Project Chatter

In the autumn of 1947, weeks after the Nuremberg Code declared consent essential, the U.S. Navy launched Project CHATTER: a secret hunt for a drug that could make anyone talk. Drawing on declassified Senate, Pentagon and FBI records, this book traces the search from scopolamine “twilight sleep” and OSS marijuana cigarettes to Dachau’s mescaline trials, a university study disguised as motion-sickness research, and covert tests on Soviet defectors in 1952. It reveals how fear of Soviet brainwashing pushed science across ethical lines, why every truth serum failed, and how CHATTER paved the way for MKULTRA.