Poisoner in Chief

by Stephen Kinzer

  Mexico

  MH-CHAOS

  Miami News

  Midnight Climax, Operation

  Mill Valley safe house

  Mindszenty, Jozsef

  Mission: Impossible (TV show)

  MK-NAOMI

  MK-SEARCH

  MK-ULTRA. See also Gottlieb, Sidney; and specific drugs, projects, researchers, and victims

  Abramson and

  Church Committee and

  CIA “family jewels” and

  CIA memo criticizing

  congressional oversight and

  counterculture and

  death of Gottlieb and

  death of Olson and

  Dulles and

  Earman report on

  elephant’s death and

  Eli Lilly and

  FBI report on

  fear of Communists and

  files destroyed

  FOIA and

  Gorman Annex and

  Gottlieb’s doubts and

  handwriting analysis and

  Helms and

  Helms-Gottlieb memo on

  hospitals and

  Human Ecology Society and

  hypnosis and

  informed consent and

  Kirkpatrick and

  lawsuits and

  magic and

  Manchurian candidate and

  mental patients and

  mind control and

  MK-SEARCH and

  morality and

  Mossad and

  NYPD protects

  Olson family and

  poisons and

  popular culture and

  prisoners and

  prostitutes and

  public anger and

  reduction of

  Rockefeller Commission and

  secrecy and

  Senate hearings on

  shut down

  subprojects

  torture and

  Victims Task Force and

  White diaries on

  MK-ULTRA band and song

  MK-ULTRA (marijuana strain)

  Mockingbird, Operation

  Montessori, Maria

  Moore, James

  Morgenthau, Robert

  Morocco

  Morris, Errol

  Mossad

  Mossadegh, Mohammad

  Mount Sinai Hospital

  Mulholland, John

  Munich

  Murrow, Edward R.

  mushrooms

  My Lai massacre

  Nasser, Gamal Abdel

  National Academies of Sciences

  National Institute of Mental Health

  National Institutes of Health

  National Research Council

  National Security Act (1947)

  National Security Council

  Nazi Germany

  Nelson, Tim Blake

  Nembutal

  neo-Nazis

  nerve gas

  Nevada nuclear tests

  New Leader

  New Republic

  Newsweek

  New York Bedford Street safe house

  New York District Attorney

  New York Police Department

  New York Psychiatric Institute

  New York Times

  New York University

  Nixon, Richard

  North China People’s Revolutionary University

  North Korea

  Norway

  Nosenko, Yuri

  nuclear weapons

  Nuremberg Code

  Nuremberg trials

  Oakland, California

  Oaxaca

  Office of Naval Research

  Office of Policy Coordination, CIA

  Office of Scientific Intelligence, CIA

  Office of Security, CIA

  Office of Strategic Services (OSS)

  Office of Technical Services, CIA (formerly Technical Services Department)

  Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, The (Mulholland)

  Olson, Alice

  Olson, Eric

  Olson, Frank

  Abramson and

  body exhumed

  Church Committee and

  death of

  Gottlieb on

  lawsuits and

  murder and

  NYPD and

  Rockefeller Commission and

  Senate hearings and

  TV documentaries on

  Olson, Nils

  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Kesey)

  Organization Man, The (Whyte)

  Orlikow, David

  Orlikow, Velma

  Orwell, George

  Oswald, Lee Harvey

  Palestinians

  Panama Canal Zone

  Paperclip, Operation

  Parade

  Paris

  Parke, Davis

  Paycheck (film)

  Pearl Harbor attacks

  Pearson, Drew

  Penkovsky, Oleg

  Pentathol-Natrium

  Pfeiffer, Carl

  Philippines

  Phoenix program

  Picrotoxin

  Pitt, William

  piule

  Pius XII

  Plum Island, New York

  Poe, Edgar Allan

  poisons

  Poisonwood Bible, The (Kingsolver)

  polygraph

  Pont-St.-Esprit mass hysteria

  Porsche, Ferdinand

  Powers, Francis Gary

  Powers, Thomas

  POWs

  presidential executive orders

  President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities

  Princeton University

  prisoners

  prostitutes

  psilocybin

  psychic driving

  “psycho-chemicals as new concept of war” conference

  “Psychochemical Warfare” (Greene)

  Psychological Strategy Board, CIA

  Purdue University

  Pynchon, Thomas

  Quicker Than the Eye (Mulholland)

  Raborn, William

  Radio Free Europe

  Ranelagh, John

  Rappahannock News

  Rasher, Sigmund

  Rathenau, Walter

  Rauh, Joseph

  Ravensbrück

  Reagan, Ronald

  “Realm of the Unreal, The” (Bierce)

  Rebet, Lev

  Red Army

  Reed, Ishmael

  Regis, Ed

  Remember Me (video game)

  Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC)

  Resistance, The (album)

  Rhodes, David

  Ritchie, Wayne

  Robert-Houdin, Jean-Eugène

  Rockefeller, Nelson

  Rockefeller Commission

  Roosevelt, Cornelius

  Roosevelt, Eleanor

  Roosevelt, Franklin D.

