Calculated chaos: The legacy of MKUltra

Tom O’Neill is the author of “Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties,” which pulls the curtain back on the mysterious government-funded MKUltra experiments that left their human guinea pigs insane and ultimately ruined lives.

And O’Neill, who investigated the mind-numbing experiments for 20 years, found that many of them were on children.

“Here’s what I know the CIA did do with children in the 50s and at least through the early to mid-60s, although I don’t think you would be a candidate for this — they looked for kids who were completely orphaned or had parents that were disinterested,” O’Neill tells BlazeTV host Nicole Shanahan on “Back to the People.”

“If the kids got in trouble, they were taken into juvenile detention centers. This is exactly what happened to Manson,” he continues, “and they were doing research using drugs and hypnosis.”

According to O’Neill, the CIA’s goal was to learn “which kids were more suggestible to persuasion, which kids could be convinced of something, which kids were more resistant to that,” and if it was genetic.

But it wasn’t just the low-income families whose children ended up as government experiments.

“Allen Dulles put his daughter into MKUltra research laboratories because she was a difficult child, and he wanted to see if they could change her behavior using drugs — you know, completely rewire her brain,” O’Neill explains. “It was shocking how inhumane he was.”

“In the way that you and I, I think, are obsessed about trying to figure out the truth,” Shanahan responds, “they’re obsessed with the power to use these techniques and substances, in some cases, to influence behavior, to influence society.”

“It’s scary that they even had these objectives,” O’Neill agrees. “They had mass conversion projects where they wanted to learn how to convert audiences, crowds, and, you know, other people have done studies of that suggestibility with music and lyrics and concerts.”

“And of course, that’s what Manson learned how to do, was to control groups of people and get them to act uniformly, obediently, and do whatever he said — including, by the end of it all, killing strangers without questioning who they are or why,” he continues.

Some of those brainwashed by the technique to act out in ways they wouldn’t otherwise have also been reported to have no memory of what they’ve done.

“There’s accounts in your book of individuals who do these horrific things and then have no memory of it,” Shanahan states.

According to O’Neill, there was a technique to “remove true memories in human beings without their knowledge and replace them with false memories, which would be permanent.”

This involved LSD and hypnosis, which O’Neill explains worked well on those who were more susceptible to hypnosis — just like how some people have life-changing experiences on LSD, while others don’t.

“Some people had a psychedelic experience during their first LSD trip that changed them permanently, where other people would just do LSD and have a wild, intense experience but then be the person they were before,” he tells Shanahan.

“That was the whole reason MKUltra was created. I mean, a person’s memory is among the most precious things we have, and if someone can put a false memory in our head without us knowing, that takes away your whole life prior,” he adds.

Want more from Nicole Shanahan?

To enjoy more of Nicole’s compelling blend of empathy, curiosity, and enlightenment, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.