatchiks could locate. Many of the surviving MK-ULTRA documents are receipts for contractor work and materials that Helms and Gottlieb forgot about in their mass shredding and burning.

This DoD memo appears to be a briefing based on a strictly limited search to enable the Secretary of State for Defence to say, publicly or privately, that the Pentagon was used primarily as a CIA cutout. Other evidence suggests that this position is a lie.

That said, I snorted with derision when I read, on page 5, discussing human experiments on prisoners and soldiers, that:

"It appears that all of the test subjects were volunteers, and that stringent medical safeguards and followup procedures were used."

Whether a person can ethically "consent" to being a guinea pig for drugs whose clinical effects are unknown, but are believed to incude severe "modification" of human behaviour, and for which no medical treatment or antidotes are known, is highly debatable.

At the very least, the doctors would have to inform the subject that there was no known antidote for the drug he was about to take, for consent to be informed.

When the human subjects are either prisoners or soldiers, both of whom exist in highly authoritarian and rank-driven institutions where automatic obedience is expected, I find it hard to see how consent could ever be judged to be informed and freely given.