Between 1953 and 1973, MKUltra, a secret CIA program, explored ... mind-control drugs that the U.S. could use as weapons. By drugging civilians and government workers (without consent), the program's researchers wanted to observe the effects of the drugs like LSD, ultimately hoping to make people biddable to carry out tasks like secret assassinations. Details of MKUltra began to emerge in 1974, when a New York Times story exposed the CIA's unethical and illegal practices, leading to a senate investigation and public revelations. The full extent of MKUltra's activities will likely remain a mystery, since CIA director Richard Helms ordered all of the program's records to be destroyed the year before. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI launched the Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, in the thick of the Cold War. Its objective: mitigate the Communist Party of the United States's influence. COINTELPRO used a range of tactics to surveil and sabotage its targets, such as undermining them in the public eye or sowing conflict to weaken them. The program gradually broadened its scope to include ... leading activists in the civil rights movement""including Martin Luther King, Jr. As the U.S. built a stockpile of nuclear arms during the Cold War, a new risk emerged: broken arrow incidents in which nuclear weapons are stolen, lost, or mishandled. America has officially owned up to 32 broken arrow incidents.