Operation Midnight Climax: A CIA Operative’s Account of a Decade in the Shadows

Operation Midnight Climax: A CIA Operative’s Account of a Decade in the Shadows

In 1955, I, John Kessler, was recruited by the CIA into Operation Midnight Climax, a clandestine MKUltra subproject in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, where we dosed unwitting citizens with LSD—70% without consent—lured by prostitutes and watched through two-way mirrors to master mind control amid Cold War paranoia. This first-person memoir, drawn from declassified CIA files and court records, chronicles my decade of complicity and guilt, from setting up neon-lit safe houses to betraying the vibrant counterculture, until the program’s collapse in 1965. Through foggy streets and psychedelic chaos, Operation Midnight Climax unveils a chilling tale of secrecy, exploitation, and shattered lives, exposing the scars left on a generation’s dream of freedom.