Friday, 26 June 2015

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FALLS: Supreme Court ruling legalizes same-sex marriage nationwide!





Supreme Court ruling legalizes same-sex marriage nationwide

The Supreme Court in a historic 5-4 ruling on Friday said there is a right to same-sex marriage in all 50 states, delivering a monumental win for gay rights across the country.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the swing vote on the court, sided with its more liberal members and authored the 34-page decision.

He wrote that marriage is a "keystone of the nation's social order" and that there is "no difference between same- and opposite-sex couples with respect to this principle."
Kennedy then criticized that same-sex couples are denied the benefits that states have linked to marriage.
"It is demeaning to lock same-sex couples out of a central institution of the nation’s society, for they too may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage," he wrote.
Supporters of same-sex marriage cheered outside the Supreme Court as word of the decision leaked outside. Many held flags adorned with a blue and yellow equal sign, the logo of the LGBT advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign.
Marc Solomon, national campaign director for Freedom to Marry, called the decision a “profound victory.”
“America has once again fulfilled its promise of the Constitution to another group of Americans,” he said.
Kennedy’s opinion declares that all states must recognize same-sex marriages under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. He swats down the argument promoted by those against same-sex marriage, who asserted that granting same-sex marriage would devalue or harm the institution of traditional marriage.
“Far from seeking to devalue marriage, the petitioners seek it for themselves because of their respect — and need — for its privileges and responsibilities,” he writes.
“And their immutable nature dictates that same-sex marriage is their only real path to this profound commitment.”
All four conservative justices wrote dissenting opinions, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the longest, 29 pages, of which he read excerpts from the bench.
 
While Roberts recognized the day is a monumental one for gays and lesbians, he wrote that it has “nothing to do” with the Constitution.
“If you are among the many Americans — of whatever sexual orientation — who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision,” he writes.
“Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.”
Justice Antonin Scalia, fresh off of a scathing dissent in Thursday’s Affordable Care Act case, penned his own decision even though he said he completely agrees with Roberts’s views, in order to "call attention to this court’s threat to American democracy." 
Scalia writes that the outcome of the decision is not particularly important to him, and that he believes the law can recognize “whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes, and can afford them favorable civil consequences.”
But, as he warned in his dissent Thursday, he views the opinion as an overreach by the court that goes beyond its role as a neutral arbiter to create policy.
“Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court,” he writes.
“This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”
The fierce national debate over same-sex marriage, which spans more than a decade, began when gay and lesbian couples started to challenge state-approved bans on gay marriage in courts across the country.
Most of the bans were struck down as unconstitutional in a succession of federal court rulings, but that string of victories for gay marriage supporters came to an end in November, when the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld bans in Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan and Kentucky. 
The ruling created a lower court split, forcing the high court to answer calls from those on both sides of the fight to revisit same-sex marriage. 
In the case, known as Obergefell v. Hodges, the court was faced with answering two questions: whether states are required to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and whether states have to recognize same-sex marriage licenses from other states under the 14th Amendment.
That second question is moot after the ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.
The court released the decision on the anniversaries of two other seminal Supreme Court decisions on same-sex marriage: Lawrence v. Texas and U.S. v. Windsor. Lawrence struck down anti-sodomy laws in 2003; Windsor struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, which codified the federal government’s definition of marriage as only heterosexual. 
Public support for gay marriage in the United States has steadily grown in recent years.  
A record 57 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. But while almost two-thirds of Democrats and independents back legalizing same-sex marriage, just one-third of Republicans share that view.
That partisan divide could complicate the calculus for Republicans ahead of the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton, the current Democratic front-runner, has already incorporated the issue into her campaign, which she launched with a video that included a brief appearance by a same-sex couple.
But every GOP candidate has spoken out against granting a national right to same-sex marriage, so all eyes will be on how the party reconciles that stance with the court decision.
The party and its presidential contenders will have to decide whether to punt on the issue and remove it from the electoral conversation, or to dig in and fight back with a proposal for a constitutional amendment to overrule the court, as Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Gov. Scott Walker (Wis.) have supported.

