Ted Kaczynski and the Harvard study

Henry Murray had worked for the OSS, the CIA’s wartime forerunner, on assessing agents and on interrogation. In 1959 he recruited Harvard undergraduates for a study in which each wrote an essay on his beliefs and was then attacked over it by a trained interrogator while wired to electrodes and filmed. [1][2] MKULTRA funded research at 44 colleges and universities, including studies of stress and interrogation. [3] Believers argue the Harvard study fits the pattern, and that what happened to Kaczynski there helped create the Unabomber.

The study ran from autumn 1959 to spring 1962 with 22 students. It “included deliberately abusive interrogations”. [1] Alston Chase, who studied it for The Atlantic in 2000, described it as purposely brutalizing. [2]

There is “no documentary evidence” the study was part of MKULTRA, and “no CIA funding for the study has ever been proven.” [1] No drugs are documented in it. Psychiatrists who examined Kaczynski pointed to many other factors, and his violence began more than 15 years later. [1]