In 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of all MKUltra files. A filing error saved 20,000 pages. Those pages revealed that the United States government had spent twenty years experimenting on its own citizens with LSD, sensory deprivation, and psychological torture — and no one was ever prosecuted.
Declassified examines government programs that were hidden from the American public for decades. These are not conspiracy theories. They are documented, sourced, and verified programs revealed through Freedom of Information Act requests, Congressional investigations, and declassified archives.
The Source Standard
Every claim in this series is traceable to primary documents: Congressional testimony, declassified CIA memoranda, Pentagon budget records, or verified journalistic accounts. When documents are incomplete — as they often are when agencies have destroyed evidence — that gap is stated explicitly.
This is not speculation. It is history that was classified.
Why This Series Exists
The distance between “conspiracy theory” and “declassified fact” is often just a matter of time. Programs that sounded paranoid when first alleged — the CIA dosing unwitting Americans with LSD, the military training psychics, the government building secret bunkers for Congress — are now matters of public record.
Understanding what governments have done in secret is essential to understanding what oversight and accountability require. These stories are told not to provoke outrage but to inform judgment.
New episodes premiere every Friday.
