[HN Gopher] CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare ...
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CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare in the Korean
war (2022)
Author : VagueMag
Score : 121 points
Date : 2023-06-03 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jeff-kaye.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jeff-kaye.medium.com)
| [deleted]
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| [flagged]
| hammock wrote:
| Which names?
| yellow_postit wrote:
| This article was first published in 2021
| [deleted]
| badrabbit wrote:
| In unrelated news: war is very not nice. Makes people do mean
| things.
| sillywalk wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_biological_warf...
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| This reminds me of Gulf War I when Iraqi TV was displaying what
| they claimed was the wreckage from a downed America fighter jet.
| It was shell halves from an American cluster bomb, a CBU-58 I
| think.
| TheBlight wrote:
| I've heard another variation of this story. The broad outline is
| that the USG thought the Chinese/Soviets had some sort of mind-
| control/brainwashing technique that triggered these confessions.
| It was allegedly a large part of the impetus that led them to
| create their own ARTICHOKE/MKULTRA program. But in the end the
| CIA determined the only technique that was really necessary and
| used on the men for this purpose was sleep deprivation.
|
| I'm not claiming either version of the events is true/false. Just
| relaying another I've heard.
| VagueMag wrote:
| > _It was allegedly a large part of the impetus that led them
| to create their own ARTICHOKE /MKULTRA program._
|
| This is a commonly repeated refrain, but it just exists to
| provide a comforting explanation for the fact that the U.S.
| security state decided to embark on a program of mind control
| experimentation on many unwitting and unwilling human guinea
| pigs. The truth is that as WWII wound down, we eagerly imported
| Nazi scientists who were already engaged in this kind of
| research, and ARTICHOKE/MKULTRA/etc were just the continuation
| of it for all the same purposes but under a different name.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| If you don't have a medium login (like me) you can read the full
| article archived[1]
|
| A bit tangential to the central thesis, but John Marks' 1979
| classic _The Search for the Manchurian Candidate_ , referenced by
| TFA, is online[2].
|
| Chapter 8, _Brainwashing_ [3], has interesting details about CIA-
| friendly journalist Edward Hunter's PR campaign to frame
| "brainwashing" (a term he coined) as a uniquely communist form of
| political indoctrination via technological means.
|
| > In September 1950, the Miami News published an article by
| Edward Hunter titled " 'Brain-Washing' Tactics Force Chinese into
| Ranks of Communist Party." It was the first printed use in any
| language of the term "brainwashing," which quickly became a stock
| phrase in Cold War headlines. Hunter, a CIA propaganda operator
| who worked under cover as a journalist, turned out a steady
| stream of books and articles on the subject. He made up his
| coined word from the Chinese hsi-nao--"to cleanse the mind"--
| which had no political meaning in Chinese.
|
| > American public opinion reacted strongly to Hunter's ideas, no
| doubt because of the hostility that prevailed toward communist
| foes, whose ways were perceived as mysterious and alien. Most
| Americans knew something about the famous trial of the Hungarian
| Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, at which the Cardinal appeared zombie-
| like, as though drugged or hypnotized. [...] Americans were
| familiar with the idea that the communists had ways to control
| hapless people, and Hunter's new word helped pull together the
| unsettling evidence into one sharp fear.
|
| Marks then touches on the bioweapon allegation without further
| examination:
|
| > The brainwashing controversy intensified during the heavy 1952
| fighting in Korea, when the Chinese government launched a
| propaganda offensive that featured recorded statements by
| captured U.S. pilots, who "confessed" to a variety of war crimes
| including the use of germ warfare.
|
| 1: https://archive.is/8stAi
|
| 2: https://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/marks.htm
|
| 3: https://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/marks8.htm
| alwaysthesame wrote:
| [flagged]
| hammock wrote:
| Examples? Is there any domestic crime as well?
| DocTomoe wrote:
| How about the time when American pregnant women were given
| "vitamin cocktails" by their doctors which turned out to be
| radioactive to see if radioactive particles would be passing
| the placenta barrier? [1]
|
| Or this Syphillis study? [2]
|
| And then there was the time the US waged germ warfare against
| the Bay Area... [3]
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1993/12/2
| 1/r...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
| chaosbolt wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| alwaysthesame wrote:
| Read the article. Coups in Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba, Ukraine,
| Italy. Wars in Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam, Irak, Palestine.
|
| The backlash against the US is going to be brutal. I doubt
| the CIA continues to exist within 10 years.
| Eumenes wrote:
| > I doubt the CIA continues to exist within 10 years.
|
| I'd forgo Christmas and Birthday gifts for the next 10
| years to have this happen!
