TS 185209/1 · Copy 1 of 1
A Top Secret control number and copy count. Beside it a later hand wrote Ser A cy 2 of 6: a copy series was made afterwards.
Report of Inspection of MKULTRA — 2019 release package
1963-07-26 · 50 source pages
The 2019 release package remains available at its source. An earlier release can be read here; the two releases have different page sets.
Source scans are unavailable here. Publisher annotations remain available below.
Publisher annotations
Commentary by The Declassified Collection, separate from the original source.
Source PDF page 5 · 2 notes
MKULTRA · MKDELTA
Two cryptonyms as the memorandum defines them: research and development, and the DD/P system controlling operational use.
Source PDF page 6 · 1 notes
J. S. Earman
John S. Earman, Inspector General. He also signs the memorandum of 29 November 1963 printed in Part III.
Source PDF page 7 · 1 notes
TSD, then TSS
One component under two names: the 1953 papers in Part II are signed TSS, and by 1963 the report calls it TSD.
Source PDF page 8 · 2 notes
Questions of legality
The four sensitivities are distinct: researchers' professional reputations, legality, the rights of U.S. citizens, and the consequences of public exposure. Keeping them separate matters when the report later weighs the intelligence value of unwitting tests against the risk of compromise.
Statements of certification
Dulles's 1953 authority substituted internal certifications for the usual contracts and supporting papers. The three prescribed signatures cover technical performance, authorization of payment and approval of scope (Report of Inspection of MKULTRA — 2019 release package — source PDF page 46). This paragraph also records the later introduction of limited audit.
Source PDF page 9 · 1 notes
Tab C
The funding table at Report of Inspection of MKULTRA — 2019 release package — source PDF page 50 compares the research programme with its MKULTRA share for fiscal years 1960–63. Its last year is a partial year, through 8 May 1963.
Source PDF page 10 · 2 notes
radiation, electro-shock
Avenues added to the charter over ten years without a new authorisation. The recommendation is that the charter be redefined.
Agency-sterile
An arrangement designed to conceal the Agency's sponsorship. The safehouse accounts show one mechanism: a bank account in an individual's name, with Agency ownership recognized by a separate declaration of trust (Project MKULTRA, Subproject 42 (with attachments) — source PDF page 205 and Project MKULTRA, Subproject 42 (with attachments) — source PDF page 1).
Source PDF page 11 · 1 notes
Minimum documentation
The next leaf explains the cost of this security practice: only two officers had full substantive knowledge, much of it unrecorded. Inspectors could not reconstruct a project's purpose, results and further requirements from its file. That weakness existed ten years before the drug-file destruction.
Source PDF page 12 · 1 notes
Two individuals
The inspectors identify a management bottleneck, not simply a small staff. Both officers applied 'need to know' even to colleagues and clerical assistants. Their personal knowledge substituted for records that senior managers and successors could independently examine.
Source PDF page 13 · 1 notes
Unwitting U.S. citizens
The report dates this testing programme to 1955. Its later account distinguishes a West Coast arrangement begun that year from an East Coast arrangement established in 1961 (Report of Inspection of MKULTRA — 2019 release package — source PDF page 17). The earlier Subproject 3 papers in Part II also belong to the history of the facilities.
Source PDF page 14 · 2 notes
sterile grants in aid
Research money passed through a cut-out, so the recipient need not know, or need not admit, where it came from.
witting
The Agency's term throughout these papers for someone who knows who is paying. Its opposite governs the final phase.
Source PDF page 15 · 2 notes
hospitals and prisons
The phase before the safehouses. The 1977 hearing returned to one such arrangement at Lexington, Kentucky.
Audit procedures waived
The report does not say the original waiver remained absolute. It describes later research contracts and secure funding systems, then proposes bringing the Deputy Director/Support into MKULTRA's administration. The audit dispute in Part II shows that scrutiny of safehouse spending was already possible in 1955.
Source PDF page 16 · 2 notes
Food and Drug Administration
Paragraph 9. The inspectors found no MKULTRA file showing how the programme would meet the new federal requirements.
unwitting subjects
The Agency's term for the final phase. The memoranda in Part II call the same thing covert and realistic field trials.
Source PDF page 17 · 2 notes
Bureau of Narcotics
The Federal Bureau of Narcotics was in the Treasury Department. Its officers supplied access to targets and premises; TSD supplied materials, money and supervision. The 1976 summaries identify George White, using the name Morgan Hall, in the safehouse work (MKULTRA briefing book — source PDF page 12 and MKULTRA briefing book — source PDF page 123).
