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A fake medical flyer used by The Murkoff Corporation to recruit unknowing citizens into Project Lathe
Project Lathe (an abbreviation of Latent Agency Therapy; formerly an abbreviation of Limbic Aggression Therapy) was an illegal mind control program conducted by the Murkoff Corporation at the Sinyala Facility during the 1950s and 1960s. A covert collaborative effort with Project MKUltra, Project Lathe engaged in many crimes against humanity, primarily unethical human experimentation, administering psychedelic drugs on subjects without their consent, kidnapping, torture, and causing the deaths of an untold amount of people.
The purpose of the Project was to produce "Sleeper Agents" for the CIA through methods of brainwashing. These Sleeper Agents were intended to infiltrate and sabotage pro-Communist nations to combat the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. However, project lead Hendrick Joliet Easterman also intended these Sleeper Agents to gain positions of power as "thought leaders" and manipulate them into influencing public society in his own image to satiate his God complex.
The Project involved the abduction of various American and minority citizens off the streets to experiment on them by putting them through various deadly "Trials" whilst under the influence of hallucinogens and the charismatic sway of Doctor Easterman and the Prime Assets. To the public eye, the Project is disguised as a charitable therapy program for willing subjects to "Let the Miracles of Science give you purpose". It then adds "The world owes you everything", which helps convince down-on-their-luck citizens to earn what they are "owed" by signing up for the therapy.
History[]
Project Lathe One[]
Project LATHE (or Limbic Aggression Therapy) first started with Project Lathe One, which was led by Doctor Hendrick Joliet Easterman in order to create Sleeper Agents to be used in conjunction with the Government.
However, due to the deaths and injuries that happened during the project's active stage, the Murkoff Corporation's Board of Directors viewed the entire project as unfixable and suggested it be shut down. This deeply angered Dr. Easterman as he knew they would kill the whole project and all of the subjects in the Project would also be "liquidated" [1].
Project Lathe Two[]
Upon realizing the mistakes of the first iteration of Project Lathe, Dr. Easterman wrote in his journal that the subjects in testing would have to be meaningless, with nothing mentally wrong with them and that he would have to be a symbolic figure, his visage must not be shown to them ever [2].
He conversed with Sinyala Facility architect Moses Scarfiotti on how the Reagents would need to be completely worthless in terms of society, how they would be less expensive to take in, and that this would be the key to creating the Sleeper Agents he promised in Project Lathe One [3][4].
In a letter to Mount Massive Asylum's Assistant Director of Behavioral Medicines Olivier W. Baranczyk, he optimistically states that they are working on salvaging Project Lathe and that the autopsies soon to be performed on the large number of deceased Lathe Subjects should show a correlation between the conditioning and the tumors they had grown[5]. Unfortunately, it was proven untrue and Easterman feared that Lathe Two would not come to be.[6] Nevertheless, Easterman claimed he made sure the conditioning worked perfectly, that the lesions were formed on purpose and that the funding of Project Lathe is vital [7].
With the Board officially authorizing Project Lathe Two, the documented name was changed to Latent Agency Therapy, and the assets of the first project were to be reused. Oversight via Los Alamos and subject from Mount Massive would become minimal, as well as the budget of the project[8].
Trivia[]
- Using the provided in game documents, we can figure out that Project LATHE has been an ongoing project for a few years before the game takes place. The document used in the first cutscene of the game reads "1956".
- The Project Lathe poster does not mention children, simply calling out to "Men and Women" who are presumably required to be of age to partake in the experiment.