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.”
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