1977 Senate Hearing on MKULTRA
by U.S. Senate
JOINT HEARING BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON HEALTH AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH OF THE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
NINETY-FIFTH CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION
AUGUST 3, 1977
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Intelligence and Committee on Human Resources
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON: 1977
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C. 20402
Stock No. 052-070-04357-1
SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
(Established by S. Res. 400, 94th Cong., 2d sess.)
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii, Chairman
BARRY GOLDWATER, Arizona, Vice Chairman
BIRCH BAYH, Indiana
ADLAI E. STEVENSON, Illinois
WILLIAM D. HATHAWAY, Maine
WALTER D. HUDDLESTON, Kentucky
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware
ROBERT MORGAN, North Carolina
GARY HART, Colorado
DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN, New York
CLIFFORD P. CASE, New Jersey
JAKE GARN, Utah
CHARLES McC. MATHIAS, JR., Maryland
JAMES B. PEARSON, Kansas
JOHN H. CHAFE, Rhode Island
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
MALCOLM WALLOP, Wyoming
ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia, Ex Officio Member
HOWARD H. BAKER, JR., Tennessee, Ex Officio Member
WILLIAM G. MILLER, Staff Director
EARL D. EISENHOWER, Minority Staff Director
AUDREY H. HATRY, Chief Clerk
COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
HARRISON A. WILLIAMS, JR., New Jersey, Chairman
JENNINGS RANDOLPH, West Virginia
CLAIBORNE PELL, Rhode Island
EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts
GAYLORD NELSON, Wisconsin
THOMAS F. EAGLETON, Missouri
ALAN CRANSTON, California
WILLIAM D. HATHAWAY, Maine
DONALD W. RIEGLE, JR., Michigan
JACOB K. JAVITS, New York
RICHARD S. SCHWEIKER, Pennsylvania
ROBERT T. STAFFORD, Vermont
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
JOHN H. CHAFEE, Rhode Island
S.I. HAYAKAWA, California
STEPHEN J. PARADISE, General Counsel and Staff Director
MARJORIE M. WHITTAKER, Chief Clerk
DON A. ZIMMERMAN, Minority Counsel
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HEALTH AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts, Chairman
CLAIBORNE PELL, Rhode Island
GAYLORD NELSON, Wisconsin
WILLIAM D. HATHAWAY, Maine
HARRISON A. WILLIAMS, JR., New Jersey (ex officio)
RICHARD S. SCHWEIKER, Pennsylvania
JACOB K. JAVITS, New York
JOHN H. CHAFEE, Rhode Island
LAWRENCE HOROWITZ, Professional Staff Member
DAVID WINSTON, Minority Counsel
PROJECT MKULTRA, THE CIA'S PROGRAM OF RESEARCH IN BEHAVIORAL MODIFICATION
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 1977
U.S. SENATE,SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, AND SUBCOMMITTEE ON HEALTH
AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH OF THE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
Washington, D.C.
The committees met, pursuant to notice, at 9:07 a.m. in room 1202, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator Daniel K. Inouye (chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence) presiding.
Present: Senators Inouye (presiding), Kennedy, Goldwater, Bayh, Hathaway, Huddleston, Hart, Schweiker, Case, Garn, Chafee, Lugar and Wallop.
Also present: William G. Miller, staff director, Select Committee on Intelligence; Dr. Lawrence Horowitz, staff director, Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research; and professional staff members of both committees.
Senator INOUYE. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is meeting today and is joined by the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. Senator Hathaway and Senator Chafee are members of both committees. We are to hear testimony from the Director of Central Intelligence, Adm. Stansfield Turner, and from other Agency witnesses on issues concerning new documents supplied to the committee in the last week on drug testing conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency.
It should be made clear from the outset that in general, we are focusing on events that happened over 12 or as long as 25 years ago. It should be emphasized that the programs that are of greatest concern have stopped and that we are reviewing these past events in order to better understand what statutes and other guidelines might be necessary to prevent the recurrence of such abuses in the future. We also need to know and understand what is now being done by the CIA in the field of behavioral research to be certain that no current abuses are occurring.
I want to commend Admiral Turner for his full cooperation with this committee and with the Subcommittee on Health in recognizing that this issue needed our attention. The CIA has assisted our committees and staffs in their investigative efforts and in arriving at remedies which will serve the best interests of our country.
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The reappearance of reports of the abuses of the drug testing program and reports of other previously unknown drug programs and projects for behavioral control underline the necessity for effective oversight procedures both in the executive branch and in the Congress. The Select Committee on Intelligence has been working very closely with President Carter, the Vice President, and Admiral Turner and his associates in developing basic concepts for statutory guidelines which will govern all activities of the intelligence agencies of the United States.
In fact, it is my expectation that the President will soon announce his decisions on how he has decided the intelligence agencies of the United States shall be organized. This committee will be working closely with the President and Admiral Turner in placing this new structure under the law and to develop effective oversight procedures.
It is clear that effective oversight requires that information must be full and forthcoming. Full and timely information is obviously necessary if the committee and the public is to be confident that any transgressions can be dealt with quickly and forcefully.
One purpose of this hearing is to give the committee and the public an understanding of what new information has been discovered that adds to the knowledge already available from previous Church and Kennedy inquiries, and to hear the reasons why these documents were not available to the Church and Kennedy committees. It is also the purpose of this hearing to address the issues raised by any additional illegal or improper activities that have emerged from the files and to develop remedies to prevent such improper activities from occurring again.
Finally, there is an obligation on the part of both this committee and the CIA to make every effort to help those individuals or institutions that may have been harmed by any of these improper or illegal activities. I am certain that Admiral Turner will work with this committee to see that this will be done.
I would now like to welcome the most distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, the chairman of the Health Subcommittee, Senator Kennedy.
Senator KENNEDY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We are delighted to join together in this very important area of public inquiry and public interest.
Some 2 years ago, the Senate Health Subcommittee heard chilling testimony about the human experimentation activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that 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.
Other experiments were equally offensive. For example, heroin addicts were enticed into participating in LSD experiments in order to get a reward -- heroin.
Perhaps most disturbing of all was the fact that the extent of experimentation on human subjects was unknown. The records of all these activities were destroyed in January 1973, at the instruction of then CIA Director Richard Helms. In spite of persistent inquiries by both the Health Subcommittee and the Intelligence Committee, no additional records or information were forthcoming. And no one -- no single individual -- could be found who remembered the details, not the Director of the CIA, who ordered the documents destroyed, not the official responsible for the program, nor any of his associates.
We believed that the record, incomplete as it was, was as complete as it was going to be. Then one individual, through a Freedom of Information request, accomplished what two U.S. Senate committees could not. He spurred the agency into finding additional records pertaining to the CIA's program of experimentation with human subjects. These new records were discovered by the agency in March. Their existence was not made known to the Congress until July.
The records reveal a far more extensive series of experiments than had previously been thought. Eighty-six universities or institutions were involved. New instances of unethical behavior were revealed.
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.
I think this is illustrated, as Chairman Inouye pointed out. These are issues, are questions that happened in the fifties and sixties, and go back some 15, 20 years ago, but they are front page news today, as we see in the major newspapers and on the television and in the media of this country; and the reason they are, I think, is because it just continuously begins to trickle out, sort of, month after month, and the best way to put this period behind us, obviously, is to have the full information, and I think that is the desire of Admiral Turner and of the members of this committee.
The Central Intelligence Agency drugged American citizens without their knowledge or consent. It used university facilities and personnel without their knowledge. It funded leading researchers, often without their knowledge.
These institutes, these individuals, have a right to know who they are and how and when they were used. As of today, the Agency itself refuses to declassify the names of those institutions and individuals, quite appropriately, I might say, with regard to the individuals under the Privacy Act. It seems to me to be a fundamental responsibility to notify those individuals or institutions, rather. I think many of them were caught up in an unwitting manner to do research for the Agency. Many researchers, distinguished researchers, some of our most outstanding members of our scientific community, involved in
this network, now really do not know whether they were involved or not, and it seems to me that the whole health and climate in terms of our university and our scientific and health facilities are entitled to that response.
So, I intend to do all I can to persuade the Agency to, at the very least, officially inform those institutions and individuals involved.
Two years ago, when these abuses were first revealed, I introduced legislation, with Senator Schweiker and Senator Javits, designed to minimize the potential for any similar abuses in the future. That legislation expanded the jurisdiction of the National Commission on Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research to cover all federally funded research involving human subjects. The research initially was just directed toward HEW activities, but this legislation covered DOD as well as the CIA.
This Nation has a biomedical and behavioral research capability second to none. It has had for subjects of HEW funded research for the past 3 years a system for the protection of human subjects of biomedical research second to none, and the Human Experimentation Commission has proven its value. Today's hearings and the record already established underscore the need to expand its jurisdiction.
The CIA supported that legislation in 1975, and it passed the Senate unanimously last year. I believe it is needed in order to assure all our people that they will have the degree of protection in human experimentation that they deserve and have every right to expect.
Senator INOUYE. Thank you very much. Now we will proceed with the hearings. Admiral Turner?
Prepared Statement of Admiral Stansfield Turner, Director of Central Intelligence
Mr. Chairman: In my letter to you of July 15, 1977, I reported our recent discovery of seven boxes of documents related to Project MKULTRA, a closely held CIA project conducted from 1953-1964. As you may recall, MKULTRA was an "umbrella project" under which certain sensitive subprojects were funded, involving among other things research on drugs and behavioral modification. During the Rockefeller Commission and Church Committee investigations in 1975, the cryptonym became publicly known when details of the drug-related death of Dr. Frank Olsen were publicized. In 1953 Dr. Olsen, a civilian employee of the Army at Fort Detrick, leaped to his death from a hotel room window in New York City about a week after having unwittingly consumed LSD administered to him as an experiment at a meeting of LSD researchers called by CIA.
