THINK ABOUTIT SUMMARY

OPERATION DORMOUSE: The Secret Plan to Hide Project Artichoke 

Project/Group Name:    Operation Dormouse

Mission:  To protect the CIA from institutional destruction by deliberately leaking the MKULTRA program as a “buffer” to divert media and Congressional attention away from the more sensitive and operational Project Artichoke.

Date Started:   June 1975.  Ended:  Late 1970s (Successfully achieved its objective of burying Artichoke).

Who or Whom Started It:  CIA General Counsel Lawrence Houston, coordinated with White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld and Assistant Richard Cheney.

Part of what Government Agency:  CIA Security Research Branch, under the direction of the Ford White House.

Location:  CIA Headquarters (Langley, VA) and the White House.

Special Features/Characteristics: 

• Limited Hangout Strategy: Admitting to a lesser crime (MKULTRA) to hide a greater one (Artichoke).

• Academic Buffering: Used the involvement of prestigious universities (Harvard, Tulane, etc.) in MKULTRA to make the research appear more “legitimate” and less “offensive” than Artichoke’s field operations.

• Legal Immunity: Relied on a secret 1954 CIA-DOJ agreement (The Rogers-Houston Agreement) to prevent prosecution of CIA officials for capital crimes.

Summary/Description:  Operation Dormouse was a counter-intelligence operation launched in response to the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee hearings. Fearing that the investigation into Frank Olson’s death would lead to Project Artichoke, Lawrence Houston convinced Rumsfeld and Cheney to “offer up” MKULTRA to the press. The plan was remarkably effective; by feeding the media details about Dr. Sidney Gottlieb and LSD experiments, the public was led to believe Artichoke was merely a small, defunct predecessor to MKULTRA, when in reality, Artichoke was the CIA’s primary operational mind-control and torture program for nearly two decades.

Related to:  Project Artichoke, MKULTRA, Project BLUEBIRD, Project Paperclip, and the Frank Olson assassination.

Source:  A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments (H.P. Albarelli); Rockefeller Commission Files.

Other Details:  Operation Dormouse specifically protected records of Nazi scientists imported via Project Paperclip who worked at Fort Detrick and Edgewood Arsenal. It successfully ensured that even as the public grew outraged over MKULTRA, the “Artichoke Conference” and its extreme interrogation atrocities remained nearly invisible to history.

“Houston impressed upon both men that any prolonged and intense media scrutiny of Project Artichoke would lead to opening a Pandora’s box… that could destroy the CIA.”