Poisoner in Chief

by Stephen Kinzer

  The seven years during which Gottlieb ran Technical Services—he was its longest-serving chief—were a period of frenetic global activity for the CIA. Its officers ran operations every day, in almost every country on earth, and required an endless array of tools and devices. Gottlieb’s men and women provided them: individually tailored disguises to help officers evade surveillance; cameras hidden inside key chains, tie clips, wristwatches, and cigarette lighters; a thumb-sized single-shot pistol; a pipe that concealed a radio receiver; cars with secret compartments in which agents could be smuggled out of hostile countries; and a compressor that squeezed Soviet currency into tiny packets so large amounts could be passed in small containers.

  Gottlieb’s “concealment engineers” also crafted a remarkable device intended to entrap Philip Agee, a retired CIA officer who had become a fierce critic of the Agency. In 1971, when Agee was in Paris working on a tell-all book, he met a woman later described as “a blonde, bosomy and wealthy heiress of an American businessman in Venezuela.” She encouraged his work, gave him money, lent him her apartment as a work space, and gave him a portable typewriter. Being a trained covert operative, Agee quickly discovered that the typewriter was crammed with tiny electronic devices, including microphones, a transmitter, and fifty miniature batteries. The woman who gave it to him turned out to have been a CIA officer. It was well crafted, an exemplar of Gottlieb’s art. Agee found it so ingenious that he featured it on the cover of his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary. The lining of the typewriter lid is peeled back to reveal the battery array concealed beneath.

  Some of the requests for exotic devices that Gottlieb received from operations officers had a peculiar origin. He ran Technical Services at a time when spy-versus-spy television shows like Secret Agent, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, I Spy, and Mission: Impossible were immensely popular. The craze for James Bond movies exploded at the same time. Scriptwriters competed to invent the most outrageously imaginative gadgets for their fictional spies to use. Real spies took notice. Operations officers would become intrigued by a gadget from a TV show or film, and ask whether it could be made to function in real life. These inquiries were so persistent that for a time Technical Services added extra officers to its telephone switchboard on the morning after each episode of Mission: Impossible was broadcast. Officers who had been intrigued by some piece of spyware they saw on the show would call to ask: “Could you do that?” Gottlieb’s crew took each of these orders seriously, and they filled more than a few.

  Inevitably, given the era, Gottlieb and his Technical Services Division became deeply involved in the Vietnam War. The CIA station in Saigon was enormous and included a contingent of officers from Technical Services. One of them later estimated that equipment produced by Gottlieb’s officers was used in “thirty to forty missions a day in Laos and Vietnam.”

  Engineers from Technical Services designed a portable “triple-tube rocket launcher” for commandos to use in destroying enemy fuel depots. Another team built a wooden superstructure to be fitted around a high-powered patrol boat so it would look like an innocent junk. Forgers made false documents for Vietnamese agents. Engineers designed sensors to be placed along the Ho Chi Minh trail, where they could be used to guide bomb strikes. They also produced mini-transmitters to be hidden in the stocks of rifles that would be abandoned on battlefields in the hope that enemy troops would recover them and become easier to track. One team invented an advanced compass for use by covert teams operating inside North Vietnam. It looked like a cigarette pack but contained miniaturized maps that were dimly backlit so they could be used in night operations.

  “Throughout 1968, Dr. Gottlieb continued to preside over his empire of scientists who still prowled the backwaters of the world seeking new roots and leaves which could be crushed and mixed in the search for lethal ways to kill,” according to one study of American intelligence during this period. “In their behavior laboratories, the psychiatrists and psychologists continued experimenting. Once more they had turned to an earlier line of research: implanting electrodes in the brain … An Agency team flew to Saigon in July 1968; among them were a neurosurgeon and a neurologist … In a closed-off compound at Bien Hoa Hospital, the Agency team set to work. Three Vietcong prisoners had been selected by the local station. How or why they were chosen would remain uncertain. In turn each man was anaesthetized and, after he had hinged back a flap in their skulls, the neurosurgeon implanted tiny electrodes in each brain. When the prisoners regained consciousness, the behaviorists set to work … The prisoners were placed in a room and given knives. Pressing the control buttons on their handsets, the behaviorists tried to arouse their subjects to violence. Nothing happened. For a whole week the doctors tried to make the men attack each other. Baffled at their lack of success, the team flew back to Washington. As previously arranged in case of failure, while the physicians were still in the air the prisoners were shot by Green Beret troopers and their bodies burned.”

