Poisoner in Chief

by Stephen Kinzer

  “a scientist named Dr. Gottlieb was hired”: Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008), p. 319.

  “cosmic in scope, interested in everything”: Norman Mailer, Harlot’s Ghost (New York: Random House, 1992), p. 331.

  from a rubber airplane to an escape kit: Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, with Henry Robert Schlesinger, Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda (New York: Dutton, 2008), pp. 290, 297.

  “Under Gottlieb’s leadership”: Ibid., pp. 379–80.

  At the age of twelve: Ted Gup, “The Coldest Warrior,” Washington Post, December 16, 2001. “I was born with a pair of clubbed feet that were corrected, as best they could in those days, very early in my life, in the first year or two. And I wore braces to continue the therapeutic process … I wore special shoes at various parts of my life”; U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Gloria Kronisch, Executrix of the Estate of Stanley Milton Glickman, against United States of America, Sidney Gottlieb, et al., “Deposition of Sidney Gottlieb,” September 19, 1995, Cr62448.0-Cr62451, pp. 6–7.

  “viciously harassed”: H. P. Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), p. 102.

  He studied advanced German: Sidney Gottlieb Admissions Papers, Series 19/12/2/1, University of Wisconsin–Madison Archives.

  He received a short but cordial reply: Ibid.

  he was able to take the courses he wanted: Ibid.

  He sang in the Glee Club: Agricola (Russellville: Arkansas Polytechnic College, 1938).

  “a Yankee who pleases the southerners”: Ibid.

  “I have been keeping up an A average”: Gottlieb Admissions Papers.

  he joined the campus chapter of the Young People’s Socialist League: Weiner, “Sidney Gottlieb, 80, Dies”; Gup, “Coldest Warrior.”

  Baldwin gave him a glowing recommendation: Accession 1990/061, College of Agriculture, student folders, University of Wisconsin–Madison Archives.

  “Grad students were not supposed to get married”: Margaret Moore Gottlieb, “Autobiographical Essays” (Box 1, Folder 24—Call No. RG 489), Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA.

  “We were very excited to get the cable”: Ibid.

  “I wanted to do my share in the war effort”: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 102.

  “I enjoyed my FDA time”: Ibid., p. 103.

  “By this time we had found a very old and primitive cabin”: Margaret Gottlieb, “Autobiographical Essays.”

  A relative who spent four days with the young family: Ibid.

  “Sid is pitching in more”: Ibid.

  2. Dirty Business

  On a wall near Odeonsplatz: “Munich City 1945 in Colour—Old City,” YouTube video, 3:22, posted by Timeline, February 24, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idiJegt7tFw.

  Blome was, according to one report, “a well-dressed man”: Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Back Bay, 2014), p. 75; Egmont R. Koch and Michael Wech, Deckname Artischocke: Die Geheimen Menschenversuche der CIA (Munich: Bertelsmann, 2002), p. 28.

  Blome’s complex was surrounded by ten-foot walls: Ute Deichmann, Biologists under Hitler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 283; Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1944–1990 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 180; Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, pp. 159–64.

  “very concerned that the installations for human experiments”: Deichmann, Biologists under Hitler, p. 287.

  Interrogators from the Counterintelligence Corps confronted Blome: Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, pp. 160–65.

  “In 1943 Blome was studying bacteriological warfare”: Operation Paperclip Info, “Kurt Blome,” http://www.operationpaperclip.info/kurt-blome.php.

  “The best defense is offense”: Ed Regis, The Biology of Doom: The History of America’s Secret Germ Warfare Project (New York: Henry Holt / Owl Books, 1999), p. 21.

  “Biological warfare is of course a ‘dirty business’”: Ibid., p. 25.

  “The value of biological warfare”: Ernest T. Takafuji, Biological Weapons and Modern Warfare (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1991), p. ii.

  Churchill asked the Americans for help: PBS American Experience, “The Living Weapon,” https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x35q3xt; Regis, Biology of Doom, p. 69.

  “Practically all of the people there”: University of Wisconsin Oral History Program, “Interview with Ira L. Baldwin, 1974. First Interview of Three,” http://www.worldcat.org/title/oral-history-program-interview-with-ira-l-baldwin-1974-first-interview-of-three/oclc/227181167&referer=brief_results.

  “To understand the biological warfare program”: Ibid.

  “If I said ‘I want that man’”: Ibid.