Source: THE HILL 
hehill.com/homenews/news/246241-supreme-court-ruling-legalizes-same-sex-marriage

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Thursday, 25 June 2015

Scientists Create First Entirely Lab-Grown Baby – The Soulless Humans

THEY CALL IT ONE OF THE HOLY GRAIL IN MEDICINE.....BUT WE CALL IT AN ABOMINATION

Scientists Create First Entirely Lab-Grown Baby – The Soulless Humans......By NotAllowedTo

lab baby
KOLTSOVO, RUSSIA – Scientists and researchers from Vector (State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology – Государственный научный центр вирусологии и биотехнологии Вектор), had successfully given life to the first human baby grown entirely in vitro and created from reprogrammed stem cells.
Frankenstein, Dr. Ivanov and his team after two years of research and experiments; gave life to an artificially created young boy in heir biotechnology lab, located in southern Russia.
Scientists have named the baby “ADAM” who was born on 15th of June 2015 in a laboratory of the research center. He weights only 400 grams and is barely seven inches (18 cm) tall, but the experts believe that his chances of survival are very good.
lab baby born
The tiny newborn is the size of a 22-week gestation baby and needs a ventilator and a feeding tube, but is otherwise “rather healthy”, say the scientists.
The project director and the famous genetician, Dr. Аlexei  Nicolaïevitch Ivanov said:
“The ability to create an entire human being from simple cells, in a lab, is definitely one of the ‘holy grails’ in medicine. This is a major breakthrough! For the first time, we literally created intelligent life from scratch!”
This is the new era of science, its the first time that scientists have literally given life to a human being, and the process is extremely complicated. The young boy had to be artificially assembled on a microscopic level, from various cells, which had previously been reprogrammed to become specific organs.
Scientists used specialised human cells derived from stem cells, which are called fibroblasts. These fibroblasts were turned into different cell strains, by flipping a genetic “switch” in their DNA, to create the various organs.
These “organ cells” were then assembled to create a living human embryo, and placed inside an artificial gestational sac, in a specially designed tank. This tank made to simulate amniotic fluids, contained mainly water with electrolytes, but also proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and phospholipids, and urea, to help him grow.
The embryo, then grew and developed for 36 weeks under the close supervision of a team of experts, until he reached full development.
russian lab
VECTOR Institute has been conducting a lot of controversial biotechnological experiments over the years, including many projects like cloning and biological warfare.
Dr. Ivanov explains :
“We created this tiny living being, and we watched him grow and develop, day after day. I have two kids myself, but this was totally different… Adam has no father or mother, he is entirely our creation. We created life from nothingness, and that makes me extremely proud. It was a wonderful experience.”
The announcement of Adam’s “birth” has brought Dr. Ivanonv and his team, dozens of violent critics. Many scientists, including Professor Clare Blackburn, from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh,  denounced the unethical and immoral nature of the research project, claiming the actual scientific knowledge is insufficient to carry such experiment.
Professor Clare Blackburn said :
“We are hardly capable of creating viable organs, at the moment, so creating an entire being is just crazy. It still remains to be seen whether, in the long term, cells generated using direct reprogramming will be able to maintain their specialised form and avoid problems such as tumour formation. For all we know, this baby could gradually regress and become a sort of DNA ‘blob’…”

