Was the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump earlier this month part of a secret CIA program involving brainwashed killers? This is the claim of some far-right accounts on X, but US intelligence agencies are taking the unusual step of directly and forcefully denying these claims.
In the 1970s, when it was revealed that the CIA was trying to develop a mind-manipulation program called MKUltra, it sounded like the most ridiculous conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, this turned out to be true, even though the program’s suggestive results and potential to create manchurian candidate– like The Killer – was exaggerated in the following decades.
But MKUltra has become quite the meme in the 2020s, with many conspiracy theorists jumping into the fray after Trump was shot by a 20-year-old at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. But some on social media have tried to claim that Crooks was in part trained by the CIA’s MKUltra program to hunt down Trump.
“What if US President Joe Biden’s ‘mean tweets’ triggered Thomas Matthew Crooks?” an X account called Real Global News tweeted days after the shooting. “Yeah, like a #MKUltra exam subjects. I don’t want to get into conspiracy theories here, but the CIA did mind control experiments, e.g. #manchuriancandidate. Wait for the trigger before taking action.
Another account, @MJTruthUltra, tweeted “MKUltra anyone?” lays out a series of questionable claims about Crooks and how local police handled the investigation into the assassination attempt against Trump.
The CIA decided to publicly refute the claims, something the agency does not often do when bizarre conspiracy theories circulate online.
“These claims are completely false, ridiculous and damaging,” a CIA spokesperson told Gizmodo on Thursday. “The CIA had no relationship with Thomas Crooks. Regarding MKULTRA, the CIA’s program was established more than 40 years ago.” was shut down, and declassified information about the program was made public on CIA.gov.
The CIA’s denial, first reported by Wired and confirmed by Gizmodo after we contacted it, suggests that after decades of “no comment” or Glomar’s stereotypical response to just about everything, the CIA is now May be more willing to engage with the public.
It’s not surprising that Trump supporters have advanced conspiracy theories, such as that Crooks was part of the MKUltra scheme. It’s really their whole brand. Trump himself has been fomenting ridiculous conspiracy theories for years, often boasting that “QAnon” is real. Believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory believe there is a secret cabal of Democratic politicians and Hollywood powerful people who drink the blood of children while engaging in ritual torture and rape. The only person who can save these children from this fate is… Donald Trump, the sex offender who had a decades-long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump supporters may be some of the dumbest people on the planet, but it’s easy to see why even ordinary people believe conspiracy theories. There are a lot of strange things happening in the world, and sometimes these rumors turn out to be true.
Fundamentally, the MKUltra program focuses on how to mentally destroy those being interrogated. Test subjects were sometimes given mind-altering drugs without their knowledge, and the program included countless other abuses, including sexual assault and torture. While that’s scary enough, the CIA never created a Manchurian Candidate who could be programmed to kill anyone the agency wanted. At least that’s as far as anyone can tell, according to the thousands of pages of records that have been discovered.
But clearly, as the U.S. government abuses human beings with reckless abandon, people are ready to carry these ideas into other areas of our lives.
We still don’t know why Crooks shot Trump.
