Revisiting Shock Doc - Inside Bellevue’s Horrific Child Psychiatry Experiments

Summary

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True Weird Stuff: Revisiting Shock Doc – Inside Bellevue’s Horrific Child Psychiatry Experiments

Date: July 10, 2026
Host: Sheri Lynch (with Max Sweeten)

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Episode Overview

This riveting episode of True Weird Stuff explores the disturbing true history behind government-sponsored child psychiatry experiments at New York’s Bellevue Hospital, led by Dr. Loretta Bender from the 1940s to the 1960s. The podcast untangles her contradictory legacy: a pioneer in child psychiatry and a participant in brutal, CIA-supported experiments including electroshock therapy and LSD administration to children—many of whom were institutionalized, orphaned, or abandoned. Context is given to both the scientific advances and the nightmarish ethical violations, urging listeners to confront the shadowy intersections of medical progress, government secrecy, and human suffering.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The History of Psychiatry and Early Autism Misconceptions

[00:30–03:02]

• Psychiatry in the early 20th century was rife with misunderstanding and brutality. Dr. Eugen Bleuler, a German psychiatrist, created the terms "schizophrenia" and "autism"—wrongly linking the two, influencing decades of misdiagnosis and mistreatment.
• The host dismantles the myth that autism and ADHD are modern, “woke” inventions:

  “Autism isn’t new. We just understand it better now, which means we’re better able to identify, diagnose and treat people...” (03:02, Narrator/Host)

Treatments and Institutionalization of Children

[03:02–06:52]

• Barbaric practices—cold wet wraps, spinning wheels, intentional malaria—were common, and children were often institutionalized for trivial reasons like truancy or masturbation.
• Stigma and shame led families (across social classes) to commit children for minor behavioral issues—sometimes resulting in brain-destroying procedures like lobotomy (e.g., Rosemary Kennedy’s story).

Dr. Loretta Bender: A Complex Legacy

[06:52–17:26]

• Bender overcame her own childhood struggles (likely dyslexia), rose to become head of child psychiatry at Bellevue, and made major contributions:
  • Advocated for neurological (not parental) causes of mental illness in children, countering the Freudian tidal wave.
  • Early champion of affection in child-rearing and the benefits of “mother love”:

    “Babies and adults...were ruined not by affection, but by insufficient love and attention.” (10:45, Narrator/Host)

  • Dismissed panic over comic books and youth delinquency, grounding her opinions with early data on child resiliency.
• The host notes Bender was “ahead of her time and a product of her time”—her brilliance shadowed by the era’s blurry ethical lines.

CIA Collaboration & Project Artichoke

[17:26–21:58]

• Bender’s work attracted the attention of the CIA, who sought to control behavior (“mind control”) under Project Artichoke—precursor to MK Ultra.
• Declassified CIA files reveal experiments with drugs (Metrozole, mescaline, LSD, Thorazine, Dexedrine), electroshock, and hypnosis—often on unwitting psychiatric patients, including children.
• The rationale: Cold War apocalyptic anxiety justified virtually anything, especially with “unwanted” kids in hospitals and asylums—“That kid was up for grabs.”

Electroshock Experiments on Children

[21:58–30:44]

• At Bellevue, Bender selected children (many 3–12 years old, some orphans with no diagnosis) for experimental electroshock therapy, initially seeking to “treat” what she misdiagnosed as “autistic schizophrenia.”
• Children received daily ECT for 20 days, with details chillingly recited:

  “I was dragged...crying, a handkerchief stuffed in my mouth so I wouldn’t bite off my tongue. And I woke after the shock treatment not knowing where I was or who I was, but feeling as if I had undergone the experience of death.” (30:00, Ted Chabasinski, survivor)

• Bender claimed “positive changes” but later experts and survivors reported aggression, trauma, memory loss, and lasting catastrophe:

  “He became aggressive for the first time after ECT...In adulthood, he became a convicted multiple murderer.” (25:45, Dr. Peter R. Breggin)

LSD and Drug Trials on Children

[30:44–35:46]

• From 1961, at Creedmoor State Hospital, Bender ran CIA-funded trials, administering daily LSD—sometimes for 18 months—to nearly 100 children (ages 6–15).

  “All showed some type of response...remarkable, in autistic children...more affectionate, more like human beings...there is still a disappointing deficit in verbal communication.” (32:09, Dr. Loretta Bender)

• She reported “no adverse effects.” The host expresses disbelief:

  “Girl, I mean, damn, you had these vulnerable helpless kids tripping for a year and a half.” (33:09, Narrator/Host)

• There was no informed consent, little follow-up, and many children were wards of the state. Glowing press covered up the reality; the medical establishment largely applauded it at the time.

The Shadowy Government Role & Lack of Accountability

[35:46–46:43]

• The Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology funded Bender’s research as a CIA front.
• The search for “mind control”—could they induce amnesia? Program assassins?—drove monstrous experiments, without corresponding scientific yield or meaningful record-keeping.
• Survivors and later generations never knew the true extent or aftermath; nothing was learned, and no one held accountable. The National Research Act (1974) and Nuremberg Code (1947) came too late for these children.

Wrestling with Bender’s Dual Legacy

[46:43–63:52]

• The hosts stress the moral ambiguities: Bender was a champion for neurodiversity and child rights, yet conducted and excused profound ethical violations.

  “She was such a force in the study and treatment for autism that it’s almost painful to lift the rock up and see the other stuff.” (51:47, Narrator/Host)

• This “good versus evil” split, they argue, is oversimplified—a lesson in the dangers of dehumanizing both heroes and villains, and a reminder not to blindly trust authority:

  “It’s scarier if she’s not a monster...just a person...moving one small step at a time until slipping down the hill.” (45:18, Narrator/Host)

Context, Oversight, and the Cold War Seduction

[42:26–50:00]

• Max and Sheri dissect how the Cold War, coupled with governmental flattery and secrecy, seduced highly intelligent, well-meaning people into horrific actions.

  “If someone comes to you...and says your work could be the thing that saves the entire world, you can see how seductive that is.” (42:26, Narrator/Host)

Modern Parallels and Lasting Questions

[63:52–78:00]

• The hosts reflect on current therapies (like ECT) and the likelihood that, in another 30 years, society may judge today’s “advancements” with horror.
• Governmental secrecy and record-keeping remain issues, and as technology advances, accountability may become even more elusive.
• The episode closes with gratitude for improved understanding of autism and neurodiversity, but deep sorrow for the children whose suffering went unacknowledged.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Dismissal of Modern Autism Myths:
“Autism isn’t new. We just understand it better now...” (03:02, Narrator/Host)

On Cold War Justification:
“Your ethics can be immaculate, your morality unwavering, and then they drop the fate of humanity in your lap.” (21:58, Narrator/Host)

Survivor’s Testimony:
“I was six years old in 1944...I was dragged down a hall crying, a handkerchief stuffed in my mouth...and I woke after the shock treatment not knowing where I was...” (30:00, Ted Chabasinski)

Dr. Bender on Affection and Children:
“Babies and adults...were ruined not by affection, but by insufficient love and attention.” (10:45, Narrator/Host)

On Bender’s Experiment Outcomes:
“All showed some response...more affectionate, more like human beings...still a disappointing deficit in verbal communication.” (32:09, Dr. Loretta Bender)