Wednesday, 24 June 2015

10 Dirty Secret CIA Operations

BY: MIKE FLOORWALKER
We’ve always loved to discuss some of the shadier dealings of the government and the military—and no organization provides more fodder for these discussions than the American Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA has a way of very publicly blowing their cover—seeming to pop up wherever turmoil, strife, and political unrest materialize. Despite being almost synonymous with dirty tricks, the Agency has essentially been given free rein, permitted to use whatever tactics they see fit to deal with any (real or perceived) threat to American interests.
If there’s one thing we know about absolute power, it’s that it corrupts absolutely; and if there’s one thing we know about the CIA, it’s that the astoundingly unethical and criminal projects highlighted in this list are probably just the tip of the iceberg.
10
Operation PBSUCCESS
arbenz-mural
PBSUCCESS was the code name for a CIA-backed coup led against the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, the President of Guatemala, in 1954. It’s one of the first in a long line of suspected or acknowledged CIA interventions in the governments of foreign countries, and it was indeed a tremendous success from the Agency’s point of view.—the first indication that such a feat could be accomplished relatively smoothly.
Elected in 1950, Arbenz set about instituting reforms aimed at making his country self-sufficient, by giving huge chunks of government land back to citizens. This rubbed the US Government the wrong way, as much of this land was “owned” by the United Fruit Company, a truly evil corporation with which the Eisenhower administration was snugly in bed at the time (CIA director Allen Dulles and his brother John, the Secretary of State, both had strong ties to the company).
The Agency snidely referred to Arbenz policies in internal memoranda as “an intensely nationalistic program of progress colored by the touchy, anti-foreign inferiority complex of the ‘Banana Republic.’ ” In other words, non-dependence on the US and its allies was not to be tolerated.
Four hundred and eighty CIA-trained mercenary soldiers, led by exiled Guatemalan military officer Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, forcibly wrested Guatemala from Arbenz’ control. While he and his aides were able to flee the country, CIA documents show that “the option of assassination was still being considered” right up until the day he resigned on June 27, 1954.
9
Operation Mongoose
Fidel Castro 01
After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the Agency’s public image was worse than ever. President Kennedy famously proclaimed that he would “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds” (shortly before getting shot, but we digress). But to deal with Cuba, he turned to the only person he knew he could trust: his brother, Robert, who organizedOperation Mongoose. This operation was conducted by the Department of Defense in conjunction with the CIA, under Robert Kennedy’s supervision. He told his team at its first briefing that deposing Castro was “the top priority of the US government—all else is secondary—no time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared.”
Among the dozens of extremely silly methods of assassination proposed: infecting Castro’s scuba gear with tuberculosis; planting exploding seashells at a favorite diving site; slipping him a poisoned fountain pen; and even even poisoning or slipping a bomb into one of his cigars. Castro’s bodyguard asserted that there were hundreds of CIA schemes on Castro’s life—and they all ended in failure, a gigantic waste of time and money. Castro was Cuba’s dictator for forty-nine years, stepping down in 2008 due to failing health, and appointing his younger brother as his replacement.
8
CIA-Produced Pornography
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President Sukarno ruled Indonesia from 1959 until 1966, when he was deposed by Suharto, one of his generals. Sukarno had been deemed pro-Communist by the CIA, which meant there would inevitably be an attempt to oust him or at least make him look bad—but the plot they actually came up with was truly laughable.
The CIA produced a porno film starring a Sukarno look-alike, titled “Happy Days”, for distribution in Indonesia. Not that the culture generally frowns upon such things, but as the CIA understood it, “being tricked, deceived, or otherwise outsmarted by one of the creatures God has provided for man’s pleasure cannot be condoned” in Indonesian culture, and “what we were saying was that a woman had gotten the better of Sukarno.” The film went as far as production, and stills were made, but for some reason (perhaps common-sense) it was never deployed.
Bizarrely enough, this idea resurfaced shortly before the Second Gulf War, when the CIA suggested that a fake gay porno featuring Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden be produced in order to discredit these men in the eyes of their followers. This went nowhere—at least one official claiming that nobody would care. “Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos.”
7
Pakistani Vaccine/DNA Collecting Drive
