12. Operation Midnight Climax
Operation Midnight Climax was a CIA experiment designed to test the effects of LSD and other mind-altering drugs as a part of its mind-control research program. To ensure maximum efficacy, the medications needed to be tested on people who were not aware of the drugs being administered, so the CIA recruited prostitutes, who were put onto the government payroll. However, they weren’t the ones taking the pills. No, they were luring people to brothels, strategically located in New York City and San Francisco. The government was operating inside brothels.
When people visited the brothels, the prostitutes took them into the back and coaxed them into being injected with the drugs. Government officials from behind one-way glass then watched the subjects. In addition to studying the effects of LSD on people who had been coerced into taking it, the study became a hallmark for researching things like sexual blackmail and the wrong use of surveillance technology. The program was finally shut down in 1965 when the “safe houses” that had been cleverly disguised as brothels were exposed. The CIA director later apologized for the experiments on the San Francisco evening news.