Dr Sidney Gottlieb

Gottlieb, Sidney (1918–1999), born Sidney Goutterman, was a prominent American biochemist who served for two decades within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), becoming its director of history’s most systematic search for mind control techniques.

His career was largely shrouded in secrecy, rendering him invisible to the public until investigations in the 1970s revealed his work. Gottlieb’s life was marked by a unique blend of scientific ambition, spiritual seeking, and a willingness to operate beyond conventional ethical and legal boundaries in the service of national security.

Early Life and Education

Sidney Goutterman was born on 3 August 1918, in the Bronx, New York, the youngest of four children to Fanny and Louie Goutterman, Orthodox Jewish immigrants of Hungarian descent who had sought refuge in America in the early 20th century. His father established a sweatshop in the garment industry, providing enough income for the family, where academic achievement was highly valued. Like many of his peers, he learnt Hebrew, had a bar mitzvah, and studied diligently.

Gottlieb faced two significant challenges from birth:

• Deformed feet: He was born with club feet, a condition that left him unable to walk for most of his childhood. His mother carried him everywhere. Three operations, funded by the family business, were partly successful, allowing him to walk without braces by age 12, though he retained a lifelong limp.
• Stuttering: This affliction may have been partly a reaction to schoolmates who reportedly harassed him viciously for his physical disability.

Gottlieb’s academic achievements and Baldwin’s recommendation secured his admission to graduate school at the California Institute of Technology. He earned a doctorate in biochemistry in 1943. During these years, he married Margaret Moore, the daughter of a Presbyterian preacher born and raised in India. Despite their seemingly disparate backgrounds, they shared a spiritual restlessness and a disregard for convention, opting for a bare-bones civil ceremony in 1942, later followed by a Jewish wedding to appease his parents.

A significant formative event during his California years was his rejection by the Selective Service System for military service in World War II due to his limp. Deeply disappointed by his inability to serve in uniform, Gottlieb resolved to find an alternative way to contribute to the war effort.

In autumn 1943, Gottlieb and his wife moved to Tacoma Park, Maryland. He began working for the Department of Agriculture, researching the chemical structure of organic soil, then transferred to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where he developed tests to measure drugs in the human body and became an expert witness in court cases. Although he enjoyed his time at the FDA, the work became repetitive, prompting him to seek a greater challenge.

In 1948, he joined the National Research Council, studying plant diseases, fungicides, and encountering “ergot alkaloids as vasal constrictors and hallucinogens.” He then became a research associate at the University of Maryland, studying the metabolism of fungi. During this period, the Gottliebs purchased a primitive cabin in Vienna, Virginia, without electricity or running water, embracing a rural, austere lifestyle that included raising goats and growing vegetables. This lifestyle, which included outdoor toilets and meditation, was a stark contrast to the expected stereotype of a career civil servant.

By the late 1940s, Gottlieb felt frustrated by his mid-level research path. His mentor, Ira Baldwin, had guided other students into significant wartime work, but Gottlieb had been too young. His desire for a more impactful role coincided with a new mission emerging within American intelligence following World War II.

The Origins of Mind Control and Gottlieb’s Recruitment

The Cold War spurred intense fears within American intelligence circles, particularly after the 1949 show trial of Hungarian Cardinal József Mindszenty, who appeared disoriented and confessed to implausible crimes. This led the CIA and military scientists to believe, albeit without evidence, that the Soviets had developed drugs or mind control techniques that could coerce individuals.

This fear prompted the Chemical Corps to establish the Special Operations Division (SOD) at Camp Detrick in 1949, tasked with researching chemicals for covert action, including coercive drug use.

In 1950, Dr. Albert Hofmann's accidental discovery of LSD-25 in 1943 and its extraordinary psychoactive effects became known in Washington. A report by L. Wilson Green, technical director of the Chemical and Radiological Laboratories at Edgewood Arsenal, titled Psychemon: New Concept of War, advocated weaponising mind-altering compounds. This report captivated Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Director of Central Intelligence, who sought and received President Truman’s authorisation for drug research under CIA direction. This led to an informal partnership between Camp Detrick's SOD and the CIA’s Technical Services Staff (TSS) for covert drug experiments, later codenamed MKNAOMI. Early projects explored toxins for assassination and diseases for incapacitation, conducting field tests such as Operation Sea-Spray in San Francisco in 1950, which released harmless bacteria into the city’s air to study vulnerability to biological attack.

