Poisoner in Chief

by Stephen Kinzer

  “There was an extensive amount of self-experimentation,” Gottlieb later testified. “We felt that a first-hand knowledge of the subjective effects of these drugs [was] important to those of us who were involved in the program.”

  Using LSD whetted Gottlieb’s appetite. So did reports from “mock interrogations” in which CIA employees were given LSD and then induced to violate oaths and promises. In one, a military officer swore never to reveal a secret, revealed it under the influence of LSD, and afterward forgot the entire episode. Gottlieb and his platoon of scientists felt the exhilaration of approaching the heart of an eternal mystery.

  “We had thought at first,” one of them later recalled, “that this was the secret that was going to unlock the universe.”

  Just a couple of years earlier, L. Wilson Greene of the Chemical Corps had urged that LSD be made the centerpiece of a crash program to prepare for “psychochemical warfare.” His ideas were incorporated into Bluebird and Artichoke, but the focus on LSD had been lost. Researchers were comfortable testing drugs and other techniques with which they were at least vaguely familiar. After Gottlieb resolved to press ahead with LSD research, he contacted Greene, who was still with the Chemical Corps and as enthusiastic as ever about LSD. Both men wanted to harness its power.

  Greene saw LSD as a weapon of war, for incapacitating enemy armies or civilian populations. This was radically different from the view of its inventor, Albert Hofmann, who hoped it could be used to treat mental illness. Gottlieb shared neither of those ambitions. The true value of LSD, he believed, would lie in its effect on individual minds. He became convinced that of all known substances, LSD was the one most likely to give initiates a way to control other human beings. That would make it the ultimate covert action weapon.

  This was a leap of faith. Even the scientists at Sandoz considered LSD deeply mysterious. Few had studied it. Ten years after it was accidentally invented, Gottlieb came to believe that it could be the key to mind control. He was the first acid visionary.

  Gottlieb directed just a handful of scientists at the Chemical Division. The Special Operations Division was only slightly larger. These men formed the inner core on which Gottlieb would rely for the next decade. As part of his effort to mold a coherent team, he took groups of them on weekend retreats at cabins in Maryland and West Virginia. These retreats helped form a bond that allowed Gottlieb to use cutting-edge laboratories at Camp Detrick and Edgewood Arsenal to develop substances that he could use in mind control experiments.

  “Needless layers of interplay and approval were eliminated,” Gottlieb later explained. “Little or nothing was reduced to writing, except essential reports. The right hand never knew what the left was doing, unless we wanted it otherwise.”

  Skillfully wielding the bureaucratic power that came from Dulles’s support, Gottlieb consolidated his control over Artichoke-related projects. Dulles and Helms gave him authority to launch whatever experiments he could conceive. Not everyone at the CIA appreciated this. CIA officers who had worked on mind control projects before Gottlieb arrived bristled at his new influence. So did military men at the Chemical Corps, who felt his growing presence and resented it.

  “There were CIA people who infiltrated the laboratories,” a Camp Detrick researcher fumed years later. “They worked on their own, and I suspect very few people knew that.”

  In 1952 Gottlieb helped organize a conference at Edgewood Arsenal on “psycho-chemicals as a new concept of war.” Panelists—all of them CIA or Chemical Corps officers with the highest security clearance—discussed chemical compounds that could induce mass hysteria, and aerosol techniques by which these compounds could be sprayed over large areas. The speaker who attracted the most attention was L. Wilson Greene, whose advocacy of LSD had been secret. Almost no one in the room knew of it, or had even heard of the drug. He astonished them by describing what he called the “incredible discovery” of an ergot enzyme that could cause symptoms ranging from hallucinations to suicidal tendencies, even when used in infinitesimal quantities. Then he read from a report by a volunteer who wrote that under the drug’s influence he had seen “flickering, glimmering, glittering, scintillating, rapid and slow blotting of colors, sparks, whirling, traveling small dots, light flashes and sheet lightning.”

