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Morse Allen was one of the most important—and least publicly biographed—figures in the CIA’s early investigation of hypnosis, drugs, interrogation, amnesia, and behavioral control. During the formative years of Projects BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE, Allen tried to determine whether hypnosis could become a practical intelligence weapon.

His questions were extraordinary:

• Could
  hypnosis force someone to reveal protected information?
• Could
  an agent be hypnotically conditioned to resist interrogation?
• Could
  a hypnotized person steal documents or deliver secret material without
  remembering it?
• Could
  posthypnotic suggestion create convincing amnesia?
• Could
  drugs make someone more hypnotizable?
• Could
  a person be induced to violate deeply held moral principles?
• Could
  an unwitting individual be programmed to commit violence or an
  assassination?

The surviving record proves that Allen and the CIA seriously investigated these possibilities. It does not, however, prove that the CIA successfully created a reliable, real-world “Manchurian Candidate.”

What is known about Allen personally

Compared with Sidney Gottlieb, Richard Helms, or Allen Dulles, remarkably little reliable biographical information about Morse Allen has been released. Even his birth date, education, family history, and life after the CIA remain difficult to establish from authoritative public records.

What can be established is that:

• Allen
  worked in the CIA’s security apparatus, particularly its Inspection and
  Security Office and Security Research Staff.
• He
  was already proposing combined drug, polygraph, and hypnosis teams in
  1949.
• He
  became one of the principal working-level officers conducting or
  coordinating BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE research.
• By
  the early 1950s, he was regarded inside the program as its leading
  hypnosis enthusiast and practitioner.
• Archival
  records identify him as director or chief of the Security Research Staff
  during at least part of the 1960–1965 period.
• He
  remained associated with sensitive security research and outside
  consultants after ARTICHOKE’s most active early phase.

The New York Public Library’s Harry Belafonte archival collection identifies Allen as CIA director of the Security Research Staff from approximately 1960 to 1965. This is important because it shows that his CIA career continued well beyond the famous 1951–1954 hypnosis experiments. NYPL archival description

Allen should not be confused with CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb. Their roles overlapped, but they were institutionally different:

The origins of Allen’s work: 1949

One of the earliest surviving documents connected directly to Allen is a memorandum dated September 27, 1949. After returning from an overseas trip, Allen recommended creating “security validation teams” inside the United States and abroad.

These teams would combine:

• Hypnosis
• Drugs
• Polygraph
  examinations
• Psychiatric
  or psychological assessment
• Specialized
  interrogation procedures

Allen envisioned several possible uses:

1. Screening CIA employees, informants, defectors, and agents.

2. Investigating loyalty or security cases.

3. Interrogating suspected enemy agents.

4. Determining whether defectors and intelligence sources were genuine.

5. Learning what interrogation methods the Soviet Union and its allies were using.

6. Exploring what Allen called “operational hypnosis.”

This document demonstrates that Allen’s interest began before the Korean War “brainwashing” controversy reached its height and before MKULTRA was created. His early approach treated hypnosis not merely as a laboratory curiosity, but as something that might be incorporated into deployable intelligence teams. National Security Archive: Allen’s September 1949 memorandum

Project BLUEBIRD

In April 1950, CIA security director Sheffield Edwards sought approval for Project BLUEBIRD. Because of the program’s “extreme sensitivity” and covert character, Edwards sent it directly to CIA Director Roscoe Hillenkoetter instead of processing it through the normal project-review system.

BLUEBIRD proposed interrogation teams composed of:

• A
  psychiatrist
• A
  polygraph examiner
• A
  hypnotist

The teams would use “the polygraph, drugs, and hypnotism” in combination. A Washington office would provide training, experimentation, and indoctrination. A handwritten notation shows that Hillenkoetter authorized $65,515 on April 20, 1950.

BLUEBIRD’s stated purposes included both defensive and offensive concerns:

• Discovering
  whether hostile governments could manipulate American personnel.
• Developing
  countermeasures for agents who might be captured.
• Testing
  defectors and suspected double agents.
• Extracting
  information.
• Creating
  amnesia or altered states.
• Exploring
  behavioral control for clandestine operations.

The CIA’s surviving BLUEBIRD questions went considerably beyond ordinary interrogation. Agency memoranda asked whether posthypnotic control could make someone act contrary to fundamental moral principles and whether a person might be made to crash an airplane or wreck a train.

