Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny 1x7

1. - Throughout time, governments and the people

2. who work for them have done strange and even terrible

3. things in the name of national interest,

4. including scientific projects so shocking,

5. they are kept secret for decades.

6. From experimenting on orphans...

7. - He'd force-feed the children, stimulate the wrist.

8. They'd start salivating.

9. - To breeding super soldiers using apes.

10. - He ultimately wanted to create

11. a living war machine.

12. - And even to weaponizing incurable diseases.

13. - These guys are playing with fire.

14. - What could possibly go wrong?

15. - Just how far will nations go to gain an edge?

16. Now it's time to bring

17. these dark experiments into the light.

18. During World War II, the Nazis and the Allies

19. are locked in a race to develop a nuclear weapon.

20. But little is known about how radioactivity

21. affects people exposed to it.

22. To learn more, one nation conducts

23. covert experiments that are covered up for decades.

24. That nation is the United States.

25. Oak Ridge is the headquarters of the Manhattan Project,

26. the U.S. quest to develop an atomic bomb.

27. Scientists here are facing a problem.

28. They are working with radioactive elements

29. they know are dangerous.

30. But they don't yet fully understand

31. the risks of exposure.

32. - Workers must protect themselves

33. from the "hot stuff,"

34. as they call radioactive materials.

35. - But the deadly radiation from the "hot stuff" is

36. invisible and hard to avoid.

37. Sometimes workers even inhale plutonium dust.

38. - If this dust gets into the lungs,

39. it can get into the bloodstream and travel throughout the body.

40. So they need to determine,

41. what is a safe exposure limit for scientists?

42. And what is going to be lethal?

43. - So the Manhattan Project scientists turned

44. to testing, first on animals.

45. It's reported that they used 25,000 mice, and even dogs.

46. But they want more information.

47. - They felt that, you know, the physiological reactions

48. of mice and dogs might be different

49. in significant ways from humans.

50. - So to safeguard their staff,

51. they need even more reliable tests.

52. - The Manhattan Project Science Committee decides

53. to go one step further.

54. They will run radiation exposure tests on humans.

55. The only question is,

56. where to begin?

57. They decide to start close to home.

58. An ambulance speeds

59. through Oak Ridge,

60. rushing construction worker Ebb Cade

61. to the hospital after a head-on collision

62. with a dump truck.

63. - Ebb Cade is in a horrific car accident.

64. He shatters his arm and his leg.

65. But when he goes to the hospital,

66. the doctors start a course of treatment

67. that really isn't consistent for broken bones.

68. - That's because Ebb Cade

69. is about to become the Manhattan Project's

70. first human radiation testing subject.

71. - In the hospital, Ebb Cade is being injected

72. with a syringe that's only marked with the number 49.

73. In a few days, he starts to feel absolutely terrible.

74. - It turns out that 49,

75. the substance that Cade was injected with,

76. was the code name for plutonium.

77. - Without his knowledge or consent,

78. scientists make Cade part of their experiments.

79. - Cade is injected with 4.7 milligrams

80. of plutonium, five times what is deemed

81. to be safe for human exposure.

82. - They delay Cade's treatment for his shattered arm and leg

83. so that they can take bone samples from him

84. after a few days of radiation exposure.

85. - As if that's not enough damage,

86. the scientists pull out 15 of Cade's teeth.

87. It's like they don't give a damn about this guy.

88. They send the teeth, along with bone samples,

89. to the labs at Los Alamos.

90. - As soon as he can move, Ebb Cade gets

91. out of the facility where he's being treated.

92. But by that point, it's kind of too late.

93. He's already been exposed to plutonium.

94. He's already been irradiated.

95. - A few years after this incident, he's gone blind.

96. And he eventually dies in 1953.

97. Cade never knew what had happened to him.

98. - Ebb Cade is not the only victim

99. of the secret radiation exposure testing.

100. Between 1945 and 1947, Manhattan Project scientists

101. used 18 other unsuspecting civilians

102. as human Guinea pigs.