In 1950, the CIA launched Project Bluebird, aiming to investigate "control of an individual by application of special interrogation techniques," including hypnosis, electroshock, and sensory deprivation, particularly on prisoners. By 1951, the agency sought to expand Bluebird and needed a visionary chemist to centralise and lead its mind control research.

Gottlieb as Director of MK Ultra

On 13 July 1951, Sidney Gottlieb began his career at the CIA, marking a pivotal moment in America’s secret history. He was recruited due to his background as a chemist, specifically to organise a group of chemists for work the CIA was interested in, though the nature of the work was initially vague. Alan Dulles, the Deputy Director for Plans and a fervent believer in mind control as a decisive weapon against Communism, actively sought Gottlieb’s expertise. Gottlieb’s patriotic fervour, stemming from his inability to serve in World War II, aligned with the CIA’s mission.

Dulles, despite his patrician background and Gottlieb's "outsider" status as a limping, stuttering Jew from an immigrant family, recognised Gottlieb’s drive and creative imagination. Both men shared the commonality of having been born with club feet, a "strong but never mentioned bond" between them.

After a three-month intelligence tradecraft course, Gottlieb immersed himself in existing CIA chemical research on mind control, which he found promising but disorganised. Impressed by his zeal and imagination, Dulles appointed him Chief of the newly formed Chemical Division of the Technical Services Staff (TSS). On 20 August 1951, Dulles ordered the expansion, intensification, and centralisation of Bluebird, renaming it Project Artichoke. Gottlieb consolidated control over Artichoke-related projects, with Dulles’s support ensuring his authority to launch experiments.

In April 1953, Dulles approved a proposal from Gottlieb and Richard Helms (then chief of operations for the CIA’s Directorate of Plans) to launch a new, broader mind control project. This project, codenamed MK Ultra, would subsume Artichoke and grant Gottlieb authority over all CIA research into mind control. He was given a starting budget of $300,000, freedom from standard financial controls, and permission to conduct research and experiments without written contracts. MKUltra’s mandate was to test every imaginable and unimaginable drug and technique, including experimenting on unwitting American citizens in addition to expendable subjects abroad. Gottlieb became, effectively, America’s mind control master and poisoner-in-chief.

MKUltra: Scope and Methods

Under Gottlieb's direction, MKUltra became the most systematic and wide-ranging mind control project undertaken by any government. Its broad mandate included developing capabilities in covert use of biological and chemical materials, including those that:

• Promoted illogical thinking and impulsiveness for public discrediting.
• Increased mental efficiency and perception.
• Prevented or promoted alcohol intoxication.
• Produced reversible symptoms of recognised diseases for malingering.
• Facilitated hypnosis or enhanced its usefulness.
• Enhanced resistance to torture and coercion.
• Induced amnesia for specific events.
• Produced shock and confusion through physical methods.
• Caused physical disablement (e.g., paralysis, acute anaemia).
• Produced pure euphoria without let-down.
• Altered personality to increase dependency.
• Caused mental confusion to hinder fabrication under questioning.
• Lowered ambition and efficiency in undetectable amounts.
• Produced weakness or distortion of sight or hearing, preferably without permanent effects.
• Functioned as a safe, amnesia-inducing knockout pill for surreptitious administration.
• Made it impossible for an individual to perform any physical activity, even in minute, undetectable amounts.

The project encompassed various fields, including radiation, electroshock, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, graphology, harassment substances, and paramilitary devices. The programme's final phase involved applying materials to unwitting subjects in "normal life settings."

Key MKUltra Experiments and Collaborations:

