Original subtitles

[narrator] Beginning in the 1950's,

the CIA's notorious mind control program knew no bounds.

[Dr. Peggy] In some cases, people died.

But in all cases, their lives were irreparably damaged.

[narrator] Classified documents and modern investigation

tell of terrible atrocities, carried out in the name of national security

both at home and abroad.

[woman speaking foreign language]

[narrator] Using the brand new drug LSD,

they sought to completely destroy subject's minds,

only to rebuild them for their own purpose.

[Lindsay] This is a real part of history

it goes against the grain of everything that we think is acceptable in America.

[narrator] Could the agency have been

involved in one of the most notorious assassinations in history?

What is the truth behind the CIA's Mind Control Program?

[theme music playing]

[birds chirping]

[narrator] The foothills of the Alps

are the birthplace of the CIA's Mind Control Program.

Just outside Munich, Germany,

lie the remnants of the Dachau concentration camp.

It was here that a campaign of human experimentation

using mind-altering drugs began.

[Dr. Luke] The Nazis conducted all sorts of horrible

experiments on concentration camp prisoners.

They put people in large tubs of ice water to see how long

it could take them to die and they put people in high altitude chambers.

They even put a drug called mescaline,

which has got hallucinogenic properties

in people's drinks.

One eye witness from Dachau said that the mescaline

experiments were conducted to try and eliminate the will of the person examined.

[Lynn] At the end of the second world war,

there was something called Operation Paperclip,

where a great many German scientists

were invited over to The United States.

They shared their knowledge, their scientific discoveries, their research

and basically took roots in The States.

[Dr. Colin] There was a man named Hubertus Strughold who did

real atrocity level of experimentation

that resulted in people dying

during the second world war. He was brought over to Texas.

A library is named after him.

And he is regarded as the medical founder of Aviation Medicine.

[narrator] The intelligence gained from Nazi scientists

via Operation Paperclip

led to huge advances in the fields of rocketry and aeronautics.

But the CIA also pursued clandestine research into mind control.

In 1950, just five years after the end of World War II,

the cold war suddenly heated up.

[distant explosion]

The West found itself at war with communism in Korea.

[Tony] During the Korean war,

many American soldiers who were shot down

by communist forces over Korea,

subsequently made public confessions

saying that they'd been engaging in germ warfare.

That they dropped anthrax and plague onto the civilian populations.

And that was something hotly denied

by the Americans.

And they accused the Koreans

of using Soviet and Chinese brainwashing methods.

And you can see the anxiety

in the United States about this whole issue

in Hollywood movies like Manchurian Candidate

and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

[Dr. Colin] So, the official story of why the CIA got into mind control

was that it was defensive and reactive

to brainwashing by the communist Chinese.

[man] This brainwashing, the psychological indoctrination

that had taken place was so successful

that we had 21 people decide not to be repatriated.

[Dr. Luke] Some CIA agents reason that even if the Soviets hadn't yet

got a mind-controlling drug,

they could get one in future

which meant that America had to have one first

to better protect the Americans and to help win the cold war.

[rocket launching]

[narrator] A number of projects were started by the CIA

to explore the use of drugs in mind control.

The most ambitious of these became known as MKULTRA.

Of all the drugs tested by the CIA,

one new synthetic chemical compound stood out from all the others.

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, or LSD.

[Dr. Colin] So, LSD was discovered by accident,

late '30s, early '40s

by a chemist at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland.

His name was Albert Hofmann.

So, he was doing research on ergot alkaloids

which are rye fungus. He got one on his fingers

and licked his finger and went on the first LSD trip.

[Lynn] LSD is the great psychedelic drug.

It's a psychoactive substance that basically gives you hallucinations

which can be heavenly and can be hellish.

[Lindsay] The CIA decided to use LSD

because they essentially saw it as a way to destroy someone's mind.

[speaking indistinctly]

And the thinking was,

if we can destroy a person's mind,

we can perhaps build it back to our liking.

[narrator] And the man chosen by the CIA

to lead the research into this seemingly incredible new drug

was Sidney Gottlieb.