103. - They injected these people with plutonium

104. and other radioactive compounds

105. and just waited to see what would happen.

106. - These experiments stay secret for decades...

107. Until 1987, when a junior reporter

108. in Albuquerque, New Mexico, stumbles

109. across something strange.

110. - Eileen Welsome is a new neighborhoods reporter

111. at "The Albuquerque Tribune."

112. - One day, Welsome is flicking through declassified documents

113. from Kirtland Air Force base about radioactive waste.

114. - There's a footnote in one of the reports

115. that she's looking at that makes reference

116. to plutonium exposure experiments.

117. - And that sets off alarm bells right there.

118. Plutonium is one of the most dangerous

119. elements in the world.

120. - So Welsome sets off on an investigative deep-dive.

121. - Over a period of five years,

122. Welsome tracks down retired government scientists

123. and historians.

124. - In 1993, Welsome publishes

125. a series of articles

126. exposing the Manhattan Project's

127. radiation testing on unsuspecting citizens.

128. - Welsome's investigation quickly becomes public.

129. She's going to win the Pulitzer Prize

130. for her reporting on this issue.

131. President Clinton is going to wind up ordering

132. a deeper investigation into the allegations

133. that Welsome has brought to light.

134. - They plowed through a lot of evidence that

135. had been previously suppressed, kept at arm's distance

136. from reporters like this assiduous member

137. of "The Albuquerque Tribune."

138. - And what they find is the U.S. government

139. really did inject American citizens

140. with radioactive materials

141. to see what the effects would be.

142. - Whether in war or at peace,

143. this is one of the most appalling

144. abuses of government power in U.S. history.

145. - Finally there was an acknowledgment that

146. this had actually happened.

147. - So the government is forced to apologize

148. and give a payout of $400,000 apiece

149. to the surviving families of 12 of the victims.

150. - In 1997, the U.S. Congress passes a law

151. that prohibits the use of unknowing subjects

152. in medical research.

153. - As experts from the Manhattan Project

154. experiment on Americans without their consent,

155. some researchers in the Soviet Union

156. are also pursuing dark science.

157. They want to create a new kind of life,

158. a cross between human and ape.

159. Seven years after the Russian Revolution,

160. the Soviet government cements its power.

161. Now its leaders look to stamp out religion,

162. seeing it as a hindrance

163. in a socialist society.

164. - Lenin and Stalin are both convinced,

165. they have to absolutely eradicate religion

166. if they're going to bring about

167. the glorious Communist revolution.

168. Following the ideas of Marx,

169. they think it's the opium of the people.

170. And it's got to go.

171. - To further that cause, Stalin turns

172. to a scientist named Ilya Ivanov,

173. who has an unusual interest in human genetics.

174. - To show off the potential of this new science,

175. Ivanov has already produced crossbreeds.

176. - But in 1924, he decides

177. to try something far beyond merging two animals together.

178. - What Ivanov is proposing is to crossbreed

179. humans and chimpanzees

180. to create what he'll call a humanzee.

181. - It's a project that's just so perverse,

182. it boggles the mind.

183. But Ivanov is staking his reputation

184. and his life on its success.

185. - Ivanov is convinced that if his experiments work

186. and apes and humans can successfully interbreed,

187. that this means they share a common ancestor.

188. And therefore, the Bible and the notion

189. of unique creation is false.

190. - Once Stalin gives Ivanov funding,

191. the pressure is on to deliver.

192. Ivanov travels to Guinea, French West Africa,

193. and gets to work.

194. - Ivanov artificially inseminates

195. three female chimpanzees with human sperm.

196. Shocker, it doesn't take.

197. - So he decides to flip the experiment—

198. use chimp sperm in a human woman.

199. - This is just so dark and perverted that

200. it proves to be too much for the authorities in Guinea.

201. They've had enough of Ivanov.

202. And they just expel him from the country.

203. "You are not welcome here."

204. - Ivanov is terrified at the prospect

205. of not being able to succeed.

206. - He received serious funding from the USSR.

