The CIA did destroy the vast majority of MKUltra records in 1973.
Then-CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of nearly all files related to the program, largely in response to growing scrutiny amid the Watergate scandal and fears of exposure. Sidney Gottlieb, the head of MKUltra, carried out the order.
This deliberate purge severely hampered later investigations, including those by the 1975 Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee, which relied heavily on limited surviving documents and witness testimony.
However, not all records were destroyed.
A cache of approximately 20,000 pages—mostly financial and budgetary documents—survived because they were misfiled in a separate records center.
These were discovered in 1977 following a Freedom of Information Act request and provided crucial evidence for further congressional hearings.
Additional fragments, such as a 1963 Inspector General report, also escaped destruction.
Recent declassifications (e.g., by the National Security Archive in 2024–2025) continue to release surviving materials, but significant gaps remain due to the 1973 purge.
This act of record destruction is widely regarded as one of the most notorious cover-ups in CIA history, limiting full accountability for the program’s unethical human experiments.
(Grok AI)
Writing by Dr. Dannielle Blumenthal 