1. LSD Research: Gottlieb and his team were most fascinated by LSD. They believed it to be the key to mind control due to its unpredictable, powerful effects on the brain, its lack of taste, colour, or odour, and the belief that minute quantities had "terrific effect." They also feared that Soviet scientists were pursuing similar research.
   • Self-Experimentation: Gottlieb and his colleagues engaged in "extensive amount of self-experimentation," dosing themselves (Gottlieb at least 200 times) to gain firsthand knowledge of the drug's subjective effects.
   • Unwitting Subjects: CIA employees were given LSD without warning in mock interrogations to test its ability to induce them to violate oaths, with subjects often forgetting the incident afterwards.
   • Subcontracts with Hospitals and Universities: MKUltra subsidised research at over 80 colleges, universities, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies, often through front groups like the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation and the Gebhard Fund for Medical Research. Many researchers were unaware of CIA funding.
     • Lexington, Kentucky: Harris Isbell, director of research at the Addiction Research Center (a hospital functioning as a prison), was an ideal contractor. He had a ready supply of "expendables" (mostly African-American inmates) and conducted experiments on chronic LSD administration, often offering high-grade heroin as a reward. One victim, William Henry Wall, suffered permanent brain damage. Gottlieb reportedly observed these experiments.
     • Atlanta Federal Penitentiary & Bordentown Juvenile Detention Center: Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, chairman of pharmacology at Emory University, ran four MKUltra sub-projects involving LSD and other drugs to induce psychotic states in "normal and schizophrenic human beings." James "Whitey" Bulger, a Boston gangster, was a subject, receiving LSD almost daily for 15 months and describing severe psychological distress.
     • Boston Psychopathic Hospital: Dr. Robert Hyde, assistant superintendent, was the first American to take LSD and a prolific early dispenser. He conducted LSD experiments on hundreds of unwitting student volunteers from Harvard, Emerson, and MIT, paying them $15. Some had negative reactions, including one who died by suicide.
     • University of Rochester: Dr. G. Richard Wendt, chairman of the psychology department, received a large grant from the US Navy's Project Chatter to study heroin's effects.
     • Cornell Medical Center: Dr. Harold Wolff, a neurologist, worked with Gottlieb on "human ecology" experiments. Patients were given drugs and subjected to sensory deprivation to "wipe the mind clean" and open it to reprogramming, often without informed consent. The Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology was created by Gottlieb and Wolff as a CIA conduit for funding such research.
     • McGill University’s Allen Memorial Institute: Dr. Ewen Cameron, a prominent psychiatrist, received CIA funding (via the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology) for experiments he called "repatterning" or "psychic driving." He used extreme sensory deprivation, drug-induced comas (including LSD), and intense electroshock (30-40 times normal strength) combined with endless repetition of recorded messages to "cleanse unwanted thoughts" and destroy minds. Patients with minor conditions became unwitting subjects. A later review found Cameron’s techniques comparable to Nazi medical atrocities.
2. Safe Houses:
   • New York City (81 Bedford Street): Directed by George Hunter White, a narcotics detective with a sadistic streak, who used unsuspecting drug users and petty criminals. Gottlieb approved expenses for the "lair" and its surveillance equipment, including hidden microphones and X-ray mirrors. White's "adventurous" approach included lacing drinks with LSD and recording reactions.
   • San Francisco (225 Chestnut Street, Operation Midnight Climax): Also run by George Hunter White from late 1955. This safe house incorporated sex into the experiments, with prostitutes luring clients and secretly dosing them with LSD while White observed through a one-way mirror, often consuming martinis himself. A second safe house was opened in Marin County for broader experiments involving stink bombs, itching powder, sneezing powder, and devices like drug-laced swizzle sticks. White’s assistant, Ike Feldman, revealed that the goal was to make men talk freely after sex and drugs.
   • Fort Clayton, Panama Canal Zone: A black site where experiments were conducted on prisoners, including Dimitri Demitro, a Bulgarian politician, for three years.
   • Germany (Camp King, Villa Schuster): Captured recalcitrant Nazis and suspected Soviet agents were subjected to "special interrogation" techniques, including drug cocktails, hypnosis, electroshock, and severe physical abuse. Villa Schuster became the CIA's "torture house," where the "most extreme experiments on human beings" were carried out. Kurt Blome, a former Nazi biological warfare director, and Walter Schreiber, former Surgeon General of the Nazi army, advised Bluebird teams on coercive techniques learned from concentration camp experiments.
   • Japan: Similar Bluebird interrogation teams injected captured North Korean soldiers with depressants and stimulants, then subjected them to hypnosis, electroshock, and debilitating heat to induce cathartic reactions.

Poisoner-in-Chief and Assassination Plots

Beyond mind control, Gottlieb was also the CIA's chief poison maker. He directed the application of various drugs into living humans and was the logical person to produce poisons when needed by the US government.