Vaccinate 87126793
The May 2011 raid that killed Osama Bin Laden was the result of an insane amount of intelligence collecting and planning; regardless of his crimes, conducting a US military operation to kill a foreign national on Pakistani soil was bound to have myriad consequences. A courier had been tracked to an Abbottabad compound, where it was pretty damn certain Bin Laden was hiding. But before conducting the raid, they had to be absolutely sure—and one method of collecting this proof was shady in the extreme.
The CIA recruited a respected Pakistani doctor to organize a fake vaccination drive in the town, and in the process collected thousands of blood samples from children in the area children—among them, as it turned out, Bin Laden’s children. Since theirs was a fairly upscale section of town, the campaign began in a poorer area to make it look more authentic, then moved on to the neighborhood housing the Bin Laden compound a month later—without even following up with the required second or third doses in the poor area. The whole thing worked—with consequences.
For one thing, Dr. Shakil Afridi—the doctor involved—has been convicted of treason by the Pakistani government and given a thirty-three-year prison sentence (“Wouldn’t any country detain people for working for a foreign spy service?” one Iranian official helpfully pointed out). For another, the campaign has caused irreparable damage to organizations that carry out legitimate vaccinations. There are deep-seated suspicions in many Middle Eastern regions about those who provide vaccinations, and this gambit to assist in finding Bin Laden has only bolstered those suspicions—particularly in Nigeria, India and of course Pakistan, where efforts to eradicate polio are ongoing.
6
Muammar al-Qaddafi
In+Profile+Muammar+Al+Gaddafi+Rklg5Zxgaccl
February 2011 saw the beginning of the Libyan Revolution, which would culminate in the August ousting of Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, followed by his capture and killing in October. There was little mention at the time of any potential involvement by foreign interests—but about one year later, an incident occurred which shed a curious light on the entire Revolution.
On September 11, 2012, an American diplomatic mission in Benghazi came under attack by armed militants. The response came not from within the mission itself, but from half a dozen CIA agents deployed from a hidden base within the city. More reinforcements arrived from Tripoli, and diplomatic personnel where whisked by convoy to chartered aircraft which carried them out of the country.
This betrayed a CIA presence in the city, which had hitherto been unknown. The Agency was forced to admit that it had maintained a fairly strong presence in Libya since about February 2011—right around the time the Libyan Revolution began. The annex which had housed the secret base was scrubbed clean and abandoned after the incident at the mission.
5
Operation Mockingbird
Tumblr Lxuvhc1Xto1Qa64A4O1 500
Operation Mockingbird was a bit of a two-pronged approach to dealing with the media: on the one hand, journalists were routinely employed by the CIA to develop intelligence and gather information, or to report on certain events in a way that portrayed the US favorably. On the other, there were actual plants within the media—paid off with bribes or even directly employed by the CIA—to feed propaganda to the American public.
Mostly, this program was meant to convince the public of how incredibly scary Communism was, and to make sure that public opinion favored taking out the Red Menace at any expense. Even scarier was the fact that having major newspaper publishers and the heads of TV stations bought and paid for meant that significant overseas events could be excluded from coverage in the media—events like the aforementioned coup in Guatemala, which didn’t see the light of the day in the American press at the time.
Congressional hearings in 1976 (the “Church Committee”) revealed that the CIA had been bribing journalists and editors for years. Following the Church hearings, newly minted CIA director and future President George H.W. Bush announced: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.” Yet he added that the CIA would continue to welcome unpaid, voluntary support of said journalists.
4
Operation CHAOS
00 - Intro - Vietnam War Protests 2
Protests against US involvement in Vietnam were proving to be a giant pain in the backside for the government’s plans in the mid 1960s. While Mockingbird was busily using the mainstream to try to shove the necessity of the war down the throat of the public, the “counter-culture” couldn’t be controlled so easily. Ever-mindful of the KGB’s propensity for their own style of dirty tricks, the CIA attempted to weed out any foreign influence on the American anti-war movement by launching Operation CHAOS—and they didn’t even bother to come up with an innocuous-sounding code name.