207. And this is not a government to disappoint.

208. So you can imagine, the pressure is on.

209. - Let's be honest.

210. Stalin kills anybody

211. who makes a promise and can't fulfill it.

212. - Coming up...

213. when Ivanov returns to Russia,

214. he tries to recruit new subjects for his experiments.

215. - He wants to entice Soviet women in

216. and artificially inseminate them with chimpanzee sperm.

217. - Then the real purpose behind Ivanov's perverse experiments

218. is exposed.

219. - What Stalin wants is regiments

220. - What Stalin wants is regiments

221. of completely obedient, super capable super soldiers.

222. - In the 1920s, a Russian scientist

223. named Ilya Ivanov engages in a shocking experiment

224. with Stalin's support.

225. He tries to create a hybrid creature

226. by crossbreeding humans and apes.

227. His alleged goal?

228. Challenge the belief that God created man.

229. After his experiments in Africa fail,

230. Ivanov returns home with four chimpanzees.

231. - He wants to entice Soviet women in

232. and artificially inseminate them with chimpanzee sperm.

233. - But the chimp that he has earmarked to donate samples,

234. a 26-year-old named Tarzan, dies of a brain hemorrhage

235. before he can get a sample.

236. - Ivanov is officially a failure.

237. And Stalin does what he does with those who disappoint him.

238. Ivanov is off to the gulag.

239. - Ivanov's notes and research disappear for decades,

240. lost in the labyrinths of the Soviet archives.

241. When they're finally uncovered,

242. they reveal something new.

243. - The real hidden purpose of Ivanov's experiments

244. doesn't become known until 2005,

245. when a revelatory story is published

246. in "The Scotsman" newspaper.

247. - The paper reveals that this was never

248. about undermining religion.

249. It was about developing a new breed

250. of half-human, half-ape super soldiers.

251. - It sounds like something you would read in a comic book

252. when you were a kid.

253. But according to the paper,

254. Stalin ordered Ivanov to create

255. a living war machine for the Red Army.

256. - Consider the physical characteristics

257. of chimpanzees.

258. Incredibly strong.

259. They would ignore pain.

260. They wouldn't care what type of food they were being fed.

261. They would accept any abuse in service of the state.

262. - What Stalin wants is regiments

263. of completely obedient, super capable super soldiers.

264. - Stalin's hybrid human-ape army never comes to pass.

265. But just a few years after Ivanov is carrying out

266. his research, Japanese scientists are

267. working on their own dark experiments,

268. experiments that lead to the largest

269. biological warfare attack in human history.

270. Imperial Japanese troops invade Manchuria

271. in Northeast China and begin a brutal occupation.

272. - Japan's top microbiologist in the 1930s

273. is a man named Shiro Ishii.

274. And he is posted to Manchuria during the Japanese invasion

275. of mainland China.

276. - Ishii's mission is to develop hideous biological weapons

277. for the Japanese army.

278. - In 1935, with the backing of the Japanese military,

279. Ishii creates a huge bio-warfare laboratory.

280. - The Imperial Japanese bulldoze a set

281. of villages at Pingfang.

282. - In their place, they construct

283. a massive new headquarters

284. for Ishii's covert division, Unit 731.

285. - It's set to become

286. one of the most notorious divisions

287. in the entire Japanese military.

288. - They are creating at Pingfang an Eastern Auschwitz.

289. They're creating a place where

290. they will perfect the mechanisms

291. for the extermination of human life.

292. - He creates a cover story

293. to explain the construction.

294. He says it's a lumber mill.

295. And the scientists there refer to their victims as logs.

296. - The Japanese, over and over again at Special Unit 731,

297. treat Chinese people as if they are animals,

298. as if they have no feelings, as if they have no families,

299. as if they don't deserve to live on the planet.

300. - The new facility soon grows

301. to the size of a small town.

302. Ishii and his team round up Chinese citizens

303. and imprison them there.

304. What happens next is shocking.

305. - These monsters, these butchers in Unit 731,

306. they deliberately infect male prisoners

307. with venereal diseases like syphilis.

