Inside the CIA’s ‘Wild West’ era of secret human experiments,
The CIA’s Wild West era of mind control, bioweapons and secret human testing is back in the spotlight as lawmakers prepare to revisit the notorious MKUltra program decades after the agency destroyed most of the files.
AJ Gentile, host of The Why Files, who has built a massive audience dissecting UFO lore, government secrecy and hidden history, said Americans have forgotten just how disturbing the CIA’s MKUltra experiments really were.
‘People versus power, that’s what it is,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘I don’t like authority, I don’t like corruption, and I don’t like our rights being violated.’
Among the programs Gentile highlighted was Operation Sea-Spray, a covert 1950 experiment in which the CIA released bacteria over San Francisco to study how vulnerable US cities would be to biological attacks.
‘They sprayed… they covered San Francisco with bacteria,’ Gentile said. ‘They did it in New York, too.’
The conversation also turned to the death of CIA scientist Frank Olson, who plunged from a New York hotel window in 1953 after being secretly dosed with LSD by colleagues connected to MKUltra.
Olson’s death has long fueled speculation that the government covered up what really happened during the agency’s early mind control experiments.
‘If nothing happened, why did President Ford give them money and make them sign an NDA?’ Gentile said of the government’s later settlement with Olson’s family.
AJ Gentile, host of The Why Files, who has built a massive audience dissecting UFO lore, government secrecy and hidden history, said Americans have forgotten just how disturbing the CIA’s MKUltra experiments really were
A hearing on MKUltra was previously set for May 13, but had been rescheduled days before.
However, former CIA officer James Erdman testified in front of the Senate last week, claiming US intelligence officials seized ’40 boxes of JFK and MKUltra files’ that were being processed for declassification.
House Oversight Committee members Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Eric Burlison of Missouri are standing by the whistleblower’s claims that the CIA took secret files and marched into CIA headquarters in Virginia to demand the return of the files.
The meeting took place after lawmakers gave the agency just 24 hours to both preserve and relinquish the troves of data.
Burlinson said on X: ‘We went to deliver a message, and that message is that this is a new era. This president is demanding disclosure, and we wanted assurances that they are understanding of that and on the same page.’
‘That message was received, and we expect to be able to see all of the files for JFK and [MKUltra], etc, and we await these actions.’
The CIA’s formative years in the 1950s through the 1970s often drew on a similar ‘Wild West’ ethos.
Faced with an entirely new global frontier of espionage, operatives frequently relied on rugged individualism, covert sabotage, and swashbuckling field tactics reminiscent of Western folklore.
Pictured is Dr Frank Olson with his wife Alice and their children (L-R) Eric, Lisa and Nils
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Gentile highlighted a Church Committee investigation from the 1970s, which exposed decades of intelligence abuses involving surveillance, chemical testing and covert experimentation within the CIA. ‘It will make you angry,’ he said of the report.
He said the hearing immediately raised red flags for him because the majority of MKUltra documents were deliberately destroyed decades ago.
‘It’s gone, they were destroyed,’ he said. ‘So that’s why the hearing, to me, is… you’ve heard the expression, limited hangout? It sounds like a limited hangout to me.’
The term ‘limited hangout’ refers to the release of partial truths meant to distract from deeper secrets, a concept long associated with intelligence agencies and political scandals.
The CIA officially launched MKUltra in 1953 under director Allen Dulles, with the stated goal of developing techniques for mind control and interrogation during the Cold War.
Thousands of pages later revealed that the agency experimented with LSD, hypnosis, sensory deprivation and psychological abuse, often on unsuspecting Americans.
The program, conducted from 1953 to 1964, aimed to develop procedures and drugs for interrogations, weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.
Gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, a former organized crime boss, was used as a test subject in 1957 while an inmate at the Atlanta penitentiary. He explained he was one of eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state while in MKUltra
Pictured are scientists administering mind-altering drugs in the CIA experiments
A total of 144 projects were carried out under MKUltra during that period, highlighting the vast scale of the CIA’s secret experimentation program.
Gentile said one of the most disturbing cases tied to the program remains the death of CIA scientist Frank Olson, who plunged from a New York hotel window in 1953 after being secretly dosed with LSD by colleagues connected to MKUltra.
