When the CIA planned out its psychological warfare strategy in the 1950s, it wasn’t just exploring exotic drugs and hypnosis.
It was engineering an entire operational ecosystem-custom labs, human test subjects, field schools, and behavioral modification programs designed to reshape reality itself.
The document reads like a military blueprint for mind control at scale.
It covered everything: interrogation tactics, brainwashing resistance, language-specific hypnosis, and even psychiatric countermeasures to Communist indoctrination.
🧪 Project Artichoke Was Just the Beginning
One section outlines plans for deploying hypnosis on unsuspecting patients in medical dispensaries-under the guise of routine care.
Subjects would be evaluated for hypnotic susceptibility and used for field demonstrations once "useful information" had been extracted.
"Once the maximum benefits have been extracted from these unwilling subjects, attention can be shifted to planning operational experiences."
This was to be followed by live field testing-including simulated interrogations, memory-wiping trials, and behavioral training in high-stress environments.
🧬 Ethnic Targeting and Linguistic Hypnosis
The CIA wasn’t developing one method of control-they were creating custom techniques for different ethnicities.
Each group would receive a tailored psychological profile, including unique training protocols based on language, race, and cultural background.
"The peculiar requirements… based on language, racial and cultural background, and philosophy of each ethnic group."
Hypnotists would be trained to operate in native dialects. The result was psychological warfare personalized by linguistic geography.
🧠 Brainwashing Isn’t a Fear-It’s a Tactic
The memo features a full section titled "Counter Indoctrination (Brainwashing)" Analysts were instructed to gather data on Soviet re-education techniques, then use returning prisoners or defectors to build resistance protocols for U.S. agents.
"We must develop countermeasures that will enable individuals to better withstand the effects of brainwashing and to sustain motivation under stress."
The strategy included mass psychometric testing, psychiatric screening, and in-field simulations of prison-camp-style indoctrination.
🔍 Psychological Vetting of Field Agents
Another program involved interviewing CIA case officers to collect data on their ability to handle emotional and psychological strain. Findings would be turned into a training manual for future operatives.
Topics included:
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What to do when agents "break" emotionally
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How to manage sexual coercion
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What strategies work in prolonged isolation
This wasn’t therapy. It was damage control for psychological warfare.
🧪 Drug Use With Full Amnesia
The CIA also tested drugs and hypnosis for interrogations, aiming for total memory erasure of the experience.
The ideal subject would confess-then forget they’d ever spoken.
"Voluntarily or involuntarily, information can be extracted with a reasonable possibility of complete amnesia."
This became a key component of the ARTICHOKE program and was marked for integration into ongoing field interrogation systems.
🕳️ Tactical Mind Science
The document ends with a quiet demand for greater interagency coordination and scientific collaboration, warning that failure to unite these disciplines would waste time, money, and opportunity.
What they were really building wasn’t just a system of tools.
It was a system of control.