  While this experiment was failing in Vietnam, another one in Israel also failed. The Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, had an intimate connection to the CIA through James Jesus Angleton, the CIA officer who managed their relationship, and the two services often shared intelligence. As head of the CIA’s counterintelligence staff, Angleton knew much about MK-ULTRA. Mossad was curious about one of the central MK-ULTRA goals: creating a programmed killer. Mossad officers thought this technique might help them assassinate the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. “The Israelis spent three months in 1968 trying to transform a Palestinian prisoner into a programmed killer,” according to a study of Mossad’s assassination program. “Within five hours of being released to carry out his mission, he had turned himself in to the local police, handed over his pistol and explained that Israeli intelligence had tried to brainwash him into killing Arafat.”

  Gottlieb’s operation reached a peak of activity during the late 1960s. His ability to oversee a worldwide network of officers—informed by his years running MK-ULTRA—secured his reputation as a skilled administrator. He worked hard, happy with five hours of sleep each night. At lunchtime he snacked on food he brought from home, usually raw carrots, cauliflower, or other vegetables, homemade bread, and goat milk. He was known as a compassionate boss who made a point of mixing with his subordinates. “Gottlieb’s personal attention to the TSD ‘family’ became legendary,” one of his successors reported. “He had a self-deprecating sense of humor, liked to show off folk-dance steps, and remembered names, spouses’ names, birthdays, and hobbies.”

  “It sounds hokey, but he had a touch with that kind of thing,” said a chemist who worked for him. “It came across as, ‘The boss knows me.’”

  By the early 1970s Gottlieb had secured his place as one of the CIA’s veteran leaders. Suspicions that followed him during his MK-ULTRA days seemed to have dissipated. His management style won him many admirers. So did his willingness to bend with the bureaucratic winds. His MK-ULTRA past might have threatened his position, but with Helms in place as director of central intelligence the past was safely secret.

  That secrecy began to unravel in the pre-dawn hours of June 17, 1972. A security guard at the Watergate complex in Washington noticed a piece of tape over a door lock at the office of the Democratic National Committee. He called the police. Several intruders were arrested. They turned out to have connections to the White House and the CIA. Gottlieb’s Technical Services Division had prepared false identity papers for two of them, Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, and had provided Hunt with implements of espionage including a speech alteration device, a camera concealed in a tobacco pouch, and a wig-and-glasses disguise. The Watergate break-in led to a series of discoveries that shattered American politics, leading ultimately to President Nixon’s resignation. It also set off the chain of events that ended Gottlieb’s career.

  Eager to contain the political damage of Watergate, Nixon sought help from the CIA. Helms refused to create a cover story that would exculpate the White House. On F
ebruary 1, 1973, Nixon fired him. Suddenly Gottlieb’s protector was gone. He was alone and vulnerable.

  As Helms was packing to leave, he summoned Gottlieb for a farewell. Their talk turned to MK-ULTRA, now fading from memory but still alive in files that documented years of experiments and interrogations. They made a fateful decision. No one, they agreed, could ever be allowed to see those files. They would certainly cause outrage if made public—and could also be used as evidence to prosecute Gottlieb and Helms for grave crimes.

