Declassified Documents Confirm CIA Experiments on Korean POWs in 1950s

The first reference to Project Bluebird appears in an April 5, 1950, office memorandum addressed to CIA Director Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter. The memo outlines the project's objectives, including the use of polygraph, drugs, and hypnotism for personality control, with knowledge restricted to a minimum number of persons.

Interrogation teams were to consist of a doctor, a hypnotist, and a polygraph technician, with training estimated at five months for the doctor and technician.

A February 2, 1951, memo inquires about acquiring six hypospray devices for injecting sedatives through the skin. It also requests investigation into modifying a tear gas pencil and other devices, such as a German 'Scheintot' pistol. The proposed budget for the project was $65,515, covering team salaries, equipment like syringes and film cameras, and $18,000 for transportation to redacted offshore locations.

A CIA meeting write-up from one year later notes a project in Japan and Korea where the Army used a polygraph operator along with a team of psychiatrists and psychologists on Korean POWs. Documents list specific problems for experimentation, including whether an action contrary to an individual's basic moral principles could be created, if a subject could be made to crash an airplane or wreck a train within one to two hours, if a person's personality could be altered and for how long, and if total amnesia could be guaranteed.

In Japan, a Project Bluebird team tested combinations of sodium amytal, benzedrine, and picrotoxin on four subjects to induce amnesia, with reports indicating success sufficient for further tests.

Two months later, the team applied advanced interrogation techniques to 25 North Korean prisoners of war, according to journalist John Marks's 1979 book, which used CIA documents. The documents do not contain evidence that U.S. enemies conducted similar experiments on American POWs during the Korean War.

In a 1983 witness testimony, CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb stated that a report found no evidence of drug-induced hypnosis on American POWs by the Chinese.

Project goals included researching psychological factors for accepting political beliefs, combating communism, selling democracy, and preventing communist penetration into trade unions. A May 9, 1950, meeting requested information from Nuremberg Trials papers on drugs, narcoanalysis, and special interrogation techniques.

Cultural depictions during the era included films narrated by Ronald Reagan showing American troops subjected to psychological torture by Chinese and North Korean soldiers, and Richard Condon's 1959 novel 'The Manchurian Candidate,' which portrayed a brainwashed American soldier as a sleeper assassin.