Project OFTEN and MKCHICKWIT — CIA behavior programs
The primary government document on MKOFTEN and MKCHICKWIT is a September 20, 1977 memorandum from the General Counsel of the Department of Defense to the Secretary of Defense, produced after a congressional inquiry. It is the only confirmed primary source on both programs. Full transcription below.
Read full transcription →MKOFTEN and MKCHICKWIT were subprograms of MKSEARCH, which was itself the successor to MKULTRA. MKULTRA was formally terminated around 1966. MKSEARCH ran from 1965 to 1973 with the stated objective of developing a capability to manipulate human behavior in a predictable manner through the use of drugs. MKOFTEN and MKCHICKWIT operated within that framework.
MKCHICKWIT's objective was to identify new drug developments in Europe and Asia and to obtain information and samples. A California contractor collected this intelligence beginning in 1967. No testing on human subjects was conducted under MKCHICKWIT. The CIA funded the project at $12,084 in 1967 and $5,000 in 1969, channeled through Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories to conceal agency involvement.
MKOFTEN's objective was to test the behavioral and toxicological effects of certain drugs on animals and humans. It ran from approximately 1968 to 1973. The Army's Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories in Maryland was the primary institutional partner. Drug testing under MKOFTEN included animal trials, testing on military volunteers at Edgewood, and testing on prisoners at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. The compound that received the most CIA attention under MKOFTEN was designated EA-3167, a glycolate class chemical. Edgewood tested it on animals. In June 1973, two military volunteers were tested using EA-3167. The documents provide no further details on those tests.
The Navy served as a financial conduit for a related OFTEN project involving a Massachusetts contractor synthesizing analogs of central nervous system stimulants including DOPA, dopamine, picrotoxin, and ibogaine. The CIA authorization document for that project stated explicitly that the arrangement existed to protect the Agency's association with this area of research and to provide the contractor with credible sponsorship.
All programs under MKSEARCH, including MKOFTEN and MKCHICKWIT, were terminated in 1973. That is the same year the CIA destroyed the bulk of the MKULTRA files on the order of Director Richard Helms. The destruction of records is why so little is known about the programs in operational rather than financial terms. What survived were approvals of advances of funds, vouchers, and accounting records. The substantive program files were gone.
A significant body of claims about MKOFTEN goes beyond what the declassified documents establish. The claims center on occult research: that the CIA under Dr. Stephen Aldrich, who took over MKSEARCH from Sidney Gottlieb, expanded MKOFTEN to include consultations with astrologers, fortune tellers, witches, and practitioners of Satanism. That the program investigated whether occult ritual techniques could be used as behavioral control instruments. That the CIA approached the monsignor in charge of exorcisms for the Archdiocese of New York.
These claims originate with two sources. The more prominent is Gordon Thomas, a British journalist whose books on intelligence programs are widely cited but whose sourcing practices have been questioned. Thomas wrote that MKOFTEN's task was to "explore the world of black magic" and to "harness the forces of darkness." The second source is John Marks, whose 1979 book "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate" is the scholarly foundation of MKULTRA history, based on 16,000 pages of CIA documents obtained through FOIA. Marks described Aldrich as having explored "the world of ESP, ghosts, and the paranormal" but was careful to distinguish what documents showed from what sources told him.
No CIA FOIA document currently in the public record confirms the occult research angle. The CIA's own 1977 internal memo flagging areas of potential press distortion in the MKULTRA document release mentions a handbook prepared by a magician for operational use of sleight of hand in administering drugs to unwitting subjects. That document, which is frequently cited as evidence of occult involvement, describes a misdirection technique for covert dosing. It is an MKULTRA subproject document, not an MKOFTEN document, and it describes a stage magic technique, not ritual practice.
The gap between what the documents say and what has been alleged is a direct consequence of the 1973 records destruction. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The substantive program files for MKOFTEN do not exist in the public record because they were destroyed before anyone thought to look for them.
PRIMARY SOURCE: DoD General Counsel Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, Subject: Experimentation Programs Conducted by the Department of Defense That Had CIA Sponsorship or Participation and That Involved the Administration to Human Subjects of Drugs Intended for Mind-control or Behavior-modification Purposes. September 20, 1977. DoD FOIA Release 02-A-0846.
RECORDS DESTROYED: The substantive operational files for MKOFTEN and MKCHICKWIT were destroyed in 1973. What survived are financial records: fund approvals, vouchers, and accounting documents.
Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia was the site of a long-running experimental drug testing program operated by Dr. Albert Kligman of the University of Pennsylvania under contract with the U.S. Army. Kligman's program ran from 1951 to 1974 and tested hundreds of substances on prisoners without adequate informed consent. The DoD memo confirms that prisoners at Holmesburg were used as test subjects for Edgewood Arsenal's testing of the glycolate compound EA-3167 under MKOFTEN. This places MKOFTEN within the Kligman-Holmesburg testing infrastructure, which is one of the most extensively documented cases of covert human experimentation in U.S. government history.
The Army's Annual Report from Duhring Laboratories at the University of Pennsylvania dated March 31, 1966 is listed in the DoD memo's Appendix A as one of the nine Army documents related to the MKOFTEN program. Duhring Laboratories was Kligman's facility. The connection between MKOFTEN and the Holmesburg program is confirmed by the document index even when the substantive files do not survive.
General Counsel of the Department of Defense. Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Experimentation Programs Conducted by the Department of Defense That Had CIA Sponsorship or Participation and That Involved the Administration to Human Subjects of Drugs Intended for Mind-control or Behavior-modification Purposes." September 20, 1977. DoD FOIA Release 02-A-0846.
DoD FOIA Reading Room: 02-A-0846 PDF →
Mirror: DoD FOID Reading Room (alternate path) →
NOTE: This is a public domain U.S. government document. The transcription on this site is word-for-word from the source PDF. The occult claims about MKOFTEN are not present in any declassified government document. They derive from secondary sources cited in the primary documents section.
The Colonial Authority's research program in The Interference does not begin with the mesh. It begins with the compound. MKOFTEN is the documented proof that the CIA and the U.S. Army ran a joint program to find substances that could be absorbed through the skin and alter behavior without the subject knowing contact had been made. EA-3167 was tested that way. The records of what it did were destroyed in 1973. The Interference series is built on a structural fact that MKOFTEN demonstrates clearly: the most significant findings of a classified research program are the ones that do not survive declassification.
The Interference begins with a patent. US3951134, filed in 1974, describes a device for remotely monitoring and altering human brain waves without physical contact. The patent is real. The USPTO granted it.
What precedes that patent is a documented institutional record. In 1960, the CIA funded MKUltra Subproject 119 at Texas Christian University. The stated objective included techniques of activation of the human organism by remote electronic means. The contractor was unwitting. The budget was $6,370. Sidney Gottlieb signed off. In 1952, an ARTICHOKE field team produced total amnesia in two overseas subjects held in a guarded safehouse with eyes taped shut in transit. Their dispositions after the operation were outside the team's responsibility. In 1963, the CIA Inspector General recommended termination of unwitting testing on American citizens. The program ran for another decade. In 1983, a U.S. Army Intelligence report filed in the CIA's STARGATE collection treated the brain as an electromagnetic organ that could be entrained to external frequencies. Not as theory. As established fact.
The Colonial Authority in The Interference is what that timeline produces if you follow it forward rather than stop at the declassified record. The mesh program James Harlan carries inside his skull is built on the physics in these documents. The fiction begins exactly where the public record stops answering questions.