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Cold War – The CIA’s mind control project, MKULTRA – John Lisle
123 Plays20 days ago
Ep 058 – Nonfiction. Historian John Lisle discusses his new book, “Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA.”
‘The inside story of the CIA’s secret mind control project, MKULTRA, using never-before-seen testimony from the perpetrators themselves.
Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous―even deadly―experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the movements of animals via electrodes implanted into their brains. His goal was to develop methods of mind control that could turn someone into a real-life “Manchurian candidate.”
In conjunction with MKULTRA, Gottlieb also plotted the assassination of foreign leaders and created spy gear for undercover agents. The details of his career, however, have long been shrouded in mystery. Upon retiring from the CIA in 1973, he tossed his files into an incinerator. As a result, much of what happened under MKULTRA was thought to be lost―until now.
Historian John Lisle has uncovered dozens of depositions containing new information about MKULTRA, straight from the mouths of its perpetrators. For the first time, Gottlieb and his underlings divulge what they did, why they did it, how they got away with it, and much more. Additionally, Lisle highlights the dramatic story of MKULTRA’s victims, from their terrible treatment to their dogged pursuit of justice.
The consequences of MKULTRA still reverberate throughout American society. Project Mind Control is the definitive account of this most disturbing of chapters in CIA history.’
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Transcript
Introduction to War Books Podcast and John Lyle
00:00:01
A.J. Woodhams
Hi, everyone. This is AJ Woodhams, host of the War Books Podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics. Today, I am extremely excited to have on the show John Lyle for his newest book, Project Mind Control, Sidney Gottlieb, The CIA, and The Tragedy of MKUltra.
00:00:22
A.J. Woodhams
John Lyle has PhD in history from the University of Texas, where he is now a professor of the history of science. He has received research and writing awards from the National Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Physics, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
00:00:36
A.J. Woodhams
His work has been published in Skeptic, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, and elsewhere.
The Dirty Tricks Department and New Work
00:00:41
A.J. Woodhams
He has been on the show before for his first book, The Dirty Tricks Department, which you should go check out um after you ah check out this book.
00:00:50
A.J. Woodhams
John, how are you doing today?
00:00:52
John
I'm good, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about these topics. It never never really gets old.
00:00:55
A.J. Woodhams
Oh, yeah.
00:00:56
John
There's always something exciting to talk about.
00:00:56
A.J. Woodhams
Absolutely. Yeah, no. Well, i'm i' I'm glad you wrote this book. Loved it, just like I loved the last one. um If people are watching this on YouTube, as opposed to listening, and we did not coordinate our outfits today.
00:01:10
A.J. Woodhams
We are both in red t-shirts and um black framed glasses and are looking pretty similar. ah Great minds think alike, though.
00:01:19
John
I think so, I think so.
Exploring MKUltra and Sidney Gottlieb
00:01:21
A.J. Woodhams
Well, um let's ah let's let's dive right into it. the The first question that I like people to answer when they come on the show is if in your own words, can you just tell us what is your book about?
00:01:32
John
Yes, this book is about the CIA's MKUltra mind control project that happened during the Cold War. This was in in response to a few events that were happening around the world, especially some American pilots who were shot down during the Korean War and started saying things like they were dropping germ bombs on the Koreans.
00:01:51
John
People within the CIA started to wonder, why would they say something like this? Is it perhaps possible that the communists, the Koreans or the Chinese or someone is using methods of mind control to manipulate these people?
00:02:03
John
And if so, what are those methods? And even whether they are or aren't using those methods, now that we're kind of thinking about it, maybe we should develop those methods ourselves. So this book is about this MKUltra project led by a man named Sidney Gottlieb.
00:02:16
John
And the idea was to try to use drugs or hypnosis or psychological techniques like electric shocks or sleep deprivation or something in order to manipulate people, either to get them to believe certain things or behave certain ways.
00:02:31
John
um So that's broadly what the book is about. But it also goes into a lot about the personal life of Sidney Gottlieb. He's not only working on MKUltra within the CIA, he's also involved in assassination attempts on foreign leaders.
00:02:44
John
He's also involved in creating the um kind of gadgets and disguises and cover stories of within the CIA for agents who are going undercover.
00:02:54
John
So he's involved in a lot of stuff within the CIA that this book goes into. um And largely also the second half of this book, what it talks about is the repercussions of MKUltra, the fallout from it. So the first half is really about what it was.
00:03:08
John
The last half is really about what happened when it was revealed to the public that this was going on during the Cold War. um So I talk about how it was revealed to the public, the kinds of investigations that uncovered it, and how the public reacted to it, and kind of some conspiracy theories that that led to.
00:03:24
John
um So it's really about the broad scope of MKUltra, not only what it was, but also what it influenced.
Cultural Impact of MKUltra
00:03:30
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, and I think if and if people are even a little bit familiar with maybe the the excesses of the CIA or maybe the darker periods of the CIA, MKUltra is the project that um that most people think of when they think of just the messed up things that the CIA has done.
00:03:47
John
hmm. Yep. yeah
00:03:49
A.J. Woodhams
ah In fact, I was out with some friends. and we were We were having lunch. This is, I think, so your book has been out for about a month now, I think. And um that week I was out with some friends and it just so happens, like one of my friends is like, um who works at the state department.
00:04:05
A.J. Woodhams
He's like, I don't even know how we got on this topic, but we did. And he's like, have you ever heard of something called MK ultra at the the CIA? I'm like, Oh, actually, yeah, I have.
00:04:16
A.J. Woodhams
And you should check out this, ah this new book that has come out, but just unprompted. and Like when, when I think we were probably talking about just like the excesses of, of,
00:04:21
John
Mm-hmm.
00:04:25
A.J. Woodhams
and governments ah historically. This is the thing that people kind of think about.
00:04:31
John
It is.
Sidney Gottlieb's Background and Motivations
00:04:32
John
And it's it's funny that you say that too, because i don't know if it's because I was writing this book, but I, lately, within the past few years, especially, i have noticed a lot more references to MKUltra than I ever had.
00:04:32
A.J. Woodhams
um Yeah.
00:04:44
John
And again, it's fresh in my mind. So that is probably part of it. I'm actually noticing the references when they crop up instead of just forgetting them because, you know, before I was writing this book, maybe it wasn't on my radar, but I really do feel like there's, there's something to this moment right now where where it's really infused into the kind of public discourse.
00:05:01
John
So that yeah, there's definitely an uptick in interest probably about MKUltra right now, I think.
00:05:01
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:05:05
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, well, and I think too, and maybe we'll get to this at the the end of the show. um a lot of ah conspiracies, you know, we're in an age right now where we're thinking a lot about information and how we're getting information and what is a conspiracy and what is not.
00:05:12
John
Mm-hmm.
00:05:20
A.J. Woodhams
And, and you know, this is like one of those things where and don't want to say all conspiracies stem from like MKUltra, but like this has spawned so many different conspiracies.
00:05:31
A.J. Woodhams
um which you know we'll we'll get into maybe at the end. um But let's let's start with let's start at the beginning. Let's lay some groundwork and and some context.
00:05:39
John
Mm-hmm.
00:05:41
A.J. Woodhams
um First, let's just talk about Sidney Gottlieb. um who Who was Sidney Gottlieb? um What was his background, his family, and how did he come to work for the CIA? Yeah.
00:05:55
John
Yes, Sidney Gottlieb. He is this the main character of this book, the man who would eventually head MKUltra. He was a chemist. He had gotten his PhD in bio-organic chemistry from Caltech.
00:06:06
John
And really, when he got his PhD, right at the end of it, it was 1943, and he was wanting to volunteer to go into the army. He wanted to join... the army during World War II and serve his country. He was born of immigrant parents, and so he felt like he owed a debt to his country for allowing his parents to come over here and give him the life that he had.
00:06:24
John
But when he tried to volunteer, he was ah denied service because he had he was born with club feet. So he had this physical ailment that prevented him from serving in the military. And he always...
00:06:35
John
afterward kind of carried this burden that he felt that he wasn't able to pay the debt that he owed to his country. So after that, he had several jobs working at universities and a few different ah government organizations.
00:06:48
John
But eventually he was able to get a job within the CIA. And here he felt like he would be able to repay
Mind Control Experiments and Ethical Dilemmas
00:06:54
John
that debt because it wasn't a military job in the sense that he wouldn't be going overseas fighting or something, but he could use his brain in order to help the government win the Cold War, is what he thought, at least. And so he joined the CIA, and originally he served as kind of an assistant, a chemist within ah branch that was doing things like secret writing. how to you know How can we... formulate different chemicals that will allow us to write something that nobody can see and we can send secret messages back and forth.
00:07:22
John
And then he kind of rose through the ranks eventually to become head of this MKUltra project. One of the reasons why the CIA especially was interested in hiring chemists like Sidney Gottlieb is because just within the historical context, this is right after World War II and right after the atomic bombs had come at the end of World War II. And who created the atomic bombs? These physicists that the government recruited, the military recruited these physicists. So it seemed like science was now necessary and integral to national security right at the end of World War twoi And if that's the case, then we better hire a lot of scientists who might know what the next arms race is going to be.
