Today's #CIA and #assassination rabbit hole. At the end of his discussion of CIA-MI6 operations in #Albania, James Callanan (Covert Action in the Cold War) briefly mentions the CIA's Project #ARTICHOKE.
The project - connected to other drug experiments such as #MKULTRA - aimed at making an individual 'perform an act of attempted assassination involuntarily under the influence of ARTICHOKE.' As John Marks wrote, it was an effort to create a #ManchurianCandidate.
I started from the always excellent @NSArchive which created an entry in their blog #Unredacted on the project. Initially, from one of the memos and from the quote above it seemed that 'ARTICHOKE' was either the name of a substance or the project itself. unredacted.com
At other times, reference is made to 'ARTICHOKE interrogations.' connecting it to the broader use of drugs for interrogation. The person in charge of the project was Sheffield Edwards - later in charge of part of the CIA's effort to kill #Castro. Hence, my query earlier today.
A 1977 memorandum from Robert Gambino, however, having reviewed the boxes of material available on ARTICHOKE seems to suggest that Artichoke is - in fact - an individual, a contractor used by the CIA at the time? Possibly the subject of the other memo? cia.gov
Curiously, according to a United Press International Article, the 1954 memo later discussed by Unredacted was originally released after a FOIA request by the Church of #scientology. cia.gov
Finally, I found a longer CIA document declassified in 2004 (cia.gov) which confirms the leading role of Edwards. It includes a memo by Edwards himself and details his effort to expand and revamp the project in 1954. In his view, the functions of ARTICHOKE are:
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