On Advance and Atrocity:
“I’m grateful for the progress that’s been made. And I’m sick at heart for the human suffering that got us there.” (76:19, Narrator/Host)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment/Topic | |-------------|----------------------------------------------| | 00:30-03:02 | Autism and ADHD Myths: Roots & Reality | | 03:02-06:52 | Historic Mistreatment of “Defective” Children| | 06:52-17:26 | Dr. Bender’s Biography & Early Ideas | | 17:26-21:58 | The CIA, Project Artichoke, and Mind Control | | 21:58-24:54 | Electroshock Experiments Backstory | | 24:54-30:44 | Survivor Testimony & Professional Criticism | | 30:44-35:46 | LSD Trials on Children at Creedmoor | | 35:46-41:24 | Legacy, Media Reception, and Lack of Consent | | 46:43-50:00 | Cold War Seduction & Contextual Judgments | | 51:23-63:52 | Moral Ambiguity, Modern Parallels, Reflection| | 63:52-78:00 | Government Secrecy, Progress & Remorse |

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Conclusion

The episode makes chillingly clear that advances in psychiatric science can come at a devastating human cost—and that giants of progress may also cast vast, destructive shadows. With a blend of wry humor and raw empathy, the hosts urge us to learn the hard truths of medical history, both to judge it justly and to avoid repeating its appalling mistakes.

Final Thought:
“You can’t condemn what you don’t know. You can’t prevent it...until you do know.” (37:57, Narrator/Host)

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Transcript

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[Narrator/Host]

Even we admit that some things sound too crazy, just way too far fetched to be true. Like in what world does a respected doctor, a pioneer in her field, somehow end up treating children like laboratory mice, conducting cruel experiments on their brains and bodies. Experiments that left many of those kids with lasting, irrevocable damage. And when I tell you that the CIA sponsored some of this under a little CIA operation called Project Artichoke. Sure sounds like tinfoil hat crazy time, doesn't it? If only it was. But it's a true story. I'll tell it to you now.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

But first I need you to open wide and bite down on this rubber block. There you go. Just like that. Stop making such a bust. Now hold still.

[Dr. Peter R. Breggan (quoted)]

Still. Make out a small beam of light against the mirror.

[Max Sweeten]

True weird stuff.

[Narrator/Host]

It all begins in 1911 with a German psychiatrist named Dr. Eugen Bleuler. He's responsible for two major concepts in mental health. Schizophrenia and autism. Now the thing is, Bleuler combined the two. He theorized that autism was a symptom of the most severe cases of schizophrenia. Today we know that this is not even remotely correct. But back then people were like oh, okay. Blueler's theory became working model for psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists from the 1920s to the 1950s. Autism didn't get reconsidered and redefined until the 1960s. Just the littlest bit too late to help the kids. In our story, sadly, you'll hear people say stuff like there wasn't all this autism and ADHD when I was a kid. All these screens and junk food and the woke mind virus is causing it

[Max Sweeten]

and blah blah blah blah.

[Narrator/Host]

First, that's just wrong. Second, let's don't be those people because they sound like cranky old coots. Autism isn't new. We just understand it better now, which means we're better able to identify, diagnose and treat people who fall on the autism spectrum. Back in the so called good old days, we called these people by other names. Mentally defective was a popular term we called a lot of people. That and worse. In those early days of psychiatry, treatment could be downright barbaric. And there was no distinction made between treating children versus treating adults. Insane things were done in those early attempts to cure insanity. Wrapping patients in cold, wet blankets, for example. Burning them with hot irons in hopes of knocking some sense back into them. No, really. Or how about that, this Strapping people to large wheels and spinning them. Some patients were deliberately infected with malaria. It was believed to be a cure for the madness brought on by advanced syphilis. And it was used for other mental insanities, too, and the belief that a high fever had amazing medical powers. In those good old days, it wasn't all that hard to get a child committed to an asylum. Developmental or learning disabilities, an enthusiasm for masturbation, off you go. Once involuntarily committed, those kids were typically on their own. The shame, disgrace, and stigma of mental illness led to a lot of children being warehoused in asylums and state hospitals, essentially abandoned there by their families. It wasn't all that rare to find kids with no legitimate diagnosis at all being treated with heavy meds and even electroshock therapy for stuff like defiant behavior or skipping school. Rich or poor, it didn't matter. Even wealthy prominent families were mortified to have a child with behavioral or mental health issues. Look at Rosemary Kennedy. Her older brother would grow up to be the President of the United States. She would have her brain destroyed by a lobotomy in November 1941, and then was stashed away out of sight for the rest of her life. The past has a lot of things going for it, like zero Internet trolls and peaches probably tasted a lot better. But when it comes to mental health, trust me, you don't want to go back.

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[Historical Context Narrator]

One among the nearly 7 million Americans suffering from some form of emotional or mental ill health. Today, mental illness is by way of becoming America's number one health problem. For years, what was called insanity was regarded as a problem for each state to solve. As Best it could. In nearly all state mental hospitals, little more than custodial care was provided. Few who were committed could hope to return to society.

[Narrator/Host]

Loretta Bender was born in Butte, Montana. She had a really hard time in school as a young child. They made her repeat first grade three times. It was the Alphabet that gave her so much trouble. Letters had a way of jumping around when she tried to read them, and writing was just as hard. Schaffen reversed her letters. It was assumed that she must have some sort of intellectual disability, that she was maybe just a little simple minded. Sure sounds like dyslexia though, doesn't it? Loretta was lucky to have parents who believed in their child and refused to give up on her. And it turns out they were right. Loretta's father worked with her on her reading and writing, and she ended up being the valedictorian of her high school class. Loretta went on to finish college at the University of Chicago. And then in 1926, she earned her M.D. she did research at Johns Hopkins. She won a Rockefeller Traveling Fellowship that took her to the Netherlands. And when she returned to the U.S. she took a position at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, which has a name right out of a Batman movie. In 1930, Dr. Loretta Bender began working at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Just four years later, she was named head of the Children's Psychiatric division, a job she held for the next 21 years. The majority of Dr. Bender's young patients at Bellevue from had been deposited there by parents who believed that something was fundamentally wrong with their kid and they couldn't deal with it. Some of those children were abandoned orphans and now wards of the state. It's not fair to talk about what happened to so many of those kids at Bellevue without first at least mentioning some of Dr. Bender's finer contributions to the field of mental health. Because she was brilliant and ahead of her time in ways that changed how mental health disorders in children were understood and diagnosed and eventually treated. But she was also a woman of her time. A time when ethics and boundaries and medicine weren't as clear as they are today. Which isn't an excuse. It's more like context, because, you know, we're doing stuff now that the people of the future, assuming there are people of the future, are going to look at and wonder what the hell we were thinking. Poor parenting and a bad disposition used to be the go to scapegoat for mental health disorders in children. Dr. Bender was one of the first in the field to argue against that. Her research pointed instead to mental illness having a Neurological basis. This was huge. And at a time when the theories of one Dr. Sigmund Freud were enormously influential. Freud was talking about the ID and the ego and the superego and psychosexual dynamics and how all human behavior was driven by forces outside our conscious awareness. Dr. Bender was like, yeah, about that. See this? It's a brain, and that's a central and peripheral nervous system. And those are no more immune to disease or congenital issues than the rest of the body. So, Sigmund, why don't you sit over there quietly and play with your penis envy while the medical doctors have a look at the situation? You know how even today there are people who believe that soothing a crying infant will only spoil the baby? As far back as 1941, Dr. Bender was rolling her eyes at that. The opposite was true. She declared babies and the adults they grow into were ruined not by affection, but by insufficient love and attention.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

All the old theories that crying is good exercise for the child and that denying it things its wants is good discipline have been exploded. Psychiatrists have found, by checking back on childhood, that most of the people who make trouble in the world, if physically all right, didn't have as much mother love as they should.

