--- title: The Craziest CIA Projects description: "In popular media, the American Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA as it is widely known, is often depicted as a nexus of bizarre and inhumane experimentation; an organisation in which unshackled mad scientists ply their trade with shockingly little oversight and bottomless budgets. Think *American Dad* or *Stranger Things*, and you have the idea.\n\nYou might find yourself chuckling at the absurd stories presented in these shows, because they're just fiction, right? Surely, reality can't be as outlandishly bizarre as these fictional tales?\n\nWell, hold onto your tinfoil hats folks, because while these stories certainly crank up the absurdity to eleven for maximum entertainment factor, they are *much* closer to the truth than you might initially imagine, and today we will be demonstrating this point by showing you five of the CIA's most machiavellian, unethical, and downright bizarre real-life operations.\n\nSo, let's get right into it!\n\n## Operation Northwoods\n\nIn the volatile climate of the 1960s, a tiny island nation, just a stone's throw away from the coast of Florida, had committed the ultimate offense in the eyes of the CIA. Cuba, under the charismatic sway of Fidel Castro, had dared to leave the United States' hegemon and hoist the red banner of communism.\n\nNaturally, the CIA, who bled red white and blue, weren't exactly pleased by this development, and so, their strategic planners got to work with a single aim in mind: to subvert this seismic shift, and reinstate what they believed to be the \"correct\" economic system on Cuba, and in the process, place it firmly back under Uncle Sam's boot.\n\nBut how to do such a thing? Many devious strategies were drafted, and among the multitude of sinister schemes, a particularly chilling idea eventually came to the fore: war. However, they had to tread carefully; they couldn't just attack out of the blue, it had to appear justified to the international community – lest Cuba's new friend, the Soviet Union, come to its defence.\n\nThis presented a problem, despite already having faced numerous provocations such as repeated assassination attempts on its leadership, and a failed US backed coup led by Cuban exiles, Cuba wasn't *actually doing* anything of note to the US, certainly not enough to justify a little regime changing military excursion. So then, the CIA decided that if Cuba wouldn't play ball and attack it, they'd just stage it!\n\nOperation Northwoods officially launched in 1962 and was tasked with carrying out these false-flag attacks. A range of options were planned out, from downing and hijacking airliners, to sinking both civilian and military ships, and the cherry on this most macabre cake? Mass shootings in key American cities. All of which would be blamed squarely on Cuba.\n\nThe most shocking part of Operation Northwoods was its scale. This wasn't some hairbrained idea penned on the back pages of a tattered old notebook by some intern or junior agent, this idea went right from the bottom to the top of the CIA, with hundreds of agents of all ranks and seniorities seeing the plan, thinking it was a thoroughly cracking idea, and signing off on it. It progressed so far that it found itself only a single pen stroke away from being implemented, but fortunately that pen was President John F Kennedy's, a man who was no stranger to authorising some shady stuff in regards to Cuba, but fortunately drew the line at the ritualistic slaughter of his own citizens on the altar of US hegemon.\n\nThe plan, several inches thick after just over a year of work, found its way to his desk in 1963, just before his assassination, and fortunately, he was utterly repulsed by what he read, and firmly refused to authorise the plan, or any others like it.\n\nBut this didn't stop the CIA from planning, as they carried on working on the plan in secret, eventually bringing it to the desk of Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B Johnson in 1964. Fortunately, he proved just as opposed to slaughtering his own citizens as his predecessor, and so, the operation was formally cancelled that same year.\n\nThe plans then sat gathering dust in a CIA archive, until they eventually came to light several decades later in 1997, having been found buried deep within 1,521 pages of 1960s military records that were declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. The now uncovered story of Operation Northwoods generated some limited anger as word of it disseminated around America, but with most of the key players of the story being long dead by that time, nothing ultimately came of this anger.\n\n## The (Many) Attempted Assassinations of Fidel Castro\n\nSo, you probably realised during our previous chapter that the CIA weren't exactly Fidel Castro fans, and from that, you are probably able to deduce that they were quite keen to see him assassinated. But what you probably didn't expect was for them to have a whopping **634 attempts** at it. Naturally then, having had so many goes at it, a few of them were bound to be just a bit… weird. Here are some of the oddest ones!