  Greene ventured a few thoughts about ways that LSD might be used in war. “In targeted urban areas, the cloud from multiple bombs or generating devices would blanket the densest portion,” he said. “Saboteurs or intelligence operatives could release psycho-chemicals from hand-operated generators … Upcoming field projects will focus on long-distance cloud travel and the behavior of aerosols when released over populated areas.”

  Before finishing, Greene noted the presence of Frank Olson and other aerosol experts. He called their work “essential for the development of these weapons,” and urged others to take advantage of their expertise. One scientist asked him if LSD would be made available in research quantities. Not yet, Greene replied, but soon.

  This presentation intrigued but did not satisfy Gottlieb. He was pleased to see that Greene still shared his belief in LSD’s earth-shaking potential. Still, a crucial difference remained: Greene imagined LSD as a battlefield weapon; Gottlieb wanted to use it to control minds.

  “I was fascinated by the ideas Greene was advancing,” he said later. “He was convinced that it was possible to actually win a battle or larger engagement without killing anyone or destroying any property. While I found this a novel approach to war, I was somewhat skeptical about it. But I was intrigued by the potential application of psycho-chemicals to much smaller situations and conflicts. There I saw tremendous promise.”

  Until Gottlieb’s arrival at the CIA, most experimentation with mind control drugs was aimed at finding a “truth serum.” As various drugs were found, one by one, to be useless as reliable aids to interrogation, and as their possible value in inducing amnesia was also discounted, they were pushed aside. The same might have happened with LSD. Early experiments showed that while some who took it became docile and uninhibited, others had completely different reactions, imagining themselves super-powerful and fiercely refusing to cooperate. Some had paranoid breakdowns. Scientists who did “Artichoke work” with LSD—mainly at Villa Schuster in Germany and other secret prisons—were forced to conclude that it was not a reliable “truth serum” and did not wipe away memory. Gottlieb, however, was convinced that LSD had powers yet to be understood. It affected the brain in wildly powerful ways. Because it is colorless, tasteless, and odorless, it seemed ideally suited to clandestine use—and, as one CIA psychiatrist put it, “the most fascinating thing about it was that such minute quantities had such a terrific effect.”

  Another factor driving Gottlieb to pursue research into LSD was the creeping fear that Soviet scientists must also be on the trail. No evidence ever emerged to suggest that they were, but it seemed a reasonable suspicion. The discovery of LSD had been reported in Russian journals. CIA analysts speculated that Soviet scientists might be stockpiling ergot enzymes as raw material.

  “Although no Soviet data are available on LSD-25,” they concluded in one assessment, “it must be assumed that the scientists of the USSR are thoroughly cognizant of the strategic importance of this powerful new drug, and are capable of producing it at any time.”

  Gottlieb’s burgeoning ambition quickly outpaced his resources. He began outsourcing experiments to Camp Detrick. The officers he deployed there were told not to reveal that they worked for the CIA, and to identify themselves only as a “staff support group.” Some army scientists guessed the truth and disapproved.

  “Do you know what a ‘self-contained, off-the-shelf operation’ means?” one of them asked years later. “The CIA was running one in my lab. They were testing psycho-chemicals and running experiments in my labs, and weren’t telling me.”

  Gottlieb’s drug experiments were not confined to Washington and Maryland. He traveled regularly in order to observe and participate in “special
interrogation” sessions at detention centers abroad. On these missions he had the chance to test his potions on human prisoners.

  “In 1951 a team of CIA scientists led by Dr. Gottlieb flew to Tokyo,” according to one study. “Four Japanese suspected of working for the Russians were secretly brought to a location where the CIA doctors injected them with a variety of depressants and stimulants … Under relentless questioning, they confessed to working for the Russians. They were taken out into Tokyo Bay, shot and dumped overboard. The CIA team flew to Seoul in South Korea and repeated the experiment on twenty-five North Korean prisoners-of-war. They were asked to denounce Communism. They refused and were executed … In 1952 Dulles brought Dr. Gottlieb and his team to post-war Munich in southern Germany. They set up a base in a safe house … Throughout the winter of 1952–3 scores of ‘expendables’ were brought to the safe house. They were given massive amounts of drugs, some of which Frank Olson had prepared back at Detrick, to see if their minds could be altered. Others were given electro-convulsive shocks. Each experiment failed. The ‘expendables’ were killed and their bodies burned.”