Most of what was known about the Agency's involvement with behavioral drugs during the investigations in 1975 was contained in a report on Project MKULTRA prepared by the Inspector General's office in 1963. As a result of that report's recommendations, unwitting testing of drugs on U.S. citizens was subsequently discontinued. The MKULTRA-related report was made available to the Church Committee investigators and to the staff of Senator Kennedy's Subcommittee on Health. Until the recent discovery, it was believed that all of the MKULTRA files dealing with behavioral modification had been destroyed in 1973 on the orders of the then retiring Chief of the Office of Technical Service, with the authorization of the DCI, as has been previously reported. Almost all of the people who had had any connection with the aspects of the project which interested Senate investigators in 1975 were no longer with the Agency at that time. Thus, there was little detailed knowledge of the MKULTRA subprojects available to CIA during the Church Committee investigations. This lack of available details, moreover, was probably not wholly attributable to the
destruction of MKULTRA files in 1973; the 1963 report on MKULTRA by the Inspector General notes on page 14: "Present practice is to maintain no records of the planning and approval of test programs."
When I reported to you last on this matter, my staff had not yet had an opportunity to review the newly located material in depth. This has now been accomplished, and I am in a position to give you a description of the contents of the recovered material. I believe you will be most interested in the following aspects of the recent discovery:
How the material was discovered and why it was not previously found;
The nature of this recently located material;
How much new information there is in the material which may not have been previously known and reported to Senate investigators; and
What we believe the most significant aspects of this find to be.
To begin, as to how we discovered these materials. The material had been sent to our Retired Records Center outside of Washington and was discovered sent to our Retired Records Center outside of Washington and was discovered there as a result of the extensive search efforts of an employee charged with responsibility for maintaining our holdings on behavioral drugs and for responding to Freedom of Information Act requests on this subject. During the Church Committee investigation in 1975, searches for MKULTRA-related material were made by examining both the active and retired records of all branches of CIA considered at all likely to have had association with MKULTRA documents. The retired records of the Budget and Fiscal Section of the Branch responsible for such work were not searched, however. This was because financial papers associated with sensitive projects such s MKULTRA were normally maintained by the Branch itself under the project file, not by the Budget and Fiscal Section. In the case at hand, however, the newly located material was sent to the Retired Records Center in 1970 by the Budget and Fiscal Section as part of its own retired holdings. The reason for this departure from normal procedure is not known. As a result of it, however, the material escaped retrieval and destruction in 1973 by the then-retiring Director of the Office as well as discovery in 1975 by CIA officials responding to Senate investigators.
The employee who located this material did so by leaving no stone unturned in his efforts to respond to FOIA requests. He reviewed all listings of material of this Branch stored at the Retired Records Center, including those of the Budget and Fiscal Section and, thus, discovered the MKULTRA-related documents which had been missed in the previous searches. In sum, the Agency failed to uncover these particular documents in 1973 in the process of attempting to destroy them; it similarly failed to locate them in 1975 in response to the Church Committee hearings. I am convinced that there was no attempt to conceal this material during the earlier searches.
Next, as to the nature of the recently located material, it is important to realize that the recovered folders are finance folders. The bulk of the material in them consists of approvals for advance of funds, vouchers, accountings, and the like -- most of which are not very informative as to the nature of the activities that were undertaken. Occasional project proposals or memoranda commenting on some aspect of a subproject are scattered throughout this material. In general, however, the recovered material does not include status reports or other documents relating to operational considerations or progress in the various subprojects, though some elaboration of the activities contemplated does appear. The recovered documents fall roughly into three categories:
First, there are 149 MKULTRA subprojects, many of which appear to have some connection with research into behavioral modification, drug acquisition and testing or administering drugs surreptitiously.
Second, there are two boxes of miscellaneous MKULTRA papers, including audit reports and financial statements from "cut-out" (i.e., intermediary) funding mechanisms used to conceal CIA's sponsorship of various research projects.
Finally, there are 33 additional subprojects concerning certain intelligence activities previously funded under MKULTRA which have nothing to do either with behavioral modification, drugs, and toxins or with any other related matters.
We have attempted to group the activities covered by the 149 subprojects into categories under descriptive headings. In broad outline, at least, this presents the contents of these files. The activities are placed in the following 15 categories:
1. Research into the effects of behavioral drugs and/or alcohol:
17 subprojects probably not involving human testing;
14 subprojects definitely involving tests on human volunteers;
19 subprojects probably including tests on human volunteers. While not known, some of these subprojects may have included tests on unwitting subjects as well;
6 subprojects involving tests on unwitting subjects.
2. Research on hypnosis: 8 subprojects, including 2 involving hypnosis and drugs in combination.
3. Acquisition of chemicals or drugs: 7 subprojects.
4. Aspects of magicians' art useful in covert operations: e.g., surreptitious delivery of drug-related materials: 4 subprojects.
5. Studies of human behavior, sleep research, and behavioral changes during psychotherapy: 9 subprojects.
6. Library searches and attendance at seminars and international conferences on behavioral modification: 6 subprojects.
7. Motivational studies, studies of defectors, assessment, and training techniques: 23 subprojects.
8. Polygraph research: 3 subprojects.
9. Funding mechanisms for MKULTRA external research activities: 3 subprojects.
10. Research on drugs, toxins, and biologicals in human tissue; provision of exotic pathogens and the capability to incorporate them in effective delivery systems: 6 subprojects.
11. Activities whose objectives cannot be determined from available documentation: 3 subprojects.
12. Subprojects involving funding support for unspecified activities connected with the Army's Special Operations Division at Fr. Detrick, Md. This activity is outline in Book I of the Church Committee Report, pp. 388-389. (See Appendix A, pp. 68-69.) Under CIA's Project MKNAOMI, the Army Assisted CIA in developing, testing, and maintaining biological agents and delivery systems for use against humans as well as against animals and crops. The objectives of these subprojects cannot be identified from the recovered material beyond the fact that the money was to be used where normal funding channels would require more written or oral justification than appeared desirable for security reasons or where operational considerations dictated short lead times for purchases. About $11,000 was involved during this period 1953-1960: 3 subprojects.
13. Single subprojects in such areas as effects of electro-shock, harassment techniques for offensive use, analysis of extrasensory perception, gas propelled sprays and aerosols, and four subprojects involving crop and material sabotage.
14. One or two subprojects on each of the following:
"Blood Grouping" research, controlling the activity of animals, energy storage and transfer in organic systems; and stimulus and response in biological systems.
15. Three subprojects canceled before any work was done on them having to do with laboratory drug screening, research on brain concussion, and research on biologically active materials to be tested through the skin on human volunteers.
Now, as to how much new the recovered material adds to what has previously been reported to the Church Committee and to Senator Kennedy's Subcommittee on Health on these topics, the answer is additional detail, for the most part: e.g., the names of previously unidentified researchers and institutions associated on either a witting or unwitting basis with MKULTRA activities, and the names of CIA officials who approved or monitored the various subprojects. Some new substantive material is also present: e.g., details concerning proposals for experimentation and clinical testing associated with various research projects, and a possibly improper contribution by CIA to a private institution. However, the principal types of activities included have, for the most part, either been outlined to some extent or generally described in what was previously available to CIA in the way of documentation and was supplied by CIA to Senate investigators. For example:
Financial disbursement records for the period 1960-1964 for 76 of the 149 numbered MKULTRA subprojects had been recovered from the Office of Finance by CIA and were made available to the Church Committee investigators in August or September 1975.
The 1963 Inspector General report on MKULTRA made available to both the Church Committee and Senator Kennedy's Subcommittee mentions electro-shock
and harassment substances (pp. 4, 16); covert testing on unwitting U.S. citizens (pp. 7, 10-12); the search for new materials through arrangements with specialists in universities, pharmaceutical houses, hospitals, state and federal institutions, and private research organizations (pp. 7, 9); and the fact that the Technical Service Division of CIA had initiated 144 subprojects related to the control of human behavior between 1953-1963 (p. 21).
The relevant section of a 1957 Inspector General report on the Technical Service Division was also made available to the Church Committee staff. That report discusses techniques for human assessment and unorthodox methods of communication (p. 201); discrediting and disabling materials which can be covertly administered (pp. 201-202); studies on magicians' arts as applied to covert operations (p. 202); specific funding mechanisms for research performed outside of CIA (pp. 202-203, 205); research being done on "K" (knockout) material, alcohol tolerance, and hypnotism (p. 203); research on LSD (p. 204); anti-personnel harassment and assassination delivery systems including aerosol generators and other spray devices (pp. 206-208); the role of Fort Detrick in support of CIA's Biological/Chemical Warfare capability (p. 208); and material sabotage research (p. 209). Much of this material is reflected in the Church Committee Report, Book I, pp. 385-422. (See Appendix A, pp. 65-102).
The most significant new data discovered are, first, the names of researchers and institutions who participated in the MKULTRA project and, secondly, a possibly improper contribution by CIA to a private institution. We are now in possession of the names of 185 non-government researchers and assistants who are identified in the recovered material dealing with the 149 subprojects. The names of 80 institutions where work was done or with which these people were affiliated are also mentioned.
The institutions include 44 colleges or universities, 15 research foundations or chemical or pharmaceutical companies and the like, 12 hospitals or clinics (in addition to those associated with universities), and 3 penal institutions. While the identities of some of these people and institutions were known previously, the discovery of the new identities adds to our knowledge of MKULTRA.
