Title: The TRUTH About \"MK Ultra\" and Why Conspiracy Theories Grow
Show: The Megyn Kelly Show
Date: 2026-04-02
URL: https://youtu.be/AsQUErTJYOE
Duration: 17:00

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[00:00] I think post COVID we're much more conspiratorial than we were pre because all of our conspiracies came true during the COVID era. So, it made it made everybody like, "Mhm, I trust nothing and no one." But, you know, for example, I know there are a lot of people questioning whether the CIA had some control over the Butler shooter of President Trump. >> Right. There's been a question about whether they had any knowledge whatsoever about what happened to Charlie Kirk. Um, do you think that the CIA possibly

[00:32] has any role in in cases like that? I don't know, but I can tell you it's absolutely possible. You know, when when Joe Kent, whether you like Joe Kent's politics or not, you cannot doubt the man's patriotism. He's walked the walk. And if he says that he was forbidden from having his analysts follow investigative leads, you have to ask why.

[01:02] Why Why do we not know more about the Butler shooter and the circumstances surrounding the Butler shooting? I grew up 15 miles from Butler. We never missed a county fair and farm show. I've been there a thousand times. Um, that should have been easy to investigate. Right? They're all patriotic people. It's a red county and in a red part of the state and and then the President of the United States takes a shot to the ear. So, why why were comprehensive, full, complete

[01:36] investigations not carried out? Why was Joe Kent told that he could not pursue investigative leads in the Charlie Kirk case? And one other thing about the Charlie Kirk case that I've always been confused about, why is the FBI involved at all? The The crime took place in Utah. The shooter is from Utah. He set out that day from Utah. He went to a location in Utah. This is a state police case for for this the Utah state police. Why in the world

[02:08] is the FBI calling the shots? Unless they know something that we don't know. Unless they know something something that they haven't revealed that indicates you know, either cross interstate some investigative lead that came across state lines or some kind of international involvement. But my god, transparency is everything. And like you said, Megan, in the post-COVID area era where where we've learned definitively that we can't trust what the government is telling us,

[02:40] then wouldn't transparency make that all go away? Well, as I understand it, as I I haven't really been conspiratorial in my adult life at all in any part of my life. But I do I do want to understand the theories because some of them do turn out to be right over time. And as I understand it, the theory kind of revolves around MK Ultra. Like either, you know, they unleash an operation on a vulnerable target to try to get that target possibly the shooter

[03:12] in Butler to do what they want him to do. But can you walk me through what you know about MK Ultra? Sure. MK Ultra was a was a CIA operation that was that was conceived in 1952. It began to be implemented in 1953 and really took hold in 1955. It did a lot of different things. It There were even sub operations within MK Ultra, MK Chickwit, MK Midnight something or other. Lots of them. The bottom line was this.

[03:44] There was a source that the CIA recruited, a Chinese communist source, who said that the Chinese government was experimenting with mind control. That's where the the idea of the Manchurian Candidate came out, which led to a popular movie in the late 19 1950s starring Frank Sinatra. In fact, the Chinese were not experimenting on mind control. The Russians were. And the source was wrong. But the CIA believed that it was behind the eight ball and if the Chinese were experimenting in mind control, then we

[04:16] needed by God to experiment in mind control and to figure out if we could sort of create a Chinese zombie who could then work his way through the the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party and take over China and then do away with communism and we all live happily ever after. That's how it started. So, the CIA went about doing this in all of the worst possible ways. Right around the time that MK Ultra was was being hatched, a scientist in Switzerland

[04:48] invented something called LSD. And LSD did these incredible things and it could manipulate your mind. You could see colors that didn't exist. You could see people that didn't exist and maybe if we microdosed people with this new LSD, then maybe we could control their minds. The CIA began by using it on their own people. Now, we know that one of those CIA contractors actually jumped out of a hotel window and committed suicide