$10,000 to each
The annual sum covered cultivating targets and maintaining a safehouse in each area. The Subproject 42 status sheet dated 5 September 1963 carries $10,000.00 and marks the work 'Continuing'—after this report's recommendation to stop the unwitting testing (Project MKULTRA, Subproject 42 (with attachments) — source PDF page 35).
Source PDF page 18 · 2 notes
Scientific observation
The problem was more than the agents' qualifications. Subjects were usually unavailable after the first hours; illness could continue for days, with follow-up reduced to guarded inquiries. The inspectors distinguish observations useful for delivery techniques from the sustained observation needed to evaluate effects. The Church Committee later quoted this passage (The 1977 MKULTRA hearing — source PDF page 83).
operational value
What the Bureau got from the arrangement, in the report's own words. The exchange ran both ways.
Source PDF page 19 · 1 notes
the public press
Paragraph 15. The exposure risk, as assessed in 1963, was journalism rather than any inquiry.
Source PDF page 20 · 2 notes
No records
Admiral Turner read this sentence to the Senate in 1977 (The 1977 MKULTRA hearing — source PDF page 13). It identifies a gap in approval records, not an absence of every kind of paper: the safehouse funding, inventory and audit documents in Part II are the surviving counterpoint.
No effective cover story
TSD claimed to transfer responsibility to the Bureau of Narcotics, yet expected the Bureau's chief to deny knowledge. The inspector then follows responsibility down to the narcotics agent working alone, with no planning-and-approval record and a risk that critical results would never reach senior management.
Source PDF page 21 · 2 notes
testing on foreign nationals
Paragraph 19, immediately after the recommendation to stop testing on Americans. The report treats the two as separable.
correctly attribute the cause
The risk as framed here is not harm to the subject but the subject working out what had happened.
Source PDF page 22 · 1 notes
Dr. Sidney Gottlieb
Deputy Chief of TSD, and author of a 1960 study of the programme. His is the only name the folders in Part II leave unboxed.
Source PDF page 23 · 2 notes
no knockout pill
The 1960 assessment: no truth serum, aphrodisiac or recruitment pill was known to exist either.
high-risk, low-yield
The programme's own description of MKDELTA as a field of operations, three years before this inspection.
Source PDF page 24 · 1 notes
unilateral operations
Operations run without a partner service's knowledge. The argument that testing abroad was impracticable kept it at home.
Source PDF page 25 · 2 notes
TDY visits
Temporary duty. The paragraph treats such visits as a way of advertising the capability to officers not using it.
Chief, Medical Staff
Medical consultation was available but not the final approval gate. The DD/P could consult the Chief about medical risk; the report explicitly says the Chief would not expect to have final authority to disapprove an operation. The operational chain retained that decision.
Source PDF page 26 · 2 notes
basic moral objections
Some case officers refused to use the materials. The objection is recorded as an obstacle to be managed.
CI Staff study
A 1960 recommendation the inspection notes had not been acted on. It is repeated on the next leaf.
Source PDF page 27 · 1 notes
144 projects · twenty-five
The programme's size in the inspector's count, and the number still running. Subproject numbering later reached 149.
Source PDF page 28 · 1 notes
petroleum sabotage
One of the miscellaneous projects in the inspection's own classification, with defoliants and remote measurement.
Source PDF page 29 · 1 notes
Oral communication
The inspectors feared loss through turnover as well as missing paperwork: much of the programme's record rested in officers' memories. Turner later identified both sparse original records and the destruction of 1973 when explaining the gaps to Congress (The 1977 MKULTRA hearing — source PDF page 13).
Source PDF page 30 · 2 notes
added in 1962 under pressure
The support officer arrived nine years into the programme, and one year before this inspection.
re-confirmation of authority
The first recommendation: go back to the Director and rewrite the 1953 charter, which is bound in at Tab A.
Source PDF page 31 · 1 notes
Deputy Director/Research
A separate directorate created in 1962. The recommendation would have made MKULTRA coordinate with it.
Source PDF page 32 · 2 notes
Accredited institutions
Recommendation (g) would remove testing from the safehouse arrangement by requiring accredited institutions and accepted scientific procedures. The November meeting reopened the question of unwitting tests; its conditional route to the Director is at MKULTRA: debate over unwitting drug tests — source PDF page 2.