[Tony] Sidney Gottlieb was essentially the CIA's top chemist.

He was in charge of the mind control program.

And he's been referred to since as the CIA's Poisoner-in-chief.

[Lindsay] So, here we have an American Jew, who is using the same

methodology that a Nazi scientist used

to experiment on prisoners in Dachau,

with seemingly, no qualms about it.

[narrator] In the early 1950s,

the CIA bought the world's entire supply of LSD

from Sandoz Pharmaceuticals for $240,000.

The scope of the mind control program soon grew exponentially.

[Lindsay] MKULTRA was a super-secret program.

Very few individuals knew about it.

And it very quickly got completely out of hand.

[Dr. Peggy] We'll never know the full scope

of how many people were involved in the MKULTRA program.

We certainly know that there were volunteers

that knew what they were getting into.

But there were also people who were coerced into it.

And unfortunately so many more that had no clue that they were being dosed.

[Dr. Luke] But at one stage, the MKULTRA Team

they decide that in order to test the true effect of LSD

they have to do it unwittingly.

And so you have this remarkable situation where at the height of the cold war

CIA agents actually put LSD in their morning coffee cups and tripping out.

[Dr. Colin] There's many ways that we know that all of this

science fiction sounding stuff is true.

The Free of Information Act liberated all the documents back in the '70s.

It's fully, fully, fully documented by the CIA.

And it describes in great detail

implanting electrodes in peoples brains,

using hypnosis, using all kinds of different chemicals.

[narrator] Inevitably, the cavalier experiments undertaken

by Sidney Gottlieb and his underlings would have dire consequences,

shown most clearly by the fate of a scientist named Frank Olson.

Former CIA operative, Lindsay Moran,

knows all too well what the agency is capable of doing

in the interests of national security.

Frank Olson was a bioweapon scientist,

and he was actually doing top-secret work for the CIA.

[Dr. Luke] On 19th of November 1953,

Frank Olson is at a work retreat with his CIA

colleagues in the woods of Maryland.

And just after dinner in the evening

the men share a bottle of Cointreau

which Sidney Gottlieb had actually spiked with LSD.

Now, Frank Olson has a really bad trip,

and one of the men who was with him says that he actually started to act psychotic.

[narrator] Olson returned home

and appeared despondent to his family

telling them that he's made a terrible mistake.

Reluctantly he agreed to go to New York City with his colleagues

to see a psychiatrist.

So, Frank Olson was given this LSD,

and it kind of understandably blew his mind.

Both prior to the retreat and even during and after of the retreat,

Frank Olson was expressing misgivings

about the programs he was involved with, with the CIA.

And these were super top-secret programs.

So, it had become evident that Frank Olson was a problem.

He was essentially a dissident.

And he expressed openly to this small core group of people

that he didn't want to do this anymore.

He actually asked to quit.

[narrator] Frank Olson's grave misgivings

about his involvement in this secretive CIA program,

would seal his fate.

The CIA's MKULTRA mind control program

used a variety of drugs and other methods to alter people's consciousness.

In 1953, one of the agency's top scientists had had enough

and wanted to leave the program.

Shortly after being spiked with LSD by a colleague,

Frank Olson suffered a nervous breakdown.

Afterward, he agreed to travel to New York City

to be examined by one of the agency's recommended physicians.

It was outside this hotel that he would meet an untimely death.

[Lindsay] Frank Olson, at 2:30 in the morning plunged to his death,

right here.

The night manager of the hotel

came out and Frank Olson was still alive at this point,

and was trying to mumble a few words

that the night manager couldn't understand.

And then Frank Olson died.

But the night manager knew that something was amiss.

If you look at the rooms in this hotel,

they are actually very small.

There would be no way that someone could get enough of a running start

to dive and crash through the glass window and fall to his death.

Even if he opened the door and got a running start down the hallway.

It's just virtually impossible, it doesn't make any sense.

[narrator] But who was responsible for Frank Olson's death

and why?

[Dr. Colin] I'm strongly convinced that Frank Olson was pushed

out of the hotel room and it was not a suicide.