These memoranda establish that the CIA asked such questions. They do not establish that Allen or BLUEBIRD actually demonstrated those capabilities. National Security Archive’s document collection and BLUEBIRD summary

BLUEBIRD becomes ARTICHOKE

In August 1951, BLUEBIRD was renamed ARTICHOKE. The program broadened its research into combinations of:

• Hypnosis
• Sodium
  pentothal and other barbiturates
• Amphetamines
• Morphine
  addiction and withdrawal
• LSD
  and other hallucinogens
• Electroshock
• Sleep
  manipulation
• Isolation
• Psychological
  pressure
• Polygraph
  examinations
• Posthypnotic
  amnesia

ARTICHOKE was not simply the earlier name for all of MKULTRA. It was an Office of Security-centered operational and interrogation program that overlapped with MKULTRA after 1953.

In October 1952, CIA officials described ARTICHOKE’s scope as “research and testing to arrive at means of control,” rather than merely conducting special interrogations. This distinction is central to understanding Allen: he was interested not only in extracting information, but in influencing future conduct.

Allen teaches himself hypnosis

According to former State Department official John Marks, whose research was based on approximately 16,000 pages of released CIA records and interviews with former participants, Allen became intensely interested in hypnosis in 1951.

He reportedly:

• Read
  extensively in the professional and popular hypnosis literature.
• Consulted
  psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical hypnotists, and entertainers.
• Attended
  a four-day course in New York given by a stage hypnotist.
• Practiced
  inductions and posthypnotic suggestions.
• Examined
  whether hypnotic amnesia could survive later questioning.
• Investigated
  whether one hypnotist could break another person’s conditioning.

The stage hypnotist told Allen that hypnosis could be used to induce women to engage in sexual activity. Allen recorded and investigated these claims.

A critical clarification is necessary: the document shows that Allen examined a hypnotist’s claimed sexual exploitation. It does not prove that Allen himself hypnotized women for sexual purposes. More broadly, the CIA’s interest in sexual compromise, blackmail, and behavior control is well documented, but individual allegations must not be merged without evidence.

The released CIA interview includes questions about:

• Whether
  a second hypnotist could break a subject’s conditioning.
• Whether
  a subject could be trained to resist another hypnotist.
• Posthypnotic
  commands and amnesia.
• The
  use of hypnosis for sexual exploitation.
• The
  limits of hypnotic control.

CIA-released Morse Allen hypnosis interview and related CIA file

Experiments involving CIA secretaries

Allen’s most notorious experiments involved CIA employees, frequently described in the literature as young female secretaries. According to Marks’ reconstruction of ARTICHOKE records, Allen attempted to determine whether hypnosis could induce people to violate security rules or commit acts they would normally reject.

Reported tests included instructions to:

• Remove
  classified documents.
• Pass
  protected material to an unfamiliar person.
• Steal
  from another employee.
• Start
  or simulate starting a fire.
• Enter
  an unfamiliar man’s bedroom.
• Fall
  asleep at a predetermined location.
• Forget
  the assignment afterward.

These experiments appear to have convinced Allen that hypnotic suggestion could create serious security vulnerabilities. He reportedly concluded that a hypnotized individual could be placed in a compromising situation and later blackmailed.

But there were substantial scientific weaknesses:

• Subjects
  knew they were participating in an experiment.
• They
  were dealing with an authority figure inside their employer.
• They
  might reasonably assume that Allen would prevent actual harm.
• The
  experimental setting implicitly signaled that apparently dangerous actions
  were safe.
• The
  subjects may have been unusually responsive volunteers.
• There
  were no modern independent review boards or meaningful protections against
  coercion.
• Documentation
  of informed consent is inadequate or nonexistent.

These weaknesses make it impossible to treat the experiments as proof that an unwitting person could be converted into a controllable field operative.

John Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” Chapter 11

The February 19, 1954 pistol experiment

The most disturbing experiment attributed to Allen took place on February 19, 1954.

The reported sequence was:

1. Allen hypnotized one secretary and instructed her to remain asleep.

2. He hypnotized a second secretary.

3. The second woman was told that if she could not awaken her colleague, she would become so angry that she would kill her.

4. An unloaded pistol was placed nearby.

5. Although the second woman reportedly feared firearms, she picked up the pistol.

6. She pointed it at the sleeping woman and pulled the trigger.

7. Allen later brought her out of hypnosis.

8. She reportedly displayed or claimed amnesia and denied that she would ever shoot someone.

This incident is often presented as proof that the CIA created a hypnotically controlled assassin. That interpretation goes beyond the evidence.

What the experiment may demonstrate

It suggests that, in a controlled setting, a highly responsive subject could be led through an elaborate scenario involving an apparently violent act and could later show incomplete recall.

What it does not demonstrate

It does not prove that:

• The
  subject believed the pistol was loaded.
• She
  believed Allen would permit an actual killing.
• The
  behavior would occur outside a laboratory or office demonstration.
• A
  subject could be programmed without awareness.
• The
  command would survive for weeks or months.
• The
  person could carry out a complex assassination under real danger.
• Amnesia
  would withstand expert interrogation, forensic investigation, or another
  hypnotist.
• The
  technique could be reproduced reliably across ordinary subjects.

