Buying Options

Kindle Price:	$12.99
Sold by:	Macmillan Price set by seller.

Promotions apply when you purchase

Add Audible narration to your purchase for just $7.49

Deliver to your Kindle or other device

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Enter a promotion code or Gift Card

Share <Embed>

Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by [Stephen Kinzer]

Follow the Author

Stephen Kinzer

Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control Kindle Edition

by Stephen Kinzer (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

667 ratings

Editors' pick Best Biographies & Memoirs

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$12.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover, Illustrated

"Please retry"

$18.57

$14.37

$2.54

Paperback

"Please retry"

$14.39

$12.58

$7.96

Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$36.78

$32.48

$57.76

Great on Kindle

Great Experience. Great Value.

Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.

The bestselling author of All the Shah’s Men and The Brothers tells the astonishing story of the man who oversaw the CIA’s secret drug and mind-control experiments of the 1950s and ’60s.

The visionary chemist Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s master magician and gentlehearted torturer—the agency’s “poisoner in chief.” As head of the MK-ULTRA mind control project, he directed brutal experiments at secret prisons on three continents. He made pills, powders, and potions that could kill or maim without a trace—including some intended for Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders. He paid prostitutes to lure clients to CIA-run bordellos, where they were secretly dosed with mind-altering drugs. His experiments spread LSD across the United States, making him a hidden godfather of the 1960s counterculture. For years he was the chief supplier of spy tools used by CIA officers around the world.

Stephen Kinzer, author of groundbreaking books about U.S. clandestine operations, draws on new documentary research and original interviews to bring to life one of the most powerful unknown Americans of the twentieth century. Gottlieb’s reckless experiments on “expendable” human subjects destroyed many lives, yet he considered himself deeply spiritual. He lived in a remote cabin without running water, meditated, and rose before dawn to milk his goats.

During his twenty-two years at the CIA, Gottlieb worked in the deepest secrecy. Only since his death has it become possible to piece together his astonishing career at the intersection of extreme science and covert action. Poisoner in Chief reveals him as a clandestine conjurer on an epic scale.

Print length

371 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Henry Holt and Co.
Publication date

September 10, 2019
File size

12483 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

Due to its large file size, this book may take longer to download

Stephen Kinzer
684
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $12.99
Stephen Kinzer
1,046
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $12.99
Stephen Kinzer
223
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $11.99
Stephen Kinzer
724
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $12.25
Stephen Schlesinger
183
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $13.77
Tom O'Neill
6,695
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $15.99

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of September 2019: Mention “mind control” and you’re bound to elicit visions of Rasputin, Svengali, or Mesmer, famous creeps said to hold almost preternatural powers of persuasion over less disciplined minds. But interest in deep, subliminal influence of others goes well beyond the salons and séances of would-be mystics. In the 1950s, Sidney Gottlieb was a mild-mannered government chemist who lived in a cabin in the woods of Virginia with his family, pursuing a rustic, spiritual existence without electricity or running water. But he also had a knack for bureaucracy that coexisted alongside patriotic zeal, which led him to the top of PROJECT MK-ULTRA, the CIA’s clandestine pursuit of drugs and techniques intended for mind-control and political assassination. He pioneered “black sites” in Europe and Asia, secret prisons where – with the help of the darkest minds that ran the camps of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan – he implemented his psyche-busting experiments, including torture and the administration of LSD. Almost unbelievably, MK-ULTRA was only part of his legacy, which includes the development of a 007-worthy poisoned cigar meant for Fidel Castro, and the expansion of his “truth serum” experiments to unwitting American agents (see also: Errol Morris’s documentary, Wormwood). It’s quite the C.V., one which earned him the sobriquets “Black Sorcerer,” “Dirty Trickster,” and now “Poisoner in Chief” –the forthright title of Stephen Kinzer’s mind-blowing biography. As the author of Overthrow and The Brothers, Kinzer is well versed in the investigation of shadowy domestic intelligence services, and Poisoner in Chief similarly draws from the well of posthumously declassified materials and original interviews to craft a meticulous mosaic of a complicated paradox of a man. Spy-lit is a burgeoning subgenre filled with many thrilling and eye-opening books, but Gottlieb’s story is a must-read for any espionage aficionado. —Jon Foro, Amazon Book Review

