[TheBlight]

I've heard another variation of this story. The broad outline is that the USG thought the Chinese/Soviets had some sort of mind-control/brainwashing technique that triggered these confessions. It was allegedly a large part of the impetus that led them to create their own ARTICHOKE/MKULTRA program. But in the end the CIA determined the only technique that was really necessary and used on the men for this purpose was sleep deprivation.

I'm not claiming either version of the events is true/false. Just relaying another I've heard.

[VagueMag]

> It was allegedly a large part of the impetus that led them to create their own ARTICHOKE/MKULTRA program.

This is a commonly repeated refrain, but it just exists to provide a comforting explanation for the fact that the U.S. security state decided to embark on a program of mind control experimentation on many unwitting and unwilling human guinea pigs. The truth is that as WWII wound down, we eagerly imported Nazi scientists who were already engaged in this kind of research, and ARTICHOKE/MKULTRA/etc were just the continuation of it for all the same purposes but under a different name.

[dmix]

Wasn't it somewhat of a natural progression? The world was making multiple major discoveries, tons of new developments in pharma and psychology research, the space race, plus how Telecom, satellites and radio communications impact on spying etc.

It makes sense that spies would dream up some super drug that makes people talk. The El Dorado miracle pill to solve hard human problems... you combine that with technological exuberance of the era and cold war pressure, it makes sense.

You don't need to have Nazi imports or any one motivation to explain why they tried.

The circumstances of them unethically testing it on civilians is another matter.