John Marks
Writer who exposed the CIA's MKUltra program through FOIA
- Born
- 1943
- Earlier career
- US State Department analyst; aide to Senator Clifford Case
- Books
- The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974, with Victor Marchetti); The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (1979)
- Later work
- Founder of Search for Common Ground (1982)
Former State Department analyst whose FOIA requests uncovered the surviving MKUltra papers, the basis of his 1979 book.
What is John Marks known for?
John D. Marks is an American writer and peace-building organiser. He worked for five years at the US State Department, including in Vietnam and in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, then as an aide to Senator Clifford Case.
With former CIA officer Victor Marchetti he wrote The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974). The CIA demanded the removal of many passages, and the book was printed with blanks where text had been cut.
Using the Freedom of Information Act, Marks obtained thousands of pages of CIA financial and administrative records about MKUltra, the agency's mind-control and drug research program, which had survived the 1973 destruction of most project files. These documents were the basis of the 1977 Senate hearings and of his book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (1979), which describes LSD experiments on unwitting people.
In 1982 he founded the organisation now called Search for Common Ground, which works on conflict resolution.
Obtained the surviving MKUltra documents through FOIA, which led to the 1977 Senate hearing.
Mentioned on these pages
- Rabbit holeMKUltra: The 1977 Senate Hearing
Sources
- Wikipedia, 'John D. Marks'Reference
- US Senate, 'Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification', joint hearing, August 3, 1977 (PDF)Primary text
Pictures on profile pages are drawn placeholders, not likenesses. Public-domain portraits and photographs will replace them.