\n\nOur first scheme takes us to the year 1960, Fidel Castro has just come to power, and on account of all that socialism he was so famous for, the CIA wasn't taking the news well. In response, they hatched a plan to lace a box of his favourite cigars with a potent botulinum toxin; one puff, and he's a dead man. They quickly deduced his favourite brand from the many publicly released photos of him smoking, secured a box, laced it with the deadly toxin, and had an agent secrete it in his office. But for some reason, this deadly ruse just didn't work, he kept on appearing in public, smoking the exact same brand of cigars, very much alive, and eventually the plan was deemed a failure. There are also reports that the cigar was intended to explode, but we haven't been able to confirm this.\n\nThe next weird scheme to kill Castro involved exploiting his love for scuba diving. The plan? To conceal explosives inside a large seashell that they painted sufficiently vibrant as to be *absolutely irresistible* to the ocean loving communist. This plan was ultimately abandoned, because would you believe, it was deemed to be just a tad ridiculous.\n\nBut that wasn't the end of the scuba-related plots. In 1963 the agency schemed to infect one of Castro's diving suits with a fungus designed to cause a severe skin disease. The suit, along with an infected breathing apparatus, was to be delivered to Castro by American lawyer James Donovan.\n\nThis one sounds *much* more sensible right, how could this go wrong? Did the warm waters of Cuba kill the fungus and thwart their dastardly plan? Did Castro have a mole in the CIA that tipped him off? Nope – Donovan just accidentally gave him the wrong suit.\n\nAnother scheme saw the CIA plan to kill Castro with a poisoned pen. At great expense to the US taxpayer, the CIA constructed a special pen with a hypodermic needle rigged inside of it, as soon as someone wrote with the pen, the needle would jump out, prick deadly poison into the user, killing them. A genius plan if ever there was one surely? Well, not in the eyes of the Cuban collaborator chosen to deliver it to Castro – he thought the whole plan was ridiculous and threw the pen in the bin.\n\nThe CIA also hatched several schemes intended not to assassinate the man, but his public image. A notable example involved lacing Castro's broadcast studio with LSD. The idea was to disorientate Castro during a particularly important speech, make him look utterly ridiculous, which would somehow spark a counter revolution, and return Cuba to the embrace of Uncle Sam. When this didn't work, the CIA then looked at lacing his cigars with LSD to achieve the same effect, and sprinkling thallium salts on his shoes to make his signature beard fall out.\n\nNone of these ridiculous schemes worked. Castro proved to be something of a Teflon President, as not a single assassination plot, hairbrained or not, managed to stick. He went on to live till 2016, dying at the ripe old age of 90 – outliving many of the people who once strived to end his life.\n\n## Operation PBSuccess\n\nIt wasn't just Cuba which became a target of the CIA's regime changing efforts during the Cold War. All across Latin America, any nation which threatened the US hegemon by drifting too far to the left found itself in the agency's crosshairs. One such example is Guatemala, with the efforts to return it to the 'correct' sphere of influence being dubbed Operation PBSuccess.\n\nGuatemala's great afront to the CIA was electing Jacabo Árbenz in 1950. He was a leader who came to power on a platform of Land Reform, Labour Rights, Infrastructure Investment, and Education. As far as many in the CIA were concerned, such a *LUDICROUS* platform was already tantamount to a soft October Revolution, but what they found *REALLY egregious* was that first promise… Land Reform. You see, in this period Guatemala was an American colony in all but name, with the United Fruit Company, now Chiquita, all but controlling the country, completely dominating the nations most lucrative industry, paying the local workers a pittance, and treating them like garbage.\n\nLand Reform was intended to change this state of affairs, but the notion that an American company might have to actually reduce its profits in order to treat its workers in the developing world like human beings was the last straw for the CIA, Árbenz had to go, and so, US President Dwight Eisenhower formally authorised the operation in August 1953. The plan was simple: a campaign of propaganda and psychological warfare would weaken the country's will, then a conventional military invasion would swoop in and remove Árbenz from power.\n\nThe propaganda campaign painted the Guatemalan leader as a puppet of the Soviet Union, one who threatened the delicate balance of power in the Western Hemisphere.\n\nThe psychological warfare consisted of radio broadcasts being infiltrated with messages aimed at sowing ill-will, undermining the government's authority, and instilling a sense of impending doom, and just to further ensure success, infiltrators were planted within the ranks of the Guatemalan government to feed information to the CIA, while military equipment was amassed for the impending invasion.\n\nThe military component of the operation came in the form of Carlos Castillo Armas, a Guatemalan army Colonel handpicked by the CIA. Assembling an invasion force of 480 men, Armas and his force stood ready to invade Guatemala, with the greenlight for the invasion being given in June 1954.