OPERATION OFTEN

Opening

Operation Often, sometimes written MKOFTEN, is said to have been a CIA programme of the late 1960s and early 1970s that studied the occult. In the usual telling, the Agency paid astrologers, palmists and a medium, approached an exorcist and even audited a university course on sorcery, to see whether black magic or psychic gifts could be put to intelligence use. Nearly every version traces back to one writer, Gordon Thomas.

The name itself is real. A CIA statement placed in the record of a 1977 Senate hearing describes a Project OFTEN, but as something else entirely: a drug-testing programme run from 1967 by the CIA's Office of Research and Development with the Army's Edgewood Arsenal. The documented OFTEN tested chemicals on animals and, ultimately, people. The occult version has no released document behind it.

Timeline

April 1953Project MKUltra begins under Sidney Gottlieb in the Technical Services Staff, later Division.

Fiscal year 1966Funding begins for MKSEARCH, the continuation of MKUltra, which has its own report.

1967The Office of Research and Development (ORD) and the Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories begin a joint programme to identify and test drugs that could influence behaviour. It is split into OFTEN, for testing, and CHICKWIT, for gathering drug developments and samples from Europe and Asia.

1971A memo describes a backlog of more than 26,000 compounds awaiting screening.

Fiscal year 1972MKSEARCH funding ends.

1972The CIA begins funding remote viewing research at the Stanford Research Institute, the start of what later became the Stargate programme.

10 December 1972 (claimed)According to Thomas, Director Richard Helms cancels the occult programme.

1973Helms orders MKUltra records destroyed.

June 1973Human testing takes place at Edgewood; in 1977 the CIA and the Defense Department disagree over who sponsored it.

3 August 1977At a joint Senate hearing, Senator Edward Kennedy asks Director Stansfield Turner for reports on MKSEARCH, OFTEN and CHICKWIT.

1989Thomas publishes Journey into Madness, the earliest account of the occult programme I could find.

2007Thomas retells it in Secrets and Lies, the version most online accounts repeat.

Key figures

Gordon Thomas, the British journalist and author who is the source for the occult story.

Sidney Gottlieb, MKUltra's chief, named in the popular version as the programme's originator.

Stephen Aldrich, who headed ORD, the office that actually ran the documented OFTEN.

Stansfield Turner, the Director who promised the Senate reports on OFTEN and CHICKWIT.

H. P. Albarelli Jr., whose 2009 book A Terrible Mistake challenged much of Thomas's sourcing.

Physical and documentary trail

The documented OFTEN appears in the CIA's "Material for the Record" printed with the 3 August 1977 hearing on MKUltra. It sits under the same heading as MKSEARCH, which the CIA described in the same statement as the continuation of MKUltra. The statement reads:

The program was divided into two projects. Project OFTEN was to deal with testing the toxicological, transmissivity and behavioral effects of drugs in animals and, ultimately, humans. Project CHICKWIT was concerned with acquiring information on new drug developments in Europe and the Orient, and with acquiring samples.

The occult claims rest on Thomas's books: ORD officers posing as a "Scientific Engineering Institute", three astrologers on the payroll by May 1971, two Chinese-American palmists by 1972 who were shown Fidel Castro's palm prints, a medium used at the United Nations, and a sorcery course at the University of South Carolina. Nick Redfern's Final Events (2010) adds a $150,000 grant and a story that the name came from a word Gottlieb often used. None of these details is supported by a released document, and Albarelli found many of Thomas's claims unsupported by documents or cited sources.

Corrections to the earlier version of this report. The documented OFTEN was a drug programme run by ORD with Edgewood from 1967, not an occult project of Gottlieb's Technical Services Division. Thomas's occult account dates to 1989, not first to 2007. MKSEARCH was funded from fiscal 1966 to 1972, not 1964 to 1973.

Things you might not know

• The real OFTEN was about knockout drugs. Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain's Acid Dreams describes the OFTEN and CHICKWIT work as focused on incapacitating agents.
• The backlog ran to five figures. A 1971 memo cited in Acid Dreams describes more than 26,000 drugs waiting to be screened.
• One compound hit the testers. Acid Dreams reports that EA-3167 caused "prolonged psychotic effects in laboratory personnel".
• Turner had not read it. Asked about CHICKWIT in 1977, Turner said it was the CIA's part in what was basically a Defense Department programme and that he had not yet read into that part of the Agency's history.
• The fees are oddly precise. Redfern repeats a figure of $350 a week for the astrologers, a detail no released record confirms.
• The parapsychology was real. ORD did fund parapsychology, and the SRI remote viewing contracts from 1972 are fully documented.

Competing explanations

A real, small occult side project. The CIA studied parapsychology and funded remote viewing, and the 1973 destruction removed much of the record of this era. An occult project under ORD would fit that culture.

A real name with an invented story attached. The genuine OFTEN was secret, odd-sounding and lightly documented, which made it an easy label to hang other material on. Thomas may have merged real parapsychology work, rumour and the drug programme's name.

An embellished account. Albarelli's critique of Thomas's sourcing points to a writer whose specific details often cannot be traced. Without his sources, the astrologers and palmists cannot be checked either way.

Later life of the case

Operation Often is widely repeated on conspiracy sites and podcasts, usually as documented fact and usually alongside MKUltra, whose record is far stronger. The confusion with the real OFTEN helps it: a search for the name turns up a genuine CIA document, though one about drugs, not witches.

Finding

One witness. The CIA's OFTEN existed and was a drug-testing programme with Edgewood, documented in the 1977 Senate record. The occult programme under that name rests on Gordon Thomas's account alone, first published in 1989, with no released document behind it.

What still will not resolve: Thomas's sources. Albarelli found his claims unsupported by documents or cited sources, nothing released since has filled the gap, and the 1973 destruction means the absence of a CIA record cannot settle it either way.