308. And then those same men are forced

309. to rape female prisoners,

310. just so Ishii can test disease transmission.

311. - They would inject them with plague and anthrax

312. and then watch them die.

313. Sometimes it was even worse than that.

314. As the disease was advancing,

315. they would conduct a "living dissection,"

316. a vivisection of the test subject.

317. - They were going to take your organs out

318. and examine them to see the progression of disease.

319. You're still alive while this is happening.

320. You're awake.

321. You're not under anesthesia.

322. They are holding you down

323. and taking out your organs.

324. You are going to die,

325. and you're going to watch it happen.

326. - By 1942, Ishii reaches

327. the culmination of his experiments.

328. He unleashes biological warfare on entire cities.

329. - What the Japanese do is they essentially

330. breed fleas and make sure that they are plague carriers.

331. And then they use aerial bombardment

332. to drop those fleas on Chinese urban areas,

333. in the hopes of touching off a plague epidemic.

334. - Nobody knows for sure how many

335. people are actually killed.

336. But estimates have given us numbers

337. as high as 50,000 people, possibly even more.

338. This is the largest biological weapons attack

339. on people in the whole war-torn 20th century.

340. - In 1945, the Russians invade Manchuria,

341. ending Japan's occupation of China.

342. Ishii's reign of terror is over.

343. - Ishii and their team slaughter

344. their remaining prisoners.

345. And then they just run back to Japan,

346. taking all of this blood-soaked experimental data with them.

347. - Between 1945 and 1947, U.S. war crimes investigators

348. question Ishii and the Unit 731 team.

349. - Through that interrogation, it was learned

350. what had been done at Special Unit 731.

351. They not only kill about 14,000 Chinese test subjects—

352. living, breathing human beings that are

353. treated like test animals—

354. they kill off about 50,000 Chinese people

355. through actual weaponization of the flea.

356. - Despite having clear proof of Ishii's guilt,

357. investigators decide not to charge him with any war crimes.

358. - Why doesn't the U.S. prosecute

359. this known war criminal?

360. The answer is simple.

361. The military wants his data.

362. In exchange for his research, Ishii gets off scot-free.

363. The facts are revealed in a 1998 letter

364. from the Department of Justice.

365. - The U.S. government was prohibited from conducting

366. actual ghoulish testing against human test subjects

367. that had been an everyday matter of business

368. at Special Unit 731.

369. And so we wanted to benefit from it by having access

370. to the details of all of the technical information

371. that his institute had developed.

372. - Sometimes American authorities made compromises

373. with horrible people as part of its pursuit

374. of advantage against the Soviet Union.

375. - The leader of Unit 731 lives in peace

376. until his death from throat cancer in 1959.

377. - During the Cold War, the Soviets carry out

378. covert science experiments in remote locations.

379. One place will become known as Plague Island.

380. But it only becomes a priority for U.S. spy agencies

381. when a boat strays too close to shore.

382. The Aral Sea,

383. deep inside the Soviet Union,

384. 1971.

385. The research vessel "Lev Berg"

386. is working in waters near a remote island there.

387. - It's a normal day on board, when suddenly,

388. the ship runs into something strange.

389. - It's a brown cloud of haze hovering just above the water,

390. and it's too late to avoid it.

391. The ship sails right through it.

392. - On board the ship, a young researcher

393. comes down with a mysterious illness,

394. and a terrible rash breaks out all over her body.

395. When she gets back to her home village, her illness spreads.

396. - It's a severe contagion.

397. Within weeks, three people in the town

398. are dead, including two newborn children.

399. - Doctors find out that what she was infected with

400. was one of the most deadly diseases

401. that humans have ever encountered, smallpox.

402. - Smallpox is terrifying.

403. It killed more people in the 20th century

404. than all of the wars in that century combined.

405. - But the researcher is vaccinated against smallpox.

406. She should have been immune to it.

407. - One year later, a fishing boat is found

408. washed up near the same island.

409. - Inside the boat are two fishermen, stone-cold dead.

