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The Black Vault: A FOIA obsessive’s UFO-filled empire

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Re: The Black Vault: A FOIA obsessive’s UFO-filled empire

#11

Post by hnmonkey »

breakbread wrote: post #10
_jal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to laugh about it, and the emphasis on the sillier aspects are, I think, intentional. They got up to some really nasty stuff. Anyone not familiar with the program would do well to spend a couple minutes on the summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra And of course it served as the template for how to deal with the Abu Ghraib fallout: Given the CIA's purposeful destruction of most records, it…

One of the crazier projects https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Midnight_Climax

That is an absolute bombshell of a story and I'd guess that the vast majority of people have never heard of it but would be horrified if they did. It sounds like they even blackmailed the people.

Re: The Black Vault: A FOIA obsessive’s UFO-filled empire

#13

Post by _zzaw »

hnmonkey wrote: post #11
breakbread wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the crazier projects https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Midnight_Climax

That is an absolute bombshell of a story and I'd guess that the vast majority of people have never heard of it but would be horrified if they did. It sounds like they even blackmailed the people.

Holy goddamn. I never heard of that.

This is one of those moments when I started to feel shock and horror shifting towards disbelief, and then remembered that this is the CIA and of course they did stuff like that because who would stop them?

One of those little examples of how journalism really is one of the last bulwarks between the country we want to think we are and the country we very easily could be.

Re: The Black Vault: A FOIA obsessive’s UFO-filled empire

#15

Post by _zzaw »

HillRat wrote: post #8
keanebean86 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume the CIA leaks mkultra and related stuff to keep the crazies busy and troll other countries. There's also patents for seemingly impossible technology filed by the Navy. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a30645682...

Except MKULTRA was part of CIA’s “family jewels” —- indeed, it was so infamous that a cover letter to the DCI suggested they not familiarize themselves with the program in order to maintain plausible deniability. And MKULTRA was only part of a set of equally concerning operations, such as its progenitors, BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE, or Project OFTEN, which collaborated with pharmaceutical firms to uncover drugs too risky…

I have to wonder about the extent to which the CIA really believed this was possible, or if it was more along the lines of "well sure, it sounds batshit, but the Soviets are doing it and if there really is something to it, we don't want to be behind in the game."

When one has infinite funding and no ethical oversight, the pit really is bottomless.

Re: The Black Vault: A FOIA obsessive’s UFO-filled empire

#16

Post by lsiebert »

Fnoord wrote: post #2

> The Black Vault’s biggest score to date may be its material related to MKUltra, a top-secret CIA project that involved dozens of mind-control experiments on US citizens and others. [..] Why would this be the biggest score (title doesn't reflect it)? Was this the first documentation regarding MKULTRA/ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD? For those interesting in CIA's attempts to explore New Age (e.g. apply "remote viewing") I can re…

It's not actually a documentary, more like a loose semi fictional adaption of a book.

Re: The Black Vault: A FOIA obsessive’s UFO-filled empire

#17

Post by aSockPuppeteer »

api wrote: post #3
Fnoord wrote: post #2

> The Black Vault’s biggest score to date may be its material related to MKUltra, a top-secret CIA project that involved dozens of mind-control experiments on US citizens and others. [..] Why would this be the biggest score (title doesn't reflect it)? Was this the first documentation regarding MKULTRA/ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD? For those interesting in CIA's attempts to explore New Age (e.g. apply "remote viewing") I can re…

The remote viewing stuff was a bit silly, but the MKUltra stuff included a lot of very unethical human experimentation. These two things are not really in the same category in terms of scandal.

There was actually some truth to remote viewing working in very specific scenarios. Operationally is a different story though.

The studies, Ganzfeld experiments, said once you learn if you were right or not, your skill improves a little. For some reason young students from Julliard had the highest scores. The test was 4 possible pictures iirc and you must guess the picture another person is looking at.

