The CIA’s mind-control program failed yet fuelled conspiracy beliefs

Evidence

This story was attractive to conspiracy theorists for three reasons. First, there was suffi cient mystery as a result of withheld or destroyed documents to encourage unrestrained speculation. Second, the horrifi c nature of the experiments suggested that those in the government who sponsored them lacked any moral scruples—though in fact the CIA developed elaborate justifi cations based on Cold War tensions at the time. Finally, the existence of such an elaborate research program led conspiracists to assert that it created an entire technology of behavioral manipulation and mind control that allowed the controllers to produce any behavior they desired in their subjects. In fact, this assertion appears to be entirely unsupported. All of the extant documentation, as well as the information uncovered by journalists, suggests that despite its heavy funding, the program was singularly unproductive: its sponsors did not achieve mastery over brainwashing, as they had hoped. — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 386

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The CIA funded unethical mind-control experiments on unwitting subjects for twenty-four years — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 385; Cold war panic over communist brainwashing drove CIA investment in mind control research. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1006; Real-world events only strengthen conspiracy belief regardless of the identified perpetrators — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 816 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Cold war panic over communist brainwashing drove CIA investment in mind control research. #corroborates (0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1006
• The CIA reinterpreted Chinese brainwashing as Skinnerian operant conditioning on unpredictable reinforcement schedules. #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1009
• Real-world events only strengthen conspiracy belief regardless of the identified perpetrators #expands (0.72) — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 816