Poisoner in Chief
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“Do you know why they recruited you?”: U.S. District Court 2nd Circuit, “Deposition of Sidney Gottlieb,” September 19, 1995, p. 11.
he “continued his work”: Koch and Wech, Deckname Artischocke, p. 63.
Several years earlier, Baldwin had guided: Gordon Thomas, Secrets and Lies: A History of CIA Mind Control and Germ Warfare (Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky and Konecky, 2007), p. 42.
“It’s pretty amazing”: H. P. Albarelli, “The Mysterious Death of Frank Olson,” Crime, May 19, 2003, http://www.crimemagazine.com/part-two-mysterious-death-cia-scientist-frank-olson.
He confessed to the CIA psychologist assigned to screen him: Gup, “Coldest Warrior”; Weiner, “Sidney Gottlieb, 80, Dies.”
Neither ever walked normally: Thomas, Secrets and Lies, p. 63.
“a strong but never mentioned bond”: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 103.
Gottlieb’s first assignment at the CIA: U.S. District Court 2nd Circuit, “Deposition of Sidney Gottlieb,” September 19, 1995, p. 311.
On August 20, 1951, he directed that Bluebird be expanded: Tani M. Linville, “Project MKULTRA and the Search for Mind Control: Clandestine Use of LSD within the CIA,” Digital Commons, April 26, 2016, https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=history_capstones; Susan Maret, “Murky Projects and Uneven Information Policies: A Case Study of the Psychological Strategy Board and CIA,” Secrecy and Society, vol. 1, no. 2, February 2018, https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1034&context=secrecyandsociety; Colin Ross, The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists (Richardson, TX: Manitou, 2006), p. 34.
Supposedly he chose that name: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 226; Richard Gilbride, Matrix for Assassination: The JFK Conspiracy (Bloomington, IN: Trafford, 2009), p. 31.
The first directives sent to Artichoke teams: John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), pp. 211–13.
“Our principal goal”: Ibid., p. 214.
“drugs are already on hand”: Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond (New York: Grove, 1985), p. 13.
The first subject was a prisoner called Kelly: Jeffrey Kaye and H. P. Albarelli, “The Real Roots of the CIA’s Rendition and Black Sites Program,” Truthout, February 17, 2010, https://truthout.org/articles/the-real-roots-of-the-cias-rendition-and-black-sites-program/.
Hunter had been a militantly anti-Communist journalist: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, pp. 187–90; Marcia Holmes, “Edward Hunter and the Origin of ‘Brainwashing,’” May 26, 2017, http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hiddenpersuaders/blog/hunter-origins-of-brainwashing/; New World Encyclopedia, “Brainwashing,” http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Brainwashing; Matthew W. Dunne, A Cold War State of Mind: Brainwashing and Postwar American Society (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), pp. 3–56; Kathleen Taylor, Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 3–11, 101–4.
“psychological warfare on a scale”: Timothy Melley, The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), p. 48.
“The Reds have specialists”: Tim Weiner, “Remembering Brainwashing,” New York Times, July 6, 2008.
“There was deep concern over the issue of brainwashing”: Central Intelligence Agency, “An Interview with Richard Helms,” https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol44no4/html/v44i4a07p_0020.htm.
“Specific research should be undertaken”: Central Intelligence Agency, “Special Research for Artichoke,” April 24, 1952, https://mikemcclaughry.wordpress.com/the-reading-library/cia-declassified-document-library/project-artichoke-special-research-areas-april-24-1952/.
Each Artichoke team included a “research specialist”: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, pp. 228–29; Koch and Wech, Deckname Artischocke, p. 75; Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” pp. 31–36, 40–47.
“As a rule”: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, pp. 228–30.
In 1950 they completed more than two years of work: Chris Heidenrich, Frederick: Local and National Crossroads (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 2003), p. 144; Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, p. 291.