• James Jesus Angleton: In 1953, Gottlieb reportedly provided the poison (likely undetectable in a normal postmortem) that James Angleton, a senior CIA security officer, used to kill himself after being compromised.
• U2 Pilot Suicide Tools: In the late 1950s, Gottlieb was tasked by Richard Bissell (Deputy Director for Plans) with developing suicide tools for U2 spy plane pilots, in case they were captured.
  • Initially, he provided glass ampules of liquid potassium cyanide, similar to that used by Hermann Göring.
  • Later, his team designed a more sophisticated device: a silver dollar containing a straight pin coated with saxitoxin, a paralytic shellfish poison, potent enough to kill within seconds. Francis Gary Powers, shot down in 1960, had such a pin but chose not to use it.
• Patrice Lumumba Assassination Plot (1960): Following President Eisenhower's desire for Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo, to be "eliminated," Gottlieb prepared a lethal kit containing a vial of liquid botulinum, a hypodermic syringe, and accessories (e.g., pre-poisoned toothpaste). He personally delivered this kit to the CIA station chief in Leopoldville, Larry Devlin, instructing him to inject the botulinum into something Lumumba would ingest, ensuring an untraceable death resembling a natural disease. Though Lumumba was ultimately killed by Congolese and Belgian forces, not Gottlieb's poison, this mission solidified his reputation for crafting lethal agents.
• Zhou Enlai Assassination Plot (1955): Gottlieb concocted a toxin intended to be placed in a rice bowl for Premier Zhou Enlai of China. The plot, part of an effort to sabotage Zhou's plane, was aborted when General Lucian Truscott, a Deputy Director of the CIA, reportedly intervened due to fears of traceability.
• Fidel Castro Assassination Plots (1960-1963): Eisenhower’s order to "chop off" Castro led Gottlieb to develop various assassination methods:
  • LSD Aerosol: An early idea to spray LSD into Castro's radio studio to discredit him was deemed impractical.
  • Thallium Salts: A scheme to sprinkle thallium salts into Castro's boots to make his beard fall out, hoping to diminish his charisma, was also discarded.
  • Poisoned Cigars: Gottlieb provided a box of 50 cigars contaminated with a potent botulinum toxin. The cigars were so heavily poisoned that merely putting one in the mouth would be fatal. This method was abandoned due to inability to deliver them.
  • Exploding Seashell: A plan to hide a bomb inside a rare seashell for Castro to encounter while scuba diving was rejected as impractical.
  • Contaminated Diving Suit: A diving suit was dusted with a fungus to cause a chronic skin disease and contaminated with tuberculosis bacilli, intended to be presented to Castro. This plan was also abandoned.
  • Lethal Pills: Gottlieb supplied small, "L-pills" (lethal pills) containing botulinum to Mafia gangsters for delivery to contacts in Cuba. These pills were never successfully administered.
  • Concealment Devices: Gottlieb and his staff designed devices to deliver poisons, including a pencil concealing pills and a ballpoint pen with a hypodermic needle for injecting poison. The latter was handed to a Cuban CIA asset on 22 November 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

Leadership of Technical Services Division

Gottlieb's role evolved beyond MKUltra. In 1959, he became Scientific Advisor to Richard Bissell, then Deputy Director for Plans, tasked with using chemical and biological agents more effectively in covert operations. In 1966, following Richard Helms's appointment as Director of Central Intelligence, Gottlieb was named Chief of the Technical Services Division (TSD). This made him the "Master of the CIA tool shop," overseeing its global network.

The TSD, based in Washington, was responsible for developing, testing, and building espionage tools. Gottlieb expanded its workforce, recruiting engineers, chemists, artists, and craftsmen from technical schools. TSD officers were responsible for developing cutting-edge technology for covert operations, including:

• Miniaturised Surveillance: Tiny microphones and transmitters disguised as wall outlets, hidden cameras in keychains, tie clips, wristwatches, and cigarette lighters.
• Weaponry: Thumb-sized single-shot pistols, silenced rifles, and a "pencil designed as a concealment device for delivering pills."
• Concealment and Disguise: Cars with secret compartments, a compressor to squeeze currency into tiny packets, individually tailored disguises, and false identity papers.
• Specialised Devices: A pipe that concealed a radio receiver, "I-glasses" with a hidden suicide pill in the temple tips.
• "Acoustic Kitty": A project to turn a living cat into a surveillance device by implanting a microphone and transmitter in its ear canal. Though technically functional, control of the cat's movements proved inconsistent, leading to the project's termination in 1967.
• Graphology: Gottlieb pursued handwriting analysis, commissioning research to explore its use in intelligence.