  Months of experiments like these left Gottlieb unsatisfied. He decided he needed to formalize his relationship with the Special Operations Division at Camp Detrick. It had become one of the world’s most advanced biochemical laboratories—though few knew this, since all of its work was secret. Its facilities, including the custom-built test chamber known as the Eight Ball, were unmatched anywhere. Gottlieb wanted to use these assets to propel Artichoke to new heights.

  For more than a year, under the terms of MK-NAOMI, the Special Operations Division had been doing research and production work for the CIA. Gottlieb asked Dulles to negotiate a formal accord that would allow him to deepen this cooperation. Officially it would link the army,s Chemical Corps and the CIA, but its real meaning was narrower. It would bind the small, super-secret units within each organization that did “Artichoke work”: the Special Operations Division at Camp Detrick, run by an elite band of army scientists with advanced research capacity, and their handful of CIA counterparts who, under Gottlieb, were planning to take Artichoke in wildly new directions.

  “Under an agreement reached with the Army in 1952,” Senate investigators wrote years later, “the Special Operations Division at Detrick was to assist the CIA in developing, testing, and maintaining biological agents and delivery systems. By this agreement, CIA acquired the knowledge, skill, and facilities of the Army to develop biological weapons suited for CIA use.”

  This secret accord gave Gottlieb new momentum. He had already observed the effects of various drugs on himself and his colleagues. From there he had gone on to feed drugs in much larger doses, and under far more torturous conditions, to prisoners and other helpless subjects. That was not enough. He wanted to know more.

  One of the luxuries that Gottlieb’s interrogators enjoyed was the knowledge that if any “expendables” died during their experiments, disposing of their bodies would be “no problem.” This was not always a fully efficient process, as an American translator who worked at Camp King discovered while sunning herself there one weekend in mid-1952. “Arrived back in Frankfurt from Paris Sun. morning in time to spend all day at the Oberursel swimming pool acquiring a nice tan,” she wrote in a letter home. “They dragged a dead man out of the pool at 10 AM.”

  * * *

  BOHEMIAN EXPATRIATES IN Paris have been drawn to Le Select since it opened in 1925. It is one of the city’s classic literary cafés, with art deco flourishes and large windows overlooking Montparnasse. Henry Miller, Emma Goldman, Samuel Beckett, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, and Luis Buñuel were regulars. So was Ernest Hemingway, who wrote in The Sun Also Rises of carefree lovers who hail taxis near the Seine and tell the driver, “Le Select!” Hart Crane once started a fight at the bar. Isadora Duncan flung a saucer during an argument over the Sacco-Vanzetti trial. With this pedigree, Le Select naturally attracted a young American artist who came to Paris in 1951.

  Stanley Glickman had shown artistic talent from childhood. During his high school years in New York, he took advanced classes and won prizes. After arriving in Paris, he enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, spent the following summer studying fresco painting in Florence, and then returned to take classes from the modernist master Fernand Léger. His studio was near Le Select, but after a while he came to prefer another café, Le Dôme, just across the Boulevard du Montparnasse. One evening in October 1952, he was drinking coffee there when an acquaintance appeared and invited him over to Le Select. Reluctantly he agreed.

  At Le Select, the two joined a group of Americans whose conservative dress set them apart from the rest of the crowd. Talk turned to politics and grew heated. Glickman rose to leave, but one of the men insisted on buying him a last drink to show there were no hard feelings. Glickman said he’d have a glass of Chartreuse, an herbal liqueur. Rather than call the waiter, the man walked to the bar, ordered the Chartreuse himself, and carried it back to their table. He walked with a limp, Glickman later recalled.

