Mind Control

“There is no truth serum.” “That bridge between consciousness and drug effects has yet to be crossed, and I don’t know if it ever will be,” Ketchum says. Even so, plenty of people have their doubts. Programs funded by the Department of Defense have looked into the feasibility of fMRI research. Private companies tout fMRI as an improved lie detector, and the government has taken notice.

Recent studies suggest that noninvasive brain scans, taken with a functional MRI (fMRI), make the mind more transparent. Still, the search for ways to penetrate minds continues. “Moral issues were considered minor if greater national security could be obtained.” LSD, radiation, and electroshock all ended up as dead ends in the MKULTRA program’s quest for mind control. Ketchum, whose book, Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten, recounts his participation in a different Army project exploring the use of LSD as a chemical weapon. “They launched into reckless experimentation without close medical supervision,” says psychiatrist James S.

Clients were secretly dosed with LSD and committed suicide a week later. In the 1950s, visitors to a brothel atop San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill got more than just a tryst and a view of the bay.