[Narrator/Host]

She was still banging that drum 15 years later. Because it was still controversial in 1956 to cuddle a crying infant. It's still controversial now in some circles, which honestly blows my mind, because babies are helpless little things who have very few ways to communicate. And if you wanted something capable of surviving on its own the minute it was born, maybe you should have just had a shark.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

Baby's cries are a manifestation of the baby's struggle to adjust himself to the strange society that he suddenly finds himself in. For example, a newborn baby has to actually learn a seemingly elementary thing as to how to breathe properly. Simple bodily contact, a show of affection, reassures the baby.

[Narrator/Host]

Now, as those babies grew, some of them fell prey to the siren call of the comic strip or comic books. Yes, there was an uproar about the effect comics had on kids. You know, there have always been adults wanting to control what kids read, always adults who believe that it takes very little to corrupt those tiny minds. Enter Dr. Bender in 1945.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

The comic strip would seem to offer the same type of mental catharsis to its readers that Aristotle claimed was an attribute of the drama.

[Narrator/Host]

That's lofty praise for Brenda Starr, Dick Tracy, and the Lone Ranger. Dr. Bender believed that even comics that might have struck an adult as too intense were perfectly fine for children.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

Well balanced children are not upset by even the more horrible scenes in the comics, including extraordinary excitement, gruesomeness and torture. As long as only the threat of torture is made and not actually carried out.

[Narrator/Host]

Yet. One more item for the Dr. Bender plus column was her take on juvenile delinquency. Did you know that there has never been a day in the United States of America where adults weren't wringing their hands and fetching over the state of the today's youth? I promise you that even if you went as far back as the 1600s, you'd find those miserable puritans lying awake at night worrying about young Miles lack of fortitude or prudence, showing a half inch worth of ankle to a stable hand, truly wailing about the state of these darn kids. Today is a proud American tradition. And in 1955, parents were beside themselves over their teenagers getting all heated up by that crazy rock and roll music. They worried about rebellious gangs of teen hoodlums leading their sweet children astray. And the label they dreaded most juvenile delinquent alarmists.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

There is no crisis in juvenile delinquency. The real puzzle is why there are not more delinquents. Children have an amazing capacity to tolerate bad parents, poor teachers, dreadful homes and communities. What is hard to understand is why a much larger percentage of young people doesn't lapse into delinquency.

[Narrator/Host]

Hey, she's talking about resiliency. The study of resiliency in children is a science that didn't come onto the scene until the 1970s. See what I mean about Bender being ahead of her time when it came to underage hooligans? Bender had data on her side.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

Look, she said communities in the years 1860 through 1900 had to cope with exactly the same types of youth crimes as today and in the same proportion to the population. Young people of today are no worse than they were 50 to 100 years ago.

[Narrator/Host]

Bender argued that if you wanted to understand delinquency, you'd need to consider the last 100 years and all of Western civilization while you're at it.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

We have blamed the home entirely too much. After all, who are these parents in these homes? Poor, unhappy people themselves. A broken home in adolescence may be a tragedy, but in and of itself will not cause delinquency.

[Narrator/Host]

If that microphone wasn't bolted to the desk, she'd have dropped it. Dr. Bender also had strong views about a child's most formative years.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

My experience with thousands of children has led me to believe that the first five or six years of a child's Life is most important. The child should, if he is to make the best adjustment to society later on, be under the care during this period of one individual. Mother, father, foster mother. This person must give the child a feeling of security and guide it in making adjustments within the family and eventually in its early contacts with society.

[Narrator/Host]

Benders convictions on this subject were rock solid but didn't win any fans in the adoption community.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

Either adopt the child when it is very young or wait until it has reached five or six years of age.

[Narrator/Host]

If you're getting the feeling that Dr. Bender was kind of famous, she was. She was a well regarded expert in her field. Someone in high demand as a speaker at medical conferences and the press ate her up. Her work with children was relevant to their readers. She had a brisk, no nonsense way of getting right to the point. But never forget that she was a woman in a male dominated field at a time when sexism was just, you know, a fact of life. Listen to this. Published in 1955 in the Charlotte observer, sight unseen.

[Max Sweeten]

We'd say Loretta is a good gal who bends psychiatric talent with uncommon sense. As senior psychiatrist at New York's Bellevue Hospital, she developed a new slant on the problem of youth delinquency.

[Narrator/Host]

Okay, if I had a dollar for every time I've seen the male head of a major medical institution addressed by his first name, not his title, and labeled a lad who blends his area of expertise with with uncommon sense, I would have let me see no dollars and heads up by this point. That gal Loretta had powerful connections in the CIA. So if that reporter had any uncommon sense himself, he'd be calling her Dr. Bender all day long. But what on earth could the Central Intelligence Agency have in common with Dr. Bender? What relevance did her work have to theirs? That's where Project Artichoke comes in. Project Artichoke began in 1953. Kind of like the opening act for the much better known Project MK Ultra. Project Artichoke is also known as Project Blue bluebird. Back in August 1977, during an inventory of CIA archives, 18 boxes labeled Project Artichoke were discovered. Somehow those 18 boxes had been missed. During the 1975 congressional investigation into the CIA's various covert programs and unethical shenanigans.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

The.

[Max Sweeten]

The bulk of this material pertains to behavior control, the effects of characteristics of drugs. Drugs, interrogation and interviewing techniques, lie detectors, hypnotism and brainwashing.

[Narrator/Host]

This by the way, is straight from the CIA's own archives. Now we're about to shout out some specific drugs and some specific techniques, things Dr. Bender was involved in.

[Max Sweeten]

Metrozole, mescaline, etc.

[Narrator/Host]

One of those etceteras happened to be LSD. LSD?

[Max Sweeten]

Non drug related fields of behavior control such as electroshock therapy.

[Narrator/Host]

Now we're getting closer and closer to Dr. Bender and her young patients at Bellevue. A review of the contents of those 18 boxes is full of tasty little nuggets. Experimentation on human subjects shows up on page two. Page four teases an unwitting test in 1943 on a notorious New York gangster. The next page notes that so much more money was spent on MK Ultra than on Artichoke.

[Max Sweeten]

The personnel involved while doctors, psychiatrists, chemists and hypnotists who were doing work or were acknowledged as experts in areas of interest to Bluebird Slash Artichoke.

[Narrator/Host]

There were even a handful of syringes and some drugs in those cartons. Drugs like Thorazine and Dexedrine. It's unsettling to think that the CIA back then was just haphazardly tossing stuff into boxes like a kid moving out of a dorm room. So what was Artichoke all about? In a nutshell, the CIA was wondering if a person could be made to attempt an assassination involuntarily. Mind control. In the 1950s and 1960s, it wasn't uncommon for psychiatry interests at some of America's top institutions to collaborate with the CIA. The CIA was hunting for ways to control the minds and actions of individuals. And they needed subjects to experiment on these human subjects, most of whom had no idea what was happening. Because informed consent wasn't required at the time. These subjects were very often incarcerated people and patients in psychiatric wards. It was the Cold War and everything was justified under the looming threat of nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviets. The fact that some of those psychiatric patients were 12 years old and younger. Well, what are you going to do? The attitude toward kids back then was completely different than it is today. And an orphaned kid in an institution?