  The next few minutes were the last of Glickman’s productive life. After taking a few sips from his drink, he began to feel what he later called “a lengthening of distance and a distortion of perception.” Soon he was hallucinating. Others at the table leaned in, fascinated. One told Glickman he could perform miracles. Finally, overwhelmed by panic and fearing that he had been poisoned, he jumped up and fled.

  After awakening the next morning, Glickman was overcome by another wave of hallucinations. Visions overwhelmed his mind. He abandoned his studies and began wandering aimlessly through Montparnasse. One day he walked into Le Select, sat down, and collapsed. An ambulance brought him to the American Hospital, which maintained a confidential relationship with the CIA. Records say he was given sedatives, but he later asserted that he was treated with electroshock and possibly given more hallucinogenic drugs. His Canadian girlfriend arrived after a week and signed him out of the hospital. He sent her back to Canada, warning that she would ruin her life if she stayed with him.

  For the next ten months, Glickman lived as a recluse in his garret, refusing to eat for fear of poison. Finally his parents learned of his condition and brought him home. He never recovered. For the rest of his life he lived in an apartment in Manhattan’s East Village, with dogs as his only companions. For a time he ran a small antiques shop. He never again painted, read books, worked steadily, or had a romantic relationship.

  “Even in an area known for street characters,” according to one chronicle, “he cut a striking figure with his shock of white hair and a red-and-black silk scarf, knotted like a cravat. But most of the time, he just sat on his step with a cup of coffee.”

  If Glickman was the subject of an Artichoke experiment, why did Gottlieb choose him rather than someone else? Coincidence is a logical possibility. The “acquaintance” who lured Glickman into Le Select might simply have noticed him sitting in a café across the street and suggested him as a conveniently available victim. Later investigation, however, raised another possibility.

  Several months before his apparent poisoning, Glickman had been treated for hepatitis at the American Hospital. Artichoke researchers were interested in learning whether people with hepatitis might be especially vulnerable to LSD. Glickman would have been the ideal subject for a test. A later CIA memo summarizing results of experiments conducted during the early 1950s includes this conclusion: “Subjects in whom even a slight modification of hepatic function is present make a very marked response to LSD.”

  * * *

  AS GOTTLIEB’S FAR-FLUNG research project was reaching new extremes, politics intervened to guarantee its future. On November 4, 1952, Americans elected Dwight Eisenhower to the presidency. His victory ensured that Gottlieb would be free to do whatever he could imagine.

  One of the few senior officials in Washington with whom Eisenhower had worked closely was the director of central intelligence, General Walter Bedell Smith, who had been his chief of staff d
uring World War II. After taking office, he made Smith undersecretary of state. That left the top CIA job open. Eisenhower considered several candidates and finally chose the one who wanted the job most fervently: Allen Dulles.

  What another director might have done with Gottlieb’s mind control project—whether he might have sought to curtail or end it—cannot be known. With Dulles secure in power, though, Gottlieb had free rein. As if this were not enough good news, Eisenhower selected Dulles’s older brother, John Foster Dulles, as secretary of state. That meant the State Department could be relied upon to support whatever Gottlieb did abroad, including giving “black sites” all the diplomatic cover they needed.

  Newly encouraged, Gottlieb pressed ahead with the task he had been given: pursue mind control research as far as it could go. He had already brought several doctors into his orbit and was pushing them to carry out tests on psychoactive drugs. One of them, Paul Hoch of New York Psychiatric Institute, agreed to inject mescaline into one of his patients so its effects could be observed. He chose a forty-two-year-old professional tennis player named Harold Blauer, who had come to him seeking treatment for depression following a divorce.

  Beginning on December 5, 1952, one of Hoch’s assistants injected Blauer with a concentrated mescaline derivative, without any explanation or warning. Over the next month he was injected five more times. He complained that the treatment was giving him hallucinations and asked that it be ended, but Hoch insisted that he proceed. On January 8, 1953, Blauer was given a dose fourteen times greater than previous ones. The protocol notes that he protested when he was injected at 9:53 a.m. Six minutes later he was flailing wildly. At 10:01 his body stiffened. He was pronounced dead at 12:15.