[05:20] because he thought he could fly. That's been well documented. Then they decided, you know, maybe experimenting on our own people isn't the best way to go about this. Maybe we should just experiment on random citizens in San Francisco. And so they went to San Francisco, they rented a safe house, they recruited a bunch of prostitutes and sent the prostitutes out on the street to pick up dates. Bring the dates back to the safe house, dose them with LSD without their

[05:51] knowledge, and then try to get them to reveal their innermost secrets just to see if the CIA could collect those. Another part of MKUltra, also in San Francisco, was they decided to to create um a virus or a bacterium, in this case it was a bacterium, that they could just push out into the air and see how many people they could infect. They waited until an unusually foggy day where the

[06:24] air is very heavy and sitting close to the ground. And all around the city of San Francisco, as well as on the public transit system, they released this bacterium. And eight people came down with this very rare upper respiratory infection. So then they tried to couple that and the release of the bacterium with the LSD. Can we release LSD into the air? They experimented in a small village in France by dosing the yeast in the

[06:54] village's only bakery with LSD. Everybody in the in the village ate bread from that bakery and everybody went nuts for a day or two. And so that was another, you know, successful operation. In the end, um nobody's mind was taken over. We didn't bring down Chinese communism or Russian communism or anything else. It was a failure. But then Congress got wind of it. The Church Committee got wind of it in 1975

[07:26] and called the Director of Central Intelligence to testify. And then at the testimony, specifically ordered him to not destroy the documents. He immediately went back to CIA headquarters and told everybody, "Destroy everything." That's why what we have today is only 15% of the MK Ultra documents. Everything else was destroyed in 1975. Now, he was held in contempt of Congress, and by God, he was fined $150.

[07:57] And um Right. >> Yeah, and all the uh CIA employees chipped in to pay the $150 fine for him. Yeah. And and a negative presumption was against him that he had something to hide. >> right. But I think as a result of that, it's part of the reason why people now suspect government involvement in everything. >> is. You know, the the things that we don't feel like we're getting full transparency on, it's it's a CIA conspiracy, or maybe an NSA conspiracy, or maybe an FBI conspiracy. Yes. >> it's undermining

[08:28] what what probably are CIA and FBI conspiracies. Do you know what I mean? Like not everything is a conspiracy by the government, but for sure they are doing some things that we should know about. So, how do you tell the difference? I think you're exactly right. And the only way to tell the difference is through robust congressional oversight. Something that we have not had since the early 1980s. We're screwed. >> Because what what are they? They're cheerleaders for the CIA and the FBI on the intelligence committees and on the

[09:00] judiciary committees. They're cheerleaders. You know, when I got home from prison, I was invited to uh a dinner at the Greek ambassador's residence. And I went there. And um there was a a Democratic senator there who happens to be a member of the intelligence committee. And I went up to him. He came up to me, actually. And he said, "Hey, welcome home. We were really pulling for you." And I said, "Uh thanks, Senator. But I got to tell you, I I expected more from you. I thought you would have been more helpful to me."

[09:30] And he got angry. And he said, "Look, it took everything I had just to not lose my security clearance." And I said, "Oh, you're afraid of them. You're not overseeing them. You're afraid of them." And he walked away from me, but I was right. He was afraid of them. They're all afraid. And so they just tow the line. Remember who was it that said uh about Trump like, "You mess with the three-letter agency. You mess with CIA and they will make you pay

[10:00] >> uh for the rest of your life." I can't remember >> Schumer. He said they have nine ways from Sunday to make your life miserable. To make you pay. But here's my question cuz I heard you on um Diary of a CEO saying the CIA can they can they can wrest control of your car. You know, our cars have these big brains now that I mean, you know, if the car company can and like whatever the the service is if you get into an accident, you can just sort of say, "Help me." If they can get in there, sure, I bet it's hackable by somebody else to the point where they

[10:32] could potentially drive your car right off the road. >> Yes. If they could do that, then why would they ever have to do anything more explicit? Why would they ever have to do mind control over anybody at a at a rally in Pennsylvania if that's what they want. You know, like there are there would be ways of getting rid of you that would be so undetectable and and not suspicious that they could be doing that all the time. They wouldn't have to go about mind control, MK Ultra, LSD. You know what I'm saying? So that to me that's that undermines the theory that they're doing any of these