And the reason that was done is

he was threatening to become a whistle blower.

He was directly involved

in all kinds of chemical experimentation, and chemical warfare.

[Lynn] I think the evidence is such that

one could say, yeah, Frank Olson was murdered.

[Dr. Luke] CIA agents proceeded to cover up

the circumstances of Frank Olson's death in public.

Although, privately they admitted that LSD had triggered his death.

Frank Olson's loving wife and children had to wait until 1975

to discover that The CIA had actually given him LSD.

[narrator] The CIA has never admitted

to having a hand in Frank Olson's death.

Yet over 20 years later in 1975,

the Olson family received apologies from CIA director William Colby

and president Ford

as well as $750,000 in compensation.

I can sympathize greatly with Frank Olson

having worked for the CIA myself.

The Central Intelligence Agency

is not now and never has been a place

appropriate for someone who has strong moral compass.

It's a place where you have to be comfortable operating in the grey.

Frank Olson was deeply uncomfortable with a lot of the things

that the CIA and the US government was doing.

If you have moral qualms,

or misgivings of the work you are doing

you should probably keep them to yourselves.

Because nothing good will come of it for your career

or as we saw in the case of Frank Olson, for your life.

[narrator] Thousands of people were knowingly

and unknowingly dosed with LSD by The CIA in the 1950's.

This project was so pervasive

it started to have some unintended consequences.

[Dr. Peggy] Some famous volunteers to take LSD

were Allen Ginsberg,

Ken Kesey, the author of " One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest"

"Grateful Dead" lyricist, Robert Hunter.

[Dominic] One of the ultimate ironies about the MKULTRA program

is that it was created by the government for control.

And yet when you look at the some of the people

who participated in the program or were closely impacted by it,

they actually founded the counter-culture.

MKULTRA succeeded in creating a revolution.

[narrator] But this LSD dosing

also had negative consequences for many of its participants

including psychosis and suicide.

[man] As you concentrate, time slows down, you hallucinate,

that is, you dream.

This is called tripping.

[narrator] A combination of human experimentation

and little oversight would lead to very unsavory side projects.

[Dominic] The CIA really had very few limits

on who they chose to use as the subjects in their trials.

People in prisons,

people in hospitals and mental asylums,

even men visiting brothels.

[Lindsay] This location here, 81 Bedford Street,

in the west village in New York City,

was actually home to one of the CIA's

most secretive, most nefarious and perhaps

little known missions.

And it was called "Operation Midnight Climax".

They gave unwitting Americans doses of LSD,

and it coupled the drugs with sex.

They used this as a safe house

and they had the prostitutes go out, bring their johns back,

and they would watch everything that happened, including the sex.

Operation Midnight Climax

was essentially the brainchild of two people.

The CIA's main chemist, Sid Gottlieb,

and also this guy named George Hunter White,

a completely out of control character.

[narrator] Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent, George Hunter White,

was said to be more interested in sampling the CIA-supplied drug stash

than conducting scientific research.

[Tony] Operation Midnight Climax has to be one of the most bizarre episodes

in this whole mind control saga.

I mean, it's a completely ridiculous idea,

to use prostitutes to lace their client's drink with LSD

and have scientists behind the mirror gawping at all of this.

I mean, really, this is voyeurism.

This isn't science.

[narrator] Starting in the mid 1950's,

Operation Midnight Climax would run for nearly a decade

with little to no credible results.

But soon The MKULTRA project would spread beyond America's borders

and become an international scheme of brainwashing.

Beginning in the 1950s,

the CIA dosed thousands of people with LSD.

Leading to the death of at least one of its own scientists.

But spurred on by Cold War paranoia,

and claims of communist brainwashing,

it would continue to undertake a variety of unethical experiments

in its quest for mind control.

[Dr. Colin] There was a wide range of institutions,

who contracted under MKULTRA.

And this includes leading universities like

Tulane, Harvard, Yale. Many leading psychiatrists and psychologists,

all cleared at top secret.

