FOIAWEAR — BLUEBIRD / Project Bluebird 1950 Tee

FOIAWEAR / ARCHIVE SERIES 042 — BLUEBIRD

In 1950 the Agency authorised its first mind-control programme, and asked for it to be kept from almost everybody who worked there.

The programme was Project BLUEBIRD. Its authorisation survives as an Office Memorandum of August 1950 from the Chief, Inspection and Security Staff to the Director of Central Intelligence, and it opens by explaining why it is going straight to the Director: “In view of the extreme sensitivity of this project and its covert nature, it is deemed advisable to submit this project directly to you, rather than through the channel of the Projects Review Committee.” The next line is the one that stays with you: “Knowledge of this project should be restricted to the absolute minimum number of persons.”

The purpose is stated just as plainly. BLUEBIRD was to “provide for the immediate establishment of interrogation teams” — and those teams would “utilize… personnel, drugs, and hypnosis to obtain the greatest results in interrogation”. It came out of a meeting of representatives of ADSO, ADPC, ADMS and the Chief of DPSS on 14 March 1950. The memorandum’s own justification for centralising the work is a security argument: the varied interests in this field should be “brought into a single project where appropriate controls can be exercised”, to “avoid compromise of our techniques.”

By June 1950 a team was being assembled and sent overseas. The priority requirement for it adds “a doctor-psychiatrist” to the staff, notes that the team “should not be over four people”, and works out how much of it can be told what — a member who “would not be briefed on the entire project”, with the polygraph used as cover for the work.

What the programme actually accumulated is visible in its own filing guide. The Reference Guide to Material in Central BLUEBIRD Files of the Office of Security indexes the material under five headings:

A. Personnel — which, the guide notes, “will include victims, officials, scientists and others.”
B. New Techniques — “Drugs, Hypnosis, etc.”
C. Conventional Techniques
D. Research — “Fundamental or applied”
E. Discussions, Outlines and Bibliographies

BLUEBIRD was renamed ARTICHOKE in 1951, and ran on alongside the larger MKULTRA programme created in 1953.

The artwork is a mid-century clinical plate — the induction spiral, a psychograph trace rolling out of the machine, the vial and the syringe, and the tabbed cards of a case file.

Offered in eleven garment colours, printed as two different plates rather than one image re-toned. On the dark garments (Black, Graphite, Espresso, Pepper) the plate prints in warm cream, brick and ochre. On the light garments (White, Ivory, Butter, Chalky Mint, Light Green, Blossom, Chambray) the same instruments are drawn again as a three-ink screen plate for pale cloth — heavy black line work and halftone shading, the induction spiral and a card tab in deep bluebird blue, and one red mark on the trace.

The QR code on the front opens the released document itself — Project BLUEBIRD, Office Memorandum to the Director of Central Intelligence, August 1950: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/00144898

Note: quotations above are taken verbatim from the released documents. The original memoranda are OCR scans with damaged characters, so wording is quoted only where it is legible; redactions, filing marks and page layout are not reproduced. This is a tribute to the historical record, not an official publication.

Garment: Comfort Colors 1717 garment-dyed t-shirt. Heavyweight 6.1 oz/yd² (206.8 g/m²), 100% ring-spun US cotton, pre-shrunk, relaxed fit, double-needle stitched with no side seams and a sewn-in label. Sizes S–4XL. Printed on the front at 300 DPI; plain back. The main artwork prints at 10 × 10 in and the QR at 1.8 × 1.8 in.

Care: machine wash cold, inside out, with like colours. Tumble dry low. Do not iron directly on the printed area.

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