\n\nThis invasion went remarkably well thanks to the aforementioned supporting campaigns. The Guatemalan army flatly refused to fight, fearing that Armas' attack was just the opening stage of a full-scale US invasion. This made the outcome inevitable, and Árbenz was forced to abdicate on the 27th of June.\n\nAs far as the CIA was concerned the operation was a roaring success, the United Fruit Company had kept control of its economic colony, and the taxable dividends would keep flowing into Washington. But for the people of Guatemala, the operation was nothing short of disastrous; the lucky ones remained under the boot of the United Fruit Company, and the unlucky ones found themselves among the 200,000 casualties of the 36 year long civil war that broke out in the country in 1960, as a direct result of the CIA's destabilisation of the country.\n\n## MKUltra\n\nThe year is 1953, and the Cold War's icy grip is squeezing the globe. Amid this simmering geopolitical tension, the CIA launches Project MKUltra. The objective? To develop mind-controlling techniques that could turn individuals into compliant puppets and bend enemy minds to the American will.\n\nIt was a most comprehensive program, with a broad range of disturbing experiments falling under its remit, including hypnosis, electroconvulsive therapy, isolation, and sensory deprivation. But it was a drug that played the starring role in this sinister saga; Lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD.\n\nThe CIA had its eyes set on LSD as a potential truth serum, hoping it would crack open the human mind and make it pliable for manipulation. Unconcerned with trifling matters like 'consent' or 'ethics,' the Agency drugged countless unsuspecting people. From soldiers and government agents to sex workers and mental patients – no one was safe from the invisible tentacles of MKUltra.\n\nTo exemplify the true horror of the program, let us focus in on subproject 68, which was run out of the Allan Memorial Psychiatric Institute in Canada, under the direction of psychiatrist Dr Ewen Cameron. Here, patients who sought treatment for minor mental health issues found themselves trapped in a real-life horror show. They were subjected to 'psychic driving' – repeated audio messages played for hours, combined with drug-induced sleep for days, even weeks. This brutal method aimed to erase their existing memories and implant new ones – a nefarious form of brainwashing. And of course, if any of the poor patients ever tried to tell the outside world of their torture, well they were just crazy weren't they! No need to listen to a word they say!\n\nThen there were the 'Midnight Climax' operations, another dark chapter in the MKUltra story. For these operations, the CIA set up brothels in San Francisco, and used them to lure unsuspecting men for non-consensual drug experiments. The men were then drugged by the 'prostitutes', and observed by agents, who were watching the whole thing behind one-way mirrors.\n\nDespite the unfathomable scale and severity of these experiments, the grisliest aspect of MKUltra was perhaps its utter lack of oversight. The project's directors brazenly disregarded basic human rights and used the pretext of 'national security' to escape *any and all* reprimand for their inhumane experiments. Not that the CIA's directors would have cared even if they didn't have this flimsy blag, they were just as invested in the program's success as their agents, and if a few innocent people had to get hurt along the way, then so be it!\n\nThis chilling tale remained hidden for many years, buried deep upon layers and layers of bureaucratic red tape, but did eventually come to public attention in 1975, when the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission peeled back the layers of secrecy and shined light on the dark tale… partially anyway, as most of the project's documents were ordered destroyed in 1973 by then-CIA Director Richard Helms. This calculated move veiled many details of the project in an impenetrable fog of mystery, and consequently, it is likely we will never know the full story of the horrific atrocities carried out in the name of MKUltra.\n\n## Stargate Project\n\nLet's end today on a lighter note by finishing with something a bit more firmly on the weird side of the weird-evil scale.\n\nThe story starts in the early 1970s, when the CIA caught wind of rumours suggesting that the Soviets were pouring an astounding 60 million rubles a year into research on Extrasensory Perception and mind reading. These rumours were received with great alarm, prompting the CIA to create their own equivalent program – Project Stargate.\n\nTheir focus was ambitious and, frankly, unprecedented. They aimed to explore and potentially harness psychic phenomena, such as telepathy, precognition, and remote viewing, which is an ability to perceive distant or unseen targets using the mind alone.\n\nTesting began in earnest in 1972 at the Stanford Research Institute in California. The operation was led by physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, who initiated the first trials with individuals believed to possess psychic gifts. Among them was Uri Geller… yes, *THAT* Uri Geller, who stood out for his purported abilities. His performance in a series of tests appeared to verify his paranormal skills… somehow… sparking a significant interest from the U.S. Department of Defense.