410. Meanwhile nearby, other fishermen are

411. bringing in catches filled with dead and dying fish.

412. - When villagers examine the bodies

413. of the dead fishermen,

414. they find them covered in pustulous swellings.

415. - The lesions on these fishermen

416. are consistent with bubonic plague,

417. one of the deadliest diseases that confronts humankind,

418. with a fatality rate of about 50%.

419. - When U.S. intelligence agencies

420. get wind of these strange deaths, they have questions.

421. What's happening on this remote island?

422. - The island is located

423. 1,500 miles from Moscow.

424. Access is restricted

425. by the Soviet government.

426. - American spies have been trying

427. to study the island for years.

428. Photos of the island snapped from spy planes and satellites

429. show that it's far from ordinary.

430. - Other settlements nearby have

431. fishing piers and fish packing sheds.

432. The secret island appears to instead have

433. things like barracks and rifle ranges,

434. as well as animal pens, research buildings,

435. and what appears to be an open air testing site.

436. - The images confirm the CIA's worst fears.

437. The island is clearly a military

438. scientific research base.

439. - But the question remains, what kind of horrifying weapons

440. are being dreamed up and tested there?

441. - What's going on on this island

442. remains a mystery until

443. after the end of the Cold War.

444. - In 1992, a year after the USSR fails,

445. Soviet military microbiologist Colonel Ken Alibek

446. flees to America and brings with him

447. the truth about Plague Island.

448. - The former insider reveals that the island

449. is more than just a military scientific base.

450. It's devoted to transforming natural diseases

451. into deadly weapons— bio-warfare,

452. which is illegal under international law.

453. - For decades, the Soviets have been

454. experimenting here with some of the deadliest

455. diseases known to man.

456. - Beginning in the 1930s, they're attempting

457. to weaponize everything, from smallpox and plague

458. to these monstrous viral diseases

459. which have no known cure.

460. - They were trying to make bacterial pathogens

461. resistant to antibiotics, make viruses

462. more difficult to detect and treat.

463. - What they hoped to create were unstoppable plagues,

464. which they could launch at their enemy:

465. the United States and her allies.

466. - Things that were developed on that island still,

467. to this day, have no cure.

468. - Safety protocols are tight,

469. but these guys are playing with fire.

470. And sure enough, things go wrong, very wrong.

471. - Just a little leak or the smallest spill

472. can have deadly consequences.

473. - We have no idea how many people

474. were killed in the process of developing these weapons.

475. were killed in the process of developing these weapons.

476. - To this day, Plague Island is

477. one of the most poisonous places on the planet.

478. - Many U.S. soldiers returning from World War II

479. carry battle scars, both physical and mental.

480. When they seek help, some receive treatment

481. that can only be called shocking.

482. The U.S. Army's bombardment group are flying B-17s

483. on dangerous daytime raids.

484. - Flying combat missions over Europe

485. is one of the most dangerous aspects

486. of World War II for American service personnel.

487. - On every mission, these men were dancing with death.

488. - 22-year-old Roman Tritz is

489. one of those American aviators

490. flying 34 combat missions over Europe.

491. - Tritz sees many of his comrades,

492. his friends, being shot out of the sky.

493. - B-17 out of control at 3 o'clock.

494. - The unit loses more than 100 planes

495. over the course of the war.

496. - Come on, you guys. Get out of that plane.

497. Bail out!

498. - There's one. He's come out of the bomb bay.

499. - Yeah, I see him.

500. - It's an experience he'll never forget,

501. and it'll haunt him for the rest of his life.

502. - When the war ends in 1945, Roman Tritz comes home

503. to ticker tape parades and public adulation.

504. - After being discharged, Tritz is given

505. a clean bill of health by the Army medics.

506. But for the young bomber pilot,

507. the wartime trauma just won't go away.

508. - When Tritz comes home,

509. his life effectively starts to fall apart.

510. He can't sleep.

511. He starts to have hallucinations and delusions.

512. - Tritz is probably suffering from a form

513. of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD,

514. something people don't understand at the time.

