Operation Artichoke
By any means necessary. (The Bus 1.42)
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ARCHIVE EDITION - ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 29 AUGUST 2022
The Stop
Originally designated Operation Bluebird, Operation Artichoke was a Central Intelligence Agency project which focused on researching interrogation methods. Begun in August 1951 when Bluebird1 was deemed ‘not wide-ranging or comprehensive enough,’ Operation Artichoke was designed to centralise, expand and intensify lessons learned from the former project with the goal of determining whether a ‘person could be involuntarily made to perform an act of attempted assassination.’ To ascertain whether this was possible or not, the project additionally studied the efficacy of ‘hypnosis, forced morphine addiction (and subsequent forced withdrawal) and the use of other chemicals including LSD, to produce amnesia and other vulnerable states in subjects.’ The project lasted for two years until it was replaced by the wider-ranging MK-ULTRA.
In the 1950s fear of Communism, the supposed infiltration of Communists into the American government and the belief that these ‘same Communists had found ways of controlling people’s minds,’ fuelled not only public hysteria but also the work of the national security establishment. Much of this anxiety resulted from the work of Edward Hunter, an ‘imaginative propagandist’ who coined the term ‘brain-washing.’2 Though ‘few scientists’ believed this to be seriously possible, Hunter’s claims gripped popular imagination and ‘fit the tenor of the times’: the USSR had successfully detonated nuclear weapons, Americans were ‘being told their country could be attacked at any moment,’ and the new threat of ‘brainwashing’ was ‘even more horrific because it was so unfathomable.’
It appears the CIA ‘fell under the spell of its own propaganda’ and as a result not only justified ‘extreme drug experiments,’ but convinced themselves ‘America’s national security demanded them.’ Operation Artichoke was essentially ‘medical torture’ - unwilling patients were dosed with potent drugs, subjected to extremes of temperature and sound, strapped to electroshock machines and exposed to countless other forms of abuse.3 Starting with marijuana and then moving to cocaine - both of which were found to be ‘unreliable for use in special interrogation,’ the CIA experimenters moved to heroin4 and then mescaline before turning its attention to LSD.
The investigation of LSD as a potentially mind-controlling drug was championed by the director of Operation Artichoke, Sidney Gottlieb. Obsessed with the drug’s potential, Gottlieb pushed the experiments further than they had gone before. He was fully supported by Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA, and his work was validated even further when Eisenhower was elected President and subsequently appointed Dulles’s older brother - John Foster Dulles5- as Secretary of State. This meant that, as far as the CIA was concerned, the State Department could be ‘relied upon to support whatever Gottlieb did … including giving ‘black sites’ all the diplomatic cover they needed.’
After eighteen months of experiments, Gottlieb determined he was ‘no closer to understanding how hallucinogenic drugs could be used to control minds.’ Though convinced LSD was the substance that held the answer, he realised he needed to take advantage of the CIA’s ‘broadening ambition’ on mind control projects in order to be certain. His solution was a ‘new project that would subsume Artichoke and give him authority over all CIA research into mind control.’ Running this project would allow him to test every ‘imaginable drug and technique, plus some not yet imagined’ on not only ‘expendables at secret prisons abroad, but also to … witting and unwitting Americans.’ By this time, Operation Artichoke had become one of the ‘most violently abusive projects’ ever sponsored by the US government - and with Dulles’s agreement, it was systematically intensified in the form of MK-ULTRA.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to a fascinating article from Humanities: ‘All History is Revisionist History,’ examining the difference between the past - ‘something that happed at some point before now’ - and history - the ‘narratives and analyses that historians offer about early times.’ The debate about the nature of history began around 430 BCE - and is still going on today. Give it a read - it provides an interesting window onto contemporary thinking about how we explain about the past and the present.
All History is Revisionist History
The Recommendation
Today’s recommendation is Stephen King’s Firestarter (1980). The story of a father and daughter in a deadly game of chase as a result of secret government drug trials, I felt it fit today’s Stop well. One of the first books by King I read as a young teenager, it’s filled with great scenes - one in particular which sticks with me to this day. It’s a fun read - and if you’re a fan of Netflix’s Stranger Things - it’s easy to see its influence on that show’s creators.
From the inside cover of the first edition:
In 1969 Andy McGee and Vicky Tomlinson participate in a drug experiment run by a veiled government agency known as The Shop. One year later they marry. Two years after that their little girl, Charlie, sets her teddy bear on fire … by looking at it. Now that Charlie is eight, she doesn’t start fires anymore. Her parents have taught her to control her pyrokinesis, the ability to set anything - toys, clothes, even people - aflame.
But The Shop knows about and wants this pigtailed ‘ultimate weapon.’ Shop agents set out to hunt down Charlie and her father in a ruthless and terrifying chase that ranges from the streets of New York to the backwoods of Vermont. And once they get her they plan to use Charlie’s capacity for love to force her into developing a power as horrifyingly destructive as it is seductive. What they don’t take into account is that even a child can know the pleasure of the whip hand and the satisfaction of revenge.
Let the reader beware, for Firestarter is Stephen King at his most mesmerising … and menacing.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist is inspired by today’s Stop and Recommendation: ‘Firestarter’ (The Prodigy, 1996), ‘MK Ultra’ (Muse, 2009), ‘Comfortably Numb’ (Pink Floyd, 1979), ‘Mutual Slump’ (DJ Shadow, 1996) and ‘Mind Games’ (John Lennon, 1973). Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is from the English writer and critic Aldous Huxley. Best known for the dystopian novel Brave New World (1932), Huxley had a ‘lifelong preoccupation with the negative and positive impacts of science and technology on 20th -century life:’6
‘It’s a little embarrassing that, after forty-five years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little kinder to each other.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed a brief diversion from your regular journey!
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Until the next stop …
For first-hand Bluebird information, check this out: Bluebird (CIA) Sources for today’s Stop include Kinzer, Stephen. Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. New York: Henry Holt, 2019.
Hunter was a ‘militantly anti-Communist journalist’ in the 1920s and 1930s who worked for the Office of Strategic Services during WWII as a ‘propaganda specialist.’ After the war he joined the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination where he worked on Operation Mockingbird, the programme through which the CIA ‘shaped coverage of world news in the American press.’ In the 20 September 1950 issue of the Miami News, Hunter published an article based on fictitious interviews with a ‘graduate of North China People’s Revolutionary University headlined ‘‘Brain-Washing’ Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party’ in which he claimed the Chinese Communists had discovered ways of ‘controlling their people’s minds.’
The ‘Artichoke’ teams (there were four in early 1952 and more were added later) did not confine themselves to unwilling American subjects, though these were certainly used. They also worked in West Germany, France, Japan and South Korea - dispatched when interrogators faced ‘particularly stubborn prisoners’ or when the scientists wished to test a new drug or technique and needed ‘expendable’ subjects - ones whose bodies could be easily disposed.
A $300,000 (remember this was the 1950s) study concluded it only had a ‘slight’ interrogation value.
After whom Washington-Dulles Airport is named.
For a brief biography, see: Aldous Huxley (Britannica).
Interesting issue! I have read many Stephen King books but missed Firestarter. Its now on the list.