00:07:51
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:07:58
John
You know, so the arms race right now could be atomic bombs, but maybe there's something in the future.
00:07:59
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:08:02
John
Maybe that arms race is going to be mind control. And if so, we better get a leg up on the communists. So we need to start hiring these chemists and other scientists who will be able to help us in that potential arms race that's coming.
00:08:13
John
That was at least the CIA's
00:08:14
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:08:15
John
ah thought process. And that's one of the reasons why Sidney Gottlieb lands at the CIA.
00:08:19
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, and in your book, the the reader will i get kind of a a nice um under so nice, the reader will get an understanding that in the 1950s, mind control was just on on the minds, so to speak.
00:08:37
A.J. Woodhams
ah of all these different governments. ah the the The CIA was fixating on it. The Soviets were fixating on it.
00:08:45
John
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It-it-it.
00:08:46
A.J. Woodhams
Scientists were were fixating on it. um Researchers who were outside of government. it was it would It almost kind of seemed like it was the new frontier um of not not really weaponry, but um that was like the, it seemed like a cool new thing.
00:09:03
A.J. Woodhams
What is, what yeah, talk about that.
00:09:03
John
it it Yeah, it it was. And there are several there are several events that kind of lead to that development. You know, going back even to the eighteen ninety s you have Ivan Pavlov, this Russian physiologist who is doing his behavioral
Frank Olson's Death and MKUltra's Darker Side
00:09:19
John
conditioning experiments with dogs, you know, ringing a bell and getting him to salivate. These are famous experiments.
00:09:24
John
But... Within the CIA, people were thinking, well, if the Russians were able to do that back in the 1890s, you know, in if they were able to behaviorally condition these dogs, surely they've since applied that to humans.
00:09:36
John
And so there's kind of the worry that they've been working on this for a long time, and maybe we're going to have to catch up on how to condition people in order to behave certain ways. That's one event that leads to this interest in the nineteen fifty s especially.
00:09:48
John
Another one is the Moscow show trials where Stalin is purging his political enemies from power and he levies these false charges against them that they didn't do, but he's just trying to find them guilty of something so that he can get them out of the way.
00:10:02
John
But the interesting thing is that they admit to these false charges. They they say that they're guilty of the things that they didn't do. Why would they behave this way? One explanation that develops within the CIA, a CIA who's already thinking about mind control, is that maybe mind control is involved.
00:10:16
John
Maybe there are certain drugs or hypnotic techniques that these prisoners have been subjected to that's making them act this way. Similarly, in Hungary, there's a ah ah very prominent critic of the Communist Party, ah Cardinal Menzinti, and he's arrested, and the same thing happens to him. he's There are false charges that are are levied against him.
00:10:37
John
um And he confesses to them eventually. Why would he do this again? Perhaps it's mind control. At least that's the thinking within the CIA at the time. And then finally, the most important event is the downing of those American pilots during the Korean War who confessed to doing things like dropping biological weapons on the Koreans, anthrax, typhus, bubonic plague, all kinds of stuff.
00:10:57
John
Why would they confess to these false charges? Or why why would they fill confess to these things? And again, the thinking in the CIA is that maybe the communists are in possession of some method of mind control that has been used on these people.
00:11:09
John
Now, it turns out that's not the case. What got these pilots to talk is that they were tortured. There's sleep deprivation and torture and all kinds of other stuff.
00:11:14
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:11:17
John
they're They're interviewed, basically, after they come back to the United States when the war is over. and Many of the psychologists who interview them you know are able to figure out that what's actually going on here is that if you torture someone, they're going to say anything.
00:11:29
John
you know It's not that torture necessarily guarantees the truth, but torture can get someone to talk. And so people are going to say anything to make the torture stop.
00:11:35
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. and
00:11:37
John
um
00:11:37
A.J. Woodhams
Spoiler alert.
00:11:37
John
But still, within this... Yeah.
LSD's Role in Mind Control and Covert Operations
00:11:39
A.J. Woodhams
Spoiler alert for the audience, mind control does not work.
00:11:39
John
Yeah.
00:11:42
A.J. Woodhams
And Sidney Gottlieb comes to understand that.
00:11:43
John
ah yeah yeah
00:11:45
A.J. Woodhams
And that's what he says. it's like, you know, a lot of these things where where this information was gathered from other methods like torture, like you just said.
00:11:52
John
Yeah, and you know, and this is one of the reasons why the CIA wants to turn to these more esoteric techniques of mind control aside from torture, because people quickly, I mean, people have known for hundreds ah of years before this, torture can get someone to talk, but it can't guarantee the truth.
00:12:08
John
But what if we want to guarantee the truth? If we need a truth drug or a truth serum, torture is not going to be it. So maybe something else, maybe something like what Sidney Gottlieb is doing in the CIA, maybe, you know, some ah hallucinogenic drug like LSD or maybe some hypnotic technique or something. So the CIA turns away from torture because that is not a proven effective method for getting someone to spill the truth.
00:12:29
John
But then the ironic thing is when MKUltra, for the most part, isn't that effective, afterwards, the CIA turns back to torture. So But that's kind of the trajectory of ah why.
00:12:36
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Going all the way up to like the the in the two thousand um you know Yeah.
00:12:41
John
ah Exactly. Yeah. but But so that's why the CIA is interested in this in the first place. Can we have an effective truth drug?
00:12:46
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:12:47
John
And is it possible that these other countries might possess some methods that we don't know about that we need to develop ourselves to to defend against it? But once we start developing those things that, you know, the CIA soon becomes interested in, well, whether they're developing this or not, we want it for our own sake.
00:13:03
John
So that that that's kind of how it develops.
00:13:03
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:13:05
A.J. Woodhams
Well, let's going going back to Sidney Gottlieb, um i was something that really struck me about him and you know this this ah assignment that he has at the CIA, if you want to call it that, it is weird.
00:13:21
A.J. Woodhams
it's I mean, i think just like objectively, even in the 1950s, anybody working there would be like, this is this is weird. um And some people do say that.
00:13:28
John
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:13:30
A.J. Woodhams
um Thinking about Sidney Gottlieb himself is um you also find out that he is an outsider. Like he's always felt like an outsider. um He, the the thing about the CIA is pale male in Yale.
00:13:44
A.J. Woodhams
um He did not go to Yale. um He's ah from a, he's not from like a ah white Anglo-Saxon family. He's from a Jewish family. ah So he he really is kind of in this,
00:13:59
A.J. Woodhams
I don't want to say it's like an outsider. you know The very very senior people are involved in um in this project, um but like it's kind of like an outsider project. And he's an outsider himself, and he he he weirdly fills that role.
00:14:12
A.J. Woodhams
How did Sidney Gottlieb get and put on MKUltra in the first place?
00:14:19
John
And well, I should say that's, I think that is a perceptive observation, because I think one of the things that motivates Sidney Gottlieb is the fact that he's always for his entire life been seen as an outsider.
00:14:30
John
He had a stutter, you know, I mean, he had a stutter throughout his life.
00:14:33
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:14:33
John
And he had it was born with club feet. So he walked with a limp, he talked with a stutter. When he was young, children would make fun of him at school. And so he always felt like he was kind of this outsider who didn't fit in. At the CIA, he still feels like an outsider because he's not the stereotypical recruit of what someone in the CIA would be.
00:14:49
John
And so part of, i think, his... the way he rationalized what he was doing to himself was that he was trying to fit in. i'm I'm trying to make these people proud who gave me this important position within the CIA to put in charge of this ah project.
00:15:04
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:15:05
John
And i want I want to prove to them that like you know that they have my loyalty and that I can do something special and that I belong. So I think that's part of his internal motivation to want to try to prove to people that, hey, I'm not this other, I'm not this outsider. I belong with you and I can prove that you know i'm I'm worthwhile and I have something important to offer.
00:15:23
John
So I think and that's part of his motivation.
00:15:25
A.J. Woodhams
him
00:15:25
John
As for how he got put in charge of this project, he had been a chemist in in a few earlier projects within the CIA. But one of the things that really ingratiates Sidney Gottlieb to this position and to Alan Dulles in particular, who's the head of the CIA, is ironically is the thing that makes Sidney Gottlieb an outsider. One of the things that he had a club foot, Alan Dulles also had a club foot.
00:15:46
John
And so I think Alan Dulles took a liking to Sidney Gottlieb. And there's there's no doubt that Sidney Gottlieb was a brilliant chemist. He had gotten his PhD from Caltech. And so naturally, if you're going to give it to someone within the organization, this position, it's going to be someone who has to be competent and understand kind of the basics of chemistry or science or drugs.
00:16:04
John
And that certain Sidney Gottlieb certainly fit that bill. So there are a few reasons why I think he got it, his scientific credentials, but also the fact that Alan Dulles kind of sympathized with him.