  “Early in 1973, Dr. Gottlieb, then C/TSD [chief of the Technical Services Division], called [redacted] and me to his office and requested that we review our Branch holdings and assure him that there were no extant records of the drug research program which had been terminated many years before,” a CIA psychologist wrote in a memo two years later. “Dr. Gottlieb explained that Mr. Helms, in the process of vacating his chair as DCI, had called him and said, in effect, ‘Let’s take this with us’ or ‘Let’s let this die with us’ … There were no relevant investigations taking place at the time, and no relevant caveats on reduction of files. Mr. Helms seemed to be saying, ‘It was our bath; let us clean the tub.’”

  In one of his last acts as director of central intelligence, Helms ordered all MK-ULTRA records destroyed. The chief of the CIA Records Center in Warrenton, Virginia, was alarmed. He called Gottlieb and asked for confirmation. Gottlieb took the matter seriously enough to drive to the Records Center, present the order in person, and insist that it be carried out forthwith. On January 30, 1973, seven boxes of documents were shredded.

  “Over my stated objections, the MK-ULTRA files were destroyed by order of the DCI (Mr. Helms) shortly before his departure from office,” the chief of the Records Center wrote in a memo for his file.

  Around the same time, Gottlieb directed his secretary to open his office safe, remove files marked “MK-ULTRA” or “Secret Sensitive,” and destroy them. She did as she was told. Later she said she had made no record of what she destroyed and “never thought for a moment to question my instructions.” With these blows, a historic archive was lost.

  Helms’s successor, James Schlesinger, arrived determined to make changes. “Schlesinger came on strong,” one of his successors wrote in a memoir. “He had developed some strong ideas about what was wrong with [the CIA] and some positive ideas as to how to go about righting those wrongs. So he arrived at Langley, his shirttails flying, determined, with that bulldog, abrasive temperament of his, to implement those ideas and set off a wave of change.”

  Gottlieb was an obvious target. By CIA standards he was a grizzled veteran, having joined the Agency just four years after it was founded and served for twenty-two years. The program with which he was most closely associated, MK-ULTRA, was no longer well regarded. He had been a Helms protégé, and the Helms era was over. Finally, he was tainted by the fact that his Technical Services Division had collaborated with the Watergate burglars.

  Immediately after taking office, Schlesinger changed the name of the Technical Services Division. It became the Office of Technical Services. Gottlieb was still the chief, but he must have anticipated what was coming.

  One afternoon in April, Schlesinger telephoned John McMahon, an experienced CIA officer who had worked on the U-2 project. He asked McMahon to be at his office the next morning at 9:30. When McMahon appeared, pleasantries were brief.

  “I’ve got a job for you,” Schlesinger told him.

  “What’s that?” McMahon asked.

  “I want you to go down and run OTS.”

  “I don’t know anything about OTS.”

  “I want you to go down there and run it anyway. Make sure you know what’s going on.”

  With that, Gottlieb was out and McMahon was in. There remained only the question of when to make the change. Schlesinger, not a patient man, brushed off the idea of waiting until the first day of May. Instead he looked at his watch and asked, “How about 10 AM?”

  “We drove down to OTS,” McMahon recalled years later. “I walked in and said, ‘Hi, I’m your new leader.’ It was a very awkward occasion.”

  For Gottlieb it was more than awkward. He might have sought to remain at the CIA in a reduced capacity, but that would have suited neither his wishes nor those of the Agency. A clean break was best for all.

  Before departing, Gottlieb was asked to write a memo listing the kinds of help Technical Services was giving to other government agencies that carry out covert operations. It describes one aspect of the work he had been doing for more than a decade.

  Department of Defense: Documents, disguise, concealment devices, secret writing, flaps and seals, counter-insurgency and counter-sabotage courses.

  Federal Bureau of Investigation: At the request of the FBI we cooperate with the Bureau in a few audio surveillance operations against sensitive foreign targets in the United States.

  Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs: Beacons, cameras, audio and telephone devices for overseas operations, identity documents, car-trailing devices, SRAC [short-range agent communications], flaps and seals, and training of selected personnel responsible for the use thereof.

