Poisoner in Chief

by Stephen Kinzer

  MK-ULTRA had been Gottlieb’s child. He designed it, helped Richard Helms draft the memo to Allen Dulles that brought it into being in 1953, conceived the 149 “subprojects” that pushed its mind control research into hitherto unimagined realms, and monitored the results of extreme experiments at detention centers on four continents. In a decade of work, he had failed to produce a “truth serum,” a technique to program the human mind, or a potion to work any kind of psychic magic.

  Acting on his growing suspicion of MK-ULTRA, McCone directed the CIA’s inspector general, J. S. Earman, to find out what it was and what it did. Earman submitted his report on July 26, 1963. A note at the top says it was prepared “in one copy only, in view of its unusual sensitivity.”

  “MK-ULTRA activity is concerned with the research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior,” the report begins. “Over the ten-year life of the program, many additional avenues to the control of human behavior have been designated by TSD management as appropriate to investigation under the MK-ULTRA charter, including radiation, electroshock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment substances, and paramilitary devices and materials.”

  The report does not name Gottlieb or his deputy Robert Lashbrook, but refers to them: “There are just two individuals in TSD who have full substantive knowledge of the program, and most of that knowledge is unrecorded. Both are highly skilled, highly motivated, and professionally competent individuals … The final phase of testing MK-ULTRA materials involves their application to unwitting subjects in normal life settings … The MK-ULTRA program director has, in fact, provided close supervision of the testing program and makes periodic visits to the sites.” Then, after assessing Gottlieb’s “testing program,” the inspector general reaches four conclusions.

  a—Research in the manipulation of human behavior is considered by many authorities in medicine and related fields to be professionally unethical, therefore the reputations of professional participants in the MK-ULTRA program are on occasion in jeopardy.

  b—Some MK-ULTRA activities raise questions of legality implicit in the original charter.

  c—A final phase of the testing of MK-ULTRA products places the rights and interests of US citizens in jeopardy.

  d—Public disclosure of some aspects of MK-ULTRA activity could induce serious adverse reaction in US public opinion, as well as stimulate offensive and defensive action in this field on the part of foreign intelligence services … Weighing possible benefits of such testing against the risks of compromise and of resulting damage to CIA has led the Inspector General to recommend termination of this phase of the MK-ULTRA program.

  The report went on to suggest a series of steps to bring MK-ULTRA under tighter control. Its contracts should be audited. Gottlieb should file regular updates describing his work. Project managers should update their “notably incomplete” files. The conclusion is understated but profound: “A redefinition of the scope of MK-ULTRA is now appropriate.”

  Gottlieb had directed MK-ULTRA with only the loosest supervision. Suddenly he faced the prospect of oversight. Yet sharing the secrets of MK-ULTRA was unthinkable. How should he respond? A more combative bureaucrat might have chosen to resist the inspector general’s report, defend the essential value of MK-ULTRA, and insist that it be allowed to continue functioning within its opaque shroud. Instead, in true Buddhist fashion, Gottlieb not only embraced the inspector general’s report but suggested that its critique of his work was not deep enough. His response may be read as both an admission of defeat and a protective measure. Instead of redefining the scope of MK-ULTRA, he suggested, let the program fade away entirely.

  It has become increasingly obvious over the last several years that the general area had less and less relevance to current clandestine operations. The reasons for this are many and complex, but two of them are perhaps worth mentioning briefly. On the scientific side, it has become very clear that these materials and techniques are too unpredictable in their effect on individual human beings, under specific circumstances, to be operationally useful. Our operations officers, particularly the emerging group of new senior operations officers, have shown a discerning and perhaps commendable distaste for using these materials and techniques. They seem to realize that, in addition to moral and ethical considerations, the extreme sensitivity and security constraints of such operations effectively rule them out.