[True Weird Stuff Closing Announcer]

Please.

[Narrator/Host]

That kid was up for grabs. It's appalling, but it's true. These doctors weren't monsters. They were something scarier. They were people, just regular people who were trying to balance duty to country with their own Hippocratic oath. First do no harm while being told that their participation, their research, could be the thing that prevented a global nuclear holocaust. Your ethics can be immaculate, your morality unwavering, and then they drop the fate of humanity in your lap. Can you see how easy it might be under those circumstances? For one uncomfortable decision to lead to the next and the next. And before you know it, you're clinging on for dear life as you rocket down that slippery slope. Not an excuse for what happened, just context. So now let's circle back to Dr. Eugene Blueler and his categorizing of autism as an extreme form of schizophrenia. At that time, Dr. Bender was practicing at Bellevue. Autistic schizophrenia was the diagnosis. Diagnosis given to children selected for experimental electroshock therapy. As many as 100 kids, and some estimates double that number. All ages 3 to 12, became test subjects. And those are just the children Dr. Bender used. As you might have guessed, the records are spotty, incomplete, and sometimes spot just plain missing. Bender's electroshock experiments spanned a period of 13 years, from 1940 through 1953. She wasn't the only staffer zapping kids. Other sources suggest that more than 500 children at Bellevue underwent the treatment right through 1956. And then the program continued at Creedmoor State Hospital until 1969. Bender's stated goal was to evaluate the effectiveness of electroshock therapy on children with autistic schizophrenia. The protocol was this. Each young patient would receive daily electroshock treatment for 20 days. Bender would document their behavior before and after the treatment. And then adjust the voltage based on her observations. Bender was an early advocate of what we now call art therapy. So each child would be asked to make a drawing before and after each treatment. For those children who had families to return to. Bender would follow up, speaking with parents and teachers and family members to assess the results.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

In all but two or three of the children, a positive change in behavior. Behavior following treatment has been observed. Nevertheless, it is the opinion of all observers in the hospital, in the schoolrooms of the parents and other guardians. That the children were always somewhat improved by the treatment. Inasmuch as they were less disturbed, less excitable, less withdrawn and less anxious. They were more composed, happier. And were better able to accept the teaching or psychotherapy.

[Narrator/Host]

Except that's not exactly the full truth. An analysis of Bender's experiments done years later by another expert, Dr. Peter R. Breggan, disagreed. This is his assessment of just one of Bender's patients.

[Dr. Peter R. Breggan (quoted)]

One boy, G.R. came from a very chaotic, disturbed family. He was terrified by his father's violence when intoxicated and had been truant at school. There is no indication of any severe psychiatric disorder. And he was diagnosed primary behavior disorder, conduct disturbance at Bellevue. Beginning November 3, 1949, he was subjected to a series of. Of 20 ects. As far as I could ascertain from the records, he became Aggressive for the first time. After ECT treatment, GR was soon sent to Rockland State Hospital. In adulthood, he became a convicted multiple murderer.

[Narrator/Host]

Poor conduct and skipping school, hardly a reason to commit a child to a psychiatric facility. Whether GR would have grown up to be a violent perpetrator with or without Bender's electroshock treatment, no one can say. But it's troubling pretty much every level, isn't it? So now, here's how electroshock therapy works. It induces a grand mal convulsion by passing up to 600 volts of electrical current through the brain. Takes anywhere from a half second to four seconds. The induced convulsion can last up to 60 seconds. This is followed by a period of unconsciousness that typically lasts several minutes. There may be complications like pain, cardiac arrest, and even death. Patients receiving the treatment are generally given an anesthetic and a muscle. Paralytics. Why? Because in the old days, before those drugs were added to the mix, patients could have a physical reaction so violent that they broke their own bones, particularly in the spine. The human brain is an ingenious little blob of electrified goo operating on just millivolts of electricity. Hit it with 150 to 600 volts of electricity, and as neuroscientist Peter Sterling put it, the acute rise in blood pressure often causes small hemorrhages in the brain. When a hemorrhage occurs in the brain, nerve cells die and they're not replaced. Plus, the treatment ruptures the blood brain barrier, and that can lead to swelling, lack of oxygen to the brain, and neuron death. Sterling said that repeated episodes of electroshock therapy can contribute to significant brain damage and memory loss, persistent memory loss. And whatever benefits may come from the treatment, they're temporary. A 2001 study found that nearly every patient relapsed after just six months. Bender's young patients received this treatment every day for 20 days. They weren't anesthetized. They were strapped down with wedges of hard rubber stuffed into their mouths.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

But first, I need you to open wide and bite down on this rubber block. There you go. Just like that. Stop making such a fuss. Now, full stealth.

[Narrator/Host]

Ted Chavesinski was a foster child in Bellevue under Dr. Bender's care. He described the experience.

[Ted Chabasinski (Survivor)]

I was six years old in 1944. My mother had been locked up in a mental hospital just before I was born, and I was a ward of the state. A psychiatrist at Bell Bellevue Hospital In New York, Dr. Loretta Bender had just begun her infamous series of experiments with shock treatment on children, and she needed more subjects. So I was diagnosed as a childhood schizophrenic, torn away from my foster parents and given 20 shock treatments. I was dragged down a hall crying, a handkerchief stuffed in my mouth so I wouldn't bite off my tongue. And I woke after the shock treatment not knowing where I was or who I was, but feeling as if I had undergone the experience of death. After four months of this, I was returned to my foster home. Shock treatment had changed me from a shy little boy who liked to sit in a corner and read to a terrified child who would only cling to his foster mother and cry. I couldn't remember my teachers. I couldn't remember the little boy I was told had been my best friend. I couldn't even find my way around my own neighborhood. The social worker who visited every month told my foster parents that my memory loss was a symptom of my mental illness. A few months later, I was shipped to a state hospital to spend the next 10 years of my life.

[Narrator/Host]

And then there were the drugs.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

Might LSD benefit autistic children by providing psychedelic experiences that would mobilize perceptual growth and reduce developmental lags?

[Narrator/Host]

Bender didn't use her little human subjects at Bellevue for her drug trials. Those took place at Cross Creedmoor State hospital beginning in 1961. Nearly 100 children there were given drugs daily, including LSD. Many of those little patients were given those drugs for months and sometimes years. Dr. Bender gave the whole experiment two thumbs up. The medical establishment seemingly agreed. There were glowing articles and newspapers all over the country praising them. The work that Bender was doing at Creedmoor. The New York chapter of the National Society for autistic children recommended Dr. Bender in their 1968 newsletter in an article about how new drug therapies like hers can reach children where psychotherapy has failed. In 1962, Bender reported her early findings regarding the use of LSD in treatment of autism in children. She said that 54 kids, ages 6 to 15 had been administered a daily dose of LSD over a period of 18 months.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

All showed some type of response, varying in degree and kind. There were definite changes, remarkable, in autistic children. Laughing frequently, more alert, more aware, interested in watching other persons. They were able to understand and follow directions more readily. Hospital personnel, teachers and parents were enthusiastic, describing the children as more affectionate, more like human beings. There is still a disappointing deficit in verbal communication, however.