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| [flagged]
| nancyhn wrote:
| Even sooner, we could see RFK Jr. taking care of this in
| 2025.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Whatever you're smoking, you might want to check with
| your supplier.
| mistermann wrote:
| I have a feeling this showdown would resolve much like it
| did last time.
| nancyhn wrote:
| That would be too obvious, don't you think?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > The US has been involved in a staggering amount of crime
| abroad in the last century.
|
| You're not wrong. We've been incredibly shitty domestically and
| internationally.
|
| > Perhaps more than all other countries combined.
|
| Uhhhh, yeah, not really. The last century or two, humanity's
| hands have been pretty collectively bathed in blood.
|
| I'd say easily the most bloody are those of the British, whose
| oppression and exploitation is unmatched in modern history for
| how pervasive, long-running, and brutal it was. I'd guess
| figures well into "hundreds of millions", possibly a billion or
| more across the several centuries. People look at Blackwater
| and their ilk and think it was some sort of new boundary being
| crossed. East India Company for two and a half centuries placed
| large swaths of the world's populace under corporate rule and
| had its own standing army and navy.
|
| Japan committed so many wartime atrocities during WW2 it's
| difficult to summarize or account for them all, and estimates
| go as high as 30M killed.
|
| Stalin's regime is estimated to have killed around 20 million
| people.
|
| Mao could have been responsible for as many as 40 million.
|
| Then there's all manner of dictators in the Americas and Africa
| (some propped up by America, of course), the various southeast
| asian regimes (Indonesia for example) and so on.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| The Holocaust? The Soviet and Nazis attempt to genocide Easter
| Europe? The multi million deaths caused by the CCP?
| krapp wrote:
| As far as the Holocaust goes, Hitler was inspired by
| America's white supremacy and genocide of native Americans,
| and the Holocaust was funded by numerous American companies
| (not just IBM.) So while Hitler and the Nazis definitely
| deserve the blame for that, the US' hands aren't entirely
| clean either.
| coldtea wrote:
| If the comparison is the Holocaust and Gulags, you know
| yoy're near rock bottom
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| It's a fair comparison. Frankly the Nazis are overrated.
|
| Nazis: ~6 million
|
| Soviet Union: ~20 million
|
| China Cultural Revolution: ~30 million
|
| Though the Soviet Union and China ones were more of a
| result of incredibly bad economic policies. The Soviets
| still killed ~1-2 million in Gulags directly.
|
| Let's also not forget the Japanese genocides against China.
| Nanjing, Unit 731...
|
| There also is, of course, more recent ones that are little
| known. Cambodia took over a million and Rwanda close to
| that.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Don't forget that the Nazis were planning on genociding
| all of eastern europe:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
| coldtea wrote:
| At least the CPP and China only fucked their own people -
| plus, the numbers are hugely inflated BS as you note,
| adding results of bad policies, and famines etc in
| societies torn by wars and poverty. Regarding those, one
| could include the British genocide of Irish and Indian
| people which used those as explicit tools even (as
| opposed to mere incompetence, not to mention ruling India
| wasn't their job in the first place).
|
| In contrast, imperialism and colonialism fucked people
| over all over the world. And some of the later impact is
| masked, because they enabled locals to do the dirty job
| for them - to the tunes of tens of millions affected.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| You can not have "Government by the people, for the people" when
| you allow some people to keep secrets from other people under the
| guise of "national security"
|
| Self governance is incompatible with states secrets, and only
| leads to abuse, corruption, and tyranny.
|
| History is full of known abuses, and for every known abuse there
| is the potential for LOTS of unknown abuse.
|
| One can say "well congress will hold them accountable" but along
| time ago congress passed a law to declassify everything around
| JFK assassination, yet multiple presidents after bring pressured
| by the CIA for "national security reasons" have refused to
| release all kinds of document in direct violation of that law.
|
| the CIA, any other agency with the power to "classify" things, is
| a direct and ever present threat to not only liberty but the
| underpinning of democracy everyone claims to support.
