Earlier this year, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that two veterans’ rights organizations, Vietnam Veterans of America and Swords to Plowshares, along with six veterans had the right to proceed with a case against the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Army based on the veterans’ unwitting participation in Project MKULTRA.

Morrison & Forester, the plaintiffs’ lawyers, described MKULTRA as a:

“. . . human experimentation program launched in the early 1950s and continued through at least 1976 when it was suspended in response to hearings conducted by Congress. Thousands of experiments took place at the Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick, as well as several universities and hospitals across America contracted by the Defendants. ‘Volunteers’ were exposed to thousands of toxins under code names such as MKULTRA, including drugs such as LSD, mescaline, and cannabis; biological substances such as plague and anthrax; and noxious gases such as sarin, tabun, and nerve gases.”

Often experiments were conducted without the “volunteers’” (or victims in this case) knowledge or consent.

The firm’s description of the project is not only straight forward, but accurate as well. Not a lot of legalese here.

The experiments and their results are detailed in nearly 20,000 MKULTRA documents, now declassified. They were made available through an FOIA request in 1977. The goal of the project, supported by declassified documents, was to research methods of mind control and extracting information from resistant subjects during interrogations.

Some historians have even gone as far to say the ultimate goal of MKULTRA was to create a real-life “Manchurian Candidate.”

The plaintiffs’ lawyers, who are handling the case pro bono, assert that the six veterans involved are looking to be relieved of their secrecy oaths so that they can find proper healthcare for ailments caused by the project’s experiments, and also settle why these soldiers were made into victims.