[Narrator/Host]

Now even her peers noted that daily LSD for 18 months was a bit daring. There were few psychiatrists Willing to dose a patient with LSD for longer than a week because of how potent the drug is. You think? Nonsense, said Dr. Bender.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

No adverse effects are evident.

[Narrator/Host]

Girl, I mean, damn, you had these vulnerable helpless kids tripping for a year and a half. And all the while in the background was the CIA and Project Artichoke. Bender's LSD trials were funded by the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, which was nothing more than a front for the CIA, which also supplied Bender with the LSD purchased from the Swiss pharmaceutical company company that manufactured it, Sandoz. Because don't you know, the CIA was Sandoz's biggest buyer of lsd. If you're wondering what the CIA hoped to gain from all the electroshocking and dosing of children, remember mind control. Could amnesia be induced? Could a brain be programmed to carry out orders without the owner of that brain being aware they were being used? You know, just your basic James Bond villain kind of stuff. Although honestly, good luck finding anyone who can make a reasonable case for what the CIA found from Bender's work. The declassified records sure don't. And if Project Artichoke is anything like other similar CIA ops, Project Midnight Climax sub, Project 68, the record keeping was half assed at best. Missing and incomplete files, reams of data destroyed accidentally or on purpose. Misplaced and misfiled documents. A whole clown car of taxpayer funded sloppiness hiding some pretty decent dastardly deeds. We do have a report bender submitted in 1970 describing LSD trials on two adolescent boys, both diagnosed with mild schizophrenia.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

The boys experienced perceptual distortions. They thought the researchers were making faces at them, that their pencils were becoming rubbery. And one boy reported the other boy's face had turned. Turned green. The boys began to complain that they were being experimented upon.

[Narrator/Host]

Their complaints fell on deaf ears. The experiments continued. One of those boys returned to Creedmoor State Hospital later as an adult, where he was diagnosed as a severely disturbed schizophrenic.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

It wasn't the LSD or his reaction to it. It was his own psychopathology.

[Narrator/Host]

There isn't a scrap of evidence to suggest that the parents of any of these children knew that the CIA was funding this program. There was also no follow up on any of these patients. It's unknown how many of these children were wards of the state or what happened to them after they were discharged from Creedmoor State Hospital. Unknown. And while we're listing the unknowns, most Americans have no idea that their government, in collaboration with some of the most brilliant medical Minds of their day perpetrated these horrific, unethical, and often brutal experiments on children. All this happened prior to 1974 and the passage of the National Research act, which regulates the use of human resources research subjects. But most of it happened after the Nuremberg trials and the passage of the Nuremberg Code in 1947. Ten rules governing the use of human subjects in medical experiments. That was meant to prevent what the Nazis did to helpless human beings from ever happening again. Oh, well. Looks like not everyone got that memoir. Dr. Loretta Bender's legacy is a knotted up mess of contradictions. She made extraordinary contributions to our understanding of childhood schizophrenia and psychosis. Bender was very early in seeing that mental illness was a matter of biology and neurology, not a matter of parenting or character or more. She was a fierce advocate for the rights of children with developmental disabilities. She's recognized as an important key figure in autism research. It was Bender who called autism one

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

of the most challenging problems in psychiatry, short of actual suicide. Energetic treatment must be provided for children otherwise. Otherwise destined to become lost souls.

[Narrator/Host]

And she also conducted ghastly medical experiments on hundreds of children. She did this without their knowledge or consent. To be fair, the protocols we use now, randomized controlled drug trials didn't yet exist. But as renowned child psychiatrist Dr. Leonard Eisenberg said many years after the Bellevue and Creedmoor experiments, Bender saw no need for drug trials. She believed she knew what worked, and so that's what she did. Was it evil? Was it ego? Was it a thrill of the chase? Chasing a breakthrough in knowledge so intoxicating that sacrifice, sacrificing compassion and decency and human dignity seemed like a reasonable compromise? She wasn't alone in what she did. Countless people participated, ate it, and looked away, including the United States government. Aided, abetted, and looked away as children pleaded to not be shocked or drugged. More looked away when children were left damaged, sometimes catatonic, their lives destroyed before they even had a chance to begin. Dr. Bender deserves to be judged by history, Even knowing the context, even knowing the times she operated in, so different from our own, Our government deserves to be judged. What kind of government allows the use of children as medical guinea pigs, as fodder for CIA research into what can only be described as fantastical hypotheticals and not just for Project Artichoke. You'd be shocked at how many times American children found themselves turned into laboratory mice. The hypocrisy of it all makes your skin crawl. And that's why we have to tell these stories. You can't condemn what you don't know. And you can't prevent it from ever happening again until you do know. And we also have to live with the uncomfortable truth that lots of our scientific and medical advancements were built on just this kind of human suffering. Dr. Bender died at age 88 in January 1987 at a nursing home in Annapolis, Maryland. Her obituary credited her with developing the Bender Gestalt visual motor Test. No mention was made of her work with children at Bellevue or Creedmoor. In her unpublished autobiography, Bender wrote, I

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

wanted to remove from the category, category of hopelessness and untreatable those children who were mentally defective, organically damaged, epileptic, psychotic, delinquent, or who just had uncooperative parents or no parents at all. At the same time, I distrusted the tendency to not recognize and diagnose these conditions when they existed for fear that the recognition itself should condemn the child.

[Narrator/Host]

Dr. Loretta Bender, ahead of her time and a product of her time, surrounded now by the ghosts of all those children silenced then and silenced forever.

[Max Sweeten]

Special thanks to our voice talents Stacy Robertson, Don Morgan and Carrie Doc Bowser. One of the amazing things about this story, and this has happened with other episodes we've done. All of this stuff that really, in retrospect looks so horrific, was really not that long ago. It was a minute ago, as you pointed out. You know, we put these things in at the Nuremberg trial in 1947 so that, you know, this wouldn't happen. And it's like people going, yeah, yeah, that was the Nazis. But we're over here and we're. We're doing this. We're doing what we want to do over here. I mean, it is horrifying.

[Narrator/Host]

What's. What's interesting, you know, if you. We did an episode on Operation Midnight Climax, that. That episode is called Trippin Johns, right? And that was when they were using LSD on men who frequented brothels, right, to see if sex and drugs could be used to extract confessions from foreign operatives, Right? So that's called Trippin John's, if you haven't heard that one. And we also did an episode on sub project 68, which was another set of devastating, unethical, illegal experiments on human beings funded by the CIA. And in the case of Sub Project 68 and Dr. Bender's work, the Fund for Human Ecology is this. That's the front group that pushed all the financing into these. Sub Project 68 happened at Institution for a psychiatric institution in Canada. And then, of course, this one happened here in New York. So, you know, the CIA is woven throughout so much of the medical history of the last century. Because there was a real agenda during the Cold War to use any means necessary to defeat the threat of being wiped off the planet. And when the threat. And I think it's interesting to talk about, if someone comes to you, if your government comes to you and says your work could be the thing that saves the entire world, you can see how seductive that is. And also how you might feel a moral imperative to think of the good of the many versus the good to reverse the Star Trek prime directive, you know, to think of the good of the many. And in this case, over the good of the few. In this case. So we zapped a few kids and drove them into stark raving madness. But we saved the world. I think that might have been the justification for some of that. How about you?