\n\nHowever, this initial 'success' was not without its pitfalls. Geller's skills came under scrutiny when an independent evaluation by Ray Hyman, a psychology professor, deemed him to be a fraud. Despite the setback, the CIA remained committed to the notion that psychic abilities could be harnessed for espionage… God loves a trier we suppose!\n\nAs the 1970s progressed, the project, renamed Operation Grill Flame, was relocated to the US Army's Fort Meade in Maryland. The project began to show promise when a remote viewer named Rosemary Smith accurately located a crashed Soviet plane in Congo using just a map. This accomplishment bolstered the project's credibility.\n\nFurther enhancing its reputation was the work of army veteran Joseph McMoneagle, or \"remote viewer number one\" as he was known during testing. He conducted numerous missions, including a particularly unusual one in 1984, where he claimed to have psychically travelled to Mars, and described seeing giant beings and pyramids. Oh, he was also a time traveller apparently too, having supposedly travelled back to the year one million BC… and we *REALLY* stress the word supposedly here.\n\nBut here's the real twist folks. What if we told you, that this project wasn't quite as absurd as it might first sound, and that *actually, it* was all completely legit and as claimed, and that the CIA actually uncovered genuine, REAL proof for the eclectic array of mental powers it was investigating…\n\nNah, of course they didn't! The program was eventually comprehensively reviewed, and it was found that not a single shred of evidence had been uncovered for the existence of these powers… a world-shattering conclusion truly... The *really shocking* thing however, was that this review didn't happen till 1995… **23 YEARS** after the project started… WHY? HOW? How did it possibly take the CIA 23 years just to conclude that human beings don't have magic powers?\n\nActually, you know what, after today's journey we aren't even mad – we'll take wasting time investigating magic powers over a botched coup any day of the week.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- The CIA's Operation Northwoods involved false-flag attacks to justify invading Cuba.\n- The CIA attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro over 600 times with bizarre methods.\n- Operation PBSuccess overthrew Guatemala's president to protect US corporate interests.\n- Project MKUltra conducted unethical experiments on unwitting subjects using LSD.\n- The Stargate Project investigated psychic phenomena for espionage, despite lack of evidence.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What was Operation Northwoods?\n\nOperation Northwoods was a plan launched in 1962 by the CIA to stage false-flag attacks on American soil, blaming Cuba. The attacks included downing airliners, sinking ships, and mass shootings to justify a military intervention in Cuba.\n\n### How many assassination attempts were made on Fidel Castro?\n\nThe CIA made 634 attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.\n\n### What was one of the bizarre assassination plots against Fidel Castro?\n\nOne of the bizarre plots involved lacing Castro's cigars with botulinum toxin or LSD, or using a poisoned pen with a hypodermic needle.\n\n### What was Operation PBSuccess?\n\nOperation PBSuccess was a CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Árbenz, in 1953. The operation involved propaganda, psychological warfare, and a military invasion.\n\n### What was the goal of Project MKUltra?\n\nProject MKUltra aimed to develop mind-controlling techniques using methods like hypnosis, electroconvulsive therapy, isolation, and LSD. The CIA conducted disturbing experiments on unsuspecting individuals.\n\n### What were the 'Midnight Climax' operations?\n\nThe 'Midnight Climax' operations involved setting up brothels in San Francisco where unsuspecting men were drugged with LSD and observed by CIA agents behind one-way mirrors.\n\n### What was the Stargate Project?\n\nThe Stargate Project was a CIA initiative in the 1970s to explore and harness psychic phenomena such as telepathy, precognition, and remote viewing. The project was eventually deemed unsuccessful after 23 years.\n\n### Who was Uri Geller's involvement in the Stargate Project?\n\nUri Geller was one of the individuals tested in the Stargate Project. His performance in initial tests appeared to verify his paranormal skills, but an independent evaluation later deemed him a fraud.\n\n### What was the outcome of the Stargate Project?\n\nThe Stargate Project was comprehensively reviewed in 1995 and found that no evidence supported the existence of the psychic abilities it was investigating. The project was deemed unsuccessful after 23 years.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original Side Projects video: The Craziest CIA Projects](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCCliWJeHSc)\n\n## Related Coverage" url: https://sideprojects.pub/article/the-craziest-cia-projects.md canonical: https://sideprojects.pub/article/the-craziest-cia-projects datePublished: 2026-06-25 dateModified: 2026-06-25 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://sideprojects.