00:16:14
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Well, did did he have any, as far as his ah personality goes, did he have any and moral ah compunctions with um what he was going to be doing as far as experimenting on human subjects?
00:16:29
A.J. Woodhams
Or we'll we'll get into into the LSD stuff, but what was the moral compass like?
00:16:33
John
Mm-hmm.
00:16:36
John
he He definitely had moral compunctions, but he did rationalize them away in several effective ways that and that made him think that this is for the greater good. It is, I mean, the main argument is it's an ends justifies the mean means kind of thing.
00:16:52
John
Well, we have to do this because, you know, if we don't dose these people with LSD, we're never going going to know how an unsuspecting person reacts to it. Therefore, if the Soviets are to, you know, dose our water supply with LSD and, you know, all...
00:17:05
John
uh chaos breaks loose then how are we going to deal with this problem so you know it's an ins justifies the means kind of thing however
Failure of MKUltra and Legal Repercussions
00:17:13
John
another way that gottlieb is going to rationalize what he does is the fact that he's not doing these experiments himself for the most part and even it's not people within the cia who are doing most of these experiments MKUltra is composed of 149 sub-projects, and for the most part, those sub-projects are contracted out to independent researchers at hospitals and universities throughout the country, and even in other countries. One of the most famous ones is Ewan Cameron in Montreal.
00:17:42
John
But... the The people who are contracted to do these subprojects, in many cases, they don't even know that they're being funded by the CIA. There's a cutout organization who Sidney Gottlieb will send funds to, and then that cutout organization will send funds to the researcher.
00:17:55
John
And those researchers are independently experts. these These are people who are very reputable in their fields. For example, Ewan Cameron in Montreal, who's a psychiatrist who's doing many of these experiments, he...
00:18:07
John
at one point is head of the American Psychiatric Association, Canadian Psychiatric Association, World Psychiatric Association. He had been on the team at Nuremberg who had analyzed the Nuremberg prisoners to determine whether they're fit to stand trial. So it's like, there's hardly anyone who's more...
00:18:23
John
at least renowned in the world of psychiatry at this time. And so Sidney Gottlieb's idea for himself, at least is, well, it's not my job to see that these patients are being treated right. It's the job of the person who's running the sub project, who is an expert and a professional in their own right. It is just their, it's their own duty to do that. So he doesn't feel the moral compunction to follow up to make sure they're actually doing it.
00:18:45
John
um So that's how, especially in several depositions that I found that Sidney Gottlieb gives in the 1980s, he's subpoenaed and required to give depositions in a couple of lawsuits.
00:18:45
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:18:56
John
During those depositions, when he's confronted with the fact that how could you not have followed up with these you know patients or followed up with these victims and see what was going on and what happened to them and how they reacted, this was the main explanation he gave is that it was the job of the researcher to do that, not my job.
00:19:12
John
Now, whether that's True or not, I mean, that's at least how he rationalized it, but that's kind kind of how he gets around these moral compunctions that he initially feels.
00:19:20
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, and you just noted, um so in in the book, the information is, these um and depositions that Sidney Gottlieb gives, and I think 1980 is um the year that he's he's required to give them, are interspersed throughout the book, which is how um i i i think you as the researcher have come to find out a lot of this information
00:19:42
John
Mm-hmm.
00:19:47
A.J. Woodhams
um In fact, why just would you mind just telling us, like how did you come across this information? It's a secret project, um ah famously like made not so secret in the 1970s.
00:19:55
John
Mm-hmm.
00:19:59
A.J. Woodhams
um How did you come across this information, and and how did that information make its way into the book?
00:20:04
John
Thank you. Yeah, this is one of the, I mean, to me, it's the most exciting part of the book is is the fact that I have verbatim dialogue from the people who are involved in the projects themselves. In the nineteen eighty s and late 70s, early 80s, this is after MKUltra has been exposed by several congressional committees to the public.
00:20:21
John
There are many victims of these sub projects who start suing the CIA. And as part of these lawsuits, The lawyers who are representing the plaintiffs, the victims, they take the depositions of many of the people involved in order to prepare to go to trial. And so Sidney Gottlieb gives a deposition. Richard Helms, who was the head of the CIA later, he he's one of the people who's deposed.
00:20:41
John
Robert Lashbrook, who's Gottlieb's right-hand man, in addition to many of the victims themselves, give depositions in preparation for a trial. So the the main attorney on this case is Joseph Rau. He's a famous civil rights attorney.
00:20:54
John
And he took the depositions of all these people. Sidney Gottlieb's depositions run to over 800 pages. And in it, Rau was just questioning him about, what did you do with MKUltra? How did you feel? it's It's incredible verbatim dialogue that I interspersed throughout the books to try to get into the heads of these people, not only but the perpetrators, but the victims also, to try to understand what they did and what they went through.
00:21:15
John
So that's the, a lot of the basis for the book is the dialogue that takes place in the depositions in the way that I found them.
00:21:21
A.J. Woodhams
Now, in this, but i was just going to ask, um in these depositions, how is Sidney, is he combative?
00:21:23
John
Oh,
00:21:29
A.J. Woodhams
um Is he willing to answer these questions? um There are several instances where he actually answers and his lawyer is like pinching him or being like, hey, i actually don't answer that.
00:21:40
A.J. Woodhams
You know, talk about kind of this environment um that he is giving these de depositions and
00:21:40
John
yes, yes.
00:21:46
John
Yeah, you know, I interviewed the court reporter who was there for the for one of these depositions with Sidney Gottlieb. And, you know, this was in the 1980s. And so I sent her the deposition after the fact, ah you know, several years ago to try to get her memories of what happened, you know, reading over this thing. Does it spark any memories about how— how you know what kind of impression Sidney Gottlieb left on you, anything like that.
00:22:08
John
And she told me reading over this deposition again that she was um she was dumbfounded by how much Sidney Gottlieb actually talked in this deposition. I mean, she did hundreds of depositions over the course of her career. And she said, hardly would anyone talk this much, um mainly because the attorneys beforehand would always tell the deponents not to talk. They would tell them, answer the question that's being asked and nothing but that question. you know If it's a yes or no question, say yes or no and don't elaborate on it.
00:22:34
John
But for some reason, Gottlieb kept elaborating on this. And you're right, several points throughout this, you know, Gottlieb's attorney has to pinch him to get him to stop talking about something or to maybe veer onto a different track.
00:22:45
John
And Joseph Rao, the ah the the plaintiff's attorney, he's watching this and he always brings it up saying, stop pinching him, stop doing that. And so there's this, you know, it's, The book is about MKUltra, but it's also about the dynamics of these depositions between the lawyers who are arguing back and forth, trying to extract information from the deponent.
00:23:03
John
And so that brings a lot of drama to the depositions. um
00:23:06
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:23:06
John
The way that I came across the depositions was that Joseph Rau, this main attorney, he and his law partner, James Turner, they settled this lawsuit out of court. So it never went to a trial. it They settled out of court for $750,000. The CIA paid these plaintiffs that much in order to end the lawsuit, basically.
00:23:25
John
And the the depositions just wound up in Joseph Rao's papers. He had taken all these depositions, but they're not you know they're they're just in in his papers now because it never went to a trial. So after he passes away, his papers are donated to the Library of Congress.
00:23:38
John
And I'm rooting around in them. And lo and behold, I find the deposition. So that's that's how I come across them.
00:23:43
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. and And that's one that's wild. I love the Library of Congress. um i've I've researched in those archives myself before.
Exposure and Public Skepticism of MKUltra
00:23:53
A.J. Woodhams
So ah for the the depositions, um so you had said that ah Sidney Gottlieb, like he he would elaborate more than what he should.
00:24:04
A.J. Woodhams
And he does not actually strike me, his personality, he does not strike me as like a loquacious person, as somebody who is like a chatterbox.
00:24:10
John
Mm-hmm.
00:24:12
A.J. Woodhams
But i you know I wonder if it's just like this, he's got, you know but thinking of him as as an outsider, he has this this opportunity to share his expertise and he's like being useful. And people are, you know he is wanted for something right now.
00:24:26
A.J. Woodhams
and so And a part of me actually wonders if he just couldn't help himself, and but to to say more than he needed.
00:24:30
John
Yeah, yeah yeah i've I've thought about this too. and Part of me thinks that he he regretted a lot of what he did. that seems to be the indication by people who knew him later in life.
00:24:41
John
um he He became a speech therapist and many of the people who either volunteered with him or worked with him ah before he died said that they always felt that he was atoning for past sins. So part of me thinks that maybe during these depositions, he felt like this was his opportunity to, I don't know, clear the air or atone for what he did in the past.
00:24:57
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:59
John
Also, part of me thinks that, I mean, this is a little bit ironic, but um you know Because what Sidney Gottlieb is doing in the CIA is very much unethical. I mean, this is the the the quote from the CIA inspector general is that it was unethical and illegal.
