MK Ultra: Cults, Trance States, and the Weaponization of Trauma
Below are Adam Simon’s notes from the show: “MK Ultra: Cults, Trance States, and the Weaponization of Trauma”
Black Budget Units
NSA – TAO
NSA/CIA – SCS (F6)
NRO – Advanced Systems & Tech Directorate
NRO – Ground Enterprise Directorate
JSOC – ISA (“The Activity”)
JSOC – Task Force Orange
SOCOM – STO (Special Technical Operations)
SOCOM – PEO Special Reconnaissance
CIA – SOG
CIA – Office of Global Access (OGA)
1. The Sinaloa Protected-Trafficker Arrangement (2000s–2013)
DEA SOD + U.S. Intel Compartment + El Chapo’s Organization**
What insiders know:
From 2004–2013, U.S. agents (primarily DEA’s Special Operations Division) conducted clandestine debriefs and exchanges with Sinaloa Cartel emissaries — especially Vicente Zambada Niebla (El Vicentillo).
In federal court, Zambada testified that the U.S. gave Sinaloa protection from prosecution, allowed them to move product through certain corridors, and exchanged intel to help them dismantle rivals (Los Zetas, BLO, La Familia).
The unspoken truth known by U.S. liaison officers:
The rationale was strategic stability — pick one cartel to dominate others to reduce open warfare along the border.
This is by far the modern equivalent of Iran–Contra in terms of shock value.
2. The Afghan Heroin Compartment (2001–2021)
CIA + ISAF + Local Warlord Networks Running 90% of Global Heroin**
What insiders know:
Post-invasion Afghanistan saw a 40-fold increase in opium production.
Why? Because the U.S. backed regional powerbrokers — warlords, militia commanders, and provincial intelligence chiefs — who controlled the opium trade.
Examples insiders recognize immediately:
Ahmed Wali Karzai, president’s brother, was on the CIA payroll while running trafficking networks.
Kandahar Strike Force & Khost Protection Force — CIA-trained units — controlled regions where opium processing labs and smuggling routes thrived.
ISAF forces were often ordered not to disrupt opium fields because “it would push locals to the Taliban.”
This is absolutely post-9/11 and extremely relevant.
3. Colombia’s AUC / Paramilitary Alliance Overlap (1995–2008)
CIA + DIA CI + U.S.-trained officers who enabled cocaine routes**
What insiders know:
The AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) — the right-wing paramilitary federation — was both:
The most significant anti-FARC asset supported indirectly through U.S.-trained Colombian army brigades.
The largest exporter of cocaine in the world by the early 2000s.
Key facts known in intel circles:
Several U.S.-vetted army units (Brigades 4, 12, and Intelligence Battalion 20) collaborated with AUC commanders who controlled entire trafficking corridors.
The AUC used U.S.-funded helicopters and intel meant for counterinsurgency to secure cocaine labs and maritime shipments.
When the U.S. finally designated the AUC a terrorist organization (2001), intelligence sharing continued through intermediaries.
This is a perfect example of “counterinsurgency first, narcotics second.”
4. The Peña Nieto–Sinaloa Quiet Understanding (2012–2018)
Not a CIA op per se, but CIA was fully aware of the Mexican Presidential Intelligence Service’s accommodation with Sinaloa, allowing them to expand while the government “focused on cartel fragmentation elsewhere.”
*5. Honduras Military Intelligence + Cachiros Cooperation With U.S. (2010s)
DEA and CIA allowed the Cachiros cartel to operate trafficking lanes in exchange for intel on politicians and military officers — until the arrangement collapsed in U.S. court.
1. Total Identity Destruction — “Psychic Driving” (Subproject 68)
Location: Allan Memorial Institute, Montréal
Doctor: Ewen Cameron
Goal: Erase a personality, rebuild a new one
What was done:
Massive electroshock far beyond medical limits
Drug-induced comas lasting 30–60 days
Patients looped with audio messages for hours/days (“psychic driving”)
Sensory isolation
Restraints
High-dose LSD repeatedly without consent
Why it’s the darkest:
Patients entered with mild anxiety or postpartum depression —
left with erased memories, childlike cognition, and permanent brain damage.
