[HN Gopher] CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare ... ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-06-03 23:00 UTC)