00:25:13
John
so But Sidney Gottlieb's personality, at least, is the kind of personality of someone I think who's a rule follower. If the CIA sets a rule or gives him a task, he wants to make sure that that gets done.
00:25:24
John
you know He's very much...
00:25:25
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:25:26
John
ah ah someone who wants to not not um upset the people who have given him this task. um And so I feel like that kind of plays out in the de depositions a bit.
00:25:38
John
He's there to talk about what happened in the past. And so, hey, this is this is what I'm told to do.
00:25:42
A.J. Woodhams
Sure.
00:25:43
John
So I'm going to do this to his attorney's chagrin because they obviously don't like him doing that.
00:25:48
A.J. Woodhams
sure
00:25:49
John
But there are a lot of differences between his personality in the depositions and someone like Robert Lashbrook, who's his right-hand man. another chemist who's involved in many of these subprojects.
00:25:59
John
Sidney Gottlieb is very open in the depositions talking. And whenever whenever I can corroborate what he's saying with documents that we have from the CIA or from the victims or from whoever, most of what Sidney Gottlieb is corroborated.
00:26:12
John
you know you You can check for from different sources and triangulate that, okay, what he's saying is true based on this.
00:26:13
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:26:17
John
Not always, but in many cases, you can actually make sure that what he's saying is true when you fact check what he's saying. the The same is not true of many of the other deponents, especially the perpetrators like Robert Lashbrook.
00:26:29
John
Lashbrook is very combative in his depositions, unlike Gottlieb, who's very, um very agreeable, at least. um Lashbrook is very combative. In fact, when the subpoena is delivered to Robert Lashbrook to give his depositions, he just throws it back in the face of the of the officer who delivers it to him.
00:26:46
John
ah So he doesn't want to say anything. In fact, this is one of the interesting parts of a deposition. Robert Lashbrook is asked several questions by Joseph Rao. I don't remember exactly what they are, but Rao asks him, you know, did you do this or did you see this or were you here?
00:27:00
John
And Lashbrook... basically refuses to answer. And his own attorney says, you need to say something. you need to answer this. So it's like, he he was so combative that his own attorney is saying you actually need to speak up more.
00:27:11
John
So yeah, there's ah the different personalities definitely come ah out.
00:27:11
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Complete opposites. Yeah. Well, um let's dive into MKUltra itself and the specifics of that. um First, you've noted this a few times, but I think it's worth repeating because I didn't i have heard of MKUltra, but I did not know this.
00:27:29
A.J. Woodhams
was um It's a huge project, and you have noted 149 sub-projects within it to different universities and hospitals, prisons, which is...
00:27:40
A.J. Woodhams
um
00:27:40
John
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:27:41
A.J. Woodhams
that that factors into things because prisoners are experimented on. um So let's, let's kind of, ah let's try and unpack MKUltra a little bit, even though it's like a huge thing, which is basically the the goal of your book.
00:27:56
A.J. Woodhams
um Let's start with LSD. um Talk about LSD. um What's its role in this period of time? And um I guess more broadly, what's its role with MKUltra, which is a big role.
00:28:09
John
Sidney Gottlieb, when he's put in charge of this project, well, I should start by saying he didn't really know how to conduct a mind control project. Alan Dulles puts him in charge of MKUltra, and he's unsure of kind of what to do.
00:28:21
John
And so largely what he does is go back in the OSS files, the precursor to the CIA, and starts looking through those files for inspiration on what he can do, how he can research mind control. He happens to land upon the files of a guy named Stanley Level, who my first book is about in in the OSS.
00:28:37
John
Stanley Level was doing many of the similar things during World War II in the OSS. He was doing truth drug trials, mainly with THC, the kind of main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. But he was injecting this into cigarettes and giving it to people and having them smoke it and seeing if they'll reveal their secrets.
00:28:53
John
He was creating, you know, weapons, gadgets, disguises. He was formulating assassination plots. And so it's by reading some of Lovell's work that Gottlieb gets a lot of the inspiration for what he's going to do throughout his career, including drug experiments.
00:29:07
A.J. Woodhams
you
00:29:07
John
And so Lovell had been working with THC acetate as the main drug that he was using to try to get people to ah tell the truth in an interrogation. But since then, um things had developed a little bit. And so LSD was the main drug. And this was especially interesting and interesting to people like Sidney Gottlieb because it had such a profound psychogenic effects. It produced profound hallucinations with such a minute dose.
00:29:32
John
It's, you know, this is tiny, tiny doses of LSD can have profound effects on someone's psychology.
00:29:35
A.J. Woodhams
Discovered on accident. i I believe discovered on accident because I think that the scientist who developed it accidentally got some on his finger and like rode his bicycle home ro his bicycle home and experienced, you're right, the world's first LSD trip, I believe, accidentally on his bike home.
00:29:45
John
Exactly. Yeah. Albert Hoffman. Yeah, exactly.
00:29:55
John
Yeah. Yeah. So he had been synthesizing compounds like LSD and I mean, he had synthesized this LSD, LSD 25 in I believe it was, or I think it was the first time he synthesized it or forty three i'm getting the dates confused um But he set it on the shelf for five more years because he didn't think anything of it. And then he resynthesized it and five years later, and some of it accidentally contacted his skin, and he starts having these hallucinogenic effects. He starts seeing colors, the room starts spinning, and he realizes that it was a tiny minute dose that contacted his skin. And so this must have a very profound effect on human psychology.
00:30:33
John
That's why the CIA becomes interested in it, because if such a minute dose can have such a profound effect, that might mean that it could be very useful in covert operations. What if we could slip a tiny amount into someone's drink before they give a speech at a political rally? That could make them appear insane. So if we want to do this to one of the people we don't want to get reelected, well, it can make them ah appear like they're crazy before they give this speech.
00:30:55
John
Then they're going to lose their political support because who's going to support this insane person who's spouting all this nonsense? So it immediately kind of kindled interest in covert operations among the people who knew about it.
00:31:06
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. And so one of the, what starts happening is, um of course, you you just mentioned Sidney Gottlieb, very fascinated with LSD and its effects. um What starts to happen is um employees of the CIA start um experimenting on themselves with LSD.
00:31:25
A.J. Woodhams
um At first, voluntarily, um which you write about. And you even write at one point, I think, uh, I don't think it's Sydney Gottlieb, but somebody runs into Alan Dulles on a plane and Alan Dulles asks if they have LSD in their drink or something like that, because it's become such an open secret.
00:31:42
John
Yeah. Yeah. I think that, I think that was Sidney Gottlieb.
00:31:43
A.J. Woodhams
Okay.
00:31:44
John
He's taking a flight and Dulles happens to be on the plane. He walks up the aisle, Sidney Gottlieb does to get a martini. And as he's walking back to his seat, ah Alan Dulles kind of nudges him and says, is that LSD in your martini there?
00:31:55
A.J. Woodhams
like Yeah. So it's become such a, yeah, go ahead.
00:31:56
John
Yeah. So it was, it was, It was known about the CIA's interest in LSD among among the people within the CIA, especially because someone like Sidney Gottlieb and his colleagues who were in MKUltra, they would dose like the office coffee pot with LSD or during a holiday party, they would put it in the punch bowl.
00:32:14
John
And there were warnings that had to go out among the CIA Office of Security, warning them not to do this you're going to get in trouble you know after it happened a couple of times.
00:32:21
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:32:22
John
And so within the CIA, it was well known that these the the members of whats what's called the TSS, the technical services staff, which is the kind of division within the CIA that Sidney Gothel is working for. It's well known that they're kind of playing these pranks.
00:32:37
John
It's not well known within the CIA, at least broadly among the people who work there, exactly what MKUltra is or what it's doing. The CIA was very highly compartmentalized.
00:32:48
John
So there aren't many people who know about MKUltra
CIA's Attempts at Amends and Lessons Learned
00:32:50
John
itself in the sense that, you know, many of the what many of the sub projects are, who's being funded, what even the sub projects are doing.
00:32:51
A.J. Woodhams
Thank you.
00:32:58
John
But the CIA's interest in LSD itself is at least known among people within the CIA.
00:33:03
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. And this is, um i don't I don't know if we want to say fun and games at this point, um but it it becomes not fun and games. um ah We had a, I believe it's a holiday party, ah which included a man named Frank Olson.
00:33:19
A.J. Woodhams
um Talk about Frank Olson and um talk about why that's an important figure in your book.
00:33:27
John
Yes, yes. So, well, you know, on the fun and games part, I will say to someone like Sidney Gottlieb, I think originally in his, in from his perspective, it was kind of fun and games. Oh, we're dosing each other with this thing. And, you know, we're seeing how we react. And he he would dose himself and he would take it, ah not unwittingly, you know, like he's doing.
00:33:44
John
To the victims of this, it definitely wasn't fun and games. But I do think that that is his perspective of what he was doing.
00:33:49
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, absolutely.