Some forgot:
Their families
Their childhood
How to speak
How to function independently
This is the closest the U.S. government ever came to attempted mind erasure.
2. Unwitting Dosing + Sexual Coercion (“Operation Midnight Climax”)
Goal: Observe behavior under intoxication and sexual vulnerability
Locations: San Francisco & New York CIA safehouses
What was done:
Sex workers on CIA payroll lured men to safehouses
Subjects were dosed with LSD without consent
Observed through two-way mirrors
Everything was recorded (audio & notes)
Why it’s so dark:
These were not volunteers.
These were targeted, vulnerable, unsuspecting civilians.
The experiments crossed into sexual exploitation as a tool of control.
This was the darkest overlap of intelligence work and human manipulation.
3. Drug + Hypnosis Compliance Experiments (Subproject 130)
Goal: Determine if a person could be compelled to act against their morals
What was done:
Subjects hypnotized under high-dose LSD, mescaline, barbiturates
Attempted induction of amnesia, fragmented identity states
Exploring whether commands could override personal ethics
Why it matters:
The Agency wanted to know:
“Can we make someone do something they would never normally do?”
This subproject sits at the heart of the MK-ULTRA mythos — because it’s the one most closely aligned with actual deliberate mind control.
4. Electroshock + Drug Cocktails on Children (FOIA-documented Cambridge & NYC work)
Not widely known because most documents were destroyed.
Confirmed in surviving grants:
Children in hospitals were given LSD, psilocybin, and stimulants
Combined with aversive conditioning
Part of studies into “behavior modification” and “childhood personality formation”
Why it’s so disturbing:
These were minors, often from low-income families or institutions.
Consent was murky or non-existent.
The purpose was explicitly to see how malleable a developing mind could be.
5. Sensory Deprivation Torture Experiments (Donald Hebb)
Location: McGill University
Funded through MK-ULTRA front foundations
What was done:
Subjects put in complete isolation
No light, no sound, hands encased in cardboard tubes
Minimal movement, constant white noise
Effects:
Within 48–72 hours subjects experienced:
Hallucinations
Breakdown of identity
Extreme suggestibility
Dissociation
Inability to perform simple cognitive tasks
Why it’s crucial:
This experiment demonstrated the single most important psychological principle the CIA would use for the next 50 years:
A deprived mind becomes extremely open to suggestion.
6. Attempted Weaponization of Mental Illness (Cameron & others)
Some subprojects explored:
Inducing psychosis
Fragmenting identity
Using regression techniques to “collapse” the psyche
Seeing if trauma states made subjects more compliant
Techniques:
Overdoses of LSD (far beyond psychotherapeutic use)
Combined ECT + depatterning
Sleep deprivation
Isolation
Fear-induction protocols
Why it’s dark:
These were not treatments.
They were engineered breakdowns designed to study how to manipulate a shattered mind.
7. MK-NAOMI — Covert Delivery Systems for Incapacitating Agents
Joint CIA–Army Special Operations Division
Focus:
Biological agents
Chemical compounds
Aerosolized incapacitating drugs
Poison disguised as everyday objects
Covert delivery tools
Why it matters:
It’s not mind control in the psychological sense, but it intersects with covert incapacitation, the physical side of controlling behavior.
8. Surreptitious Dosing of Entire Populations (St. Louis, NYC, San Francisco)
CIA and Army intelligence units conducted cold-war era “field tests” using:
Bacteria
Chemicals
Aerosols dispersed from rooftops or subways
Why this is disturbing:
The subjects were entire cities — unknowing Americans.
Though these tests were not labeled “MK-ULTRA,” they sit comfortably inside the same philosophy:
“What happens when you expose a population to a mind-altering or behavior-altering agent without their consent?”
9. Coerced Institutional Populations (Prisons, Asylums, Addiction Clinics)
Subprojects ran in:
Lexington Narcotics Hospital
Vacaville State Prison
Various psychiatric institutions
What was done:
Long-term LSD experiments on prisoners
Drug + interrogation combinations
“Rehabilitation” masking experiments
Reward-based compliance (e.g., heroin for cooperation at Lexington)
Why it’s among the darkest:
These subjects were legally and socially powerless.
The Agency took advantage of people who could not say no.