Excerpt from the... JOINT HEARING BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON HEALTH AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH testimony
AUGUST 3, 1977

Senator KENNEDY: "Admiral Turner, this is an enormously distressing report that you give to the American Congress and to the American people today. Granted, it happened many years ago, but what we are basically talking about is an activity which took place in the country that involved the perversion and the corruption of many of our outstanding research centers in this country, with CIA funds, where some of our top researchers were unwittingly involved in research sponsored by the Agency in which they had no knowledge of the background or the support for.

Much of it was done with American citizens who were completely unknowing in terms of taking various drugs, and there are perhaps any number of Americans who are walking around today on the east coast or west coast who were given drugs, with all the kinds of physical and psychological damage that can be caused. We have gone over that in very careful detail, and it is significant and severe indeed.

I do not know what could be done in a less democratic country that would be more alien to our own traditions than was really done in this narrow area, and as you give this report to the committee, I would like to get some sense of your own concern about this type of activity, and how you react, having assumed this important responsibility with the confidence of President Carter and the overwhelming support, obviously, of the Congress, under this set of circumstances.

I did not get much of a feeling in reviewing your statement here this morning of the kind of abhorrence to this type of past activity which I think the American people would certainly deplore and which I believe that you do, but could you comment upon that question, and also perhaps give us what ideas you have to insure that it cannot happen again?" Read the entire transcript HERE