00:33:49
John
Oh, it's no harm done. We're just, you know, we're just... you know, messing around. um Of course, you know, from the victim's perspective, that's obviously not the case. But from his perspective, I think it it was a little more lighthearted in his view.
00:33:57
A.J. Woodhams
absolutely
00:34:01
John
Obviously, that changes with this figure of Frank Olson. It's and ah it it's a work retreat where this happens. There are several members of the of the CIA within within the TSS especially Several scientists who would occasionally get together with several scientists from Fort Diedrich, which is the biological warfare installation for the country up in Frederick, Maryland.
00:34:22
John
but Actually, a specific division within Fort Diedrich called the Special Operations Division. Several of those scientists and several of the CIA scientists would get together um regularly at this retreat called Deep Creek.
00:34:34
John
And they would exchange their research results so they wouldn't have to duplicate each other's experiments or anything like that. And so it was at one of these retreats that Gottlieb and Robert Lashbrook, this other chemist, decide that they're going to spike the liquor with some LSD and hand it out to everyone and kind of see how they react.
00:34:49
John
Again, I think in Gottlieb's perspective, it's kind of like one of these pranks that he's pulling around the office. Obviously, it's ah it's going to lead to some more dramatic consequences than anything before this ad.
00:35:00
John
frank olson is one of the scientists at the special operations division within fort dedrick camp jedrick at that time actually who takes this lsd and he really has a mental breakdown afterwards um he goes home after this retreat he talked to his wife and she's one of the depositions who i have she's one of the people who's deposed as well and she talks about her experience what he was like when he came home from this retreat He seems to have kind of had a psychotic break.
00:35:27
John
He keeps talking about how he ruined the experiment. I ruined the experiment and nobody likes me and the police are out to get me. And, you know, there's there's all kind of these psychological troubles that seem to have arisen ah because of this LSD experiment. He seems to have some kind of psychotic break.
00:35:42
John
And so several of his colleagues, like Gottlieb and Lashbrook and some others, they decide that he needs to get psychiatric help afterwards. And so they send him to New York to a man named Harold Abramson. and Abramson talks to Frank Olson.
00:35:57
John
And eventually, Abramson decides that they need to commit him to a mental asylum for a little bit. And so Abramson makes a call to this hospital trying to get Olson admitted, but they need an extra day to prepare a room. And so Frank Olson and ah one of his colleagues, they get a hotel for the night.
00:36:16
John
And during the night at 2.30 in the morning, fra Frank Olson jumps out the window and he dies. He hits the 7th Avenue sidewalk in New York and he dies. um So that is...
00:36:27
John
a really profound consequence of one of these lsd experiments that immediately suggested to everyone how how dangerous potentially this kind of thing could be but the scary thing in a way um is that it didn't prevent the cia from going forward with these lxd experiments if anything they increased if anything Things kind of ramped up with LSD experiments after the death of Frank Olson.
00:36:47
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:36:50
John
But that's kind of the ah a brief summary of the Olson story. Of course, there are a lot of avenues to go down with that.
00:36:53
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Sure.
00:36:55
John
There are a lot of conspiracy theories around Frank Olson as well, whether he was murdered or whether it's suicide or something. But in in general, that's is ah that's what happens. He goes to this retreat. He takes the LSD. He goes out the window.
00:37:05
John
He dies.
00:37:06
A.J. Woodhams
Now thinking, for well, first on um Frank Olson's story, i think this is probably the first example of things just going terribly wrong um as it relates to MKUltra.
00:37:15
John
Mm-hmm.
00:37:18
A.J. Woodhams
And like you just said, like there's you would think it would be like a watershed moment where people are like, oh, but maybe we shouldn't do this anymore. But actually the opposite ends up happening. um ah you know i I wonder why with LSD, thinking about mind control, what was it about um LSD that that made Sidney Gottlieb or these other people at the CIA think that you could control somebody's mind by giving them LSD?
00:37:45
John
um Well, that's the hope, at least. So they're they're looking for any kind of drug that might be able to, ah yeah, give you control of someone's mind, play them like a marionette, almost control them.
00:37:57
John
um It's not just LSD. So for example, in several of these sub projects, some of them involve, you mentioned prisons, some of them involved some researchers at various prisons. One is in Lexington, Kentucky, and other is Atlanta. Yeah.
00:38:10
John
ah Harris Isbell and Carl Pfeiffer. Sidney Gottlieb would send them all kinds of drugs all the time to get them to test them on these prisoners to determine what the effects are. LSD is the most well-known one um and the most used one within K-Ultra because the psychological effects are just so profound that they're interested in experimenting and seeing how far you can push it and what it can do.
00:38:31
John
But it's not just LSD that is being experimented on. There are dozens, if not hundreds of different drugs that are also being tested to determine whether it can either break someone down or give you control of their actions or something.
00:38:43
John
So LSD is just one of the drugs, although it's the one that's most experimented with.
00:38:47
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Well, um let's i mean let's move into, this is already kind of just now taking a very dark turn. Obviously somebody is um has died already from and the this experimentation.
00:39:02
A.J. Woodhams
um Let's move into how it gets even worse. And that is um Operation Midnight Climax, which i think is is might be fair to say the
00:39:09
John
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:39:13
A.J. Woodhams
at the I would think the worst part of MKUltra. ah Talk about, talk about this and talk about some of the experimentation that begins to happen.
00:39:26
John
Yes, so this is one of the one of the early MKUltra subprojects. Pretty soon after the Frank Olsen incident is when Gottlieb formulates this new subproject. He puts in charge of it a man named George White, and it's George White who actually gives it the name Operation Midnight Climax. That doesn't come from Gottlieb.
00:39:42
John
um But George White is a Bureau of Narcotics officer. He had worked in the OSS during World War II for Stanley Lovell as part of the OSS. Remember, I mentioned that Lovell was giving people THC acetate to try to determine whether it's a truth drug.
00:39:57
John
The way he would do that is he would have George White go places and Since George White with us was working at the narcotics office, he had many criminal contacts, and George White would dose his criminal contacts with THC for Stanley Lovell to determine whether it can get them to talk about illegal things that they've done.
00:40:05
A.J. Woodhams
Thank you.
00:40:14
John
And so as Sidney Gottlieb is going through the old OSS files, he sees this name, George White, and he determines... I want him to do that same thing for me, except instead THC, I want to use LSD. So Gottlieb hires George White to work on an MPA Ultra subproject, which White names Operation Midnight Climax.
00:40:30
John
And as part of this subproject, initially it's in New York. And so White would inject some LSD through the cork of a wine bottle and pass it to people he knows and sees how their reaction is.
00:40:42
John
But eventually it's determined that this is... This is very risky because White could be found out, especially in New York. And so he's transferred to San Francisco where things are a little bit looser.
00:40:53
John
And instead of dosing people himself with this, he hires prostitutes to dose their clients with LSD. Meanwhile, White is watching this happen through a one-way mirror. And we have the we have the inventory for this the the san francisco San Francisco safe house that White house creates.
00:41:11
John
And so we can see the different items that he's bought for this. And we can tell from the end inventory that as he's watching this unfold through this one-way mirror, he sits on a portable toilet that he bought. He's drinking liquor that he bought with CIA funds. He has recording equipment, audio and visual that are pointing out there and where he's recording all this happening.
00:41:27
John
So that that's kind of the the summary of Operation Midnight Climax and the seedy activities that George White was up to there. Yeah.
00:41:33
A.J. Woodhams
and And these are just kind of random these are random people who and the the prostitutes are with.
00:41:41
John
these These are random people. um However, sometimes they're targeted in a way. So the CIA was especially interested in interested in Chinese psychology.
00:41:52
John
um You know, if chinese ah China is this communist country and it's, you know, the idea is that these Chinese communists have been brainwashed into doing certain things. Why is it that they're susceptible to this brainwashing? You know, so the CIA wants to determine Chinese psychology, especially. So these prostitutes are...
00:42:07
John
and told you know to focus on Chinese clients. And so that's a lot of the people who are coming into these safe safe houses.
00:42:15
A.J. Woodhams
And so they they get um ah you know accidentally, not accidentally, intentionally, excuse me, they get intentionally dosed um by these prostitutes with with LSD.
00:42:27
A.J. Woodhams
And what is what what what is the CIA doing with this information?
00:42:32
John
Well, the idea is that the CIA, someone like Sidney Gottlieb, is trying to determine what the effects of LSD are in terms of can it get someone to talk? Is it a truth drug? So ah George White is recording this stuff. He's writing reports. He's sending those reports back to Sidney Gottlieb.
00:42:48
John
And, you know, Gottlieb is just trying to figure out, is this the truth to right that we had hoped for? It turns out not really. So, you know, a lot of these CIA MKUltra subprojects came to nothing. It was we wasted all this money. We abused all these people. We created all these victims. We caused all of this harm.
00:43:04
John
And what did we get out of it? Not much, not not much at all.
00:43:07
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:43:07
John
In fact, there are a few things that the CIA learned of what you couldn't do. So this is how Sidney Gottlieb tries to turn it into a positive in the depositions when asked, what did you find? Like, what was all this for?