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Side Projects image: "https://media.sideprojects.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/uCCliWJeHSc/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: 72fb6f4de2b44f42b6338f33a0ae73237a0757c216c46ab13e16d1914aba3d0b tokens: 5190 summaryUrl: https://sideprojects.pub/article/the-craziest-cia-projects.md.summary.md --- In popular media, the American Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA as it is widely known, is often depicted as a nexus of bizarre and inhumane experimentation; an organisation in which unshackled mad scientists ply their trade with shockingly little oversight and bottomless budgets. Think *American Dad* or *Stranger Things*, and you have the idea. You might find yourself chuckling at the absurd stories presented in these shows, because they're just fiction, right? Surely, reality can't be as outlandishly bizarre as these fictional tales? Well, hold onto your tinfoil hats folks, because while these stories certainly crank up the absurdity to eleven for maximum entertainment factor, they are *much* closer to the truth than you might initially imagine, and today we will be demonstrating this point by showing you five of the CIA's most machiavellian, unethical, and downright bizarre real-life operations. So, let's get right into it! ## Operation Northwoods In the volatile climate of the 1960s, a tiny island nation, just a stone's throw away from the coast of Florida, had committed the ultimate offense in the eyes of the CIA. Cuba, under the charismatic sway of Fidel Castro, had dared to leave the United States' hegemon and hoist the red banner of communism. Naturally, the CIA, who bled red white and blue, weren't exactly pleased by this development, and so, their strategic planners got to work with a single aim in mind: to subvert this seismic shift, and reinstate what they believed to be the "correct" economic system on Cuba, and in the process, place it firmly back under Uncle Sam's boot. But how to do such a thing? Many devious strategies were drafted, and among the multitude of sinister schemes, a particularly chilling idea eventually came to the fore: war. However, they had to tread carefully; they couldn't just attack out of the blue, it had to appear justified to the international community – lest Cuba's new friend, the Soviet Union, come to its defence. This presented a problem, despite already having faced numerous provocations such as repeated assassination attempts on its leadership, and a failed US backed coup led by Cuban exiles, Cuba wasn't *actually doing* anything of note to the US, certainly not enough to justify a little regime changing military excursion. So then, the CIA decided that if Cuba wouldn't play ball and attack it, they'd just stage it! Operation Northwoods officially launched in 1962 and was tasked with carrying out these false-flag attacks. A range of options were planned out, from downing and hijacking airliners, to sinking both civilian and military ships, and the cherry on this most macabre cake? Mass shootings in key American cities. All of which would be blamed squarely on Cuba. The most shocking part of Operation Northwoods was its scale. This wasn't some hairbrained idea penned on the back pages of a tattered old notebook by some intern or junior agent, this idea went right from the bottom to the top of the CIA, with hundreds of agents of all ranks and seniorities seeing the plan, thinking it was a thoroughly cracking idea, and signing off on it. It progressed so far that it found itself only a single pen stroke away from being implemented, but fortunately that pen was President John F Kennedy's, a man who was no stranger to authorising some shady stuff in regards to Cuba, but fortunately drew the line at the ritualistic slaughter of his own citizens on the altar of US hegemon. The plan, several inches thick after just over a year of work, found its way to his desk in 1963, just before his assassination, and fortunately, he was utterly repulsed by what he read, and firmly refused to authorise the plan, or any others like it. But this didn't stop the CIA from planning, as they carried on working on the plan in secret, eventually bringing it to the desk of Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B Johnson in 1964. Fortunately, he proved just as opposed to slaughtering his own citizens as his predecessor, and so, the operation was formally cancelled that same year. The plans then sat gathering dust in a CIA archive, until they eventually came to light several decades later in 1997, having been found buried deep within 1,521 pages of 1960s military records that were declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. The now uncovered story of Operation Northwoods generated some limited anger as word of it disseminated around America, but with most of the key players of the story being long dead by that time, nothing ultimately came of this anger. ## The (Many) Attempted Assassinations of Fidel Castro So, you probably realised during our previous chapter that the CIA weren't exactly Fidel Castro fans, and from that, you are probably able to deduce that they were quite keen