title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Human Rights Watch asserted in a 2019 report that the CIA was backing death squads in Afghanistan. The report alleges that CIA-supported Afghan forces committed "summary executions and other grave abuses without accountability" over the course of more than a dozen night raids that took place between 2017 and 2019. The death squads allegedly committed "extrajudicial killings of civilians, forced disappearances of detainees, and attacks on healthcare facilities that treat insurgents," according to "Vice"'s reporting on the contents of the Human Rights Watch report. According to the same article, "The forces are recruited, equipped, trained, and deployed under the auspices of the CIA to target insurgents from the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS." The article also states these Afghan forces have the ability to call in US airstrikes, which have resulted in the deaths of civilians, including children, and have occurred in civilian areas, including at weddings, parks, and schools.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The CIA is also accused of human rights violations for supporting the overthrow of democratically elected governments such as in Iran, Chile and Guatemala. When the news of the September 1970 democratic election of socialist Salvador Allende in Chile reached the White House, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger referred to it as the "Autumn of Crises". The CIA led by Richard Helms was directed to "launch covert action with almost no preparation". A subsequent coup in 1973 by the Chilean armed forces with Augusto Pinochet leading the charge was orchestrated and retroactive interviews with participants "indicate a secret link between the Nixon White House and the military coup plotters".


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Following the September 11 attacks, the CIA engaged in the torture of detainees at CIA-run black sites and sent detainees to be tortured by friendly governments in a manner contravening both US and international law.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The existence of black sites was first published by "The Washington Post" in November 2005 following reports by human rights NGOs. US president George W. Bush acknowledged the existence of secret prisons operated by the CIA during a speech on 6 September 2006.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Administration officials, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, as well as prominent legal scholars such as Alan Dershowitz, publicly defended and justified the use of torture against terrorism suspects.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In May 2018, The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the countries of Romania and Lithuania were involved in torture activities perpetrated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The two countries were found to have run "black site" torture rooms and detention facilities therefore committing grave human rights abuses. In Romania, the secret facility was located at Northern Bucharest. In Lithuania, the black site was a guesthouse in the capital city of Vilnius which operated as early as 2002. In December 2014, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence filed a report which included torture details involving Saudi Arabian nationals Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri suspected of masterminding the bombing of the US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS "Cole" in Yemen and Abu Zubaydah, an alleged Al Qaeda terrorist. The European tribunal said the "two high-value prisoners" were "subjected to maltreatment and arbitrary incarceration at the CIA black site. Hence, the Lithuania and Romanian governments violated the Eastern Convention of Human Rights' ban on torture. Authorities in Lithuania also permitted the transport of Zubaydah to a secret prison in Afghanistan for additional abuse. In a separate decision, the European court learned Romania was knowledgeable of Nashiri's torture by the CIA in its own country.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Along with independent commissions that have condemned the actions of the CIA to use torture as a strategic policy, more recent assessments have shown the unintended consequences of such methods. The late Senator John McCain, for instance, asked a detained senior Al Qaeda official how they had gained a foothold in Iraq and he replied: "The chaos after the success of the initial invasion and the greatest recruiting tool: Abu Ghraib". Abu Ghraib, the U.S. run prison in Iraq became a propaganda tool for terrorist organizations. Even al-Zarqwi, the former leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, stated that the beheading of American Nicholas Berg came in retaliation for the "abuses at Abu Ghraib". A further and perhaps even more consequential result of the CIA's use of torture to accomplish strategic ends is its proven link in "making it harder to recruit potential Iraqi allies". Such methods are not only deemed human rights violations, but have also shown to be less than ideal in the United States' policy objectives.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: There is evidence that CIA has funded academic research, unwitting in some cases, which was then used to develop harsh interrogation techniques.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: From 2002 to 2007, as part of the War on Terror, CIA personnel employed so-called "Enhanced interrogation techniques", a euphemism for torture. Various officials of the George W. Bush administration have argued that "harsh" techniques such as waterboarding are not torture, or the end objectives of the War against Terror justify those means. There has been considerable domestic and international protest against these practices. The United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Torture, Human Rights Watch, and American legal scholars have called for the prosecution of Bush administration officials who ordered torture, conspired to provide legal cover for torture, and CIA and DoD personnel and contract workers who carried it out.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Torture and harsh imprisonment accusations (as well as documented examples) were not limited to the recent War on Terror. Yuri Nosenko, a Soviet KGB defector, was held in stark conditions of solitary confinement in a clandestine CIA facility in the continental US from 1966 to 1969.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Waterboarding is a method that gives the subject the sensation of drowning, and may cause permanent damage to the lungs and other parts of the body. Some individuals being waterboarded, who may have had preexisting cardiac or respiratory disease, have died under the method.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The CIA used waterboarding, and other interrogation techniques against three suspected Al-Qaeda members, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In 2007, Red Cross investigators concluded in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation methods for high-level al Qaeda prisoners constituted torture which could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes, according to the book "Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals", by Jane Mayer a journalist for "The New Yorker".


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: According to the book, the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first major al Qaeda figure captured by the United States, were "categorically" torture, which is illegal under both United States law and international conventions to which the U.S. is a party. A copy of the report was given to the CIA in 2007. For example, the book states that Abu Zubaydah was confined in a box "so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position" and was one of several prisoners to be "slammed against the walls," according to the Red Cross report. The CIA has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were waterboarded, a practice in which water is poured on the nose and mouth to create the sensation of suffocation and drowning, and an internationally recognized technique of torture.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: On 24 January 1997, two CIA manuals were declassified in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the "Baltimore Sun" in 1994. The first manual, "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation", dated July 1963, is the source of much of the material in the second manual. The second manual, "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983", was used in at least seven U.S. training courses conducted in Latin American countries, including Honduras, between 1982 and 1987. Both manuals deal exclusively with interrogation and have an entire chapter devoted to "coercive techniques." These manuals recommend arresting suspects early in the morning by surprise, blindfolding them, and stripping them naked. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, soundproof, dark and without toilets. Suspects should be held incommunicado and should be deprived of any kind of normal routine in eating and sleeping. The manuals describe coercive techniques to be used "to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist."


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: While the US manuals contained coercive measures, they did not rise to the level of what is generally defined as torture. Torture, however, has been culturally a part of authoritarian South American governments, especially in 1973–1983 (Dirty War).


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In 2007, the chief Argentinian interrogator, Ernesto Guillermo Barreiro, was arrested in the United States. It is not clear whether he will be deported, held, or extradited. The other two arrested were Peruvians, Telmo Ricardo Hurtado and Juan Manuel Rivera Rondon, accused of having participated in the massacre of 69 peasants in an Andean village in 1985, when President Alan García was trying to suppress the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement. Garcia was the president of Peru again from 2006 to 2011.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: CIA involvement ranged from no knowledge, to knowledge but no participation, to knowledge with the suggestion that less brutal techniques were appropriate, to participation or observation.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Extraordinary rendition is the process of clandestinely moving a prisoner from where he was captured, to an interrogation center in a country not subject to US law regarding extreme methods of interrogation. Some reports indicate CIA personnel operated the prison and performed the interrogations, while others state that while the CIA delivered the prisoner, third-country intelligence personnel did the actual interrogation. The Wikipedia details the list of known or suspected black sites where CIA prisoners may be detained. Known or suspected aircraft used to transport prisoners are in Rendition aircraft.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: A claim that the black sites existed was made by "The Washington Post" in November 2005 and before by human rights NGOs. US president George W. Bush acknowledged the existence of secret prisons operated by the CIA during a speech on 6 September 2006.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: A 50-page Human Rights Watch report, "Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention," contains a detailed description of a secret CIA prison from a Palestinian former detainee who was released from custody the previous year. Human Rights Watch has also sent a public letter to US president George W. Bush requesting information about the fate and whereabouts of the missing detainees.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: "President Bush told us that the last 14 CIA prisoners were sent to Guantanamo, but there are many other prisoners 'disappeared' by the CIA whose fate is still unknown," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch. "The question is: what happened to these people and where are they now?"