00:43:19
John
He says, we found, we discovered a lot of things that you couldn't do. So for example, we knew that you couldn't control someone like a marionette with these drugs. So it's like, well, ah yeah you know, did you really find anything of, you know, you determine what not to do, but not what you could do in order to control someone. So not very helpful.
00:43:35
John
um But that was the goal, at least. There are a few other sub projects that were more successful than the drug experiments especially, but none of them were especially implemented in the field.
00:43:46
John
So, you know, I can go into some detail on a couple of those.
00:43:48
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, i was about to I was about to ask, actually. Please do.
00:43:51
John
Yeah, one one of them one of the more you know just insane subprojects that I talk about in this book that I found in several of these documents that have been released is the fact that one of the sub subprojects was trying to create remote control animals, basically, by implanting electrodes into their brains and then using those electrodes to stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain.
00:44:13
John
So the idea was that, say you do this to a dog, you implant electrode and an electrode into the brain of a dog, then you would try to get the dog to walk ah a predetermined way on a predetermined path.
00:44:25
John
And so if the dog started moving in the desired direction, you would you would stimulate the electrode. And so you would stimulate that pleasure center of the brain and that through positive reinforcement, they would continue that action.
00:44:36
John
Whenever they moved in the opposite direction that you wanted them to, you would stop stimulating that pleasure center of their brain and they would stop and start searching you know for the direction to walk in with that would stimulate it it again.
00:44:47
John
And so by doing that, you actually could get a dog or different animals, or rats to walk in pre-desired directions. You could steer them like a remote control, um This was a successful subproject. Several of these experiments happened and it actually worked.
00:44:59
John
um And several documents that I found, it gets even crazier than that. It's not just steering animals you know via remote control. some Some of the documents indicate what is the purpose of this.
00:45:10
John
um One of these documents says the idea is that eventually we want to attach what what it says as payloads of interest, which is biological and chemical weapons referred to in another document. We want to attach payloads of interest to these guidance systems, it calls them,
00:45:24
John
um in order to to conduct executive action type operations, which is a euphemism for assassinations. So the idea was to put some kind of biological or chemical agent onto one of these animals and then control them to walk in a certain way that it would get close to a person and possibly infect them with some kind of disease. At least that was the idea. it was...
00:45:42
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:45:42
John
you know it was It was very wild. So the subproject itself was successful in the sense that you could get these animals to walk in pre-desired directions, but it wasn't successful in the sense that I have no reason to think that this ever actually went into the field and was actually as part of an operation.
00:45:44
A.J. Woodhams
well
00:45:57
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, well um well, first, for what you were just talking about, um something that stuck out with me from your first book was the ah the bat bombs, where napalm was attached to bats.
00:46:06
John
Mm-hmm. Yep.
00:46:07
A.J. Woodhams
And it's solving that problem of the bats just going in some direction that you can't control.
00:46:12
John
You're right. You're right. Mm-hmm.
00:46:13
A.J. Woodhams
and You brought up something that I thought was very fascinating. is the and the involvement of... i think you just yeah i think you just mentioned the Eisenhower administration, but the involvement of the executive and um also just like kind of the code names for you know assassinations, where it's either elimination or it's um you know some some other kind of code name ah I'm actually thinking of it a part in the book where the president, I think the president of the Congo um is Eisenhower basically says, let's kill this guy.
00:46:48
John
Yeah.
00:46:52
A.J. Woodhams
um
00:46:52
John
yeah
00:46:53
A.J. Woodhams
And I believe Sidney Gottlieb is actually um consulted to figure out how that is going to take place. um This actually is a little bit beyond MKUltra, but talk about and Sidney Gottlieb's involvement or just um maybe the CIA's involvement in general with these types of esoteric weapons in trying to assassinate political opponents.
00:47:16
John
Yeah, so that person in particular, Patrice Lumumba, was the prime minister of the Congo.
00:47:20
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:47:21
John
And yeah, Eisenhower gives this order, basically, to assassinate him. And so the order goes from Eisenhower to kind of Alan Dulles to Richard Bissell, who's the head of the division that Gottlieb is in, and down to Sidney Gottlieb.
00:47:32
John
And it's basically, try to find a way to kill this guy that won't implicate us. Because... Assassinating someone, killing someone isn't that difficult. You can just drop a bomb on their head, but everyone's going to know that you did it. So the hard part of assassination is to have plausible deniability. How can we make it seem as if this person died maybe of natural causes that won't implicate us?
00:47:53
John
So that's the idea. With this one attempt in particular, Sidney Gottlieb knows that anthrax is a disease that is endemic in the Congo. And so if if Patrice Lumumba is dosed with anthrax, then it might possibly be seen as having been natural.
00:48:10
John
And so Gottlieb procures some anthrax from Fort Diedrich and he takes it to the Congo himself and he gives it to the station chief there. um And the idea is that we're going to slip this maybe in his toothpaste and then maybe we'll have someone ah try to figure out a way that we can get this toothpaste into Patrice Lumumba's bathroom. He'll brush his teeth, he'll get infected with anthrax and he'll die.
00:48:31
John
That never ends up happening. There are several other people within the CIA who are also plotting the assassination of Lumumba. you know ah One is trying to procure rifles that they can use to just shoot him or you know so something else.
00:48:44
John
So there are a lot of potential you know CIA assassinations that Sidney Gottlieb is involved in. That's probably the one of the most well-known ones is Patrice Lumumba. And I should mention that when Sidney Gottlieb was confronted with this plot in particular during these depositions that I found, this is probably the most dramatic part of the entire story. This is...
00:49:03
John
ah you know I can't believe that I found some of the dialogue that happens when he's confronted about trying to kill Patrice Lumumba. you know Because, well, I'll just say, he is confronted with a question and he says something that he was supposed to keep secret.
00:49:18
John
so And as soon as he says it, his lawyer stops the deposition and says, objection, objection, stop, stop, stop. And he has to take him outside and they talk and come back. And it is so dramatic, like that what's going on in these de depositions.
00:49:29
John
And so if anyone's just interested in drama itself, you know, the story itself is dramatic, but just the interpersonal relationships between these people and how these de depositions are infused with so much of this drama.
00:49:40
John
This is a new part of this MKUltra story that is especially, um i don't know if exciting is the right word, but very dramatic and I think it makes for good reading, but it involves this assassination attempt.
00:49:42
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:49:50
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:49:51
John
Sidney Gottlieb is involved in several other attempts, most notably on Fidel Castro. um If anyone is familiar with like CIA assassination attempts, you know, the first thing that people always say is all the different wacky ways that the CIA tried to kill Fidel Castro, whether it was lacing his diving suit with some form of a fungus that would kill him eventually, or Fidel Castro was a scuba diver or a diver.
00:50:16
John
And so one idea was, what if we put some explosives into a shell and put that shell, make it a really beautiful shell, put it on the ocean floor, and then when he dives in this location that he always dives in, Fidel Castro is going to see the shell, he's going to want to pick it up, and as soon as he picks it up, that's going to trigger the de detonation mechanism. It'll explode and kill him under the water.
00:50:34
John
So there's all kinds of potential attempts on ah Fidel Castro. None of them come to fruition, but Sidney Gottlieb is involved in several of those, in addition to on Patrice Lumumba and some other people as well.
00:50:44
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Well, before i we we kind of move on um to the ah the aftermath um of all this in the 1970s when all this gets exposed, um for MKUltra, talk a little bit about what i i in what kicks all this off. The reason why he's giving the depositions, as you noted, is um He's being sued by prisoners who feel like they were experimented on without their permission.
00:51:11
A.J. Woodhams
I talk about some of these, what I would consider more, um not more egregious, but these really just like kind of awful instances of either people who got like a mental health condition and they go to see a doctor who just so happens to be funded by the CIA project and they start getting electroshock.
00:51:26
John
Mm-hmm.
00:51:30
A.J. Woodhams
or these prisoners who didn't give consent to be experimented on and how that impacted their lives. um Talk about like, you can, you can talk about those two specifically, but I'm, I'm curious if you can just give us like your worst of the worst, like what, like some of the worst excesses of the MK project, MK ultra project work.
00:51:55
John
Yeah, I think one of the scarier ones that you allude to there is Ewan Cameron in Montreal. Because again, Ewan Cameron, who I mentioned earlier, he is a towering figure in the world of psychology psychiatry.
00:52:08
John
And so people would commit themselves to his care, thinking that they were getting tried and getting tried and true treatments, um because he was such a well-known and well-respected figure. um It turns out he had kind of this Not ah necessarily a messiah complex, but he thought he was destined for the Nobel Prize. He really had a big head.
00:52:28
John
And he just needed, I mean, his one problem is that he didn't have anything to earn the Nobel Prize. He needed to find a cure for mental illness. That was his like life's goal, is to find a way to cure mental illness.