to see him assassinated. But what you probably didn't expect was for them to have a whopping **634 attempts** at it. Naturally then, having had so many goes at it, a few of them were bound to be just a bit… weird. Here are some of the oddest ones! Our first scheme takes us to the year 1960, Fidel Castro has just come to power, and on account of all that socialism he was so famous for, the CIA wasn't taking the news well. In response, they hatched a plan to lace a box of his favourite cigars with a potent botulinum toxin; one puff, and he's a dead man. They quickly deduced his favourite brand from the many publicly released photos of him smoking, secured a box, laced it with the deadly toxin, and had an agent secrete it in his office. But for some reason, this deadly ruse just didn't work, he kept on appearing in public, smoking the exact same brand of cigars, very much alive, and eventually the plan was deemed a failure. There are also reports that the cigar was intended to explode, but we haven't been able to confirm this. The next weird scheme to kill Castro involved exploiting his love for scuba diving. The plan? To conceal explosives inside a large seashell that they painted sufficiently vibrant as to be *absolutely irresistible* to the ocean loving communist. This plan was ultimately abandoned, because would you believe, it was deemed to be just a tad ridiculous. But that wasn't the end of the scuba-related plots. In 1963 the agency schemed to infect one of Castro's diving suits with a fungus designed to cause a severe skin disease. The suit, along with an infected breathing apparatus, was to be delivered to Castro by American lawyer James Donovan. This one sounds *much* more sensible right, how could this go wrong? Did the warm waters of Cuba kill the fungus and thwart their dastardly plan? Did Castro have a mole in the CIA that tipped him off? Nope – Donovan just accidentally gave him the wrong suit. Another scheme saw the CIA plan to kill Castro with a poisoned pen. At great expense to the US taxpayer, the CIA constructed a special pen with a hypodermic needle rigged inside of it, as soon as someone wrote with the pen, the needle would jump out, prick deadly poison into the user, killing them. A genius plan if ever there was one surely? Well, not in the eyes of the Cuban collaborator chosen to deliver it to Castro – he thought the whole plan was ridiculous and threw the pen in the bin. The CIA also hatched several schemes intended not to assassinate the man, but his public image. A notable example involved lacing Castro's broadcast studio with LSD. The idea was to disorientate Castro during a particularly important speech, make him look utterly ridiculous, which would somehow spark a counter revolution, and return Cuba to the embrace of Uncle Sam. When this didn't work, the CIA then looked at lacing his cigars with LSD to achieve the same effect, and sprinkling thallium salts on his shoes to make his signature beard fall out. None of these ridiculous schemes worked. Castro proved to be something of a Teflon President, as not a single assassination plot, hairbrained or not, managed to stick. He went on to live till 2016, dying at the ripe old age of 90 – outliving many of the people who once strived to end his life. ## Operation PBSuccess It wasn't just Cuba which became a target of the CIA's regime changing efforts during the Cold War. All across Latin America, any nation which threatened the US hegemon by drifting too far to the left found itself in the agency's crosshairs. One such example is Guatemala, with the efforts to return it to the 'correct' sphere of influence being dubbed Operation PBSuccess. Guatemala's great afront to the CIA was electing Jacabo Árbenz in 1950. He was a leader who came to power on a platform of Land Reform, Labour Rights, Infrastructure Investment, and Education. As far as many in the CIA were concerned, such a *LUDICROUS* platform was already tantamount to a soft October Revolution, but what they found *REALLY egregious* was that first promise… Land Reform. You see, in this period Guatemala was an American colony in all but name, with the United Fruit Company, now Chiquita, all but controlling the country, completely dominating the nations most lucrative industry, paying the local workers a pittance, and treating them like garbage. Land Reform was intended to change this state of affairs, but the notion that an American company might have to actually reduce its profits in order to treat its workers in the developing world like human beings was the last straw for the CIA, Árbenz had to go, and so, US President Dwight Eisenhower formally authorised the operation in August 1953. The plan was simple: a campaign of propaganda and psychological warfare would weaken the country's will, then a conventional military invasion would swoop in and remove Árbenz from power. The propaganda campaign painted the Guatemalan leader as a puppet of the Soviet Union, one who threatened the delicate balance of power in the Western Hemisphere. The psychological warfare consisted of radio broadcasts being infiltrated with messages aimed at sowing ill-will, undermining the government's authority, and instilling a sense of impending doom, and just to further ensure success, infiltrators were planted within the