CIA ENVISIONED SOVIET SCIENTISTS AS U.S. AGENTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000400460003-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Sequence Number: 3
• Content Type: NEWSPAPER CLIPPING

Approved For Release 2006/06/02 : CIA-RDP8-b i515R000 0460003-8
It 7'7
WASHINGTON POST
i The Central Intelligence Agency secretly financed
a research project at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in order to gain data 'on how to turn
Russian scientists into CIA agents. '
As part of its Project MK-ULTRA, the CIA, using
a private foundation as a "front,", spent.'.a'total of '.`
$12,000 in 1958 and 1959 on determing "what criteria
can:. be developed in spotting and assessing [Soviet
scientists) as. potential agent recruits," according to
CIA memos obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
The research was conducted by Anthony J. Wie-
nor, who at the time was affiliated with MIT's Cen-
ter for International Studies, which was set up in
1951 with CIA money and had as its first director
Max F. Millikan, a former assistant director of the
agency.
Wiener, currently a `consultant with the Hudson
Institute "think tank" in New `York, was apparently
an unwitting pawn .in the CIA's mind-control proj-
ect.
The research, which relied heavily on interviews
with American and ' Western scintists returning
from the Soviet Union, was financed by the now
defunct Society for the Investigation of Human
Ecology, A New York-based CIA front set up in the
1950s to provide a legitimate cover for CIA research
projects, including some involving "brainwashing.",
In a CIA. memo dated Sept. 17, 1958, an agency
official outlined. the real purpose of Wiener's re-
search: "Given a model or prototype [of a scientist],
it is desired that guidance bG 'provided as regards
the most effective way or ways in which repressed
and rationalized anti-regime motivations may be
aroused or, more property, re-activated."
"The purpose of the above -projects," the memo
said, "will 'be to sharpen our sights and methods as
respects the spotting, development and recruitment'
of selected types of citizens."
MORI/CDF
:Approved For Release 2006/06/02 : CIA-RDP88-01315R000400460003-8