How the MKUltra files survived destruction

Most MKULTRA files were destroyed in 1973. Dr. Gottlieb had the documents he could find pulled and destroyed. So when Senate investigators looked in 1975, they found very little. It seemed the record was gone for good.

The files came back because of a public records request. A writer named John Marks filed a Freedom of Information Act request. To answer it, a CIA employee searched the agency's holdings on behavioral drugs. After checking the active files, he searched the Retired Records Center outside Washington. There he found the subproject files. They were stored among the retired records of the office's Budget and Fiscal Section.

The files survived by accident. Normally the financial papers for a sensitive project were kept by the branch under the project name. But in 1970 the Budget and Fiscal Section sent these papers to the Retired Records Center as part of its own holdings. Nobody knows why this was done. Because the papers were filed under budget matters instead of under MKULTRA, the 1973 destruction missed them. The 1975 search missed them too.

The find was seven boxes. The folders were mostly finance records, such as fund advances, vouchers, and accountings. Scattered among them were project proposals and memos that explained some of the work. The original memo that set up MKULTRA, signed by Allen Dulles, was also in the boxes. Admiral Stansfield Turner, the Director of Central Intelligence, reported the discovery to the Senate in 1977. He said he was sure there had been no attempt to hide the files earlier, and he said the employee who found them was commended for his diligence.