MK-Ultra was a top-secret CIA project in which the agency conducted hundreds of clandestine experiments—sometimes on unwitting U.S. citizens—to assess the potential use of LSD and other drugs for mind control, information gathering and psychological torture. Though Project MK-Ultra lasted from 1953 until about 1973, details of the illicit program didn’t become public until 1975, during a congressional investigation into widespread illegal CIA activities within the United States and around the world. 

Wikipedia explains MKULTRA as the following:

Project MKUltra—sometimes referred to as the CIA’s mind control program—was the code name given to an illegal program of experiments on human subjects, designed and undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs, alcohol, stick and poke tattoos, and procedures to be used in interrogations and torture, in order to weaken the individual to force confessions through mind control. Organized through the Scientific Intelligence Division of the CIA, the project coordinated with the Special Operations Division of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps. The program began in the early 1950s, was officially sanctioned in 1953, was reduced in scope in 1964, further curtailed in 1967 and officially halted in 1973.  The program engaged in many illegal activities;  in particular it used unwitting U.S. and Canadian citizens as its test subjects, which led to controversy regarding its legitimacy.  MKUltra used numerous methodologies to manipulate people’s mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture.  The scope of Project MKUltra was broad, with research undertaken at 80 institutions, including 44 colleges and universities, as well as hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies. The CIA operated through these institutions using front organizations, although sometimes top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA’s involvement. As the US Supreme Court later noted, MKULTRA was: The Black Vault filed a FOIA request for all documents pertaining to MKULTRA and related projects back in the late 1990s. Despite the reports that MKULTRA documents were destroyed in 1973, the CIA did locate some files and I was told that these documents were being reviewed.

For YEARS I waited, and was never contacted back by the CIA. In time, the CIA DID release the documents on four CD-ROMs.  I received these documents back in 2004, and was one of the first (if not the first) to have uploaded the ENTIRE collection of MKULTRA records to the internet.

Below, you will find the links to the data on the CD-ROMS as originally received.

Originally, the CIA directories contained .tif images of the documents (not my favorite format) and two other files. The .txt file is a poor excuse for a OCR (optical character recognition) of the document, and a .dat file which contains a one line description, as found in the index below.

This has been an extremely popular dataset since I first added it, and in March of 2017 — expanded the original CIA release with a newer, updated, searchable PDF format consisting of their original .TIF file releases.