[11:02] public executions explicitly or behind the scenes. I I think that's right, but think of it this way, too. I'm going to tell you a little funny little anecdote about one of my promotion panels. I had been working with a psychologist in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center to come up with out of outside the box ideas on how to recruit spies to steal secrets. And she happened to also sit on my promotion panel. And she said in my promotion panel in in great support of my promotion. She said,

[11:34] "John Kiriakou will come up with 40 different ideas for an operation. 36 of them are insane, but four of them are going to be really good." So, imagine sitting around the table and somebody comes up with an idea to put an explosive in Fidel Castro's cigar. Well, that's a stupid idea. If you're going to get close enough to put an explosive in the cigar, just shoot him in the head, for example, if that's what you really want to do. So, there are a lot of people sitting around a lot of conference room tables

[12:04] at the CIA coming up with really stupid ideas. And then there are nodding heads all the all around the table saying, "Yeah, that's a great idea. We should do that." So, you know, the bottom line is this. We know thanks to WikiLeaks and the Vault 7 revelations that the CIA can remotely take over your car. They can make you drive off a bridge or into a tree or into an abutment and and kill you if they want to. They can turn your smart TV into a microphone. They can reverse engineer your speaker to turn

[12:35] into a microphone so they can listen to everything you're saying even when the TV is off. The The technology is 20 years ahead of what anybody else thinks the technology is. I mean, I don't want to be a Pollyanna about it, but they're they're not supposed to do that without a warrant. Are they doing that without a warrant? >> Without a warrant. You know, at the CIA >> I mean, that's disturbing. >> God, in training they they used to tell us all the time, "Our job is to break the law." And I remember saying,

[13:06] "Yeah, but not here." The job is to break the law over there. You know, I was perfectly happy and and on multiple occasions actively participated in, you know, breaking into people's houses or offices and planting bugs and cameras. We're the good guys. That's what we have to do. This is to protect the United States. But not here. You need a warrant. And besides, the CIA is forbidden by law from doing anything operationally inside the United States. That's what the FBI is for. I just never understood this. Like, why isn't it that

[13:37] clear to everybody? I don't know. Do you think the FBI is doing similar behaviors or is this all CIA? You know, it was my experience when I was working with the FBI, and I worked with the FBI for years and years, that they they really were sticklers for the law, where the CIA wasn't. Um I remember even saying one time, I'm going to I'm going to fudge the details here for obvious reasons, but they we were talking, a couple of us CIA people were talking to a group from the

[14:08] FBI, and they were saying what difficulty they were having infiltrating a domestic terrorist group. And I said, "Oh, no, I I I got you covered." I said, "There was this group that that we took care of. We we just didn't have access to them. So, what we did is we found one of them." It was only like six members of this terrorist group. We found one, and we said, "Hey, listen, Muhammad, your friend Abdallah I'm from the CIA, and Abdallah told me that that you're you'd be a good guy for me to talk to cuz Abdallah works for me, and and he

[14:39] said you'd like to work for me, too." Well, the guy runs screaming from the room, but he goes back, and he kills Abdallah. And then we And then we tell Rashid, "Hey, listen, we were talking about about Abdallah with Muhammad. You know, Muhammad's one of our guys, and and he told us that Abdallah was a bad guy." And then Rashid kills Muhammad. And then by the end of the year, this terrorist group doesn't exist anymore. And the FBI guy said, "Oh my god, that's so illegal. We couldn't possibly do that." And I was like, "Oh,

[15:11] it never even occurred to me that that might be illegal." Thanks for watching this clip. If you're new here, subscribe. We got a whole lot more goodness where that came from. Would love to hear your feedback. You can email me, too. Megan, m e g y n at megynkelly.com or just leave a comment below. But, join the community by becoming a subscriber. We really, really value your input and your support. We may not always agree, but we are always going to talk about it and respect. No BS, no agenda, no fear. Think about

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