Rotarian Tink Hill spoke to us about the CIA program - MK Ultra. In 1949, the USSR tested their A-bomb and the US found out they had nuclear weapons. Then North Korea invaded South Korea and the war was fought to standstill. After that war, some soldiers stayed in North Korea or came home espousing comments that communism was good. Based on these occurrences, it was thought they had been brainwashed. Subsequently, the CIA created a series of programs where they were trying to learn how to control people in hopes to create sleeper agents and couriers or use such methods offensively. They set up programs that administered drugs to different people without their knowledge - including LSD, and other treatments including shock therapy. There were catastrophic results from these programs and Tink showed us a video about a program in Canada where the subjects lost their memories and were never the same after they went into the hospital thinking that they were going to be treated for conditions such as asthma or post-partum depression. These CIA prorams ended in the early 1970s and the CIA director at that time order the documents destroyed. However, because some documents were not, some of the details of these programs were uncovered and hearings were held. Ironically, the 1960s counterculture came out of the CIA’s experiments with LSD. They bought a huge stock of it and introduced it in the US on unsuspecting Americans to try to get people to do things they might not ordinarily do. However, instead of controlling people, the LSD had the opposite result. Tink questsion whether these things actually did stop in 1973 and wonders what else the CIA may have done that we don’t know about. His theory is that CIA operatives are immune from prosecution unless the CIA get rids of them. As usually, another interesting slice of American history from our resident historian, who always makes you think at the end of his talks!