Shiftheads - The CIA Made a Sex Tape and Decided Nobody Would Believe It

CIA secret operations history has a documented file titled Happy Days. It's 1959. Indonesia. The CIA wants to discredit a foreign leader named Sukarno, so they find a lookalike, film a fake sex tape, screen it internally, and conclude that nobody will believe it. The operation that was too unbelievable even for a propaganda campaign never gets released. The CIA moves on.

Operation Midnight Climax is a subproject of MKUltra, the verified program with documented victims and government payouts. The CIA approaches sex workers in San Francisco, asks them to bring clients to a CIA safe house, doses those clients with LSD without their knowledge, and watches from behind a one-way mirror to take notes on what happens. Meanwhile, British soldiers in a separate documented experiment are given LSD on a field exercise with weapons. One drops his gun and climbs trees to feed birds. The commanding officer stands exposed in an open field, unable to give instructions. They forget how to be soldiers entirely.

The historian covering this used to dismiss all of it. That's his own admission. The person most qualified to evaluate whether something is real or fringe changed his position after looking at the evidence. That's worth knowing before you decide which category this falls into.

Topics: CIA secret operations history, MKUltra LSD experiments, Operation Midnight Climax, Cold War spy history, government conspiracy facts

GUEST: Dr. Lee Kuhnle | @‌theuncoverup

Originally aired on 2026-02-25

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