Since the FBI’s COINTELPRO program of domestic surveillance wasn’t quite producing the desired results, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized the CIA to undertake its own program of spying on US citizens. Their main task was to infiltrate student organizations—both radical and otherwise—in order to gather intelligence on potential foreign influences, and to subvert such groups from within. Famous groups such as “Students For a Democratic Society” and the Black Panthers were targeted; eventually, the program for some reason expanded to include women’s liberation and certain Jewish groups.
There is strong evidence that this type of activity has never ceased, though CHAOS itself was shuttered after the Watergate scandal. In 2011, the Agency came under fire for allegedly working with the New York Police Department to conduct surveillance of Muslim groups in the area, who had not done anything wrong and who are now suing in Federal court.
3
Phoenix Program
Phoenix-Program-Vietnam-War-001
Phoenix was a program headed by the CIA, in conjunction with US Special Forces and Australian and South Vietnamese commandos, during the Vietnam War. Its purpose was simple: assassination. And although this was a military unit, their targets weren’t military, but civilian.
From 1965 to 1972, Phoenix was involved in the kidnapping, torture, and murder of thousands upon thousands of citizens. People deemed critical to the infrastructure of the Viet Cong, or thought to have knowledge of VC activities, were rounded up and taken to regional interrogation centers, were they were subjected to: “rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electric shock . . . rendered by attaching wires to the genitals or other sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue; the ‘water treatment'; the ‘airplane’ in which the prisoner’s arms were tied behind the back, and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling, suspending the prisoner in midair, after which he or she was beaten; beatings with rubber hoses and whips; the use of police dogs to maul prisoners…”
Phoenix was the subject of 1971 Congressional hearings on abuse. Former members described it as a “sterile depersonalized murder program”, and it was phased out after negative publicity, though the replacement program F-6 was quietly phased in to take its place.
2
Operation Ajax
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The success of Operation Ajax paved the way for all future CIA operations of a similar nature. It resulted in the return to power of the Shah in 1953, after a military coup planned by American and British intelligence.
The first democratically-elected leader of Iran, Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, was seen as a potential liability because of his plans to nationalize the oil industry. Fearful of having to compete with the Soviet Union for Iranian oil, the decision was made to install a leader who was partial to US interests. You can probably see a theme developing here.
CIA agents Donald Wilber and Kermit Roosevelt Jr. (the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt) carried out the campaign by bribing everybody who could be bribed in Iran: government officials, business leaders, and even street criminals. These recruits were asked to support the Shah, in various ways, and to oppose Mossadegh.
It worked: an uprising was instigated, Mosaddegh was jailed, and pro-Western Iranian Army General Fazlollah Zahedi was installed in his place. Zahedi had been arrested by the British during World War Two for attempting to establish a Nazi government, and he lived up to that legacy by appointing Bahram Shahrokh—a protege of Joseph Goebbels—as his director of propaganda.
1
The Mujahideen
Chechen Mujahideen By Chewolf-D36M170
In 1978, Afghanistan became mired in civil war as two Communist parties seized control of the country. When it began to look like anti-Communist rebels were gaining a foothold, the Soviet Union invaded the country to lend support. And that’s when the US, of course, decided to get involved.
The CIA set up camps to train the rebels, known as Mujahideen, in the necessary tactics for beating back the Soviets. Advanced weaponry was also part of the deal, including—importantly—Stinger surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles. Soviet airstrikes had driven hundreds of guerrillas out of the cities and into the surrounding hills, and mitigating the effectiveness of those strikes proved to be essential in prolonging the conflict, placing a great strain on Soviet resources.
The Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan almost until its collapse in the early 1990s, but the legacy of the Mujahideen lives on. The CIA are finding their own tactics and training turned against them by Mujahideen veterans who have begun their own training programs, producing highly trained and skilled terrorists who now make up the backbone of Al-Qaeda and other radical groups. The US discovered these ramifications the hard way after invading Afghanistan in 2001. The invasion led to a quagmire of an occupation, which—as of this writing—has dragged on for just as long as that of the Soviets.
MIKE FLOORWALKER
Mike Floorwalker's actual name is Jason, and he lives in the Boulder, Colorado area with his wife Stacey. He enjoys loud rock music, cooking and making lists.
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PROJECT MK ULTRA