[Dr. Luke] For many of the MKULTRA experiments,

the CIA chose people who would be almost powerless

for revenge, so these are people like prostitutes,

drug addicts and even mental patients.

And in this there are horrible echoes of the selective nature

of Nazi terror.

[narrator] As the '50s wore on,

the CIA enlisted more and more institutions into the MKULTRA project,

both in the US and abroad.

One of the most respected scientists to take part in the international experiments

was the Scottish-born Ewen Cameron.

[Dr. Colin] Ewen Cameron was at McGill university in Montreal, Canada.

He was part of the team that went over and interviewed Nuremberg doctors.

His experiments were on psychic driving and depatterning.

[Dominic] From 1957 to 1964, Cameron works in the MKULTRA program.

And he was particularly focused on LSD convulsives.

And administering electro shock therapy at many times

than the normal and the safe dosage.

But one thing he's still really known for is inventing

the psychic driving technique of torture

and he did that by putting people into comas

for days, weeks, and in some cases even months.

And while the victim was in the coma,

playing white noise or repeated sentences at them

over, over and over again.

And in several cases, this resulted in

complete and permanent mental breakdown.

[Ross] So, the purpose of Ewen Cameron's experiments

was to wipe out a person's memories.

And it's obvious why the CIA would be interested in that.

And it's massively unethical, destructive treatment.

[Selwood] What's absolutely shocking

is that this was really happening.

These weren't theories on a blackboard.

People like Cameron were taking real people,

often people who were just checking in to a medical facility

because they had anxiety or post-natal depression.

And they were being put into comas

and having their minds destroyed.

And this was being done on the American taxpayer's dollar.

[Moran] It shouldn't be a surprise to any of us

that so many conspiracy theories

swirl around the topic of mind control,

and particularly around the CIA,

because this is a real part of history.

This really did happen.

It's pretty horrifying.

And it really goes against the grain

of everything that we think is acceptable in America.

[narrator] But the US government's testing on unsuspecting subjects

wasn't confined to hospitals or labs.

One bold operation experimented on a major US city

in plain sight.

In the early '50s, there was efforts

to test a number of things on unwitting civilians.

So, there was...

Uh, various kinds of bacteria were sprayed in New York and San Francisco.

Radioactive plutonium was injected into people without their consent.

All kinds of different things were done.

[narrator] One such operation undertaken in 1950

was known as Operation Sea Spray.

[Selwood] Operation Sea Spray just defies comprehension.

In 1950, the US Navy decided to investigate

how the San Francisco Bay Area would cope

if there was a biological attack.

And they did that by releasing two biological agents.

Unsurprisingly, not long afterwards,

people began to turn up with unexplained illnesses.

[narrator] Ten people were hospitalized

and one person died from this simulated biological aerosol attack.

But could the CIA have carried out similar experiments

in other parts of the globe?

Some say MKULTRA's scope reached across the Atlantic Ocean

with deadly consequences.

In southern France lies the town of Pont-Saint-Esprit.

The sleepy community seems an unlikely place for international espionage.

But in 1951,

events here put it in the global spotlight.

[speaking French]

[Moran] Multiple residents of this town,

Pont-Saint-Esprit, in France, became sick.

Mysteriously sick.

Uh, they were being hospitalized.

Uh, there were rashes.

Uh, people were becoming unconscious.

And nobody had any idea why.

And there was some speculation

that maybe there had been a poisonous agent

inserted into the bread, into the bakeries of the town.

Uh, or maybe something had gotten into the water supply.

[Schmitt speaking French]

[Selwood] At first, it was thought to be simple food poisoning.

But for some unfortunate people,

those symptoms evolved into hallucinations and convulsions.

One man jumped from a window believing that he was an aeroplane.

An 11-year-old boy tried to strangle his mother.

[Schmitt speaking French]

[narrator] What caused these apocalyptic scenes?

Many have pointed to these symptoms being very similar

to those of an LSD trip.

Recent new evidence suggests that the CIA might have been responsible.

[narrator] In 1951, hundreds of people fell violently ill

in the small French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit.

Could the CIA have been involved?

[Selwood] More than 250 people were infected, seven died,

and 50 were confined in lunatic asylums.

