Timeline

The U.S. Army establishes Fort Hero on the eastern point of Long Island as a coastal defense installation. The facility is renamed Camp Hero the same year. Reconnaissance aircraft and Coast Guard personnel begin operations as German U-boats threaten the eastern seaboard.

The U.S. Navy arranges to obtain marijuana and heroin from the FBI for use in interrogation experiments. A contractor in New York is hired to develop drugs and instrumentation for interrogation of prisoners of war and defectors. The CIA functions as an interested observer. The security cover for the project is a study of motion sickness. This program is documented in the 1977 DoD General Counsel memorandum to the Secretary of Defense.

The Air Force installs an AN/TPS-1B long-range search radar at the Montauk site and designates it Montauk Point L-10. The facility begins feeding targeting data into an air defense control center at Roslyn Air Force Station.

CIA document CIA-RDP80R01731R003500150016-5 is produced in September, cataloguing active psychological warfare research programs inside the U.S. Air Force. The document confirms formal CIA and Air Force coordination on behavioral research three years before MKUltra is authorized.

The CIA initiates Project BLUEBIRD in response to concerns about Soviet and Chinese advances in interrogation techniques. BLUEBIRD investigates hypnosis, drug administration, and their combination as tools for behavioral control. It is the first program in the chain that leads to ARTICHOKE and MKUltra.

Project BLUEBIRD is reorganized and renamed Project ARTICHOKE under the CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence. The program expands its research scope to include the development of a courier capability and the systematic testing of combined hypnotic and pharmacological interrogation protocols.

Between June 4 and June 18, 1952, the I&SO Artichoke Team conducts special interrogations at a guarded overseas safehouse on two subjects. Both subjects are transported with eyes taped shut and wearing dark glasses. In Case 1, total amnesia is produced in the professional opinion of the team. In Case 2, total amnesia is produced on the second day following sodium pentothal and Desoxyn administration. The subjects' dispositions after the operations are described as outside the Artichoke Team's responsibility. The team recommends the subject in Case 1 be held in prison for up to two years before release. Confirmed in CIA FOIA document 12884836.

The July 3, 1952 Artichoke Cases report recommends that CIA overseas offices maintain a windowless ambulance or delivery truck as standard equipment for transporting subjects without risk of observation from outside or by the subjects themselves. The recommendation follows the June 1952 operation in which subjects were transported with eyes taped shut and dark glasses to prevent recognition by local populations.

On 1 December 1953 Montauk Air Force Station's site designation changes to LP-45. The installation is incorporated into the permanent Air Defense Command network and begins integration with the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment air defense system.

CIA Director Allen Dulles authorizes Project MKUltra on April 13, 1953. ARTICHOKE is formally subsumed. MKUltra expands to approximately 150 subprojects across more than 80 institutions, adding LSD, sensory deprivation, and electromagnetic signal research to the methods inherited from ARTICHOKE.

Frank Olson, a U.S. Army biological weapons researcher, is administered LSD without his knowledge at a CIA retreat in November. Nine days later he falls from a window of the Statler Hotel in New York City. His death is ruled a suicide. A 1994 forensic examination finds evidence of blunt force trauma to the head prior to the fall.

The CIA Technical Services Division enters an informal arrangement with officials of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Safehouses are established in San Francisco and New York at $10,000 per year each. MKULTRA substances are administered to unwitting subjects including informers, criminal associates, and members of the general public at all social levels. This is confirmed in the 1963 CIA Inspector General report.

Montauk Air Force Station receives the AN/FPS-35 radar system, manufactured by Sperry Corporation. The antenna measures 126 feet across. The system operates in the UHF band with a 250-mile detection range and is integrated into the SAGE continental air defense network.

Inspector General J.S. Earman delivers a Top Secret report to the Director of Central Intelligence recommending termination of the covert testing program. The report states that no effective cover story exists, that present practice is to maintain no records of the planning and approval of test programs, and that existing checks and balances do not afford senior CIA management adequate protection against the high risks involved. The report is prepared in one copy only.

Montauk Air Force Station is officially decommissioned according to Air Force records. FOIA requests for records covering the period after this date return a response of no records exist or cannot be located, which is a distinct response from a classification exemption.

CIA Director Richard Helms orders the destruction of MKUltra files. Approximately 20,000 documents survive because they are misfiled in a financial records building in Rockville, Maryland. An unknown volume of records is not recoverable.

Robert G. Malech of Dorne and Margolin Inc. files US Patent 3,951,134 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patent describes a device for remotely monitoring and altering human brain waves without physical contact with the subject. The USPTO grants the patent in 1976.

The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities investigates MKUltra. The committee confirms the program's existence, its use of unwitting subjects, and its operation across more than 80 institutions.

The General Counsel of the Department of Defense delivers a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense documenting the results of a 30-day records search. The Army participated in three CIA-sponsored drug programs between 1969 and 1973. The Navy participated in five between 1947 and 1973. The Air Force participated in none. The document is declassified under FOIA release 02-A-0846.

A FOIA search discovers the approximately 20,000 MKUltra documents that survived the 1973 destruction order due to misfiling. The documents are released and form the basis of the public record on MKUltra. Sidney Gottlieb testifies before the Senate about the program.

Admiral Stansfield Turner testifies before the joint Senate hearing on Project MKUltra. He confirms the discovery of seven boxes of surviving financial records at the CIA Retired Records Center in Rockville, Maryland. 150 subprojects involving 44 institutions are confirmed. Unwitting testing on U.S. citizens is confirmed. The death of Frank Olson is confirmed as attributable to the program.

Montauk Air Force Station is formally closed and transferred to New York State. The site subsequently becomes Camp Hero State Park. The AN/FPS-35 radar tower remains standing and is later listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers removes ordnance explosive and non-ordnance scrap from Area H and part of Area K at Camp Hero. These two areas are designated military munitions sites and excluded from the main remedial investigation. Their CERCLA investigation proceeds on a separate timeline.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New England District issues its Final Decision Document for the Camp Hero Formerly Used Defense Site. The document formally confirms underground bunkers, the FPS-35 Radar Tower as sealed and restricted, and the exclusion of Areas H and K from the investigation. The selected remedy is No Further Action for the 18 Decision Units investigated.

The National Security Archive and ProQuest release a collection of more than 1,200 documents titled "CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments and MKUltra." The collection includes Sidney Gottlieb's personal CIA file and previously sealed Church Committee testimony transcripts.