Even Allen apparently recognized these limitations. The subject knew she was in an experimental relationship with a CIA authority figure and may have trusted that no actual killing would be allowed.

The “Manchurian Candidate” question

Allen’s greatest ambition was to determine whether hypnosis could produce an unwitting operative who would carry out a dangerous assignment and then forget it.

The concept included several separate problems:

Allen obtained suggestive demonstrations concerning some individual components, particularly susceptibility, role-playing, posthypnotic behavior, and reported amnesia. He did not solve the entire chain.

No publicly released record proves that Allen successfully created and deployed an unwitting hypnotically programmed assassin.

The “Kelly case”

Another group of documents signed by Allen concerns a person identified as “Kelly,” apparently a pseudonym or cryptonym. A January 25, 1952 memorandum records Allen’s handling of the case, and later CIA reviews placed it in the BLUEBIRD/ARTICHOKE files.

The surviving documents indicate that the CIA evaluated whether an “ARTICHOKE approach”—using drugs, hypnosis, psychological manipulation, or some combination—might alter the subject’s attitude, obtain information, or produce cooperation.

Because the record remains partly redacted and fragmented, confident claims about Kelly’s identity or ultimate treatment are unwarranted. The files are nevertheless important because they show Allen’s work crossing from general research into the evaluation of identifiable operational cases.

National Archives: Allen’s January 25, 1952 “Kelly Case” memorandum

Drugs combined with hypnosis

Allen and his colleagues were not investigating hypnosis in isolation. They suspected that drugs might:

• Lower
  resistance.
• Increase
  suggestibility.
• Create
  confusion.
• Facilitate
  age regression.
• Weaken
  a subject’s sense of identity.
• Produce
  amnesia.
• Make
  hypnotic induction easier.
• Intensify
  or prolong posthypnotic commands.

ARTICHOKE experiments therefore explored alternating depressants and stimulants—sometimes described informally as a “push-pull” method.

A subject might first receive a barbiturate such as sodium pentothal, creating sedation and disorientation, followed by an amphetamine such as Desoxyn to stimulate speech or attention. Hypnosis and polygraph questioning could then be introduced.

A 1952 CIA report claimed “outstanding success” in cases involving suspected Russian double agents. Officials used narcosis and hypnosis to induce regression and, in one case, reported “total amnesia” through posthypnotic suggestion.

Those were the CIA officers’ own conclusions. They were not independently verified clinical findings, and information obtained under drugs or hypnosis can be distorted, confabulated, or shaped by the interrogator’s suggestions. National Security Archive document summaries

“SI and H” experiments

A December 8, 1953 memorandum written by Allen is titled “SI and H Experimentation.” “H” referred to hypnosis; “SI” appears in the context of special interrogation or related security-interrogation work.

The memorandum discusses producing suggested perceptions or hallucinations and demonstrating hypnotic effects. This reflects Allen’s interest in whether subjects could be made to:

• See
  or hear things that were not present.
• Fail
  to perceive things that were present.
• Accept
  an invented account of events.
• Act
  on a false belief created during hypnosis.
• Forget
  the source of a suggestion.

Such experiments mattered to the CIA because an induced false perception might theoretically support deception, courier operations, cover stories, or the discrediting and compromising of a target.

CIA: “SI and H Experimentation,” December 8, 1953

Overseas interrogations and vulnerable subjects

BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE were international programs. CIA teams and allied specialists reportedly worked with:

• Defectors
• Suspected
  double agents
• Prisoners
• Intelligence
  informants
• Refugees
  and émigrés
• People
  suspected of working for Soviet-bloc services
• Individuals
  held under conditions in which meaningful consent was impossible

The CIA coordinated or exchanged information with military intelligence organizations and certain allied services. An important 1951 meeting brought together American, British, and Canadian representatives to discuss extracting information and controlling individual behavior.

Overseas work offered the CIA secrecy and reduced the danger of American legal scrutiny. It also created enormous potential for abuse because subjects could be held, medicated, hypnotized, questioned, or transferred without meaningful oversight.

Was Allen a scientist?

Not in the conventional sense. The public record identifies him primarily as a CIA security officer and program administrator—not a psychiatrist, psychologist, or physician.

That distinction matters. Allen learned hypnosis and consulted specialists, but his experiments were driven by operational goals rather than neutral scientific inquiry.

His work suffered from:

• Small,
  selected subject groups.
• No
  credible control groups.
• Poor
  separation between experimenter and interrogator.
• Authority
  pressure on CIA employees.
• Dependence
  upon subjects’ self-reported amnesia.
• Leading
  questions and suggestions.
• Unclear
  consent procedures.
• Secret
  reporting with no peer review.
• Pressure
  to produce operationally useful results.
• A
  tendency to treat dramatic demonstrations as evidence of capability.