The official explanation why so many people just started having

these horrific nightmares and the daymares was bread.

A particular bakery that had sold bread

to a number of the townspeople was responsible.

The idea is that this was a case of ergot poisoning.

[narrator] Ergot poisoning is caused by the ingestion of a fungus

that can grow on spoiled grain.

Throughout French history, there have been a number of these deadly outbreaks.

With victims displaying symptoms

similar to those seen in 1951.

But evidence from one author suggests foul play.

[narrator] In 2009, Hank Albarelli wrote

that the CIA, possibly with the help of Frank Olson,

was responsible for what happened at Pont-Saint-Esprit.

Hank Albarelli, who died a few years back,

very thorough, very, you know, scholarly researcher,

doesn't fly off the handle with conspiracy theories,

he was strongly convinced that Frank Olson was murdered,

and that the Pont-Saint-Esprit was an LSD experiment.

[Moran] What's really suspicious about this incident

is that Frank Olson,

who we know was somehow involved in the MKULTRA program,

until he fell to his death,

he happened to be in the vicinity

at the same time that this was taking place.

So, the very valid speculation is,

perhaps this was a CIA-conducted experiment.

In the CIA's primary mandate

of the 1950s, which was to fight communism,

they were gonna use any mechanisms that they could.

So, why not experiment on a small French town

instead of a small American town?

[narrator] Because he had spoken out about what really happened

at Pont-Saint-Esprit,

Albarelli claims that Frank Olson was murdered by the CIA,

with the help of George Hunter White,

the mastermind behind Operation Midnight Climax.

However, Albarelli's sources within the CIA remain anonymous,

purportedly for their own safety.

But without solid proof of the Agency's involvement,

many remain skeptical.

[Schmitt speaking French]

[Brunache] Could LSD have been injected

into the bread at a certain bakery?

Yes, that's possible.

Though I don't think that many people believe that was the case.

It was probably some bad spores,

or the kind of cleaning products

they use to clean the wheat,

that became used in the flour.

They suffered from very bad digestive problems

as a result of this, this poisoning,

which is not a feature of LSD at all.

So, there's things that really don't match the LSD thing

and really do match the historical description of ergot poisoning.

[speaking French]

[narrator] The CIA has never admitted

to having any involvement in the terrible events

that occurred in Pont-Saint-Esprit.

However, the vast majority of files

relating to MKULTRA were destroyed

when the project was dissolved.

[Picknett] President Ford, in the '70s,

came down hard on what he discovered

about the CIA using LSD

and other really dodgy, uh, techniques for, basically, playing with people's minds.

In some cases, destroying people's minds.

So, officially, such things are no longer legal.

[Ross] There's a whole series of projects

which just were brought to an end administratively.

And then, it was all just shut down

by the Director of the CIA, Richard Helms.

But that's not believable.

There must have been subsequent projects

with different names that we don't know about.

[narrator] Even though the MKULTRA project

was officially disbanded in the 1970s,

rumors of ongoing experiments continued.

One of the epicenters of these rumors

lies 100 miles east of Manhattan...

Camp Hero, Montauk.

[Moran] When we think of the beaches of Long Island, we think of the Hamptons,

and you would never suspect that there's actually

a rather creepy and menacing military base

that's been shrouded in mystery and conspiracy for decades.

[McMahon] Camp Hero is basically a coastal defense station

built during World War II,

and cunningly disguised as a fishing village.

And, basically, its purpose was to protect New York from seaborne invasion.

There is a theory that there was a project,

and this involved the development

of psychological warfare techniques,

but also some pretty far-out stuff,

some people believe included time travel and teleportation.

[narrator] What secrets lie beath this abandoned military base?

[narrator] Officially, the CIA's mind control program

ended in the 1970s.

Yet, in the 1980s,

rumors of abduction, torture and experimentation

began to swirl around Camp Hero,

the site of an abandoned Air Force base

in Montauk, Long Island.

Although it's never been proven,

a lot of people think that there's a connection

between Montauk and MKULTRA.