515. - PTSD as a diagnosis doesn't exist yet.

516. So doctors call someone with these symptoms

517. either shell-shocked or say that they have battle fatigue.

518. - His parents, who are not psychiatric professionals,

519. they don't know what to do with him.

520. They gave this kid to the U.S. Army.

521. The U.S. Army gave him back, and he was a complete mess.

522. They couldn't do anything for him.

523. And so they have him committed.

524. - Training footage released in 1944 by the U.S. military

525. suggests what veterans like Tritz might have experienced.

526. - In the psychiatric facility, he is given

527. 66 rounds of the so-called "needle shower."

528. He is exposed to intensely hot water,

529. followed by intensely cold water.

530. And it was thought that this would somehow

531. help him get over this condition.

532. - The doctors try insulin shock therapy,

533. which puts Tritz into a medically-induced coma.

534. The treatment is intended to break

535. the cycle of mental illness.

536. - They later hit him with 28 rounds of electroshock therapy,

537. in the hopes that this will improve

538. Tritz's brain chemistry.

539. - When this doesn't work,

540. medics turn to a new form of psycho-surgery: lobotomy.

541. - A lobotomy is a surgical procedure

542. that was developed in 1935

543. by Portuguese neurologist Antonio Moniz.

544. - Surgeons use a device called a leucotome to physically sever

545. the connection between the frontal lobe

546. and the thalamus in the brain.

547. - The operation is supposed to work

548. by eliminating excessive emotions

549. and stabilizing wild mood swings.

550. - Lobotomy is permanently damaging,

551. and the VA doctors know it.

552. - As far back as 1941,

553. the American Medical Association

554. warns of "severe negative effects."

555. They report that some 10,000 lobotomies

556. had already been performed in the United States.

557. - Some patients don't survive the procedure.

558. But those that do, some of them end up

559. just living out the rest of their lives

560. almost like just a drooling zombie.

561. - Tritz's parents don't know that,

562. and they give their consent.

563. - In Tomah Veterans Hospital in Wisconsin,

564. on the 1st of July, 1953, Tritz is taken into surgery.

565. At 11:05 a.m., a surgeon peels back

566. the flesh from his skull

567. and drills two holes right into it.

568. - Tritz survives the operation,

569. but he doesn't improve.

570. - After the surgery, Tritz experiences

571. crippling seizures, which the doctors

572. do attribute to the lobotomy.

573. - He lapses into catatonia

574. and is plagued by paranoid delusions.

575. - In 2013, more than 50 years after

576. Roman Tritz is lobotomized, a journalist unearths

577. evidence deep in the National Archives.

578. - Against all odds, journalist Michael Phillips

579. actually uses this information to track down Roman Tritz,

580. who is still alive seven decades after World War II,

581. in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

582. - Years later, even into his old age,

583. Roman is still suffering from the after-effects

584. of his brutal lobotomy.

585. - He still has paranoid delusions

586. about being pursued by the FBI.

587. He also makes references

588. to what he calls his "magnetic brain."

589. - Phillips discovers that Tritz is not alone.

590. - Michael Phillips finds a memorandum

591. that mentions how lobotomies are being used

592. to treat veterans for psychiatric conditions.

593. - The memo shows they are being performed at

594. some 50 hospitals across America.

595. - Between 1947 and 1950, the VA had carried out

596. lobotomies in 1,500 American veterans.

597. And hundreds more are lobotomized later.

598. - Roman Tritz lives

599. to see his story made public.

600. He dies at age 97,

601. He dies at age 97,

602. still blaming the government for his brutal surgery.

603. - At the beginning of the Cold War,

604. Washington is on edge about the threat

605. of Communist infiltration.

606. In 1956, a book by Edward Hunter

607. is published that confirms the public's worst fears.

608. Its subject— the Soviets are developing

609. brainwashing as a weapon.

610. - When Edward Hunter comes out with his book,

611. it really just throws a lot of kerosene

612. on a fire that was ready to explode.

