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ARTICHOKE: A Cold War chamber piece
The CIA's most absurd mind-control experiment is now a stage play
OrGiveMeDeath Industries is proud to present our first stage play: ARTICHOKE. Unearthed from deep within a cache of declassified CIA documents, this farcical tale was rejected by history for its sheer absurdity. Set in 1952 and inspired by real events, ARTICHOKE is a Cold War chamber piece about self-delusion, paranoia, bad coffee, and the race to control the human mind. Now available on Kindle1 and print. The following essay is adapted from the introduction to the stage play.
The Cold War played out as a series of races between superpowers, most notably the space race and the arms race. One race, concealed by design and largely forgotten, was the race to control the human mind. In a conflict fueled by paranoia, this contest sat on the bleeding edge of fear itself.
The mind-control Sputnik moment came in the winter of 1949 with the arrest of a Hungarian cardinal. Hungary’s shaky postwar democracy had succumbed to full Stalinization and Cardinal József Mindszenty, Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary, was subjected to a show trial for resisting state control of the Church. At his trial, before the cameras and the world, he made a series of outlandish confessions: he had conspired to steal the Hungarian crown jewels, start World War III, and make himself ruler of the world. The Cardinal’s vacant stare and mechanical voice seemed to confirm the CIA’s worst fears; the Soviets had found a means to control men’s minds.
Since its inception, the CIA had dabbled in enhanced interrogation methods including so-called truth serums, but a perceived “mind-control gap” with the Soviets created a new sense of urgency. For the next quarter-century, the CIA sought to counter and master this new threat through a succession of covert projects, each more bizarre than the last. What began with simple polygraph tests and sodium pentothal injections would end with a CIA-run LSD-bordello in San Francisco.
Much of this work would have gone unnoticed by the public were it not for a series of Congressional investigations in the 1970s. Following revelations of widespread abuses by the intelligence services, the Senate convened the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Known as the Church Committee for its chair, Senator Frank Church, it would force the release of thousands of CIA documents detailing the agency’s exploration into behavior-modifying drugs, most famously LSD.
The committee revealed the CIA had funded LSD research at universities and hospitals across the country for years. Thanks to enthusiastic test subjects, including author Ken Kesey, lab leaks had ironically fueled the very hippie counterculture the CIA later worked to thwart. More sensational projects strained credulity. Under project Midnight Climax the agency hired sex workers to lure random johns to a San Francisco safe house where they were secretly dosed with LSD and observed through one-way mirrors. The operation went on for almost nine years.
Following the release of the CIA files, project MK ULTRA became a household (or at least dorm room) name. The CIA’s work with LSD has been the subject of books, documentaries, and movies for years while the projects leading up to MK ULTRA have been largely forgotten. Before MK ULTRA there was ARTICHOKE, before that there was BLUEBIRD. The meanings of each codename are lost to history, but their activities are not.
Origins
Launched in 1950, the CIA’s first formal mind-control program, BLUEBIRD, got off to a rocky start. A memo from February 1950, with the subject line “Problems Involved in Obtaining a Psychiatrist,” outlined the obstacles to finding a psychiatrist willing and able to carry out the mission’s objectives. Some telling hindrances included:
• “His ethics might be such that he might not care to cooperate in certain more revolutionary phases of our project.”
• “Very few psychiatrists are really capable in the application of hypnosis and have no interest whatsoever in ESP.”2
Nevertheless, the agency was successful in finding a candidate who was “extremely interested in the use of hypnosis, drugs, and ESP.” He was nearing retirement, and his ethics were such that he would go along with the program “regardless of how new or revolutionary it may be.”
Staffed up, the BLUEBIRD team was ready to go to work. As luck would have it, war broke out on the Korean peninsula later that year. The BLUEBIRD team conducted its first field tests in Tokyo under the cover of “intensive polygraph” tests on suspected double agents. Stimulants and depressants were administered to subjects. In what would become an ongoing theme, attempts were made to induce amnesia. Over the next couple of years, mind-control operations bounced around different CIA jurisdictions before settling in as Project ARTICHOKE in 1952.
Project LGQ
Meanwhile, the Navy was also making progress in the burgeoning field of mind-control. Under the auspices of motion sickness research, the Navy had been funding its own drug experiments at the University of Rochester. When Professor G. Richard Wendt, Chairman of the Psychology Department, announced he had made a breakthrough with the amnesia problem, a team-up was in order. The CIA and Navy hastily set out for West Germany to put on an impromptu field test, codenamed “LGQ” for the three-ingredient miracle drug developed by Professor Wendt. What followed was a failure so catastrophically embarrassing, it nearly derailed the entire mind-control enterprise.
Thanks to journalist John Marks, this farcical tale was unearthed from beneath thousands of poorly reproduced documents released by the Church Committee. Through Marks’ archival research and original reporting, the story comes to life in his 1979 non-fiction book, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”, the first major work to detail the CIA’s mind control experiments.
