HOW DOES IT WORK?
If recent history is any guide, the government just goes ahead and does stuff and hopes no one notices. The last decade is like a greatest-hits list of things the government wished had been kept secret—torture, secret prisons, falsified intelligence, bizarre PR decisions—but bad decision-making was not invented by the last two administrations. Sexual misconduct, arms sales to terrorists, use of chemical weapons in Vietnam, illegal attacks on Cambodia, burglary, assassination, CIA training of South American death squads—all of these things were done on the simple assumption that no one would notice.
MKULTRA and similar projects are no exception. The documentation associated with MKULTRA was all classified Top Secret, but most of the experimentation was done at universities, military bases, and hospitals—none of them secure facilities. In the case of most modern human experimentation, secrecy is driven by shame. Whether they feel guilt or not, the bureaucrats and scientists involved in human experimentation are unlikely to ever admit the role they played. The fallout would destroy their lives, burying them under lawsuits, annihilating their careers, and subjecting them to the revulsion of their peers.
They further enforced secrecy by the selection of an appropriate subject population. Convicts, soldiers, and mental patients are popular subjects because they are captive populations, bound by the orders of their superiors or caregivers. Little attention is paid by loved ones or relatives to the treatment of criminals or the insane, and soldiers are indoctrinated into a culture of loyalty and silence, especially in the face of pain and discomfort.
The extremely poor are another popular subject population. Lacking access to health care and education, they possess a winning combination of need and ignorance. They are often willing to sacrifice anything to provide basic necessities for their families. The poor are used to being sick; if they suddenly feel sicker, it is only an expansion of the discomfort they probably already feel, and at least now they have the nice men in the white coats to provide medical care.
People are lured into experimentation by the promise of money, the possible cure of an incurable disease, access to resources they otherwise wouldn’t have, or even a desire to contribute to the common good. Once in an experimental framework, the subjects are kept isolated, either physically by locking them in a facility (another reason convicts and mental patients are such great subjects), or socially through blackmail, bribery, or other forms of coercion. Without access to the world outside the experiment, the subjects cannot seek assistance from noninvolved medical professionals, the media, or their families. They become dependent on the people running the experiment.
If a subject is given any explanation at all, it is a lie designed to cover the true nature of the experiment. If the subject survives, shame, guilt, or insanity combined with her ignorance as to the true nature of her experience will prevent her going public. Drastic, chronic mental and physical problems, including depression, suicide, birth defects, schizophrenia, a drastically shortened lifespan, and organ or brain damage can all afflict the subject, downgrading her threat as a security risk even further.