Project Artichoke: 70 years ago, the CIA discussed hiding consciousness-control drugs in vaccines

A recently resurfaced CIA document dated April 23, 1952, titled Special Research for Artichoke, outlines a series of ideas for developing chemicals designed to alter human behaviour and thought. The proposals contained in the document were part of the top-secret CIA project Artichoke, which, according to The Daily Mail, ran from 1951 to 1956.

In the 1950s, the CIA developed ideas for how to secretly control people’s consciousnesses – including hiding drugs in vaccines and widely available foods, a newly surfaced CIA document reveals.

The seven-page document Special Research for Artichoke is dated April 23, 1952. It describes a series of proposals for the development of chemicals designed to alter human behaviour and thought.

The document, which was declassified in 1983, recently circulated on virtual communication networks. However, it was only published in the CIA’s online reading room last year.

“Some of the proposals are controversial,” the document states. Among the proposals was the covert administration of drugs as part of a “long-term approach to test subjects.”

According to the document:

“This study should include chemicals or drugs that can be effectively hidden in ordinary items such as food, water, Coca-Cola, beer, alcohol, cigarettes, etc.”

This type of drug should also be able to be used in standard medical treatments such as vaccinations, injections, etc.

The CIA experimented on humans as part of Project Artichoke

The document also included a special research field on “bacteria, plant cultures, fungi, poisons of various kinds, etc.” which “are capable of causing diseases which in turn would produce high fever, delirium, etc.”

This included “types of mushrooms” that cause “a certain kind of intoxication and mental confusion”.

Also among the proposals was the recommendation to investigate “nutrition” or “nutritional deficiencies” in prisoners and persons being interrogated, including the use of “specially preserved foods from which certain elements have been removed.”

The document contained proposals for both short- and long-term applications in humans. Drugs deemed suitable for long-term use were intended to produce either an “excitatory effect (generating anxiety, nervousness, tension, etc.) or a sedative effect (generating dejection, hopelessness, lethargy, etc.).”

According to The Daily Mail, the CIA conducted experiments on humans as part of Project Artichoke. The experiments often involved “particularly vulnerable people, including prisoners, military personnel, and psychiatric patients.” The experiments were generally carried out “without informed consent.”

According to Ben Tapper, a Nebraska chiropractor who was included on the “Disinformation Dozen” list in 2021 for questioning vaccine safety, the document reveals “a disturbing reality that government agencies have historically explored ways to manipulate human behaviour through chemical and biological means, including concepts related to food and medical interventions.”

“This is not speculation or conspiracy, and it should deeply concern every American who values bodily autonomy and informed consent,” Tapper said.

Precursors to the CIA’s MK-Ultra consciousness control experiments?

The Daily Mail cited CIA documents revealing that US intelligence agencies feared hostile states had developed their own techniques for consciousness control and behavioural manipulation. This led the agency to prioritize the development of its own methods.

Project Artichoke “served as a precursor” to the MK-Ultra program, which the CIA launched in 1953. This program “expanded experiments with consciousness-altering substances on a larger scale,” reported The Daily Mail.

Many of the documents relating to this type of experiment were destroyed in 1973, “so the full extent of the research and how far it had progressed remains unknown.”

Naomi Wolf, Ph.D., CEO of Daily Clout and author of The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity, told The Defender that the documents confirmed a long history of intelligence research targeting human thought and behaviour.

“Unfortunately, it has long been known that our intelligence agencies – and those of our adversaries – have attempted to alter human consciousness and behaviour, often without the consent of those affected. The existence of MK-Ultra, the secret project into which Project Artichoke transitioned, is well documented,” Wolf said.

John Leake, vice president of the McCullough Foundation said: “Researchers have long suspected that the Church Committee’s revelations about the CIA’s infamous MK-Ultra consciousness control experiments, mostly using LSD, had the effect of overshadowing the much larger Project Artichoke.”