That Montauk was a place where unwitting victims,

potentially children, were kidnapped and held hostage,

and experimented on with LSD.

[narrator] Locals Brian Minnick and Danielle Lindsay

have been investigating these claims for 25 years.

They have assembled all available declassified documents

to build a picture of the suspected underground base.

[Brian Minnick] We have maps of bunkers,

and we have all kinds of military maps.

This base is huge.

I'm mapping the underground as best as I can.

And, uh, we keep finding, to this day, entrances.

When we climbed in as kids,

we, uh, just rode off from the lighthouse parking lot on our bikes.

We found a hole in the wall, climbed into a bunker.

And halfway through the hallway,

there was this hole in the floor

that went across the whole hallway.

We dropped a brick, and it was about 40 feet down with water.

[Lindsay Danielle] Some were big enough for a Hummer to fit through.

They go down, kind of, like, steps.

You have to climb down, and it goes deeper and deeper.

So we don't know how big they go out.

[narrator] Although main entrances to the underground base

are now impossible to access,

pieces of the old facility can be seen from the beach.

[Minnick] We're, basically, on the eastern side of Camp Hero,

where it connected right next to the lighthouse, actually.

If you can see, the tower right next to the lighthouse

is part of the base.

So, there's rumors that tunnels start running

-along these bluffs starting right here. -[Lindsay] Yeah.

And go all the way to the other side of the base.

That might just be a regular rock, but this...

-[Lindsay] Yeah, look at that cable. -Wow.

-That is a thick cable. -Wow. This is old.

This is a communications cable.

Basically, that's a base end station for the coastal artillery.

There was an elaborate cable system throughout the whole base.

There was a tunnel that ran across here.

And since then, the tunnel fell into the sea and broke onto the beach.

All the pieces you can find sometimes.

You know, big pieces of cement and rebar.

And these wires were running through the tunnels for communications.

[narrator] There are many rumors about what happened here,

including drug testing on unwilling subjects,

due to the presence of a place known as the LSD room.

The LSD room was a former World War II, uh, house.

Base housing. And, uh, it was the commander's house.

All four bedrooms had strange painted designs,

with the trim and the electric sockets all taped off.

-Everything perfectly professionally done. -[Lindsay] Professional.

[narrator] The strange designs in this building

are highly reminiscent of the colors seen during an LSD trip.

Brian and Danielle's working theory

is that the use of LSD

is somehow connected to Camp Hero's huge radar transmitter.

[Minnick] They picked up on where MKULTRA left off

with some of the LSD experiments.

And they did what the people at Harvard wished they could do,

is add hallucinogens with, uh, oscillating microwave or radio waves.

And they had the perfect place, Montauk, to do it.

And that's when that room might have popped up

with all that psychedelic designs.

[narrator] Camp Hero's history as an Air Force base

has also led to a number of strange sightings.

[Minnick] Well, we actually have two UFOs on video.

-Um, one-- -Just when we were here.

One was a while ago, and one was just recent.

Like, a couple of weeks ago. And we were filming the radar,

and one UFO comes up behind it and accelerates,

as the next one drops down from the sky.

It turns and accelerates that way.

There's a whole story,

and there's books about Montauk.

Stories about all kinds of mind control experimentation,

advanced physics research being done there,

torture of children.

None of it proven, as far as I know.

So, is it impossible? No.

Could it have happened? Yes.

But, really, there's not any solid evidence.

[Minnick] This place has always been such an important place

to defend the United States,

and then, all of a sudden, they just left it, you know.

And another thing is, if they, in fact, had a deeper underground base,

where there's more important...

Like, something like a laboratory.

I couldn't see them abandoning that

without trying to use it till this day.

[narrator] What happened here at Montauk remains to be seen.

And investigators like Brian and Danielle

will continue to search for evidence.

But what is the legacy of the CIA's mind control program?

Could it still be going on today?

[narrator] The CIA has gone on record,

saying that MKULTRA and other associated mind control programs

ended in the 1970s.

But that was definitely not the end of the road

for its architect, Sidney Gottlieb.