Further research into the original documents by this author reveals the full comedy of errors captured in bureaucratic prose and fragmented transcripts. The original documents include a detailed timeline of events, first-hand observations, and bizarre clips of dialogue, including a drugged subject musing, “Sometimes a dream is so vivid that after a couple of days you remember it almost as real.”3
In defiance of acceptable research norms, particularly those regarding the use of human subjects, Wendt decided to forgo rigorous lab testing and jump straight into the field. In yet another incomprehensible decision, Wendt had his undergraduate assistant, and alleged mistress, accompany him on the top-secret mission. None of this seemed to bother his government sponsors.
Wendt made every effort to conceal the true nature of his substance. When finally confronted by the Navy Commander overseeing the mission, Wendt revealed the substances to be the depressant Seconal (L), the simulant Dexedrine (G), and tetrahydrocannabinol (Q), the active ingredient in marijuana. All these substances were well known to the CIA. Seconal and Dexedrine were already available as a combination branded as Dexamyl, known by its street name goofballs. The Commander was furious, but events had gained momentum of their own, so the mission proceeded.
The team gathered in a modified farmhouse in the West German countryside to conduct their drug experiments on suspected double agents and defectors. Over the following weeks, subjects were dragged in blindfolded then given spiked coffee and beer. CIA interrogators, the Professor, and his secretary engaged in casual conversation, ate lunch, and played cards with the subjects all while being observed through a one-way mirror.
The ineffectiveness of the drugs was immediately apparent. Dosages were applied haphazardly, and the Professor’s explanations of the desired effects were contradictory. After a night of lackluster results, the Professor remarked, “At least we learned one thing from this experiment. The people you have to deal with here are different from American college students.”
Wendt wilted in the presence of the hardened subjects, pushing him to a near nervous breakdown. “I don’t know how to deal with these people,” he admitted to the CIA operators.
Meanwhile, the presence of this young female assistant was hitting a raw nerve with the group. Wendt constantly deferred decisions to her, and she frequently contradicted him. She joked with the CIA agents and giggled incessantly, all while measuring out the drugs with a knife tip. During the final test, she and Wendt became so drunk on the beer intended for the subjects they could not finish the proceedings.
Unsurprisingly, tensions rose between Wendt and the intelligence men. When pressed to reveal the ingredients in his formula, Wendt insisted the men could not comprehend his formula without first reading a 75-page technical report. He called them incompetent and claimed it would be “unpatriotic” for him to reveal the substances. An angered CIA agent shot back that he could take being called incompetent but would not stand for Wendt challenging his patriotism.4
Events came to a head when Wendt’s wife appeared in Frankfurt demanding to see him. According to an interview conducted by Marks, the professor threatened to jump off a church tower.
The final reports determined the mission to be a resounding failure. “This experiment proved nothing,”5 read one report. Another report put it in even more stark terms:
The ARTICHOKE team is also of the opinion that to a great extent a fraud was perpetrated or at least a gross misrepresentation was made to the [redacted] by the [redacted] concerning use [redacted] funds both at [redacted] and in the advocation of this [redacted] expedition. Certainly, results in [redacted] clearly established that [redacted] had either a total lack of understanding and a completely inadequate preparation or had made a deliberate attempt to mislead and deceive.6
The report made several conclusions for future missions. One recommendation was, that as an absolute rule, women should be excluded from future ARTICHOKE missions. This was deemed essential for two reasons:
The first is that the work is hazardous under certain circumstances and the second is the problem involving personal convenience, toilet facilities, etc., are complicated by the presence of women.
In one report, a list of pointed questions exposed the mission’s failures and the harsh skepticism toward the Professor:
• If [redacted] gets in trouble such as divorce, how can we smother this trip? What would the [redacted] do in the event of a scandal or possible suicide?
• Specifically, what did these things do that whisky, beer, vodka, gin wouldn’t?
• If, after two years of research and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent and the only substance developed are standard compounds such as the barbiturates, could we make now a case of fraud?
• Is [redacted] mistress or is having an affair with him or is actually in love with him or if the reverse is true, how can it possibly be state that she would be an impartial observer?7
Ultimately, the expedition was a major setback for the mind-control race. Professor Wendt saw his funding cancelled and was directed to return any unspent funds to the government. He would never work with the Navy again. The Navy did not recover from the embarrassment and rolled up its mind-control research. Despite the stumble, the CIA would regroup and continue to push the envelope with MK ULTRA and beyond.
The Play
The declassified files from Project LGQ read like accidental comedy, and now the play ARTICHOKE brings that farce to life on stage as a Cold War chamber piece. Though inspired by actual events, the dialogue is invented and characters are composites. Unlike the CIA, the stage has rules, so events have been arranged accordingly. This is firmly historical fiction that can only hope to compete with the bizarre truth.
Read the full declassified files archive here.
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Document #168