In a meta-analysis over 25 Ganzfeld experiments, where the design enabled the test subject to guess right in 25 percent of the cases, the overall hit rate was 37 percent. The odds for this to happen by chance is about a trillion to one, clearly showing that there has to exist something else than coincidence that enables the test subjects to perceive the telepathically transferred image. When artistically gifted musicians from the Julliard School in New York City were tested, they were even able to produce a hit rate as remarkable as 75 percent. [24,36,44]

In a meta-analysis of 653 formal sessions and 126 nonformal sessions of remote viewing, conducted at Princeton University from 1976 to 1999, the overall results gave a significant result with odds against chance of 33 million to one that it was possible for an individual to receive sensory impressions from a distant location. [38-43]

24. Radin, D., Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, New York, United States of America, 2006.

36. Honorton, C., “Meta-analysis of psi ganzfeld Research: A Response to Hyman,” Journal of Parapsychology 49 (1985): 51–91. 1. 38. Jahn, R. G., & Dunne, B. J., “Information and Uncertainty in Remote Perception Research,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 17 no. (2) (2003): 207–41. 39. Jahn, R. G., & Dunne, B. J., “The PEAR Proposition,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 19 no. (2) (2005): 195–245. 40. Puthoff, H. E., “CIA-initiated Remote Vviewing at Stanford Research Institute,” Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies, Summer, 2001: 60–67. 41. Targ, R., “Remote-Viewing Replication: Evaluated by Concept Analysis,” Journal of Parapsychology 58 (1994): 271–84. 42. Targ, R., Limitless Mind: A guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2004. 43. Utts, J. M., An Assessment of the evidence of psychic functioning. JSE 10:3-30, 1996. Accessed October 17, 2013, http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_10_1_utts.p....

44. Schlitz, M. J., & Honorton, C., “Ganzfeld psi Performance Within an Artistically Gifted Population,” J Am Soc Psych Res 86 (1992): 83–98. Accessed November 20, 2013, http://media.noetic.org/uploads/files/Ganzfeld_Juliard_Study....

Re: The Black Vault: A FOIA obsessive’s UFO-filled empire

#18

Post by nl »

_zzaw wrote: post #13
hnmonkey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an absolute bombshell of a story and I'd guess that the vast majority of people have never heard of it but would be horrified if they did. It sounds like they even blackmailed the people.

Holy goddamn. I never heard of that. This is one of those moments when I started to feel shock and horror shifting towards disbelief, and then remembered that this is the CIA and of course they did stuff like that because who would stop them? One of those little examples of how journalism really is one of the last bulwarks between the country we want to think we are and the country we very easily could be.

The Church committee[1] in '75 did some good work to reign in the worst of the intelligence communities work. Most of that has been undone by now though.

The CIA's work on LSD wasn't the worst thing going on and - surprisingly to me - the intelligence agencies were far from the worst. Eg, there was a Sloan-Kettering Institute researcher who injected live cancer cells into unwitting humans through out the 1950s and 60s[2]. Or in 1952 a Detroit Hospital administered radioactive iodine to premature babies, and fed it via a tube to healthy non-premature babies. Or the doctor who administered 100 or more rads of radiation after forging consent forms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

Re: The Black Vault: A FOIA obsessive’s UFO-filled empire

#19

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

keanebean86 wrote: post #4
Fnoord wrote: post #2

> The Black Vault’s biggest score to date may be its material related to MKUltra, a top-secret CIA project that involved dozens of mind-control experiments on US citizens and others. [..] Why would this be the biggest score (title doesn't reflect it)? Was this the first documentation regarding MKULTRA/ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD? For those interesting in CIA's attempts to explore New Age (e.g. apply "remote viewing") I can re…

I assume the CIA leaks mkultra and related stuff to keep the crazies busy and troll other countries. There's also patents for seemingly impossible technology filed by the Navy. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a30645682...

They're probably a limited hangout.

Re: The Black Vault: A FOIA obsessive’s UFO-filled empire

#20

Post by sterlind »

_zzaw wrote: post #15
HillRat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except MKULTRA was part of CIA’s “family jewels” —- indeed, it was so infamous that a cover letter to the DCI suggested they not familiarize themselves with the program in order to maintain plausible deniability. And MKULTRA was only part of a set of equally concerning operations, such as its progenitors, BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE, or Project OFTEN, which collaborated with pharmaceutical firms to uncover drugs too risky…

I have to wonder about the extent to which the CIA really believed this was possible, or if it was more along the lines of "well sure, it sounds batshit, but the Soviets are doing it and if there really is something to it, we don't want to be behind in the game." When one has infinite funding and no ethical oversight, the pit really is bottomless.

Mkultra seems pretty plausible to me, at least with the science they had at the time. LSD was making huge waves in the psychiatric community, and many humint objectives like interrogation and brainwashing are inherently applied psychology. LSD was a breakthrough tool that laid the psyche bare, if only they could discover how to harness it.

Combine that with amoral thinking about the cold war and "greater good" and it's understandable, yet reprehensible, that they dosed prisoners and johns in brothels.

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