In 1950 the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence authorized Project BLUEBIRD to discover methods of:

• conditioning personnel to prevent unauthorized extraction of information
• control of an individual by the application of special interrogation techniques
• memory enhancement
• preventing hostile control of CIA personnel

In 1951 Project Artichoke was established to determine whether a person could be involuntarily made to perform an act of attempted assassination.

Project Artichoke also studied:

• hypnosis
• forced morphine addiction and withdrawal
• use of other chemicals (including LSD) to produce amnesia and other vulnerable states
  
  

In 1953 the MKUltra project used numerous methods to manipulate people’s mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture.