But he wasn't only involved in making poisons to kill people. Tim Leary, who became the great guru of LSD, first came across psychedelics through Sidney Gottlieb, although like all these other people, he had never heard Gottlieb's name because Gottlieb lived in complete invisibility. Gottlieb was also the CIA's chief chemist, creating poisons and innovative ways of . And that made Gottlieb, although in some ways a very compassionate person, certainly the most prolific torturer of his generation. [15], On October 7, 1975, Gottlieb testified before the Church Committee under his birth name "Joseph Schneider." We'll be right back. His use of alcohol and narcotics was legendary, but he was also a cop who did pursue jazz figures, including Billie Holiday. Allen Dulles was the CIA director during most of the years MKUltra was in operation. The CIA inspector general who later investigated this plot reported that an Agency officer did contaminate a full box of fifty cigars with botulinum toxin, a virulent poison that produces a fatal illness some hours after it is ingested. 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. This evolved into MK-ULTRA, a program Gottlieb headed starting in 1953. Within 20 seconds after the prick, death set in from respiratory paralysis . Vitos taste for lemon lozenges had led other drivers to call him the Lemon Drop Kid. I guess those didn't work as mind control drugs. He edited books written by Alfred Hitchcock as well. To emphasize the clarity of his memory, he named the officer, then assigned to [the Western Hemisphere Division], who approached him with the scheme. 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. of California Press), Framing Hitchcock (Wayne State University Press; coedited with Chris . The needle is extracted when tightly pulling the pin head. Besides, the idea that Castros charisma would disappear with his beard struck some officers as far-fetched. The coercive use of toxins was a new field, and chemists at the Special Operations Division had to decide how to begin their research. So how high does it fly, really? Over a period of twenty years as a scientist with the agency, Sidney Gottlieb ran the largest systematic search for mind control techniques in history He presided over medical experiments and. ''We were in a World War II mode,'' Mr. Gittinger said. And the Nuremberg Code established that if you are conducting experiments, that the person you are experimenting on needs to give informed consent. Rosellis contacts in the Havana underworld made him an ideal partner for the CIA. Sidney Gottlieb, chemist and intelligence officer: born New York 3 August 1918; married 1942 Margaret Moore (two sons, two daughters); died Washington, Virginia 7 March 1999. Accuracy and availability may vary. 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. They had just received an urgent cable from Larry Devlin in the Congo. Less than five months after the downing of Powerss U-2, Gottlieb had flown to the Congo on one of the 20th centurys most extraordinary courier missions. He made a list of the ways he thought drugs could be used to affect behavior. There were places she couldn't perform in. See the article in its original context from. There was also, like, questioning and other kind of testing that went along with the administration of these high doses. By crafting the lethal pin that was given to U-2 drivers, he solidified his position as poisoner in chief. So MKUltra was a project lasting up to 10 years in which the CIA sought to find ways to control the human mind. Clear rating. So these were the kind of people that naturally gravitate to a project like this one. Gottlieb began looking for a match: Which poison would produce a death most like the one those diseases cause? He was also interested in making toxins that would affect their behavior in various ways. He had a special dislike for her because he said the way that she flaunted her furs and her big cars was offensive to him. By the time Gottlieb landed in the Congo, he could look back on almost a full decade at the CIA. Only when you get caught up in a cause like that that allows you to put aside conscience and all other moral considerations and even serious scientific considerations can you allow yourself to get caught up in a situation like this where one person is allowed, on his own whim, to go out and torture and kill people. Gottlieb's first government position was at the Department of Agriculture, where he researched the chemical structure of organic soils. In one case, a mental patient in Kentucky was dosed with LSD continuously for 174 days. He lived in an eco-cabin in the woods with no running water. He never, however, found a way to implant a new mind in the resulting void. Gottlieb and colleagues were tasked with making that substance and imagining how it could be delivered. Stephen Kinzer's new book book is Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. His new book is called "Poisoner In Chief: Sidney Gottlieb And The CIA Search For Mind Control." That spring, U-2 flights were taking off from a secret CIA airfield near Peshawar, Pakistan. Gottlieb's imagination ran wild. So MKUltra was the most sustained search in history for techniques of mind control. He forgot who was deputy was. The CIA awarded him a medal. 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. A clubfoot kept him from military service in World War II, and he was always bitter that he missed the war, Mr. Gittinger said. Devlin invited the visitor into his car. Communists, the CIA concluded, must have developed a drug or technique that enabled them to control human minds. In the early 1950s, he arranged for the CIA to pay $240,000 to buy the world's entire supply of LSD. The airman faced a burst of criticism for failing to make use of his suicide pin, but after emotions had cooled Powers was praised for his service. KINZER: One of the most remarkable discoveries that I made in the research for this book is that the CIA mind control project, MKUltra, was essentially a continuation of work that began in Japanese and Nazi concentration camps. We'll hear more after a break, and Justin Chang will review Steve McQueen's new five-film series, "Small Axe." It was part of his effort to test all kinds of substances, including naturally occurring ones like shrubs and trees and barks and mushrooms and fish parts and animal pieces, as possible tools for mind control. He had, according to one of his colleagues, prepared poison that a compromised CIA officer, James Kronthal, used to commit suicide in 1953. 