CIA drugged unwitting Americans from all walks of life in secret safehouses

By June Hargrove · August 9, 2026

Unwitting subjects were targeted in a program where only two managers held full knowledge and records were suppressed to avoid the risk of compromise and damage to the Agency.

A 48-page report dated July 26, 1963, sits in the National Security Archive. It is the work of John S. Earman, the Inspector General of the CIA, and it serves as an internal audit of the Technical Services Division's (TSD) management of MKULTRA. Public records identify MKULTRA as an illegal human experimentation program designed by the CIA to develop procedures and identify drugs for altering human behavior, a program later condemned for its disregard for consent and violation of individual rights.

Because this is a curated archival description rather than the raw report, we are seeing the launderer's view of the files. The file's catalogue entry records that Earman found the program's "structure and operational controls need strengthening" and warned that certain testing of substances under simulated operational conditions involved "excessive risk to the Agency."

"Need to Know"

The report indicates that the TSD operated under a "philosophy of minimum documentation." This lack of a paper trail was not an accident but a strategy, one that Earman notes "precluded use of routine inspection procedures" and created significant gaps in management and fiscal controls. The secrecy was concentrated at the top: according to the catalogue entry, only two individuals within the TSD possessed "full substantive knowledge of the program."

These two managers were described by Earman as "highly skilled, highly motivated, professionally competent individuals" who used the "need to know" doctrine to shield the Agency's efforts to "manipulate human behavior." To populate the research, the Agency employed a strategy of outsourcing, where the CIA "in effect 'buys a piece' of the specialist" to steer academic or medical research toward intelligence goals.

The scope of the investigation was broad. The archive describes how the TSD expanded the MKULTRA charter to include the study of radiation, electro-shock, graphology, harassment substances, and various fields of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and psychiatry. The internal friction regarding these methods is evident in other related files, such as the National Security Archive's record of a 1975 memorandum from Inspector General Donald F. Chamberlain regarding the "Destruction of Records on Drugs and Toxins."

Document imagery from nsarchive.gwu.edu From the files: nsarchive.gwu.edu

George White and the Safehouses

Earman's inspection separates human testing into two distinct stages. The first involved specialists in narcotics and mental hospitals, as well as prisons. In these settings, the archive notes that "where health permits, test subjects are voluntary participants."

The second stage, described as the "final phase," was far more aggressive. The catalogue entry records that in 1955, the TSD initiated a program to test materials on "unwitting subjects in normal life settings." These experiments were conducted in CIA safehouses within the United States, directed by George White, an agent for the Bureau of Narcotics.

These subjects were not limited to a specific demographic. While some were informers or criminals, the report states that unwitting subjects were drawn from "all walks of life." The Agency viewed this diversity as a scientific necessity, noting that the effectiveness of these substances on individuals at "all social levels, high and low, native American and foreign," was of great significance. The record does not specify how many people were subjected to these tests or the long-term medical outcomes for those in the safehouses.

No effective knockout pill

Despite the scale of the operation and the disregard for subject consent, the 1963 report suggests that the scientific yield was meager. Earman notes that as of 1960, the CIA had failed to find an effective recruitment pill, aphrodisiac, truth serum, or knockout pill. The only area where "real progress" had been made was in the use of drugs to support interrogation.

This failure to produce a viable "tool" for the field created tension with the officers expected to use these materials. The report mentions the existence of MKDELTA—the program intended to operationalize the findings of MKULTRA—and notes that some case officers held "basic moral objections to the concept" of that operationalization.

Earman’s final judgment focused less on the ethics of the experimentation and more on the risk of exposure. He recommended that the Agency terminate the testing of substances on unwitting U.S. citizens, but this recommendation was based on a weighing of "possible benefits of such testing against the risk of compromise and of resulting damage to CIA."

While he advised against further tests on Americans, Earman was clear that such experiments could continue on foreign nationals. The report concludes that the Agency's "deep cover agents overseas" were better positioned than U.S.-based narcotics agents to conduct these tests, asserting that the "operational use of the substances clearly serves the testing function."