# Operation Midnight Climax > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "Operation Midnight Climax," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/operation-midnight-climax/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *Sub-project of the CIA's MK-Ultra program, conducted in San Francisco. Per John Kiriakou, the CIA rented a safe house and paid sex workers to bring men back to it, where agents dosed the men with LSD without their knowledge or consent, then observed their behavior through one-way mirrors. The operation followed an earlier phase in which the CIA had dosed its own employees; when that produced suicides, it moved to using unconsenting members of the public.* - **Parent program:** [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra) - **Location:** San Francisco safe house - **Method:** [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)-paid sex workers lured men; CIA dosed them with LSD without consent - **Oversight:** Agents observed through one-way mirrors [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) described Operation Midnight Climax in the context of explaining the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)'s progression through [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra) experiments. The initial LSD-dosing program targeted CIA's own employees, who were dosed without their knowledge. Several committed suicide; one jumped from a hotel window. Headquarters then decided it was counterproductive to dose its own workforce and shifted to unwitting members of the public.[1] The San Francisco operation: the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) rented a safe house and hired sex workers to go out on the street, pick up men paying for sex, bring them back to the safe house, and dose them with LSD. Agents watched through one-way mirrors and recorded the subjects' behavior. The stated goal was to assess whether LSD could be used as a mind-control tool — to break and rebuild the human mind, plant false memories, and produce controllable subjects.[2][3] Kiriakou noted that [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of all [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra) files on the same day he testified before the [Church Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/church-committee), which had specifically ordered him not to destroy documents. Helms was held in contempt of Congress and fined approximately $150. Approximately fifteen percent of the documents were missed in the destruction — misfiled elsewhere — and survived.[3] ## San Francisco safe house [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) describes the [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra) effort in which the CIA recruited prostitutes to pick up clients, dose them with LSD, bring them to a safe house, and try to extract their *"deepest, darkest secrets"* — an approach he says simply did not work, leaving subjects *"jabbering incoherently and having flashbacks."*[4] He returns to the operation whenever he is asked what the agency would rather stayed buried. Pressed in May 2026 on why the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) would resist declassifying the surviving [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra) files, he named this programme among the reasons: the agency, he said, does not want the public to know about *"coming up with a program in San Francisco to hire to dose johns and see if they would cough up their innermost secrets."* His verdict, again, was one word — *"Ridiculous."*[5] In that telling he did not use the operation's codename.[6] ## See also - [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra) - [Church Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/church-committee) - [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) - [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) ## Sources 1. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou: They Can See All Your Messages! (2026-01-19), at 1:06:30. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUNoJ32eLBc&t=3990s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-19-diary-of-a-ceo-they-can-see-all-your-messages/ 2. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou: They Can See All Your Messages! (2026-01-19), at 1:07:00. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUNoJ32eLBc&t=4020s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-19-diary-of-a-ceo-they-can-see-all-your-messages/ 3. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou: They Can See All Your Messages! (2026-01-19), at 1:07:30. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUNoJ32eLBc&t=4050s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-19-diary-of-a-ceo-they-can-see-all-your-messages/ 4. 3 Hours with John Kiriakou: CIA Whistleblower on JFK, Conspiracies & Power (2026-06-15), at 2:00:55. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dfXffvHAnU&t=7255s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-15-jason-jones-3-hours-kiriakou/ 5. 'YOU LIAR': Former CIA official calls Fauci's pardon 'unacceptable' (2026-05-14), at 04:07. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egmGLaf76DM&t=247s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-14-fox-news-you-liar-former-cia-official-calls-fauci-s-pa/ 6. 'YOU LIAR': Former CIA official calls Fauci's pardon 'unacceptable' (2026-05-14), at 03:37. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egmGLaf76DM&t=217s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-14-fox-news-you-liar-former-cia-official-calls-fauci-s-pa/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/operation-midnight-climax/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt