Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said Wednesday that the House Oversight Task Force will hold a hearing on MKUltra on May 13, putting the CIA’s secret mind control program back on the congressional calendar. In a post on X, the Florida Republican wrote: “Hearing on May 13. MK Ultra. House Oversight Taskforce,”
MKUltra was established in 1953 by CIA Director Allen Dulles and became one of the most controversial chapters in U.S. intelligence history. The program explored behavior modification through electroshock therapy, hypnosis, polygraphs, radiation and a range of drugs, toxins and chemicals. Some people volunteered willingly, some were coerced, and others did not know they were part of a defense research program.
The program ended in 1963 after the CIA inspector general told the agency to shut down programs involving non-consenting volunteers. A decade later, in 1973, the CIA director ordered workers to destroy records of the project, helping ensure that much of its history remained buried for years. New declassified records related to MKUltra were published in 2024 by the National Security Archive and ProQuest, adding fresh documentation to a file that has long drawn public attention.
Luna, who represents Florida’s 13th congressional district and is serving her second term, is the first Mexican-American woman elected to Congress from Florida. She sits on the Oversight and Government Reform committee and chairs the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, giving her a direct role in pushing the hearing forward.
The hearing is now set to force a public look at a program that left some participants with lasting psychological damage and became infamous not only for what it did, but for how thoroughly the government later tried to erase it. On May 13, Congress will have a chance to confront both the experiments and the record that was built around them.