| jeffreyames wrote:
| Not just secrets but deliberate misinformation in the name of
| national security
| colordrops wrote:
| Another problem with state secrets is that the class of people
| with access to secrets is usually biased toward specific
| groups, races, or creeds, and said secrets are used to keep the
| group in a position of power.
| the-printer wrote:
| "Self governance" at the scale being discussed here is a myth.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I stopped reading when the author categorized "prisoners of war
| being told to read confessions over Chinese propaganda radio" as
| "testifying publicly", almost at the start of the piece:
|
| > It was the propaganda version of an incendiary bomb. In 1952
| U.S. Air Force and Marine flyers, shot down during the Korean
| War, testified publicly that they had been ordered to drop
| biological weapons (BW) on China and North Korea.
|
| The two sentences feel intentionally written to obfuscate the
| fact that the statements were made under duress as POWs; it
| strongly implies that they testified, after the war, about
| dropping biological weapons.
|
| Even if much of what he does discuss did happen (the US secretly
| pardoning Japanese units that did absolutely horrific experiments
| on people for chemical and biological warfare, for example, and
| of course we used a lot of horrific shit in Korea and Vietnam),
| there's so much that is unsourced / uncited mixed in.
|
| Half the links in the text are to his own writing, another chunk
| are to other Medium blogs, with a sprinkling of newspaper
| clippings (because the newspapers were so trustworthy back during
| that time)...pass.
| quad_eye_oh wrote:
| Reader beware! Last time I looked into the alleged US use of
| anthrax bombs it was clear that the anthrax found was a Chinese
| variant. So it seemed to me the whole thing was possibly a
| communist (Chinese + USSR joint) psyop to drum up anti-US
| sentiment, and if actual anthrax was deployed it was likely
| Chinese troops on Chinese farmers.
|
| Also, the photos of delivery devices were not delivery devices
| for anthrax.
|
| Reader beware.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >it strongly implies that they testified, after the war, about
| dropping biological weapons.
|
| It directly says it happened in 1952, and links to a newspaper
| clearly saying the 'confession' was made by captured American
| officers. How does it imply the exact opposite of what it says?
| creato wrote:
| I really don't know what to think of HN these days. You're
| absolutely right, and yet this post is at the bottom being
| downvoted.
|
| If the pilots knew, then a large number of support crew also
| would have known. But the only "testimony" we have is from
| captured PoWs, after how many decades of opportunities for
| deathbed confessions? Give me a break.
| the-dude wrote:
| This reminds me of a video I stumbled across on YT :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMq-fApmzts
|
| This guy alleges that the US were 'kind' on Japan (only light
| tribunal?) after the war because they wanted to acquire the bio-
| warfare knowledge of the Japanese.
|
| And the Japanese tested bio-bombs.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The US had invaded Japan, they did not need to be "nice" to
| acquire any of Japan's knowledge.
|
| My understanding is that the US were worried about the
| communists and Japan's stability in general and decided not to
| unduly rock the boat.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course
| bluepizza wrote:
| This is 1945, before the decades long alliance and best
| friendship between US and Japan, before Internet, computers,
| and most electronics. Americans can't even read the signposts
| in the streets, let alone find and interpret the results of
| extremely secret operations.
| depingus wrote:
| There's some interesting analysis of WWII that posits that
| the nukes were completely unnecessary. Stalin was poised to
| invade Japan from the north so the US had to act fast.
|
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-
| jap...
|
| I don't know how accurate this is, but its a good read.
| [deleted]
| retrac wrote:
| This is a constantly changing area of history, so we're on
| shaky ground. The diaries of the chamberlain to Hirohito were
| only published a couple years ago, for example. They implicate
| the emperor deeply in war-time decisions in a way that
| contradicts the post-war narrative of a hapless well-meaning
| buffoon misled by his underlings.
|
| I suspect the real reason is close to the usually accepted
| story, though. Millions of Japanese thought the emperor was a
| living god. That's how many Americans viewed it then. It's a
| useful interpretive lens even now.
|
| If the Emperor concedes and surrenders, all of his legitimacy
| transfers to whoever the Emperor says to listen to. MacArthur
| got the unofficial title gaijin shogun -- foreign Shogun, the
| shogun being the military dictator who ruled pre-Meiji Japan,
| _in the name of the Emperor_.
