The Central Intelligence Agency ran a secret mind control programme for 20 years, drugged and tortured unwitting American citizens, destroyed the evidence, and told Congress the files were gone forever. Now, a whistleblower says those files may still exist, and the CIA just seized them to stop their release.
MK-Ultra was a covert CIA programme that ran from 1953 to 1973. It used LSD, psychological torture, sleep deprivation, hypnosis, and sensory deprivation on unwitting test subjects across more than 80 institutions, including universities, hospitals, and prisons.
The programme funded over 150 sub-projects designed to explore mind control and interrogation techniques during the Cold War. When the Watergate scandal threatened to expose the agency's secrets, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MK-Ultra files destroyed in 1973.
Most were wiped. But roughly 20,000 pages survived because they had been incorrectly stored in a financial records building and were only discovered through aFreedom of Information Act request in 1977.
Those surviving documents triggered Senate hearings and confirmed the programme's existence. But the CIA has long maintained that the rest of the records were gone for good.
That claim is now under direct challenge.
On 13 May 2026, CIA whistleblower James Erdman III, a senior operations officer with roughly two decades of service, testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. While the hearing focused on allegations of a COVID-19 origins cover-up, Erdman also told senators the CIA 'took back 40 boxes of JFK and MK-Ultra files' that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had been processing for declassification.
Erdman described the seizure as part of 'documented efforts to circumvent oversight.' He also alleged the agency 'illegally monitored the computer and phone usage' of investigators working under Gabbard's authority.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, the Republican chairwoman of the House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, responded within hours. She gave the CIA a 24-hour ultimatum to return the documents or face a congressional subpoena.
'The CIA famously said that all documents were released and other documents had been destroyed,' Lunatold NewsNation. 'So these are allegedly those documents that apparently never existed.'
Source: International Business Times UK