ONE OF THE MOST SHOCKING CIA PROGRAMS OF ALL TIME: PROJECT MK ULTRA

CIAWhen the extent of the U.S. government’s domestic spying program was revealed this past summer, many were surprised and outraged: how could a government which so prizes liberty of its citizens covertly collect data on its own people?
Yet, sadly, this is not the first time Uncle Sam, without permission or notice, secretly gathered information on its people and wasn’t even close to the greatest atrocity.  For that, there are numerous other examples such as when the government intentionally poisoned certain alcohol supplies they knew people would drink, killing over 10,000 American citizens and sickening many thousands others. (Despite this, the program continued for some time, though it was hotly debated in Congress when the death tolls started rolling in.)
One other such “interesting” program, was from 1953 to 1964, when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted dozens of experiments on the effects of biological and chemical agents on American citizens without their knowledge in Project MKUltra. These covert tests included subjecting the unwitting subjects to hallucinogenic drugs and other chemicals, among other things.
It is difficult to find official documents about this program; however, in 1976 and 1977, the U.S. Senate conducted investigations and even held a joint committee hearing on Project MKUltra, then published much of what was discovered; you will not believe what they found out.
MKULtra’s Purpose
According to the hearing report, the project was intended to “develop a capability in the covert use of biological and chemical materials.”[1] The motivation was also defensive, in that many were afraid during the Cold War that the Russians and Chinese had already developed weapons in this area. As the project’s proponents noted:
The development of a comprehensive capability in this field of covert chemical and biological warfare gives us a thorough knowledge of the enemy’s theoretical potential, thus enabling us to defend ourselves against a foe who might not be as restrained in the use of these techniques as we are.[2]
Officially authorized in 1953, by 1955, project creep had expanded the CIA’s authority under MKUltra to include the following:
Discovery of the following materials and methods [including those]:
  • which will promote the intoxicating affect of alcohol;
  • which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness;
  • which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so called “brain-washing;”
  • which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use;
  • [which will produce] shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use; and
  • which will produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc.[3]
LSD experiments
Senator Edward Kennedy dominated the hearing. In his opening remarks, he noted there was:
an “extensive testing and experimentation” program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens “at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign.” Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to “unwitting subjects in social situations.”[4]
For many of these drug tests, especially early on, there were “no medical personnel on hand either to administer the drugs or observe their effects.” Often, the randomly selected subjects had “become ill for hours or days, including hospitalization in at least one case.”[5]
Even more troubling, some of the tests proved lethal, but that did not stop the CIA from continuing their experimentation:
The deaths of two Americans can be attributed to these programs; other participants in the testing programs may still suffer from the residual effects. . . . The fact that they were continued for years after the danger of surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting individuals was known, demonstrate fundamental disregard for the value of human life.[6]
One of these lives belonged to Dr. Frank Olson, himself a researcher with the U.S. Army who studied “developing techniques for offensive use of biological weapons . . . [and] biological research for the CIA.”[7]
Along with a group of 9 other such scientists, he attended a conference in a cabin at Deep Creek Lake, Maryland in November 1953. Once there, ironically, CIA operatives spiked the researchers’ Cointreau with LSD. Only after the scientists had finished their drinks were they informed that they had been drugged.[8]
Most of the researchers handled the experience well and had no aftereffects, but not Dr. Olson. He never recovered from the ordeal and shortly after the experiment, began to show “symptoms of paranoia and schizophrenia.”[9]
Dr. Olson’s superior and the CIA who ran the experiment arranged for him to get treatment in New York City. While spending the night inA HOTEL ROOM with the CIA officer, and after requesting a wake-up call for the next morning, Dr. Olson somehow managed to fall to his death. As the CIA officer (Lashbrook) reported:
At approximately 2:30 a.m. Saturday, November 28, Lashbrook was awakened by a loud “crash of glass.” . . . . Olson “had crashed through the closed window blind and the closed window and he fell to his death from the window of our room on the 10th floor.”[10]
There is no indication that any investigation of foul play, particularly by the CIA officer (who was both responsible for the experiment and alone in theHOTEL ROOM with Olson) was ever conducted.
Universities, Prisons and Hospitals Conducted Experiments
