Editing Brainwashing (section)

===Research by the U.S. government===
{{Main|Project MKUltra}}

For 20 years, starting in the early 1950s, the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA) and the [[United States Department of Defense|U.S. Department of Defense]] conducted secret research, including [[Project MKUltra]], in an attempt to develop practical brainwashing techniques. These experiments ranged "from [[electroshock therapy]] to high doses of [[Lysergic acid diethylamide|LSD]]".<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url = https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief|title = The CIA's Secret Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and A 'Poisoner in Chief'|publisher = NPR|access-date = 20 July 2021|archive-date = 28 June 2021|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210628081520/https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief|url-status = live}}</ref>

The director [[Sidney Gottlieb]] and his team were apparently able to "blast away the existing mind" of a human being by using torture techniques;<ref name=":0" /> however, reprogramming, in terms of finding "a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void",<ref name=":0" /> was not so successful.<ref name="Anthony">{{cite journal|author=Anthony, Dick|year=1999|title=Pseudoscience and Minority Religions: An evaluation of the brainwashing theories of Jean-Marie|journal=Social Justice Research|volume=12|issue=4|pages=421–456|doi=10.1023/A:1022081411463|s2cid=140454555 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/achre/chap3_4.html|title=Chapter 3, part 4: Supreme Court Dissents Invoke the Nuremberg Code: CIA and DOD Human Subjects Research Scandals|work=Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments Final Report|access-date=24 August 2005|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041109061412/http://www.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/achre/chap3_4.html|archive-date=9 November 2004}} "MKUltra, began in 1950 and was motivated largely in response to alleged Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean uses of mind-control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war in Korea."</ref>

Controversial psychiatrist [[Colin A. Ross]] claims that the CIA was successful in creating programmable so-called "[[The Manchurian Candidate|Manchurian Candidates]]" even at the time.<ref>{{Cite journal|doi = 10.1300/J229v02n03_08|title = Book Review|journal = Journal of Trauma & Dissociation|year = 2001|volume = 2|issue = 3|pages = 123–128|s2cid = 220439052}}</ref> The CIA experiments using various psychedelic drugs such as LSD and [[Mescaline]] drew from previous [[Nazi human experimentation]].<ref>''The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control'': By John Marks.  P 93 (c)1979 by John Marks Published by Times Books {{ISBN|0-8129-0773-6}}</ref>

In 1979, [[John D. Marks]] wrote in his book ''The Search for the Manchurian Candidate'' that until the MKUltra program was effectively terminated in 1963, the agency's researchers had found no reliable way to brainwash another person, as all experiments at some stage always ended in either amnesia or catatonia, making any operational use impossible.<ref name="MarksJohn1979" />

A bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report, released in part in December 2008 and in full in April 2009, reported that U.S. military trainers who came to [[Guantánamo Bay]] in December 2002 had based an interrogation class on a chart copied from a 1957 Air Force study of "Chinese Communist"  brainwashing techniques used to elicit false confessions from American POWs during the Korean War. The report showed how the Secretary of Defense's 2002 authorization of the aggressive techniques at Guantánamo led to their use in Afghanistan and in Iraq, including at [[Abu Ghraib prison|Abu Ghraib]].<ref>{{cite news|last=Chaddock|first=Gail Russell|url=https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2009/0422/report-says-top-officials-set-tone-for-detainee-abuse|title=Report says top officials set tone for detainee abuse|work=[[The Christian Science Monitor]]|date=22 April 2009|access-date=2020-01-03|archive-date=4 January 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200104062314/https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2009/0422/report-says-top-officials-set-tone-for-detainee-abuse|url-status=live}}</ref>