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In early September 2006, 14 detainees were transferred from secret CIA prisons to military custody at Guantánamo Bay. In a televised speech on 6 September 2006, President Bush announced that with those 14 transfers, no prisoners were left in CIA custody. A further congressional investigation and a series of hearings were conducted within Congress. Then-candidate Obama also promised to close down Guantanamo Bay but did not follow through. 41 prisoners are still held at Guantanamo without US judicial processes followed for their detainments.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Before 1973, Administrations were principally concerned with a Communist threat of subversion, to be met with host country internal security forces such as the police. Police and military roles were blurred. US assistance to foreign police began in the 1950s, and increased in the early 1960s when the Kennedy administration became concerned about growing communist insurgent activities and established a public safety program within the Agency for International Development (AID) to train foreign police. By 1968 the United States was spending $60 million a year to train police in 34 countries in areas such as criminal investigation, patrolling, interrogation and counterinsurgency techniques, riot control, weapon use, and bomb disposal The United States also provided weapons, telecommunications, transportation, and other equipment. In the early 1970s, the Congress became concerned over the apparent absence of clear policy guidelines and the use of program funds to support repressive regimes that committed human rights' abuses. As a result, "the Congress determined that it was inadvisable for the United States to continue supporting any foreign police organizations". Both the CIA and military intelligence with Counterintelligence Force Protection Source Operations may have intelligence collecting relationships with local police.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The Bureau of Diplomatic Security, under the Department of State representatives at any embassy is expected to be aware of all contacts between US personnel and local law enforcement organizations. The 1973 legislation significantly limited police training of all sorts, partially in response to human rights concerns.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The majority of this training went to Latin America, but some did go to countries elsewhere in the world, according to Senator Alan Cranston, especially those with narcotics or terrorism problems. Cranston cited six reasons why the Congress, in 1974, banned police training, after learning of training and equipping "police in Iran, Vietnam, Brazil, and other countries were involved in torture, murder, and the suppression of legitimate political activity":


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In principle, training and assistance to police, as opposed to military organization, is against US law, but the relevant law allows presidential waiver of most provisions. A GAO report


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: ... provides information on (1) the legislative authority for providing assistance to foreign law enforcement agencies and personnel, (2) the extent and cost of U.S. activities, and (3) experts' opinions on the management of these programs.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In 1973 and 1974, the Congress enacted legislation forbidding U.S. agencies from using foreign economic or military assistance funds to assist foreign police, but it subsequently granted numerous exemptions to permit assistance in some countries and in various aspects of police force development, including material and weapons support, force management, narcotics control, and counterterrorism tactics. The 1974 prohibition did not apply to the use of other funds by agencies such as the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) or United States Department of Transportation (DOT) to train or assist foreign law enforcement personnel.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: No government agency is in charge of calculating the cost. However, the General Accounting Office identified 125 countries that received U.S. training and assistance for their police forces during fiscal year 1990 at a cost of at least $117 million.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The prohibition did not apply to DEA and FBI assistance to combat international narcotics trafficking.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: During fiscal year 1990 at a cost of about $117 million, the GAO estimated the major programs were: U.S. programs providing :


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Current and former State Department and other government officials, and academic experts who have been involved in assistance to foreign police forces, stated that the U.S. government lacks:


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: a clear policy, or program objectives, on the role of U.S. assistance to police forces in the new and emerging democracies, a focal point for coordination and decision-making, and a means for determining whether individual programs and activities support U.S. policy or contribute to overall U.S. interests.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: They noted that each program is managed individually, and the only place that coordination is occurring is at the U.S. embassy in the country.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The US General Accounting Office obtained information on CIA training and assistance provided to foreign law enforcement personnel, reviewed the legislative authority for providing this training and assistance, and identified efforts to coordinate these activities. They did not review program implementation in recipient countries. They interviewed officials and obtained records from AID and the Departments of State, Justice, and Defense, in Washington, D.C.; reviewed legislation and agency legal opinions on foreign police assistance; interviewed academic and legal experts on current U.S. assistance to foreign police; and reviewed literature published on foreign police assistance and AID's public safety program.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Congressionally approved exemptions generally authorize activities that benefit a specific U.S. goal, such as countering the terrorist threat to U.S. citizens overseas or combating drug trafficking.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: It also expanded the judicial reform program and the police training exemption to Latin America and the Caribbean countries. In 1988 the Congress further expanded the judicial reform program to allow police assistance to promote investigative and forensic skills, develop law enforcement training curricula, and improve administration and management of law enforcement organizations. This act specifically prohibited the Department of Defense (DOD) and the U.S. armed forces from providing training under this program.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Maritime subjects were exempted from the section 660 prohibition and the prohibition for any country that has a long-standing democratic tradition, does not have armed forces, and does not engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights. The act permitted such countries to receive any type of police assistance.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: This series of acts approved certain police assistance activities in Latin America and the Caribbean for narcotics control purposes. The 1988 act expanded DOD's role and allowed it to provide training and weapons and ammunition in fiscal years 1989 and 1990 to foreign police units that are specifically organized for narcotics enforcement in eligible countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. This act also allowed economic support funds to be provided to Colombian police for the protection of judges, government officials, and members of the press against narco-terrorist attacks. The 1989 Act extended DOD's authority to train police units in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru in fiscal year 1990, if the units are only for narcotics enforcement. It also allowed DOD to provide, in addition to weapons and ammunition, other defense articles such as helicopters, vehicles, radios, and personnel gear.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In addition to the exemptions previously discussed, there are other authorities that waive the prohibition on assistance to police forces of foreign countries. For example, the president may authorize foreign assistance when `it is important to the United States' security interests. This allows the president to waive any provision of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, including section 660.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: This aims to improve foreign governments' antiterrorist capabilities to better protect U.S. citizens and interests. In 1990, the U.S. provided assistance to 49 countries at a cost of nearly $10 million. Sixty-two percent of the funds were spent in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe, and less than $500,000 was used to purchase equipment. The Department of State manages the program and contracts with other U.S. government agencies, state or local police departments, and private firms to conduct the training. The Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, and the U.S. Marshals Service are regular trainers. In compliance with legislative requirements, most training takes place in the United States.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: One of the objectives of the Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics Matters (INM) international narcotics control training program is to strengthen host country enforcement and interdiction capabilities. During fiscal year 1990, INM provided a minimum of $45 million in training and equipment to foreign police, principally in Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, Pakistan, Thailand, and Turkey. These are all narcotics producing and trafficking countries.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: INM reimburses other U.S. government agencies, primarily the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Customs, and Coast Guard, to conduct the actual training. DEA provides narcotics investigative training, Customs teaches air, sea and land port search procedures, and Coast Guard teaches courses in maritime interdiction. Other agencies may also be requested to train on a reimbursable basis in areas where they have specific expertise. For example, DOD provides helicopter training to police in drug trafficking countries. Training is conducted both overseas and in the United States and is reviewed and approved by INM.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In addition, DOD used military assistance funds to train and equip narcotics enforcement police in several drug producing and trafficking countries. Documents provided by DOD show that in fiscal year 1990, DOD provided training and equipment with a value of at least $17 million to Mexico, $1.3 million to Bolivia, $10 million to Colombia, $1 million to Ecuador, and $1 million to Peru. DOD officials informed us that training and equipment valued at more than these amounts may also have been provided. However, documentation was not available at the Washington, D.C., agency headquarters level that specified the amounts for law enforcement activities. The equipment provided consisted of UH-1 helicopters and spare parts, ammunition, small arms, riot control equipment, radios, and miscellaneous personal gear.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In FY1986, AID transferred funds to DOJ to design, develop, and implement projects to improve and enhance the investigative capabilities of law enforcement agencies in the Latin America and the Caribbean region. This was part of AID's effort to reform judicial systems. Using these funds, DOJ established the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP). Operating under State Department oversight, ICITAP has conducted criminal justice sector needs assessments in the region and has expanded its training to include basic police management and police academy development. In fiscal year 1990, ICITAP received $7 million from the Department of State for its regional program. It trained more than 1,000 students from the Caribbean, Central and South America and sponsored 7 conferences. Training includes police management, criminal investigation, crime scene search, and forensic medicine courses. Except for students sent to training programs in the United States, ICITAP training takes place overseas.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also provides limited training for foreign law enforcement officials. Each year approximately 100 international police officials attend the 11-week college level course at the FBI National Academy that includes studies on management and forensic sciences. The FBI pays for the training and subsistence, but does not pay for the students' transportation. Over the last 10 years, more than 1,100 foreign police officials from 89 countries have graduated from this course.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The FBI also provides other training and assistance to foreign police as requested, but the cost is unknown. For example, the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime provided training to Canadian police. The Criminal Investigative Division conducted a training seminar for officers from Italy's three national law enforcement agencies on the use of sensitive investigative techniques such as the operation of confidential sources, undercover operations, and electronic surveillance. The FBI also furnishes on-the-job assistance to governments who request help during particularly difficult or sensitive investigations.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: DOD supplies a limited amount of military training and assistance to police officials. During fiscal years 1986 and 1987, DOD trained and equipped the El Salvadoran and Honduran police to counter urban terrorist activities.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: This assistance was authorized in response to the murder of U.S. Marines by terrorists in El Salvador and was managed and delivered by the U.S. Army Military Police. The assistance consisted of training in counterterrorism techniques and the supply of police vehicles, communications, weapons, and other equipment. This effort cost $19.8 million, of which $17 million was provided to El Salvador.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In fiscal year 1990, DOD spent $6.4 million in previously authorized but unused military assistance funds to purchase needed equipment and weapons for Panama's newly formed national police force. Items procured included police vehicles, communications equipment, small arms, and personal gear. This assistance was a one-time, emergency program.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: DOD has an ongoing military assistance program to support Costa Rican police. In fiscal year 1990, DOD supplied $431,000 in military equipment and $232,000 in military training to the Costa Rican Civil Guard to help them carry out their responsibility to protect the country's border regions. DOD provided equipment such as vehicles, personnel gear, and radios, and military training in areas such as coastal operations. Additionally, DOD conducted technical training courses in equipment maintenance and medical skills among others.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: DOD, along with the United Kingdom, supports the Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System that was formed after the U.S. intervention in Grenada. The Security System is composed of a few permanently assigned military officers, but largely depends upon island nation police officers who can be called up for military duty in case of emergency. The United States equips and trains these personnel to prepare them for such an eventually. In fiscal year 1990, DOD provided $4.2 million in military assistance funds that were used to purchase equipment such as jeeps, small arms, uniforms, and communications gear. DOD also provided $300,000 for training in special operations, rural patrol, field survival, surveillance, and technical courses in communications, navigation, maintenance, and medicine.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Since some agencies fund assistance out of their own budgets, without necessarily having a line item for police assistance, the GAO "could not accurately determine the extent or cost of assistance to foreign police" In the GAO estimates, "some double counting of students may be occurring and agencies may not be differentiating between assistance provided to police and assistance provided to the military." This might happen when "the agency supplying the training and the agency paying for the training may both include the trainees in their reporting systems, such as when ICITAP pays for students attending the FBI academy."