“aerobiological studies of agents”: U.S. Department of the Interior, “National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: One-Million-Liter Test Sphere,” https://mht.maryland.gov/secure/medusa/PDF/Frederick/F-3-46.pdf.
He pushed for wider use of polygraphs: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” pp. 26–28.
“dangerous combinations of drugs”: Alfred W. McCoy, Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), p. 77.
After taking a four-day course: Streatfeild, Brainwash, pp. 151–54.
“If hypnotic control can be established over any participant”: Ibid., p. 154.
The first drug they hoped would work: Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, p. 4; Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 7.
Cocaine was the next candidate: Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, pp. 11–12.
“frequently used by police and intelligence”: Ibid., p. 12.
At the end of 1950 the U.S. Navy: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” pp. 39–42.
Could mescaline … be the answer?: Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, p. 5; Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” pp. 4, 11; McCoy, “Science in Dachau’s Shadow.”
The MK-NAOMI project: Regis, Biology of Doom, p. 158.
“I happened to experience an out-of-bodyness”: U.S. District Court 2nd Circuit, “Deposition of Sidney Gottlieb,” September 19, 1995, p. 86.
Later, Agency trainees were given LSD without forewarning: Streatfeild, Brainwash, p. 68; “They were witting in the sense people knew that this was going to happen when they got there. Perhaps at the particular moment they were given was not witting.” U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 80–3163, “Deposition of Sidney Gottlieb,” April 19, 1983, p. 156.
“There was an extensive amount of self-experimentation”: Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, p. 29.
“We had thought at first”: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 110.
As part of his effort to mold a coherent team: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 60.
“Needless layers of interplay and approval”: Ibid., p. 66.
“There were CIA people who infiltrated”: Ibid., p. 76.
Greene, whose advocacy of LSD had been secret: Ibid., pp. 63–64.
“I was fascinated by the ideas Greene was advancing”: Ibid., p. 61.
“the most fascinating thing about it”: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 58.
“Although no Soviet data are available on LSD-25”: Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, pp. 14–16.
to identify themselves only as a “staff support group”: Testimony of Charles Senseney to Church Committee, https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/vol1/pdf/ChurchV1_6_Senseney.pdf, pp. 160–61.
“Do you know what a ‘self-contained’”: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 76.
“In 1951 a team of CIA scientists”: Thomas, Secrets and Lies, pp. 66–67.
For more than a year, under the terms of MK-NAOMI: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 65; Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 32.
“Under an agreement reached with the Army in 1952”: Letter from Stansfield Turner to Sen. Daniel Inouye, cited in Wayne Madsen, “The US Continued Biological Weapons Research Until 2003,” Strategic Culture, August 28, 2016, https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/08/23/us-continued-biological-weapons-research-until-2003.html.
“Arrived back in Frankfurt from Paris”: “Letters Home: Joan Eisenmann to Elmer and Frances Eisenmann,” https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/3767896/letters-home-joan-eisenmann-to-elmer-frances-eisenmann.
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Bohemian expatriates in Paris: Noel Riley Fitch, Paris Café: The Select Crowd (New York: Soft Skull, 2007), pp. 57–104.
Stanley Glickman had shown artistic talent: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, pp. 643–45; Alliance for Human Research Protection, “Stanley Glickman Was Another Human Casualty of Sidney Gottlieb’s LSD Antics,” http://ahrp.org/1952-stanley-glickman-was-another-human-casualty-of-sidney-gottliebs-lsd-antics/; Russ Baker, “Acid, Americans and the Agency,” Guardian, February 14, 1999; Glickman v. United States, https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/626/171/1398799/; José Cabranes, Kronisch v. United States, July 9, 1998, https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1364923.html.
“Even in an area known for street characters”: Baker, Guardian, February 14, 1999.
“Subjects in whom even a slight modification”: Ibid.