[Max Sweeten]

It had to have been, because otherwise morally, how could you have done such things? Just because children had parents, didn't have, that were in foster families. I mean, you know, that's just, it's, it's, it's mind boggling, but as you said, and it's seductive. You have the government saying that, then you have things in newspapers. You're at Bellevue Hospital, a renowned hospital. You're doing these things at places that have great reputations. I imagine you get. That's an intoxicant of its own. You get wound in that. And your perspective on things is not what it would be like us sitting here and looking at this in black and white.

[Narrator/Host]

Thank you, Max. Exactly. And that's why, that's why I thought it was good to have some context here. So that, because it's very easy. And I've read a lot about Loretta Bender and I've listened to some other things about Loretta Bender. And it's super tempting to just be like, what a monster. But you know, for me it's scarier if she's not a monster at all, if she's a person who kept moving one small step at a time until she was sliding down the hill. Because I think that's probably more what happens than just you wake up one day and you're a monster.

[Max Sweeten]

And it's very interesting about lsd. I believe one of the doctors who developed it was a Dr. Hofer in Canada. And LSD was sort of thought of as a cure all for all kinds of things before it found its way into the drug culture as a, you know, as a recreational drug. That it started out as a drug that was really, it was felt that there were pharmaceutical, real practical applications for this drug. And Even today there are some people that are using it with depression to see if it can be treated for that in some clinical situations and complex trauma.

[Narrator/Host]

And there's a fascinating study that I don't know if it's finished yet. It was underway with the use of hallucinogenics in people with a terminal medical diagnosis. And the people in the study group had, they knew they were dying, you know, cancer like just terrible, terrible terminal diseases. Coming into the study, they knew they were dying. They were paralyzed with fright, couldn't, they couldn't. They could hardly function after going through the treatment protocol. They were completely Zen. And I remember, I'll never forget it. I remember reading one of the, one of the accounts of a patient in that project who said, I know now that nothing ends when the body dies and I look forward to everything that comes next. Now you can call bullshit on that, right? But if that's you with a term and we're all going to die like we're all terminally ill, right? But let's say, you know, you've got three months left and you are given a treatment involving LSD or psilocybin that leaves you fully at peace and takes all your fear away. That's not bullshit.

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[Max Sweeten]

People didn't know what would happen with this drug. It was the wild west with that drug at that time. So I sort of understand her desire to use it because it was being used in a lot of applications. In fact it was, it was thought that LSD could be a cure for alcoholism to bring, to bring about some sort of a spiritual experience that could cure you from it. And in fact I watched a documentary and there was a guy, they did some of this stuff in Canada and there was a guy that, that said, yeah, I believe this was very helpful in having me overcome alcoholism. So this was something from the 1950s, the shock therapy. I look at that and I go, I just don't know how you think this is going to help somebody, especially with the side effects that you're talking about.

[Narrator/Host]

It's still in use today. I know When I did my clinicals, you know, your field work as a social work grad student, it was in inpatient behavioral health. And it's just a population that I love. I mean, if I wasn't doing this, I'd be. I'd be doing that. And I remember being pretty surprised when I showed up for a shift and was sent into the room of a patient who was. She suffered from extreme severe clinical depression. It was devastating. And she was admitted for routine electroshock therapy. It was something that she was getting and not, you know, she wasn't getting every day for 20 days like these children were, most of whom had no psychiatric diagnosis at all. I mean, skipping school, folks, is not a psychiatric diagnosis. And her husband, this patient's husband, told me that she wanted the ECT because she knew it would make her feel better. The challenge that I have, I am not a medical doctor, neurologist, any of those things, but when you look at the studies, and I included one of them in here, 100% relapse in six months. So the effects are not durable, they're not lasting. And the nerves that die, the nerve cells that die, are not regenerated. So I guess the question is, how much can you have before you cannot have any more? And, you know, like, I don't know. I would never say to someone suffering who was helped by ECT that they shouldn't do it. But once you. Once you look at the data, I don't know. I mean, what do you think? That rate of relapse is not encouraging, is it?

[Max Sweeten]

One of the things I'm thinking about this. This is frightening to look back upon. I'm wondering, is there anything happening today that 30 years from now we'll look back on and go, can you believe they were doing this or that? That's the thing that goes through my mind, you know, because, you know, you're doing lobotomies, electric shock therapy, and lst. Good heavens. I mean, it's barbaric.

[Narrator/Host]

I don't think there's any question but that the people of the future will hold us accountable for some stuff that we don't even think twice about now. And some of it, to be fair, we don't even know about, because the people of this era had no idea what was happening to those kids at Bellevue or Creedmoor. That was not, you know, that wasn't common knowledge. Right? Just like. Like today, you'll talk to your family members or neighbors or whatever, and. And you're shocked that they're. They don't. They don't know what's going on in the world. We just had that, that thing, the CrowdStrike software problem that snarled up air traffic and just caused mayhem and chaos. And you know, I'm sitting having dinner with some family members and I was like, man, I'm just glad I. Because I was on a business trip, I'm just glad I made it home. With the CrowdStrike problem with the airlines. What are you talking about? Oh, right. So if you can, you can very much check yourself out of like uncomfortable news and headlines and all that. And people could back then even more easily. They didn't have, you know, mobile phones and there weren't TVs everywhere you went. If, you know, you could choose to not know. People back then didn't know what was happening. There are things happening right now we don't know about. And when you know better, as Maya Angelou said, you do better. I'm fascinated by Dr. Bender because she is like in equal measure so good and so morally compromised. Like she did so much and she was so brilliant. You know, the medical model of mental illness, where we talk about it being an organic structural or biological neuro, neurological thing in the body and brain, that's the medical model that's kind of new. And there are a lot of environments where the olden way, the old ways of viewing mental illness as a moral or character failing, that's still pretty dominant in a lot of places right freaking now. But Dr. Bender was just early was visionary in thinking of psychiatric disorders as not problems of weakness or moral ineptitude. The other place where she was really early, like decades early, was this idea that, you know, if you blame the parents for everything, there should be no good kids, right? Nobody should be good. And she was really big on resiliency, which wasn't even considered until the 70s. So here we have all of this remarkable stuff. And she was such a force in the study and treatment for autism that it's almost painful. Painful to lift the rock up and see the other stuff. People don't like to do that because she was so brilliant and good and heroic in so many ways that there are a lot of people who were like, nobody's perfect. Can we not talk about what happened with Project Artichoke? And to be fair to Dr. Bender and to all of the doctors who participated in these CIA funded trials at hospitals and clinics, the record isn't clear about how much those people knew. They knew they were getting funded for. They had a research grant through the Project for Human Ecology, which sounds like,

[Max Sweeten]

the most bogus name for anything ever

[Narrator/Host]

because it was so max. Like, they knew that they were getting this funding, but nobody, you know, no dude in dark glasses and a trench coat came in and said, I am with the CIA and we're looking for mind control. Like, it wasn't spelled out.

[Max Sweeten]

No. If government grant sounds so much less sinister or mysterious, you know, a. You're getting a government grant. Oh, okay. There's government grants all the time for things. Yeah, we. We're looking into this research. Government would, you know, like to fund this.

[Dr. Peter R. Breggan (quoted)]

Oh, great.

[Max Sweeten]

Great. The government's behind our work.

[Narrator/Host]

I try really hard because, you know that, like, I was born wearing my tinfoil hat, so. But I try really hard to be like, okay, let me be. Let me be fair. Let me be. Try to be objective. Let me try to travel back in time and put myself there. I think that some people at the highest levels of authority, like the head of the Raven. Raven's Crag Hospital in Canada that we covered in subproject 68, remember?