Olson was one of at least eight men given LSD on November 19, 1953, as part of an MKUltra experiment, Paul Vidich, Olson’s nephew, previously told the Daily Mail.
In statements made during a 1977 hearing about the activities of the CIA, according to Gottlieb, a ‘very small dose’ of LSD was added to the bottle of Cointreau, which was served after dinner.
In the days that followed, Olson became paranoid, barely ate and even threw away his wallet, identification badge and money after believing his boss, Vincent Ruwet, had instructed him to do so.
Olson was scheduled to travel to a mental health facility on November 27. At approximately 2.45am on November 28, 1953, Ruwet received a call from Dr Sidney Gottlieb reporting that Olson had died.
Olson’s body was later found outside the Statler Hotel, where he had been staying on the 13th floor.
Operation Sea-Spray was a covert 1950 CIA experiment in which bacteria were released over San Francisco to study how vulnerable American cities would be to biological attacks
Pointing to the government’s handling of the case after Olson’s death, Gentile said: ‘If nothing happened, why did President Ford give them money and make them sign an NDA?’
President Gerald Ford formally apologized to the Olson family in 1975 and invited them to the White House after revelations emerged about the CIA’s role in Olson’s drugging.
Gentile said the Church Committee findings became even darker when investigators uncovered evidence of continued biological warfare development despite public promises from the government that such programs had ended.
He referenced Operation Sea-Spray, a covert 1950 CIA experiment in which bacteria were released over San Francisco to study how vulnerable American cities would be to biological attacks.
For one week in September of 1950, the US Navy sprayed massive amounts of bacteria into the air two miles off the coast of San Francisco, California.
This secret biological warfare experiment aimed to learn how vulnerable large US cities like San Francisco would be to a biowarfare attack by terrorists.
The bacteria used were Serratia marcescens, which can cause respiratory issues and meningitis, and Bacillus atrophaeus, which can be lethal to immunocompromised individuals. At the time, the Navy believed these bacteria were harmless to humans.
But after inhaling thousands of bacterial spores, 11 people checked into Stanford Hospital near San Francisco with very rare, serious urinary tract infections that doctors ultimately determined were caused by the experiment.
‘They covered San Francisco with bacteria,’ Gentile said. ‘They did it in New York, too.’
Reports have suggested that the CIA may have been involved in ‘open air’ biological warfare tests in streets and tunnels in the New York City area in 1955 and 1956, according to an analysis of CIA records released in 1979 by the Church of Scientology.
Gentile also pointed to Plum Island, the controversial government research facility off the coast of New York, while discussing theories surrounding Lyme disease and Cold War bioweapons research
A four-month investigation found the CIA allegedly acquired equipment for covert experiments involving the release of unidentified substances through aerosol devices hidden inside suitcases and the exhaust system of a modified 1953 Mercury sedan, according to the Church Committee report.
Gentile also pointed to Plum Island, the controversial government research facility off the coast of New York, while discussing theories surrounding Lyme disease and Cold War bioweapons research.
‘Eric Traub was brought in to create that facility,’ he said, referring to the German scientist accused of overseeing Nazi biological warfare research during World War II.
Traub later worked with the US government after the war as part of America’s recruitment of former German scientists during the early Cold War.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has also suggested Lyme disease may have originated from a failed US bioweapons program in the 1970s tied to research at Plum Island.
Plum Island is an 840-acre island off the northeastern coast of Long Island, New York, and home to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a government lab used since the 1950s to study infectious animal diseases.
However, the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly said Lyme disease was never studied at the facility.
Gentile said public distrust toward intelligence agencies is rooted in decades of secrecy that many Americans either never learned about or dismissed as conspiracy theories.
‘Most Americans don’t know what MKUltra is,’ he said. ‘We think everybody does, because we like this stuff. But my neighbors, if I say that to my neighbors, they won’t know what that is.’
He also claimed programs tied to psychological manipulation never truly disappear once they begin.
‘Once a program starts, it never really stops,’ Gentile said. ‘Psychic spies or MKUltra, it just never stops.’
