Behind the beautiful name "BLUEBIRD", which in English means "Bluebird" or "Bluebird", hid a secret CIA project dedicated to the control of the human mind. His goal was to create a controlled individual with a modified consciousness.
Coding programs
In the summer of 1949, the CIA created a Security Directorate headed by Colonel Sheffield Edwards. The main task of this unit was the organization of small mobile interrogation teams. Interrogations were applied not only to criminals, but also to those who wanted to go to work in the special services. Each group consisted of a psychiatrist and a psychologist, who also had at their disposal various techniques, including a polygraph, that is, a "lie detector".
The project was codenamed "Blue Bird". On April 20, 1950, he was approved by the CIA Director Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillencotter.
To assist the Security Directorate, experts from the Directorate of Intelligence in Science were assigned. The team was given a very specific goal - to achieve such a degree of control over a person so that he would execute any orders even against his will and suppress the instinct of self-preservation, for example, he could commit a murder or a terrorist attack.
To achieve the desired result, the following scheme was used. At first, a person was deprived of food, sleep, heat, and subjected him to psychological pressure.
After self-control weakened, the subject was given drugs to increase the suggestive effect, subjected to hypnotic suggestion, which involved coding for the necessary actions, and erased the memory, that is, when he came to himself, he did not remember anything …
Promotional video:
Subject was then left alone for a while. After he was resting and recovering, the operator pronounced a code phrase, and the participant in the experiment had to perform one or another action. If the experiment was unsuccessful, then everything was repeated from the beginning.
Amital, polygraph and electroshock
The first experiments were carried out in June 1950 on Korean prisoners of war. They were injected with drugs such as amytal and sodium with benzedrine or picrotoxin. At the same time, they tried to induce amnesia, as well as suppress self-control without the help of medication. Alas, the results did not impress the authors of the program too much.
At the end of 1950, the BLUEBIRD project was headed by Morse Allen, who was tasked with creating the so-called "superpolygraph". By that time it became clear: a trained person can easily deceive the "lie detector". Therefore, it is necessary to make sure that the interrogated is not even aware of its presence. To do this, it was supposed to mount the device in a table, sofa or chair, so that it would automatically turn on upon contact with the subject.
Allen failed to invent such a Morse polygraph, but he developed a device called "Electrosleep". With the help of electric shock, it introduced the subject into an altered state of consciousness and could even cause a mild concussion. The administration approved the invention, however, gave instructions - not to subject the CIA personnel to "electric sleep", since, as it turned out, the use of the device could lead to amnesia, which means professional unsuitability.
It turned out that Electrosleep could also be used as a torture tool: when the regulator was set to high power, people began to experience severe pain, which forced many to speak during interrogation.
Other ways
After numerous experiments, CIA researchers came to the conclusion that with the help of electrical impulses it is possible to bring a person to an animal state. But this did not really suit the program managers, since the animal could not be used for the necessary purposes. “We have to look for other ways,” Allen wrote in a memo addressed to the head of the Intelligence Agency.
In 1952, the so-called "neurosurgical" methods of influencing human behavior began to be developed. During the experiments, stimuli such as bright light, vibration, ultrasound, various kinds of gases, heat and cold, pressure drops, etc. were used.
BLUEBIRD's successors are the Artishok (Artichoke) projects to develop an effective truth serum and MK-ULTRA (MK Ultra), also associated with the use of various means to control the psyche, including those that can change a person's beliefs and make him an "ideal" spy … Hopefully, the main task has not yet been completed, and methods that completely deprive people of free will have not yet been found.