Mexico
MH-CHAOS
Miami News
Midnight Climax, Operation
Mill Valley safe house
Mindszenty, Jozsef
Mission: Impossible (TV show)
MK-NAOMI
MK-SEARCH
MK-ULTRA. See also Gottlieb, Sidney; and specific drugs, projects, researchers, and victims
Abramson and
Church Committee and
CIA “family jewels” and
CIA memo criticizing
congressional oversight and
counterculture and
death of Gottlieb and
death of Olson and
Dulles and
Earman report on
elephant’s death and
Eli Lilly and
FBI report on
fear of Communists and
files destroyed
FOIA and
Gorman Annex and
Gottlieb’s doubts and
handwriting analysis and
Helms and
Helms-Gottlieb memo on
hospitals and
Human Ecology Society and
hypnosis and
informed consent and
Kirkpatrick and
lawsuits and
magic and
Manchurian candidate and
mental patients and
mind control and
MK-SEARCH and
morality and
Mossad and
NYPD protects
Olson family and
poisons and
popular culture and
prisoners and
prostitutes and
public anger and
reduction of
Rockefeller Commission and
secrecy and
Senate hearings on
shut down
subprojects
torture and
Victims Task Force and
White diaries on
MK-ULTRA band and song
MK-ULTRA (marijuana strain)
Mockingbird, Operation
Montessori, Maria
Moore, James
Morgenthau, Robert
Morocco
Morris, Errol
Mossad
Mossadegh, Mohammad
Mount Sinai Hospital
Mulholland, John
Munich
Murrow, Edward R.
mushrooms
My Lai massacre
Nasser, Gamal Abdel
National Academies of Sciences
National Institute of Mental Health
National Institutes of Health
National Research Council
National Security Act (1947)
National Security Council
Nazi Germany
Nelson, Tim Blake
Nembutal
neo-Nazis
nerve gas
Nevada nuclear tests
New Leader
New Republic
Newsweek
New York Bedford Street safe house
New York District Attorney
New York Police Department
New York Psychiatric Institute
New York Times
New York University
Nixon, Richard
North China People’s Revolutionary University
North Korea
Norway
Nosenko, Yuri
nuclear weapons
Nuremberg Code
Nuremberg trials
Oakland, California
Oaxaca
Office of Naval Research
Office of Policy Coordination, CIA
Office of Scientific Intelligence, CIA
Office of Security, CIA
Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, The (Mulholland)
Olson, Alice
Olson, Eric
Olson, Frank
Abramson and
body exhumed
Church Committee and
death of
Gottlieb on
lawsuits and
murder and
NYPD and
Rockefeller Commission and
Senate hearings and
TV documentaries on
Olson, Nils
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Kesey)
Organization Man, The (Whyte)
Orlikow, David
Orlikow, Velma
Orwell, George
Oswald, Lee Harvey
Palestinians
Panama Canal Zone
Paperclip, Operation
Parade
Paris
Parke, Davis
Paycheck (film)
Pearl Harbor attacks
Pearson, Drew
Penkovsky, Oleg
Pentathol-Natrium
Pfeiffer, Carl
Philippines
Phoenix program
Picrotoxin
Pitt, William
piule
Pius XII
Plum Island, New York
Poe, Edgar Allan
poisons
Poisonwood Bible, The (Kingsolver)
polygraph
Pont-St.-Esprit mass hysteria
Porsche, Ferdinand
Powers, Francis Gary
Powers, Thomas
POWs
presidential executive orders
President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities
Princeton University
prisoners
prostitutes
psilocybin
psychic driving
“psycho-chemicals as new concept of war” conference
“Psychochemical Warfare” (Greene)
Psychological Strategy Board, CIA
Purdue University
Pynchon, Thomas
Quicker Than the Eye (Mulholland)
Raborn, William
Radio Free Europe
Ranelagh, John
Rappahannock News
Rasher, Sigmund
Rathenau, Walter
Rauh, Joseph
Ravensbrück
Reagan, Ronald
“Realm of the Unreal, The” (Bierce)
Rebet, Lev
Red Army
Reed, Ishmael
Regis, Ed
Remember Me (video game)
Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC)
Resistance, The (album)
Rhodes, David
Ritchie, Wayne
Robert-Houdin, Jean-Eugène
Rockefeller, Nelson
Rockefeller Commission
Roosevelt, Cornelius
Roosevelt, Eleanor
Roosevelt, Franklin D.
