He wrote, I was in prison for committing a crime, but they committed a greater crime on me. We'll be right back. One batch could not be used because the Cuban official who was to place the pills in Castros food was transferred out of proximity to the Cuban leader. President Dwight Eisenhower authorized several more flights in the weeks that followed. Kinzer spoke with Terry in September of last year, when "Poisoner In Chief" was released in hardback. He did not reveal much in his testimony, besides saying he had destroyed nearly all records of what he did during his time at the agency. More about CIA This also contributed to the CIA rapidly expanding its experimental methods and tactics over the next two decades, in an effort to break down and rebuild the human mind to work in its favor, falsely believing that the USSR and The People's Republic of China had already mastered brainwashing and were using it against their own citizens and prisoners. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. In fact, CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb had gone well beyond curare, a toxin that is found in tropical plants. Vitos taste for lemon lozenges had led other drivers to call him the Lemon Drop Kid. KINZER: The end of Gottlieb's career came in 1972 when his patron Richard Helms, who was then director of the CIA, was removed by Nixon. The man he chose, Sidney Gottlieb, was not part of the silver-spoon aristocracy from which most officers of the early CIA were recruited, but a 33-year-old Jew from an immigrant family who limped . After 5 years in California the couple moved back to Virginia to a new home in a richer, but more rural area to spent their retirement years. GROSS: Even Timothy Leary, who turned a lot of people onto LSD and helped guide them through trips, he found out about LSD because of Sidney Gottlieb. His planned summit with Khrushchev collapsed. Then, after the Korean War ended, it was revealed many American prisoners had signed statements criticizing the United States and, in some cases, confessing to war crimes. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. The experiments were useless, Mr. Gottlieb concluded in 1972, shortly before he retired. Sidney was born in the Bronx under the name Joseph Scheider. A Cold War showdown loomed. No evidence of this ever emerged, but the CIA fell hard for the fantasy. The CIAs epically inept 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs intensified Kennedys determination. He also meditated, lived in a remote cabin without running water and rose before dawn to milk his goats. [16], On March 7, 1999, Gottlieb died at his home in Washington, Virginia. GROSS: Well, Stephen Kinzer, thank you for this book. Thats because Detrick, still thriving today as the Armys principal base for biological research and now encompassing nearly 600 buildings on 13,000 acres, was for years the nerve center of the CIAs hidden chemical and mind control empire. [17] He was reported to have a history of heart problems,[17] but his wife declined to give the cause of death. The CIA had made contact with gangsters who wanted Castro dead. I guess those didn't work as mind control drugs. That substance was a paralytic poison, saxitoxin, extracted from infected shellfish. But he will always be remembered as the Government chemist who dosed Americans with psychedelics in the name of national security, the man who brought LSD to the C.I.A. At the same time, CIA had just established its own corps of chemical magicians. He tested an astonishing variety of drug combinations, often in conjunction with other torments like electroshock or sensory deprivation. Take this, Gottlieb said. Steve Kinzer's Biography of CIA Chemist Sidney Gottlieb, Tells the Dark Inside the dollar was what appeared to be an ordinary straight pin, Francis Gary Powers later wrote. Sidney Gottlieb of the Central Intelligence Agency testifies during 1977 Senate hearings on CIA abuses (AP Photo), https://www.historynet.com/unassuming-chemist-was-the-cias-poisoner-in-chief/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, Why? Hired by the CIA in 1951, Gottlieb had worked on Special Operations Division projects at Camp Detrick, near Frederick, Maryland. [2], Gottlieb along with his wife, Margaret, moved back to the United States to Santa Cruz, California to be more involved in their young grandchildren's lives. GROSS: Yeah, I found that pretty hard to understand. Mr. Gottlieb was fascinated by the drug, and, a family friend said, he took it hundreds of times. He was so excited about it he took a job in the hospital and began stealing the LSD to give it to his friends. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Gottlieb and his scientists turned their thoughts to assassination. . As he fell, his thoughts turned to the suicide pin he was carrying. And seized by this myth, the CIA not only believed that communists had approached or reached this Holy Grail, but that the CIA should also find out a way to do it. While there, Gottlieb got a master's degree in speech pathology. Author Robert F. ONeill reconsiders three overlooked 1863 cavalry clashes. We'll hear more after a break, and Justin Chang will review Steve McQueen's new five-film series, "Small Axe." Later on he built himself one of the first solar homes in Virginia. He not only used the drugs that you mentioned but extreme forms of stimulants and sedatives. A stutterer from childhood, Gottlieb got a . He received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. As the Cold War began, however, two seemingly unrelated developments on opposite sides of the world stunned the newly created Central Intelligence Agency and gave Detrick a new mission. He had not poisoned the leader of a foreign government, but he had shown once again that he knew how. Stephen Kinzer's new book is called "Poisoner In Chief: Sidney Gottlieb And The CIA Search For Mind Control." In 1942, alarmed by reports that Japanese forces were waging germ warfare in China, the Army decided to launch a secret program to develop biological weapons. You may have heard stories about the CIA's secret experiments with LSD, through which '60s counterculture luminaries like Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg were first introduced to the drug. MK-ULTRA ended in failure in the early 1960s. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. After proceeding through training, he was named chief of the newly formed Chemical Division of the Technical Services Staff (TSS). They were invisible, untraceable and, if intelligently selected and delivered, not even liable to create a suspicion of foul play. And in the context of the time, who would argue? Let's start with, what was the mission of MKUltra? Gottlieb's imagination ran wild. It might now be sprayed in the radio studio from which Castro made live broadcasts that reached millions of Cubans. He asked Dulles to negotiate an accord that would formalize the connection between the military and the CIA in this pursuit. This Unassuming Chemist Was the CIA's Poisoner in Chief No one knows what became of the victims. Brainstorming produced the outlines of a plot. GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. The gangsters wanted poison. How did the CIA find out about LSD? They were testing psychochemicals and running experiments in my labs and werent telling me.. Gottlieb searched relentlessly for a way to blast away human minds so new ones could be implanted in their place. During this period, Fort Detricks public profile rose uncomfortably. Before Army technicians could remove them, two officers from the Special Operations Division packed them into the trunk of a car and drove them to the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery in Washington, where the CIA maintained a small chemical warehouse. Sidney Solomon Gottlieb (1890 - 1963) - Genealogy HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. In the spring of 1949 the Army created a small, super-secret team of chemists at Camp Detrick called the Special Operations Division. . In all, the agency conducted 149 separate mind-control experiments, and as many as 25 involved unwitting subjects. [citation needed], In addition to working with subcontractors, the CIA worked with the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense and the Office of Naval Intelligence, though it is unclear what role Gottlieb played in these affairs other than authorization. GROSS: When the men were having sex with prostitutes and were unknowingly given doses of LSD, weren't they then asked questions to see what their answers would be like under LSD? He settled on botulinum, sometimes found in improperly canned food. Sidney Gottlieb (Editor), Christopher Brookhouse (Editor), Charles L.P. Silet (Contributor), Christopher Morris (Contributor) 3.25 avg rating 4 ratings published 2002. It hired a University of Wisconsin biochemist, Ira Baldwin, to run the program and asked him to find a site for a new bio-research complex. Finding a chemical that would make a beard fall out was just the kind of challenge Gottlieb enjoyed. Hurriedly they concocted a cover story: a research plane studying high-altitude weather patterns over Turkey had run into trouble, the pilot had lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen, and the plane had continued on autopilot, lamentably straying deep into Soviet airspace. Less than an hour after Gottlieb and Devlin met in front of the American embassy in Leopoldville, the men were sitting in Devlins living room. Sidney Gottlieb - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia He married Margaret Marshal Moore on 12 September 1942, in Pasadena, Los Angeles, California, United States. At first Gottlieb and his chemists concentrated on ways to cause Castros downfall by non-lethal means. In fact, it was chosen for its isolation. So CIA brought LSD to America unwittingly. His handful of CIA chemists worked so closely with their comrades in the Special Operations Division that they became a single unit. First-hand testimony, fragmentary Government documents and court records show that at least one participant died, others went mad, and still others suffered psychological damage after participating in the project, known as MK Ultra. He did testify at two rounds of hearings, one undercover - that is, under a pseudonym in a private room - another under his own name but also in a private room. He couldn't remember what part of the CIA he had worked in. Powers later testified that the choice of whether to use the suicide pin was left more or less up to me. He decided not to. This is FRESH AIR. So if you remember Q from those James Bond movies, that was Gottlieb. Sidney Gottlieb, who for more than two decades managed the CIA's TechnicalServices Division, died on March 10. Few historical studies