00:52:40
John
And the way that he thought this could happen is if you break someone down to their blank slate, you know, make them forget all their past behaviors, and then you could give them new behaviors that they could ah build up in its place. So he was a behaviorist. He thought that all behavior came from the environment, from nurture, not nature.
00:52:59
John
And so he figured that the way to cure mental illness, mental illness must be the result of a bad environment reinforcing bad behaviors. And so if you want to cure it, you have to get rid of those bad behaviors and reinforce better behaviors in their place. so And so the the concept now was how do you reduce someone back to a blank slate in order to build up better behaviors in place of the bad ones that you've just gotten rid of?
00:53:21
John
His idea was that you have to induce stress. If you induce enough stress in them, maybe they'll forget their bad behaviors and then you can reinforce them with new and better behaviors in their place. So how do we induce some stress in someone to make them them forget these bad behaviors?
00:53:36
John
One idea that he has is um psychic driving. This is what he thought was kind of his greatest breakthrough. Psychic driving was a process whereby... He would play auditory messages over and over, repeated messages thousands and thousands of times a day for days and days on end that he would make his patients listen to. These were negative messages.
00:53:56
John
And many times he would have the families of the patients come in and record negative messages that would then play in these patients' ears. Again, the idea being that we're going to break them down mentally so that we can build them back up later.
00:54:09
John
And so Ewan Cameron was doing this before MKUltra or the CIA is interested in his work. He's doing this on his own because he thinks it's potentially the cure for mental illness. So he's already experimenting with his patients.
00:54:21
John
And then Sidney Gottlieb reads a an article that Ewan Cameron wrote and submitted to a psychiatric journal. And Sidney Gottlieb becomes interested in psychic driving especially because it seems like you know potentially a way to induce amnesia.
00:54:35
John
If he's making these patients forget their past behaviors, can we make someone forget something? So that's obviously something the CIA might be interested in. From that point, Sidney Gottlieb starts funding Ewan Cameron to do the experiments he was largely already doing.
00:54:49
John
But in addition to psychic driving, those include chemical comas. It includes sensory deprivation, so putting goggles on someone and muffs over their ears and cardboard tubes over their hands and making them lay in bed for weeks on end.
00:55:02
John
um It also involved electric shocks, so shocking these people over and over. in order to try to make them forget you know their past bad behaviors. These are the kinds of things that Ewan Cameron is doing. I think his experiments are especially egregious though, again, because these patients have committed themselves to his care, thinking that these are tried and true treatments that he's going to be using to make them better.
00:55:22
John
In fact, in many cases, it does the exact opposite. It makes them worse off than they've ever been before. There are a few stories in the book about this. One is of a twin, an identical twin, one of the identical twins gets committed to the Allen Memorial Institute where Ewan Cameron is at and receives these treatments, supposed treatments.
00:55:40
John
When she's left out, and when when she's let out, she goes and lives with her identical twin sister for a while, but she's basically um incontinent. She can't control how she goes to the bathroom. She doesn't remember who she is hardly. She ends up scavenging for food outside of dumpsters.
00:55:56
John
And it's such a stark portrait between these two identical twins, one who's got this supposed treatment and the other who didn't. The one who got it is just a complete mess and ah abused mentally.
00:56:06
John
And the other one has a perfectly normal family life with a husband and children and everything. So it's it's such a sad situation. But that's the an example of a kind of subproject that Sidney Gottlieb is funding. And I should mention...
00:56:19
John
with you and Cameron real quick. You know, I said he was doing these experiments before the CIA started funding him. And that's how it is for a lot of these sub projects. A lot of people hear MKUltra and they think that, oh, the CIA instigated all these terrible things.
00:56:32
John
The CIA didn't instigate necessarily all these things, but it aided and abetted the people who did instigate them.
00:56:37
A.J. Woodhams
Sure. Sure.
00:56:38
John
So a lot of these researchers had been conducting these drug experiments or psychiatric experiments before the CIA was funding them. And the CIA starts funding them so that they continue to do the thing that they were already doing.
00:56:49
John
So that's a maybe an important distinction for people to keep in mind. the The exception to that being Operation Midnight Climax with George White, that was instigated by the CIA to hire these prostitutes and do all that. But a lot of these subprojects were independent researchers already doing this kind of thing, who the CIA then ate in the bets in abusing these people.
00:57:07
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. And it's not like there's, you know these aren't like researchers and in some in the basement of the CIA, like um you know getting yeah know checks from the government.
00:57:13
John
Yeah, yeah, the the yeah. they Like you said, there are prisons, hospitals, universities, all everywhere.
00:57:18
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. um Well, let's talk about and the end of MKUltra. ah So I think 1950 to like would you say is the we're looking
00:57:29
John
Yeah, 53 to 63 is kind of the main timeframe.
00:57:31
A.J. Woodhams
fifty three to sixty three
00:57:33
John
Well, in 1963, there's an inspector general report. The CIA inspector general does an investigation of MKUltra and issues a report condemning it as illegal and unethical. After that, MKUltra kind of dwindled down.
00:57:46
John
It continued on for several more years in the form of a sub of a project named MKSearch. But for the most part, most of the subprojects, the funding was cut off except for a few of them that continued into the late 60s.
00:57:59
A.J. Woodhams
And and when when were people like, this was, when did people decide collectively, this was bad that we did this, we should not have done this? um Who who ah who who was the whistleblower?
00:58:14
A.J. Woodhams
What was the reaction? What happened? Tell that story.
00:58:19
John
Yeah, well, I think among certainly Sidney Gottlieb, but also several other people who were involved in this, by the end of MKUltra, knowing that it didn't produce many results, they were ashamed of what they had done, especially Gottlieb.
00:58:33
John
One... David Morgan, Ph.D.: You kind of proof of this is that in 1973 whenever he's retiring from the CIA he destroys many of the MK ultra files that he has so that no one would be able to see them because he was embarrassed in fact in these depositions he specifically says I was embarrassed by what we did.
00:58:48
John
David Morgan, So he destroys those in 1974.
00:58:53
John
a someone within the CIA leaks a group of documents to an investigative journalist named Seymour Hirsch, who then publishes on the front page of The New York Times several past abuses of the intelligence community, not MKUltra yet.
00:59:08
John
But, ah you know, so on the front page of The New York Times, it's revealed that the CIA had infiltrated some antiwar protesters and was spying on them. um So that leads to several congressional investigations of the intelligence community.
00:59:23
John
And within those investigations, it's revealed that, oh, not only was the CIA doing that, they were also involved in these drug experiments in the past. That's eventually how MKUltra becomes public. um After several of these, there's one executive investigation, the Rockefeller Commission, and then the Church Committee and the and the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House.
00:59:41
John
And then there are several independent hearings from different congressional subcommittees that specifically focus on MKUltra. So in 1975 really is when it's revealed to the public.
00:59:50
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, i I believe a lot of this gets kicked off with a disgruntled employee from the, what probably was a disgruntled employee from the CIA. During the and the Nixon administration, they decided they needed to reorganize.
00:59:59
John
Mm-hmm.
01:00:03
A.J. Woodhams
I think they fired like over a thousand people.
01:00:05
John
Yep. Yep.
01:00:06
A.J. Woodhams
And somebody, I think the the leadership at the CIA at the time decided they were going to compile this one document that had all the terrible things that the CIA had done ah into one file. And of course, somebody gets fired, they leak that file.
01:00:20
John
Mm-hmm. Yep.
01:00:21
A.J. Woodhams
And now we know about all these you know terrible and things that happened.
01:00:21
John
yep
01:00:26
A.J. Woodhams
ah yeah i I'm curious if, you know it's living now in the world that we live in we tend to associate the CIA with these like kind of weird projects or maybe their assassination or coup attempts or like the darker side of things.
01:00:45
A.J. Woodhams
um but i don't you know Part of me wonders if that was actually the case in like the 50s or the 60s, if maybe they were seen as this very kind of patriotic, um doing good things organization.
01:00:58
A.J. Woodhams
In your opinion, you know after all of these revelations come out, do you think this is a moment culturally where Americans decide ah something's not right here?
01:01:10
John
Yeah, the 70s especially. And this is one of the catalysts for that is the revelations about the intelligence community that comes out from these investigations. But that's not the only thing. You have um the Watergate scandal that's happening at the same time. You have this unpopular Vietnam War. So there are several...
01:01:27
John
um events that happen within government, those three especially, that really make people turn a skeptical eye to government itself and think, you're supposed to be the protector of our libertyties liberties, but given that these things are now leaking and we're understanding what's been going on in the past, you seem to be the abuser of our liberties.
01:01:44
John
And so there's there's there is, I think, a collective shift in the way that people think about the CIA, especially in the 1970s when this is released.
01:01:44
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
01:01:52
John
But about government in general, that makes people a lot more skeptical. The fact that, well, now we have evidence that you have abused us in the past. I thought that was the opposite of what you're supposed to do. Aren't you supposed to protect our liberties?