[Max Sweeten]

Oh, yeah.

[Narrator/Host]

I think the director of that hospital had a very good idea of what was happening.

[True Weird Stuff Closing Announcer]

How could you not.

[Narrator/Host]

I don't know about Dr. Bender later in her life, you know, she. She never really owned this part of her career. It sort of got kind of, you know, just kind of brushed over. So I don't know. And. And we can't say. We can't say how she later thought toward the end because she did live a long time. She was 88 when she died. We can't really say if she had any regret for what was done to those child subjects, because she never said that I was able to find. And I looked at her unpublished autobiography, which I was surprised it was unpublished. She was a great big deal. I. I mean, I couldn't find any. Well, mission.

[Max Sweeten]

The last thing she says in this episode is very interesting, though, when she says, at the same time, it distrusted the tendency not to recognize and diagnose these conditions when they existed for fear that the recognition itself should condemn the child. It's a very interesting.

[Narrator/Host]

Way ahead of her time.

[Max Sweeten]

Yeah, it's a very interesting.

[Narrator/Host]

Say, I wanted her like I had. You know, I came across her when we were working on sub project 68. I came across and set it aside because it was its own story, and I couldn't shove it into that episode. And I wanted. I wanted her to not have done these things. I wanted that to not be true because I just can't imagine any time frame where doing those things to children Seemed reasonable. Can you.

[Max Sweeten]

Their children, they have no advocate. There's nobody to say no, you really shouldn't do that because these are children that have no one to speak for them.

[Narrator/Host]

Ted Shabasinski, the grown survivor of the therapies of the experiments. Listen to what he said. He was in the foster care system. His mother was institutionalized. Bender needed more subjects and so he was given the diagnosis of schizophrenia and pushed into the test pool. That kid, that kid did not have a legitimate diagnosis. So when you look at the that and he was not, he was by far not the only kid with no legitimate mental health diagnosis in these two experiment pools. When you look at that, it becomes harder to extend grace, I think. Thoughts?

[Max Sweeten]

Yeah, I mean, there are people, there are unscrupulous people that are involved in all kinds of addiction services and mental health who in order to get insurance money, have to come up with some sort of a diagnosis that will satisfy the insurance company even if that is not the case. I know of examples of this where that's happened.

[Narrator/Host]

Yeah, it's a flawed, of course, it's a flawed system in a flawed world because we're flawed creatures. But there were a lot of children across the years at Bellevue and Creedmoor who were, as far as you can hope to be, from a disease like schizophrenia.

[Max Sweeten]

I do wonder how Ted Chabasinski Sinski. Did I say that right anyhow? Yeah, you did. I, I just wondered how he turned out as an adult. It's a rhetorical question. I don't know, but it is interesting. I wonder what the long term effects into adulthood were like for him.

[Narrator/Host]

I mean, he struggled, you know, he found himself back in and out of treatment. You can't, you, you can only pump so much electricity into a child's brain before you create irrevocable, lasting damage. You can only shove so much LSD into a child or an adult before you run the risk of that, because

[Max Sweeten]

it's in, in under these conditions, we would call that torture.

[Narrator/Host]

It's just, I mean, you, you couldn't get away. Now, I have to say, the CIA in Project MK Ultra, which, you know, was the big daddy that people do know about, or a lot of people know about. Oh yeah. Prisoners, enlisted, military orphans, psychiatric patients, like they just went it down. And even in the episode we did about the illegal experiments with human subjects and radiation during the Manhattan Project, you know, they'd go into a hospital and they'd go, who, who here has a terminal diagnosis? And then they would just do stuff to them because, you know, they're going to die anyway.

[Dr. Loretta Bender (quoted)]

Right?

[Max Sweeten]

Right.

[Narrator/Host]

Why not? So we, we have kind of a shameful history. Post Nazi Germany. Post Nazi Germany, you know, when we were as two faced as we always are about, you know, never again and never here, as it was happening here again and again for decades and for all I know, may still be happening now. Now I do want to say that one of Dr. Bender's really solid contributions was toward the understanding that autism is not connected to schizophrenia. And we now understand autism to be on a spectrum. There are people with a diagnosis of severe autism who are nonverbal, that those were the lost souls that Dr. Bender talks about at the end of the episode. These were children that were seemingly unreachable. And these were kids that they thought, well, maybe if we give them enough electricity and, and enough hallucinogens, maybe we can pull them out of whatever interior world they're trapped in. But she did do a lot of good. And as a result, we have a much greater understanding of what autism is. And, and I think we're getting closer to an acceptance that there's more than one kind of brain.

[Grainger Announcer]

Right.

[Narrator/Host]

And, and you know, brains, our brains run on tiny millivolts of electricity and our brain chemistry dictates a lot. You know, people with adhd, there's, there's nothing wrong with them. They, their dopamine delivery systems are different from you and they, they just have a different brain and a different way of engaging and connecting with reality. It's not a negative, it's just a difference. And you know, we have so many people on the autism spectrum who are just absolutely brilliant and creative and they have a different way of engaging and connecting with reality. And I think we're getting better about that. And Dr. Bender was a part of that. And that's what makes her so difficult, Max, is that she did do so much good. So much.

[Max Sweeten]

But you have to then go however, you know.

[Narrator/Host]

Yeah, but, yeah, you can't escape it.

[Max Sweeten]

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I just think, yeah, but

[Narrator/Host]

you can't escape what happened toward the end. But, but I think that the refusal to tell those stories because it was a stain on her leg. See, like, I don't agree with that. I think we have to know. I think that we can be. I only know what it's like to be an American. I think we can be a little childlike. We want our heroes to be pure 100% and we want our villains to

[Max Sweeten]

be terrible 100% because they're always presented to us in media that way.

[Narrator/Host]

Yeah.

[Max Sweeten]

Do you know what I mean?

[Narrator/Host]

I mean, yeah. Because it's a lot harder to kind of grapple with the idea that your heroes are as flawed as your villains.

[True Weird Stuff Closing Announcer]

Right.

[Narrator/Host]

And nobody escapes compromise. And sometimes, you know, when you have a lot of power and you feel like you're on the. Maybe on the precipice of a breakthrough, or your country has come to you, Max, and said, you're the. You're what stands between us and nuclear annihilation. I think that that kind of framework makes it easy to be morally corrupt.

[Max Sweeten]

If government came and said that to me, I'd know it was bs.

[Narrator/Host]

Oh, yeah. Like, there's nothing. If they came to me and said that, I'd be like, oh, I'm so sure. I'm so very sure. CIA.

[Max Sweeten]

If you say so. Here's my bank account for that grant money now.

[Narrator/Host]

Oh, yeah, everyone's got their finger on the nuclear button, but as soon as you told them I might do a true weird stuff episode about it, they. They came right back. Step right back.

[Historical Context Narrator]

Right, right.

[Narrator/Host]

Yeah, it's. It's really. It's really, like, uncomfortable, isn't it? And so. Okay, so let's talk for just a second about the CIA's record keeping. Holy cow. So in the sub projects, was it sub project 68, the episode where we went. No, it was. Or was it. Which one? Was it where we went into those 1975 congressional hearings with Senator Ted Kennedy?

[Max Sweeten]

I think that was project sub.