ranks of the Guatemalan government to feed information to the CIA, while military equipment was amassed for the impending invasion. The military component of the operation came in the form of Carlos Castillo Armas, a Guatemalan army Colonel handpicked by the CIA. Assembling an invasion force of 480 men, Armas and his force stood ready to invade Guatemala, with the greenlight for the invasion being given in June 1954. This invasion went remarkably well thanks to the aforementioned supporting campaigns. The Guatemalan army flatly refused to fight, fearing that Armas' attack was just the opening stage of a full-scale US invasion. This made the outcome inevitable, and Árbenz was forced to abdicate on the 27th of June. As far as the CIA was concerned the operation was a roaring success, the United Fruit Company had kept control of its economic colony, and the taxable dividends would keep flowing into Washington. But for the people of Guatemala, the operation was nothing short of disastrous; the lucky ones remained under the boot of the United Fruit Company, and the unlucky ones found themselves among the 200,000 casualties of the 36 year long civil war that broke out in the country in 1960, as a direct result of the CIA's destabilisation of the country. ## MKUltra The year is 1953, and the Cold War's icy grip is squeezing the globe. Amid this simmering geopolitical tension, the CIA launches Project MKUltra. The objective? To develop mind-controlling techniques that could turn individuals into compliant puppets and bend enemy minds to the American will. It was a most comprehensive program, with a broad range of disturbing experiments falling under its remit, including hypnosis, electroconvulsive therapy, isolation, and sensory deprivation. But it was a drug that played the starring role in this sinister saga; Lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD. The CIA had its eyes set on LSD as a potential truth serum, hoping it would crack open the human mind and make it pliable for manipulation. Unconcerned with trifling matters like 'consent' or 'ethics,' the Agency drugged countless unsuspecting people. From soldiers and government agents to sex workers and mental patients – no one was safe from the invisible tentacles of MKUltra. To exemplify the true horror of the program, let us focus in on subproject 68, which was run out of the Allan Memorial Psychiatric Institute in Canada, under the direction of psychiatrist Dr Ewen Cameron. Here, patients who sought treatment for minor mental health issues found themselves trapped in a real-life horror show. They were subjected to 'psychic driving' – repeated audio messages played for hours, combined with drug-induced sleep for days, even weeks. This brutal method aimed to erase their existing memories and implant new ones – a nefarious form of brainwashing. And of course, if any of the poor patients ever tried to tell the outside world of their torture, well they were just crazy weren't they! No need to listen to a word they say! Then there were the 'Midnight Climax' operations, another dark chapter in the MKUltra story. For these operations, the CIA set up brothels in San Francisco, and used them to lure unsuspecting men for non-consensual drug experiments. The men were then drugged by the 'prostitutes', and observed by agents, who were watching the whole thing behind one-way mirrors. Despite the unfathomable scale and severity of these experiments, the grisliest aspect of MKUltra was perhaps its utter lack of oversight. The project's directors brazenly disregarded basic human rights and used the pretext of 'national security' to escape *any and all* reprimand for their inhumane experiments. Not that the CIA's directors would have cared even if they didn't have this flimsy blag, they were just as invested in the program's success as their agents, and if a few innocent people had to get hurt along the way, then so be it! This chilling tale remained hidden for many years, buried deep upon layers and layers of bureaucratic red tape, but did eventually come to public attention in 1975, when the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission peeled back the layers of secrecy and shined light on the dark tale… partially anyway, as most of the project's documents were ordered destroyed in 1973 by then-CIA Director Richard Helms. This calculated move veiled many details of the project in an impenetrable fog of mystery, and consequently, it is likely we will never know the full story of the horrific atrocities carried out in the name of MKUltra. ## Stargate Project Let's end today on a lighter note by finishing with something a bit more firmly on the weird side of the weird-evil scale. The story starts in the early 1970s, when the CIA caught wind of rumours suggesting that the Soviets were pouring an astounding 60 million rubles a year into research on Extrasensory Perception and mind reading. These rumours were received with great alarm, prompting the CIA to create their own equivalent program – Project Stargate. Their focus was ambitious and, frankly, unprecedented. They aimed to explore and potentially harness psychic phenomena, such as telepathy, precognition, and remote viewing, which is an ability to perceive distant or unseen targets using the mind alone. Testing