Artichoke was the CIA’S cryptogram for the study and/or use of special interrogation methods that have been known to include hypnosis, drugs and total isolation. It grew out of the Agency’s Operation Bluebird and was a forerunner to the Agency’s MK Ultra.

Project Artichoke also known as Operation Artichoke was run by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of Scientific Intelligence. The project went deeper into interrogation methods studied in the CIA’s Project Bluebird. Artichoke offensive mind control techniques experiments attempted to induce amnesia and highly suggestive states in its subjects. Artichoke employed the use of hypnosis, forced morphine addiction, forced morphine addiction withdrawal, and the use of other drugs, chemicals, and techniques.

The main focus of the program was summarized in a January 1952 CIA memo, “Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?”

One program experiment attempted to see if it was possible to produce a “Manchurian Candidate.” In Richard Condon’s 1959 novel “The Manchurian Candidate” an American soldier, who has been placed into a hypnotic state by Communist forces, returns home to assassinate on command. Five years earlier the CIA considered the possibility. A January 1954 CIA report asks the question, “Can an individual of [redacted] descent be made to perform an act of attempted assassination involuntarily under the influence of artichoke?”