MK-ULTRA was run under the direction of Dr. Charles Savage of the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, MD from 1947 – 1953, after which CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence continued it under the name Project Bluebird, its first mind control program to:
– learn how to condition subjects to withstand information from being extracted from them by known means;
– develop interrogation methods to exert control;
– develop memory enhancement techniques; and
– establish ways to prevent hostile control of Agency personnel.
In 1951, it was renamed Project Artichoke, then MK-ULTRA under Deputy CIA Director Richard Helms in 1953. It aimed to control human behavior through psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs, electroshock, radiation, graphology, paramilitary techniques, and psychological/sociological/anthropological methods, among others – a vast open-field of mind experimentation trying anything that might work, legal or otherwise on willing and unwitting subjects.
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