The facts as they pertain to the possibly improper contribution are as follows: One project involves a contribution of $375,000 to a building fund of a private medical institution. The fact that a contribution was made was previously known; indeed it was mentioned in a 1957 Inspector General report on the Technical Service Division of CIA, pertinent portions of which had been reviewed by the Church Committee staff. The newly discovered material, however, makes it clear that this contribution was made through an intermediary, which made it appear to be a private donation. As a private donation, the contribution was then matched by federal funds. The institution was not made aware of the true source of the gift. This project was approved by the then DCI, and concurred in by CIA's top management at the time, including the then General Counsel who wrote an opinion supporting the legality of the contribution.
The recently discovered documents give a greater insight into the scope of the unwitting drug testing but contribute little more than that. We now have collaborating information that some of the unwitting drug testing was carried on in safehouses in San Francisco and New York City, and we have identified that three individuals were involved in this undertaking as opposed to the previously reported one person. We also know now that some unwitting testing took place on criminal sexual psychopaths confined at a State hospital and that, additionally, research was done on knock-out or "K" drug in parallel with research to develop pain killers for cancer patients.
These, then are the principal findings identified to date in our review of the recovered material. As noted earlier, we believe the detail on the identities of researchers and institutions involved in CIA's sponsorship of drugs and behavioral modification is a new element and one which poses a considerable problem. Most of the people and institutions involved are not aware of Agency sponsorship. We should certainly assume that the researchers and institutions which cooperate with CIA on a witting basis acted in good faith and in the belief that they were aiding their government in a legitimate and proper purpose. I believe we all have a moral obligation to these researchers and institutions to protect them from any unjustified embarrassment or damage to their reputations which revelation of their identities might bring. In addition, I have a legal obligation under the Privacy Act not to publicly disclose the names of the individual researchers without their consent. This is especially true, of course, for those researchers and institutions which were unwitting participants in CIA-sponsored activities.
Nevertheless, recognizing the right and the need of both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Subcommittee on Health to investigate the circumstances of these activities in whatever detail they consider necessary. I am providing your Committee with all of the names on a classified basis. I hope that this will facilitate your investigation while protecting the individuals and institutions involved. Let me emphasize that the MKULTRA events are 12 to 25 years in the past. I assure you that the CIA is in no way engaged in either witting or unwitting testing of drugs today.
Finally, I am working closely with the Attorney General and with the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare on this matter. We are making available to the Attorney General whatever materials he may deem necessary to any investigation he may elect to undertake. We are working with both the Attorney General and the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare to determine whether it is practicable from this new evidence to attempt to identify any of the persons to whom drugs may have been administered unwittingly. No such names are part of these records, but we are working to determine if there are adequate clues to lead to their identification; and if so, how to go about fulfilling the Government's responsibilities in the matter.
TESTIMONY OF ADM. STANSFIELD TURNER,
DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
Accompanied by Frank Laubinger, Office of Technical Services; Al Brody, Office of Inspector General; Ernest Mayerfield, Office of General Counsel; and George L. Cary, Legislative Counsel
Admiral TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to begin by thanking you and Senator Kennedy for having a joint hearing this morning. I hope this will expedite and facilitate our getting all the information that both of your committees need into the record quickly.
I would like also to thank you both for prefacing the remarks today by reminding us all that the events about which we are here to talk are 12- to 24-years old. They in no way represent the current activities or policies of the Central Intelligence Agency.
What we are here to do is to give you all the information that we now have and which we did not previously have on a subject known s Project MKULTRA, a project which took place from 1953 to 1964. It was an umbrella project under which there were numerous subprojects for research, among other things, on drugs and behavioral modification. What the new material that we offer today is a supplement to the considerable material that was made available in 1975, during the Church committee hearings, and also to the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research.
At that time, the CIA offered up all of the information and documents it believed it had available. The principal one available at that time that gave the greatest amount of information on this subject was a report of the CIA's Inspector General written in 1963, and which led directly to the termination of this activity in 1964, 13 years ago.
The information available in 1975 to the various investigating groups was indeed sparse, first because of the destruction of material that took place in 1973, as detailed by Senator Kennedy a minute ago, with the concurrence of the then Director of Central Intelligence and under the supervision of the Director of the Office of Technical Services that supervised Project MKULTRA.
The material in 1975 was also sparse because most of the CIA people who had been involved in 1953 to 1964 in this activity had retired from the Agency. I would further add that I think the material was sparse in part because it was the practice at that time not to keep detailed records in this category.
For instance, the 1963 report of the Inspector General notes:
Present practice is to maintain no records of the planning and approval of test programs.
In brief, there were few records to begin with and less after the destruction of 1973.
What I would like to do now, though, is to proceed and let you know what the new material adds to our knowledge of this topic, and I will start by describing how the material was discovered and why it was not previously discovered. The material in question, some seven boxes, had been sent to our Retired Records Center outside of the Washington area. It was discovered that as the result of an extensive search by an employee charged with the responsibility for maintaining our holdings on behavioral drugs and for responding to Freedom of Information Act requests on this subject.
During the Church committee investigation of 1975, searches for MKULTRA-related material were made by examining both the active and the retired records of all of the branches of CIA considered likely to have had an association with MKULTRA documents. The retired records of the Budget and Fiscal Section of the branch that was responsible for such work were not searched, however. This was because the financial paper associated with sensitive projects such as MKULTRA were normally maintained by the branch itself under the project title, MKULTRA, not by the Budget and Fiscal Section under the project title, MKULTRA, not by the Budget and Fiscal Section under a special budget file.
In the case at hand, however, this newly located material had been sent to the Retired Records Center in 1970 by the Budget and Fiscal Section of this branch as part of its own retired holdings. In short, what should have been filed by the branch itself was filed by the Budget and Fiscal Section, and what should have been filed under the project title, MKULTRA, was filed under budget and fiscal matters. The reason for this departure from the normal procedure of that time is simply not known, and as a result of it, however, the material escaped retrieval and destruction in 1973, as well as discovery in 1975.
The employee who located this material did so by leaving no stone unturned in his efforts to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request, or several of them, in fact. He reviewed all of the listings of material of this branch, stored at the Retired Records Center, including those of the Budget and Fiscal Section, and thus discovered the MKULTRA-related documents, which had been missed in the previous searches.
In sum, the agency failed to uncover these particular documents in 1973, in the process of attempting to destroy them. It similarly failed to locate them in 1975, in response to the Church committee hearings. I am personally persuaded that there is no evidence of any attempt to conceal this material during the earlier searches. Moreover, as we will discuss as we proceed, I do not believe the material itself is such that there would be a motive on the part of the CIA to withhold this, having disclosed what it did in 1975.
Next, let me move to the nature of this recently located material. It is important to remember what I have just noted, that these folders that were discovered are finance folders. The bulk of the material in them consists of approvals for the advance of funds, vouchers, and accountings and such, most of which are not very informative as to the nature of the activities that they were supporting. Occasional project proposals or memoranda commenting on some aspect of a subproject are scattered throughout this material. In general, however, the recovered material does not include overall status reports or other documents relating to operational considerations, or to the progress on various subprojects, though some elaboration of the activities contemplated does appear from time to time.
There are roughly three categories of projects. First, there are 149 MKULTRA subprojects, many of which appear to have some connection with research into behavioral modification, drug acquisition and testing, or administering drugs surreptitiously. Second, there are two boxes of miscellaneous MKULTRA papers, including audit reports and financial statements from intermediary funding mechanisms used to conceal CIA sponsorship of various research projects.
Finally, there are 33 additional subprojects concerning certain intelligence activities previously funded under MKULTRA but which have nothing to do either with behavioral modifications, drugs or toxins, or any closely related matter.
We have attempted to group the activities covered by the 149 subprojects into categories under descriptive headings. In broad outline, at least, this presents the contents of these files. The following 15 categories are the ones we have divided these into.
First, research into the effects of behavioral drugs and/or alcohol. Within this, there are 17 projects probably not involving human testing. There are 14 subprojects definitely involving testing on human volunteers. There are 19 subprojects probably including tests on human volunteers and 6 subprojects involving tests on unwitting human beings.
Second, there is research on hypnosis, eight subprojects, including two involving hypnosis and drugs in combination.
Third, there are seven projects on the acquisition of chemicals or drugs.
Fourth, four subprojects on the aspects of the magician's art, useful in covert operations, for instance, the surreptitious delivery of drug-related materials.
Fifth, there are nine projects on studies of human behavior, sleep research, and behavioral change during psychotherapy.
Sixth, there are projects on library searches and attendants at seminars and international conferences on behavioral modifications.
Seventh, there are 23 projects on motivational studies, studies of defectors, assessments of behavior and training techniques.
Eighth, there are three subprojects on polygraph research.
Ninth, there are three subprojects on funding mechanisms for MKULTRA's external research activities.
Tenth, there are six subprojects on research on drugs, toxins, and biologicals in human tissue, provision of exotic pathogens, and the capability to incorporate them in effective delivery systems.
Eleventh, there are three subprojects involving funding support for unspecified activities conducted with the Army Special Operations Division at Fort Detrich, Md. This activity is outlined in Book I of the Church committee report, pages 388 to 389. (See Appendix A, pp. 68-69).
Under CIA's Project MKNAOMI, the Army assisted the CIA in developing, testing, and maintaining biological agents and delivery systems for use against humans as well as against animals and crops.
Thirteenth, there are single subprojects in such areas as the effects of electroshock, harassment techniques for offensive use, analysis of extrasensory perception, gas propelled sprays and aerosols, and four subprojects involving crop and material sabotage.
Fourteenth, one or two subprojects on each of the following: blood grouping research; controlling the activities of animals; energy storage and transfer in organic systems; and stimulus and response in biological systems.
