Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control Hardcover – September 10, 2019

This is the third book I've read written by Steven Kinzer and I loved it as much as the other two. There should be a reader warning that this book contains way more than an adult theme. In fact if one is American that loves his/her country and believes that Americans are above the German and Japanese death camps; well you will be shocked.I read The Brothers first followed by All the Shah's Men. One nagging question I've had is whether Eisenhower knew what's going on in his administration. The Poisoner In Chief settles that question for me. Having read about Ike, I just couldn't see his involvement. He railed about the Military Industrial Complex and also the evils of war. It seems he chose a more covert policy with lots of denials.The main protagonist is Sidney Gottlieb. I had never heard of him or MK-ULTRA before reading this book. It seems there are a few of my friends who have heard of MK-ULTRA were but I can't imagine they knew about the complexity of this group. I've usually dismissed this kind of information as coming from conspiracy theorists and perhaps that's why it's new news.Mr. Kinzer backs up his information with references and footnotes. He did this as well in the other two books I've read. The news is, we were and may still be, no better than the people we accused of horrendous tortures in Nazi Germany and Japan.The idea my country would do these things seems totally out of character. Yet, this 3rd book just goes further in shattering my ideals of God and Country. I realize times were different and being provoked to participates as the right thing to do if one is an American Patriot. Then on they marched.I guess sometimes it's not conspiracy if it's true.A very good readable book. Read and learn.

Like many people I was vaguely aware of MK-Ultra, but not in any significant way.That all changed when I read Stephen Kinzer's magnificent new book. The amount of research Kinzer undertook is truly daunting, and yet he has written a fast-paced account of the founding in 1943 of the army's Biological Warfare Facilities at Fort Detrick, Maryland and the man put in charge of the program, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb.When World War II ended, the United States actively recruited former Nazi and Japanese scientists to help them develop biological and chemical weapons, to test on prisoners and unsuspecting members of the public. One of the prisoners given massive doses of the newly created drug, LSD, was Whitey Bulger, who would later go onto become one of the country's most notorious criminals. The department even ran a brothel in San Francisco on Chestnut Street (not far from where I once lived), that fed its clients LSD, then sought to determine if this made them susceptible to spilling secrets. Big surprise! Men are more open to sharing after they've had sex! The drugs they were fed gave inconsistent results. Oh, and the CIA enlisted vice cops from San Francisco to help run the brothel. All in the name of national security.It also seems clear that the department had little trouble killing its own in extra-judicial fashion if they turned out to be agents of a foreign power, or even in the case of one scientist who started to have moral qualms about their work, Frank Olson, throwing him out the window of thirteenth floor hotel room in New York City.All of this took place in an atmosphere of Cold War hysteria and those who took part in these activities seek to use this justification for their work. Yes, how easy it is to commit terrible crimes under the guise of an imminent threat.And yet, even though Gottlieb presided over this carnival of horrors, and eagerly participated in using the services of his San Francisco bordello, and sleeping with the wives of his colleagues, Kinzer goes to great lengths to present a balanced portrait of the man. After leaving government service and realizing that no effective drug or technique could reliably break a person, or make them into a "Manchurian candidate," an assassin, ready to kill at a moment's notice, but would have no memory of why he did it, Gottlieb truly devoted himself to charitable work.However, in the 1970s the truth came calling and he was forced to give Congressional testimony as to at least some of what he had done. The wages of sin must have hung heavy on Gottlieb in the final years of his life. His wife fiercely defended him, but his children refused to speak to him. This story bears witness to what darkness lurks in the souls of men when they are given a pressing task at the very edges of science, and no oversight.The greatest monsters we may face might well be those which hide in every human heart.