THINK ABOUTIT SUMMARY:

Project Bluebird: The CIA’s First Step into Mind Control

Project/Group Name:    Project Bluebird

Mission:  To research and develop interrogation methods to achieve mind control, specifically focusing on the ability to program individuals to perform tasks and prevent them from revealing information under duress.

Date Started:  April 5, 1950.   Ended:  August 20, 1951 (Renamed to Project Artichoke).

Who or Whom Started It:  CIA (specifically the Office of Scientific Intelligence).

Part of what Government Agency:  Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Location:  Various secret facilities, hospitals, prisons, and clinics across the United States and internationally.

Special Features/Characteristics: 

• Paperclip Origins: Directly utilized research and personnel (vivisectionists and torturers) from Nazi and Japanese concentration camps.

• LSD Monopoly: Arranged for the CIA to purchase the entire world’s supply of LSD for $240,000 to keep it out of Soviet hands and weaponize it.

• License to Kill: Operatives like Sidney Gottlieb worked with zero supervision, allowing for fatal experimentation on human subjects without reporting requirements.

Summary/Description:  Project Bluebird was the CIA’s first major foray into behavioral engineering during the Cold War “race for the mind.” It was designed to continue the medical and interrogation experiments started during WWII, using drugs like LSD and hypnosis to create “Manchurian Candidates” or induce total amnesia in targets. It established the “bogus foundation” model where the CIA funded legitimate institutions to perform clandestine research.

Related to:  Project Artichoke (Successor), Project MK-ULTRA (Second Successor), Project Paperclip (Nazi recruitment), and Operation Dormouse (the 1970s cover-up).

Source:  CIA Bluebird files (recovered/partial); NPR; A Terrible Mistake (H.P. Albarelli).

Other Details:  In 1973, fearing exposure during a leadership change, Sidney Gottlieb and Richard Helms ordered the destruction of all project records. Gottlieb personally oversaw the destruction of boxes of MK-ULTRA/Bluebird history, though a small cache of financial documents was later found in a different location, allowing for the partial reconstruction of the project’s scope.

“Gottlieb arranged that the CIA would pay $240,000 for the world supply of LSD… it became a major part of Project Bluebird.”

Data:

Project Bluebird was a CIA project that researched interrogation methods to obtain mind control with or without the use of drugs. Project Bluebird was also a part of the race against the Soviet allies and the United States allies at the beginning of the Cold War. The Cold War, while not a physical war between nations, was a war of advancements, getting further in advancement by using propaganda. As later research would find, the Central Intelligence Agency had Project Bluebird files that date back to April 5, 1950, The project’s main focus was to continue previous medical experimentations and interrogation methods with the purpose of mind control. The project held a historical turning point because it sparked interest in its findings.

The project was investigated further around August 20, 1951, and renamed Project Artichoke (referred to as Operation Artichoke) where it was changed by the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence. Then, on April 13, 1953, Richard Helms had their name changed by CIA director Allen Welsh Dulles. Project Artichoke then became known as Project MK-ULTRA. Project Bluebird was based on previous research from Nazi and Japanese concentration camps. The CIA even hired vivisectionists and torturers from the camps to come explain what they had found in their research so they could understand it further and deepen their understanding. Project Bluebird was run by a CIA chemist named Sidney Gottlieb from the 1950s to the early ’60s. The project, by his standards, was concluded as “not possible”. Scientists’ quest for mind control utilized and experimented with drugs like LSD and other illuminants. Early on in the project, CIA scientists took a large interest in LSD and it became a major part of Project Bluebird. In the early 1950’s Gottlieb had arranged that the CIA would pay $240,000 for the world supply of LSD. Gottlieb brought it into the United States where he “began spreading it around to hospitals, clinics, prisons, and other institutions, asking them, through bogus foundations, to carry out research projects and find out what LSD was, how people reacted to it and how it might be able to be used as a Weapon

As time unfolded, Gottlieb continued the work of Project Bluebird almost completely without supervision. The project gave him access to a license to kill. According to NPR, “[Gottlied] was allowed to requisition human subjects across the United States and around the world and subject them to any kind of abuse that he wanted, even up to the level of it being fatal — yet nobody looked over his shoulder. He never had to file serious reports to anybody.” Richard Helms, his supervisor, and the CIA director Allen Dulles knew of this but as long as Richard was willing to look the other way and Dulles didn’t have any reason to suspect anything besides a regular drug investigation there was no need to shut Project MK-ULTRA down. When Helms’s position was going to be changed, it was only a matter of time before their experiments were to be found. Together, they decided to destroy Project MK-Ultra’s records (originally known as Project Bluebird). Gottlieb drove out boxes full of MK-ULTRA records to be destroyed in the early 70’s, in attempts to wipe any traces of what he had done. Some of the documents had been scattered and found in another place after the records were destroyed, and while the CIA was able to piece bits of experiments together, Gottlieb’s attempt to wipe out the paper trail was mostly successful. After Gottlieb had destroyed the documents, he was able to get away from the situation.