to "perfect techniques ... for the abstraction of information from individuals, whether willing or not", project bluebird researchers experimented with a wide variety of psychoactive substances, including lsd, heroin, marijuana, cocaine, pcp, mescaline, and ether. project bluebird researchers dosed over 7,000 u.s. military personnel with lsd, without their knowledge or consent, at the edgewood arsenal in maryland. years after these experiments, more than 1,000 of these soldiers suffered from several illnesses, including depression and epilepsy. many of them attempted suicide. drug deaths in 1952, professional tennis player harold blauer died when he was injected with a fatal dose of a mescaline derivative at the new york state psychiatric institute of columbia university. the united states department of defense, which sponsored the injection, worked in collusion with the department of justice and the new york state attorney general to conceal evidence of its involvement in the experiment for 23 years. cattell claimed that he did not know what the army had ordered him to inject into blauer, saying: "we didn't know whether it was dog piss or what we were giving him." on november 19, 1953, dr. frank olson was given a dosage of lsd without his knowledge or consent. after falling from a hotel window nine days later, he died under suspicious circumstances. until the project mkultra revelations, the cause of olson's death was covered up for 22 years. mkultra main article: project mkultra in 1953, the cia placed several of its interrogation and mind-control programs under the direction of a single program, known by the code name mkultra, after cia director allen dulles complained about not having enough "human guinea pigs to try these extraordinary techniques". the mkultra project was under the direct command of dr. sidney gottlieb of the technical services division. the project received over $25 million, and involved hundreds of experiments on human subjects at eighty different institutions. in a memo describing the purpose of one mkultra program subprogram, richard helms said: we intend to investigate the development of a chemical material which causes a reversible, nontoxic aberrant mental state, the specific nature of which can be reasonably well predicted for each individual. this material could potentially aid in discrediting individuals, eliciting information, and implanting suggestions and other forms of mental control.— richard helms, internal cia memo government report on government experimentation during project mkultra in 1954, the cia's project qkhilltop was created to study chinese brainwashing techniques, and to develop effective methods of interrogation. most of the early studies are believed to have been performed by the cornell university medical school's human ecology study programs, under the direction of dr. harold wolff. wolff requested that the cia provide him any information they could find regarding "threats, coercion, imprisonment, deprivation, humiliation, torture, 'brainwashing', 'black psychiatry', and hypnosis, or any combination of these, with or without chemical agents." according to wolff, the research team would then: ...assemble, collate, analyze and assimilate this information and will then undertake experimental investigations designed to develop new techniques of offensive/defensive intelligence use ... potentially useful secret drugs (and various brain damaging procedures) will be similarly tested to ascertain the fundamental effect upon human brain function and upon the subject's mood ... where any of the studies involve potential harm of the subject, we expect the agency to make available suitable subjects and a proper place for the performance of the necessary experiments.— dr. harold wolff, cornell university medical school ... it was fun, fun, fun. where else could a red-blooded american boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and bidding of the all-highest? — george hunter white, who oversaw drug experiments for the cia as part of operation midnight climax another of the mkultra subprojects, operation midnight climax, consisted of a web of cia-run safehouses in san francisco, marin, and new york which were established to study the effects of lsd on unconsenting individuals. prostitutes on the cia payroll were instructed to lure clients back to the safehouses, where they were surreptitiously plied with a wide range of substances, including lsd, and monitored behind one-way glass. several significant operational techniques were developed in this theater, including extensive research into sexual blackmail, surveillance technology, and the possible use of mind-altering drugs in field operations. in 1957, with funding from a cia front organization, donald ewen cameron of the allan memorial institute in montreal, quebec, canada, began mkultra subproject 68. his experiments were designed to first "depattern" individuals, erasing their minds and memories—reducing them to the mental level of an infant—and then to "rebuild" their personality in a manner of his choosing. to achieve this, cameron placed patients under his "care" into drug-induced comas for up to 88 days, and applied numerous high voltage electric shocks to them over the course of weeks or months, often administering up to 360 shocks per person. he would then perform what he called "psychic driving" experiments on the subjects, where he would repetitively play recorded statements, such as "you are a good wife and mother and people enjoy your company", through speakers he had implanted into blacked-out football helmets that he bound to the heads of the test subjects (for sensory deprivation purposes). the patients could do nothing but listen to these messages, played for 16–20 hours a day, for weeks at a time. in one case, cameron forced a person to listen to a message non-stop for 101 days. using cia funding, cameron converted the horse stables behind allan memorial into an elaborate isolation and sensory deprivation chamber where he kept patients locked in for weeks at a time. cameron also induced insulin comas in his subjects by giving them large injections of insulin, twice a day, for up to two months at a time. the frequent screams of the patients that echoed through the hospital did not deter cameron or most of his associates in their attempts to depattern their subjects completely. — john d. marks, the search for the manchurian candidate, chapter 8 concerns the cia leadership had serious concerns about these activities, as evidenced in a 1957 inspector general report, which stated: precautions must be taken not only to protect operations from exposure to enemy forces but also to conceal these activities from the american public in general. the knowledge that the agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles ...— 1957 cia inspector general report in 1963, the cia had synthesized many of the findings from its psychological research into what became known as the kubark counterintelligence interrogation handbook, which cited the mkultra studies and other secret research programs as the scientific basis for their interrogation methods. cameron regularly traveled around the u.s. teaching military personnel about his techniques (hooding of prisoners for sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation, humiliation, etc.), and how they could be used in interrogations. latin american paramilitary groups working for the cia and u.s. military received training in these psychological techniques at places such as the school of the americas. in the 21st century, many of the torture techniques developed in the mkultra studies and other programs were used at u.s. military and cia prisons such as guantanamo bay and abu ghraib. in the aftermath of the congressional hearings, major news media mainly focused on sensationalistic stories related to lsd, "mind-control", and "brainwashing", and rarely used the word "torture". this suggested that the cia researchers were, as one author put it, "a bunch of bumbling sci-fi buffoons", rather than a rational group of men who had run torture laboratories and medical experiments in major u.s. universities; they had arranged for torture, rape and psychological abuse of adults and young children, driving many of them permanently insane. shutdown mkultra activities continued until 1973 when cia director richard helms, fearing that they would be exposed to the public, ordered the project terminated, and all of the files destroyed. but, a clerical error had sent many of the documents to the wrong office, so when cia workers were destroying the files, some of them remained. they were later released under a freedom of information act request by investigative journalist john marks. many people in the american public were outraged when they learned of the experiments, and several congressional investigations took place, including the church committee and the rockefeller commission. on april 26, 1976, the church committee of the united states senate issued a report, final report of the select committee to study governmental operation with respect to intelligence activities, in book i, chapter xvii, p. 389, this report states: lsd was one of the materials tested in the mkultra program. the final phase of lsd testing involved surreptitious administration to unwitting non-volunteer subjects in normal life settings by undercover officers of the bureau of narcotics acting for the cia. a special procedure, designated mkdelta, was established to govern the use of mkultra materials abroad. such materials were used on a number of occasions. because mkultra records were destroyed, it is impossible to reconstruct the operational use of mkultra materials by the cia overseas; it has been determined that the use of these materials abroad began in 1953, and possibly as early as 1950. drugs were used primarily as an aid to interrogations, but mkultra/mkdelta materials were also used for harassment, discrediting, or disabling purposes. experiments on patients with mental illness dr. robert heath of tulane university performed experiments on 42 patients with schizophrenia and prisoners in the louisiana state penitentiary from 1950 to 1973. the experiments were funded by the u.s. army. in the studies, he dosed them with lsd and bulbocapnine, and implanted electrodes into the septal area of the brain to stimulate it and take electroencephalography (eeg) readings. various experiments were performed on people with schizophrenia who were stable, other experiments were performed on people with their first episode of psychosis. they were given methylphenidate to see the effect on their minds. torture experiments from 1964 to 1968, the u.s. army paid $386,486 to professors albert kligman and herbert w. copelan to perform experiments with mind-altering drugs on 320 inmates of holmesburg prison. the goal of the study was to determine the minimum effective dose of each drug needed to disable 50 percent of any given population. kligman and copelan initially claimed that they were unaware of any long-term health effects the drugs could have on prisoners; however, documents later revealed that this was not the case. medical professionals gathered and collected data on the cia's use of torture techniques on detainees during the 21st century war on terror, to refine those techniques, and "to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies", according to a 2010 report by physicians for human rights. the report stated that: "research and medical experimentation on detainees was used to measure the effects of large-volume waterboarding and adjust the procedure according to the results." as a result of the waterboarding experiments, doctors recommended adding saline to the water "to prevent putting detainees in a coma or killing them through over-ingestion of large amounts of plain water." sleep deprivation tests were performed on over a dozen prisoners, in 48-, 96- and 180-hour increments. doctors also collected data intended to help them judge the emotional and physical effects of the techniques so as to "calibrate the level of pain experienced by detainees during interrogation" and to determine if using certain types of techniques would increase a subject's "susceptibility to severe pain". in 2010, the cia denied the allegations, claiming they never performed any experiments, and saying "the report is just wrong"; however, the u.s. government never investigated the claims. psychologists james mitchell and bruce jessen ran a company that was paid $81 million by the cia, that, according to the senate intelligence committee report on cia torture, developed the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used. in november 2014, the american psychological association announced that they would hire a lawyer to investigate claims that they were complicit in the development of enhanced interrogation techniques that constituted torture. in august 2010, the u.s. weapons manufacturer raytheon announced that it had partnered with a jail in castaic, california, to use prisoners as test subjects for its active denial system that "fires an invisible heat beam capable of causing unbearable pain." the device, dubbed "pain ray" by