Luna’s MKULTRA hearing swerved into conspiracies, frustration

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s House oversight hearing on the CIA’s MKULTRA—believed to have operated from 1953 to 1973—was supposed to push for more declassifications. Instead, it veered into speculative claims about ongoing mind control, USAID and “prisoners of wa

When Rep. Anna Paulina Luna stepped into a House oversight hearing about the CIA’s MKULTRA program. the stakes were clear to longtime observers: MKULTRA has long been dogged by secrecy. harm. and unanswered promises. Luna. who leads the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets. opened a hearing titled “Mind Control and Accountability: Uncovering the Truth of the CIA’s MKULTRA Project” on Tuesday.

The witnesses were authors who have written extensively about MKULTRA’s dark corners. Yet as the hearing unfolded, it didn’t feel like a straight shot at declassification. It started turning—first toward Luna’s own conspiracy theories. then toward questions about COVID and Anthony Fauci that had nothing to do with the CIA program. By the end, even supporters of more disclosure sounded puzzled about whether the task force had actually produced something new.

MKULTRA. the CIA mind control effort widely believed to have operated from 1953 to 1973. is notorious for its pseudo-experimentation and for the way its victims were never properly identified or compensated. Luna’s committee called on Dr. Stephen Kinzer. the author of “Poisoner In Chief. ” and Tom O’Neill. author of “Chaos.” Both used their testimony to press for more document releases tied to MKULTRA.

Kinzer urged the committee to move beyond what has already surfaced. “I would urge this committee to fill out all the blank spaces in the documents that we have. ” he said in his opening statement. He also argued the task force should consider whether a “new incarnation of MKULTRA exists today. ” adding that advances in cybertechnology. artificial intelligence. and neuroscience could give covert agencies tools Sidney Gottlieb—MKULTRA’s architect—could not have imagined.

That argument went further than most historical inquiries. Kinzer said it may now be possible under “new circumstances,” pointing to the idea that secret-service scientists have likely been thinking about it.

O’Neill. whose book chronicles a decades-long search into whether Charles Manson or members of his “murderous Family” may have been subject to CIA experiments and served as FBI informants. aimed his remarks at a broken promise. He told the panel that during the 1977 hearings into MKULTRA and other abuses. committee members promised that victims would be identified. compensated. and provided lifetime medical care—and that none of it happened.

He also said that the documents already discovered “warrant a thorough reexamination of what this program accomplished, what Congress was told, and what may still remain hidden.”

Then Luna pulled the hearing into a different lane.

Luna questioned whether MKULTRA could still be active, asking one witness if USAID—the international humanitarian aid organization dismantled by the Trump administration—“may have been used overseas” on “prisoners of war” to further the CIA program. She provided no direct evidence for the claim.

Luna also suggested the hearing was only the first step. She said she had “received reports” about “new MKULTRA boxes that were discovered. ” and that the CIA was in the process of declassifying what was in those files. She said the files appeared to relate to a “forgery program that was being housed under MKULTRA. ” promising that documents would be released as soon as possible.

For audiences expecting a clean focus on the CIA’s historical record, those turns clashed with what was already known.

The hearing’s setting was shaped by earlier disclosures. Documents about MKULTRA released by a Senate committee began in 1975. Two years later, in 1977, records with far more detailed revelations were made public—disclosures that included the CIA giving drugs like LSD to unwitting civilians.

One of the most infamous operations discussed in the record is Operation Midnight Climax: sex workers in CIA safehouses drugged patrons with LSD while CIA agents watched behind two-way mirrors. At least one death is known to have resulted from MKULTRA: Frank Olson. a CIA scientist who was drugged with LSD at a CIA meeting in 1953 and either jumped or was pushed from a hotel window the same night. Olson’s death remains among the most contested and infamous incidents in U.S. intelligence history.

Luna’s hearing also surfaced the backdrop of earlier congressional criticism. During a 1977 hearing, the late-Sen. Edwardy Kennedy (D-Mass.) denounced MKULTRA’s “bizarre and unethical pseudo-experimentation.” Kennedy said the Agency itself acknowledged the tests made “little scientific sense. ” that agents monitoring were not qualified scientific observers. and that test subjects were seldom accessible beyond the first hours. leaving follow-up impossible. He described instances where subjects became ill for hours or days. He also cited experiments involving heroin addicts who were enticed with rewards—heroin—to participate in LSD experiments. and he said the extent of experimentation on human subjects was unknown.

