In a 1951 internal memo stamped for ARTICHOKE review, a CIA technical officer laid out a research proposal with chilling simplicity: use U.S. military prisoners as human test subjects for high-risk psychological and pharmacological experiments.
The proposal detailed how convicted soldiers-over 4,000 of them scattered across federal prisons-might be quietly enlisted into classified research programs, their cooperation secured by one offer:
Sentence reductions in exchange for participation.
No formal consent procedures.
No mention of medical safeguards.
Just the idea that guiltless or lightly convicted servicemen might be chemically interrogated or cognitively altered for operational insights.
This was ARTICHOKE in its embryonic stage. Covert psychological warfare, rendered experimental.
🧍♂️ Soldiers in Cells, Ready for Use
At the time, over 4,000 American military men were serving sentences in federal institutions. The memo suggested that:
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These individuals could be selected based on age, offense type, and psychological profile.
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Their motivation could be engineered via sentence reductions authorized by the Adjutant General.
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Feelings of guilt-or lack thereof-could inform test group selection, yielding useful psychological baselines.
The plan was quietly ambitious. It proposed transforming federal prisons into controlled behavioral laboratories, using military convicts as a captive research population.
🏛️ Institutional Support Was Assumed
The memo’s author noted prior “dangerous experiments” conducted inside federal prisons with “great co-operation” from both the Bureau of Prisons and local wardens.
One unnamed warden was identified as “an insider” with ties to high-level government operations and “already cleared for contact.”
In other words, the clearance pipeline was already in place. The memo’s logic didn’t ask permission-it described coordination as a matter of process, not ethics.
👨⚕️ Medical Staff Were Not the Target-Only the Gatekeepers
The proposal emphasized that medical staff at participating prisons might not even need to know the full extent of the research:
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ARTICHOKE teams could present themselves as from a “university research organization.”
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Only the chief medical officer might need to be fully briefed and cleared.
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All prisons had on-site hospital facilities and underutilized space for “working rooms.”
The language is deliberate. The deception was not only planned-it was considered part of the protocol.
📜 No Drug Names, Just Direction
While the memo doesn’t list specific compounds or psychological methods, the context is clear: ARTICHOKE research was exploring chemical control of behavior, truth-induction drugs, and amnesia triggers.
Pairing this with a docile, incentivized population behind bars would remove civilian oversight, media risk, and operational fallout.
🕳️ A Controlled Silence
This was not a request for permission. It was a proposal framed as ready-to-implement. The only questions posed were administrative:
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Who at each prison would act as the point of contact?
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Would you like me to proceed?
There is no mention of ethical review. No moral rationale. Just a stark, typewritten trail of logic:
Find prisoners.
Offer deals.
Test the limits of control.
