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Conspiracy file · 1950–1951

Project BLUEBIRD

The CIA's first behavior-control program, approved in April 1950: interrogation teams armed with drugs, hypnosis and the polygraph. It became ARTICHOKE in 1951 and led to MK-ULTRA.

Also known as BLUEBIRD · Project ARTICHOKE · Special Interrogation

On the recordTimelineFrom the comicsIn Paranoid American comicsSources & further reading

Project BLUEBIRD, a panel from a Paranoid American comic
From Time Samplers #2

The story

On April 5, 1950, Sheffield Edwards, the CIA's security chief, asked Director Roscoe Hillenkoetter to approve Project BLUEBIRD. The plan was to field interrogation teams, each with a psychiatrist, a polygraph technician and a hypnotist, that would "utilize the polygraph, drugs, and hypnotism" on defectors and suspected agents. Hillenkoetter signed off on April 20, with a budget of $65,515.

The first teams worked on detainees and suspected informants at secret U.S. interrogation sites in Japan and Germany, and the question soon grew from getting answers to the "possibility of control of an individual." In 1951 the project was renamed ARTICHOKE. In 1953 Allen Dulles approved MK-ULTRA, and the research moved on to LSD, universities and safehouses.

Most of the MK-ULTRA files were destroyed in 1973 on the orders of Richard Helms. What survived, much of it pried loose by John Marks under the Freedom of Information Act, is the paper trail behind nearly every modern mind-control story, from the Manchurian Candidate to Project Monarch.

Memorandum for the recordSubject: Project BLUEBIRD

On the record

  1. On April 5, 1950, Sheffield Edwards of the CIA's Inspection and Security Staff asked Director Roscoe Hillenkoetter to approve Project BLUEBIRD.
  2. The proposal called for teams with a psychiatrist, a polygraph technician and a hypnotist, using "the polygraph, drugs, and hypnotism" in interrogations.
  3. A handwritten note on the memo records Hillenkoetter's approval of $65,515 on April 20, 1950.
  4. BLUEBIRD teams worked with detainees and suspected informants at secret U.S. interrogation sites in Japan and Germany.
  5. BLUEBIRD was renamed ARTICHOKE in 1951; in 1952 the project moved to the CIA's security office.
  6. MK-ULTRA, authorized by Allen Dulles in 1953, grew to 149 subprojects. Most of its records were destroyed in 1973.
  7. In 2024 the National Security Archive published more than 1,200 records on these programs, most obtained by John Marks under FOIA.

The theory

  • BLUEBIRD never ended; it only changed names, from ARTICHOKE to MK-ULTRA to programs still classified today.
  • The real goal was a Manchurian Candidate: a programmed agent who would kill on command and forget. (The CIA's own files show the question was asked.)
  • Project Monarch grew out of this research: trauma-based programming, with the monarch butterfly as its emblem (Fritz Springmeier, Cisco Wheeler and others).

Timeline

  1. 1950Project BLUEBIRD is proposed (April 5) and approved (April 20)
  2. 1951BLUEBIRD becomes ARTICHOKE
  3. 1952ARTICHOKE moves to the CIA's security office
  4. 1953Allen Dulles authorizes MK-ULTRA
  5. 1973Most MK-ULTRA records are destroyed
  6. 1975The Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee investigate the CIA
  7. 1977A Senate hearing on MK-ULTRA (August 3)
  8. 1979John Marks publishes The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate"
  9. 2024The National Security Archive publishes its behavior-control collection

From the comics

Panels straight from the page. Click one to read it full size.

From Time Samplers #2: Disorder of Skull and Bones · Pages 5-6

My little bird

Luna joins a protest outside the mall while a control room watches her brainwaves climb. "Project Luna" is the comic's invention; its toolkit (brainwave states, a handler, a voice beamed in from outside) comes straight from BLUEBIRD and MK-ULTRA lore.

My little bird, 1 of 4
My little bird, 2 of 4
My little bird, 3 of 4
My little bird, 4 of 4
  1. Thirteen hertz: brainwaves are counted in cycles per second. Alpha waves, about 8 to 12 Hz, mark a relaxed, eyes-closed state; Hans Berger first recorded them in the 1920s. Thirteen is where alpha shades into beta.
  2. My little bird: a nod to BLUEBIRD. Luna's monarch butterflies, earlier in the issue, are another: in Project Monarch lore the butterfly is the emblem of a programmed subject.
  3. V2K, "voice to skull": U.S. Army nonlethal-weapons jargon for putting sound inside someone's head. The same satellite turns up at HAARP in Time Samplers #1.

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