FREE now and never miss the top politics stories again. SUBSCRIBE Invalid email Sign up fornow and never miss the top politics stories again. We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights.

By the Sixties, the CIA and US government had several covert operations which focused on harnessing techniques of manipulation to get the upper hand in the Cold War. Though perceived as a serious threat, authorities could not push ahead with the experiments without a pretext or justification.

The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 acted a the perfect backdrop for what would lead to 30 years of experimentation with chemicals, manipulation, and torture. During the war some US POWs cooperated with their captors. They were thought to have supplied information to the enemy, in some cases even defecting to the opposite side. It led military officials to believe that Maoist China – fighting alongside North Korea in the conflict – was using some sort of coercive persuasion, later dubbed “brainwashing”.

Mind control: The CIA used the Korean War as a pretext to kick-start its brainwashing campaign

Gina Haspel is the current director of the CIA

US authorities had already been testing the effects of various chemicals and experiments on US soldiers. Biki Atoll is among the most salient pre-Korean War examples of this – between 1946 and 1962, around 500,000 men were exposed to radiation in order for scientists to observe the impact of nuclear war on the human body. But, such tests and experiments cost vast sums of money, and in the early days, authorities had no reason to receive such funds. The CIA used the Korean War’s looming danger to obtain budgets that allowed them to work on brainwashing. JUST IN: Messiah season 2 Netflix release date: Will there be another series?

Korean War: The war in present-day North Korea justified the CIA's funding

Operation Paperclip: Naturalised German scientists work on the Saturn Rocker, another CIA operation

Nazi Germany: The US recruited the best Nazi scientists to help propel its science and technology

“Before MKultra was Bluebird and Artichoke, so the whole rationale was ‘it’s defensive’ – it’s because of what the Communists are doing. “The problem is, the Korean War started in June 1950, Bluebird was signed by the CIA into operation in April 1950.” From this point on US soldiers were called upon more and more to participate in experiments. In one instance at the Edgewood Camp, Los Angeles, soldiers were made to believe they were testing gas, but were in fact inhaling toxic chemicals.

Military might: China outweighs the US' military numbers considerably

Among the most brutal of the operations was MKUltra, which eventually ended in 1973. For 30 years, people, often unknowingly, were given psychoactive drugs, especially LSD, and electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, sexual abuse as well as other forms of torture. LSD was a mainstay of researchers as the CIA believed it harnessed the potential to compromise a person’s will and manipulate them to tell secrets. With the backdrop of the Cold War and fears over the Soviet Union advancing, the CIA moved to targeting members of the public. This included mental health patients, prisoners, drug addicts, and sex workers.

MKUltra: Sidney Gottlieb, left, head of the CIA's Project MKUltra testifying in 1977

Trending