Finally, 15th, there are three subprojects canceled before any work was done on them having to do with laboratory drug screening, research on brain concussion, and research on biologically active materials.
Now, let me address how much this newly discovered material adds to what has previously been reported to the Church committee and to Senator Kennedy's Subcommittee on Health. The answer is basically additional detail. The principal types of activities included in these documents have for the most part been outlined or to some extent generally described in what was previously available in the way of documentation and which was supplied by the CIA to the Senate investigators.
For example, financial disbursement records for the period of 1960 to 1964 for 76 of these 149 subprojects had been recovered by the Office of Finance at CIA and were made available to the Church committee investigators. For example, the 1963 Inspector General report on MKULTRA made available to both the Church Committee and the Subcommittee on Health mentions electroshock and harassment substances, covert testing on unwitting U.S. citizens, the search for new materials through arrangements with specialists in hospitals and universities, and the fact that the Technical Service Division of CIA had initiated 144 subprojects related to the control of human behavior.
For instance also, the relevant section of a 1957 Inspector General report was also made available to the Church committee staff, and that report discusses the techniques for human assessment and unorthodox methods of communication, discrediting and disabling materials which can be covertly administered, studies on magicians' arts as applied to covert operations, and other similar topics.
The most significant new data that has been discovered are, first, the names of researchers and institutions who participated in MKULTRA projects, and second, a possibly improper contribution by the CIA to a private institution. We are now in the possession of the names of 185 nongovernment researchers and assistants who are identified in the recovered material dealing with these 149 subprojects.
There are also names of 80 institutions where work was done or with which these people were affiliated. The institutions include 44 colleges or universities, 15 research foundation or chemical or pharmaceutical companies or the like, 12 hospitals or clinics, in addition to those associated with the universities, and 3 penal institutions.
While the identities of some of these people and institutions were known previously, the discovery of the new identities adds to our knowledge of MKULTRA.
The facts as they pertain to the possibly improper contribution are as follows. One project involves a contribution of $375,000 to a building fund of a private medical institution. The fact that that contribution was made was previously known. Indeed, it was mentioned in the 1957 report of the Inspector General on the Technical Service Division of CIA that supervised MKULTRA, and pertinent portions of this had been reviewed by the Church committee staff.
The newly discovered material, however, makes it clear that this contribution was made through an intermediary, which made it appear to be a private donation. As a private donation, the contribution was then matched by Federal funds. The institution was not made aware of the true source of the gift. This project was approved by the then Director of Central Intelligence and concurred in by CIA's top management including the then General Counsel, who wrote an opinion supporting the legality of the contribution.
The recently discovered documents also give greater insight into the scope of an unwitting nature of the drug testing, but contribute little more than that. We now do have corroborating information that some of the unwitting drug testing was carried out in what is known in the intelligence trade as safe houses in San Francisco and in New York City, and we have identified that three individuals were involved in this undertaking, whereas we previously reported there was only one person.
We also know that some unwitting testing took place on criminal sexual psychopaths confined at a State hospital, and that additionally research was done on a knockout or K drug in parallel with research to develop painkillers for cancer patients.
These, then, are the principal findings identified to date in our review of this recovered material. As noted earlier, we believe the detail on the identities of researchers and institutions involved in CIA sponsorship of drug and behavioral modification research is a new element and one which poses a considerable problem. Most of the people and institutions involved were not aware of CIA sponsorship. We should certainly assume that the researchers and institutions which cooperated with CIA on a witting basis acted in good faith and in the belief that they were aiding their Government in a legitimate and proper purpose.
I believe that we all have a moral obligation to these researchers and institutions to protect them from any unjustified embarrassment or damage to their reputations which revelation of their identities might bring. In addition, I have a legal obligation under the Privacy Act not to publicly disclose the names of the individual researchers without their consent.
This is especially true, of course, for those researchers and institutions which were unwitting participants in CIA sponsored activities.
Nonetheless, Mr. Chairman, I certainly recognize the right and the need of both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research to investigate the circumstances of these activities in whatever detail you consider necessary. I am providing your committee with all of the documentation, including all of the names, on a classified basis. I hope that this will facilitate your investigation while still protecting the individuals and the institutions involved.
Let me emphasize again that the MKULTRA events are 12 to 24 years in the past, and I assure you that CIA is in no way engaged in either witting or unwitting testing of drugs today.
Finally, I am working closely with the Attorney General on this matter. We are making available to the Attorney General whatever materials he may deem necessary to any investigations that he may elect to undertake. Beyond that, we are also working with the Attorney General to determine whether it is practicable from this new evidence to identify any of the persons to whom drugs were administered, but we are now trying to determine if there are adequate clues to lead to their identification, and if so how best to go about fulfilling the Government's responsibilities in this matter.
Mr. Chairman, as we proceed with that process of attempting to identify the individuals and then determining what is our proper responsibility to them, I will keep both of these committees fully advised. I thank you, sir.
Senator INOUYE. Thank you very much, Admiral Turner. Your spirit of cooperation is much appreciated. I would like to announce to the committee that in order to give every member an opportunity to participate in this hearing, that we would set a time limit of 10 minutes per Senator.
Admiral Turner, please give this committee the genesis of MKULTRA. Who or what committee or commission or agency was responsible for dreaming up this grandiose and sinister project, and why was it necessary? What is the rationale or justification for such a project and was the President of the United States aware of this?
Admiral TURNER. Mr. Chairman, I am going to ask Mr. Brody on my right, who is a long-time member of the CIA to address that in more detail. I believe everything that we know about the genesis was turned over to the Church committee and is contained in that material. Basically, it was a CIA-initiated project. It started out of a concern of our being taken advantage of by other powers who would use drugs against our personnel, and it was approved in the Agency. I have asked the question you just asked me, and have been assured that there is no evidence within the Agency of any involvement at higher echelons, the White House, for instance, or specific approval. That does not say there was not, but we have no such evidence.
Mr. Brody, would you amplify on my comments there, please?
Mr. BRODY. Mr. Chairman, I really have very little to add to that. To my knowledge, there was no Presidential knowledge of this project at the time. It was a CIA project, and as the admiral said, it was a project designed to attempt to counteract what was then thought to be a serious threat by our enemies of using drugs against us. Most of what else we know about is in the Senate Church committee report.
Senator INOUYE. Are you suggesting that it was intentionally kept away from the Congress and the President of the United States?
Admiral TURNER. No, sir. We are only saying that we have no evidence one way or the other as to whether the Congress was informed of this particular project. There are no records to indicate.
Senator INOUYE. Admiral Turner, are you personally satisfied by actual investigation that this newly discovered information was not intentionally kept away from the Senate of the United States?
Admiral TURNER. I have no way to prove that, sir. That is my conviction from everything I have seen of it.
Senator INOUYE. Now, we have been advised that these documents were initially discovered in March of this year, and you were notified in July of this year, or June of this year, and the committee was notified in July. Can you tell us why the Director of Central Intelligence was notified 3 months after its initial discovery, why the delay?
Admiral TURNER. Yes, sir. All this started with several Freedom of Information Act requests, and Mr. Laubinger on my left was the individual who took it upon himself to pursue these requests with great diligence, and got permission to go to the Retired Records Center, and then made the decision to look not only under what would be the expected subject files, but through every file with which the branch that conducted this type of activity had any conceivable connection.
Very late in March, he discovered these seven boxes. He arranged to have them shipped from the Retired Records Center to Washington, to our headquarters. They arrived in early April. He advised his appropriate superiors, who asked him how long he thought it would take him to go through these and screen them appropriately, clear them for Freedom of Information Act release.
There are, we originally estimated, 5,000 pages here. We now think that was an underestimation, and it may be closer to 8,000 pages. He estimated it would take about 45 days or into the middle of May to do that. He was told to proceed, and as he did so there was nothing uncovered in the beginning of these 149 cases that appeared particularly startling or particularly additive to the knowledge that had already been given to the Church committee, some details, but no major revelations.
He and his associates proceeded with deliberateness, but not a great sense of urgency. There were other interfering activities that came and demanded his time also. He was not able to put 100 percent of his time on it, and there did not appear to be cause for a great rush here. We were trying to be responsive to the Freedom of Information Act request within the limits of our manpower and our priorities.
In early June, however, he discovered two projects, the one related to K drugs and the one related to the funding at the institution, and realized immediately that he had substantial new information, and he immediately reported this to his superiors.
Two actions were taken. One was to notify the lawyers of the principal Freedom of Information Act requestor that we would have substantial new material and that it would be forthcoming as rapidly as possible, and the second was to start a memorandum up the chain that indicated his belief that we should notify the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence of this discovery because of the character at least of these two documents.
As that proceeded up from the 13th of June, at each echelon we had to go through the legal office, the legislative liaison office and at each echelon about the same question was asked of him: Have you gone through all of this, so that when we notify the Senate Select Committee we do not notify half of the important revelations and not the other half? The last thing I want, Mr. Chairman, is in any way to be on any topic, give the appearance on any topic of being recalcitrant, reluctant, or having to have you drag things out of me, and my subordinates, much to my pleasure, had each asked, have you really gone through these 8,000 pages enough to know that we are not going to uncover a bombshell down at the bottom?
By late June, about the 28th, this process reached my deputy. He notified me after his review of it on the 7th of July, which is the first I knew of it. I began reading into it. I asked the same probing question directly. I then notified my superiors, and on the 15th delivered to you my letter letting you know that we had this, and we have been working, many people, many hours since then, to be sure that what we are telling you today does include all the relevant material.
