Delve into the shadowy world of intelligence operations with us as we explore some of the most disturbing conspiracy theories surrounding America's most secretive agency. From mind control experiments to alleged political assassinations, these controversial claims continue to fuel debate about the CIA's covert activities and their impact on history.
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00:00From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time.
00:08Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the darkest, most unbelievable conspiracies that the Central Intelligence Agency has been accused of orchestrating.
00:17I was having trouble with my parents. My father and my stepmother decided to put me in the Allen Memorial Institute.
00:26Phoenix Program.
00:27I'm an ex-CIA colonel with blood up to my armpits. Not personally, I never killed myself, but I managed wars that killed a lot of people.
00:38The Vietnam War was and remains one of the most historically unpopular war efforts ever.
00:43Countless casualties on both sides, deeply shameful events like the My Lai Massacre and the CIA's Phoenix Program made up just some of the reasons why the Vietnam War was so heavily protested.
00:54The CIA was tolerant of torture in Vietnam. It also participated in it on occasion in some of the interrogation centers as a matter of policy. Of course, as a matter of policy, it had to deny it.
01:08For the purposes of our video today, the Phoenix Program, which operated from 1968 to 1972, was described by the CIA as,
01:18a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong. Using disturbing tactics like infiltration, torture, and even assassination, the CIA neutralized just over 80,000 people suspected of being associated with the Viet Cong.
01:35We never got interrogation reports out of the PICs. Others said, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. They denied everything.
01:42In fact, I never found one who was ever identified as a Class A VC from a village. I never found one in any of the PICs. I went into all of the PICs, Military Region 3.
01:56Project Stargate.
01:56We were mostly concerned with targeting the Soviet Union, the PRC, China, some of our other enemies, Libya, Iran, Iraq.
02:11Psychic superpowers like telepathy and telekinesis are the stuff of science fiction and superhero comic books, right?
02:18Unfortunately, at least for now, the answer is yes. But that didn't stop the CIA from trying to find out.
02:24So they asked the California psychics at SRI, can you tell us what's happening there?
02:29And with mixed results, nonetheless, there was enough information that convinced the CIA this is worth investigating in a serious way.
02:37In the 1970s, unnerved by reports that the Soviet Union was conducting research into parapsychology and the occult,
02:45the agency set up a top-secret research unit within the U.S. Army that would attempt to prove the existence of so-called remote viewing.
02:53The in-house CIA moniker for what was essentially telepathy.
02:57The program ran for a few decades, but would ultimately shut its doors in 1995,
03:02after failing to prove the existence of such psychic phenomenon.
03:06Remote viewing is a perceptual technique whereby a person can describe places, events, or people that are perceived mentally,
03:13but separated from the viewer by distance, shielding, and even time.
03:17It's, if you like, a trained intuitive ability.
03:21Operation Chaos.
03:23The CIA's mission, which is ostensibly to collect intel about global threats to U.S. national security,
03:29became more than a little murky when the existence of Operation Chaos was revealed.
03:34A domestic espionage operation, Chaos' goal was straightforward.
03:39Chaos would attempt to uncover any possible foreign influences on quote-unquote
03:43submersive American groups and organizations.
03:46The program, founded by President Lyndon B. Johnson and continued by President Richard Nixon,
03:52maintained a network of informants as well as covert wiretaps to spy on American citizens.
03:58Targets of Operation Chaos included activist groups like the Students for a Democratic Society,
04:04the Black Panther Party, Women's Strike for Peace, and more.
04:07Recently, I read a book called Atom Bomb Children.
04:11In this book, it was a collection of compositions written by children that were living through the bomb ones,
04:18had to see such misery and torture.
04:21At night, when I put my five children to sleep, I would touch their arms and wonder,
04:26can this happen to them?
04:27Aiding and abetting illicit trafficking.
04:29Now, if you understand what you're saying, a ton of cocaine was smuggled into the United States of America
04:35by the Venezuelan National Guard?
04:39Well, they...
04:39In cooperation with the CIA?
04:42That's what... that's exactly what appears to have happened.
04:46Although you'd think that one of the CIA's main goals would be to end drug trafficking,
04:51it's faced numerous accusations of participating in the illegal trade since its founding in 1947.
04:56Said DEA agent Hector Boreas, quote,
05:00I know specifically that some of the CIA contract workers, meaning some of the pilots,
05:06in fact were bringing drugs into the U.S. and landing some of these drugs in government military airbases, end quote.
05:12Put it this way, Mike.
05:14If this has not been approved by DEA or an appropriate law enforcement authority in the United States,
05:19then it's illegal.
05:21It's called drug trafficking.
05:22It's called drug smuggling.
05:23Similarly, historian Alfred McCoy has claimed that the CIA was condoning
05:28and even cooperating with corrupt elements in Southeast Asia's illegal drug trade
05:32out of political and military considerations,
05:35involving itself in the Golden Triangle heroin trade.
05:38Several investigations have failed to prove these allegations,
05:41but they couldn't be ruled out either way.