About the Author

Stephen Kinzer is the author of many books, including The True Flag, The Brothers, Overthrow, and All the Shah’s Men. An award-winning foreign correspondent, he served as the New York Times bureau chief in Nicaragua, Germany, and Turkey. He is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and writes a world affairs column for the Boston Globe. He lives in Boston. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Review

“Winding through the spy-loving Eisenhower-Kennedy years, Kinzer’s book is a Tarantino movie yet to be made: it has the right combination of sick humor, pointless violence, weird tabloid characters, and sheer American waste. It is also frightening to read . . . [and] compelling, not least in the way it illustrates how the law of unintended consequences in covert action can work with an almost delirious vengeance.” ―Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

“Absolutely riveting. Stephen Kinzer’s Poisoner in Chief reads like a spy thriller―but his revelations about the macabre career of the CIA’s Sidney Gottlieb are deeply disturbing. Kinzer’s work underscores once again the narrative power of biography to unearth our collective history.” ―Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of American Prometheus, author of The Good Spy, and executive director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography

“Stephen Kinzer has done a great public service with this absorbing and informative portrait of the life and career of Sidney Gottlieb, a CIA scientist who was the Agency’s Dr. No in the Cold War―a producer of poison pills, poison darts, and leader of the hunt for the perfect killing machine, a la the Manchurian Candidate. It’s all in the bone-crunching detail, and Kinzer, a master of American perfidy, has done it again.” ―Seymour M. Hersh, author of Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib and Reporter: A Memoir

"Kinzer’s retelling of the MK-ULTRA story is unsparing in its gruesome details, but not overwrought . . . Gottlieb has previously been treated as a historical footnote, but Kinzer elevates him to his proper place as one of the C.I.A.’s most influential and despicable characters." ―Sharon Weinberger, The New York Times

"Poisoner in Chief is a biography of Dostoyevskian proportions. Gottlieb emerges as a tortured soul, penned in by personal compunction and a twisted sense of patriotism." ―Los Angeles Review of Books

"This [book] connects dots between former Nazi torturers, Oregon author Ken Kesey, Boston mobster Whitey Bulger and an obscure CIA chemist who qualifies as the ultimate James Bond villain. . . . Kinzer’s startling reportage on Gottlieb’s amok research in secret, international detention cells can’t help but evoke more recent memories of Abu Ghraib and the like." ―Seattle Times

“A stranger-than-fiction account of the CIA’s efforts in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s at developing mind control and chemical-based espionage methods, and the chemist, Sidney Gottlieb, who spearheaded the effort . . . The nigh-unbelievable efforts he led are vividly and horrifically recreated in this fascinating history.” ―Publishers Weekly

"It's an awful story, told fast and well . . . Kinzer has put together a revolting look at the champions of freedom in the USA." ―San Francisco Review of Books

"A bustling narrative that sets MK-Ultra in its institutional framework of federal government, the military and the intelligence services, swerving all the while between madcap farce and grim atrocity." ―Mike Jay, London Review of Books

"He’s been called Dr. Death, Washington’s 'official poisoner,' and a mad scientist. But Sidney Gottlieb never became a household name . . . Now, pulling together a trove of existing research, newly unearthed documents, and fresh interviews, Kinzer puts the fetid corpus of American Empire back under a microscope. It isn’t pretty―but it is instructive." ―Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, The American Conservative

"The most powerful and important organs in the invisible government are the nation’s bloated and unaccountable intelligence agencies . . . The best window we have into this shadow world comes with historical accounts of its crimes, including those in Stephen Kinzer’s new book, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control." ―Chris Hedges, Truthdig

"Stephen Kinzer tells the story of Gottlieb, a chemist obsessed with finding a way to control the human brain, no matter how many innocent minds he destroyed in the process." ―Larry Getlen, New York Post

“Stephen Kinzer takes the unusual approach of making Sidney Gottlieb, MK-Ultra’s program manager, the central figure of the story . . . Reflecting on Gottlieb’s culpability, Mr. Kinzer is careful to place his story in historical context . . . The reader will have to decide how far to venture into this dark thicket.” ―The Wall Street Journal