Senator INOUYE. I would like to commend Mr. Laubinger for his diligence and expertise, but was this diligence the result of the Freedom of Information Act or could this diligence have been exercised during the Church hearings? Why was it not exercised? Admiral TURNER. There is no question that theoretically this diligence could have been exercised at any time, and it may well be that the Freedom of Information Act has made us more aware of this. Would you speak for yourself, please.
Mr. LAUBINGER. I really don't attribute it, Senator, to diligence so much as thoroughness. If you can imagine the pressures under an organization trying to respond, which I think the CIA did at the time of the Church committee hearings, the hallways of the floor I am on were full of boxes from our records center. Every box that anyone thought could possibly contain anything was called up for search. It was one of a frantic effort to comply.
When the pressure of that situation cools down, and you can start looking at things systematically, you are apt to find things that you wouldn't under the heat of a crash program, and that is what happened here.
Senator INOUYE. Thank you very much. Senator Kennedy?
Senator KENNEDY. Admiral Turner, this is an enormously distressing report that you give to the American Congress and to the American people today. Granted, it happened many years ago, but what we are basically talking about is an activity which took place in the country that involved the perversion and the corruption of many of our outstanding research centers in this country, with CIA funds, where some of our top researchers were unwittingly involved in research sponsored by the Agency in which they had no knowledge of the background or the support for.
Much of it was done with American citizens who were completely unknowing in terms of taking various drugs, and there are perhaps any number of Americans who are walking around today on the east coast or west coast who were given drugs, with all the kinds of physical and psychological damage that can be caused. We have gone over that in very careful detail, and it is significant and severe indeed.
I do not know what could be done in a less democratic country that would be more alien to our own traditions than was really done in this narrow area, and as you give this report to the committee, I would like to get some sense of your own concern about this type of activity, and how you react, having assumed this important responsibility with the confidence of President Crater and the overwhelming support, obviously, of the Congress, under this set of circumstances.
I did not get much of a feeling in reviewing your statement here this morning of the kind of abhorrence to this type of past activity which I think the American people would certainly deplore and which I believe that you do, but could you comment upon that question, and also perhaps give us what ideas you have to insure that it cannot happen again?
Admiral TURNER. Senator Kennedy, it is totally abhorrent to me to think of using a human being as a guinea pig and in any way jeopardizing his life and his health, no matter how great the cause. I am not here to pass judgment on my predecessors, but I can assure you that this is totally beyond the pale of my contemplation of activities that the CIA or any other of our intelligence agencies should undertake.
I am taking and have taken what I believe are adequate steps to insure that such things are not continuing today.
Senator KENNEDY. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Admiral TURNER. I have asked for a special report assuring me that there are no drug activities extant, that is, drug activities that involve experimentation. Obviously, we collect intelligence about drugs and drug use in other countries, but there are no experimentations being conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency, and I have had a special check made because of another incident that was uncovered some years ago about the unauthorized retention of some toxic materials at the CIA. I have had an actual inspection made of the storage places and the certification from the people in charge of those that there are no such chemical biological materials present in our keeping, and I have issued express orders that that shall not be the case.
Beyond that, I have to rely in large measure on my sense of command and direction of the people and their knowledge of the attitude I have just expressed to you in this regard.
Senator KENNEDY. I think that is very commendable.
Admiral TURNER. Thank you, sir.
Senator KENNEDY. I think it is important that the American people understand that.
You know, much of the research which is our area of interest that was being done by the Agency and the whole involved sequence of activities done by the Agency, I am convinced could have been done in a legitimate way through the research programs of the National Institutes of Mental Health, other sponsored activities, I mean, that is some other question, but I think you went to an awful lot of trouble, where these things could have been.
Let me ask you specifically, on the followup of MKULTRA, are there now -- I think you have answered, but I want to get a complete answer about any experimentations that are being done on human beings, whether it is drugs or behavioral alterations or patterns or any support, either directly or indirectly, being provided by the Agency in terms of any experimentation on human beings.
Admiral TURNER. There is no experimentation with drugs on human beings, witting or unwitting, being conducted in any way.
Senator KENNEDY. All right. How bout the nondrug experimentation our Committee has seen -- psychosurgery, for example, or psychological research?
Admiral TURNER. We are continually involved in what we call assessment of behavior. For instance, we are trying to continually improve our polygraph procedures to, you know, assess whether a person is lying or not. This does not involve any tampering with the individual body. This involves studying records of people's behavior under different circumstances, and so n, but it is not an experimental thing. Have I described that accurately, Al?
Mr. BRODY. Yes.
Senator KENNEDY. Well, it is limited to those areas?
Admiral TURNER. Yes; it does not involve attempting to modify behavior. It only involves studying behavior conditions, but not trying to actively modify it, as was one of the objectives of MKULTRA.
Senator KENNEDY. Well, we are scarce on time, but I am interested in the other areas besides polygraph where you are doing it. Maybe you can either respond now or submit it for the record, if you would do that. Would you provide that for the record?
Admiral TURNER. Yes.
[The material on psychological assessments follows:]
Psychological assessments are performed as a service to officers in the operations directorate who recruit and/or handle agents. Except for people involved in training courses, the subjects of the assessments are foreign nationals. The assessments are generally done to determine the most successful tactic to persuade the subject to accept convert employment by the CIA, and to make an appraisal of his reliability and truthfulness.
A majority of the work is done by a staff of trained psychologists, some of whom are stationed overseas. The assessments they do may be either direct or indirect. Direct assessments involve a personal interview of the subject by the psychologist. When possible the subject is asked to complete a formal "intelligence test" which is actually a disguised psychological test. Individuals being assessed are not given drugs, nor are they subjected to physical harassment or torture. When operating conditions are such that a face-to-face interview is not possible, the psychologist may do an indirect assessment, using as source materials descriptions of the subject by others, interviews with people who know him, specimens of his writings, etc.
The other psychological assessments involve handwriting analysis or graphological assessment. The work is done by a pair of trained graphologists, assisted by a small number of measurement technicians. They generally require at least a page of handwritten script by the subject. Measurements are made of about 30 different writing characteristics, and these are charted and furnished to the graphologist for assessments.
The psychologists also give courses in psychological assessment to group of operations officers, to sharpen their own capabilities to size up people. As part of the training course, the instructor does a psychological assessment of each student. The students are writing participants, and results are discussed with them.
It is important to reiterate that psychological assessments are only a service to the operations officers. In the final analysis, it is the responsibility of the operations officer to decide how a potential agent should be approached, or to make a judgment as to whether any agent is telling the truth.
Admiral TURNER. The kind of thing we are interested in is, what will motivate a man to become an agent of the United States in a difficult situation. We have to be familiar with that kind of attitudinal response that we can expect from people we approach to for one reason or another become our spies, but I will be happy to submit a very specific listing of these.
Senator KENNEDY. Would you do that for the committee?
In the followups, in the MKSEARCH, in the OFTEN, and the CHICKWIT, could you give us also a report on those particular programs?
Admiral TURNER. Yes, sir.
Senator KENNEDY. Did they involve experimentation, human experimentation?
Admiral TURNER. No, sir.
Senator KENNEDY. None of them?
Admiral TURNER. Let me say this, that the CHICKWIT program is the code name for the CIA participation in what was basically a Department of Defense program. This program was summarized and reported to the Church committee, to the Congress, and I have since they have been rementioned in the press in the last 2 days here, I have not had time to go through and personally review them. I have ascertained that all of the files that we had and made available before are intact, and I have put a special order out that nobody will enter those files or in any way touch them without my permission at this point, but they are in the Retired Records Center outside of Washington, and they are available.
I am not prepared to give you full details on it, because I simply haven't read into that part of our history, but in addition I would suggest when we want to get into that we should get the Department of Defense in with us.
Senator KENNEDY. Well, you will supply that information to the Intelligence Committee, the relevant, I mean, the health aspects, obviously, and the research we are interested in?
Admiral TURNER. Yes, sir.
Senator KENNEDY. Will you let us know, Admiral Turner?
Admiral TURNER. I will be happy to.
[See p. 169 for the material referred to.]
Senator KENNEDY. Thank you. I am running out of time. Do you support the extension of the protection of human subjects legislation to include the CIA and the DOD? You commented favorably on that before, and I am hopeful we can get that on the calendar early in September, and that is our strong interest.
Admiral TURNER. The CIA certainly has no objection to that proposed legislation, sir. It is not my role in the administration to be the supporter of it or the endorser of it.
Senator KENNEDY. As a personal matter, since you have reviewed these subjects, would you comment? I know it is maybe unusual, but you can understand what we are attempting to do.
Admiral TURNER. Yes, sir.
Senator KENNEDY. From your own experience in the agency, you can understand the value of it.
Just finally, in your own testimony now with this additional information, it seems quite apparent to me that you can reconstruct in very careful detail this whole project in terms of the responsible CIA officials for the program. You have so indicated in your testimony. Now with the additional information, and the people, that have been revealed in the examination of the documents, it seems to be pretty clear that you can track that whole program in very careful detail, and I would hope, you know, that you would want to get to the bottom of it, as the Congress does as well. I will come back to that in my next round. Thank you very much.
Senator INOUYE. Senator Goldwater?
Senator GOLDWATER. I have no questions.
Senator INOUYE. Senator Schweiker?
Senator SCHWEIKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral Turner, I would like to go back to your testimony on page 12, where you discuss the contribution to the building fund of a private medical institution. You state, "Indeed, it was mentioned in a 1957 Inspector General report on the Technical Services Division of CIA, pertinent portions of which had been reviewed by the Church committee staff." I would like to have you consider this question very carefully. I served as a member o the original Church committee. My staffer did a lot of the work that you are referring to here. He made notes on the IG's report. My question to you is, are you saying that the section that specifically delineates an improper contribution was in fact given to the Church committee staff to see?
