On Tuesday, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) held a House oversight hearing on MKULTRA, the notorious and failed CIA mind control program that is believed to have operated from 1953 to 1973. Luna heads the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets; the two witnesses called were authors who both wrote excellent books on different aspects of MKULTRA, and who used their testimony to call for the declassification of more documents related to the program. But Luna, a Trump loyalist, muddied the proceedings by trying to link MKULTRA with her own pet conspiracy theories. She made it clear that she thought MKULTRA could still be active today, asking one witness if USAID, the international humanitarian aid organization dismantled by the Trump administration, “may have been used overseas” on “prisoners of war” to further the CIA program, a suggestion for which she provided no direct evidence.

As with a hearing she held on the JFK assassination last year, Luna implied that the MKULTRA hearing was merely the opening salvo, and that further revelations about bygone conspiracies would come. She said that she had “received reports” about “new MKULTRA boxes that were discovered,” and that the CIA was in the process of declassifying what was in those files, which appeared to relate to a “forgery program that was being housed under MKULTRA.” Luna promised that the documents would be released as soon as possible.

“Why were they talking about COVID and Anthony Fauci at a hearing about MKUltra?”

It was obvious to knowledgeable observers that Luna would likely use the hearing to promote conspiracy theories. Mike Evans, an author at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, warned as much in a blog post earlier this week. (The National Security Archive is an NGO that focuses on government transparency and holds a large collection of declassified government documents.)

“Instead of focusing on the real and enduring secrets surrounding MKULTRA, there are strong indications that Luna will use the hearing as a platform to incite panic about vaccines, something she has done time and time again,” Evans wrote. “Luna’s preoccupation with the perceived dangers of ordinary vaccines was also what originally inspired her to call for a hearing on MKULTRA, according to a February 24 post to her account on X.com.”

One of the authors called to testify was Dr. Stephen Kinzer, the author of Poisoner In Chief, a book about Sidney Gottlieb, the infamous chemist who headed the CIA’s Technical Services Division in the 1950s and 1960s and oversaw both MKULTRA and multiple attempts to kill........

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