613. - Hunter claims that Soviet brainwashing science is

614. now so advanced, it can create a kind of

615. mass hypnosis across the country

616. that would rob Americans of their free will entirely.

617. - He suggests that the Soviets could do this

618. at such a wide scale to create an army of puppets

619. under Soviet control.

620. - Hunter bases his claims on the idea

621. that Americans captured during the Korean War

622. were brainwashed into making false confessions.

623. - I came over here and dropped germ bombs on people.

624. - Hunter traces Soviet brainwashing experiments

625. back decades to before the Russian Revolution,

626. to Nobel laureate Ivan Pavlov.

627. - Pavlov is world famous for his pioneering

628. research into the brain.

629. A film produced in Russia in 1926

630. illustrates his work with dogs.

631. - Pavlov is most known for his conditioning dogs.

632. He trained dogs to react to a sound.

633. Every time they heard the sound,

634. they would get a treat, to the point where,

635. every time they heard the sound,

636. they would start salivating in anticipation of that treat.

637. - Pavlov calls this behavior "conditioned response."

638. - What he's proved is that, essentially,

639. the dogs' brains can be hijacked.

640. - Hunter gets a lead that Pavlov's experiments

641. went far further than most realize.

642. - Hunter learns from a source that Pavlov's experiments

643. didn't end with dogs.

644. He hears that there is hidden secret footage

645. of other experiments.

646. And he sets out to find it.

647. - After months of digging, he manages to trace a copy.

648. But his book keeps the source under wraps.

649. When he sits down to watch the secret film,

650. he discovers something terrifying.

651. - The footage from 1926 proves that

652. Pavlov's work extends into much darker experiments

653. than his famous animal research.

654. - What Hunter finds is footage of Pavlov

655. running the same experiments, but with human children.

656. He conditions young orphaned boys

657. to have the same salivating response to a sound

658. that he did with dogs.

659. - He'd force-feed the children, stimulate the wrist,

660. force-feed the children, stimulate the wrist.

661. They'd start salivating.

662. - Pavlov's proving that humans can be

663. conditioned, just like dogs.

664. - Hunter wonders if the Soviets aren't using

665. this kind of conditioning brainwashing tactic

666. on prisoners of war.

667. - If a human can be conditioned,

668. then how far could that conditioning go?

669. - Two years after his book comes out,

670. Edward Hunter testifies before the House Committee

671. on un-American Activities.

672. - Hunter warns that the U.S. is losing the Cold War

673. because the Soviets have such a massive head start

674. when it comes to psychological warfare

675. and mind control techniques.

676. - He wonders if the Soviets haven't honed this research

677. and have been doing mass brainwashing for decades.

678. - In a country that's already on edge

679. about the Communist menace, Hunter's report

680. about the advances in brainwashing science

681. by the Soviets just ratchets up that fear

682. to a pitch of utter hysteria.

683. - There's a final twist in the tale

684. of "journalist" Edward Hunter.

685. - So a number of years later, it was discovered that

686. Edward Hunter actually wasn't who he purported to be.

687. - He's an agent of the CIA,

688. operating in their propaganda wing.

689. - Pavlov's experiments on children were real.

690. But the link Hunter makes to Soviet mind control

691. is entirely fictitious.

692. - His writing about brainwashing

693. is, in effect, a black op,

694. designed to spread mistrust and hatred of the Communists

695. during the Cold War.

696. - Once you have a negative thought or feeling

697. about an individual or a group or an organization,

698. it doesn't take much to continue

699. to build that confirmation bias that they are bad,

700. that they're trying to do nefarious things against us.

701. And so that's what he was doing by spreading

702. And so that's what he was doing by spreading

703. this disinformation.

704. - When citizens tear down the Berlin Wall in 1989,

705. investigators discover the crimes

706. of East German scientists.

707. They've doped their athletes and used psychological warfare

708. on their own citizens.

709. They also uncover stranger experiments.

710. - For decades after the Second World War,

711. East Germans lived in terror

712. of their notorious secret police, the Stasi.