Admiral TURNER. The answer to your question is "Yes." The information that a contribution had been made was made available, to the best of my knowledge.
Senator SCHWEIKER. To follow this up further, I'd like to say that I think there was a serious flaw in the way that the IG report was handled and the Church committee was limited. I am not making any accusations, but because of limited access to the report, we have a situation where it is not even clear whether we actually saw that material or not, simply because we could not keep a copy of the report under the procedures we had to follow. We were limited by notetaking, and so it is rather ambiguous as to just what was seen and what was not seen. I certainly hope that the new Intelligence Committee will not be bound by procedures that restrict its ability to exercise effective oversight.
I have a second question. Does it concern you, Admiral, that we used a subterfuge which resulted in the use of Federal construction grant funds to finance facilities for these sorts of experiments on our own people? Because as I understand what you are saying, while the CIA maybe only put up $375,000, this triggered a response on the part of the Federal Government to provide on a good faith basis matching hospital funds at the same level. We put up more than $1 million of matching funds, some based on an allegedly private donation which was really CIA money.
Isn't there something basically wrong with that?
Admiral TURNER. I certainly believe there is. As I stated, the General Counsel of the CIA at that time rendered a legal opinion that this was a legal undertaking, and again I am hesitant to go back and revisit the atmosphere, the laws, the attitudes at that time, so whether the counsel was on good legal ground or not, I am not enough of a lawyer to be sure, but it certainly would occur to me if it happened today as a very questionable activity.
Senator SCHWEIKER. Well, I think those of us who have worked on and amended the Hill-Burton Act and other hospital construction assistance laws over the years, would have a rather different opinion on the legal intent or object of Congress in passing laws to provide hospital construction project money. These funds weren't intended for this.
It reminds me a little bit of the shellfish toxin situation which turned up when I was on the Church committee. The Public Health Service was used to produce a deadly poison with Public Health money. Here we are using general hospital construction money to carry on a series of drug experimentation.
Admiral TURNER. Excuse me, sir. If I could just be, I think, accurate, I don't think any of this $375,000 or the matching funds were used to conduct drug experiments. They were used to build the hospital. Now, the CIA the put more money into a foundation that was conducting research on the CIA's behalf supposedly in that hospital, so the intent was certainly there, but the money was not used for experimentation.
Senator SCHWEIKER. Well, I understand it was used for bricks and mortar, but the bricks were used to build the facility where the experiments were carried on; were they not?
Admiral TURNER. We do not have positive evidence that they were. It certainly would seem that that was the intent, but I do not want to draw inferences here --
Senator SCHWEIKER. Well, why else would they give this money for the building fund if the building was not used for a purpose that benefited the CIA program?
Admiral TURNER. I certainly draw the inference that the CIA expected to benefit from it, and some of the wording says the General Counsel's opinion was that this was legal only if the CIA was going to derive adequate benefit from it, but, sir, there is no evidence of what benefit was derived.
Senator SCHWEIKER. There must have been some pretty good benefits at stake. The Atomic Energy Commission was to bear a share of the cost, and when they backed out for some reason or another, the CIA picked up part of their tab. So, at two different points there were indications that CIA decisionmakers thought there was great benefit to be derived from whatever happened within the brick and mortar walls of that facility.
Admiral TURNER. You are absolutely right. I am only taking the position that I cannot substantiate that there was benefit derived.
Senator SCHWEIKER. The agreement documents say that the CIA would have access to one-sixth of the space involved in the construction of the wing, so how would you enter into an agreement that specifically says that you will have access to and use of one-sixth of the space and not perform something in that space? I cannot believe it was empty.
Admiral TURNER. Sir, I am not disputing you at all, but both of us are saying that the inference is that one-sixth of the space was used, that experimentation was done, and so on, but there is no factual evidence of what went on as a result of that payment or what went on in that hospital. It is just missing. It is not that it didn't happen.
Senator SCHWEIKER. Admiral Turner, one other--
Senator KENNEDY. Would the Senator yield on that point?
Senator SCHWEIKER. I understand that in the agency's documents on the agreement it was explicitly stated that one-sixth of the facility would be designated for CIA use and made available for CIA research are you familiar--
Mr. BRODY. Senator, as I recall, you are right in that there is a mention of one-sixth, but any mention at all has to do with planning. There are no subsequent reports as to what happened after the construction took place.
Senator SCHWEIKER. Admiral Turner, I read in the New York Times that part of this series of MKULTRA experiments involved an arrangement with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to test LSD surreptitiously on unwitting patrons in bars in New York and San Francisco. Some of the subjects became violently ill and were hospitalized. I wonder if you would just briefly describe what we were doing there and how it was carried out? I assume it was through a safe house operation. I don't believe your statement went into much detail.
Admiral TURNER. I did mention the safe house operation in my statement, sir, and that is how these were carried out. What we have learned from the new documentation is the location and the dates at which the safe houses were run by the CIA and the identification of three individuals who were associated with running those safe houses. We know something about the construction work that was done in them because there were contracts for this. Beyond that, we are pretty much drawing inferences as to the things that went on as to what you are saying here.
Senator SCHWEIKER. Well, the subjects were unwitting. You can infer that much, right?
Admiral TURNER. Right.
Senator SCHWEIKER. If you happened to be at the wrong bar at the wrong place and time, you got it.
Mr. BRODY. Senator, that would be -- contacts were made, as we understand it, in bars, et cetera, and then the people may have been invited to these safe houses. There really isn't any indication as to the fact that this took place in bars.
Admiral TURNER. We are trying to be very precise with you, sir, and not draw an inference here. There are 6 cases of these 149 where we have enough evidence in this new documentation to substantiate that there was unwitting testing and some of that involves these safe houses. There are other cases where it is ambiguous as to whether the testing was witting or voluntary. There are others where it was clearly voluntary.
Senator SCHWEIKER. Of course, after a few drinks, it is questionable whether informed consent means anything to a person in a bar anyway.
Admiral TURNER. Well, we don't have any indication that all these cases where it is ambiguous involved drinking of any kind. There are cases in penal institutions where it is not clear whether the prisoner was given a choice or not. I don't know that he wasn't given a choice, but I don't positively know that he was, and I classify that as an ambiguous incident.
Senator INOUYE. Your time is up, Senator.
Senator Huddleston?
Senator HUDDLESTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral Turner, you stated in your testimony that you are convinced there was no attempt to conceal this recently discovered documentation during the earlier searches. Did you question the individuals connected with the earlier search before you made that judgment?
Admiral TURNER. Yes; I haven't, I don't think, questioned everybody who looked in the files or is still on our payroll who looked in the files back in 1975, but Mr. Laubinger on my left is the best authority on this, and I have gone over it with him in some detail.
Senator HUDDLESTON. But you have inquired, you think, sufficiently to assure yourself that there was no intent on the part of any person to conceal these records from the previous committee?
Admiral TURNER. I am persuaded of that both by my questioning of people and by the circumstances and the way in which these documents were filed, by the fact which I did not and should have mentioned in my testimony, that these were not the official files. The ones that we have received or retrieved were copies of files that were working files that somebody had used, and therefore were slipped into a different location, and again I say to you , sir, I can't imagine their deliberately concealing these particular files and revealing the other things that they did reveal in 1975. I don't see the motive for that, because these are not that damning compared with the overall material that was provided.
Senator HUDDLESTON. Is this the kind of operation that if it were continuing now or if there were anything similar to it, that you would feel compelled to report to the Select Committee on Intelligence?
Admiral TURNER. Yes, sir. You mean, if I discovered that something like this were going on without my knowledge? Yes, I would feel absolutely the requirement to -- Senator HUDDLESTON. But if it were going on with your knowledge, would you report it to the committee? I assume you would.
Admiral TURNER. Yes. Well, it would not be going on with my knowledge, but theoretically the answer is yes, sir.
Senator HUDDLESTON. Well, then, what suggestions would you have as we devise charters for the various intelligence agencies? What provision would you suggest to prohibit this kind of activity from taking place? Would you suggest that it ought to be specifically outlined in a statutory charter setting out the parameters of the permissible operation of the various agencies?
Admiral TURNER. I think that certainly is something we must consider as we look at the legislation for charters. I am not on the face of it opposed to it. I think we would have to look at the particular wording as we are going to have to deal with the whole charter issue as to exactly how precise you want to be in delineating restraints and curbs on the intelligence activities.
Senator HUDDLESTON. In the case of sensitive type operations, which this certainly was, which might be going on today, is the oversight activity of the agency more intensive now than it was at that time?
Admiral TURNER. Much more so. I mean, I have briefed you, sir, and the committee on our sensitive operations. We have the Intelligence Oversight Board. We have a procedure in the National Security Council for approval of very sensitive operations. I think the amount of spotlight focused on these activities is many, manyfold what it was in these 12 to 24 years ago.
Senator HUDDLESTON. How about the record keeping?
Admiral TURNER. Yes; I can't imagine anyone having the gall to think that he can just blithely destroy records today with all of the attention that has come to this, and certainly we are emphasizing that that is not the case.
Senator HUDDLESTON. Admiral, I was particularly interested in the activity that took place at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital at Lexington, Ky., in which a Dr. Harris Isbell conducted experiments on people who were presumably patients there. There was a narcotics institution, I take it, and Dr. Isbell was, according to the New York Times story, carrying on a secret series of correspondence with an individual at the agency by the name of Ray. Have you identified who that person is?
Admiral TURNER. Sir, I find myself in a difficult position here at a public hearing to confirm or deny these names in view of my legal responsibilities under the Privacy Act not to disclose the names of individuals here.