Leake cited evidence suggesting that a mass poisoning in 1951 in Pont-Saint-Esprit, France, in which 250 residents suffered severe hallucinations and seven people died, may have been an experiment by Project Artichoke. The outbreak was officially attributed to contaminated bread from a local bakery.

Leake said the 1952 document was “consistent with the suspicion that the CIA wanted to develop methods of consciousness control for larger population groups.”

In 2024, a Reuters investigation revealed that the CIA conducted a covert propaganda campaign in the Philippines. The campaign targeted China’s growing influence in the country through fake online accounts.

Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda, said the Project Artichoke revelations made it “clear that the CIA poses a tremendous threat to US citizens, in addition to the horrors it unleashes against foreign governments and populations.”

Project Artichoke sought support from the Army’s Chemical Warfare Service

The 1952 document also included a recommendation to involve the US Army’s Chemical Warfare Service in the project’s efforts, citing its experience with “comprehensive studies in these areas.”

This proposal bears similarities to recent claims that covid-19 – and the response to the pandemic – was coordinated at the highest levels by government, military and intelligence agencies.

Last year, former pharmaceutical research director Sasha Latypova and retired science writer Debbie Lerman published the Covid Dossier, which presents evidence of “military intelligence coordination of the covid biodefense response in the USA, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy”.

According to Latypova and Lerman, “Covid was not a public health event” but “a global operation coordinated by public-private intelligence and military alliances invoking laws for CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) weapons attacks.”

Leake said it was “anything but clear” that the Church Committee hearings in 1975 “brought a complete end to the CIA’s covert programs.” He referred, among others, to the possible laboratory development of SARS-CoV-2.

“The creation of SARS-CoV-2 in the laboratory using gain-of-function techniques developed at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, as well as the involvement of the US military in the development and distribution of the mRNA covid-19 vaccines, should be considered as possible offshoots or even continuations of Project Artichoke,” Leake said.

Experts question similarities between Project Artichoke and covid vaccines

In a Substack post, epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher drew a possible link between Project Artichoke and the development of covid-19 vaccines. Hulscher cited recent peer-reviewed studies that found harmful neurological effects of the vaccines and “sharply increasing rates of cognitive decline.”

Hulscher wrote:

“Disturbingly, since 2021, over 70% of humanity has received a neurotoxic agent disguised as a ‘vaccine.’ The same objectives described in the CIA document (vaccines/drugs that can secretly induce anxiety, depression, and lethargy) are now being observed in covid-19-vaccinated populations. […….]

If the CIA was already secretly discussing methods for behaviour modification in the 1950s, it would not be surprising if similar secret projects had emerged in the following decades.”

A study published in Molecular Psychiatry in 2024 examined psychiatric side effects in over 2 million people in South Korea. The study found that “Covid-19 vaccination increased the risk of depression, anxiety disorders, dissociative, stress-related and somatoform disorders, and sleep disorders, while decreasing the risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.”

A study published in 2025 in the International Journal of Innovative Research in Medical Science found “alarming safety signals regarding neuropsychiatric disorders following covid-19 vaccination compared to influenza vaccines and all other vaccines.”

These included increases in schizophrenia, depression, cognitive decline, delusions, violent behaviour, suicidal thoughts, and homicidal intentions.

“The fact that mRNA vaccines were designed to cross the blood-brain barrier and inflame the brain – or at least were known to do so during manufacturing and distribution – should give us pause in light of this news,” Wolf said.

Wolf explained that the latest revelations provided “all the more reason to be critical of opaque, compulsory or untested vaccination programs, additives in food and water, and toxic or opaque geoengineering programs.”

Tapper said the revelations underlined “the urgent need to protect personal freedom, medical self-determination and ethical boundaries in science and public health.”

“The lesson here is simple: vigilance is necessary when governments claim authority over the human body and consciousness,” Tapper said.

 

yogaesoteric
February 25, 2026