The Central Intelligence Agency ran a secret mind control programme for 20 years, drugged and tortured unwitting American citizens, destroyed the evidence, and told Congress the files were gone forever. Now, a whistleblower says those files may still exist, and the CIA just seized them to stop their release.
What MK-Ultra Was and Why It Matters Now
MK-Ultra was a covert CIA programme that ran from 1953 to 1973. It used LSD, psychological torture, sleep deprivation, hypnosis, and sensory deprivation on unwitting test subjects across more than 80 institutions, including universities, hospitals, and prisons.
The programme funded over 150 sub-projects designed to explore mind control and interrogation techniques during the Cold War. When the Watergate scandal threatened to expose the agency's secrets, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MK-Ultra files destroyed in 1973.
Most were wiped. But roughly 20,000 pages survived because they had been incorrectly stored in a financial records building and were only discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request in 1977.
Those surviving documents triggered Senate hearings and confirmed the programme's existence. But the CIA has long maintained that the rest of the records were gone for good.
That claim is now under direct challenge.
Whistleblower Testimony Puts the CIA on the Defensive
On 13 May 2026, CIA whistleblower James Erdman III, a senior operations officer with roughly two decades of service, testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. While the hearing focused on allegations of a COVID-19 origins cover-up, Erdman also told senators the CIA 'took back 40 boxes of JFK and MK-Ultra files' that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had been processing for declassification.
Erdman described the seizure as part of 'documented efforts to circumvent oversight.' He also alleged the agency 'illegally monitored the computer and phone usage' of investigators working under Gabbard's authority.
Congress Threatens a Subpoena
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, the Republican chairwoman of the House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, responded within hours. She gave the CIA a 24-hour ultimatum to return the documents or face a congressional subpoena.
'The CIA famously said that all documents were released and other documents had been destroyed,' Luna told NewsNation. 'So these are allegedly those documents that apparently never existed.'
Luna also accused the agency of defying a presidential executive order directing the full declassification of files related to the JFK assassination and other sensitive records. She called the seizure an act of someone 'actively undermining an executive order' and said the fact that it happened while President Trump was overseas made it even more alarming.
Why This Still Affects the Public
The significance of MK-Ultra goes beyond Cold War history. The programme was an operation where the US government experimented on its own citizens without their knowledge or consent. Victims included soldiers, prisoners, psychiatric patients, and members of the general public.
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou told Fox News that the agency 'cannot overrule the president' and that Americans 'have a right to know what is in these files.'
If the documents Erdman described do exist, they would mean the CIA misled Congress for decades about destroying evidence of one of its most controversial programmes. For millions of Americans hearing the name MK-Ultra for the first time through these headlines, the question isn't just what the government did 70 years ago. It's what the government is still hiding today.