  Over the final months of 1963, MK-ULTRA slowed toward dignified expiration. Remaining “subprojects” ended and were not renewed. Apartments in New York and San Francisco to which victims had been lured for drug experiments were closed. Gottlieb focused on his other work. He was reinventing himself. The drug experimenter and poison maker became a designer of spy tools. When Gottlieb addressed the incoming class of CIA recruits in 1963, he referred only obliquely to MK-ULTRA.

  “I remember him saying that the Soviets were doing a lot of research into mind control, and that we needed to keep up with them,” one of the recruits later recalled. “As far as anyone knew, that was what he did—that was the justification for his work. It seemed quite reasonable. Nobody thought, ‘What a horrible thing.’ You didn’t get any sense of a mad scientist or someone who was off the rails or anything like that.”

  For ten years Gottlieb directed systematic, intense, and far-reaching research into mind control. Finally he and his comrades were forced to face their cosmic failure. Their research had shown them that mind control is a myth—that seizing another person’s mind and reprogramming it is impossible.

  The ride of a lifetime was ending. There would be nothing like MK-ULTRA again. Gottlieb had every reason to believe that he had put his wild adventure behind him.

  12

  Let This Die with Us

  As Sidney Gottlieb rose into the top ranks of the CIA during the 1960s, his family life remained rich. He expanded his Virginia cabin into a split-level house with large windows and modern conveniences. It was set far back from the road, in a forested glen at the end of a long gravel driveway. The grounds were built around a large swimming pool. On some summer weekends, dressed only in shorts, Gottlieb would sit cross-legged near the diving board and meditate.

  In his late forties, Gottlieb was trim, fit, and handsome, with penetrating blue eyes. He rose before the sun and enjoyed being outdoors. When weather allowed, he spent hours gardening and working on his property. He liked to swim—whenever he arrived at a hotel, he headed for the pool—and developed an interest in sailing. He played tennis. Hours under the sun gave him a ruddy tan.

  Gottlieb’s four children—two boys and two girls—were no more or less troublesome than other teenagers. His wife sprinkled her letters to relatives with reports about rowdy sons and sullen daughters. She wanted them to think freely and nourish their spirituality.

  “The way we thought about our children’s upbringing in spiritual matters was that it was very important,” Margaret Gottlieb wrote years later. “But since Sid and I came from such very different but very strong religious backgrounds, we wanted to give them the tradition of each and some knowledge of how all mankind has related to the subconscious, to the need to understand what is out there beyond. We always went to the Passover celebration at Sid’s home … We spent two years in Germany and by the time we came home, Sid’s father was sick and then died, so we didn’t go home anymore … We feel that it is very important to be connected to age-old tradition, to feel that you are part of a large community—your family, your neighborhood, your school, your town, your church. I wanted my kids to have an acquaintanceship with the Bible, to have the sound of it in their ears. I wanted them to have great music, great poetry, great books, old folk tales, to have heard about folk customs, to know how their ancestors lived, moved and spoke.”

  The elder son, Peter, was seventeen years old when, in the summer of 1966, he brought home a girlfriend. She was one of his cl
assmates at James Madison High School. Half a century later, she looked back over their romance. She remembered it as “kind of like going steady, puppy love, very innocent.” Her recollections provide a uniquely intimate view of the family.

  The girlfriend, who in an interview asked to be identified as Elizabeth, was delighted to fall into the Gottlieb orbit.

  “I was a smart kid, but I came from a very Catholic background, a big family where everyone was preoccupied with the daily struggles of life,” she said. “The Gottlieb family dynamic was so different from what I experienced growing up. They would have discussions about politics and what was happening in the world. They had so many more books—Sidney had a library in a den off the eating area. And they were so much more frank and open with each other than I was used to. I remember a time when one of Peter’s sisters yelled, ‘Oh shit! I’ve got my damn period again!’ And I thought, ‘Well, this is different.’”

  Elizabeth recalls Sidney and Margaret emerging one evening in full Bavarian costume. He wore knee-length leather breeches with suspenders, and she wore an embroidered dirndl. They were on their way to an evening at one of their dancing clubs. “This was real folk dance,” Elizabeth said, “not square dance.”

