A group of military veterans are suing to get the CIA to come clean about allegedly implanting remote control devices in their brains. It’s well known that the CIA began testing substances like LSD on soldiers beginning in the 1950s but less is known about allegations that the agency implanted electrodes in subjects.

A 2009 lawsuit (.pdf) claimed that the CIA intended to design and test septal electrodes that would enable them to control human behavior. The lawsuit said that because the government never disclosed the risks, the subjects were not able to give informed consent.  Bruce Price, one plaintiff in the lawsuit, believes that MRI scans confirm that the CIA placed a device in his brain in 1966.

According to a 1979 book by former State Department intelligence officer John Marks, The CIA and the Search for the Manchurian Candidate, an internal 1961 memo by a top agency scientist reported that “the feasibility of remote control of activities in several species of animals has been demonstrated… Special investigations and evaluations will be conducted toward the application of selected elements of these techniques to man.”

“There is no question that these experiments were done but defendants say that they used private researchers and test subjects drawn from prisons, hospitals and nursing homes as subjects, not active duty military [personnel],” Erspamer said. “CIA said it had no one knowledgeable on this topic.”