  Roselli, Johnny

  Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel

  Rumsfeld, Donald

  Russell, Richard

  Ruwet, Vincent

  Sabina, María

  Saigon CIA station

  Saltonstall, Leverett

  Sandoz

  San Francisco

  Midnight Climax and

  Sea Spray and

  San Francisco Call Bulletin

  San José State University

  Saracco, Stephen

  Sargant, William

  sarin gas

  Sausalito, California

  saxitoxin

  Scandinavia

  “Scheider, Joseph” (Gottlieb alias)

  schizophrenia

  Schlesinger, James

  Schreiber, Walter (“Doc Fisher”)

  Schwab, John

  Schwarz, Frederick

  Schweiker, Richard

  Science and Technology Directorate, CIA

  “Scientific and Technical Problems in Covert Action Operations” (Gottlieb)

  Search for the “Manchurian Candidate
,” The (Marks)

  Sears, Alden

  Sea Spray, Operation

  Sebrell, William

  Secret Agent (TV show)

  Secret Pilgrim, The (le Carré)

  secret prisons (black sites)

  Secret Service

  Security Research Staff, CIA

  Selective Service System

  sensory deprivation

  September 11, 2001, attacks

  Serratia marcescens bacterium

  sex experiments

  Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Kinsey)

  shellfish toxin

  Sherwood, John

  silver dollar tool

  Simpsons, The (TV show)

  sleep deprivation

  smallpox

  Smith, Walter Bedell

  Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology (CIA front)

  sodium amytal

  Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception (Mulholland)

  South Korea

  Soviet Union

  special interrogations

  Special Operations Division, U.S. Army (SOD)

  Baldwin and

  Church Committee and

  CIA joint projects

  created

  Gottlieb and

  Korean War and

  LSD and

  MK-NAOMI and

  MK-ULTRA and

  Olson and

  prisoners and

  saxitoxin and

  U-2 suicide ampules and

  Villa Schuster and

  Wilson Memorandum and

  Special Projects School

  Speer, Albert

  Sphinx

  Stanford University

  staph enteroxin

  Starrs, James

  State Department

  “Statement on MK-ULTRA” (CIA)

  Statler Hotel

  Stein, Gertrude

  Stimson, Henry

  Stranger Things (TV show)

  “Studies on Ascorbic Acid in Cowpeas” (Gottlieb)

  “Study of Assassination, A” (Gottlieb)

  Stuttgart CIA prison

  Sukarno

  Sun Also Rises, The (Hemingway)

  Svengali (character)

  Sweden

  Switzerland

  syphilis

  Taylor, Telford

  Technical Services Division, CIA (TSD; later Office of Technical Services)

  Acoustic Kitty and

  assassination and

  Detrick and

  gadgets and

  Gottlieb as chief of

  Justice Department and

  mandate narrows

  popular culture and

  projects of

  Senate hearings and

  Watergate and

  Technical Services Staff, CIA (TSS; later Technical Services Division)

  Bedford Street reports and

  Chemical Division

  CIA memo on

  death of Olson and

  Eli Lilly and

  gadgets and

  Gorman Annex and

  Gottlieb positions at

  Gottlieb leaves

  Kirkpatrick report and

  magic manual and

  MK-ULTRA and

  Pfeiffer and

  “Testing and Use of Chemical and Biological Agents” (Church Committee)

  tetrahydrocannabinol

  thallium salts

  Theodore, Carla

  Time

  Times (London)

  torture

  Treblinka

  Trilby (du Maurier)

  True

  Truman, Harry

  Truscott, Lucian, Jr.

  truth serum

  tuberculosis

  Tulane University

  Turkey

  Turner, Stansfield

  Tusko (elephant)

  typhoid

  U-2 spy planes

  Ukrainian exiles

  ultrasonics

  Union Minière du Haut-Katanga

  Unit 731 (Manchuria)

  U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)

  U.S. Army. See also Special Operations Division; and other specific divisions

  U.S. Congress

  oversight of intelligence agencies by

  U.S. House Committees

  Armed Services

  Intelligence, Permanent Select

  Un-American Activities

  U.S. Marines

  U.S. Navy

  U.S. Postal Service

  U.S. Senate Committees

  Appropriations

  Armed Services

  Governmental Operations, Select (Church Committee)

  Health and Scientific Research

  Intelligence, Select

  Judiciary

  Labor and Public Welfare

  Watergate

  U.S. Supreme Court

  University of California, Berkeley

  University of California, Los Angeles

  University of Denver

  University of Illinois

  University of Indiana

  University of Kentucky

  University of Maryland

  University of Minnesota

  University of Oklahoma

  University of Pennsylvania

  University of Posen

  University of Rochester

  University of Texas

  University of Wisconsin

  uranium

  Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism, The (Abramson)

