No, Kamala Harris’ mother Shyamala Gopalan did not work for MK-Ultra

Was Vice President Kamala Harris’ mother secretly involved in brainwashing and training assassins as part of the clandestine MK-Ultra program? That’s what one Instagram user says.

In an Oct. 28 Instagram reel, a man says Shyamala Gopalan “worked the MK-Ultra program” and was part of a covert operation involving the Canadian and British governments that “trained assassins and conducted brainwashing experiments.” 

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The man cites conservative commentator Candace Owens as the source of his claim. Owens has pushed antisemitic conspiracy theories and falsehoods about the COVID-19 pandemic, and was recently banned from entering Australia for a planned speaking tour. 

Owens did not directly make the claim about Harris’ mother. Instead, it was the topic of an interview she conducted for her podcast with a man who appears to have originated the claim. 

Yoichi Shimatsu, who is described by Owens as a former editor of The Japan Times, claimed in a Rense.com article that Gopalan was a key player in the MK-Ultra program while living in Montreal, working to help train brainwashed assassins on behalf of the British government. The article cites no sources.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League have said Rense.com promotes pro-Nazi views, antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denialism. 

We found no credible evidence linking Gopalan to MK-Ultra, a clandestine CIA program from 1953 to 1973 that sought to evaluate the effectiveness of drugs such as LSD as a method of mind control and psychological torture. 

PolitiFact reached out to the Harris campaign regarding the claim and did not receive a response by publication time. 

Gopalan, who died in 2009, was a breast cancer researcher. The claim attempts to link her time working at a research hospital in Montreal and a series of CIA-funded psychological experiments that occurred in Canada during the 1950s and 1960s. 

In 1976, Gopalan moved Kamala Harris and her younger sister, Maya Harris, to Montreal to research breast cancer at Jewish General Hospital and teach medical school classes at McGill University. 

The experiments referenced by Shimatsu occurred at the Allan Memorial Institute, a now defunct psychiatric hospital at McGill University, and conducted by Dr. Ewen Cameron. Cameron believed a combination of psychedelic drugs, sleep deprivation and electric shock treatments could enable researchers to control a person’s mind, The New York Times reported. 

The experiments ended in 1964 and were funded by the CIA as part of MK-Ultra. 

We rate the claim that Harris’ mother “worked the MK Ultra program” and was “involved in secret mind-control experiments” Pants on Fire!