  The summer was a revelation for Elizabeth in several ways. “There was no religious feeling in that household, but I would say that Sidney had mystical leanings,” she said. “So did his wife. They would talk about esoteric subjects that never came up at my dinner table at home. I remember feeling kind of entranced by their whole dynamic as a family. It was exotic. They were very unusual people. He meditated, but they weren’t wackos or anything like that. There was something I just couldn’t put my finger on.”

  Toward the end of Elizabeth’s summer romance, that “something” came suddenly into focus.

  One day that summer, we were out at the house swimming. The parents had gone to the store to buy food for dinner and Peter goes, kind of conspiratorially, “Come here. I want to show you something.” He takes me into his father’s den, his library, and says, “Turn around.” He did something—he didn’t want me to see what he did—and the wall of books opened up. Behind it was all this stuff. Weapons—I couldn’t tell which kind, but guns. There was other stuff back there. It was like a secret compartment. I asked him, “What is that for?” He closed it back up quickly and said, “You know, my father has a price on his head.” I said, “Why? Is he a criminal?” He said, “No, he works for the CIA.” Then he said, “You know, my dad has killed people. He made toothpaste to kill someone.” Later on he told me, “Don’t tell anyone that you were in there, and don’t ever tell anyone you know that my father kills people.”

  Looking back, Elizabeth concluded that Margaret Gottlieb “had to know” what her husband did for a living. “I also think all the kids knew about the secret compartment,” she said. “You just got a sense that there were certain things they knew they had to follow, kind of unspoken protocols. You had to honk your horn when you arrived at the bottom of the driveway. Guests could come over, but only at certain times. There were little rules that had to be followed. This explains what was behind that wall of books. There probably was a worry about security, and someone coming after him.”

  * * *

  SILENT CIA OFFICERS watched intently as a veterinarian anesthetized a gray-and-white cat on the operating table of a modern animal hospital. When the first incision drew blood, one of the spectators—an audio engineer from Gottlieb’s Technical Services Division—felt faint and stepped back to sit down. The others followed the vet’s every move. He implanted a tiny microphone in the cat’s ear canal, connected it with ultra-fine wire to a three-quarter-inch-long transmitter at the base of her skull, and added a packet of micro-batteries as a power source. Then he sewed up his incisions. The cat awoke and, after a recovery period, behaved normally.

  “Acoustic Kitty” was conceived as the CIA’s answer to a nagging surveillance problem. Bugging devices that its officers placed in foreign embassies often picked up too much background noise. Someone—a case officer or a “tech” from Gottlieb’s shop—observed that cat ears, like human ears, contain a cochlea, a natural filter that screens out much of that noise. Why not try to turn a living cat into a surveillance device? Even if it proved unable to filter out background noise, it would allow “audio access” to targets who allowed cats to wander through their offices or conference rooms. This idea led to many months of experimentation and, ultimately, the creation of “Acoustic Kitty” in a CIA-contracted operating theater.

  This cat was a miracle of technology. After the operation, she showed no outward scars, walked normally, and could do everything other cats did. The microphone and transmitter implanted within her worked perfectly. Finally her CIA handlers brought her to a park for a test mission. They pointed her in the direction of two men lost in conversation, supposedly with this command: “Listen to those two guys. Don’t listen to anything else—not the birds, no cat or dog—just those two guys!” Any cat owner could guess what happened next. The cat took a few steps toward the men and then wandered off in another direction.

  “Technically the audio system worked, generating a viable audio signal,” according to one report of this experiment. “However, control of the cat’s movements, despite earlier training, proved so inconsistent that the operational utility became questionable. Over the next few weeks, Acoustic Kitty was exercised against various operation scenarios, but the results failed to improve.”