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: While the DOJ was asked to calculate information on its work with foreign police, it could not assign a dollar value to items including "travel expenses, salaries, and expendable items such as course materials." H.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: "Also, GAO could not always determine whether a student was a police officer or a military member because some agencies do not collect such data, DOD officials informed us that once they receive permission to train police in a specific activity they do not provide a further accounting breakdown. For example, training provided to the Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System was for law enforcement personnel, although a few trainees may have belonged to military organizations."


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a CIA mind-control research program that began in 1950, involved primarily with the experimentation of drugs and other "chemical, biological and radiological" stimuli on both willing and uninformed subjects.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Brainwashing as a descriptive term entered the lexicon of the CIA in January 1950 . Although widely used in science fiction novels, dystopian depictions of oppressive governments, and other popular culture mediums, brainwashing as it relates to the CIA was disseminated by the CIA to "fuel public anxiety about communist methods". MK-Ultra, as verified with unsealed public documents, was a CIA program intended to brainwash. Independent researchers have verified that the historical explanation for brainwashing in MK-Ultra could have only been accomplished through torture. Thus, torture on civilians and unwilling participants, itself a humans rights violation, comes to frame.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In December 1974, "The New York Times" reported that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S. citizens, during the 1960s. The report prompted investigations by both the U.S. Congress (in the form of the Church Committee) and a presidential commission (known as the Rockefeller Commission). The congressional investigations and the Rockefeller Commission report revealed that the CIA and the Department of Defense had in fact conducted experiments to influence and control human behavior through the use of psychoactive drugs such as LSD and mescaline and other chemical, biological, and psychological means. Experiments were often conducted without the subjects' knowledge or consent.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: MK-ULTRA was started on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles, largely in response to alleged Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind-control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war in Korea. The goal of the experiments was to study mind-control in order to develop methods of interrogation and behavior modification and manipulation, as well as to develop a possible truth drug.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: MK-ULTRA research ultimately proved useless to the CIA and they have abandoned the program. Because most MK-ULTRA records were deliberately destroyed in 1973 by order of then CIA director Richard Helms, it is difficult if not impossible to have a complete understanding of the more than 150 individually funded research sub-projects sponsored by MK-ULTRA and related CIA programs.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Following the recommendations of the Church Committee, President Gerald Ford in 1976 issued the first Executive Order on Intelligence Activities which, among other things, prohibited "experimentation with drugs on human subjects, except with the informed consent, in writing and witnessed by a disinterested party, of each such human subject" and in accordance with the guidelines issued by the National Commission. Subsequent orders by Presidents Carter and Reagan expanded the directive to apply to any human experimentation.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: At least since World War II, a distinction has been drawn between assassination of civilian leaders, and targeted killings of leaders of fighting organizations, including the British-Czech Operation Anthropoid (the killing of SS officer Reinhard Heydrich, acting Reichsprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia), a failed British attempt to kill Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and Operation Vengeance, the shooting down of Isoroku Yamamoto by the US Air Force.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The CIA has admitted to involvement in assassination attempts against foreign leaders. Recently, there have been targeted killings of alleged terrorists, typically with missiles fired from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The Pakistani government, which may "have picked some targets of drone attacks" has criticized the US for drones flying over its territory as an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty. Increased criticism of the CIA drone program has come mostly during the later stages of the war in Afghanistan. One of the main criticisms of the drone program is that "the surgical use of military force in self-defense itself creates a state of international armed conflict". Arguments and criticisms of the CIA drone program have been made, but as it is still relatively new, legal rulings have not yet been made.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Of the cases cited, it appears that no CIA personnel or even directly controlled foreign agents personally killed any leader, but there certainly were cases where the CIA knew of, or supported, plots to overthrow foreign leaders. In the cases of Lumumba in 1960/61 and Castro in the 50s and 60s, the CIA was involved in preparing to kill the individual. In other cases, such as Diem, the Agency knew of a plot but did not warn him, and communications at White House level indicated that the Agency had, with approval, told the plotters the US didn't object to their plan. The gun or poison, however, was not in the hands of a CIA officer.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: CIA personnel were involved in attempted assassinations of foreign government leaders such as Fidel Castro. They provided support to those that killed Patrice Lumumba. In yet another category was noninterference in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) "Coup d'état" in which President Ngo Dinh Diem was killed.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: A distinction has been drawn between political assassinations and "targeted killing" of leaders of non-state belligerents.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Perhaps the best-documented account of CIA-sponsored assassination plans were against President Fidel Castro of Cuba.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: According to columnist Jack Anderson, the first attempt was part of the Bay of Pigs Invasion operation, but five more teams were sent, the last apprehended on a rooftop within rifle range of Castro, at the end of February or beginning of March 1963.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Maheu was identified as the team leader, who recruited John Roselli, a gambler with contacts in the Italian American Mafia and Cuban underworlds. The CIA assigned two operations officers, William King Harvey and James O'Connell, to accompany Roselli to Miami to recruit the actual teams.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Anderson's story appears to be confirmed by two CIA documents, the first referring to an Inspector General report of investigation of allegations that the Agency conspired to assassinate Fidel Castro. The story first appeared in Drew Pearson's column and has since appeared in Jack Anderson's column. "While the columns contained many factual errors, the allegations are basically true. Second, a declassified memo from Howard Osborne, director of the CIA Office of Security, dated 15 February 1972, in the "CIA Family Jewels" series, from to the Executive Director, speaks of John Roselli, then serving time in a Federal penitentiary in Seattle, Washington, with deportation scheduled at the end of his sentence. While the CIA was aware "Roselli intended to expose his participation in the plot should we not intervene in his behalf. The DCI at the time, John McCone, decided to take a calculated risk and accept the consequences of possible disclosure. Two articles by Jack Anderson discuss the plot, as well the "Washington Post" Sunday magazine, "Parade"


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Individuals who were aware of this project were: Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, Richard M. Bissell Jr. (Deputy Director for Plans (DDP)) Colonel J.C. King (Chief, Western Hemisphere Division, DDP), Colonel Sheffield Edwards, William Harvey, and James P. O'Connell. Also included were Robert A. Maheu (former FBI agent, public relations agent who did work for the CIA, and later an aide to Howard Hughes), and his attorneys Edward P. Morgan and Edward Bennett Williams.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: On 26 February 1971, Osborne arranged with the Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to flag any deportation. INS confirmed they did this again for 1972.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Cuba's former counterintelligence chief, Fabian Escalante, reviewed more than six hundred CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, a project code-named "Executive Action", in his book "Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro". The various plots, some of which were abandoned, included the use of cigars (poisoned or exploding), poison pills hidden in a cold-cream jar, the use of Caribbean molluscs containing explosives and a custom-made diving-suit infected with a fungus that would cause a debilitating skin disease. The assassination attempts started under the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and continued under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Most attempts were made during Richard Nixon's presidency. When Castro travelled abroad, the CIA cooperated with Cuban exiles for some of the more serious assassination attempts. In 2000, when Castro was due to visit Panama, a plot was hatched to put explosives under the podium where he was due to speak. Castro's personal security team discovered the explosives before he arrived.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Furthermore, the Bay of Pigs invasion launched in April 1961 was instigated by the director of the CIA Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell Jr, the deputy director of the CIA, and General Lyman Lemnitzer. Kennedy was initially "wary and reserved" when hearing about the plan, but later succumbed. An evident fault in the invasion was the rejection of "clear evidence of Castro's political and military strength" even as other governments attempted to make the United States aware. Thus, another plotted coup by the CIA towards Castro's regime failed and backfired, leading to Castro's further isolationist vision of Cuba's future.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In summary, CIA, Embassy, and other US personnel, up to White House level, were aware of yet another coup being planned against President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. While the US had no direct participation in the coup, the plotters were told, in a deniable way, that the US did not object to it. No documentary evidence has surfaced that the US knew that Diem and his brother were to be killed, and it is unclear that all the Vietnamese plotters knew or agreed to it. President John F. Kennedy was aware of the coup plans, but apparently had not considered the hazard to Diem.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: According to the "Pentagon Papers", the final US loss of confidence in Diem began when his government violently suppressed a protest on Buddha's Birthday, 8 May 1963. Up to that point, the majority Buddhists had not been very politically active, even though Diem had given preference to the Catholic minority. Quickly, however, the Buddhists put a "cohesive and disciplined [political] organization" into action. By June, the situation moved from dissidence from a religious group to a "grave crisis of public confidence".


