37. CIA Mind Control: Sex, Drugs, and Mysterious Deaths (Ep 3)

The Rest Is Classified

Goalhanger

History

4.6 • 732 Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From LSD-fuelled hallucinations to medically-induced comas, the CIA explored every avenue in their search for mind control. But how did they justify these gross violations of human rights? And what does it reveal about the hidden history of the Cold War? In the clandestine world of espionage, the pursuit of knowledge can have a dark side. As the US and the USSR battled to come out on top, the CIA embarked on a series of top-secret experiments, pushing the boundaries of ethics and legality in their quest to unlock the secrets of the human brain. Listen as Gordon and David expose the shocking truth about MK Ultra, the CIA's mind control program, and the legacy of abuse that continues to haunt the agency's past. ------------------- Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, via this link. ------------------- Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ www.nordvpn.com/restisclassified It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! Email: [email protected] Twitter: @triclassified Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It has become increasingly obvious over the last several years that the general area had less and less
0:13.5	relevance to current clandestine operations. The reasons for this are many and complex, but two of
0:19.3	them are perhaps worth mentioning briefly.
0:22.0	On the scientific side, it has become very clear that these materials and techniques are too
0:27.0	unpredictable in their effect on individual human beings, under specific circumstances,
0:33.7	to be operationally useful. Our operations officers, particularly the emerging group of new senior operations officers,
0:40.9	have shown a discerning and perhaps commendable distaste for using these materials and techniques.
0:47.6	They seem to realise that, in addition to moral and ethical considerations,
0:52.1	the extreme sensitivity and security constraints of such operations
0:56.6	effectively rule them out.
0:59.8	Welcome to the rest is classified.
1:01.5	I'm Gordon Carrera.
1:02.7	And I'm David McCloskey.
1:03.9	And that was Sydney Gottlieb, the man in charge of the weird, crazy, dark world of the CIA's mind control programs,
1:15.3	also known as MK Ultra.
1:18.3	That's my best kind of over-the-top voice.
1:20.2	That was very ominous.
1:21.4	It was ominous.
1:22.2	I do like in the quote how Sidney Gile never really says what they're working on, right?
1:27.2	He just sort of alludes
1:28.5	to what they were doing. Something with ethical and moral issues, I think, which we're going to be
1:33.1	looking at. Some people had moral and ethical distaste for trying to control the human mind.
	...

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