Beginning on December 5, 1952, one of Hoch’s assistants: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, pp. 161–62; Alliance for Human Research Protection, “NYPSI an Early CIA-Contracted Academic Institution under MK-NAOMI,” http://ahrp.org/nypsi-an-early-cia-contracted-academic-institution-under-mk-naomi/; Harris and Paxman, Higher Form of Killing, p. 191; J. Francis Wolfe, “10 Real Victims of the CIA’s MKULTRA Program,” Listverse, May 28, 2015, http://listverse.com/2015/05/28/10-real-victims-of-the-cias-mkultra-program/.
On the evening of March 30, 1953, Allen Dulles sat down for dinner: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, pp. 132–34; William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento, and Joseph John Trento, Widows: Four American Spies, the Wives They Left Behind, and the KGB’s Crippling of American Intelligence (New York: Crown, 1989), pp. 11–13; David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), pp. 297–300; Paul Vidich, “An Honorable Man: Backstory,” http://paulvidich.com/books/an-honorable-man/backstory/.
“Allen probably had a special potion prepared”: Peter Janney, Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace (New York: Skyhorse, 2016), p. 379.
A redacted version of this memo: Central Intelligence Agency, “Project MK-ULTRA: Extremely Sensitive Research and Development Programs,” https://cryptome.org/mkultra-0003.htm (Tab A).
On April 10, 1953, as Dulles was considering this proposal: “Summary of Remarks by Mr. Allen W. Dulles at the National Alumni Conference of the Graduate Council of Princeton University, Hot Springs, Va., on Brain Warfare,” https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80R01731R001700030015-9.pdf.
“It was fashionable among that group”: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 61.
He set to work with three assets: Gary Kamiya, “When the CIA Ran a LSD Sex-House in San Francisco,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 1, 2016; Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 61; Kim Zettler, “April 13, 1953: CIA OKs MK-ULTRA Mind-Control Tests,” Wired, April 13, 2010.
5. Abolishing Consciousness
“fat and bull-like”: Douglas Valentine, “Sex, Drugs and the CIA,” Counterpunch, June 19, 2002, https://www.counterpunch.org/2002/06/19/sex-drugs-and-the-cia-2/.
“a vastly obese slab of a man”: Johann Hari, “The Hunting of Billie Holiday,” Politico, January 17, 2015, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/drug-war-the-hunting-of-billie-holiday-114298_Page3.html.
“an extremely menacing bowling ball”: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 96.
His first wife, who divorced him in 1945: Valentine, “Sex, Drugs and the CIA.”
His consumption of alcohol … was legendary: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 97.
His other appetite was sexual fetish: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 411; Valentine, “Sex, Drugs and the CIA.”
“Poor little bastard just couldn’t make it”: John Jacobs, “The Diaries of a CIA Operative,” Washington Post, September 5, 1977.
The men’s magazine True lionized him: True, December 1959.
He was sent for paramilitary training: “The LSD Chronicles: George Hunter White, Part One,” http://visupview.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-lsd-chronicles-george-hunter-white.html.
Several of his trainees went on to long careers at the CIA: Ibid.
In 1949 he made national headlines: Hari, “The Hunting of Billie Holiday.”
They talked about the OSS: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 67.
“really gave us a chance to discuss”: Ibid., p. 217.
“We were Ivy League, white, middle class”: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 98.
She shared many of his interests: Valentine, “Sex, Drugs and the CIA.”
In 1952 the Whites hosted a Thanksgiving dinner party: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 240.
“Gottlieb proposes I be a CIA consultant”: Jacobs, “Diaries”; Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 96.
“A couple of crew-cut, pipe-smoking punks”: Ibid., p. 97.
“CIA—got final clearance”: Jacobs, “Diaries.”
“He posed alternately as a merchant seaman”: Valentine, “Sex, Drugs and the CIA.”
“I was angry at George for that”: Ibid.
Episodes like these were kept quiet: Ibid.
“mostly rich boys, trust fund snobs”: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 98.