[Moran] After MKULTRA, Sidney Gottlieb,

uh, continued to work for the CIA,

and he was kind of their main chemist

in devising different ways

that we might assassinate foreign leaders.

Sidney Gottlieb ended up becoming involved

in some very curious attempts to undermine Fidel Castro in Cuba.

One was to spray Castro's TV studio with LSD.

Another one was to coat his shoes with thallium

so his beard would fall out.

There was also, very famously, the idea of a poisoned cigar,

because Castro loved smoking cigars,

so he'd smoke one and hopefully die.

[Moran] Some of them were quite silly,

some of them had the potential to be very deadly.

Fidel Castro managed to evade them all.

[narrator] The CIA may have failed to undermine Fidel Castro,

but one area where it might have succeeded

was in the creation of a real life Manchurian Candidate assassin.

[Picknett] There are certainly many anomalies

in the killing of Bobby Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan.

Uh, one of them is his general demeanor.

He shoots him, and then the security guards jump on him,

and it's like he's just been caught for...

As one of the guards said, for a traffic violation.

[McMahon] There's no doubt that like his brother, JFK,

Bobby Kennedy had plenty of enemies.

And, of course, it spawned a vast amount of theories

about why he was assassinated.

And if you watch the footage of the assassination,

there is something rather unnerving and surreal about the whole event,

and what motivated Sirhan Sirhan

to commit this terrible deed.

Well, Sirhan Sirhan has always had amnesia for the shooting.

And so, there's circumstantial evidence

that he was controlled by somebody,

and was hypnotically controlled,

but it's not really quite locked down and proven.

So, I'd say better than 50-50 odds

that he was handled and controlled by somebody.

[Moran] Through the years, a lot of speculation

has swirled around

a kind of wild conspiracy theory

that Sirhan Sirhan might have been a CIA agent.

Knowing what we know now about MKULTRA

and how far-reaching it was,

and how there was, truly, no lack of accountability at the CIA,

and they were getting into bed

with, uh, mobsters, and drug dealers, and assassins,

and all and sundry criminals,

it certainly wouldn't surprise me

if there was some tangential connection between Sirhan Sirhan

and the MKULTRA program.

[narrator] In 2021, Sirhan Sirhan was granted parole.

But this was overturned by California Governor Gavin Newsom,

giving the reason of Sirhan's refusal

to accept responsibility for the murder.

With so many questions still unanswered about the CIA's involvement,

some wonder, could the CIA's mind control program still be active?

[Ross] When somebody asks me,

"Do you think this is ongoing?"

My basic answer is, "I don't know for a fact."

But what I do know for a fact is Guantanamo Bay and Abu Gharib.

Those are organized interrogation programs,

using a lot of pretty destructive, unethical tactics,

like, electric shock to the person,

uh, sleep deprivation, food deprivation,

uh, sexual humiliation.

All of these are elements of enhanced interrogations

that trace probably back 2,000 years,

but certainly back to MKULTRA.

[Selwood] Militaries and governments are always researching,

always trying to find the next edge

in combat and intelligence, to give them the advantage.

But these days, the research is much more likely

to be into automation and AI,

than it is to be pumping soldiers or spies full of drugs.

[Moran] With all of the experimentation of the MKULTRA program,

the CIA really didn't succeed in any of its aims.

So, one could say that the program was almost entirely for naught.

Although, you potentially could credit the CIA,

uh, with being the harbinger of the, the age of free love.

And LSD really found its foothold.

[Ross] There is a massive amount

that, obviously, we don't know.

The person in charge of MKULTRA, Sidney Gottlieb,

who I talked to briefly on the phone once,

he told me an interesting thing, which was,

there was another unit within the CIA, in parallel to his,

conducting mind control research,

which has not been identified or declassified at all.

[narrator] We may never know if MKULTRA was responsible

for the poisonings at Pont-Saint-Esprit,

or the deaths of Frank Olson and Robert F. Kennedy.

But until more files are declassified

and the CIA is either exonerated or admits responsibility,

rumors of Agency involvement in some of the darkest moments

of the 20th century will continue.