01:02:02
John
And so the 1970s, I think, are a really important time, ah integral time for that shift in mindset among the public.
01:02:10
A.J. Woodhams
Now, has there ever been an apology or any kind of reckoning um from the CIA for some of these projects?
01:02:17
John
Kind of. So, you know, Frank Olson was the man who was ah killed after that ah LSD. He was dosed with LSD at Deep Creek in the 1970s. Once it became public that the CIA had been doing this kind of thing, it was quickly revealed that they were involved in his death, that he had received this LSD and gone out the window.
01:02:37
John
And so in order to stave off any potential lawsuits from the family, the Gerald Ford administration invited ah Frank Olson's family, his wife and his children, to come to the White House where he personally met with them.
01:02:50
John
And the government basically gave them $750,000 to not sue the government. And the CIA handed over documents that it had from the Frank Olson incident.
01:03:00
John
um And so they they took the money and agreed not to sue the government. So they got that. And then there were several lawsuits against the CIA and the government by prisoners who were involved in these prison experiments and Ewan Cameron's patients who were involved in all kinds of his experiments.
01:03:18
John
And so those lawsuits, the prison lawsuit was dismissed, actually. It didn't settle because of the statute of limitations. But the ah the victims of Ewan Cameron, that lawsuit went forward enough to where the CIA decided to settle out of court for $750,000.
01:03:33
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. And I think something actually that's interesting in doing some preparation for this interview, um i i just was Googling some of the terms from your book. You can find on the CIA's website, they publish information about ah these projects. they've got
01:03:50
John
Mm-hmm.
01:03:51
A.J. Woodhams
They publish information about MKUltra, about Operation Midnight Climax. You can find out a lot of information about these projects from the CIA's website itself, ah which which I think is very interesting.
01:04:05
A.J. Woodhams
and But obviously, you know, go ahead.
01:04:05
John
Yeah, and you know yeah yeah I was going to say, there are a lot of um streams of sources that are useful. you know So for example, um there there are documents from the CIA, which are of course useful because it's better to have some documents than no documents.
01:04:20
John
However, it's not like you want to strictly just rely on the documents that you get the CIA for understanding what happened with it with this.
01:04:25
A.J. Woodhams
Right. Yeah.
01:04:26
John
because For one reason, because Sydney Gottlieb destroyed many of the documents. So it's like, well, I know the CIA doesn't have all the documents because many of them were destroyed. and But that's an important point because despite the fact that Sidney Gottlieb destroyed a lot of these documents, we still can know about MKUltra. We can know a lot about what it was.
01:04:45
John
um So for example, we have the declassified documents, that one that the ones that weren't incinerated, but also we have... government reports. We have these congressional investigations. We have memoirs of the people people who are involved in this.
01:04:57
John
We have institutional records from the hospitals and prisons that were subcontracted to as part of these subprojects. We have these thousands of pages of depositions that I found. So through all these sources, we can know a lot about MKUltra, despite the fact that many of these documents were destroyed.
01:05:13
John
And the fact that these documents were destroyed leads a lot of people to conjecture form speculations about MKUltra. Well, we can't know exactly what it was because we'll never have those documents. Therefore, maybe it was this crazy thing.
01:05:26
John
But I actually think we can know a lot about MKUltra. We can know enough about it to know what it wasn't. you know So we know what it was doing in general. It was using these drugs and different psychiatric techniques and all kinds of stuff.
01:05:38
John
We know, in fact, what 146 of the 149 sub projects were, you know, we have the the explanations of basically all of them. um So we can know that it wasn't some of the more crazy things that people think or claim that it was.
01:05:53
John
um So I think that is an important point to make, because a lot of times there are conspiracy theories that come out of MK Ultra. But if you actually understand the documentation that we have, we know a lot about MKUltra. We can't know everything. That is absolutely true. We can't know everything, but we we can have a good enough and broad enough picture that we can know enough to know what it wasn't.
01:06:11
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Well, um kind of lastly here, and thanks for your your excellent answers to my questions. And I could keep going for a long time, but ah we won't do that.
01:06:22
A.J. Woodhams
and What do you think today? What's the, um why why is this story important today? What what lessons do we have to learn? you know What do you think from your research is important for people to know about this book?
01:06:36
John
Yeah, a couple things. I try to draw out some some lessons really in the last few chapters. One of the chapters is about um oversight. So why is it that MKUltra was allowed to continue within the CIA even after Frank Olson dies, even after it's agreed by the CIA inspector general that it's illegal and unethical?
01:06:56
John
How does it still continue despite all that? There are a few reasons. And one is the lack of internal oversight. So the CIA inspector general might write this report, but nobody listens to him. He's basically impotent. He can't do anything. And if he tries to, he's going to get fired, at least at that time.
01:07:10
John
um So that's not a good internal check. Instead, what's necessary is external checks by like Congress. You need congressional committees or someone who's required to so look into these things and to do something about it if they do...
01:07:23
John
find anything illegal or unethical. um You know, I talk in one of the chapters of the book about different external checks that are necessary in order to kind of keep the intelligence community in check. um So that's that's one of the lessons of the book is what kind of external checks can can help with that?
01:07:38
John
And just the fact that these external checks are absolutely necessary and needed. And ah really another lesson is understanding the origin of many conspiracy theories that stem from MKUltra and why many of them are just completely not true.
01:07:54
John
but So the thing that I try to do in this last chapter is really to dispel a lot of the conspiracy theories that stem from this. And again, one of the reasons why they they proliferate so much is because Sidney Gottlieb destroyed many of the documents that allows anyone to paint MKUltra as they' anything they want to. It can be their wildest imagination because, hey, you don't have the documents to check what I'm actually saying.
01:08:16
John
um But I try to explain, especially in that last chapter, how we can actually know that a so lot of what these conspiracy theorists say is absolutely not true. you know
01:08:25
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
01:08:25
John
um So, for example, there's this ah project that's supposedly an MKUltra subproject that we don't have any reference to it before 1993. um The first reference that we have to it comes in a journal that's known for peddling conspiracy theories.
01:08:41
John
One of the editors of the journal claims to be a nine foot tall alien, and the other editor of the journal claims to receive messages from a god named Aten that sits on a council of gods that governs the universe and is subservient to an all creator god that created the multiverse.
01:08:57
John
So, I mean, maybe that doesn't discredit this guy in particular, but to me, it seems like I'm not going place much much credit. and And this is our source. This is like the first reference to this that I can find comes from this journal. I've never seen anything before that.
01:09:10
John
So to me, it seems a little suspect. There's no corroborating documents for any of this stuff. In fact, a lot of the people who claim to to be victims of this supposed subproject, um are part of kind of the recovered memory of movement that was big in the 1980s with the satanic panic saying that if we hypnotize these people, we can recover memories that they supposedly lost, which has been you know debunked, the fact that you can recover these memories. In many cases, what happens is that you induce false memories in people, which is, I think, a lot of what's happening here.
01:09:38
John
So um I try to, you know in the last chapter, have some lesson about what we can and can't know about MKUltra and the fact that it's not a lot of the conspiracy theories that people think it is.
01:09:47
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Well, um or maybe it's a kind a conspiracy where you have written about it to cover that up, John. Did you ever think of that? Yeah.
01:09:55
John
Yeah, could well, here the thing about MKUltra, one of the reasons why it's such a powerful tool for the conspiracy theorists is because it is a true conspiracy.
01:10:04
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
01:10:04
John
Sidney Gottlieb conspired to do these unethical things to people, and it was true. It actually happened. So it's like if you ever want proof that conspiracy theories are true, this is it, because that is an absolutely true conspiracy.
01:10:15
John
But that doesn't mean that everything that people say about MKUltra itself is also true, even despite the fact that it is a true conspiracy.
01:10:23
A.J. Woodhams
Well, ah John, we will leave it at that. um But thank you so much for for coming on the show and talking about the book. what are you ah What are you working on right now?
01:10:34
John
I think my next project is going to be something different from my last two. i've been you know I've been writing about the intelligence community for a long time now. I did my dissertation on it, then my first book, then this book. I'm ready for a change of pace.
01:10:45
John
my you know my My main interest, really, i mean, yeah I'm a historian of science. And so I'd like to get back to the history of science and do something more related to that. So I think my next project is going to be more history of science related.
01:10:57
A.J. Woodhams
Okay. Well, when you if you settle on a project that is in some shape related to a war, I hope you will come back on the War Books podcast and talk about it.
01:11:07
John
Thank you. Yeah. And thanks for having me.
01:11:08
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, absolutely.
01:11:08
John
i appreciate it.
01:11:10
A.J. Woodhams
um Well, ah John Lyle, Project Mind Control, Sydney Gottlieb, The CIA and the Tragedy of MKUltra. um Go out and buy a copy, check it out from your library, um read this really fascinating book.
01:11:24
A.J. Woodhams
And John, thanks so much for your time today.
01:11:27
John
Thank you.
01:11:28
A.J. Woodhams
um right, take care.