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Then-Ambassador Frederick Nolting had tried to persuade Diem to moderate government action against Buddhists, but with no success. While Nolting was on leave, President John F. Kennedy appointed Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. as the new Ambassador. In June 1963, senior leaders began, for the first time, to discuss the effect of a coup to remove Diem. Nolting and the US military in Vietnam, however, argued that Diem was keeping chaos at bay. Nolting left permanently in mid-August, but the assurances from Diem died with multiple August 21 night raids on Buddhist temples in many parts of Vietnam. Two days later, a US representative was approached by generals considering a coup. On 23 August, the first contact with a U.S. representative was made by generals who had begun to plan a coup against Diem. They were told that the U.S. had determined that Diem's brother, who had led the raids on the Buddhists, could not stay in any kind of power, and that, "then, we must face the possibility that Diem himself cannot be preserved."


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: An 8 May 1973 memorandum states that "An Inspector General report of investigation of allegations that the Agency was instrumental in bringing about the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. The allegations were determined to be without foundation."


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: For the military coup d'etat against Ngo Dinh Diem, the U.S. must accept its full share of responsibility. Beginning in August 1963 we variously authorized, sanctioned and encouraged the coup efforts of the Vietnamese generals and offered full support for a successor government. In October we cut off aid to Diem in a direct rebuff, giving a green light to the generals. We maintained clandestine contact with them throughout the planning and execution of the coup and sought to review their operational plans and proposed new government. Thus, as the nine-year rule of Diem came to a bloody end, our complicity in his overthrow heightened our responsibilities and our commitment in an essentially leaderless Vietnam.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The Church Committee concluded it had "solid evidence of a plot to assassinate Patrice Lumumba (the first elected Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Strong hostility to Lumumba, voiced at the very highest levels of government may have been intended to initiate an assassination operation; at the least it engendered such an operation. The evidence indicates that it is likely that President Eisenhower's expression of strong concern about Lumumba at a meeting of the National Security Council on 18 August 1960 was taken by (Director of Central Intelligence) Allen Dulles as authority to assassinate Lumumba. There is, however, testimony by Eisenhower Administration officials, and ambiguity and lack of clarity in the records of high-level policy meetings, which tends to contradict the evidence that the President intended an assassination effort against Lumumba. In a footnote, the Committee cited an unnamed official as saying he had heard Eisenhower order the assassination."


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Lumumba was killed in 1961 by forces under the control of President Moïse Tshombe of Katanga, a province that had declared its independence of the Republic of the Congo. Lumumba was taken by Katangan soldiers commanded by Belgians, and eventually shot by a Katangan firing squad under Belgian leadership. U.S. intelligence was kept apprised.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In February 1960, CIA's Near East Division sought the endorsement of what the Division Chief <nowiki>[</nowiki>James H. Critchfield<nowiki>]</nowiki> called the "Health Alteration Committee" for its proposal for a "special operation" to "incapacitate" an Iraqi Colonel believed to be "promoting Soviet bloc political interests in Iraq." The Division sought the Committee's advice on a technique, "which while not likely to result in total disablement would be certain to prevent the target from pursuing his usual activities for a minimum of three months," adding: "We do not consciously seek subject's permanent removal from the scene; we also do not object should this complication develop." ... In April [1962], the [Health Alteration] Committee unanimously recommended to the DDP [Deputy Director for Plans, Richard M. Bissell Jr.] that a "disabling operation" be undertaken, noting that the Chief of Operations advised that it would be "highly desirable." Bissell's deputy, Tracy Barnes, approved on behalf of Bissell. ... The approved operation was to mail a monogrammed handkerchief containing an incapacitating agent to the colonel from an Asian country. [James] Scheider [Science Advisor to Bissell] testified that, while he did not now recall the name of the recipient, he did remember mailing from the Asian country, during the period in question, a handkerchief "treated with some kind of material for the purpose of harassing that person who received it." ... During the course of this Committee's investigation, the CIA stated that the handkerchief was "in fact never received (if, indeed, sent)." It added that the colonel: "Suffered a terminal illness before a firing squad in Baghdad (an event we had nothing to do with) not very long after our handkerchief proposal was considered."


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Although some sources depict this operation as an assassination attempt on Iraqi prime minister Abd al-Karim Qasim, other sources note that this interpretation is inaccurate or unsupported by evidence, as the notion that the CIA sought the target's assassination is refuted by the plain meaning of the text itself. In addition, it is unlikely that Qasim was the intended recipient of the handkerchief, as CIA officials would likely have remembered an attack on the Iraqi head of state. While Qasim was not a colonel but a brigadier general and did not openly promote Soviet interests in Iraq, the pro-Soviet head of Iraq's "People's Court," Colonel Fahdil Abbas al-Mahdawi, fits the above description perfectly. Qasim effectively banned the Iraqi Communist Party in January 1960, but Mahdawi remained a crucial conduit between Qasim's government and several communist-front groups—including the "Peace Partisans," which was allowed to operate in public despite being formally outlawed in May 1961—and was known for his outspoken praise for Fidel Castro as well as his trips throughout the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and China. In 1991, former high-ranking U.S. diplomat Hermann Eilts told journalist Elaine Sciolino that Mahdawi had been the target.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: Mahdawi and some of his family members "were" stricken with a serious case of what Mahdawi dubbed "influenza" in 1962, but it is unknown whether this ailment was related to the CIA's plan to poison him; Nathan J. Citino observes that "the timing of the illness does not correspond exactly to that of the 'incapacitating' operation as described in the cited testimony." Mahdawi was ultimately assassinated by Ba'athists following the February 1963 Ramadan Revolution in Iraq.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: An Inspector General report of investigation of allegations that the Agency was instrumental in bringing about the


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: assassination of Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic. Trujillo was effective head of government at the time of his assassination in 1961.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In a report to the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, CIA officials described the agency as having "no active part" in the assassination and only a "faint connection" with the groups that planned the killing. However, the internal investigation by the CIA's Inspector General "disclosed quite extensive Agency involvement with the plotters."


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: According to an 86-page portion of the Rockefeller Commission investigating the CIA's domestic activities that was removed at the behest of the Ford administration and did not become public until 2016:


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: [Richard] Bissell [Deputy Director of Plans for the CIA] also testified that there was discussion within the Agency of the possibility of an attempt on the life of President Achmed Sukarno of Indonesia which "progressed as far as the identification of an asset who it was felt might be recruited for this purpose. The plan was never reached, was never perfected to the point where it seemed feasible." He said the Agency had "absolutely nothing" to do with the death of Sukarno. ... He stated that no assassination plans would have been undertaken without authorization outside the Agency, and that no such authorization was undertaken for plans against either Lumumba or Sukarno. ... Since no evidence was found to bring the Sukarno and Lumumba matters within the scope of the Commission's investigative authority, no further investigation in these two areas was undertaken.


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: In 1984, a CIA manual for training the Nicaraguan Contras in psychological operations and unconventional warfare, entitled "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare", became public. The manual recommended "selective use of violence for propagandistic effects" and to "neutralize" (i.e., kill) government officials. Nicaraguan Contras were taught to lead:


title: Human rights violations by the CIA

text: The CIA claimed that the purpose of the manual was to "moderate" activities already being done by the Contras.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: The McDonnell Douglas (later Boeing) MD-90 is an American five-abreast single-aisle airliner developed by McDonnell Douglas from its successful model MD-80. The airliner was produced by the developer company until 1997 and then by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. It was a stretched derivative of the MD-80 and thus the third generation of the DC-9 family.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: After the more fuel-efficient IAE V2500 high-bypass turbofan was selected, Delta Air Lines became the launch customer on November 14, 1989.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: Its 5 ft (1.4 m) longer fuselage seats 153 passengers in a mixed configuration over up to 2,455 nmi (4,547 km), making it the largest member of the DC-9 family. It kept the MD-88's electronic flight instrument system (EFIS).