  This aborted project was part of a CIA effort to test the value of animals—birds, bees, dogs, dolphins, and others—for electronic surveillance. No one considered it a failure. The official directive that ended it in 1967 concludes that further attempts to train animals “would not be practical,” but adds: “The work done on this problem over the years reflects great credit on the personnel who guided it.”

  In an earlier era, that would have been a tip of the hat to Gottlieb and his fellow craftsmen-scientists at the Technical Services Division. It still was, but the “Acoustic Kitty” project was not run by Technical Services alone. Officers from the new Directorate of Science and Technology, which steadily expanded into what had been Gottlieb’s domain, were also involved. Technical Services was able to remain autonomous—and to protect MK-ULTRA secrets—thanks to the vigilant patronage of Richard Helms. Nonetheless its mandate narrowed. Projects that would in the past have been its responsibility were transferred to the new directorate. Among them were “behavioral” experiments involving induced amnesia, implanted electrodes, and the cultivation of false memory.

  With many of Gottlieb’s responsibilities assigned to other CIA officers, MK-ULTRA ceased to exist as an active project. In 1964 the cryptonym was officially retired. A new one, MK-SEARCH, was assigned to its successor project, whose purpose was “to develop a capability to manipulate human behavior in a predictable manner through the use of drugs.” The work Gottlieb had pioneered would continue, but in a more conventional scientific environment and stripped of its most brutal extremes.

  If the demise of MK-ULTRA troubled Gottlieb, his concern was wiped away by the fortuitous results of unexpected turmoil at the top of the CIA. John McCone resigned as director in 1965. The tenure of his successor, Admiral William Raborn, was brief and unhappy. When Raborn resigned in 1966, President Johnson chose Richard Helms to succeed him. Gottlieb’s bureaucratic godfather had reached the top. The result was not long in coming: Helms named Gottlieb chief of the Technical Services Division. The chemist whom some colleagues called “that clubfooted Jew” was now master of the CIA tool shop and its network of subsidiaries around the world.

  * * *

  ON FEBRUARY 14, 1970, a fiat from the White House shook Sidney Gottlieb’s world. President Nixon, declaring that he feared the outbreak of a global pandemic, ordered government agencies to destroy their stores of bio-weapons and chemical toxins. Army scientists dutifully complied. Gottlieb hesitated. He asked the chief of his Chemical Division, Nathan Gordon, for an inven
tory of CIA stocks. Gordon reported that the CIA’s “health alteration committee” medicine chest at Fort Detrick contained ten biological agents that could cause diseases including smallpox, tuberculosis, equine encephalitis, and anthrax, as well as six organic toxins, among them snake venom and paralytic shellfish poison. Both men were disturbed at the prospect of losing this deadly pharmacopeia. Gordon suggested that it be secretly moved out of Fort Detrick. He even found a research center in Maryland willing to warehouse it for $75,000 a year.

  A couple of days later, however, Gordon and Gottlieb met with Richard Helms and Tom Karamessines, the CIA’s deputy director for plans, and agreed that the Agency had no realistic option other than to follow the president’s order and destroy its stock of poison. It did so—but one batch, the paralytic shellfish poison known as saxitoxin, escaped destruction. This was one of Gottlieb’s prize poisons. Fabricating it had required extracting and refining minute amounts of toxin from thousands of Alaskan butter clams. The resulting concentrate was so strong that a single gram could kill five thousand people. Gottlieb had used it to make “L-pills” for agents who thought they might have to kill themselves, and to coat the suicide needle given to pilots of the U-2 spy plane.

  Two canisters containing nearly eleven grams of this poison—enough to kill 55,000 people—were in one of Gottlieb’s freezers. 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’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery in Washington, where the CIA maintained a small chemical warehouse. Nathan Gordon later testified that he ordered this operation himself, without consulting Gottlieb. He said he had never seen a directive requiring the destruction of toxins, and in any case believed that the CIA should keep some on hand in case “higher authority” should ever need it. By the time the eleven grams of shellfish poison were discovered and destroyed in 1975, Gottlieb had retired.