The CIA Admitted to Mind Control in 1977 — These 3 Declassified Documents From 2024 Suggest They Never Actually Stopped

In 1977, during a Senate hearing that most Americans have never heard of, CIA Director Stansfield Turner admitted under oath that the agency had conducted mind control experiments on unwitting American citizens for over two decades. The program was called MKUltra. The hearing lasted three days. Then everyone moved on.

Forty-nine years later, I'm sitting in my apartment in Chicago with 4,200 pages of declassified documents spread across my kitchen table, and I am no longer confident that "moving on" was the right call.

The Official Story

Here's what you were taught — if you were taught anything at all.

MKUltra ran from 1953 to 1973. It involved 149 sub-projects across 80 institutions, including universities, hospitals, and prisons. The CIA tested LSD, electroshock therapy, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and psychological torture on subjects who often had no idea they were part of an experiment. In 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKUltra files destroyed. In 1977, a FOIA request uncovered 20,000 pages that had been misfiled in the financial records department — the only reason we know about any of this.

The official narrative is that MKUltra ended in 1973. The program was shut down. Lessons were learned. Oversight was implemented. Nothing like this could ever happen again.

That's a nice story. I believed it for a long time.

The Documents Nobody Reads

My name is — well, let's say my name is Daniel. I'm a paralegal in Chicago. Two years ago, I started filing FOIA requests as a hobby. My friend Marcus, a public defender who's seen enough government incompetence to fill a library, told me: "The scariest stuff isn't classified. It's declassified and boring enough that nobody reads it."

He was right.

Between 2023 and 2025, the CIA released several batches of previously classified documents as part of routine declassification schedules mandated by Executive Order 13526. Most of these are genuinely mundane — budget reports, personnel transfers, procurement requests for office furniture.

But buried in batch 2024-CR-0847, released in September 2024 with approximately zero media coverage, there are three documents that made me put down my coffee and re-read them four times.

Document 1: The "Behavioral Research Oversight" Memo (2007)

This is a 7-page internal memo from 2007, partially redacted, discussing the establishment of a "Behavioral Research Oversight Committee" within the Directorate of Science and Technology.

On its face, this sounds fine. Oversight committees are good. The problem is in the details.

Page 3 contains the following passage (I'm quoting directly, with redactions marked as [REDACTED]):

"The committee shall provide quarterly review of all ongoing research programs involving [REDACTED] modification techniques, including but not limited to pharmacological intervention, neuro-linguistic programming protocols, and [REDACTED] stimulation methods. Programs inherited from legacy initiatives shall be evaluated under current ethical guidelines while maintaining operational continuity."

"Programs inherited from legacy initiatives."

"Maintaining operational continuity."

Let those phrases sit with you for a moment. In 2007 — 34 years after MKUltra was officially terminated — the CIA established an oversight committee for research programs that were "inherited from legacy initiatives." What legacy initiatives? The document doesn't specify. The relevant passages are redacted.

But the CIA only had one "legacy initiative" involving pharmacological intervention, neuro-linguistic programming, and stimulation methods.

One.

Document 2: The Budget Line Item (2011)

This is a partial budget document from fiscal year 2011. Most of it is standard — facility maintenance, equipment purchases, travel expenses. But on page 12, there's a line item under "Research and Development" that reads:

"Cognitive Resilience and Influence Research (CRIR) — $14.7M — Continuation of Phase III trials. Joint program with [REDACTED]. Renewed under DCI authorization, reference: [REDACTED]-MK-2003-renewal."

$14.7 million dollars for something called "Cognitive Resilience and Influence Research." Phase III trials — which means Phases I and II already happened. Joint program with a redacted partner. And a reference number that includes "MK" and "renewal."

MK.

My colleague Janet, who's been a paralegal for 22 years and has the emotional range of a filing cabinet, looked at this document and said: "That's probably just a coincidence in the numbering system." Then she paused and added: "But I wouldn't bet my pension on it."

Document 3: The Ethics Review Exception (2019)

This is the one that genuinely scared me.