05:43One example, Levine said, was during the Nixon administration
05:47when he was about to bust a major source of heroin.
05:49And I was stopped, stopped cold, because that source were our allies in the Vietnam War.
05:56Levine said this was not an isolated incident,
05:59that it had happened many times in his 25-year career.
06:02Colluding with the Contras.
06:04My name is Gary Webb.
06:05I am an investigative journalist.
06:07I've been an investigative journalist for about 25 years for daily newspapers.
06:12And in 1996, I wrote a series of stories entitled Dark Alliance,
06:16which was about CIA involvement in drug trafficking.
06:19Many Americans will likely be familiar with the deeply damaging Iran-Contra affair,
06:24which caused President Ronald Reagan's credibility and overall reputation
06:28to take a serious, lasting hit.
06:30Although several investigations did not find sufficient evidence to justify the accusation,
06:35the CIA has been accused of playing a not-insignificant role in the scandal.
06:40What my story showed was that the cocaine that was being sold in those neighborhoods
06:45was coming from mainly one source.
06:48And this one source was being used to finance a guerrilla war in Central America.
06:53That's specifically with regard to their links to the right-wing Nicaraguan militant group,
06:58the Contras, as part of a U.S. effort to overthrow the Sandinista government.
07:02To that end, the 1986 Cary Committee found payments to drug traffickers
07:07by the U.S. State Department of Funds authorized by the Congress for Humanitarian Assistance to the Contras.
07:14The general idea of the CIA dealing drugs was something that the American mainstream press
07:20had never written about before, and that's why it prompted outrage among blacks,
07:26among drug reform activists, among politicians, by the CIA,
07:32by every federal agency involved in the drug war,
07:35because it showed they weren't doing their jobs, that it was a fraud.
07:39Operation Mockingbird
07:40The alleged existence of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird
07:44is enough to make you realize that propagandistic, state-controlled messaging
07:47can come from any part of the world, even bedrocks of democracy like the United States.
07:53While its existence has never been formally proven,
07:55its supposed activities will likely cause you to hope that it never is.
07:59In the aftermath of the explosive Watergate scandal,
08:02the Congressional Inquiry Group known as the Church Committee discovered some truly shocking secrets.
08:07According to Carl Bernstein,
08:09more than 400 American journalists have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency.
08:15That being said, no evidence exists to suggest that the CIA carried out a plan
08:20to influence American mass media as a whole.
08:23The assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
08:26From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official,
08:29President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time.
08:35We don't need to tell you that there exists no shortage of conspiracy theories
08:38as to who truly took President Kennedy's life in 1963.
08:42While the official story, that Kennedy was slain by disgruntled lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald,
08:48has been widely accepted as the truth,
08:50some have accused the CIA of puppeting Kennedy's murder.
08:53Garrison, the Warren Commission said that Oswald acted alone and there was no conspiracy.
08:58Apparently, you do not believe the Warren Commission's report.
09:01Is that correct?
09:02That's correct.
09:03I believe the Warren Commission was wrong and will be shown to be wrong.
09:09New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison began researching the theory in 1966
09:13and arrested international trademark leader Clay Shaw
09:17for his supposed involvement in the Kennedy assassination.
09:21Shaw was accused of working for a CIA front organization that conspired to kill Kennedy.
09:26Although the businessman was brought to trial in 1969, he was ultimately found not guilty.
09:31What are your general feelings about the case now?
09:34Well, you understand I am constrained by court order not to discuss the case as such.
09:39I can say to you that, as I said before, I am completely innocent.
09:43I have no knowledge of any conspiracy whatsoever to kill President Kennedy or anyone else.
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10:04MKUltra
10:05I was given a glass of Kool-Aid and so were the other children.
10:11The details of this top secret program are so unsettling that you'd want them to be a wild conspiracy theory.
10:25Tragically, MKUltra is anything but a fantastical fabrication.
10:30Operating from 1953 to 1973, MKUltra was designed by the CIA to test out new methods of torture
10:37based on forcing powerful psychoactive drugs on interview subjects.
10:42This was a way of weakening their resolve and making them more susceptible to revealing information that the agency wanted.
10:47It was the most secret program ever conducted by the CIA in the United States.
10:55Patients at psychiatric hospitals, prisoners in federal institutions, and even people in the public were given drugs
11:03without their awareness or consent and experimented upon.
11:08However, drugs were just one part of the story.
11:11The related Operation Midnight Climax recruited sex workers to test the effects of non-consensual LSD on their unsuspecting clients.
11:19Revealed to the public in 1975, Project MKUltra stands as possibly the CIA's most damaging black mark.
11:26The CIA knew that it was breaking, you know, every moral, ethical, and legal law in the books to do these experiments.
11:35They all were behind it.
11:38They all knew what they were doing, but they weren't doing it out of care or love.
11:43They were doing it out of military and political reasons.
11:47So, which CIA conspiracy theory shocked you the most?
11:50Be sure to let us know in the comments below.
11:52While historians and survivors have exposed MKUltra's exploits to the world, much remains unknown about its extent and wider impact.
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