“A confidential informant of this office”: Internet Archive, “Full Text of George Hunter White,” https://archive.org/stream/GeorgeHunterWhite/FBI_white-george1_djvu.txt.
White had taken up leatherworking: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 413.
Gottlieb taught him to dance a jig: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 99.
“That period, up until about 1954”: Author’s interview with retired CIA officer “BD.”
“You can look around the whole circle of the world”: “John Foster Dulles Interview: U.S. Secretary of State under Dwight D. Eisenhower (1952),” YouTube video, 12:16, posted by the Film Archives, May 23, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EJZdikc6OA.
He sent the chief of his Tehran station: James Risen, “Secrets of History: The CIA in Iran, a Special Report,” New York Times, April 16, 2000.
Worthwhile results … “could not be obtained”: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, pp. 365–66.
“SOD developed darts coated with biological agents”: Redfern, Secret History, p. 158; U.S. Senate, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1976), p. 361, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1157&relPageId=369; U.S. Senate, Joint Hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources: Project MK-ULTRA, the CIA’s Program of Research on Behavioral Modification (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1977), p. 389.
Americans should have been able to celebrate: Lorraine Boissoneault, “The True Story of Brainwashing and How It Shaped America,” Smithsonian.com, May 22, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-brainwashing-and-how-it-shaped-america-180963400/; Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 134; Thomas, Journey into Madness, p. 157; Charles S. Young, “Missing Action: POW Films, Brainwashing and the Korean War, 1954–1968,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 18, no. 1, 1998, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01439689800260021.
“The most-used germ bomb was a 500-pounder”: Thomas, Secrets and Lies, p. 59.
In it, two “acknowledged independent experts”: Ibid., p. 85.
“shifty-eyed and groveling”: “Korea: The Sorriest Bunch,” Newsweek, February 8, 1954.
COMMUNIST BRAINWASHING—ARE WE PREPARED?: New Republic, June 8, 1953.
“Interrogations of the individuals who had come out of North Korea”: Ross, CIA Doctors, p. 35.
“There is ample evidence in the reports”: Michael Otterman, American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghr
aib and Beyond (London: Pluto, 2007), p. 21.
“[It] is awfully hard in this day and age”: Ibid., p. 22.
Other early “subprojects” were aimed at studying: Ross, CIA Doctors, p. 60.
“hypnotize a man—without his knowledge”: Bowart, Operation Mind Control, p. 59; McCoy, Question of Torture, p. 24.
After MK-ULTRA was launched, Estabrooks wrote a memo: Ross, CIA Doctors, pp. 152–53.
In 1953, Morse Allen, who also believed fervently: Streatfeild, Brainwash, p. 160.
This contradicted what many scientists believed: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 270.
One of his first ventures was MK-ULTRA Subproject 5: Ross, CIA Doctors, pp. 63–66.
West was researching ways to create: Ibid., pp. 106–17, 289.
6. Any Effort to Tamper with This Project, MK-ULTRA, Is Not Permitted
A birdcage disappears into thin air: John Mulholland, John Mulholland’s Book of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963), pp. 29–57.
His circle of friends and admirers: Ben Robinson, The Magician: John Mulholland’s Secret Life (Lybrary.com: 2008), p. 53.
His library on these and related subjects: Michael Edwards, “The Sphinx and the Spy: The Clandestine World of John Mulholland,” Genii: The Conjurer’s Magazine, April 2001.
After his death: Robinson, Magician, pp. 202–3.
When not writing or performing: Tatiana Kontou, The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-century Spiritualism and the Occult (New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 257; Robinson, Magician, p. 54.
On April 13, 1953—the day MK-ULTRA: Robinson, Magician, p. 96.
“the psychology of deception”: Ibid., p. 77.
“John was an American and he loved his country”: Ibid., p. 85.
“He said yes because his government asked him to”: Edwards, “Sphinx and the Spy.”
“Our interest was in sleight-of-hand practices”: Albarelli, Terrible Mistake, p. 271.