Poisoner in Chief

by Stephen Kinzer

  The New York Times obituary said: Christopher Marquis, “Richard Helms, Ex-C.I.A. Chief, Dies at 89,” New York Times, October 24, 2002.

  Yet like all CIA officers, he had signed a secrecy agreement: United States of America, Appellee, v. Victor L. Marchetti, Appellant, 466 F.2d 1309 (4th Cir. 1972), September 11, 1972, https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/466/1309/424716/.

  “I must say Colby has done a startlingly good job”: Moran, Company Confessions, pp. 151–52.

  The best Helms could say about his old colleague: CIA, “Interview with Richard Helms.”

  “I see no way to handle it”: Gup, “Coldest Warrior.”

  “Ah, poor Sid Gottlieb”: Ibid.

  “In retrospect, it is clear that Gottlieb’s work lit a fuse”: Ranelagh, Agency, p. 208.

  “My sense is that the new oversight procedures”: Loch Johnson, Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 431–32.

  “I talked to my wife quite a bit about it”: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, “Deposition of Sidney Gottlieb,” April 19, 1983, p. 66.

  “You never get it right”: Gup, “Coldest Warrior.”

  “She was an enthusiastic folk dancer”: “Margaret Gottlieb,” Rappahannock News, December 11, 2011, https://www.pressreader.com/usa/rappahannock-news/20111208/282815008071703.

  Peter wrote a book about African American history: Peter Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way: Southern Blacks’ Migration to Pittsburgh, 1916–30 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1996).

  In 2013, Peter and Penny … joined a group of volunteers: Chris Mertes, “Sun Prairie Resident Returns from El Salvador Trip,” Sun Prairie Star, February 18, 2013, http://www.hngnews.com/sun_prairie_star/community/features/article_8b72347e-7a1e-11e2-b7fa-001a4bcf6878.html.

  “The family decided some time ago”: Author’s interview with Gottlieb relative, 2018.

  “a villa with dark secrets”: “Die Geheimnisse der Villa Schuster,” Taunus-Zeitung, January 11, 2016.

  “the worst things happened at Villa Schuster”: Klaus Wiegrefe, “Das Geheimnis,” Der Spiegel, December 12, 2015.

  “In this house, the CIA did experiments”: Author’s interview with owner of Villa Schuster.

  one character produces tablets: David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (New York: Back Bay, 2006), p. 212.

  “Subjects whom the CIA questioned”: Kathy Acker, Empire of the Senseless (New York: Grove, 2018), p. 142.

  A remarkable Canadian artist: Ashifa Kassam, “The Toxic Legacy of Canada’s Brainwashing Experiments,” Guardian, May 3, 2018; Douglas Eklund et al., Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), pp. 146–62; Murray White, “Sarah Anne Johnson Takes Grim Trip into Family Past,” Toronto Star, April 14, 2016.

  It emerged in 1963: Central Intelligence Agency, KUBARK Counter-Intelligence Interrogation, July 1963, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB27/docs/doc01.pdf.

  In 1983, twenty years after the KUBARK manual was written: Central Intelligence Agency, Human Resources Exploitation Manual, 1963, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/CIA%20Human%20Res%20Exploit%20A1-G11.pdf; McCoy, Question of Torture, pp. 88–96; McCoy, Torture and Impunity, pp. 27–29.

  One CIA officer who trained Latin American interrogators: Peter Foster, “Torture Report: CIA Interrogations Chief Was Involved in Latin American Torture Camps,” Telegraph, December 11, 2014.

  “the gloves come off”: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, “Testimony of Cofer Black,” April 14, 2004, https://fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/092602black.html.

  Some intelligence officers have argued: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” p. 30.

  This brings into sharp relief: Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), pp. 17, 33.

  Acknowledgments

  “The name Sidney Gottlieb is but an obscure footnote”: Gup, “Coldest Warrior.”

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