Roselli, Johnny
Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel
Rumsfeld, Donald
Russell, Richard
Ruwet, Vincent
Sabina, María
Saigon CIA station
Saltonstall, Leverett
Sandoz
San Francisco
Midnight Climax and
Sea Spray and
San Francisco Call Bulletin
San José State University
Saracco, Stephen
Sargant, William
sarin gas
Sausalito, California
saxitoxin
Scandinavia
“Scheider, Joseph” (Gottlieb alias)
schizophrenia
Schlesinger, James
Schreiber, Walter (“Doc Fisher”)
Schwarz, Frederick
Schweiker, Richard
Science and Technology Directorate, CIA
“Scientific and Technical Problems in Covert Action Operations” (Gottlieb)
Search for the “Manchurian Candidate
,” The (Marks)
Sears, Alden
Sea Spray, Operation
Sebrell, William
Secret Agent (TV show)
Secret Pilgrim, The (le Carré)
secret prisons (black sites)
Secret Service
Security Research Staff, CIA
Selective Service System
sensory deprivation
September 11, 2001, attacks
Serratia marcescens bacterium
sex experiments
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Kinsey)
shellfish toxin
Sherwood, John
silver dollar tool
Simpsons, The (TV show)
sleep deprivation
smallpox
Smith, Walter Bedell
Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology (CIA front)
sodium amytal
Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception (Mulholland)
South Korea
Soviet Union
special interrogations
Special Operations Division, U.S. Army (SOD)
Baldwin and
Church Committee and
CIA joint projects
created
Gottlieb and
Korean War and
LSD and
MK-NAOMI and
MK-ULTRA and
Olson and
prisoners and
saxitoxin and
U-2 suicide ampules and
Villa Schuster and
Wilson Memorandum and
Special Projects School
Speer, Albert
Sphinx
Stanford University
staph enteroxin
Starrs, James
State Department
“Statement on MK-ULTRA” (CIA)
Statler Hotel
Stein, Gertrude
Stimson, Henry
Stranger Things (TV show)
“Studies on Ascorbic Acid in Cowpeas” (Gottlieb)
“Study of Assassination, A” (Gottlieb)
Stuttgart CIA prison
Sukarno
Sun Also Rises, The (Hemingway)
Svengali (character)
Sweden
Switzerland
syphilis
Taylor, Telford
Technical Services Division, CIA (TSD; later Office of Technical Services)
Acoustic Kitty and
assassination and
Detrick and
gadgets and
Gottlieb as chief of
Justice Department and
mandate narrows
popular culture and
projects of
Senate hearings and
Watergate and
Technical Services Staff, CIA (TSS; later Technical Services Division)
Bedford Street reports and
Chemical Division
CIA memo on
death of Olson and
Eli Lilly and
gadgets and
Gorman Annex and
Gottlieb positions at
Gottlieb leaves
Kirkpatrick report and
magic manual and
MK-ULTRA and
Pfeiffer and
“Testing and Use of Chemical and Biological Agents” (Church Committee)
tetrahydrocannabinol
thallium salts
Theodore, Carla
Time
Times (London)
torture
Treblinka
Trilby (du Maurier)
True
Truman, Harry
Truscott, Lucian, Jr.