[Narrator/Host]

Project 68. Yeah. So there were. There was this. This enormous, enormous congressional investigation into, like, what the hell the CIA has gotten up to. And, you know, they had to testify. The head of the CIA had to testify. And he was like, oh, you got us. You know, we're kind of reckless and muddy. And so a ton of documents were declassified as part of that investigation. Isn't it interesting that Project artichoke, that those 18 boxes were misplaced and were not found? They just. Where were they? They just were not part of anything for that congressional hearing. And record keeping back then was. There were no computers. Right. There were no databases. Everything was done by hand. Sometimes handwritten, sometimes typewriters. And, like, the records in Montreal for sub project 68 were a disaster. The records for Project Artichoke were a hot mess. And inside the boxes were papers. Like, things were not. They were in no kind of order. They had just been shoved into boxes. But inside those boxes were vials of, like, really powerful drugs. Dexedrines and amphetamine, Thorazine, just vials of Thorazine and syringes knocking around mixed in with the vials. What in the world? How was that allowed to be?

[Max Sweeten]

You've got me. The fact that it's so sloppy. I don't know. Now the guy from the Tripping John's episode that we did where they were given the LSD to the guys going to the houses of prostitution, that guy was a drunk, so that doesn't surprise me that, I mean he was, he was a flat out drunk, so it doesn't surprise me that his record keeping was a little sus. But I don't know with this, is it that it's like, oh well, the government's looking for some sort of paperwork that we have to justify what's happening here. Just stick it over here in this box. It makes me wonder how serious they were about what they were doing.

[Narrator/Host]

It, it all feels a little bit cowboy when you look at the CIA in that era. It just feels like they had a ton of money and zero oversight. Because until the, until that congressional investigation, Max, who was paying who? Where was the oversight in all the stuff that we've, we've researched and looked at and talked about? Where was the oversight in any of it?

[Max Sweeten]

Because. Yeah, go ahead.

[Narrator/Host]

Operation Midnight Climax, where they were lacing the drinks of John's and brothels with LSD and then sitting behind two way mirrors and studying them and the guy behind the two way mirror studying them. That's who Max is talking about. He's pounding bourbon like he's getting shit faced.

[Max Sweeten]

He's getting drunk while watching people have sex, one of whom is on lsd. And all of this is being funded by the US government. I mean, I gotta tell you, it's

[Narrator/Host]

a lot to take in. It's a lot.

[Max Sweeten]

It's not surprising that when you get into these murky dark areas that there is no oversight. It's just. Because how are you going to explain this to somebody at an oversight committee? Do you know what I mean? I mean, how are you going to. If you're doing this, you're doing this under a certain amount of COVID you're not really being, you're not, not being responsive to a Senate subcommittee or anything like that.

[Narrator/Host]

Those were the days. Those were the days. Because the CIA, they had this government remit like they had a mission and they had seemingly an unlimited budget and nobody to answer to and whatever wild ass comic book notion they came up with, they could, they could pursue it. They could pursue it. And they did pursue it. That's the hysterical part about this. All of that actually happened. And you know, it's not that way now. In a couple of ways there is oversight. Although I still think we're up to all sorts of filthy, foul, no good things, I'm sure. I have no doubt. But check this out. So you would think, well, if nothing else, we're not going to find warehouses full of sloppy boxes because everything is digitized now. But let me remind you that that technology is changing rapidly. Also, did you see what came across my newsfeed? Like they can't read floppy disks anymore. They don't use.

[Max Sweeten]

Because they don't have the. They don't have the technology. The old, old technology.

[Narrator/Host]

Yeah, I mean, I'm. I'm sure somewhere somebody in their basement has a computer that can run a floppy. But yeah, you can't. You can't run floppy disks anymore. In the same way that you've got it, if you've got old VHS home movies and no vcr, you've got to get them converted to something else. And, and look at technology. It, it rises up and goes obsolete. Elite. Remember those first, I forget what they were called, but they were the size of LP records and you could watch movies on them. You know what I'm talking about?

[Max Sweeten]

Yeah. Laser discs is what they. Yeah, that's exactly what they were called.

[Narrator/Host]

Supposed to be the biggest thing.

[Historical Context Narrator]

Oh, yeah.

[Narrator/Host]

Incredible fidelity. Beautiful. Gone. That's gone. Technology evolves and it evolves at a breakneck pace and, and it flashes into existence and then is obsolete. So I'm not sure that the CIA really has to worry about having all their records ferreted out.

[Max Sweeten]

Well, you know, I will find out 30 years from now. We, we won't find. We'll find out what's going on 30 years from now, and we'll be just as horrified that I believe leave as

[Narrator/Host]

we are now because of human nature and just know that whatever is being funded, it's never funded by, hello, we're the men in Black and we are here to. Blah, blah, blah, blah. The CIA. The list of front groups that the CIA had in the 1950s and 1960s to get to funnel money into these various different experimental programs. Not, not one of them was, you know, announced as a US Government or top secret thing. They all came through very bland, meaningless names like the Human Ecology Project.

[Max Sweeten]

I know somebody who used to work for the CIA. I won't say who, but I was in the car with him one day. He goes, yeah, see that building there that said, you know, Logicon or whatever it was on the front he goes, yeah, that used to be a cover for the CIA. See this building over here? You know, Tex Tech Max? Yeah, that was a cover for the CIA too, over here because it worked for him. And going around doing this. So there's a lot of shit going down we just don't know anything about

[Narrator/Host]

and may never like. If you think we know everything that the CIA did in this era, oh, think again. And a lot of it was a lot of it. Like I've read through a ton of declassified CIA projects and a lot of them were just really stupid. You know, they were funding to see if blue ink versus black ink, you know, that kind of a thing, right. And just really benign. And so you'll go through like page after page, you know, project this and project that and operation here, an operation there. And then you'll get to one and you'll land on it. You'll be like, oh, get out of town. That cannot be real. And that's one of, that's one of these. But you have to know what you're looking for as soon as you see incarceration. Enlisted psychiatric. That to quote Robin Williams in the Matt Damon movie Goodwill Hunting. That's the good stuff. That's all the good stuff.

[Max Sweeten]

Yes, it is.

[Narrator/Host]

Yeah, you go. You go hunting for the word inmate and the word psychiatric. That's the good stuff in the CIA. So as someone who has reverence for mental health practitioners and dear friends and family members with an autism diagnosis, I'm grateful for the progress that's been made. And I'm sick at heart for the human suffering that got us there. And those kids that were children in like 1961 are probably many of them still alive today in whatever capacity they were left with. And if I'll remind you, when we did the episode on the human radiation studies, remember what they did to those kids that were foster children and wards of the state? They fed them radium laced milk, remember, at an orphanage in Massachusetts. So it wasn't just Dr. Bender and the other practitioners. We have a long, dark history of it.

[True Weird Stuff Closing Announcer]

Thank you for listening to this classic episode of True Weird Stuff. To fall even further down the rabbit hole of weird history, follow True Weird Stuff on Instagram and YouTube. True Weird Weird Stuff is a now media production written and hosted by Sherry lynch, executive produced by Tony Garcia, directed by Max Sweeten. Additional support from producers Carrie Bowser and Stephen Call, our digital witch and social media cult leader Heather Fur. Original graphics by Kevin Nash. Original artwork by Olivia Axeland True Weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and zane Nash. Copyright 2026 Now Media. All rights reserved.

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