Edward Kennedy on MKULTRA

_44712184_kennedy.512.jpg“We believed that the record, incomplete as it was, was as complete as it was going to be.  Then one individual, through a Freedom of Information request, accomplished what two U.S. Senate committees could not.  He spurred the agency into finding additional records pertaining to the CIA’s program of experimentation with human subjects.  These new records were discovered by the agency in march.  Their existence was not make known to the Congress until July.

The records reveal a far more extensive series of experiments than had previously been thought.  Eighty-six universities or institutions were involved.  New instances of unethical behavior were revealed.  The intelligence community of this Nation, which requires a shroud of secrecy in order to operate, has a very sacred trust from the American people.  The CIA’s program of human experimentation of the fifties and sixties violated that trust.  It was violated again on the day the bulk of the agency’s records were destroyed in 1973.  It is violated each time a responsible official refuses to recollect the details of the program.  The best safeguard against abuses in the future is a complete public accounting of the abuses of the past.”

— from the MKULTRA Hearings and Documents, PROJECT MKULTRA, THE CIA’S PROGRAM OF RESEARCH IN BEHAVIORAL MODIFICATION, testimony, Wednesday, August 3, 1977, to the U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence and Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources

We’re still waiting for a complete accounting.

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