The CIA’s Wild West era of mind control, bioweapons and secret human experiments may still be going on, bombshell testimony at a congressional hearing alleged.
On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee heard from two experts who have investigated the actions of the secretive government program known as MKUltra that was exposed to the American public in the 1970s.
MKUltra was led by chemist and spymaster Sidney Gottlieb and allegedly included 149 projects from the 1950s to the 1970s.
The program drugged Americans without their knowledge in an effort to develop procedures and chemicals that could be used during interrogations during the Cold War, weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and torture.
Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow in International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and investigative journalist Tom O’Neill warned House members that the sinister CIA experiments could still be happening in secret decades later.
Kinzer said: ‘There have been enormous advances in cyber technology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Covert agencies may have access to tools for mind control that Sidney Gottlieb could not have imagined.’
O’Neill added: ‘Is it happening today? Did it continue? I don’t know. I can’t imagine that it didn’t, though, because the technology they worked to establish over 20-25 years and spent more money than any operation the CIA ever conducted was successful. I imagine it’s being used; I have no evidence it’s being used.’
During the hearing, members of the House Oversight Committee openly questioned whether alleged MKUltra mind control experiments to turn ordinary citizens into assassins had been secretly continued and used to target political figures such as President Trump.
Witnesses at a congressional hearing on the actions of MKUltra claimed that the infamous mind control program may still be in operation today (Stock Image)
Stephen Kinzer (Left) and Tom O’Neill (Right) testified at a House Oversight hearing on MKUltra on June 30, 2026
Gottlieb believed that to implant a new mind into someone, researchers first had to destroy the one that already existed.
Subjects included criminals, mental patients, drug addicts, Army soldiers and ordinary citizens who were given drugs without their knowledge.
According to congressional testimony, MKUltra consisted of at least 149 subprojects, operated across more than 80 institutions and involved 185 non-government researchers.
The CIA secretly funded hospitals and research facilities so unwitting patients could be used as experimental subjects.
‘The American people deserve the complete record,’ Kinzer told lawmakers.
‘The victims and their families deserve acknowledgment, accountability, and justice.’
During the hearing, members of the House Oversight Committee openly questioned whether alleged MKUltra mind control experiments to turn ordinary citizens into assassins had been secretly continued and used to target political figures such as President Trump.
Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee asked both Kinzer and O’Neill if they suspected that failed presidential assassin Thomas Crooks could have been the pawn of a brainwashing program that now uses computer algorithms instead of mind-altering drugs.
MKUltra was led by chemist and spymaster Sidney Gottlieb and allegedly included 149 projects from the 1950s to the 1970s
O’Neill declined to speculate about the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting and the murder of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, but did state that the CIA ‘developed means that we’ve never been told about many, many years ago, and I imagine they’ve evolved to be much more effective now.’
Burchett has previously claimed, without evidence, that mind control programs using radio waves and computer programs were still in use today and were still transforming American citizens into potential killers.
According to the congressman, Crooks was allegedly ‘programmed’ to act as a disposable patsy, sending a warning that Trump and his supporters were targets of the so-called ‘deep state’ – a near-identical description to that of JFK’s advisor Arthur Schlesinger in 1961.
Kinzer, a historian who wrote a book about Gottlieb, explained how the US intelligence community in the 1950s justified taking terrible and unethical actions by saying they believed the US faced huge threats from the Soviet Union and China.
Because of that fear, Kinzer continued, the CIA convinced itself that hurting or even killing a few innocent people was an acceptable ‘cost’ if it helped protect the country.
‘Commitment to a great cause is one of the most fundamental justifications for committing immoral acts. And patriotism is among the most noble of causes,’ Kinzer told Congress.
‘It can be twisted, and it can be used as an excuse to carry out research under the guise that this is simply research we’re doing to protect ourselves against others. And I think that is a mindset that may still be active in some parts of our government.’
The hearing also laid bare the staggering scope of the operation.
Pictured is Dr Frank Olson with his wife Alice and their children (L-R) Eric, Lisa and Nils
Olson’s body was found in the street after falling from the 13th floor of The Statler Hotel
Witnesses said Americans were subjected to LSD, electroshock, hypnosis, sensory deprivation and psychological torture without their knowledge or consent.
One of the most notorious examples was Operation Midnight Climax.
The CIA set up safe houses and brothels where unsuspecting men were lured in by prostitutes, secretly dosed with hallucinogens and observed through one-way mirrors.
Kinzer testified that there was ‘not even the pretense of scientific experimentation.’
He said the operation appeared to have become an opportunity for agency officials to indulge themselves while conducting unauthorized experiments on Americans.
Even more disturbing were allegations surrounding psychiatrist Dr Louis Jolyon West, whom investigative journalist Tom O’Neill said worked closely with Gottlieb.
After combing through hundreds of boxes of West’s papers, O’Neill discovered correspondence that he described as a blueprint for MKUltra’s true objectives.
According to the documents, West proposed using LSD and hypnosis to induce ‘trance states,’ ‘confusions,’ ‘amnesias’ and other ‘specific mental disorders’ in unwilling subjects who would remember nothing afterward.
‘These experiments, needless to say, must eventually be put to test in practical trials in the field,’ O’Neill testified.
The ultimate goal, O’Neill claimed, was to learn how to extract information, implant false information and alter an individual’s beliefs and loyalties.
‘In other words, to completely switch their allegiance from one group or leader to another,’ he said.
One of the most explosive claims involved a 1956 report in which West allegedly wrote that he had learned how to replace ‘true memories’ with false ones.
O’Neil said under oath: ‘It has been found to be feasible to take the memory of a definite event in the life of an individual and, through hypnotic suggestion, bring about the subsequent conscious recall to the effect that this event never actually took place, but that a different (fictional) event actually did occur.’
He called it the ‘Holy Grail’ of MKUltra, saying: ‘The secret to taking possession of a person’s mind and controlling their behavior.’
The hearing also revisited some of the program’s darkest alleged abuses.
Kinzer described a case involving a group of African American inmates in a federal prison in Kentucky who were reportedly fed double, triple and quadruple doses of LSD every day for 77 days.
‘We have no idea what happened to them,’ he told lawmakers.
Another major focus was the death of Dr Frank Olson, a scientist who worked on CIA biological weapons programs and secretly participated in MKUltra.
A memorandum dated December 2, 1953 provided details about Olson’s death and included illegible Xeroxed copy of the death certificate
Olson died in 1953 after plunging from a New York City hotel window, a death officially ruled a suicide.
But Kinzer told Congress that he believes Olson was murdered because he intended to expose the government’s biological weapons activities and reveal what he knew about lethal MKUltra experiments.
‘The Frank Olson case, that was a murder,’ testified O’Neill. ‘I don’t believe that was a suicide.’
‘The motivation was [that] he was going to be a whistleblower and announce that the US government was using biological weapons in the Korean War and was also going to share what he knew about MKUltra experiments, including lethal experiments.’
Witnesses also claimed that people were ‘experimented to death’ at a CIA safe house in Germany and suggested that the true number of victims may never be known.
The secrecy surrounding MKUltra was compounded when then-CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of the program’s records in 1973.
Thousands of documents were shredded or burned, leaving only a fraction of the operation’s history intact. Yet Kinzer warned that the story may not be over.
Although Gottlieb eventually concluded that mind control had failed, Kinzer said advances in artificial intelligence, cyber technology and neuroscience have dramatically changed the landscape.
‘Covert agencies may have access now to tools for mind control that Sidney Gottlieb could not even have imagined,’ he testified.
‘Whether it is still true that mind control is impossible is uncertain.’
