Part of MKUltra, the agency’s broader and highly controversial mind-control research program, Operation Midnight Climax began in 1954. As part of Operation Midnight Climax, White administered experimental drugs like LSD to American citizens in New York and San Francisco without their consent. It’s at this time she can lead him gently.”But Operation Midnight Climax was far from a rigorous scientific pursuit. “Operation Midnight Climax was not scientific at all,” Kinzer says. Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter and poet Allen Ginsburg reportedly got their first hits of LSD from MKUltra projects.