Trashed Torture Tapes-- Shadows of MKULTRA

“We haven’t seen anything like this since the 18 1/2-minute gap in the tapes of President Richard Nixon,” said Senator Edward Kennedy of the destroyed CIA torture tapes.

Yes and no. The current torture tape scandal does have another precedent. Kennedy should know it quite well.

In 1977, Kennedy headed the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research. In September of that year, it probed into the shadowy depths of MKULTRA. This program-- like Artichoke and Bluebird before it-- was a CIA operation aimed at unlocking the secrets of the human mind using drugs like LSD, PCP and THC. Its chief goal was mind control-- or in the words of one agency document-- "controlling an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation".

As Kennedy remarked in his opening statement to the hearings:

... Over 30 universities and institutions were involved in an "extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to "unwitting subjects in social situations."

At least one death, that of Dr. Olson, resulted from these activities. The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense. The agents doing the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers. The tests subjects were seldom accessible beyond the first hours of the test. In a number of instances, the test subject became ill for hours or days, and effective followup was impossible.

Unlike today, top members of Congress were not initially briefed on the existence of this illegal CIA operation. The truth only came out years later, first in the the 1975 Rockefeller Commission report, then later in Kennedy's inquiry and via the Church Committee. At each step of the way, these investigations were hampered by CIA stonewalling, purjury and document destruction.

The actions of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, MKULTRA’s chief scientist, makes today's torture tape destruction seem tame. In 1972/3, Gottlieb destroyed nearly all MKULTRA records, including 152 separate files outlining unwitting drug testing on US citizens. As the New York Times reported on 22 September 1977:

[Gottlieb] testified today that his action had "nothing to do with covering up illegal activities", but was done, in part, because "this material was sensitive and capable of being misunderstood".

Dr. Gottlieb said he had destroyed the files on his own initiative and not, as was previously reported, under orders from Richard Helms, then Director of Central Intelligence. Mr. Helms testified under oath in 1975 that he never ordered the destruction of the drug records.

A document that came to light in today's hearing indicated that Dr. Gottlieb's deputy had attempted to stop the destruction of these files. Asked about this, Dr. Gottlieb replied, "I can't recall".

Ted Kennedy's 1977 remarks during the hearing ring just as true today as they did then:

The intelligence community of this Nation, which requires a shroud of secrecy in order to operate, has a very sacred trust from the American people. The CIA's program of human experimentation of the fifties and sixties violated that trust. It was violated again on the day the bulk of the agency's records were destroyed in 1973. It is violated each time a responsible official refuses to recollect the details of the program. The best safeguard against abuses in the future is a complete public accounting of the abuses of the past.

Let the inquests begin...