began in earnest in 1972 at the Stanford Research Institute in California. The operation was led by physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, who initiated the first trials with individuals believed to possess psychic gifts. Among them was Uri Geller… yes, *THAT* Uri Geller, who stood out for his purported abilities. His performance in a series of tests appeared to verify his paranormal skills… somehow… sparking a significant interest from the U.S. Department of Defense. However, this initial 'success' was not without its pitfalls. Geller's skills came under scrutiny when an independent evaluation by Ray Hyman, a psychology professor, deemed him to be a fraud. Despite the setback, the CIA remained committed to the notion that psychic abilities could be harnessed for espionage… God loves a trier we suppose! As the 1970s progressed, the project, renamed Operation Grill Flame, was relocated to the US Army's Fort Meade in Maryland. The project began to show promise when a remote viewer named Rosemary Smith accurately located a crashed Soviet plane in Congo using just a map. This accomplishment bolstered the project's credibility. Further enhancing its reputation was the work of army veteran Joseph McMoneagle, or "remote viewer number one" as he was known during testing. He conducted numerous missions, including a particularly unusual one in 1984, where he claimed to have psychically travelled to Mars, and described seeing giant beings and pyramids. Oh, he was also a time traveller apparently too, having supposedly travelled back to the year one million BC… and we *REALLY* stress the word supposedly here. But here's the real twist folks. What if we told you, that this project wasn't quite as absurd as it might first sound, and that *actually, it* was all completely legit and as claimed, and that the CIA actually uncovered genuine, REAL proof for the eclectic array of mental powers it was investigating… Nah, of course they didn't! The program was eventually comprehensively reviewed, and it was found that not a single shred of evidence had been uncovered for the existence of these powers… a world-shattering conclusion truly... The *really shocking* thing however, was that this review didn't happen till 1995… **23 YEARS** after the project started… WHY? HOW? How did it possibly take the CIA 23 years just to conclude that human beings don't have magic powers? Actually, you know what, after today's journey we aren't even mad – we'll take wasting time investigating magic powers over a botched coup any day of the week. ## Key Takeaways - The CIA's Operation Northwoods involved false-flag attacks to justify invading Cuba. - The CIA attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro over 600 times with bizarre methods. - Operation PBSuccess overthrew Guatemala's president to protect US corporate interests. - Project MKUltra conducted unethical experiments on unwitting subjects using LSD. - The Stargate Project investigated psychic phenomena for espionage, despite lack of evidence. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What was Operation Northwoods? Operation Northwoods was a plan launched in 1962 by the CIA to stage false-flag attacks on American soil, blaming Cuba. The attacks included downing airliners, sinking ships, and mass shootings to justify a military intervention in Cuba. ### How many assassination attempts were made on Fidel Castro? The CIA made 634 attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. ### What was one of the bizarre assassination plots against Fidel Castro? One of the bizarre plots involved lacing Castro's cigars with botulinum toxin or LSD, or using a poisoned pen with a hypodermic needle. ### What was Operation PBSuccess? Operation PBSuccess was a CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Árbenz, in 1953. The operation involved propaganda, psychological warfare, and a military invasion. ### What was the goal of Project MKUltra? Project MKUltra aimed to develop mind-controlling techniques using methods like hypnosis, electroconvulsive therapy, isolation, and LSD. The CIA conducted disturbing experiments on unsuspecting individuals. ### What were the 'Midnight Climax' operations? The 'Midnight Climax' operations involved setting up brothels in San Francisco where unsuspecting men were drugged with LSD and observed by CIA agents behind one-way mirrors. ### What was the Stargate Project? The Stargate Project was a CIA initiative in the 1970s to explore and harness psychic phenomena such as telepathy, precognition, and remote viewing. The project was eventually deemed unsuccessful after 23 years. ### Who was Uri Geller's involvement in the Stargate Project? Uri Geller was one of the individuals tested in the Stargate Project. His performance in initial tests appeared to verify his paranormal skills, but an independent evaluation later deemed him a fraud. ### What was the outcome of the Stargate Project? The Stargate Project was comprehensively reviewed in 1995 and found that no evidence supported the existence of the psychic abilities it was investigating. The project was deemed unsuccessful after 23 years. ## Sources - [Original Side Projects video: The Craziest CIA Projects](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCCliWJeHSc) ## Related Coverage