713. - At the head of the Stasi, we have Erich Mielke.

714. He's a Stalinist enforcer, and has no problem

715. doing that enforcing in his own homeland.

716. - He's in charge of the most pervasive

717. police state in modern history.

718. - And frankly, he's terrifying.

719. The West German press dubbed him The Master of Fear.

720. - As the regime collapses, East German citizens

721. storm the Stasi headquarters.

722. - Inside they find agents frantically

723. shredding documents, desperately

724. trying to cover their tracks.

725. But there's simply too much evidence to hide.

726. - There are literally 68 miles of shelving,

727. just chock full of spy agency files on their own citizens.

728. There's photos, tape recordings—

729. all kinds of invasions of citizen privacy.

730. But there's also something more puzzling.

731. - As they continue through

732. these endless miles of shelves,

733. they come to what are effectively Mason jars,

734. sealed shut, inside of which, typically,

735. are little bits of yellow cloth.

736. - The citizens are left wondering,

737. what exactly are these for?

738. What is the purpose of these sealed containers?

739. - Shortly after, newspaper articles expose the answer.

740. - The jars have actual people's scent inside them.

741. They're smell jars.

742. These are jars full of people's actual body odors.

743. He has been collecting body odors.

744. - Mielke believes that a person's scent

745. is every bit as individual as their fingerprints are.

746. - So just as police around the world

747. keep files on fingerprints of suspects,

748. that's what Mielke is doing with body odor.

749. - This is actually good science.

750. Modern researchers find that by analyzing

751. some 15 volatile organic compounds,

752. they can identify gender and ethnicity

753. with up to 80% accuracy.

754. - In order to satisfy his paranoia,

755. Mielke orders the creation of a library of body odor.

756. - The Stasi take the collection of odors

757. very seriously.

758. They go about the country

759. stealing articles of clothing.

760. So, sorry about your favorite sweater.

761. They'll go into a home when no one's there,

762. leave a little vial that will collect

763. the odors in the house.

764. No constitutional issues in East Germany.

765. And they'll come back again and collect that.

766. - What agents actually do is,

767. they wipe some of their suspects

768. in their sensitive areas

769. with a special cloth to collect their scent.

770. Another method involves

771. calling suspects in for interrogation.

772. And when they go in, they're forced

773. to sit in a special chair.

774. - The suspect, this local German,

775. is brought in, interrogated,

776. intentionally pushed to a point

777. of great nervousness so that they will sweat.

778. And as that sweat then seeps down into the fabric,

779. it's being absorbed by this bit of cloth

780. underneath the upholstery.

781. - But Mielke has a problem.

782. Humans can't track these smells.

783. So he turns to dogs.

784. - Compared to humans, dogs have an incredibly

785. refined sense of smell.

786. They have up to 300 million olfactory receptors

787. in their noses.

788. And this means their noses are up to

789. 100,000 times more sensitive than those of humans.

790. - So the Stasi trained dozens of specialized dogs

791. to smell the odor within a jar, and then go

792. track that out and about in the city to find

793. their potential suspects.

794. - Mielke's strange experiment causes real harm.

795. It's used to track down and imprison unknown numbers

796. of enemies of the state.

797. - About one in six East Germans were,

798. in fact, somehow answering to, working on, serving, the Stasi.

799. So everywhere you go in life, imagine this.

800. Whether you're at school, work, perhaps even at home,

801. you never know just who might be collecting

802. this vast catalog of odors, scents, and smells

803. from the citizenry, with the expectation

804. that this will enable them to identify a criminal

805. or enemy of the state in the future.

806. - Mielke keeps collecting

807. his sinister smell samples...

808. Until East German communism is finally overthrown in 1989.

809. From treatments given to American citizens

810. without consent

811. to attempts to weaponize deadly diseases,

812. dark experiments all too often

813. take place in the shadows.

814. But with luck and hard work,

815. these secrets can be revealed.

816. I'm David Duchovny.

817. Thanks for watching

818. "Secrets Declassified."