  Vanderbilt University

  Van Harmon, Lera

  vibrations

  “Victims Task Force,” CIA

  Vidal, Gore

  Vietcong

  Vietnam War

  Villa Schuster

  Vito, Carmine

  Vixen Press

  von Braun, Wernher

  Wall, William Henry

  Wallace, David Foster

  “Walter P. T.” (CIA agent)

  Walter Reed General Hospital

  War Department

  War Research Service

  Washington Post

  Washington Star

  Wasson, Gordon

  Wasson, Valentina

  Watergate scandal

  Wayne State University

  Welles, Orson

  Wendt, G. Richard

  West, Louis Jolyon “Jolly”

  Western Hemisphere Division

  West Germany

  Wev, Bosquet

  White, Albertine

  White, George Hunter (“Morgan Hall”)

  Whittier College

  Wides, Burton

  Williams, Esther

  Wilson, Charles

  Wilson, Tom

  Wilson Memorandum

  Winslet, Kate

  Wisner, Frank

  Wolff, Harold

  Woman in Green, The (film)

  Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology

  World’s Worst, The (book)

  World War I

  World War II

  Wormwood (documentary)

  X Files, The (TV show)

  yellow fever

  Young People’s Socialist League

  Zhou Enlai

  Sidney Gottlieb was born in 1918 to an immigrant family in the Bronx and grew up in this modest brick row house.

  At the age of nineteen, Gottlieb left New York to study plant biology at Arkansas Polytechnic College. The yearbook called him “a Yankee who pleases the southerners.”

  By the time Gottlieb joined the CIA in 1951, it had already opened a “black site” at Villa Schuster, near the German city of Frankfurt. Prisoners were brought to underground cells, given heavy doses of drugs, and subjected to electroshock and other torments. “There were deaths,” an investigation con- cluded years later, “but the number is not known.”

  Among those who designed drug combinations and “special interrogation” techniques for use on prisoners at Villa Schuster was Kurt Blome, who had directed the Nazis’ bio-warfare
program. He and Gottlieb searched for ways to wipe away a human mind so a new one could be implanted in its place.

  In November 1953 one of Gottlieb’s collaborators, Frank Olson, died after plunging from a thirteenth-floor hotel window in New York. Two decades later the CIA admitted that its officers had fed LSD to Olson a few days before his death, driving him to apparent suicide.

  In 1975 President Gerald Ford invited the Olson family to the Oval Office and officially apologized. Later, however, Olson’s sons became convinced that their father had not committed suicide but was thrown out of the hotel window because he was planning to quit the CIA and reveal deep secrets.

  In 1955 the CIA set out to assassinate Prime Minister Zhou Enlai of China while he was visiting Indonesia. Gottlieb made poison to be dropped into Zhou’s rice bowl. This plot was aborted at the last moment.

  Gottlieb produced a suicide pin, hidden inside a silver dollar, for pilots of the U-2 spy plane to use if they crashed inside the Soviet Union. Francis Gary Powers was carrying this pin when he crashed in 1960 but chose not to use it.

  In 1960 Gottlieb made a poison kit for use in assassinating Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of the Congo (at right in photo). He carried it personally to the CIA station chief there. Lumumba was killed by a Belgian- backed squad before the poison could be used.

  A declassified memorandum about the Lumumba assassination plot is one of the few surviving CIA documents that mentions Sidney Gottlieb by name.

  Gottlieb compounded various potions intended to kill the Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. Among them were poison pills, poison cigars, and a wet suit lined with deadly toxin.

  Because Gottlieb lived in deep secrecy, no one knew what he looked like. In a re-enactment staged by National Geographic, he was portrayed as balding and avuncular as he poured LSD into Frank Olson’s drink.

  In Errol Morris’s 2017 documentary miniseries Wormwood, Tim Blake Nelson (left) played Gottlieb as young and self-confident.

  This photo, which the CIA released to the author in 2018, shows for the first time what Gottlieb looked like while he worked for the CIA. It was taken shortly before he retired in 1973.

  When Gottlieb testified to a Senate committee about his MK-ULTRA mind control program in 1975, he used the pseudonym “Joseph Scheider,” a reference to this nineteenth-century lithograph of a hooded monk. It is Gottlieb as he saw himself: a mysterious guardian of esoteric knowledge, alluring but unsettling, drawing inspiration from a pipe to peer into the human soul.

  Photographers were not supposed to take pictures of Gottlieb when he tes- tified in 1975, but some did. He sat with his lawyer, Terry Lenzner, who ar- ranged for him to be granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony about MK-ULTRA.