  Immigration and Naturalization: Analyses of foreign passports and visas, guidance in developing tamper-proof alien registration cards, [redacted].

  Department of State: Technical graphics guidance on developing a new United States passport, analyses of foreign passports, car-armoring and personnel locators (beacons) for ambassadors.

  Postal Services: The office of Chief Postal Inspector has had selected personnel attend basic surveillance photographic courses, has been furnished foreign postal information and has been the recipient of letter bomb analyses … We also have an arrangement with the Post Office to examine and reinsert a low volume of certain foreign mail entering the United States.

  Secret Service: Gate passes, security passes, passes for presidential campaign, emblems for presidential vehicles, [and] a secure ID photo service.

  US Agency for International Development: We furnish instructors to a USAID-sponsored Technical Investigation Course (counter-terror) at [redacted].

  White House: Stationery, special memoranda, [and] molds of the Great Seal have been furnished.

  Police Representing Washington, Arlington, Fairfax and Alexandria: During the period 1968–1969 a series of classes reflecting basic and surveillance photography, basic audio, locks and picks, counter-sabotage and surreptitious entry were given to selected members from the above mentioned cities.

  Sidney Gottlieb retired from the CIA on June 30, 1973. Before departing he was awarded one of the Agency’s highest honors, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. CIA officers receive this award “for performance of outstanding services, or for achievement of a distinctly exceptional nature.” As protocol dictates, the ceremony was private and Gottlieb had to return the medal after holding it for a few moments. The citation that accompanied it has not been declassified.

  13

  Some of Our People Were Out of Control in Those Days

  One of the most shocking cables ever sent by a director of central intelligence was delivered to case officers around the world on May 9, 1973. James Schlesinger, who had been running the Agency for barely four months—and who had just fired Gottlieb—wanted to stun the CIA out of ingrained habits. The Watergate scandal had set off public demands for candor and transparency in government. Schlesinger took advantage of that climate to send his shattering cable. Even he could not have imagined all it would produce.

  “I am determined that the law shall be respected,” Schlesinger wrote. “I am taking several actions to implement this objective. I have ordered all the senior operating officials of this Agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or that have gone on in the past, which might be considered to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency. I hereby direct every person presently employed by CIA to report to me on any such activities of which he has knowledge. I invite all ex-employees to do the same. Anyone who ha
s such information should call my secretary (extension 6363) and say that he wishes to talk to me about ‘activities outside the CIA’s charter.’”

  Two days later, President Nixon announced that he was moving Schlesinger to a new job, secretary of defense. Then, eager to defend himself against charges that he was seeking to use the CIA as a political tool, Nixon named a career officer, William Colby, as its new director. Colby had a reputation as steely and harsh, shaped largely by his years of work in Vietnam, where he directed a campaign code-named Phoenix, aimed at “neutralizing” civilians who were thought to be collaborating with enemy forces. Torture had been part of Phoenix, and Colby himself had confirmed that its agents killed more than twenty thousand Vietnamese. Yet by the time Nixon named him to head the CIA, he was in the midst of a personal voyage. His determination to reveal the CIA’s past excesses turned out to be even more fervent than Schlesinger’s.

  “He was a Roman Catholic, and after his eldest daughter’s death from a combination of epilepsy and anorexia nervosa, he seemed to change, becoming more religious and more reflective,” according to one intelligence historian. “Colby’s colleagues noticed a change in him, and put it down to his daughter’s death and the harassment he faced over Phoenix. In retrospect they felt that he had ‘got religion,’ that he was a ‘soldier priest,’ and that in his own way he was trying to do the best for the Agency, convinced that if he made a clean breast of the CIA’s secrets, they could be put in the past … Implicit in his decisions was a recognition that the Agency’s secrets were going to come out anyway. So he contrived to involve America’s political leadership in the embarrassment of discovery.”