|
| Depose or kill the emperor and all bets are off. What would be
| institutionally legitimate in its place? How long to construct
| it? When you have an entire administration in place, it'd be
| awfully tempting to whitewash the imperial institution. Which
| is exactly what MacArthur did. Speaking of which, the
| personality of Douglas MacArthur dominates this whole topic. He
| had carte blanche. Complete unlimited authority. And he
| exercised it, often in ways not anticipated in Washington. He
| was an eccentric man and quite opaque as to his decision-
| making.
| twelve40 wrote:
| they had to quickly repurpose it to be used in the next big
| thing with whatever tools did the trick, so makes sense
| bluepizza wrote:
| > quite opaque as to his decision-making
|
| Genuine question: I thought it was well understood that his
| decision making was guided by a fear of Russian expansion,
| and that conservative measures (such as keeping the Emperor
| in place and several important politicians) were aimed at
| quickly reestablishing the country to avoid communist impetus
| from arising. Is this not the case?
| retrac wrote:
| Yes, you have it right. Japan collapsing politically would
| invite Soviet "aid" in the occupation of Japan. A partition
| like Germany was to be avoided. I just meant that you won't
| find anything from MacArthur clearly explaining it that
| way, as his retconned history, which became the accepted
| history, had a largely blameless imperial institution, so
| no justificatiom for its retention was really necessary.
| hackerlight wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. The US won and Japan lost, the US
| could have taken whatever information they wanted to.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| That makes sense in a vacuum, but if some of, or all of the
| principal actors of a given institution run a tight ship it's
| entirely probable that there are various unknown secrets to
| which only they are aprised. There's nothing that forbids
| some key officer from literally burying information in a
| completely undocumented spot. In such a case, if the buried
| treasure is of any value whatever, it becomes a point of
| leverage. Some artifact that could be lost to the world
| forevermore or discovered, hinging on some nefarious
| negotiation.
|
| Not to mention the reality that aside from some sense of
| justice, allowing any of these people their freedom is
| probably irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. Which is
| to say that it's a gambit for valuable, empirical knowledge
| which for all intents and purposes, I would surmise, couldn't
| be elsewise obtained due to the moral standards of the West,
| or some theatrics which will have little consequence.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Documents have a habit of burning to ashes if they have a
| chance of becoming evidence.
|
| What this is referring to is the relative immunity Unit 731
| got post-war in exchange for research results being handed
| over, which is a well-known historical fact.
| bluepizza wrote:
| It does make a lot of sense. In the most basic terms, almost
| no American spoke Japanese, let alone at a scientific level.
| Collaboration would be at the essence.
|
| But I think the greater point that you are missing is that
| you can't walk over a country of 150 million people and
| achieve total power. Without large doses of good will,
| collaboration, and soft power, resistance gets in the way of
| every single goal an occupation has.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| Biological weapons are not used by the US due to practicality,
| not morality.
|
| 1. It's difficult to manufacture biological agents in large
| quantities.
|
| 2. It's hard to store biological agents for long periods of time,
| since living things tend to die.
|
| 3. It's hard to disperse biological agents over a large area.
| Spray tanks require flying at low altitude at slow speeds, or
| multiple deployments at high speeds. Munitions with bursters are
| problematic because the explosive burster tends to destroy much
| of the biological agent that you're trying to spread.
|
| 4. It's easy to protect troops in the field from biological
| agents and all major countries maintain and exercise the
| capability to do so.
|
| 5. Biological agents are slow acting and unreliable in their
| effect.
|
| Long after the Korean War, the Soviet microtoxin program overcame
| many of these problems. The Americans took a different approach
| and focused on improving nerve agents, with the most recent
| development (that I know of) being a multi-part agent called
| GB-2.
| rvba wrote:
| GB is sarin. What is that GB-2?
|
| Cannot find much information about anything like that via
| google.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/831901-overview
|
| "Known binary agents include the following: GB binary (sarin,
| GB2): DF is located in 1 canister, while OPA is in a second
| canister. The isopropyl amine binds to the hydrogen fluoride
| generated during the chemical reaction. After deployment of
| the weapon, the 2 canisters rupture and the chemical mixture
| produces GB."
| reso wrote:
| Highly recommend the third season of the podcast Blowback, which
| does a broad re-history of the Korean War and touches on these
| topics.
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(page generated 2023-06-03 23:00 UTC)