In the hearing, Senator Kennedy noted that many otherwise respectable institutions were fraudulently incorporated into MKUltra projects:
What we are basically talking about is . . . the perversion and corruption of many of our outstanding research centers in this country, with CIA funds, where some of our top researchers were unwittingly involved in research sponsored by the Agency in which they had no knowledge of the background or the support for[11]
According to the hearing report, “eighty-six universities or institutions were involved,”[12] and “185 non-government researchers and assistants” worked on these projects.[13] “Physicians, toxicologists, and other specialists in mental [and] narcotics” were lured into MKUltra through the provision of grants that were “made under ostensible research foundation auspices, thereby concealing the CIA’s interest from the specialist’s institution.”[14]
For some of the 12 hospitals that participated in Project MKUltra, tests were conducted on terminal cancer patients – presumably because the experiments were anticipated to have long-lasting detrimental, if not lethal, effects.[15]
Sadly, to get the hospitals (and perhaps the patients) to agree to these experiments, the CIA often paid the institution. For example, Subproject 23, authorized in August 1955, worked as follows:
The project engineer . . . authorized the contractor to pay the hospital’s expenses of certain persons suffering from incurable cancer for the privilege of studying the effects of these chemicals during their terminal illnesses.[16]
Likewise, many of the experiments conducted at the three prisons were done secretly: “We also know now that some unwitting testing took place on criminal sexual psychopaths.” [17]
Not all testing was done unwittingly, although that did not make it any more ethical. For example, in a prison experiment conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health Addiction Research Center at the Lexington Rehabilitation Center (a prison for convicted drug addicts), prisoners who volunteered to participate in a hallucinogenic drug experiment were promised (and received) doses of “the drug of their addiction.”[18]
Miscellaneous Other Experiments 
An unknown number of other experiments in “such areas as effects of electro-shock, harassment techniques for offensive use . . [and] gas propelled sprays and aerosols” to be used as “assassination delivery systems” were also being conducted.[19]
In addition, MKUltra scientists were authorized to research “additional avenues to the control of human behavior” including “radiation . . .[and] paramilitary devices and materials.”[20]
Heinous Covert Experiments: By the Numbers 
Project MKUltra consisted of 149 subprojects “many of which appear to have some connection with research into behavioral modification, drug acquisition and testing or administering drugs surreptitiously,”[21]including as follows:
  • “6 subprojects involving tests on unwitting subjects were conducted.”
  • 8 subprojects involving hypnosis, including 2 that also used drugs were performed.
  • 7 subprojects included the use of drugs or chemicals.
  • 4 subprojects used “magician’s art . . . e.g., surreptitious delivery of drug-related materials.”
  • 9 subprojects studied sleep research (read: deprivation) and psychotherapy’s influence on behavior.
  • 6 subprojects studied the effects on human tissue of “exotic pathogens and the capability to incorporate them in effective delivery systems.”[22]
The CIA Lost or Destroyed All Records of Project MKUltra
Sadly, but not surprisingly, almost no records remain of the 10 years of covert activity. As Senator Kennedy noted:
Perhaps most disturbing of all was the fact that the extent of experimentation on human subjects was unknown. The records of all these activities were destroyed in 1973, at the instruction of then CIA Director Richard Helms.[23]
Notably, however, some records were overlooked during the CIA’s destruction because new records were found in 1977, as noted by Senator Kennedy:
We believed that the record, incomplete as it was, was as complete as it was going to be. Then one individual, through a Freedom of Information request, accomplished what two U.S. Senate committees could not. He spurred the agency into finding additional records . . . . The records reveal a far more extensive series of experiments than had previously been thought.[24] 
Nonetheless, these records still leave an incomplete record of the program.
No Accountability
Two lawsuits arising out of MKUltra activities made it to the Supreme Court, but both protected the government over citizen’s rights:
In 1985, the Court held in CIA vs. Simms that the names of the institutions and researchers who participated in Project MKUltra were exempt from revelation under the Freedom of Information Act due to the CIA’s need to protect its “intelligence sources.”
In 1987, in United States v. Stanley, the Court held that a serviceman who had volunteered for a chemical weapons experiment, but who was actually tested with LSD, was barred from bringing a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Expand for Further References
Footnotes

[1] Id. at 390
[2] Id. at 390
[3] Hearing Transcript App. C, p. 123
[4] Hearing Transcript, p. 2
[5] Id. at 400
[6] Final Report, p. 386
[7] Hearing Transcript, p. 395
[8] Id. at 395-396
[9] Id. at 394
[10] Id. at 397
[11] Id. at 16
[12] Id. at 3
[13] Id. at 7
[14] Id. at 391
[15] Id. at 7
[16] Hearing Transcript App. C, p. 119
[17] Id. at 7
[18] Id. at 391
[19] Id. at 6-7
[20] Id. at 390
[21]Id. at 5
[22] Id. at 6.
[23] Id. at 3
[24] Id.