"Stephen Kinzer has written books about civil wars, terror attacks, and bloodycoups, but his latest might be his most alarming. . . . Though the events recounted in Kinzer’s Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control took place a half-century ago, they’re scandalous in a way that transcends time." ―The Daily Beast

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07MQSX85W
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Henry Holt and Co.; Illustrated edition (September 10, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 10, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 12483 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 371 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #119,678 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #66 in Biographies of Scientists
- #76 in Intelligence & Espionage (Kindle Store)
- #237 in Historical U.S. Biographies

Customer Reviews:
667 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Stephen Kinzer

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. His articles and books have led the Washington Post to place him “among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.”

Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire. While covering world events, he has been shot at, jailed, beaten by police, tear-gassed and bombed from the air.

Today Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. He writes a world affairs column for The Boston Globe.

Kinzer’s new book, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain and the Birth of American Empire, builds on his career watching the effects of American interventions around the world.

From 1983 to 1989, Kinzer was the Times bureau chief in Nicaragua. In that post he covered war and upheaval in Central America. He also wrote two books about the region. One of them, co-authored with Stephen Schlesinger, is Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala.” The other one, Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua, is a social and political portrait that The New Yorker called “impressive for the refinement of its writing and also the breadth of its subject matter.” In 1988 Columbia University awarded Kinzer its Maria Moors Cabot prize for outstanding coverage of Latin America.

From 1990 to 1996 Kinzer was posted in Germany. From his post as chief of the New York Times bureau in Berlin, he covered the emergence of post-Communist Europe, including wars in the former Yugoslavia.

In 1996 Kinzer was named chief of the newly opened New York Times bureau in Istanbul, Turkey. He spent four years there, traveling widely in Turkey and in the new nations of Central Asia and the Caucasus. After completing this assignment, Kinzer published Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds.

He has also worked in Africa, and written A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa called this book “a fascinating account of a near-miracle unfolding before our very eyes.”

Kinzer’s last book was The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War. The novelist John le Carré called it “a secret history, enriched and calmly retold; a shocking account of the misuse of American corporate, political and media power; a shaming reflection on the moral manners of post imperial Europe; and an essential allegory for our own times.”

Kinzer’s previous book was Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future “Stephen Kinzer is a journalist of a certain cheeky fearlessness and exquisite timing,” the Huffington Post said in its review. “This book is a bold exercise in reimagining the United States’ big links in the Middle East.”

In 2006 Kinzer published Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. It recounts the 14 times the United States has overthrown foreign governments. Kinzer seeks to explain why these interventions were carried out and what their long-term effects have been. He is also the author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.” It tells how the CIA overthrew Iran’s nationalist government in 1953.

In 2009, Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate. The citation said that “those of us who have had the pleasure of hearing his lectures or talking to him informally will probably never see the world in the same way again.”

The University of Scranton awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate in 2010. “Where there has been turmoil in the world and history has shifted, Stephen Kinzer has been there,” the citation said. “Neither bullets, bombs nor beating could dull his sharp determination to bring injustice and strife to light.”

Customer reviews

5 star		76%
4 star		14%
3 star		6%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Crissy 💜🦋

I Was His Chief of Staff

Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2019

Verified Purchase

This is an expose of a sordid chapter of CIA’s history; equally it is the tragic story of a patriot, abandoned by the cause he served.

Sidney Gottlieb was a brilliant biochemist, and a deeply sensitive humanist. As chief of the Clandestine Service’s Chemical Branch, he dealt in some pretty nasty potions – though principally ones ones that disabled rather than killed. In 1953 he was tasked by CIA’s Director, Allen Dulles, to investigate the mind-altering properties of LSD. Twenty-one American GI’s, taken prisoner during the Korean War, had chosen to remain in China after the Armistice instead of returning home. Were they brain-washed? Did our enemies have that capability and if so, hadn’t we better have it, too? What if an enemy could be ‘neutralized’ by messing with its leader’s mind, rather than by bombing his country into the stone age? LSD was already out there, being tried in lieu of Electro-Shock Therapy to re-program the minds of schizophrenics; could it be used to turn enemies into friends?

