Project Mind Control: 5 Questions with historian John Lisle

MKULTRA relied on forced behavioral control techniques and often used LSD to try to elicit information and influence people without their consent. Historian John Lisle discusses what newly discovered depositions reveal about Sidney Gottlieb, including the motives he believed he was serving national security and later the shame he felt after realizing the work was unethical. Lisle connects the survival of key records to Gottlieb’s file destruction and the documents that escaped incineration. The deposition record is tied to lawsuits brought by MKULTRA victims, with materials preserved through Joseph Rauh’s donated papers to the Library of Congress. Lisle also highlights Gottlieb’s admissions about ineffective outcomes, institutional failures that allowed illegal and unethical experimentation to continue, and a previously detailed attempt involving anthrax as part of CIA plans against Patrice Lumumba.