CIA had plot to brainwash Americans into carrying out assassinations

The records, which were quietly declassified in 1999, detailed a program called “Project Artichoke,” a top-secret plan that was conducted from 1951 to 1956. The CIA had selected targets for the experiments and was plotting to make a foreign official into an assassin without the individual’s knowledge.

The memo said the target was a high-ranking politician in a separate country, but that the mind-control experiment could be used on Americans “if necessary.”

A CIA official said on the filing that agents working on Artichoke had to go to a country between January 8 and January 15, 1954 to figure out the following: “Can an individual of [REDACTED] descent be made to perform an act of attempted assassination involuntarily under the influence of ARTICHOKE?”

Other notes in the document that detailed the scheme said that the plan was going to be carried out “through the medium of an alcoholic cocktail at a social party.” Documentation of the scheme was hidden until 1979, when a group obtained documents related to the project through the Freedom of Information Act.

Project Artichoke was a precursor to the CIA MKUltra program, which took on mind-altering experiments. Documents related to the projects were destroyed in the 1970s.

The agents on the project were noted to be around 35, well-educated, and fluent in English. Notes on the target showed that the individual being subject to the project had also quit from a job recently and was working with the country’s government. The CIA wanted to brainwash the individual, then suggested they could be used to assassinate “a prominent [REDACTED] politician or if necessary, against an American official.”

Although the documents detailed a plan to carry out the project, it was only “simulated,” suggesting it never took place.