When you send thousands of FOIA requests, you are bound to get some very weird responses from time to time. Recently, we here at MuckRock had one of our most bizarre gets yet - Washington State Fusion Center’s accidental release of records on the effects of remote mind control.

Forty years after the Central Intelligence Agency’s experiments on U.S. citizens was revealed in a series of Congressional investigations, materials related to their findings and the CIA’s response live easily-accessible online.

A 1972 report for the Defense Intelligence Agency spends about four pages describing and worrying about “suggestology,” and the name is the least ridiculous part about it.

A 1972 report from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Army explored the numerous ways the U.S. Government believed the Soviet Union could attack or influence small groups of people through unconventional means. Some of these included telepathy being used to infiltrate dreams, while other scenarios focused on slightly more realistic possibilities - like Soviet spy planes being used to blind or hypnotize Americans.

Buried in the STARGATE section of the CREST release is a letter from Congressman Charlie Rose, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Evaluation, regarding the Intelligence Community’s psychic program. Although short, the letter highlights a concern that was to be repeated by many outside of government for decades - that the program was part of CIA “mind control” activities, where in some cases “the rights of individuals were violated.”