1954 ARTICHOKE Memo — The Assassination Question
What This Image Shows
This is a scan of a declassified CIA document, degraded and partly illegible, marked as an attachment and stamped ARTICHOKE. It dates to January 22, 1954 and is a feasibility evaluation, not an operation.
The legible text states the problem: whether a subject could be "induced to perform the act of attempted assassination" "involuntarily under the influence of ARTICHOKE." It notes the subject had worked for the government but "has since terminated," that he "would offer no further cooperation," and that "access to the SUBJECT would be extremely limited, probably limited to a single social meeting." It then proposes the method: "Because the SUBJECT is a heavy drinker, it was proposed that the individual could be drugged through the surreptitious medium of an alcoholic cocktail at a social party," with ARTICHOKE techniques applied and the subject "induced to perform the act of attempted assassination at some later date," after which he would "be taken into custody."
This document is genuine, declassified, and available from the CIA's own reading room, which is exactly why it carries weight in this investigation: it establishes that the agency formally studied involuntary-assassin scenarios. It establishes nothing about 1954 operations, and nothing whatever about 2025. The memo's conclusion is on the next page in this sub-cluster, and it should be read before this page is cited.
See the Project Artichoke memo, MKUltra program, and the Artichoke Project sub-cluster.
Related Areas
- Cluster: CIA Assassin
- All photo evidence: Photos
More In This Cluster
- Next: CIA Assassin — Photo 2