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: The shrunken derivative of MD-80 or shorter variant of MD-90, originally marketed as MD-95, was later renamed the Boeing 717 following McDonnell Douglas' merger with Boeing in 1997.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: Production ended in 2000 after 116 deliveries. Delta Air Lines flew the final MD-90 passenger flight on June 2, 2020, marking the retirement of the type.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: It was involved in three hull-loss accidents with only one fatality being a fire related or "non-aeronautical" accident.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: The DC-9 series, the first generation of the DC-9 family with five members or variants (DC-9-10 / DC-9 Series 10, Series 20, Series 30, Series 40, and Series 50) and ten production versions (Series 11, Series 12, Series 14, Series 15, Series 21, Series 31, Series 32, Series 33, Series 34, Series 41, and Series 51), was a commercial success with 976 units built when production ended in 1982. The aircraft series was an all-new design, using two rear fuselage-mounted turbofan engines, a T-tail configuration, and a narrow-body fuselage design with five-abreast seating for 80 to 135 passengers. The success prompted the manufacturer to further develop the first generation DC-9 family into its second generation.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: The MD-80 series, the first derivative or the second generation of the DC-9 family, entered service in 1980. The aircraft series was originally designated as Series 80 or stylized as the "Super 80", which was a 14 ft 3 in (4.34 m) lengthened Series 50 with a higher maximum take-off weight (MTOW) and higher fuel capacity, as well as next-generation Pratt and Whitney JT8D-200 series engines and an improved wing design. The MD-80 series has five variants or production versions, which are designated with a non-zero second digit similar to the DC-9 series, the MD-81, MD-82, MD-83, MD-87, and the MD-88. A total of 1,191 MD-80 airliners were delivered from 1980 to 1999, making it the company's most successful airliner model.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: In 1983, McDonnell Douglas began studies on derivatives of the MD-80 series or the third generation of the DC-9 family, which later became known as the MD-90 series.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: The MD-90, the stretched derivative of the MD-80 and thus the third generation of the DC-9 family, was launched on November 14, 1989 when Delta Air Lines placed an order for 50 MD-90s, with options to purchase a further 110 aircraft. The type was 57-inch-longer (1.4 m) longer than MD-80 and featured a glass cockpit (electronic instrumentation) and more powerful, quieter, fuel-efficient IAE V2525-D5 engines, with the option of upgrading to an IAE V2528 engine.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: Starting in late 1986, McDonnell Douglas began offering the MD-90X, a stretch of the MD-80. Unlike the MD-91 and MD-92 derivatives and the clean-sheet MD-94X proposal, the MD-90X would still use turbofan engines. The MD-90X would carry 180 passengers. Powered by the CFM56-5 or V2500, the MD-90X replaced the MD-89 as McDonnell Douglas's proposed new turbofan offering, and it was designed to compete with the Boeing 757.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: For several years, McDonnell Douglas proposed powering the MD-90 with two unducted fan (UDF) or propfan engines, designated the MD-94X. Previously, an MD-81 was used as a testbed for propfan engines, such as the General Electric GE36 and the Pratt & Whitney/Allison 578-DX.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: By mid-1989, it was clear that there was insufficient interest in propfan-powered aircraft, so the company reworked its proposals to instead feature the IAE V2500 turbofan, which was estimated to be $1 million cheaper than the GE36 and had already been certified for the Airbus A320. Within six weeks of eliminating the propfan option, the MD-90 secured a large launch order.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: When the United States Navy wanted to replace its 125 Lockheed P-3 Orion anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft, McDonnell Douglas offered the P-9D, which would be a propfan-powered version of the MD-91. The thrust engine would be either the General Electric GE36 or the Pratt & Whitney/Allison 578-DX. Lockheed won the competition with its P-3 derivative, the Lockheed P-7, but the replacement program was later canceled.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: In 1991, McDonnell Douglas revealed that it was again considering developing a specialized 100-seat version of the MD-80, to be some shorter than the MD-87, powered with engines in the thrust class. At the Paris Airshow, McDonnell Douglas announced the development of a 105-seat version of the MD-80, designated "MD-95". In early 1994, the MD-95 re-emerged as similar to the DC-9-30, its specified weight, dimensions, and fuel capacity being almost identical. Major changes included a fuselage "shrink" back to length (same as the DC-9-30), and the reversion to the original DC-9 wingspan of . At this time, McDonnell Douglas said that it expected the MD-95 to become a family of aircraft with the capability of increased range and seating capacity. The MD-95 was developed to satisfy the market need to replace early DC-9s, then approaching 30 years old. The MD-95 was a complete overhaul, going back to the original DC-9-30 design and applying new engines, cockpit and other more modern systems.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: McDonnell Douglas first offered the MD-95 for sale in 1994. The airliner was later renamed the Boeing 717-200 after McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1997.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: The type first flew on February 22, 1993, and the first MD-90 was delivered to Delta in February 1995.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: No MD-90 orders were received after Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged in 1997 due to internal competition with Boeing's 737. Delta Air Lines had initially placed a large order for the MD-90 to replace some aging Boeing 727s. After the Boeing-McDonnell Douglas merger, Delta canceled their remaining 19 MD-90 orders in favor of the Boeing 737–800.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: The MD-90 was produced adjacent to the Long Beach Airport in Long Beach, California, USA. A total of 40 MD-90s (later 20) were to be assembled under contract in Shanghai, People's Republic of China under the Trunkliner program, but Boeing's decision to phase out the MD-90 resulted in only two built by Shanghai Aircraft. MD-90 production at Long Beach, California ended in 2000 with the last airplane being delivered to Saudi Arabian Airlines, and MD-90T production at Shanghai ended in 2000. With 116 MD-90 aircraft produced, the MD-90 production run was the smallest among the DC-9 family. Two aircraft were also produced at Jiangwan Airfield in Shanghai, People's Republic of China.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: The main competitors of the MD-90 included the Airbus A320ceo and the Boeing 737–800. Aeronautical Engineers Inc (AEI) planned to begin an MD-90 freighter conversion program in 2016/2017 when the 737-400SF conversions were expected to be phased out, but canceled it in 2015. A converted MD-90 freighter would be longer than a 12-pallet capacity MD-80SF and would have one more pallet position, or 13 pallets total. However, as with the MD-80SF, the narrow fuselage cross-section only allows for non-standard 88" x 108" pallets or containers, which is the main disadvantage in cargo operations and limits its potential market. The main reason for AEI's decision not to continue the 13-pallet freighter program was the limited availability of MD-90 in the market.. At the time, fewer than 100 aircraft were still active, most of which were in Delta Air Lines fleet. On June 2, 2020, Delta operated its last MD-90 on the type's final commercial flights, and so the MD-90 was retired without a freighter conversion to extend its service life.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: The MD-90 is a mid-size, medium-range airliner that was developed from the MD-80 series. Resembling the preliminary version of the MD-88 from March 1984, the MD-90 is a , updated version of the base MD-80 with similar electronic flight instrument system (EFIS) and more powerful, quieter and fuel efficient IAE V2500 engines instead of the JT8D engines, which power the MD-80 series. This made the MD-90 the first derivative variant of the DC-9 to use a high-bypass turbofan engine. Due to the heavier engines, the engine pylons feature flaps that deflect 30° downward to assist in pitching down for stall recovery. The system activates automatically when the control column is pushed fully forward.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: Typical seating for the MD-90 ranges from 153 to 172 passengers, depending on the cabin configuration and interior layout. The MD-90 was produced in two versions: -30 and −30ER. The −30 has a range of . The −30ER has a higher gross weight and range up to with an extra 565 US gal (2,140 L) auxiliary fuel tank. An even longer-range version, the −50, was offered but was never ordered.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: The initial MD-90s feature an EFIS cockpit similar to the MD-88's cockpit. The 29 MD-90s delivered to Saudi Arabian Airlines feature a full glass cockpit with avionics and an overhead display panel similar to the MD-11's cockpit for easy transition for the airline's pilots of the MD-11, also operated by the airline.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: Delta Air Lines was the last remaining operator in 2020. Delta began phasing out its MD-90s in 2017, before retiring its remaining MD-90s after their final flights on June 2, 2020.