MKULTRA was created as an umbrella project to explore LSD’s many potentials. It dispensed more than $857,000 in grants to some 142 sub-projects, and the Canadian government kicked in another $500,000. With that many irons in the fire, though, MKULTRA spun out of control, and like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice took on a life of its own. Gottlieb concluded that LSD’s effects were too unpredictable to be of operational use, but his name was forever linked to it. When the abuses of some of its more bizarre sub-projects came to light, CIA’s leaders were content to distance themselves and leave Dr. Gottlieb holding the bag. “Success has a hundred parents; failure is an orphan.”

Still, he was promoted from chief of the Chemical Branch to head CIA’s Technical Services Staff (TSS), responsible for the development of all clandestine aids and devices. In the mid-1960’s he appointed me as his EXO, or Chief of Staff, and we became close personal friends. Our backgrounds were similar; we talked and interacted a lot.

Stephen Kinzer’s book deftly captures the conundrum: How could so kindly and devout a humanist as Sidney Gottlieb have so grimly and mindlessly pursued brain-altering methods? A man who in retirement volunteered to head a leper hospital in India for eighteen months? Who worked one-on-one with children that stuttered, for he himself had stuttered as a youth? A man beloved by the Culpepper community to which he had retired, and served as a Hospice volunteer? Was his a Jekyll/Hyde personality?

Poisoner in Chief somewhat over-exploits the sensational, in my view; a more balanced picture of MKULTRA can be derived from reviewing the dozens of Wikipedia articles on the subject. It mentions but fails to capture the paranoia that gripped America in the 1950’s, when International Communism was on a roll, winning local, regional and even some national elections. When the Soviets by hook or crook had obtained “The Bomb”. Bugged the Great Seal, right over the American ambassador’s desk in Moscow! And when Sen. Joseph McCarthy told us he had the names of two hundred Commie, State Dept. employees, “…right here in my pocket!” The book also pays too little mind to the large number of LSD research projects already underway, long before CIA became involved. That many researchers were using LSD recreationally, and dispensing it to their friends - with very few ill effects.

But most profoundly, it overlooks a common human trait: When our security is challenged, we demand protection. No matter the cost; no matter the consequences. And if a few bones get broken, or principles trampled in the process -- well, that’s the price of liberty, isn’t it?

But once the crisis is over, principles return – and with a vengeance: “How could they have done that?” Those despicable Nazi scientists, who performed unspeakable experiments on prisoners, and used slave labor from the Camps that they coldly worked to death – how could America have let them escape justice? How could we condone a Narcotics agent in San Francisco providing LSD to call girls to slip into the drinks of their johns, watch gleefully through one-way mirrors and send a note back to his headquarters, saying “…this is fun, fun, fun!” And what about those appalling torture episodes from Abu Ghraib - for which the bosses have never been held accountable?

Maybe the villainy of MKULTRA is to be found less in Poisoner in Chief than in the wisdom of Pogo:

“We has met the enemy, and he is us.”

231 people found this helpful

Helpful

Douglas Bowman

Thanks to Fresh Air

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2019

Verified Purchase

As so often happens, most of the non-profit fiction works that I read come out of hearing an episode of the NPR radio show, Fresh Air. I have never been disappointed by a book presented on the show. This book was engrossing and horrific at the same time. It's subject is at once sinister and compelling.

34 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kent Heckenlively

What Men Do When Nobody is Looking

Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2019

Verified Purchase

Like many people I was vaguely aware of MK-Ultra, but not in any significant way.

That all changed when I read Stephen Kinzer's magnificent new book. The amount of research Kinzer undertook is truly daunting, and yet he has written a fast-paced account of the founding in 1943 of the army's Biological Warfare Facilities at Fort Detrick, Maryland and the man put in charge of the program, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb.

When World War II ended, the United States actively recruited former Nazi and Japanese scientists to help them develop biological and chemical weapons, to test on prisoners and unsuspecting members of the public. One of the prisoners given massive doses of the newly created drug, LSD, was Whitey Bulger, who would later go onto become one of the country's most notorious criminals. The department even ran a brothel in San Francisco on Chestnut Street (not far from where I once lived), that fed its clients LSD, then sought to determine if this made them susceptible to spilling secrets. Big surprise! Men are more open to sharing after they've had sex! The drugs they were fed gave inconsistent results. Oh, and the CIA enlisted vice cops from San Francisco to help run the brothel. All in the name of national security.

