CIA Astonishingly Steps Out of Shadows to Publicly Deny It Used MKULTRA Mind Control Program to Brainwash Trump’s Failed Assassin

The CIA wants everyone to know it had nothing to do with the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

Since the shooting, far-right conspiracy theorists have speculated that 20-year-old lone gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, whose motive is still unclear, could have been spurred into action by the intelligence agency’s top-secret MKULTRA mind control program, Knewz.com has learned.

X account Real Global News tweeted: “What if US President Joe Biden’s ‘mean tweets’ triggered Thomas Matthew Crooks? Yes like an #MKUltra test subject. I dont want to go into conspiracy theories here but the CIA did mind control experiments like the #ManchurianCandidate. Wait for the trigger before acting.”

While wild online theories about shadowy deep-state inside jobs are nothing new, the CIA doesn’t often dignify them with a response. But this time, it took the unusual step of actively pushing back against the claims in an official statement.

A CIA spokesperson told Gizmodo: “These claims are utterly false, absurd, and damaging. The CIA had no relationship whatsoever with Thomas Crooks. Regarding MKULTRA, the CIA’s program was shut down more than 40 years ago, and declassified information about the program is publicly available on CIA.gov.”

Although the theories seem far-fetched, MKULTRA, which was first revealed to the public in the 1970s, was a real program in which the CIA conducted illegal human experiments to develop experimental procedures for brainwashing interrogation subjects.

Jefferson Morley, an author who has published several books about the CIA and the JFK assassination, told Wired: “You can’t unring the MKUltra bell. People know about it. A lot of people know about it. So to say, ‘Oh, that’s irrational conspiracy,’ which is the attitude that we get from the mainstream press – ‘Oh, you know, how dare anybody question the CIA’s account of that?’ – I mean, it just doesn’t ring true to most people, because most people know it’s not true.”

Tom O’Neill, another writer who drew connections between Charles Manson and MKULTRA in his book Chaos, added: “Every time there’s a school shooting, my book sales go up … Well, there go my book sales again. They’re going to skyrocket, because people really want to believe that there’s no such thing as a lone assassin.”

Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami who studies conspiracy theories, said: “People adopt ideas that match the ways that they already view the world. And there are people out there who view the world through a lens in which events and circumstances are dictated by powerful, shadowy groups who work in secret.”

“Major leaders in our politics and people who have big followings in the media say a lot of conspiracy theories, and that’s the problem – we wind up giving political power to people who espouse these ideas, and that’s very dangerous. If we’re going to focus on anything, it shouldn’t be, ‘Oh my God, some guy in Timbuktu said something on Twitter.’ It should be, ‘F—ing Trump is saying this s—.’ He’s our conspiracist-in-chief.”