title: McDonnell Douglas MD-90

text: During its service life, the MD-90 was involved in three hull-loss accidents, resulting in one fatality.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: Alexander Francis Neil (born 9 June 1981) is a Scottish professional football manager and former player who played as a midfielder. He is currently the manager of EFL Championship club Stoke City.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: Neil began his professional career at Airdrieonians in 2000, playing half a season in the Scottish Football League First Division before moving to Barnsley. He played 142 games across all competitions in his four-year spell at Barnsley, and then signed for Mansfield Town on a free transfer. After a season at Mansfield, he returned to Scotland's First Division with Hamilton Academical, featuring in 246 matches across a decade and winning promotion to the Scottish Premier League in 2008.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: He became Hamilton's player-manager in 2013 and led them to promotion to the Scottish Premiership in 2014. In January 2015 he was appointed manager of Norwich City, as the second youngest manager in the Football League at the time. Neil guided Norwich to promotion to the Premier League, by winning the 2015 Football League Championship play-off Final. Norwich suffered relegation the following season, and in March 2017, Neil was sacked. He was appointed Preston North End's manager on 4 July 2017 and led the team to seventh place in the 2017–18 Championship. On 11 February 2022 Neil was appointed manager of Sunderland. They were promoted from League One to the Championship, winning 2-0 in the play-off final. He left later that year to become the manager of Stoke City.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: Born in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, Neil began his career at Dunfermline Athletic, before joining Airdrieonians on a free transfer in the summer of 1999. He made his professional debut in the Scottish Football League First Division on 3 January 2000, as a 64th-minute substitute for Steve McCormick in a 0–2 home loss to Falkirk. Five days later, on his first start, he scored in the eighth minute of a 3–1 loss at St Mirren. He finished his first season with 5 goals from 16 appearances, with the other four scored in three consecutive games in April, including two in a 3–0 home win over Greenock Morton on the 8th.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: After his first professional season, Neil was recommended to Barnsley by his next-door neighbour Peter Hetherston, a friend of their manager Dave Bassett. He made his debut for the Tykes in the Football League First Division on 26 August 2000, replacing Lee Jones for the final ten minutes of a 4–1 home win over West Bromwich Albion. He made 32 league appearances in his first season at Oakwell, and was sent off on 28 April 2001 in a 0–1 home loss to Bolton Wanderers.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: On 15 September 2001, Neil scored his first goal in English football, concluding a 2–0 home win over Crewe Alexandra. He netted again on 8 November in a 2–2 draw at Preston North End, in a campaign which ended in relegation. Neil spent the following two seasons in the Second Division, scoring the decisive goals in 3–2 wins at Rushden & Diamonds and Stockport County on 10 April and 8 May 2004.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: On 20 July 2004, Neil joined Mansfield Town on a free transfer. He made 41 appearances for them in League Two that season, and scored his first goal on 23 November in the first round of the FA Cup, a consolation in a 4–1 loss to Colchester United at Layer Road. His only league goal for the Stags came on 5 March 2005, opening a 1–1 draw against Shrewsbury Town at Field Mill.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: On 28 May 2005, having been told that he was surplus to the requirements of Mansfield manager Carlton Palmer, Neil returned to the Scottish First Division, signing a two-year deal at Hamilton Academical. He made his Accies debut on 13 August, as they began the season with a 0–1 loss to St Johnstone at New Douglas Park. Seventeen days later, he scored his first goal for his new team in the second round of the Scottish Challenge Cup, netting the only goal away to Ross County when he headed in Brian Carrigan's cross just before half time. On 22 October, he got his first league goal for them, in the first minute of the second half of a 3–0 home win against Brechin City. Neil played the entirety of the 2005 Scottish Challenge Cup Final on 6 November, a 2–1 loss to St Mirren at the Excelsior Stadium in Airdrie. The Accies also reached the quarter-finals of the Scottish Cup, with Neil scoring a penalty kick in the fourth round replay at Alloa Athletic, a 3–0 win.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: Neil played 30 league games in 2007–08, as Hamilton won the division and promotion to the Scottish Premier League. He scored once that season, opening a 4–0 home win over Stirling Albion on 15 September 2007 with a 40-yard free kick.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: After manager Billy Reid vacated his managerial position at Hamilton in April 2013, Neil (who had already been involved in coaching the club's youth teams) was appointed player-manager on an interim basis. He was made manager on a permanent basis on 24 May 2013, at the age of 31. Assisted by Frankie McAvoy, Neil led the club to promotion back to the top flight in his first full season, winning through the play-off system in May 2014. Hamilton then enjoyed a good start to the 2014–15 Scottish Premiership, defeating Celtic away for the first time in 76 years.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: In January 2015, Neil obtained permission from Hamilton to speak to Norwich City about their managerial vacancy. On 9 January, he was confirmed as their new manager at 33 years old, the second youngest in the Football League after Mansfield's Adam Murray. The following day in his first game, he managed his team to a 2–1 victory at Championship leaders AFC Bournemouth. Norwich gained 17 wins from 25 games played under Neil in the 2014–15 season. They finished third in the Championship and entered the play-offs, where in the semi-finals they beat East Anglia derby rivals Ipswich Town 4–2 on aggregate over two legs. On 25 May, Neil led Norwich to a 2–0 victory over Middlesbrough in the 2015 Football League Championship play-off Final, as goalscorers Cameron Jerome and Nathan Redmond secured promotion to the 2015–16 Premier League. During the 2015 close season, Neil signed a new contract with Norwich City.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: Norwich were relegated after a single season in the Premier League. Neil had his contract terminated in March 2017, with the Canaries 8th in the Championship table. They had won seven of their last 24 games in The Championship and were nine points outside the top six play-off places. Neil admitted to regret over summer recruitment, which led to his sacking in March.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: On 4 July 2017, Neil was appointed as manager of Championship club Preston North End, replacing Simon Grayson, who left the club to take over as manager of Sunderland.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: On 21 March 2021, Neil left Preston North End by mutual consent with the club 16th in the Championship table.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: On 11 February 2022, Neil was appointed as the new manager of Sunderland, on a 12-month rolling contract. On 21 May 2022, Neil guided Sunderland to promotion back to the Championship after a four-year absence after they beat Wycombe Wanderers 2–0 in front of almost 50,000 Sunderland fans at Wembley in the 2022 EFL League One play-off Final.


title: Alex Neil (footballer)