Modern researchers would also distinguish genuine hypnotic responsiveness from compliance, role enactment, demand characteristics, social pressure, and the subject’s desire to satisfy the experimenter.

Allen’s relationship to MKULTRA

MKULTRA began in April 1953 under Sidney Gottlieb and the Technical Services Staff. It expanded CIA research into drugs, chemicals, biological agents, hypnosis, sleep, sensory deprivation, and many other methods.

Allen remained associated principally with the Office of Security and ARTICHOKE. The two streams overlapped:

ARTICHOKE concentrated more directly on special interrogation and operational cases. MKULTRA became the larger research-and-development umbrella, especially for chemical and biological methods. Some responsibilities, contractors, and research interests moved between the programs.

Thus, describing Allen simply as the “head of MKULTRA” would be inaccurate. He was a central architect of the hypnosis and interrogation work that preceded and overlapped with MKULTRA.

Later Security Research Staff activities

Records indicate that Allen later headed the CIA Security Research Staff. His interests apparently expanded beyond early hypnosis demonstrations into broader security and behavioral-research projects.

One associated project was QKHILLTOP, which examined foreign and domestic research concerning:

• Human
  ecology
• Personality
• Culture
  and behavior
• Stress
• Interrogation
• Psychological
  vulnerability
• Human
  adaptation under extreme conditions

The Security Research Staff also maintained relationships with outside experts and consultants. These arrangements allowed the CIA to obtain scientific advice while concealing Agency sponsorship.

The surviving record therefore suggests that Allen was not merely an eccentric officer who conducted a handful of hypnosis demonstrations. He became a significant institutional figure in the CIA’s long-term behavioral and security research structure.

Why Allen is less famous than Gottlieb

Allen’s relative obscurity results from several factors:

1. Few personal records: There is no widely available official biography or comprehensive personnel file.

2. Program destruction: Richard Helms and Sidney Gottlieb ordered most MKULTRA records destroyed in 1973.

3. Compartmentation: Allen operated inside the Office of Security, whose work was highly restricted.

4. Redactions and pseudonyms: Subjects, consultants, and locations were frequently concealed.

5. MKULTRA overshadowed ARTICHOKE: Public investigations concentrated on LSD and Gottlieb.

6. No public testimony comparable to Gottlieb’s: Allen did not become the public face of the controversy.

7. Fragmented documentation: His name appears across individual memoranda rather than in a single narrative file.

The National Security Archive reports that much of today’s reconstruction depends on documents preserved by researcher John Marks. The Archive’s newer collection brings together more than 1,200 records, but it also emphasizes that the surviving evidence remains incomplete because of the CIA’s destruction of files. National Security Archive overview

Ethical and legal assessment

By modern standards, many activities associated with BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE would represent profound violations of research ethics and potentially of criminal or civil law.

Principal problems included:

• Questionable
  or absent informed consent.
• Experimentation
  on subordinates.
• Use
  of prisoners and persons under intelligence control.
• Administration
  of psychoactive drugs in coercive circumstances.
• Attempts
  to produce amnesia.
• Deliberate
  creation of psychological distress.
• Sexual-compromise
  and blackmail scenarios.
• Experiments
  involving simulated violence.
• Concealment
  from outside oversight.
• Lack
  of independent medical supervision.
• Destruction
  of records that impeded later accountability.

The CIA operated before modern federal human-subject protections were fully established, but the Nuremberg Code had existed since 1947 and emphasized voluntary consent. Secrecy did not make these experiments ethically acceptable.

The most responsible conclusion

Morse Allen was a central architect of the CIA’s early effort to transform hypnosis from a clinical or theatrical practice into an intelligence technique. He was not simply a peripheral bureaucrat. He proposed deployable drug-hypnosis-polygraph teams, coordinated experiments, studied outside hypnotists, tested CIA employees, examined amnesia and behavioral compulsion, and pursued the possibility of an unwitting operative.

The strongest conclusions supported by the record are:

• The
  CIA genuinely and seriously investigated hypnotic behavioral control.
• Allen
  was one of the principal officers behind that investigation.
• Some
  experiments involved ethically troubling behavior by CIA
  employee-subjects.
• Allen
  obtained dramatic demonstrations of compliance and reported amnesia.
• The
  experiments were scientifically weak and conducted in authority-laden
  settings.
• No
  public evidence demonstrates a reliable technique for producing an
  unwitting assassin.
• Later
  stories frequently present speculative CIA questions as though they were
  proven achievements.
• Destruction
  and redaction of records mean that the complete extent of Allen’s
  activities remains unknown.

Allen’s historical importance lies less in proving that “mind control” worked than in showing how far an intelligence service was willing to go in attempting to make it work.