Sidney Gottlieb
Sidney Gottlieb | |
---|---|
Born | Project MK-Ultra | August 3, 1918
Spouse |
Margaret Moore (m. 1942) |
Children | 4 |
Sidney Gottlieb (August 3, 1918 – March 7, 1999) was an American
Early years and education
Gottlieb was born to
Gottlieb graduated from
Gottlieb met his wife Margaret Moore, daughter of a Presbyterian missionary,[3] while attending CIT, and they swiftly married. Denied the chance of military service, he sought out another way to serve, and began looking for government work in Washington. By 1948, his wife and two daughters were living in a remote cabin near Vienna, Virginia, that had no electricity or running water. He was living there when he began working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). His lifestyle was in stark contrast to that of the Ivy League men the CIA normally recruited.
Government career
Gottlieb's first government position was at the Department of Agriculture, where he researched the chemical structure of organic soils. He later transferred to the Food and Drug Administration, where he developed tests to measure the presence of drugs in the human body. Gottlieb grew bored with this work and sought a more challenging position. In 1948, he found a job at the National Research Council, where he described being "exposed to some interesting work concerning ergot alkaloids as vasoconstrictors and hallucinogens." He soon relocated to the University of Maryland as a research associate dedicated to studying metabolisms of fungi.[4]
On July 13, 1951, Gottlieb had his first day of work at the CIA. Then-Deputy Director for Plans Allen Dulles hired him on Ira Baldwin's recommendation. Baldwin had founded and run the biowarfare program at Fort Detrick years earlier, and had kept Gottlieb in his orbit throughout the years. Gottlieb, who had advanced knowledge of poisons, was making his entrance in the early years of the Cold War. In the years after World War II, American paranoia about the infiltration of Communist ideology whipped the country into a nationalistic fervor to protect American cultural and political dominance from a supposed impending Soviet takeover. This also contributed to the CIA rapidly expanding its experimental methods and tactics over the next two decades, in an effort to break down and rebuild the human mind to work in its favor, falsely believing that the USSR and The People's Republic of China had already mastered brainwashing and were using it against their own citizens and prisoners.[5] This belief drove the CIA's early forays into mind control operations and led to justifications of countless horrific acts, often with no oversight or accountability.
Dulles and Gottlieb both believed there was a way to influence and control the human mind that could lead to global mastery. They also wanted a "
Gottlieb's first 18 months at the agency led to some frustrating discoveries. The drugs he was experimenting with were not the "truth serums" he wanted them to be, and often hindered interrogations rather than aiding them. He knew Dulles, now the Director of Central Intelligence under President Eisenhower, would approve anything he wanted to do, and this increased his ambitions. He hatched a new idea that consumed Artichoke and gave him authority over all CIA research into mind control, including the ability to test drugs on witting and unwitting Americans, which was not being done under Artichoke. Gottlieb and Richard Helms, then-Chief of Operations for Directorate of Plans, wrote a memorandum to send to Dulles.[7]
Dulles formally approved
Gottlieb administered LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs to unwitting subjects and financed psychiatric research and development of "techniques that would crush the human psyche to the point that it would admit anything".[citation needed] He was named as the person who gave Army bacteriologist Frank Olson LSD at an MK-ULTRA retreat, leading to Olson's mental spiral and death a week later.
Gottlieb was the liaison to the military subcontractor
By 1955 Project MK-ULTRA had outgrown its government funding. At this point Subproject 27
In addition to working with subcontractors, the CIA worked with the
In March 1960, under
Retirement and death
Gottlieb retired from the CIA in 1973, saying he did not believe his work had been effective. Visited in retirement by the son of his late colleague Frank Olson, he was residing in an "ecologically correct" home in Culpeper, Virginia, where he raised goats, ate yogurt, and advocated peace and environmentalism.[14] He and his wife, Margaret, spent two years traveling Australia, Africa, and India before settling down for several months to run a leper hospital in India. He had two sons and two daughters.[2]
Gottlieb and his wife moved back to Santa Cruz, California, to be more involved in their young grandchildren's lives. While there, Gottlieb got a master's degree in speech pathology. After five years in California, the couple moved back to Virginia for their retirement years. Both volunteered, with Gottlieb using his new degree to help in middle schools, high schools, and occasionally hospice care facilities as a speech pathologist. The couple also enjoyed farming their own food in their free time.[15]
On March 7, 1999, Gottlieb died at his home in Washington, Virginia.[16] He was reported to have a history of heart problems,[16] but his wife declined to give the cause of death.[17]
See also
References
- ^ Weinberger, Sharon (10 September 2019). "When the C.I.A. Was Into Mind Control". New York Times. Retrieved 15 December 2019.
- ^ a b Cornwell, Rupert (March 16, 1999). "Obituary: Sidney Gottlieb". The Independent. Archived from the original on May 13, 2011.
- OCLC 1330888409.
- ^ Kinzer, Stephen (2019). Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. USA: Henry Holt and Company. p. 8.
- ^ Kinzer, Stephen (2019). Poisoner in Chief. Henry Holt. pp. 31, 53–54.
- ^ Kinzer, Stephen (2019). Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. New York. p. 65.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Kinzer, Stephen (2019). Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. New York: Henry Holt & Company. p. 71.
- ISBN 978-0880483636.
- ^ Subproject 27 (archived url).
- ISBN 978-1429986809. Retrieved July 28, 2016.
- ^ Coll, Steve. "Remote Control: Our Drone Delusion", The New Yorker, May 6, 2013. Retrieved on May 6, 2013.
- Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Doubleday, pg 163.
- ^ History-Matters.com. Senate Church Committee on Lumumba (PDF)
- ^ Ignatieff, Michael (April 1, 2001). "What did the C.I.A. do to Eric Olson's father?". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
- ^ Moore, M. (2023). Margaret Moore Gottlieb auto-biographical essays. Pearl Digital Collections. https://digital.history.pcusa.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A287129?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=98a815ee66a7e4801535&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=306&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=13#page/1/mode/1up
- ^ a b Barnes, Bart (March 11, 1999). "CIA Official Sidney Gottlieb, 80, Dies". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 15, 2015.
- ^ Weiner, Tim (March 10, 1999). "Sidney Gottlieb, 80, Dies; Took LSD to C.I.A." The New York Times. Retrieved August 15, 2015.
Further reading
External videos | |
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Presentation by Stephen Kinzer on Poisoner in Chief, October 3, 2019, C-SPAN |
- Holley, Joe (2005, June 16). "John K. Vance; Uncovered LSD Project at CIA". Washington Post, Page B08.
- Jacobs, John (1977, September 5). "The Diaries Of a CIA Operative". Washington Post, A1.
- Kettle, Martin (2000, August 10). "President 'ordered murder' of Congo leader". The Guardian.
- Kinzer, Stephen (2019). Poisoner in Chief; Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. New York: Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 9781250140432. Retrieved 15 December 2019.
- Marks, John (1991). The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate". W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.