Explanation: The CIA, one of many US intelligence agencies, and the most prominent (and infamous), has a long history of funding very ‘questionable’ projects and carrying out the ‘dirty work’ of US foreign policy - or of individual politicians whose policies they particularly enjoy. One particularly curious project was MK Ultra, a (failed) attempt to use drugs as a form of brainwashing and to assist interrogation. They also spiked their own punch bowl at an internal CIA event with LSD, which, while less heinous, isn’t much less insane.

They’re quieter in the modern day, but not really any less vile - the psychopaths in the CIA continue to defy the president and Congress, openly disregard data they themselves produce (ie on torture’s lack of efficacy), and generally operate as one might expect a bunch of psychopaths given no oversight (but no longer an infinite budget, like the Cold War days) to do.

Some other light reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair

My personal favorite is a recent one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_report_on_CIA_torture

The report details actions by CIA officials, including torturing prisoners, providing misleading or false information about classified CIA programs to the President, Department of Justice, Congress, and the media, impeding government oversight and internal criticism, and mismanaging the program. It also revealed the existence of previously unknown detainees, that more detainees were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” (widely understood to be a euphemism for torture) than was previously disclosed, and that more techniques were used without Department of Justice approval. It concluded that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques did not yield unique intelligence that saved lives (as the CIA claimed), nor was it useful in gaining cooperation from detainees, and that the program damaged the United States’ international standing.[1]