It also seems clear that the department had little trouble killing its own in extra-judicial fashion if they turned out to be agents of a foreign power, or even in the case of one scientist who started to have moral qualms about their work, Frank Olson, throwing him out the window of thirteenth floor hotel room in New York City.

All of this took place in an atmosphere of Cold War hysteria and those who took part in these activities seek to use this justification for their work. Yes, how easy it is to commit terrible crimes under the guise of an imminent threat.

And yet, even though Gottlieb presided over this carnival of horrors, and eagerly participated in using the services of his San Francisco bordello, and sleeping with the wives of his colleagues, Kinzer goes to great lengths to present a balanced portrait of the man. After leaving government service and realizing that no effective drug or technique could reliably break a person, or make them into a "Manchurian candidate," an assassin, ready to kill at a moment's notice, but would have no memory of why he did it, Gottlieb truly devoted himself to charitable work.

However, in the 1970s the truth came calling and he was forced to give Congressional testimony as to at least some of what he had done. The wages of sin must have hung heavy on Gottlieb in the final years of his life. His wife fiercely defended him, but his children refused to speak to him. This story bears witness to what darkness lurks in the souls of men when they are given a pressing task at the very edges of science, and no oversight.

The greatest monsters we may face might well be those which hide in every human heart.

27 people found this helpful

Helpful

Ho-Hum Narrative Undercuts Interest

Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2019

Verified Purchase

Like other reviewers posting here, I learned of this book when I heard the NPR radio intermission with author Stephen Kinzer on the program Fresh Air. He spoke well and the subject seemed interesting—and indeed it is, the saga of Sidney Gottlieb, who led the CIA experiment in mind control and did so without significant concern for its impact on his subjects. I looked forward to the book, and was excited to begin reading it. Several chapters later I closed it with a thud, never to return. Why? Simply put, Kinzer makes the subject boring.

I’m not sure how he does it, really. Perhaps it is the slightly disorganized way in which he tells the story. Perhaps it is because, if you watch documentaries on The History Channel and such, you know a lot of this stuff already, and he’s not adding anything new to it. Perhaps it is because he hasn’t been able to turn up anything in depth on Gottlieb as a person. Or perhaps—and I think this is probably the problem—he’s just a boring writer. His narrative lacks zip and dash. It has no drive. It has no interest at all.

As I’ve said: interesting subject. But you might want to catch Kinzer in an interview instead of buying the book, because the latter is a waste of time and money. Ho-Hum.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

41 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

paulholdsworth

very interesting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 19, 2022

Verified Purchase

read this and find some of the answers you may have

mr.T.R.Smith

Well I didn’t know that

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2020

Verified Purchase

An excellent tale

Gordinho

Enlightening

Reviewed in Canada on April 10, 2020

Verified Purchase

What we have here is another arcane and ugly side of the CIA we know so little about. unfortunately, many of the records were destroyed.
But the author manages to put us in the historical context of the cold war to explain why the Poisoner in chief and his acolytes were able to carry on as they did. it is a horror story to some degree and what SK weaves here from fragmented cables is how expendable human life was for these men.

To think that there is a strong possibility that similar human experiments are being conducted right now. I think it very likely. What an horrific reality to even consider!

3 people found this helpful

himmelhund

Interesting read

Reviewed in Germany on June 8, 2020

Verified Purchase

Gottlieb was Allen Dulles right-hand man and as such was guilty of crimes against all kinds of people. He was basically in immoral experimenter with no conscience who, like so many others in the spook world, justified his crimes with the excuse that "the other guys are already doing it, and if not they will soon be doing it when they find out WE are doing it." Or something like that.
Reading about Dulles and Gottlieb, and their cast of sinister characters is guaranteed to give you a bad taste if you have moral standards.
The book is clear and readable and gives some insight into the man, but it is incredibly difficult to reconcile his amoral and inhuman behavior with his "ascetic" and humble lifestyle. This club-footed monster was, like his club-footed boss, truly a creep. Even if he "seemed like a nice guy" to his associates and neighbors.
Eye-opening read.