More than half a century after the CIA’s notorious human experimentation program was exposed, U.S. lawmakers are now demanding full transparency regarding the agency’s remaining secret archives. During a high-profile hearing in the House of Representatives, the intelligence service faced harsh criticism while information emerged suggesting that previously unknown MKUltra documents may have been preserved.

The hearing, titled Mind Control and Accountability: Uncovering the Truth of the CIA’s MKULTRA Experiments, was led by Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna, chair of the House task force for declassifying federal secrets.

In her opening remarks, Luna described the program as one of the gravest abuses ever committed by the American state against its own people.

– This hearing is about the crimes the Central Intelligence Agency committed against American citizens and the decades of secrecy used to conceal them, she said.

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She also dismissed the notion of MKUltra as a project that spun out of control.

– Project MKUltra was not a political failure or an overly ambitious program that went off the rails. It was a deliberate and systematic government operation.

Luna also sharply criticized the CIA’s then-chief Richard Helms, who in 1973 ordered the destruction of most of the program’s documentation.

Hidden for Decades

According to Luna, the task force has reviewed documents showing how the destruction of the archives was carried out, which still makes it difficult to establish the full scope of the program. She also stated that the CIA is now working to declassify additional documents related to MKUltra that have not been previously made public. However, no details about the content were presented during the hearing.

Several witnesses argued that the biggest scandal was not only the human experimentation, but that the American state had actively covered up what happened for decades. Historians and researchers pointed out that today, no one can say with certainty how many people were subjected to the experiments or how many may have died as a result, since most of the documentation was destroyed before Congress got to review the activity.

Investigative journalist Tom O’Neill also hinted that the CIA may have operated from a secret facility in what was then West Germany, linking this to several of the Cold War’s most controversial events.

Criminal Activity

Despite the dramatic testimonies, the hearing revealed few concrete new facts about the MKUltra program itself. The most significant development was instead that Congress has reopened the issue and is now trying to force the disclosure of documents that remain secret.

After the hearing, Luna described what had come to light as criminal activity and emphasized that the American public has the right to know the truth about one of the intelligence service’s darkest chapters.

CIA’s Secret Experiments

MKUltra was started by the CIA in 1953, in the midst of the Cold War. The aim was to investigate whether people could be manipulated, broken down, or controlled through means including LSD, other drugs, hypnosis, sleep deprivation, sensory isolation, and psychological pressure.

The program was conducted through at least 149 subprojects and involved universities, hospitals, prisons, and research institutions in both the USA and Canada.

Thousands of people are believed to have been subjected to these experiments. Among them were psychiatric patients, prison inmates, military personnel, and ordinary civilians. Many were given hallucinogenic drugs without their knowledge or consent and used as test subjects without the opportunity to refuse.

When Congress began scrutinizing the CIA after the Watergate scandal, then-CIA chief Richard Helms ordered that most of MKUltra’s documentation be destroyed. Only a small number of documents survived by mistake, which means much of the program’s activities remain shrouded in mystery. For this reason, lawmakers argue that unknown documents may still exist that could shed new light on how extensive the experiments actually were.

The full hearing:

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