EXCLUSIVE Inside the CIA's secret squad of adorable assassins dubbed 'Project 94'

Daily Mail​

13-06-2025

A secret CIA project conducted bizarre experiments on wildlife in the hopes of creating an army of 'animal assassins' that could eliminate America's enemies.
Called Subproject 94, the chilling plot saw scientists implant electrodes into the brains of rats, cats, dogs, monkeys, donkeys, guinea pigs, and birds in order to control their movements through electrical impulses during the 1960s.
It was all part of MKUltra, an infamous CIA program led by chemist Sidney Gottlieb to develop mind control techniques during the Cold War.
Declassified records about MKUltra have revealed how Americans were drugged and tortured during dozens of different experiments more than 60 years ago.
The subjects included criminals, mental patients, and drug addicts, but Army soldiers and average citizens were also given drugs like LSD and cocaine without their knowledge.
However, more declassified files delving into Gottlieb's oversight of these dangerous experiments have revealed that people weren't the only weapons the CIA was planning to use against the Soviet Union.
Heavily redacted documents from the 1960s show that the CIA were looking to send 'payloads' of these remote-controlled animals to carry out 'direct executive actions' - which some experts now believe meant assassinating officials who opposed the US.
Eventually, scientists working on Subproject 94 planned to take what they learned from animals and apply them to people, creating mind-controlled soldiers programed to kill.
In the new book, 'Project Mind Control,' author John Lisle revealed how Subproject 94 was one of 149 MKUltra experiments aimed at harnessing cutting-edge neuroscience to manipulate behavior.
This particular experiment was inspired by Swedish psychologist Valdemar Fellenius, who taught trained seals how to attach explosives to submarines during World War II.
Gottlieb turned this idea into a plot to have animals plant listening devices, deliver deadly toxins, or even rig larger creatures like bears to serve as mobile bombs.
This was done by stimulating the pleasure centers of the animals' brains with positive feedback.
Scientists successfully managed to make the animals to move how they wanted them to, controlling their speed and direction in field tests.
In one test, researchers were able to make a dog follow an visible path 'with relative ease.' In fact, Lisle revealed that the hardest part of these experiments was finding isolated areas where the public couldn't see what the CIA was doing.
Lisle, a historian and professor specializing in the history of the US intelligence community, revealed that rats were the easiest creatures to control.
Uncovered notes from Subproject 94 researchers noted that they had to be careful not to 'overdo the pleasure reaction' in these animals because it would cause them to become immobile.
On the other hand, experiments with negative feedback in the brain's punishment centers only caused the animals to panic and become unresponsive to mind control.
Uncovered CIA documents revealed that the cost of Subproject 94 was more than $55,000, which was hidden as part of the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research
Documents uncovered by DailyMail.com in the CIA's declassified archives revealed that Subproject 94 began in December 1961.
The CIA covered up the funding for these experiments by hiding it in the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research.
This private foundation was established in 1939 by Dr Charles Geschickter, a prominent American pathologist and professor at Georgetown University.
It was created to support research in areas like cancer, but later became infamous in 1977 when a congressional investigation revealed that the fund was acting as a front for MKUltra's experiments for decades.
However, the full scope of Subproject 94 and MKUltra's mind control operations may never be known, as Gottlieb had many of the project's files destroyed in 1973.
A previous discovery of more than 1,200 declassified pages revealed that MKUltra also attempted to weaken individuals and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture between 1953 and 1964.
Those files documented how the CIA used methods such as induced sleep, electroshocks, and 'psychic driving' on drugged subjects for weeks or months to reprogram their minds .
While it has long been said that subjects only included prisoners, mental patients, and drug addicts, one report showed that some CIA and Army officials and 'subjects in normal life settings' were 'unwittingly' given LSD over the decade-long experiment.
Unlike people, however, many animals are capable of achieving feats that even mind-controlled humans simply couldn't do.
Researchers with Subproject 94 wrote that yaks and bears "are capable of carrying heavy payloads over great distances under adverse climatic conditions."
It's unknown if the CIA ever used mind-controlled animals in an actual operation or assassination attempt of a foreign official.
The revelations about MKUltra in the mid 1970s led to public distrust of the CIA and US intelligence community as a whole, leading to stricter congressional oversight of intelligence agencies.
Some victims of MKUltra experiments pursued legal action. Notably, the family of Frank Olson, a CIA scientist who died in 1953 after being unknowingly dosed with LSD, received a $750,000 settlement from the government in 1976, acknowledging the CIA's role in his death.
Other lawsuits, such as those by former prisoners and mental patients, faced challenges due to lack of evidence and CIA denials.