- At the time of the Watergate Scandal, CIA director Richard Helms ordered that Project MK-ULTRA be cancelled and that all of its documents be destroyed in 1973.
- In December 1974, the New York Times published an article claiming that the CIA had used unknowing Americans in illegal domestic activities
- This led to an investigation by Congress known as the Church Committee.
- It was discovered that Helms had not destroyed all of the documents from MK-ULTRA. 20,000 financial documents remained because they had been stored in a different area and they were found in 1977.
-The documents were financial, so they did not give much detail about the project other than who spent how much.
-The documents showed that thousands of human subjects were exposed to the project’s harmful testing and it can be assumed that even more people than this were exploited after considering how many documents were destroyed to hide this information.- There were 2 lawsuits that came up because of MK-ULTRA's events and made it to the Supreme Court, but in both cases, the Court chose to protect the government, rather than the rights of citizens.
- Later, the CIA said that Project MK-ULTRA did not make much sense scientifically since most of the CIA agents performing the tests were not scientific observers.
TODAY
- Although Project MK-ULTRA ended, we cannot be sure that CIA mind-control research has come to an end, especially in the constantly changing war climate.
- Former CIA agent Victor Marchetti says that the CIA has most likely only abandoned the name “MK-ULTRA,” but continues the same experiments under a different acronym and a divided budget.
IN CONCLUSION:
The CIA did all of this inhumane testing at the cost of the lives of innocent American citizens. This is an embarrassing time in American history. Project MK-ULTRA did not respect human rights, nor gain knowledge. It was a waste of time, money, and mostly human lives. National safety is important, but not as important as the safety of American citizens. It is obvious in Project MK-ULTRA that the CIA was not concerned with the safety of American citizens as they destroyed their subjects’ minds, gave them psychological disorders, and even killed them, all for the sake of pointless testing. The government is supposed to protect its people, not exploit them and use them as guinea pigs without their consent.
The CIA did all of this inhumane testing at the cost of the lives of innocent American citizens. This is an embarrassing time in American history. Project MK-ULTRA did not respect human rights, nor gain knowledge. It was a waste of time, money, and mostly human lives. National safety is important, but not as important as the safety of American citizens. It is obvious in Project MK-ULTRA that the CIA was not concerned with the safety of American citizens as they destroyed their subjects’ minds, gave them psychological disorders, and even killed them, all for the sake of pointless testing. The government is supposed to protect its people, not exploit them and use them as guinea pigs without their consent.