text: On 28 August 2022, Neil was appointed as the new manager of Stoke City, after the dismissal of Michael O'Neill.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: The green fluorescent protein (GFP) is a protein that exhibits bright green fluorescence when exposed to light in the blue to ultraviolet range. The label "GFP" traditionally refers to the protein first isolated from the jellyfish "Aequorea victoria" and is sometimes called "avGFP". However, GFPs have been found in other organisms including corals, sea anemones, zoanithids, copepods and lancelets.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: The GFP from "A. victoria" has a major excitation peak at a wavelength of 395 nm and a minor one at 475 nm. Its emission peak is at 509 nm, which is in the lower green portion of the visible spectrum. The fluorescence quantum yield (QY) of GFP is 0.79. The GFP from the sea pansy ("Renilla reniformis") has a single major excitation peak at 498 nm. GFP makes for an excellent tool in many forms of biology due to its ability to form an internal chromophore without requiring any accessory cofactors, gene products, or enzymes / substrates other than molecular oxygen.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: In cell and molecular biology, the GFP gene is frequently used as a reporter of expression. It has been used in modified forms to make biosensors, and many animals have been created that express GFP, which demonstrates a proof of concept that a gene can be expressed throughout a given organism, in selected organs, or in cells of interest. GFP can be introduced into animals or other species through transgenic techniques, and maintained in their genome and that of their offspring. To date, GFP has been expressed in many species, including bacteria, yeasts, fungi, fish and mammals, including in human cells. Scientists Roger Y. Tsien, Osamu Shimomura, and Martin Chalfie were awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on 10 October 2008 for their discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Most commercially available genes for GFP and similar fluorescent proteins are around 730 base-pairs long. The natural protein has 238 amino acids. Its molecular mass is 27 kD. Therefore, fusing the GFP gene to the gene of a protein of interest can significantly increase the protein's size and molecular mass, and can impair the protein's natural function or change its location or trajectory of transport within the cell.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: In the 1960s and 1970s, GFP, along with the separate luminescent protein aequorin (an enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of luciferin, releasing light), was first purified from the jellyfish "Aequorea victoria" and its properties studied by Osamu Shimomura. In "A. victoria", GFP fluorescence occurs when aequorin interacts with Ca ions, inducing a blue glow. Some of this luminescent energy is transferred to the GFP, shifting the overall color towards green. However, its utility as a tool for molecular biologists did not begin to be realized until 1992 when Douglas Prasher reported the cloning and nucleotide sequence of wtGFP in "Gene". The funding for this project had run out, so Prasher sent cDNA samples to several labs. The lab of Martin Chalfie expressed the coding sequence of wtGFP, with the first few amino acids deleted, in heterologous cells of "E. coli" and "C. elegans", publishing the results in "Science" in 1994. Frederick Tsuji's lab independently reported the expression of the recombinant protein one month later. Remarkably, the GFP molecule folded and was fluorescent at room temperature, without the need for exogenous cofactors specific to the jellyfish. Although this near-wtGFP was fluorescent, it had several drawbacks, including dual peaked excitation spectra, pH sensitivity, chloride sensitivity, poor fluorescence quantum yield, poor photostability and poor folding at 37 °C.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: The first reported crystal structure of a GFP was that of the S65T mutant by the Remington group in "Science" in 1996. One month later, the Phillips group independently reported the wild-type GFP structure in "Nature Biotechnology". These crystal structures provided vital background on chromophore formation and neighboring residue interactions. Researchers have modified these residues by directed and random mutagenesis to produce the wide variety of GFP derivatives in use today. Further research into GFP has shown that it is resistant to detergents, proteases, guanidinium chloride (GdmCl) treatments, and drastic temperature changes.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Due to the potential for widespread usage and the evolving needs of researchers, many different mutants of GFP have been engineered. The first major improvement was a single point mutation (S65T) reported in 1995 in "Nature" by Roger Tsien. This mutation dramatically improved the spectral characteristics of GFP, resulting in increased fluorescence, photostability, and a shift of the major excitation peak to 488 nm, with the peak emission kept at 509 nm. This matched the spectral characteristics of commonly available FITC filter sets, increasing the practicality of use by the general researcher. A 37 °C folding efficiency (F64L) point mutant to this scaffold, yielding enhanced GFP (EGFP), was discovered in 1995 by the laboratories of Thastrup and Falkow. EGFP allowed the practical use of GFPs in mammalian cells. EGFP has an extinction coefficient (denoted ε) of 55,000 Mcm. The fluorescence quantum yield (QY) of EGFP is 0.60. The relative brightness, expressed as ε•QY, is 33,000 Mcm.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Superfolder GFP (sfGFP), a series of mutations that allow GFP to rapidly fold and mature even when fused to poorly folding peptides, was reported in 2006.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Many other mutations have been made, including color mutants; in particular, blue fluorescent protein (EBFP, EBFP2, Azurite, mKalama1), cyan fluorescent protein (ECFP, Cerulean, CyPet, mTurquoise2), and yellow fluorescent protein derivatives (YFP, Citrine, Venus, YPet). BFP derivatives (except mKalama1) contain the Y66H substitution.They exhibit a broad absorption band in the ultraviolet centered close to 380 nanometers and an emission maximum at 448 nanometers. A green fluorescent protein mutant (BFPms1) that preferentially binds Zn(II) and Cu(II) has been developed. BFPms1 have several important mutations including and the BFP chromophore (Y66H),Y145F for higher quantum yield, H148G for creating a hole into the beta-barrel and several other mutations that increase solubility. Zn(II) binding increases fluorescence intensity, while Cu(II) binding quenches fluorescence and shifts the absorbance maximum from 379 to 444 nm. Therefore, they can be used as Zn biosensor.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Chromophore binding. The critical mutation in cyan derivatives is the Y66W substitution, which causes the chromophore to form with an indole rather than phenol component. Several additional compensatory mutations in the surrounding barrel are required to restore brightness to this modified chromophore due to the increased bulk of the indole group. In ECFP and Cerulean, the N-terminal half of the seventh strand exhibits two conformations. These conformations both have a complex set of van der Waals interactions with the chromophore. The Y145A and H148D mutations in Cerulean stabilize these interactions and allow the chromophore to be more planar, better packed, and less prone to collisional quenching.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Additional site-directed random mutagenesis in combination with fluorescence lifetime based screening has further stabilized the seventh β-strand resulting in a bright variant, mTurquoise2, with a quantum yield (QY) of 0.93. The red-shifted wavelength of the YFP derivatives is accomplished by the T203Y mutation and is due to π-electron stacking interactions between the substituted tyrosine residue and the chromophore. These two classes of spectral variants are often employed for Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) experiments. Genetically encoded FRET reporters sensitive to cell signaling molecules, such as calcium or glutamate, protein phosphorylation state, protein complementation, receptor dimerization, and other processes provide highly specific optical readouts of cell activity in real time.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Semirational mutagenesis of a number of residues led to pH-sensitive mutants known as pHluorins, and later super-ecliptic pHluorins. By exploiting the rapid change in pH upon synaptic vesicle fusion, pHluorins tagged to synaptobrevin have been used to visualize synaptic activity in neurons.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Redox sensitive GFP (roGFP) was engineered by introduction of cysteines into the beta barrel structure. The redox state of the cysteines determines the fluorescent properties of roGFP.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: The nomenclature of modified GFPs is often confusing due to overlapping mapping of several GFP versions onto a single name. For example, mGFP often refers to a GFP with an N-terminal palmitoylation that causes the GFP to bind to cell membranes. However, the same term is also used to refer to monomeric GFP, which is often achieved by the dimer interface breaking A206K mutation. Wild-type GFP has a weak dimerization tendency at concentrations above 5 mg/mL. mGFP also stands for "modified GFP," which has been optimized through amino acid exchange for stable expression in plant cells.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: The purpose of both the (primary) bioluminescence (from aequorin's action on luciferin) and the (secondary) fluorescence of GFP in jellyfish is unknown. GFP is co-expressed with aequorin in small granules around the rim of the jellyfish bell. The secondary excitation peak (480 nm) of GFP does absorb some of the blue emission of aequorin, giving the bioluminescence a more green hue. The serine 65 residue of the GFP chromophore is responsible for the dual-peaked excitation spectra of wild-type GFP. It is conserved in all three GFP isoforms originally cloned by Prasher. Nearly all mutations of this residue consolidate the excitation spectra to a single peak at either 395 nm or 480 nm. The precise mechanism of this sensitivity is complex, but, it seems, involves donation of a hydrogen from serine 65 to glutamate 222, which influences chromophore ionization. Since a single mutation can dramatically enhance the 480 nm excitation peak, making GFP a much more efficient partner of aequorin, "A. victoria" appears to evolutionarily prefer the less-efficient, dual-peaked excitation spectrum. Roger Tsien has speculated that varying hydrostatic pressure with depth may affect serine 65's ability to donate a hydrogen to the chromophore and shift the ratio of the two excitation peaks. Thus, the jellyfish may change the color of its bioluminescence with depth. However, a collapse in the population of jellyfish in Friday Harbor, where GFP was originally discovered, has hampered further study of the role of GFP in the jellyfish's natural environment.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Most species of lancelet are known to produce GFP in various regions of their body. Unlike "A. victoria", lancelets do not produce their own blue light, and the origin of their endogenous GFP is still unknown. Some speculate that it attracts plankton towards the mouth of the lancelet, serving as a passive hunting mechanism. It may also serve as a photoprotective agent in the larvae, preventing damage caused by high-intensity blue light by converting it into lower-intensity green light. However, these theories have not been tested.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: GFP-like proteins have been found in multiple species of marine copepods, particularly from the Pontellidae and Aetideidae families. GFP isolated from "Pontella mimocerami" has shown high levels of brightness with a quantum yield of 0.92, making them nearly two-fold brighter than the commonly used EGFP isolated from "A. victoria."


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: There are many GFP-like proteins that, despite being in the same protein family as GFP, are not directly derived from "Aequorea victoria". These include dsRed, eqFP611, Dronpa, TagRFPs, KFP, EosFP/IrisFP, Dendra, and so on. Having been developed from proteins in different organisms, these proteins can sometimes display unanticipated approaches to chromophore formation. Some of these, such as KFP, are developed from naturally non- or weakly-fluorescent proteins to be greatly improved upon by mutagenesis. When GFP-like barrels of different spectra characteristics are used, the excitation spectra of one chromophore can be used to power another chromophore (FRET), allowing for conversion between wavelengths of light.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: FMN-binding fluorescent proteins (FbFPs) were developed in 2007 and are a class of small (11-16 kDa), oxygen-independent fluorescent proteins that are derived from blue-light receptors. They are intended especially for the use under anaerobic or hypoxic conditions, since the formation and binding of the Flavin chromophore does not require molecular oxygen, as it is the case with the synthesis of the GFP chromophore.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Fluorescent proteins with other chromophores, such as UnaG with bilirubin, can display unique properties like red-shifted emission above 600 nm or photoconversion from a green-emitting state to a red-emitting state. They can have excitation and emission wavelengths far enough apart to achieve conversion between red and green light.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: A new class of fluorescent protein was evolved from a cyanobacterial ("Trichodesmium erythraeum") phycobiliprotein, α-allophycocyanin, and named small ultra red fluorescent protein (smURFP) in 2016. smURFP autocatalytically self-incorporates the chromophore biliverdin without the need of an external protein, known as a lyase. Jellyfish- and coral-derived GFP-like proteins require oxygen and produce a stoichiometric amount of hydrogen peroxide upon chromophore formation. smURFP does not require oxygen or produce hydrogen peroxide and uses the chromophore, biliverdin. smURFP has a large extinction coefficient (180,000 M cm) and has a modest quantum yield (0.20), which makes it comparable biophysical brightness to eGFP and ~2-fold brighter than most red or far-red fluorescent proteins derived from coral. smURFP spectral properties are similar to the organic dye Cy5.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: GFP has a beta barrel structure consisting of eleven β-strands with a pleated sheet arrangement, with an alpha helix containing the covalently bonded chromophore 4-("p"-hydroxybenzylidene)imidazolidin-5-one (HBI) running through the center. Five shorter alpha helices form caps on the ends of the structure. The beta barrel structure is a nearly perfect cylinder, 42Å long and 24Å in diameter (some studies have reported a diameter of 30Å), creating what is referred to as a "β-can" formation, which is unique to the GFP-like family. HBI, the spontaneously modified form of the tripeptide Ser65–Tyr66–Gly67, is nonfluorescent in the absence of the properly folded GFP scaffold and exists mainly in the un-ionized phenol form in wtGFP. Inward-facing sidechains of the barrel induce specific cyclization reactions in Ser65–Tyr66–Gly67 that induce ionization of HBI to the phenolate form and chromophore formation. This process of post-translational modification is referred to as "maturation". The hydrogen-bonding network and electron-stacking interactions with these sidechains influence the color, intensity and photostability of GFP and its numerous derivatives. The tightly packed nature of the barrel excludes solvent molecules, protecting the chromophore fluorescence from quenching by water. In addition to the auto-cyclization of the Ser65-Tyr66-Gly67, a 1,2-dehydrogenation reaction occurs at the Tyr66 residue. Besides the three residues that form the chromophore, residues such as Gln94, Arg96, His148, Thr203, and Glu222 all act as stabilizers. The residues of Gln94, Arg96, and His148 are able to stabilize by delocalizing the chromophore charge. Arg96 is the most important stabilizing residue due to the fact that it prompts the necessary structural realignments that are necessary from the HBI ring to occur. Any mutation to the Arg96 residue would result in a decrease in the development rate of the chromophore because proper electrostatic and steric interactions would be lost. Tyr66 is the recipient of hydrogen bonds and does not ionize in order to produce favorable electrostatics.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Mechanistically, the process involves base-mediated cyclization followed by dehydration and oxidation. In the reaction of 7a to 8 involves the formation of an enamine from the imine, while in the reaction of 7b to 9 a proton is abstracted. The formed HBI fluorophore is highlighted in green.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: The reactions are catalyzed by residues Glu222 and Arg96. An analogous mechanism is also possible with threonine in place of Ser65.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: For example, GFP can be used as a reporter for environmental toxicity levels. This protein has been shown to be an effective way to measure the toxicity levels of various chemicals including ethanol, "p"-formaldehyde, phenol, triclosan, and paraben. GFP is great as a reporter protein because it has no effect on the host when introduced to the host's cellular environment. Due to this ability, no external visualization stain, ATP, or cofactors are needed. With regards to pollutant levels, the fluorescence was measured in order to gauge the effect that the pollutants have on the host cell. The cellular density of the host cell was also measured. Results from the study conducted by Song, Kim, & Seo (2016) showed that there was a decrease in both fluorescence and cellular density as pollutant levels increased. This was indicative of the fact that cellular activity had decreased. More research into this specific application in order to determine the mechanism by which GFP acts as a pollutant marker. Similar results have been observed in zebrafish because zebrafish that were injected with GFP were approximately twenty times more susceptible to recognize cellular stresses than zebrafish that were not injected with GFP.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: The biggest advantage of GFP is that it can be heritable, depending on how it was introduced, allowing for continued study of cells and tissues it is expressed in. Visualizing GFP is noninvasive, requiring only illumination with blue light. GFP alone does not interfere with biological processes, but when fused to proteins of interest, careful design of linkers is required to maintain the function of the protein of interest. Moreover, if used with a monomer it is able to diffuse readily throughout cells.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: The availability of GFP and its derivatives has thoroughly redefined fluorescence microscopy and the way it is used in cell biology and other biological disciplines. While most small fluorescent molecules such as FITC (fluorescein isothiocyanate) are strongly phototoxic when used in live cells, fluorescent proteins such as GFP are usually much less harmful when illuminated in living cells. This has triggered the development of highly automated live-cell fluorescence microscopy systems, which can be used to observe cells over time expressing one or more proteins tagged with fluorescent proteins.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: There are many techniques to utilize GFP in a live cell imaging experiment. The most direct way of utilizing GFP is to directly attach it to a protein of interest. For example, GFP can be included in a plasmid expressing other genes to indicate a successful transfection of a gene of interest. Another method is to use a GFP that contains a mutation where the fluorescence will change from green to yellow over time, which is referred to as a fluorescent timer. With the fluorescent timer, researchers can study the state of protein production such as recently activated, continuously activated, or recently deactivated based on the color reported by the fluorescent protein. In yet another example, scientist have modified GFP to become active only after exposure to irradiation giving researchers a tool to selectively activate certain portions of a cell and observe where proteins tagged with the GFP move from the starting location. These are only two examples in a burgeoning field of fluorescent microcopy and a more complete review of biosensors utilizing GFP and other fluorescent proteins can be found here