  Baldwin and a couple of Chemical Warfare Service officers: History Net, “Dr. Ira Baldwin: Biological Weapons Pioneer,” http://www.historynet.com/dr-ira-baldwin-biological-weapons-pioneer.htm; PBS, “The Living Weapon”; Regis, Biology of Doom, pp. 38–39.

  The Office of Strategic Services, America’s wartime intelligence agency: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, pp. 46–47.

  On March 9, 1943, the army announced: Regis, Biology of Doom, p. 41.

  The first commandant immediately ordered: Ibid., p. 79; Peter Williams and David Wallace, Unit 731: The Shattering Exposé of the Japanese Army’s Secret of Secrets (London: Grafton, 1989), p. 160.

  Everything Baldwin requisitioned was immediately supplied: Regis, Biology of Doom, p. 80.

  “I remember one time we had a party”: PBS, “The Living Weapon.”

  Ultimately about fifteen hundred came to work at Camp Detrick: Oral History, “Interview with Ira L. Baldwin.”

  “They were passionate about their science”: PBS, “The Living Weapon.”

  “In the event of my death”: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 41.

  New arrivals at Camp Detrick: Regis, Biology of Doom, pp. 66–67.

  Early in 1944, Winston Churchill abruptly changed: American History, “Dr. Ira Baldwin: Biological Weapons Pioneer,” http://www.historynet.com/dr-ira-baldwin-biological-weapons-pioneer.htm; PBS, “The Living Weapon.”

  Hundreds of scientists: Norman Covert, Cutting Edge: A History of Fort Detrick, Maryland 1943–1993 (Fort Detrick, MD: Headquarters U.S. Army Garrison Public Affairs Office, 1993), p. 19.

  Baldwin also built two field testing stations: Regis, Biology of Doom, pp. 79–80; Oral History, “Interview with Ira L. Baldwin.”

  Donovan wanted authority to grant them immunity: Hunt, Secret Agenda, pp. 9–10.

  At the Kransberg Castle interrogation center: Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, p. 227.

  President Harry Truman set it in motion: Hunt, Secret Agenda, pp. 38–40.

  Ultimately more than seven hundred scientists: Estimates range from 765 (Linda Hunt, “U.S. Coverup of Nazi Scientists,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April 1985) to more than 1,600 (Annie Jacobsen, “What Cold War CIA Interrogators Learned from the Nazis,” Daily Beast, February 11, 2014, https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-cold-war-cia-interrogators-learned-from-the-nazis?ref=author).

  Part of their assignment was to teach Americans: Hunt, Secret Agenda, pp. 160–61.

  They systematically expunged references: Ibid., p. 108; Ralph Blumenthal, “Nazi Whitewash in 1940s Charged,” New York Times, March 11, 1985.

  Applicants who had been rated by interrogators: Hunt, Secret Agenda, pp. 118–19.

  “In effect … the scientific teams wore blinders”: Ibid., p. 10.

  At home, the Federal Bureau of Investigation: Ibid., p. 112.

  The American Federation of Scientists wrote to President Truman: Ibid., p. 113.

  Newspapers reported that one of the first Paperclip contracts: United Nations War Crimes Commission, Law Reports of Trials of Wa
r Criminals, vol. 10: The I. G. Farben and Krupp Trials (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office), 1949, p. 1.

  Captain Bosquet Wev: Hunt, Secret Agenda, p. 110; Hunt, “U.S. Coverup”; Blumenthal, “Nazi Whitewash.”

  Recalcitrant diplomats were pilloried: Hunt, Secret Agenda, p. 123.

  Press reports portrayed the conflict: Ibid., p. 122.

  As a reward, and a sign of respect: Author’s interview with Oberursel historian Manfred Kopp, 2017; Koch and Wech, Deckname Artischocke, p. 54.

  They discovered that the army surgeon who ran Unit 731: Ibid., p. 55.

  Two obsessions … shaped Shiro Ishii: Daniel Barenblatt, A Plague upon Humanity: The Hidden History of Japan’s Biological Warfare Program (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005), pp. 10–20; Sheldon H. Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–45, and the American Cover-up (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 13–22; Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony: Japan’s Wartime Human Experimentation Program (Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 2004), pp. 23–25.

  In 1928, after finishing medical school: Harris, Factories of Death, pp. 40–49; Williams and Wallace, Unit 731, pp. 39–45.

  “a swashbuckling womanizer”: Christopher Hudson, “Doctors of Depravity,” Daily Mail, March 2, 2007.

