Proponents of secret science argue that it has benefited society, but insiders during the Cold War expressed concerns about the impact of secrecy on research. Secrecy made it difficult to validate and replicate experimental protocols and results. Some research in classified fields was considered poor and would be laughed off if declassified. For example, the CIA conducted experiments on cats to turn them into surveillance devices, but the project ended in failure when the cat was hit by a taxi. The government’s mind-control research programs, such as MKUltra, involved unethical experiments on unwitting subjects and were ultimately futile for intelligence purposes. The pursuit of mind control continued with enhanced interrogation techniques during the early years of the “Global War on Terror.”
https://lithub.com/how-us-intelligence-agencies-hid-their-most-shameful-experiments/