Senator HUDDLESTON. I am just asking you if you have identified the person referred to in that article as Ray. I am not asking you who he was. I just want to know if you know who he is.
Admiral TURNER. No. I am sorry, was this W-r-a-y or R-a-y?
Senator HUDDLESTON. It is listed in the news article as R-a-y, in quotations.
Admiral TURNER. No, sir, we have not identified him.
Senator HUDDLESTON. So you have no knowledge of whether or note is still a member of your staff or connected with the Agency in any way. Have you attempted to identify him?
[Pause.]
Admiral TURNER. Senator, we have a former employee whose first name is Ray who may have had some connection with these activities.
Senator HUDDLESTON. You suspect that but you have not verified that at this time, or at least you are not in a position to indicate that you have verified it?
Admiral TURNER. That is correct.
Senator HUDDLESTON. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator INOUYE. Senator Wallop?
Senator WALLOP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral Turner, not all of the -- and in no way trying to excuse you of the hideous nature of some of these projects, but not all of the projects under MKULTRA are of a sinister or even a moral nature. Is that a fair statement?
Admiral TURNER. That is correct.
Senator WALLOP. Looking down through some of these 17 projects not involving human testing, aspects of the magician's art, it doesn't seem as though there is anything very sinister about that. Studies of human behavior and sleep research, library searches. Now, those things in their way are still of interest, are they not, to the process of intelligence gathering?
Admiral TURNER. Yes, sir. I have not tried to indicate that we either are not doing or would not do any of the things that were involved in MKULTRA, but when it comes to the witting or unwitting testing of people with drugs, that is certainly verboten, but there are other things.
Senator WALLOP. Even with volunteer patients? I mean, I am not trying to put you on the spot to say whether it is going on, but I mean, it is not an uncommon thing, is it, in the prisons of the United States for the Public Health Service to conduct various kinds of experiments with vaccines and, say, sunburn creams? I know in Arizona they have done so.
Admiral TURNER. My understanding is, lots of that is authorized, but I am not of the opinion that this is not the CIA's business, and that if we need some information in that category, I would prefer to go to the other appropriate authorities of the Government and ask them to get it for us rather than to in any way--
Senator WALLOP. Well, you know, you have library searches and attendants at the national seminars. This is why I wanted to ask you if the bulk of these projects were in any way the kinds of things that the Agency might not do now. A President would not have been horrified by the list of the legitimate types of things. Isn't that probably the case?
Admiral TURNER. Yes, sir.
Senator WALLOP. And if it did in fact appear in the IG report, is there any reason to suppose that the President did not know of this project? You said there was no reason to suppose that he did, but let me reverse that. Is there any reason to suppose that they did not?
Admiral TURNER. No.
Senator WALLOP. Well, you know, I just cannot imagine you or literally anybody undertaking projects of the magnitude of dollars here and just not knowing about it, not informing your superior that these were going on, especially when certain items of it appear in the Inspector General's report on budget matters.
Admiral TURNER. Well, I find it difficult when it is that far back to hypothesize what the procedures that the Director was using in terms of informing his superiors were. It is quite a different climate from today, and I think we do a lot more informing to day than they did back then, but I find it very difficult to guess what the level of knowledge was.
Senator WALLOP. I am really not asking you to second-guess it, but it just seems to me that, while the past is past, and thank goodness we are operating under different sets of circumstances, I think it is naive for us to suppose that these things were conducted entirely without the knowledge of the Presidents of the United States during those times. It is just the kinds of research information that was being sought was vital to the United States, not the means, but the information that they were trying to find.
Admiral TURNER. I am sorry. Your question is, was this vital? Did we view it as vital?
Senator WALLOP. Well, your implication at the beginning was that it was a response to the kinds of behavior that were seen in Cardinal Mindszenty's trial and other things. I mean, somebody must have thought that this was an important defensive reaction, if nothing else, on the part of the United States.
Admiral TURNER. Yes, sir, I am sure they did, but again I just don't know how high that permeated the executive branch.
Senator WALLOP. But the kinds of information are still important to you. I mean, I am not suggesting that anyone go back and do that kind of thing again, but I'm certain it would be of use to you to know what was going to happen to one of your agents assuming someone had put one of these things into his bloodstream, or tried to modify his behavior.
Admiral TURNER. Absolutely, and you know, we would be very concerned if we thought there were things like truth serums or other things that our agents or others could be subjected to by use or improper use of drugs by other powers against our people or agents.
Senator WALLOP. Are there? I don't ask you to name them, but are there such serums?
Admiral TURNER. I don't know of them if there are. I would have to answer that for the record, sir.
Senator WALLOP. I would appreciate that.
[The material referred to follows.]
"TRUTH" DRUGS IN INTERROGATION
The search for effective aids to interrogation is probably as old as man's need to obtain information from an uncooperative source and as persistent as his impatience to shortcut any tortuous path. In the annals of police investigation, physical coercion has at times been substituted for painstaking and time-consuming inquiry in the belief that direct methods produce quick results. Sir James Stephens, writing in 1883, rationalizes a grisly example of "third degree" practices by the police of India: "It is far pleasanter to sit comfortably in the shade rubbing red pepper in a poor devil's eyes than to go about in the sun hunting up evidence."
More recently, police officials in some countries have turned to drugs for assistance in extracting confessions from accused persons, drugs which are presumed to relax the individual's defenses to the point that he unknowingly reveals truths he has been trying to conceal. This investigative technique, however humanitarian as an alternative to physical torture, still raises serious questions of individual rights and liberties. In this country, where drugs have gained only marginal acceptance in police work, their use has provoked cries of "psychological third degree" and has precipitated medico-legal controversies that after a quarter of a century still occasionally flare into the open.
The use of so-called "truth" drugs in police work is similar to the accepted psychiatric practice of narco-analysis; the difference in the two procedures lies in their different objectives. The police investigator is concerned with empirical truth that may be used against the suspect, and therefore almost solely with probative truth: the usefulness of the suspect's revelations depends ultimately on their acceptance in evidence by a court of law. The psychiatrist, on the other hand, using the same "truth" drugs in diagnosis and treatment of the mentally ill, is primarily concerned with psychological truth or psychological reality rather than empirical fact. A patient's aberrations are reality for him at the time they occur, and an accurate account of these fantasies and delusions, rather than reliable recollection of past events, can be the key to recovery.
The notion of drugs capable of illuminating hidden recesses of the mind, helping to heal the mentally ill and preventing or reversing the miscarriage of justice, has provided an exceedingly durable theme for the press and popular literature. While acknowledging that "truth serum" is a misnomer twice over -- the drugs are not sera and they do not necessarily bring forth probative truth -- journalistic accounts continue to exploit the appeal of the term. The formula is to play up a few spectacular "truth" drug successes and to imply that the drugs are more maligned than need be and more widely employed in criminal investigation than can officially be admitted.
Any technique that promises an increment of success in extracting information from an uncompliant source is ipso facto of interest in intelligence operations. If the ethical considerations which in Western countries inhibit the use of narco-interrogation in police work are felt also in intelligence, the Western services must at least be prepared against its possible employment by the adversary. An understanding of "truth" drugs, their characteristic actions, and their potentialities, positive and negative, for eliciting useful information is fundamental to an adequate defense against them.
This discussion, meant to help toward such an understanding, draws primarily upon openly published materials. It has the limitations of projecting from criminal investigative practices and from the permissive atmosphere of drug psychotherapy.
SCOPOLAMINE AS "TRUTH SERUM"
Early in this century physicians began to employ scopolamine, along with morphine and chloroform, to induce a state of "twilight sleep" during childbirth. A constituent of henbane, scopolamine was known to produce sedation and drowsiness, confusion and disorientation, incoordination, and amnesia for events experienced during intoxication. Yet physicians noted that women in twilight sleep answered questions accurately and often volunteered exceedingly candid remarks.
In 1922 it occurred to Robert House, a Dallas, Texas obstetrician, that a similar technique might be employed in the interrogation of suspected criminals, and he arranged to interview under scopolamine two prisoners in the Dallas county jail whose guilt seemed clearly confirmed. Under the drug, both men denied the charges on which they were held; and both, upon trial, were found not guilty. Enthusiastic at this success, House concluded that a patient under the influence of scopolamine "cannot create a lie... and there is no power to think or reason." [14] His experiment and this conclusion attracted wide attention, and the idea of a "truth" drug was thus launched upon the public consciousness.
The phrase "truth serum" is believed to have appeared first in a news report of House's experiment in the Los Angeles Record, sometime in 1922. House resisted the term for a while but eventually came to employ it regularly himself. He published some eleven articles on scopolamine in the years 1921-1929, with a noticeable increase in polemical zeal as time when on. What had begun as something of a scientific statement turned finally into a dedicated crusade by the "father of truth serum" on behalf of his offspring, wherein he was "grossly indulgent of its wayward behavior and stubbornly proud of its minor achievements." [11]
Only a handful of cases in which scopolamine was used for police interrogation came to public notice, though there is evidence suggesting that some police forces may have used it extensively. [2,16] One police writer claims that the threat of scopolamine interrogation has been effective in extracting confessions from criminal suspects, who are told they will first be rendered unconscious by chloral hydrate placed covertly in their coffee or drinking water. [16]
Because of a number of undesirable side effects, scopolamine was shortly disqualified as a "truth" drug. Among the most disabling of the side effects are hallucinations, disturbed perception, somnolence, and physiological phenomena such as headache, rapid heart, and blurred vision, which distract the subject from the central purpose of the interview. Furthermore, the physical action is long, far outlasting the psychological effects. Scopolamine continues, in some cases, to make anesthesia and surgery safer by drying the mouth and throat and reducing secretions that might obstruct the air passages. But the fantastically, almost painfully, dry "desert" mouth brought on by the drug is hardly conducive to free talking, even in a tractable subject.