  “Our God-given mission as doctors”: Regis, Biology of Doom, pp. 40–41.

  Japanese soldiers began sweeping up “bandits”: Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, pp. 40–42; Hudson, “Doctors of Depravity;” Williams and Wallace, Unit 731, pp. 81–82.

  For the brave of heart and strong of stomach: Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, pp. 83–85; Harris, Factories of Death, pp. 41–82; Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman, A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare (New York: Noonday, 1982), pp. 57–82; Nicholas D. Kristof, “Unmasking Horror: Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity,” New York Times, March 17, 1995; Keiichi Tsuneishi, The Germ Warfare Unit That Disappeared: The Kwangtung Army’s 731st Unit (Tokyo: Kai-mei-sha, 1982), pp. 1–166; Williams and Wallace, Unit 731, pp. 50–101.

  In the last days of the war: Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, p. 10; Williams and Wallace, Unit 731, pp. 144–51.

  “He literally begged my father”: Williams and Wallace, Unit 731, p. 227.

  Ishii admitted no crimes: Ibid., pp. 228–52; Koch and Wech, Deckname Artischocke, p. 56; Regis, Biology of Doom, pp. 104–11.

  the Americans were interested in “technical and scientific information”: Regis, Biology of Doom, p. 109.

  “The value to the US of Japanese biological weapons data”: Williams and Wallace, Unit 731, p. 314.

  “Statements from Ishii … can probably be obtained”: Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, p. 109.

  “Chalking that up to simple racism”: Lee Nisson, “Acknowledging Plunder: The Consequences of How the United States Acquired Japanese and German Technological Secrets after WWII,” senior thesis, Brandeis University, 2014, p. 143.

  Each slide contained a sliver of tissue: Regis, Biology of Doom, pp. 126–27.

  “Information has accrued”: Harris and Paxman, Higher Form of Killing, p. 154.

  Over the following years: Howard Brody et al., “United States Responses to Japanese Wartime Inhuman Experimentation after World War II: National Security and Wartime Exigency,” Cambridge Quarterly of Health Care Ethics, vol. 23, no. 2 (April 2014), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4487829/; Ralph Blumenthal, “Revisiting World War II Atrocities: Comparing the Unspeakable to the Unthinkable,” New York Times, March 7, 1999.

  Evidence later emerged: Nisson, “Acknowledging Plunder,” p. 154.

  Designs of their medical torture centers: Christian W. Spang and Rolf-Harald Wippich, eds., Japanese-German Relations, 1895–1945: War, Diplomacy and Public Opinion (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 208.

  The bang of the gavel: Vivien Spitz, Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Human Experiments (Boulder, CO: Sentient, 2005), pp. 42–45.

  Blome put up a spirited defense: Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, pp. 273–74; Nisson, “Acknowledging Plunder,” pp. 68–69; Douglas O. Lindor, “The Nuremberg Trials: The Doctors Trial,” Famous Trials, https://www.famous-trials.com/nuremberg/1903-doctortrial.

  Blome’s testimony was not all that helped his case: “Operation Paperclip Nazi Rogues Page,” http://ahrp.org/operation-paperclip-nazi-rogues-page/; “Operation Paperclip: Kurt Blome,” http://www.operationpaperclip.info/kurt-blome.php.

  “The deck was clearly stacked”: Koch and Wech, Deckname Artischocke, p. 54.

  “Available now for interrogation”: Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, p. 292.

  At one session, though, he mentioned: Ibid., p. 295.

  In the spring of 1949 they created a secret team: Scott Shane, “Buried Secrets of Bio-Warfare,” Baltimore Sun, August 1, 2004.

  “a little Detrick within Detrick”: Ibid.

  3. Willing and Unwilling Subjects

  For the next two hours he careened: Robert Campbell, “The Chemistry of Madness,” Life, November 26, 1971.

  “I had great difficulty in speaking coherently”: Julian B. Rotter, Psychology (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1975), p. 183.

  Hofmann reported what he called: Albert Hofmann, “The Discovery of LSD and Subsequent Investigations on Naturally Occurring Hallucinogens,” Psychedelic Library, http://www.psychedelic-library.org/hofmann.htm.

  He collected all the information he could find: Hunt, Secret Agenda, p. 162.

  “Their will to resist would be weakened”: Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, p. 289.

  “Throughout recorded history, wars have been characterized”: Armin Krishnan, Military Neuroscience and the Coming Age of Neurowarfare (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2018), p. 26.

