Here's an interesting piece of history that helps us understand:
It was a different time, people going for "weird psychiatric cures" at leading institutions in their city or country would have thought less about the brutal and suspect methods.
Exhibit A.
Montreal Neurological Institute / McGill and the Peter Allan Institute. In the 1900s, Montreal, Canada was one of the Mecca's in neuroscience and still is. There was a guy named Dr. Ewan Cameron who at points in his life was the head of the American Psychiatric Association (1952–1953), Canadian Psychiatric Association (1958–1959), American Psychopathological Association (1963), Society of Biological Psychiatry (1965) and World Psychiatric Association (1961–1966). He had a theory and afaik was the one who came up with the "Depatterning" idea of giving drugs then subjecting people to images with their eyelids kept open, think Clockword Orange and the stereotypes of that kind of "mind control" or "mind wiping".
His research was funded by the U.S. government. While he knew his research was being funded by a foreign government, I'm not sure if he knew it was being funded by CIA/more secretive groups. Regardless, he was doing some heinous research with the money.
People would go for depatterning at his institution of the neurological institute, be completely messed up, substance induced or activate a permanent psychosis, then they would end up at the hospital, then to Mcgill, then hospital, then to the Peter Allan institute. There was little cross-talk between institutions even in the same city and people would be shunted from one to the next in the worst cases. This is how it went undetected. Otherwise, people probably thought "o they didn't get a lobotomy, they must be crazy though, wonder how they got this way, must be in their blood".
Even Donald Hebb, of "fires together, wires together" fame was funded by the same foreign bodies but he claims he didn't know how insidious the money was, and we believed him. That's another story and he is a well loved and important figure in neuroscience. Ewan Cameron, however, who's heard of him anymore? He permanently injured and indirectly killed many with his depatterning.
All in all, the CIA funded research all over the world, it was decentralized and they looked for researchers with credentials and no scruples to conduct the kind of research we know they did. It also took ignorance, willful or otherwise, a different time and standards of care/research subjects, as well as no one connecting the dots. Think of it this way, you are a scientist with existing research, a granting body promises money in return for your research, you take the money in return for giving your results to them. Maybe it's only 1/4 of the research your lab does anyway, you take the money from this non-scientific body and your department either doesn't know or doesn't think it's all that bad or out of the ordinary.
Not familiar with how the dots were connected or by whom but I hope this gives a picture of the actual context for how things went down.