The CIA's Operation Midnight Climax dosed unwitting men with LSD in San Francisco safe houses — and then destroyed the files that could have named them. This chapter of MKUltra examines who the victims were, how they were chosen, and why the Nuremberg Code meant nothing inside a federal mind control program.
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Imagine you're a man in San Francisco in nineteen fifty-eight. You've been approached by a woman who seems friendly, maybe more than friendly.
Let's establish what we know about the mechanics of the operation. Operation Midnight Climax ran from nineteen fifty-five to nineteen sixty-three.
The harder question is who the men actually were. The honest answer is that we don't fully know, and that gap is not accidental.
The Nuremberg Code was adopted in nineteen forty-nine. It was a direct response to the medical atrocities committed by Nazi Germany.
The most documented victim of an involuntary CIA LSD dose isn't a nameless man from a San Francisco apartment. It's Frank Olson.
In January of nineteen seventy-three, Richard Helms was leaving his post as CIA director. Before he went, he ordered the destruction of all MK-Ultra files.
The story didn't end in nineteen seventy-seven. In twenty twenty-six, Representative Anna Paulina Luna led a House Oversight Committee investigation into MK-Ultra as part of a broader declassification initiative.
Here's what the record shows, stripped of justification. Men in San Francisco were drugged without consent by their own government.
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