In Tuesday’s hearing, however, Democrats and Republicans alike seemed unable to settle into the historical questions that witnesses were pressing.

House Democrats called Dr. Elizabeth Ginexi, a research psychologist and former NIH employee, despite her having “no specific knowledge of MKULTRA.” Ginexi warned that the agency is being “stripped, warped, and politicized beyond recognition.”

Republicans then pivoted repeatedly. They grilled Ginexi on Anthony Fauci and the origins of COVID.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) asked Ginexi: “Do you believe the NIH or Dr. Fauci lied to the American people about Covid?” Ginexi answered. “No.” Mace questioned why Ginexi was sent to participate if she wasn’t an expert on MKULTRA. Ginexi replied that she is an expert on human subjects research. and when Mace appeared not to understand the connection. she moved on.

Ginexi tried to bring members back toward trust and research ethics. warning that canceling government-backed clinical trials—something that has repeatedly happened under the Trump administration—was harming people’s trust in science and the government and would make it harder to recruit patients for such trials. Republican members appeared uninterested in those points, returning again to COVID and related conspiracy theories.

Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) challenged Ginexi directly when she raised trust. “You just brought up trust,” Crane said. “Do you think the NIH has a trust problem. based on how they handled Covid?” Ginexi responded. “No. I do not. ” and said the NIH is “beloved by the American people” because of health research gains including progress in cancer treatment. heart disease. and diabetes.

Crane pushed back: “Well I think you’re wrong, ma’am. I think the public has a serious mistrust issue with the NIH.” He then asked whether Ginexi denied that the NIH tried to cover up the origin of COVID.

Even outside the hearing room, the confusion was evident to people who watch government transparency closely.

Mike Evans of the National Security Archive told Mother Jones on Wednesday that the hearing had proceeded “more or less” as he expected. He said the two main witnesses tried to stay focused on what the committee could do “to illuminate the historical record. ” but he did not think it was sincere. “I just don’t think that this is a sincere effort by the Task Force to do that. ” Evans said in an email. He asked a question that captured the dissonance he saw: “Why were they talking about COVID and Anthony Fauci at a hearing about MKULTRA?”.

Evans also said he found Ginexi’s inclusion baffling, calling it a decision by the minority members to call a former NIH staffer with no background in researching MKULTRA.

For Evans. the most disappointing moment came when Luna announced files would be reviewed related to what appeared to be a “forgery program.” He asked what it had to do with MKULTRA or CIA mind control efforts. saying “That’s just basic intelligence tradecraft.” Evans suggested the CIA may have felt it needed to produce something to satisfy the task force. He concluded that if that was the extent of it, “then these hearings were a total failure.”.

“In the end, the hearing didn’t break any new ground as far as I can tell,” Evans said, adding that none of what was presented was really new and asking why the committee was holding hearings now.

The tension inside the hearing—between declassification and speculation, between historical documentation and present-day political cues—didn’t end with the exchange about COVID.

Near the end, Kinzer offered a blunt explanation for why conspiracy narratives can flourish in American politics. “There’s a reason why conspiracy theories are so widespread in America,” Kinzer told Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.). He said it has to do with “the dissociation between what we say we are and do. and what we really are and do.” He added that as more people become aware of that gap. they grow suspicious of “nefarious dealings by the US” and also suspicious of things that aren’t nefarious at all.

On Tuesday. Luna’s hearing on MKULTRA may have delivered a familiar kind of spectacle—promised documents. speculative claims about what CIA secrets could look like now. and a pivot toward COVID talking points. But for those who have waited decades for answers and for the fulfillment of earlier promises to victims. the frustration was hard to miss: the hearing often sounded less like an excavation of the past than a platform for competing narratives about the present.

Anna Paulina Luna MKULTRA CIA declassification House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets USAID Anthony Fauci COVID Dr. Elizabeth Ginexi Stephen Kinzer Tom O’Neill Edwardy Kennedy Operation Midnight Climax