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MKULTRA was some overprivileged Ivy League frat douchebags with security clearances playing God with drugs and prostitutes, not really espionage in my book.

Espionage against citizens in violation of the constitution is immoral, but spying on other countries is fair game. It’s a huge part of U.S. military dominance.

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MKULTRA was nominally for the purposes of information extraction from unwilling targets, creating sleeper agents, and blackmailing/brainwashing foreign citizens/adversaries.

And was done by the CIA.

And while in hindsight it was pretty dubious if it was going to be effective, given the mindset and knowledge of the time? Plausible.

It fits under the umbrella of dirty tricks well enough to hang it at the feet of espionage to me. It was certainly gov’t sanctioned (by some definition). What else are we going to call it? ‘Frat boys misbehaving’ doesn’t give it the proper weight.

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