THE BARBITURATES
The first suggestion that drugs might facilitate communication with emotionally disturbed patients came quite by accident in 1916. Arthur S. Lovenhart and his associates at the University of Wisconsin, experimenting with respiratory stimulants, were surprised when, after an injection of sodium cyanide, a catatonic patient who had long been mute and rigid suddenly relaxed, opened his eyes, and even answered a few questions. By the early 1930's a number of psychiatrists were experimenting with drugs as an adjunct to established methods of therapy.
At about this time police officials, still attracted by the possibility that drugs might help in the interrogation of suspects and witnesses, turned to a class of depressant drugs known as the barbiturates. By 1935 Clarence W. Muehlberger, head of the Michigan Crime Detection Laboratory at East Lansing, was using barbiturates on reluctant suspects, though police work continued to be hampered by the courts' rejection of drug-induced confessions except in a few carefully circumscribed instances.
The barbiturates, first synthesized in 1903, are among the oldest of modern drugs and the most versatile of all depressants. In this half-century some 2,500 have been prepared, and about two dozen of these have won an important place in medicine. An estimated three to four billion doses of barbiturates are prescribed by physicians in the United States each year, and they have come to be known by a variety of commercial names and colorful slang expressions: "goofballs," Luminal, Nembutal, "red devils," "yellow jackets," "pink ladies," etc. Three of them which are used in narcoanalysis and have seen service as "truth" drugs are sodium amytal (anobarbital), pentothal sodium (thiopental), and to a lesser extent seconal (seconbarbital).
As one pharmacologist explains it, a subject coming under the influence of a barbiturate injected intravenously goes through all the stages of progressive drunkenness, but the time scale is on the order of minutes instead of hours. Outwardly the sedation effect is dramatic, especially if the subject is a psychiatric patient in tension. His features slacken, his body relaxes. Some people are momentarily excited; a few become silly and giggly. This usually passes, and most subjects fall asleep, emerging later in disoriented semi-wakefulness.
The descent into narcosis and beyond with progressively larger doses can be divided as follows:
I. Sedative stage.
II. Unconsciousness, with exaggerated reflexes (hyperactive stage).
III. Unconsciousness, without reflex even to painful stimuli.
IV. Death.
Whether all these stages can be distinguished in any given subject depends largely on the dose and the rapidity with which the drug is induced. In anesthesia, stages I and II may last only two or three seconds.
The first or sedative stage can be further divided:
Plane 1. No evident effect, or slightly sedative effect.
Plane 2. Cloudiness, calmness, amnesia. (Upon recovery, the subject will not remember what happened at this or "lower" planes or stages.)
Plane 3. Slurred speech, old thought patterns disrupted, inability to integrate or learn new patterns. Poor coordination. Subject becomes unaware of painful stimuli.
Plane 3 is the psychiatric "work" stage. It may last only a few minutes, but it can be extended by further slow injection of drug. The usual practice is to back into the sedative stage on the way to full consciousness.
CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES
The general abhorrence in Western countries for the use of chemical agents "to make people do things against their will" has precluded serious systematic study (at least as published openly) of the potentialities of drugs for interrogation. Louis A. Gottschalk, surveying their use in information-seeking interviews, [13] cites 136 references; but only two touch upon the extraction of intelligence information, and one of these concludes merely that Russian techniques in interrogation and indoctrination are derived from age-old police methods and do not depend on the use of drugs. On the validity of confessions obtained with drugs, Gottschalk found only three published experimental studies that he deemed worth reporting.
One of these reported experiments by D.P. Morris in which intravenous sodium amytal was helpful in detecting malingerers. [12] The subjects, soldiers, were at first sullen, negativistic, and non-productive under amytal, but as the interview proceeded they revealed the fact of and causes for their malingering. Usually the interviews turned up a neurotic or psychotic basis for the deception.
The other two confession studies, being more relevant to the highly specialized, untouched area of drugs in intelligence interrogation, deserve more detailed review.
Gerson and Victoroff [12] conducted amytal interviews with 17 neuropsychiatric patients, soldiers who had charges against them, at Tilton General Hospital, Fort Dix. First they were interviewed without amytal by a psychiatrist, who, neither ignoring nor stressing their situation as prisoners or suspects under scrutiny, urged each of them to discuss his social and family background, his army career, and his version of the charges pending against him.
The patients were told only a few minutes in advance that narcoanalysis would be performed. The doctor was considerate, but positive and forthright. He indicated that they had no choice but to submit to the procedure. Their attitudes varied from unquestioning to downright refusal.
Each patient was brought to complete narcosis and permitted to sleep. As he became semiconscious and could be stimulated to speak, he was held in this stage with additional amytal while the questioning proceeded. He was questioned first about innocuous matters from his background that he had discussed before receiving the drug. Whenever possible, he was manipulated into bringing up himself the charges pending against him before being questioned about them. If he did this in a too fully conscious state, it proved more effective to ask him to "talk about that later" and to interpose a topic that would diminish suspicion, delaying the interrogation on his criminal activity until he was back in the proper stage of narcosis.
The procedure differed from therapeutic narcoanalysis in several ways: the setting, the type of patients, and the kind of "truth" sought. Also, the subjects were kept in twilight consciousness longer than usual. This state proved richest in yield of admissions prejudicial to the subject. In it his speech was thick, mumbling, and disconnected, but his discretion was markedly reduced. This valuable interrogation period, lasting only five to ten minutes at a time, could be reinduced by injecting more amytal and putting the patient back to sleep.
The interrogation technique varied from case to case according to the background information about the patient, the seriousness of the charges, the patient's attitude under narcosis, and his rapport with the doctor. Sometimes it was useful to pretend, as the patient grew more fully conscious, that he had already confessed during the amnestic period of the interrogation, and to urge him, while his memory and sense of self-protection were still limited, to continue to elaborate the details of what he had "already described." When it was obvious that a subject was withholding the truth, his denials were quickly passed over and ignored, and the key questions would be rewarded in a new approach.
Several patients revealed fantasies, fears, and delusions approaching delirium, much of which could readily be distinguished from reality. But sometimes there was no way for the examiner to distinguish truth from fantasy except by reference to other sources. One subject claimed to have a child that did not exist,
another threatened to kill on sight a stepfather who had been dead a year, and yet another confessed to participating in a robbery when in fact he had only purchased goods from the participants. Testimony concerning dates and specific places was untrustworthy and often contradictory because of the patient's loss of time-sense. His veracity in citing names and events proved questionable. Because of his confusion about actual events and what he thought or feared had happened, the patient at times managed to conceal the truth unintentionally.
As the subject revived, he would become aware that he was being questioned about his secrets and, depending upon his personality, his fear of discovery, or the degree of his disillusionment with the doctor, grow negativistic, hostile, or physically aggressive. Occasionally patients had to be forcibly restrained during this period to prevent injury to themselves or others as the doctor continued to interrogate. Some patients, moved by fierce and diffuse anger, the assumption that they had already been tricked into confessing, and a still limited sense of discretion, defiantly acknowledged their guilt and challenged the observer to "do something about it." As the excitement passed, some fell back on their original stories and others verified the confessed material. During the follow-up interview nine of the 17 admitted the validity of their confessions; eight repudiated their confessions and reaffirmed their earlier accounts.
With respect to the reliability of the results of such interrogation, Gerson and Victoroff conclude that persistent, careful questioning can reduce ambiguities in drug interrogation, but cannot eliminate them altogether.
At least one experiment has shown that subjects are capable of maintaining a lie while under the influence of a barbiturate. Redlich and his associates at Yale [25] administered sodium amytal to nine volunteers, students and professionals, who had previously, for purposes of the experiment, revealed shameful and guilt-producing episodes of their past and then invented false self-protective stories to cover them. In nearly every case the cover story retained some elements of the guilt inherent in the true story.
Under the influence of the drug, the subjects were crossexamined on their cover stories by a second investigator. The results, though not definitive, showed that normal individuals who had good defenses and no overt pathological traits could stick to their invented stories and refuse confession. Neurotic individuals with strong unconscious self-punitive tendencies, on the other hand, both confessed more easily and were inclined to substitute fantasy for the truth, confessing to offenses never actually committed.
In recent years drug therapy has made some use of stimulants, most notably amphetamine (Benzedrine) and its relative methamphetamine (Methadrine). These drugs, used either alone or following intravenous barbiturates, produce an outpouring of ideas, emotions, and memories which has been of help in diagnosing mental disorders. The potential of stimulants in interrogation has received little attention, unless in unpublished work. In one study of their psychiatric use Brussel et al. [7] maintain that methedrine gives the liar no time to think or to organize his deceptions. Once the drug takes hold, they say, an insurmountable urge to pour out speech traps the malingerer. Gottschalk, on the other hand, says that this claim is extravagant, asserting without elaboration that the study lacked proper controls. [13] It is evident that the combined use of barbiturates and stimulants, perhaps along with ataraxics (tranquilizers), should be further explored.
OBSERVATIONS FROM PRACTICE
J.M. MacDonald, who as a psychiatrist for the District Courts of Denver has had extensive experience with narcoanalysis, says that drug interrogation is of doubtful value in obtaining confessions to crimes. Criminal suspects under the influence of barbiturates may deliberately withhold information, persist in giving untruthful answers, or falsely confess to crimes they did not commit. The psychopathic personality, in particular, appears to resist successfully the influence of drugs.
MacDonald tells of a criminal psychopath who, having agreed to narco-interrogat | 