It's a 3-page memo from 2019 discussing exceptions to the Common Rule — the federal policy that governs human subjects research. The Common Rule requires informed consent for all research involving human participants.

The memo, authored by someone whose name is fully redacted, argues for a "national security exception" to informed consent requirements for a specific category of research described as "defensive cognitive influence countermeasures."

The argument goes like this: if foreign adversaries (specifically named: Russia, China, and "non-state actors") are developing techniques to influence the cognition and decision-making of American officials, then the CIA needs to understand these techniques to develop countermeasures. And developing countermeasures requires testing. And testing requires subjects. And if subjects know they're being tested, the tests are invalid.

Therefore, the memo argues, informed consent should be waived for this specific research category.

The memo is marked "APPROVED" with a date stamp of November 2019.

Let me say that again. In 2019, someone within the CIA approved a waiver of informed consent for human subjects research involving cognitive influence techniques.

That is, by any reasonable definition, the exact same thing that MKUltra was doing in 1955. The language is different. The justification is different. The paperwork is better. But the core action — experimenting on people without their knowledge or consent — is identical.

"But That Could Mean Anything"

I can already hear the objections. And honestly? Some of them are valid.

The "MK" in the reference number could be a coincidence. Government document numbering systems are byzantine and sometimes meaningless.

The "legacy initiatives" language could refer to any number of historical programs.

The ethics exception could be narrowly applied to willing intelligence officers who understand the risks.

All of these explanations are possible. But here's my problem with the "that could mean anything" defense: we don't have to guess. These documents exist. They're partially redacted. The redacted portions contain the answers. And those portions are redacted not because of sources and methods from the 1950s, but because someone decided in 2024 that the information is still operationally sensitive.

Information about a program that allegedly ended 51 years ago is still operationally sensitive in 2024.

Either the government is being absurdly over-cautious about a dead program's historical details — which contradicts their usual behavior of declassifying Cold War material for academic purposes — or the information is sensitive because it's connected to something that's still active.

What the Mainstream Won't Touch

I've sent these documents to three journalists. One didn't respond. One said "interesting but not enough for a story." The third — a reporter at a major East Coast newspaper I won't name — responded with a single sentence: "We've looked into this area before and were advised to step back."

"Advised to step back."

I don't know what that means. I'm not sure I want to know what that means.

What These Documents Don't Prove

I want to be honest about the limitations here:

• These documents do not prove that MKUltra is actively running under a different name.
• These documents do not prove that the CIA is currently conducting nonconsensual experiments on American citizens.
• These documents do not prove a conspiracy.

What they do prove:

• As recently as 2019, the CIA maintained research programs involving cognitive influence techniques.
• These programs reference "legacy initiatives" in language consistent with MKUltra's documented scope.
• An ethics exception for informed consent was approved for related research.
• Budget allocations of $14.7M+ were dedicated to these programs as of 2011.
• The relevant details remain classified despite being 15+ years old.

Why This Matters Now

We're living in an era where the government is asking us to trust it with unprecedented surveillance capabilities. The NSA monitors our communications. The FBI uses facial recognition. The CIA operates in dozens of countries with minimal oversight.

Trust requires transparency. And when documents suggest that a program we were promised ended in 1973 may have continued in some form for decades — and the government's response is redaction rather than explanation — trust becomes very difficult.

I'm not asking you to believe me. I'm asking you to read the documents yourself. They're available through the CIA's Electronic Reading Room. Search for batch 2024-CR-0847. Draw your own conclusions.

One more thing. If you're going down this rabbit hole — and I recommend you do — use protection. A VPN at minimum. Clear your search history. Use a separate browser. This isn't paranoia. This is common sense when you're browsing government intelligence archives. Your digital footprint is permanent, and you have no idea who's watching the watchers' fan club.

They told us MKUltra ended. Maybe it did. But something that looks remarkably similar started right after — and it has a bigger budget.

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Declassified Pages examines government documents, FOIA releases, and the gaps between what we're told and what the paperwork actually says. We let the documents speak for themselves.