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The front foundations

How the CIA hid its hand.

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The strongest version of this theory

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Respectable science was a cover for the CIA.

If the CIA could secretly fund leading scientists through a charity with a dull name, the argument goes, then any research of the period might be compromised, and the scientists themselves may have been unknowing tools. [1][2]

The sources

  1. US Senate — Project MKULTRA, joint hearing, August 3, 1977 ↗

    173-page official scan. Prepared statements, questions and answers are distinguished; Appendix A reprints the relevant Church Committee investigation. Printed page numbers differ from PDF page indices.

  2. George Cooper — Opinion regarding Canadian funding and Allan Memorial patients, 1986 ↗

    Official government-hosted PDF of George Cooper’s May1986 opinion. Direct download was unreliable during this review; selected historical sections were checked through the separately linked archived OCR. It is a government-commissioned opinion, not a court judgment resolving every patient’s experience.

How the money moved

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A society, a building fund, and unwitting scientists.

At the 1977 hearing, former CIA psychologist John Gittinger described the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology to Senator Kennedy. “The Agency in effect provided the money,” he said. “There are a lot of innocent people who received the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology money … They had no knowledge that they were getting CIA money.” He said the Society mostly funded psychological, sociological and anthropological projects, and believed it phased out in 1965. [1]

Turner also disclosed a $375,000 CIA contribution to a private medical institution’s building fund. It was passed through an intermediary so that it looked like a private donation, which was then matched with federal money. The institution “was not made aware of the true source of the gift.” [1]

The Canadian government’s 1986 Cooper report notes that Ewen Cameron, in two of his papers, acknowledged “the assistance of grants from the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology”. [2] The 1963 Inspector General’s inspection explains the system: grants were made “under ostensible research foundation auspices”, an approach that “conceals from the institution the interest of CIA”. Key researchers were cleared and told; as a rule, each was “not witting” of parallel work in his field. [3]

What we can’t tell you. The 1977 hearing record ties the gift to construction of the Gorman Annex, a wing of Georgetown University Hospital.

The sources

  1. US Senate — Project MKULTRA, joint hearing, August 3, 1977 ↗

    173-page official scan. Prepared statements, questions and answers are distinguished; Appendix A reprints the relevant Church Committee investigation. Printed page numbers differ from PDF page indices.

  2. George Cooper — Opinion regarding Canadian funding and Allan Memorial patients, 1986 ↗

    Official government-hosted PDF of George Cooper’s May1986 opinion. Direct download was unreliable during this review; selected historical sections were checked through the separately linked archived OCR. It is a government-commissioned opinion, not a court judgment resolving every patient’s experience.

  3. CIA Inspector General — Inspection of MKULTRA/TSD, July 26, 1963 ↗

    48-page CIA scan, release marking April 3, 2019. Its internal claims of success are not independent replication. Selected sections, including the warnings about unwitting testing, were inspected.

WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT THIS FILE

The claims, rated.

1 claim people make about this file, each rated documented, partly true, disputed, unproven or false. Think a rating is wrong? Use Dispute or Support, or join the Discussion.

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