Uncovering the CIA’s 1950s Hypnosis Program

In the mid-1950s, America was in a more innocent time, not yet jaded by Cold War maneuverings and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The CIA, striving to maintain its intelligence advantage over the Soviets, seriously considered hypnosis as a tool.

Two memos from 1954 and 1955, unearthed by Cryptome, reveal the CIA’s deep dive into the potential of post-hypnotic suggestion. They explored, for example, how to securely pass a secret message to a field agent. The idea was to encode the message in the mind of a messenger so he would have “no memory whatsoever in the waking state as to the nature and contents of the message.” Even if the Soviets recognized the messenger’s significance, “no amount of third-party tactics” could extract the message, “for he simply does not have it in his conscious mind.” Imagine the plight of a captive under duress.

The memos also highlighted even more ambitious uses of hypnosis in counterintelligence.

One proposal described hypnotizing a group of “loyal Americans” to create a “split personality.” These individuals would outwardly pose as “ardent Communists,” integrating with the Communist Party to gather intelligence. The CIA would then periodically hypnotize them to retrieve the information.

Despite the open nature of Communist meetings in places like Manhattan, the memo’s author was confident in the plan, stating, “I assure you, it will work.”

A 1955 follow-up memo dismissed the skepticism of “academic experts in hypnotism” as “cautious pessimism” and “congealed pig-headedness.” The CIA advocate suggested experimenting with hypnosis “in a way no laboratory worker could possibly prove.” The agency had already seen some progress: while narcotics were unreliable for inducing useful trances, “drug-assisted hypnosis is essential in CIA work.”

The 1955 memo also provided practical insights. For example, it’s reportedly easier “to hypnotize large numbers of people” than individuals, though it offered no further details. It also assured that a skilled hypnotist could always bring a subject out of a trance.

However, these mind-control advocates acknowledged the potential risks. There was no scientific method to determine “what limits ‘belief’ may be changed by hypnosis,” hinting at the possibility of an “Orwellian world of hypnosis.” While unlikely, it wasn’t entirely out of the question.

The CIA’s ventures into hypnosis, though eventually abandoned, are well-documented. Their quest for mind control led to the infamous MK-ULTRA LSD tests, which later faced intense congressional scrutiny.

Three years ago, the CIA released documents known as the “Crown Jewels,” providing more details about their hypnosis experiments. If these revelations leave you unfazed, consider the unsettling thought that you might be subject to mental conditioning yourself.

One cited benefit of hypnosis in the 1955 memo was its potential to resist Communist brainwashing. It suggested that hypnosis could “pre-condition a subject against the pressure” of enemy influence or “help undo the damage” afterward.

In a time when the lines between espionage and ethical boundaries blurred, the CIA’s hypnotic ambitions serve as a chilling reminder that, in the quest for control, the human mind itself became just another battleground.