Scoff away if you want, but for the CIA the ability to turn operatives into unconscious robots, carrying out missions and orders they would have no memory of, was serious business. Their prime motivation was the belief that Russia, North Korea and China were already carrying out mind-control experiments of their own, and the U.S. was in danger of falling behind. That, combined with the top-secret bureaucratic infrastructure left over from the Manhattan Project days, gave the agency the running start they needed.

On this day, July 20, in 1977, a Freedom of Information Act request brought over 16,000 documents describing declassified CIA experiments with hypnosis. The memos read like science fiction: soldiers being split into completely dissociative personalities, civilians on command firing a gun with the intent to kill, and the priming operatives with the mention of a codeword by phone.

A 1951 declassified memo listed some of the objects of research. Among them were “Can we create by post-H [hypnotic] control an action contrary to an individual’s basic moral principles?”; “Can we ‘alter’ a person’s personality?”; and — straight out of the Manchurian Candidate — “Can we by H [hypnosis] and SI [sleep inducing] techniques force a subject to travel long distances, commit specified acts and return to us or bring documents or materials?”