mention his name. After trying LSD for the first time himself, Gottlieb accelerated LSD experiments at the agency, testing it on agents who agreed to be dosed under controlled environments and some who agreed to be dosed by surprise. Let's get back to Terry's interview with Stephen Kinzer about his book, "Poisoner In Chief: Sidney Gottlieb And The CIA Search For Mind Control." And the idea was to try to draw out information and to see whether drugs could make people talk, and of course, they found out things that are very obvious - that people will talk. So they hired the Nazi doctors who had been involved in that project to advise them. One was handed to the pilot of the first U-2 mission as he prepared to take off from an American base at Wiesbaden, Germany, on June 20, 1956. One of Kinzer's previous books was about the Dulles brothers, Allen and John Foster Dulles. His shops main mission was developing mind control toolsone study focused on adapting the hallucinogen lysergic acid diethylamide-25LSDfor that use. There isnt any question about this., For years, White House pressure kept Gottlieb and his bosses focused on killing Castro. '', John Marks, author of the definitive book on the experiments, ''The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate' '' (Times Books, 1979) said Mr. Gottlieb was ''unquestionably a patriot, a man of great ingenuity. The drugs he was experimenting with were not the "truth serums" he wanted them to be, and often hindered interrogations rather than aiding them. Gottliebs scientists procured thallium and began testing it on animals. Gottlieb began considering which lethal or incapacitating germs he would use. The same needle was inserted under the skin of a white mouse. The CIA came up with the same explanation for both: brainwashing. Describe that part of his job. He lived in an eco-cabin in the woods with no running water. He did not name Lumumba. In 1953, he arranged a safe house for the Lockheed Aeronautics Services Division (LASD) with an easy and exclusive egress. The needle is extracted when tightly pulling the pin head. On January 17, 1961, a squad of six Congolese and two Belgian officers took Lumumba out of confinement, brought him to a jungle clearing, shot him, and dissolved his remains in acid. It is a straight ordinary-looking pin made of white metal with a head and a sharpened point. A week later, Olson died in a plunge from a hotel window in New York. To cover up the tracks of the crime, the pilot was told that he must not be taken alive by Soviet authorities, Khrushchev told his comrades. Sidney Gottlieb Obituary (2022) - Washington, DC - The Washington Post The man he chose, Sidney Gottlieb, was not part of the silver-spoon aristocracy from which most officers of the early CIA were recruited, but a 33-year-old Jew from an immigrant family who limped and stuttered. Gottlieb actually made a potion that was supposed to be put in a rice bowl that Zhou Enlai would eat from. awarded Mr. Gottlieb the Distinguished Intelligence Medal and deliberately destroyed most of the MKUltra records in 1973. (SOUNDBITE OF AVISHAI COHEN'S "GBEDE TEMIN"). ''He thought he was doing exactly what was needed. The midget submarine that would have had to be used in emplacement of the shell has too short an operating range for such an operation.. There was also, like, questioning and other kind of testing that went along with the administration of these high doses. And the people who might be supervising him really don't want to hear about it for reasons that have to do with the old CIA code, which is the code of all secret services - the less you know, the better. And towards the end of his life, Bulger came to realize the truth of what had happened to him, and he actually told his friends that he was going to find that doctor in Atlanta who was the head of that experiment program in the penitentiary and go kill him. Except that he was real. Today, its a cutting-edge lab. Accuracy and availability may vary. Who authorized this operation?, President Eisenhower, Gottlieb replied. Last week, the SSCI completed its review of the declassified transcripts of Sidney Gottlieb's testimony before the SSCI in 1975 on the MKULTRA project and other behavioral control research programs. ''We were in a World War II mode,'' Mr. Gittinger said. In the United States, his victims were unwitting subjects at jails and hospitals, including a federal prison in Atlanta and an addiction research center in Lexington, Kentucky. He actually created and found ways to administer poison. He obtained a Ph.D. at California Institute of Technology in 1943. [7], Dulles formally approved Project MKUltra on April 13, 1953. The agency and Mr. Gottlieb believed the United States had to fight by any means necessary. psychologist who vetted Mr. Gottlieb -- ''one of the most brilliant men I've ever known'' -- and worked with him for 22 years, said the agency began the tests because it was gripped by ''a great fear'' in the cold war. He was born with a club foot, which got him rejected from military service in World War II but did not prevent his pursuit of folk dancing, a lifelong passion. The Technical Services Division considered planting a bomb in what would appear to be a rare mollusk where Castro liked to scuba dive. Allen Dulles was the CIA director during most of the years MKUltra was in operation.
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