HR 31-1
The Agency's own audit regulation. The last recommendation asks only that MKULTRA be audited under it.
Source PDF page 34 · 2 notes
Richard Helms
Acting Deputy Director (Plans), signing the request that created MKULTRA. He appears twice more in this volume.
Five controlled copies
These are the 1953 papers requesting authority for MKULTRA, not authorization of the 1963 inspection. The controlled set contains the description of the research programme at Tab A and a proposed payment authority at Tab B.
Source PDF page 35 · 1 notes
Tab A
The divider introduces the founding programme description. Its control number and copy mark identify it as part of the five-copy authorization set, even when separated from the adjoining text.
Source PDF page 36 · 1 notes
Project Review Committee
The body that approved the research programme in June 1952. MKULTRA was carved out of a budget already passed.
Source PDF page 37 · 1 notes
Contracts and concealment
The paper gives two reasons to avoid ordinary contracts: a written agreement would reveal government interest, and some cleared researchers feared damage to their professional reputations. The proposed substitute was internal approval and certification, while an intermediary could stand between researcher and Agency.
Source PDF page 38 · 2 notes
the cut-out
An intermediary, so the researcher deals with someone other than the Agency.
Six per cent
The request does not seek a new appropriation. It carves a protected funding procedure out of an already approved research budget. By 1963, the inspection describes MKULTRA funding as roughly 20 per cent of TSD's annual research and development budget (Report of Inspection of MKULTRA — 2019 release package — source PDF page 8).
Source PDF page 39 · 1 notes
Government sterility
The formal object of the arrangement, to be settled with the Inspection & Security Office.
Source PDF page 40 · 1 notes
Monthly financial report
The special procedure still promised monthly information on commitments, spending and the balance remaining. The founding papers therefore did not dispense with all financial reporting; they concentrated detailed project knowledge inside TSS.
Source PDF page 41 · 1 notes
TAB B
The second tab: the Director's authority of 13 April 1953, the memorandum for the file, and the 1960 MKDELTA instruction.
Source PDF page 42 · 1 notes
The Director’s authority
Dulles authorized expenditure within an existing budget without the usual contracts or other written agreements. Payment would instead depend on internal certifications; the required wording appears at Report of Inspection of MKULTRA — 2019 release package — source PDF page 46.
Source PDF page 43 · 2 notes
/s/ ALLEN W. DULLES
A conformed /s/ notation, not Dulles's autograph: this is the file copy.
no further documents
The sentence that made the three certifications sufficient, in the Director's own memorandum.
Source PDF page 44 · 2 notes
a separate file per subproject
The rule that produced the folders in Part II. Subprojects 3, 16 and 42 are three such files.
the blank signature blocks
Ruled and empty on this file copy. The memorandum prescribes a form; these blank blocks do not record its execution.
Source PDF page 45 · 1 notes
The Comptroller’s copy
The invoice goes to the Comptroller, but substantive project records remain with TSS. This separates the evidence authorizing a payment from the fuller account of what the project is meant to do.
Source PDF page 46 · 1 notes
Three certifications
Three officers attest to different things: the Division Chief to satisfactory work and an unpaid, correct bill; the Research Director to approval and authorized payment; the Research Board's secretary to the programme's approved scope. These are prescribed forms, not three signatures certifying this particular blank page.
Source PDF page 47 · 3 notes
K and L tablets
Named in the 22 July 1960 instruction, one of four leaves absent from the earlier release. They are not explained on the page.
To Leo for file
Read as To Leo for file; for file is clear and the short name is less distinct. A handwritten routing note at the head of the instruction.
Rescission
This instruction replaces an earlier one of 20 October 1952, whose reference is withheld.
Source PDF page 48 · 1 notes
RICHARD M. BISSELL, JR.
The name is typed. There is no autograph, no /s/ and no withholding box above it: a typed name over a title.
Source PDF page 50 · 2 notes
The funding columns
The table preserves the MKULTRA percentages even where an amount is withheld. The 1962 total also has unreadable leading digits. The fully readable 1960 and 1961 rows show the table's structure: research programme plus MKULTRA equals the total, with MKULTRA expressed as a share of that total.
Through 8 May 1963
The table stops eleven weeks before the report is signed. It is the last leaf of the 2019 release.