4,358 New MKUltra Docs To Be Released After Crowdfunding Campaign
John Greenewald has been FOIA requesting undisclosed, government documents since he was 15 years old, having filed roughly 9,000 requests. So, when he realized a batch of documents he received regarding the CIA’s mind control project MKUltra, was missing thousands of pages, he demanded an answer. Now, after a two-year battle to acquire those documents, the CIA finally acquiesced, though it commanded a fee.
Greenewald was made aware of the documents by a Reddit user who cross-checked his cache with their original index, finding 4,358 missing. Greenewald called the CIA to request them and was unsurprisingly met with resistance.
He was told the documents contained information regarding behavioral modification and were unrelated to MKUltra. But he wasn’t convinced, so he filed another FOIA to attain them.
Typically, Greenewald can submit a fee waiver for a FOIA request, under the grounds that he is a journalist and the publication of the files is for public interest, bettering the public’s understanding of the way government operates.
But this time his waiver was denied, with the CIA requiring a payment of $425.80 for his request. Unfortunately, Greenwald couldn’t come up with the money, instead turning to a GoFundMe crowdsourcing campaign. His goal was met within five days.
The disclosure of documentation surrounding the MKUltra program is of high public interest lately, especially with the release of the Netflix docudrama Wormwood, which investigates the death of former CIA scientist Frank Olsen, who became a victim of the program.
MKUltra was a program focused on studying the potential to control the minds of unwitting subjects, often through the administration of psychoactive substances, such as LSD.
Frank Olson was one of the CIA’s own, who was unknowingly given LSD before his suspicious death, falling from the 13th story window of a New York hotel.
Greenwald’s website was one of the first publications to release the CIA’s MKUltra documents after acquiring them in 2004. Since then, they have become the most commonly searched documents of more than 2,000,000 on the CIA’s website.
It will still take some time before this missing batch of documents makes its way into Olson’s hands and is published on his website, but we look forward to seeing what else the CIA has kept hidden from the public regarding one of its most nefarious and clandestine programs.
Watch this episode of Beyond Belief, in which John Greenewald discusses his career filing FOIA requests to uncover secret government programs:
About the Author
Cloud Seeding; The Confirmed Weather Modification Program
There’s an undeniable human desire to manipulate every aspect of our world and the weather is no different. In our attempt to achieve this, the prospect of geoengineering has become a very real and very contentious reality. And while debates over chemtrails continue to rage, discussion of cloud seeding receives less attention, despite its recognized use.
For decades, millions of dollars have been spent implementing cloud seeding technology near ski resorts, bodies of water, and areas experiencing drought, yet scientific institutions studying the practice often describe its actual efficacy as unproven or highly conflicted. So, why do they keep doing it and is it safe?
What is Cloud Seeding?
Discovered by Vincent Shaefer, before it was refined by Kurt Vonnegut’s brother Bernard, the most common cloud seeding technology involves the dispersion of silver iodide in cloud water. Vonnegut and colleagues discovered the reaction while working for GE in Schenectady, NY in 1946.
Those familiar with Kurt Vonnegut’s seminal novel, Cat’s Cradle, might not be surprised to learn his brother’s cloud seeding discovery became the impetus for the notorious Ice-nine – the water polymorph developed to solidify mud for soldiers’ convenience, but which turned out to kill them upon contact with bodily tissue.
In reality, silver iodide isn’t the deadly compound Vonnegut imagined, but it’s use in manipulating weather has certainly sparked conspiracy and skepticism; particularly when it comes to weaponizing the weather.
And the U.S. government did, in fact, attempt to use cloud seeding to weaponize the weather during the Vietnam war. The once-classified Operation Popeye invoked rainfall in north Vietnam with cloud seeding missions conducted over a five-year period. According to documents later declassified, the operation was credited with increasing rainfall by 35 inches – more than four times the average annual rainfall in certain parts of the American southwest.
Contrary to the intention of Vonnegut’s imagined Ice-nine, the military anticipated cloud seeding technology to create mud and flooding in Vietnam, making it difficult for enemy troops to move efficiently.
Though the operation was claimed a success, it was eventually discontinued, possibly due to ambiguities in how that success was measured, as well as a Geneva treaty prohibiting weather weaponization. Since then, the military hasn’t admitted to any further cloud seeding, though it has been accused of it.