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.. Army scientists complied. Making poison to kill foreign leaders was no longer Gottliebs job. He received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. In that capacity, he was also the chief poison maker, so he made the poisons to kill Zhou Enlai, Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Now, that doctor later died a natural death, so Bulger didn't get to carry out his wish. If you're just joining us, my guest is Stephen Kinzer. The pin is of an intricate structure: there is a bore inside it extending its entire length except for the sharpened point. I mean, we won: The Century-Long Battle Over This Confederate Flag, Revisiting the Small but Important Riots between Brandy Station and Gettysburg. Then-Deputy Director for Plans Allen Dulles hired him on Ira Baldwin's recommendation. Glickman was an American artist living in Paris in 1952, when he joined a group of fellow Americans at a caf, among them was Sidney Gottlieb. This guy had a license to kill. In the most humiliating moment of his presidency, Eisenhower was forced to admit that he had authorized his spokesmen to lie about the U-2. On August 20, 1951, Dulles ordered Bluebird to be expanded and centralized, and renamed the Project Artichoke, which quickly became a power base for Gottlieb. And this became part of his work during the late 1950s and into 1960. On April 10, Dulles described the program and others like it in a speech to alumni at Princeton University, referencing the new battlefield of "brain warfare" and the battle for controlling the human mind. Powers was exchanged for a Russian spy in 1962. At the trial, the cardinal appeared disoriented, spoke in a monotone and confessed to crimes he had evidently not committed. So all of these original strands that came together in the '60s to produce this great countercultural revolt based around LSD can be traced back through these bogus foundations to the CIA and, ultimately, the director of MKUltra, Sidney Gottlieb. KINZER: You're right. ''He was willing to try anything to discover something.''. A Cuban agent given firearms and explosives by the CIA was in contact with the Agency until 1965, but never carried out an attack. Gottlieb, 43, was a biochemist. CIA deputy director for plans Richard Bissell, who ran the U-2 project, believed that since his planes would fly at improbably high altitudes, Soviet air defense systems would not be able to shoot them down or even track them by radar. Late on the afternoon of September 26, 1960, Devlin, who had a cover job as a consular officer at the American embassy, left work and headed toward his car. For decades, though, much of what went on at the base was a closely held secret. Gottlieb created the MKUltra program, which experimented with psychoactive drugs like LSD to see what the effects were, with the goal of learning if LSD could be weaponized as a form of mind control. So what you found in these Europe experiments was a confluence of two interests. This was entirely acceptable to Bissell.. The chemists reminded Bissell how Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering had slipped a glass ampule filled with liquid potassium cyanide into his mouth, bit down on it, and died within 15 seconds, cheating the hangman at Nuremberg. He spied on musicians and entrapped them, including Billie Holiday, and Billie Holiday being busted was a turning point in her career because she couldn't get a cabaret license. We'll be right back after a short break. So how much did the committee find out about what Gottlieb had really done? Gottlieb actually drove out to the CIA Records Center and ordered the archivist to destroy boxes full of MKUltra records, and he wrote in his report that these records were destroyed over my stated objections. Stephen Kinzer's book, 'Poisoner in Chief,' exposes how CIA scientist Sidney Gottlieb worked in the 1950s and early '60s to develop mind control drugs and deadly toxins that could be used against enemies of the U.S. government. He took a vial of poison to the Congo with plans to place it on Lumumba's toothbrush in the summer of 1960. Of the CIA poison kit, Devlin later wrote that after Gottlieb handed it to him, my mind was racing. Roselli said he would prefer something nice and clean, without getting into any kind of out-and-out ambushing. He and his Mafia partner Sam Giancana offered the CIA a counterproposal: give us poison that takes time to kill, so our assassin can escape. Lumumba fled Leopoldville. Gottlieb selected multiple researchers, scientists, and ex-OSS members to work for him under MK-ULTRA "Subprojects." 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. Gottlieb hesitated. The couple also enjoyed farming their own food in their free time. The details are up to you, but its got to be cleannothing that can be traced back to the U.S. government. He handed Devlin the poison kit. 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. Drivers were given no clear instructions on how to react if shot down. They agreed that Gottlieb himself should bring it to Leopoldville. This assassination had been ordered by the president of the United States. He not only used the drugs that you mentioned but extreme forms of stimulants and sedatives. He bought land with an old log cabin outside a small Virginia town, Boston, where he practiced two of his lifelong hobbies, folk dancing and herding goats. And if you're just joining us, my guest is Stephen Kinzer. Our guest, journalist Stephen Kinzer, has spent several years investigating the CIA's mind control program, which was known as MKUltra. For four years, U-2 drivers tucked those boxes into their flight suits. TSD bought a diving suit, dusted it inside with a fungus which would produce Madura foot, a chronic skin disease, and contaminated the breathing apparatus with a tubercle bacillus, a CIA officer wrote years later. Leary was fascinated by this. And what skeptics had said at the beginning, which is that you cannot program a person to do something that he or she is basically and deeply and morally opposed to doing, and make them go out and do it. Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. We're talking about his new book, "Poisoner In Chief: Sidney Gottlieb And The CIA Search For Mind Control." No one knew the CIA was making poisons there, but its role as the countrys principal center for research into biological and anti-crop warfare became clear. No one knows what became of the victims. I don't think he ever faced the question or answered the question of whether there are limits to the amount of evil you can do in a righteous cause before the evil begins to outweigh the righteousness. The men paused, absorbing the weight of the moment. A son of immigrant Jews, he had been born with club feet. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. His new book is called "Poisoner In Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search For Mind Control."

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