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: For example, GFP had been widely used in labelling the spermatozoa of various organisms for identification purposes as in "Drosophila melanogaster", where expression of GFP can be used as a marker for a particular characteristic. GFP can also be expressed in different structures enabling morphological distinction. In such cases, the gene for the production of GFP is incorporated into the genome of the organism in the region of the DNA that codes for the target proteins and that is controlled by the same regulatory sequence; that is, the gene's regulatory sequence now controls the production of GFP, in addition to the tagged protein(s). In cells where the gene is expressed, and the tagged proteins are produced, GFP is produced at the same time. Thus, only those cells in which the tagged gene is expressed, or the target proteins are produced, will fluoresce when observed under fluorescence microscopy. Analysis of such time lapse movies has redefined the understanding of many biological processes including protein folding, protein transport, and RNA dynamics, which in the past had been studied using fixed (i.e., dead) material. Obtained data are also used to calibrate mathematical models of intracellular systems and to estimate rates of gene expression. Similarly, GFP can be used as an indicator of protein expression in heterologous systems. In this scenario, fusion proteins containing GFP are introduced indirectly, using RNA of the construct, or directly, with the tagged protein itself. This method is useful for studying structural and functional characteristics of the tagged protein on a macromolecular or single-molecule scale with fluorescence microscopy.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: The Vertico SMI microscope using the SPDM Phymod technology uses the so-called "reversible photobleaching" effect of fluorescent dyes like GFP and its derivatives to localize them as single molecules in an optical resolution of 10 nm. This can also be performed as a co-localization of two GFP derivatives (2CLM).


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Another powerful use of GFP is to express the protein in small sets of specific cells. This allows researchers to optically detect specific types of cells "in vitro" (in a dish), or even "in vivo" (in the living organism). Genetically combining several spectral variants of GFP is a useful trick for the analysis of brain circuitry (Brainbow). Other interesting uses of fluorescent proteins in the literature include using FPs as sensors of neuron membrane potential, tracking of AMPA receptors on cell membranes, viral entry and the infection of individual influenza viruses and lentiviral viruses, etc.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: It has also been found that new lines of transgenic GFP rats can be relevant for gene therapy as well as regenerative medicine. By using "high-expresser" GFP, transgenic rats display high expression in most tissues, and many cells that have not been characterized or have been only poorly characterized in previous GFP-transgenic rats.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: GFP has been shown to be useful in cryobiology as a viability assay. Correlation of viability as measured by trypan blue assays were 0.97. Another application is the use of GFP co-transfection as internal control for transfection efficiency in mammalian cells.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: A novel possible use of GFP includes using it as a sensitive monitor of intracellular processes via an eGFP laser system made out of a human embryonic kidney cell line. The first engineered living laser is made by an eGFP expressing cell inside a reflective optical cavity and hitting it with pulses of blue light. At a certain pulse threshold, the eGFP's optical output becomes brighter and completely uniform in color of pure green with a wavelength of 516 nm. Before being emitted as laser light, the light bounces back and forth within the resonator cavity and passes the cell numerous times. By studying the changes in optical activity, researchers may better understand cellular processes.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: GFP is used widely in cancer research to label and track cancer cells. GFP-labelled cancer cells have been used to model metastasis, the process by which cancer cells spread to distant organs.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: GFP can be used to analyse the colocalization of proteins. This is achieved by "splitting" the protein into two fragments which are able to self-assemble, and then fusing each of these to the two proteins of interest. Alone, these incomplete GFP fragments are unable to fluoresce. However, if the two proteins of interest colocalize, then the two GFP fragments assemble together to form a GFP-like structure which is able to fluoresce. Therefore, by measuring the level of fluorescence it is possible to determine whether the two proteins of interest colocalize.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Macro-scale biological processes, such as the spread of virus infections, can be followed using GFP labeling. In the past, mutagenic ultra violet light (UV) has been used to illuminate living organisms (e.g., see) to detect and photograph the GFP expression. Recently, a technique using non-mutagenic LED lights have been developed for macro-photography. The technique uses an epifluorescence camera attachment based on the same principle used in the construction of epifluorescence microscopes.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Alba, a green-fluorescent rabbit, was created by a French laboratory commissioned by Eduardo Kac using GFP for purposes of art and social commentary. The US company Yorktown Technologies markets to aquarium shops green fluorescent zebrafish (GloFish) that were initially developed to detect pollution in waterways. NeonPets, a US-based company has marketed green fluorescent mice to the pet industry as NeonMice. Green fluorescent pigs, known as Noels, were bred by a group of researchers led by Wu Shinn-Chih at the Department of Animal Science and Technology at National Taiwan University. A Japanese-American Team created green-fluorescent cats as proof of concept to use them potentially as model organisms for diseases, particularly HIV. In 2009 a South Korean team from Seoul National University bred the first transgenic beagles with fibroblast cells from sea anemones. The dogs give off a red fluorescent light, and they are meant to allow scientists to study the genes that cause human diseases like narcolepsy and blindness.


title: Green fluorescent protein

text: Julian Voss-Andreae, a German-born artist specializing in "protein sculptures," created sculptures based on the structure of GFP, including the 1.70 m (5'6") tall "Green Fluorescent Protein" (2004) and the 1.40 m (4'7") tall "Steel Jellyfish" (2006). The latter sculpture is located at the place of GFP's discovery by Shimomura in 1962, the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories.


title: University of Idaho

text: The University of Idaho (U of I, or UIdaho) is a public land-grant research university in Moscow, Idaho. It is the state's land-grant and primary research university, and the lead university in the Idaho Space Grant Consortium. The University of Idaho was the state's sole university for 71 years, until 1963. Its College of Law, established in 1909, was first accredited by the American Bar Association in 1925.


title: University of Idaho

text: Formed by the Idaho Territory legislature on January 30, 1889, the university opened its doors in 1892 on October 3, with an initial class of 40 students. The first graduating class in 1896 contained two men and two women. It has an enrollment exceeding 12,000, with over 11,000 on the Moscow campus. The university offers 142 degree programs, from accountancy to wildlife resources, including bachelor's, master's, doctoral, and specialists' degrees, and accompanying honors programs. Certificates of completion are offered in 30 areas of study. At 25% and 53%, its 4 and 6 year graduation rates are the highest of any public university in Idaho, and it generates 74 percent of all research money in the state, with research expenditures of $100 million in 2010 alone. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".