truth serum
tuberculosis
Tulane University
Turkey
Turner, Stansfield
Tusko (elephant)
typhoid
U-2 spy planes
Ukrainian exiles
ultrasonics
Union Minière du Haut-Katanga
Unit 731 (Manchuria)
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
U.S. Army. See also Special Operations Division; and other specific divisions
U.S. Congress
oversight of intelligence agencies by
U.S. House Committees
Armed Services
Intelligence, Permanent Select
Un-American Activities
U.S. Marines
U.S. Navy
U.S. Postal Service
U.S. Senate Committees
Appropriations
Armed Services
Governmental Operations, Select (Church Committee)
Health and Scientific Research
Intelligence, Select
Judiciary
Labor and Public Welfare
Watergate
U.S. Supreme Court
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Denver
University of Illinois
University of Indiana
University of Kentucky
University of Maryland
University of Minnesota
University of Oklahoma
University of Pennsylvania
University of Posen
University of Rochester
University of Texas
University of Wisconsin
uranium
Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism, The (Abramson)
Vanderbilt University
Van Harmon, Lera
vibrations
“Victims Task Force,” CIA
Vidal, Gore
Vietcong
Vietnam War
Villa Schuster
Vito, Carmine
Vixen Press
von Braun, Wernher
Wall, William Henry
Wallace, David Foster
“Walter P. T.” (CIA agent)
Walter Reed General Hospital
War Department
War Research Service
Washington Post
Washington Star
Wasson, Gordon
Wasson, Valentina
Watergate scandal
Wayne State University
Welles, Orson
Wendt, G. Richard
West, Louis Jolyon “Jolly”
Western Hemisphere Division
West Germany
Wev, Bosquet
White, Albertine
White, George Hunter (“Morgan Hall”)
Whittier College
Wides, Burton
Williams, Esther
Wilson, Charles
Wilson, Tom
Wilson Memorandum
Winslet, Kate
Wisner, Frank
Wolff, Harold
Woman in Green, The (film)
Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology
World’s Worst, The (book)
World War I
World War II
Wormwood (documentary)
X Files, The (TV show)
yellow fever
Young People’s Socialist League
Zhou Enlai
Sidney Gottlieb was born in 1918 to an immigrant family in the Bronx and grew up in this modest brick row house.
At the age of nineteen, Gottlieb left New York to study plant biology at Arkansas Polytechnic College. The yearbook called him “a Yankee who pleases the southerners.”
By the time Gottlieb joined the CIA in 1951, it had already opened a “black site” at Villa Schuster, near the German city of Frankfurt. Prisoners were brought to underground cells, given heavy doses of drugs, and subjected to electroshock and other torments. “There were deaths,” an investigation con- cluded years later, “but the number is not known.”
Among those who designed drug combinations and “special interrogation” techniques for use on prisoners at Villa Schuster was Kurt Blome, who had directed the Nazis’ bio-warfare
program. He and Gottlieb searched for ways to wipe away a human mind so a new one could be implanted in its place.
In November 1953 one of Gottlieb’s collaborators, Frank Olson, died after plunging from a thirteenth-floor hotel window in New York. Two decades later the CIA admitted that its officers had fed LSD to Olson a few days before his death, driving him to apparent suicide.
In 1975 President Gerald Ford invited the Olson family to the Oval Office and officially apologized. Later, however, Olson’s sons became convinced that their father had not committed suicide but was thrown out of the hotel window because he was planning to quit the CIA and reveal deep secrets.
In 1955 the CIA set out to assassinate Prime Minister Zhou Enlai of China while he was visiting Indonesia. Gottlieb made poison to be dropped into Zhou’s rice bowl. This plot was aborted at the last moment.
Gottlieb produced a suicide pin, hidden inside a silver dollar, for pilots of the U-2 spy plane to use if they crashed inside the Soviet Union. Francis Gary Powers was carrying this pin when he crashed in 1960 but chose not to use it.
In 1960 Gottlieb made a poison kit for use in assassinating Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of the Congo (at right in photo). He carried it personally to the CIA station chief there. Lumumba was killed by a Belgian- backed squad before the poison could be used.
A declassified memorandum about the Lumumba assassination plot is one of the few surviving CIA documents that mentions Sidney Gottlieb by name.
Gottlieb compounded various potions intended to kill the Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. Among them were poison pills, poison cigars, and a wet suit lined with deadly toxin.
Because Gottlieb lived in deep secrecy, no one knew what he looked like. In a re-enactment staged by National Geographic, he was portrayed as balding and avuncular as he poured LSD into Frank Olson’s drink.
In Errol Morris’s 2017 documentary miniseries Wormwood, Tim Blake Nelson (left) played Gottlieb as young and self-confident.
This photo, which the CIA released to the author in 2018, shows for the first time what Gottlieb looked like while he worked for the CIA. It was taken shortly before he retired in 1973.
When Gottlieb testified to a Senate committee about his MK-ULTRA mind control program in 1975, he used the pseudonym “Joseph Scheider,” a reference to this nineteenth-century lithograph of a hooded monk. It is Gottlieb as he saw himself: a mysterious guardian of esoteric knowledge, alluring but unsettling, drawing inspiration from a pipe to peer into the human soul.
Photographers were not supposed to take pictures of Gottlieb when he tes- tified in 1975, but some did. He sat with his lawyer, Terry Lenzner, who ar- ranged for him to be granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony about MK-ULTRA.