  Under this “informal agreement”: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 65.

  “Under MK-NAOMI”: John Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”: The CIA and Mind Control (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), pp. 80–81.

  Some observed bio-weapons tests: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 73; “Deckname Artischocke—Geheime Menschenversuche,” YouTube video, 44:47, posted by Taurus322, June 15, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7xD7_IJIrk&t=145s.; BBC, “Germ Warfare Fiasco Revealed,” November 19, 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/526870.stm; “Operation Harness, 1948–1949 [Allocated Title],” video, posted by the Imperial War Museum, catalog no. DED 85, https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060017887.

  That same year, six members: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 117.

  They chose San Francisco: Jim Carlton, “Of Microbes and Mock Attacks: Years Ago, the Military Sprayed Germs on U.S. Cities,” Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2001; Leonard A. Cole, Clouds of Secrecy: The Army’s Germ-Warfare Tests over Populated Areas (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988), pp. 75–84.

  “It was noted that a successful BW attack”: Rebecca Kreston, “Blood and Fog: The Military’s Germ Warfare Tests in San Francisco,” Discovery, June 28, 2015.

  The program was code-named Bluebird: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, pp. 28, 208; Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 24.

  One of the first Bluebird memos: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 208; Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 24.

  Experiments would be aimed at: William Bowart, Operation Mind Control (New York: Delacorte, 1977), p. 104.

  Barely six months after it was launched: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, pp. 208–9.

  “In our conversation of 9 February 1951”: Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, p. 366.

  Other memos from this period: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, pp. 208–9.

  Camp King was home base for the “rough boys”: Author’s interview with Manfred Kopp; Alfred W. McCoy, “Science in Dachau’s Shadow: Hebb, Beecher, and the Development of CIA Psychological Torture and Modern Medical Ethics,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, vol. 43(4) (Fall 2007).

  “The unit took great pride in their nicknames”: H. P. Albarelli Jr. and Jeffrey S. Kaye, “The CIA�
��s Shocking Experiments on Children Exposed: Drugging, Electroshocks and Brainwashing,” Alternet, https://www.alternet.org/story/147834/the_cia’s_shocking_experiments_on_children_exposed_—_drugging,_electroshocks_and_brainwashing.

  “disposal of body would be no problem”: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 42.

  A few miles from Camp King: Koch and Wech, Deckname Artischocke, pp. 98–100.

  “This villa on the edge of Kronberg”: WDR German Television, “Deckname Artischocke: Geheime Menschenversuche,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7xD7_IJIrk&t=145s.

  “usually resulted in a slow and agonizing death”: Hunt, Secret Agenda, pp. 151–52; Koch and Wech, Deckname Artischocke, pp. 29–30; Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, pp. 303–4.

  “The former chief physician of the German army”: Koch and Wech, Deckname Artischocke, p. 91.

  One CIA-connected researcher: SWR German Television, Folterexperten—Die Geheimen Methoden der CIA (film), https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvzl7j; “Henry K. Beecher,” Enacademic, http://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/2224000.

  German researchers would later identify other secret prisons: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 79; WDR German Television, Deckname Artischocke (film).

  Bluebird interrogation teams injected captured North Korean soldiers: Bowart, Operation Mind Control, pp. 102–5; Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 25; Dominic Streatfeild, Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007), p. 50.

  He had rubber-stamped dozens of others: Hunt, Secret Agenda, pp. 180–81; Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, pp. 344–45; Koch and Wech, Deckname Artischocke, pp. 28–30.

  Fortunately, the ideal job had just become available: Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, pp. 347, 364–65; Koch and Wech, Deckname Artischocke, pp. 106–8.

  Answers to these questions, they asserted in a memo: Declassified CIA document, MORI #140401, “Special Research, Bluebird,” https://www.wanttoknow.info/mind_control/foia_mind_control/19520101_140401.

  4. The Secret That Was Going to Unlock the Universe

  Waves of damp heat enveloped Washington: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 103; Weather Underground, “Weather for KDCA—July 1951,” https://english.wunderground.com/history/airport/KDCA/1951/7/13/DailyHistory.html?req_city=&req_state=&req_statename=&reqdb.zip=&reqdb.magic=&reqdb.wmo=. According to Wallace et al., Spycraft, Gottlieb’s Technical Services Staff then operated from a “covert building on 14th Street near the Department of Agriculture” (p. 47).