The TSD often responded to requests for "exotic devices" inspired by popular spy television shows and James Bond films. Gottlieb's division also provided extensive support for the Vietnam War, designing rocket launchers, building superstructures for patrol boats disguised as junks, creating false documents, and developing sensors for the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He also oversaw continued behavioural experiments, including implanting electrodes in the brains of Viet Cong prisoners at a hospital in Vietnam in 1968, an experiment that failed.

In 1970, President Nixon ordered the destruction of US bioweapons and chemical toxins. Gottlieb initially hesitated but ultimately complied, though 11 grams of saxitoxin (enough to kill 55,000 people) were secretly moved and only later discovered and destroyed in 1975.

Gottlieb was known as a compassionate and attentive boss who fostered loyalty within the TSD. He worked long hours, maintained a healthy lifestyle, and often engaged in folk dancing. By the early 1970s, he was a respected veteran leader within the CIA, with his MKUltra past largely hidden due to Helms's protection.

Retirement and Public Exposure

Gottlieb’s career at the CIA ended abruptly following the Watergate scandal. The TSD had provided false identity papers and espionage implements to some of the burglars. After President Nixon fired Richard Helms in February 1973 for refusing to create a cover story for the White House, Gottlieb lost his protector. Helms and Gottlieb then made a critical decision: to destroy all MKUltra records to prevent public outrage and potential prosecution for grave crimes. Seven boxes of documents were shredded on 30 January 1973, and Gottlieb ordered his secretary to destroy sensitive files in his office safe.

On 30 June 1973, Gottlieb retired from the CIA at age 54, having served for 22 years. He was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal in a private ceremony. Post-retirement, he initially sought a quiet life, becoming a consultant for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for seven months. He and his wife Margaret, embracing their restless inner spirits, decided to sell their home, land, cars, and possessions, embarking on a two-year journey across Africa, Australia, and India, volunteering at hospitals (including one treating leprosy patients in India).

However, Gottlieb’s anonymity was shattered in 1975. The Senate’s Church Committee, investigating CIA misdeeds, discovered his name in documents related to assassination plots. Recalled from India, Gottlieb, who had a pronounced stutter, hired Terry Lenzner as his lawyer. Lenzner, a former Senate Watergate committee counsel, secured Gottlieb immunity from prosecution before he testified. Gottlieb insisted on testifying, refusing to "hide behind the Fifth Amendment."

During his secret testimony to the Church Committee, Gottlieb used the alias Joseph Schneider. He admitted to overseeing assassination programmes and managing attempts on foreign leaders, including the use of lethal biological materials. He acknowledged supervising LSD experiments on over 20 unsuspecting individuals and self-experimenting with the drug. He also disclosed that the CIA had experimented on American citizens. When pressed about the destruction of MKUltra files, Gottlieb claimed it was to discard superfluous documents, manage paper volume, and protect the reputations of collaborating scientists. He publicly asserted that mind control was a myth, concluding that drugs were "too unpredictable" to manipulate human behaviour predictably.

The Rockefeller Commission (1975), formed by President Ford, also referenced MKUltra activities, including unwitting drug tests on US citizens and prison inmates, but claimed records were destroyed. However, in 1977, newly installed CIA Director Stansfield Turner, acting on a Freedom of Information Act request, discovered a trove of MKUltra expense reports that had escaped destruction. These documents brought MKUltra to public attention for the first time, revealing experiments on unwitting subjects in prisons and safe houses across the US, and at 80 academic and pharmaceutical institutions.

Gottlieb was summoned for a second round of public testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy. He again insisted on immunity and that the hearing be held behind closed doors due to a "heart condition." His voice, occasionally breaking with tension, was broadcast by loudspeaker. He stated that the work, though "extremely unpleasant," was undertaken in a context of "national survival" due to perceived enemy capabilities in mind alteration. He acknowledged the "tragic" death of Frank Olson (an Army scientist who died after being unwittingly dosed with LSD at a CIA retreat in 1953) as a "traumatic period" that caused him "a lot of personal anguish," leading him to consider resigning, but ultimately decided to continue.

During this hearing, Gottlieb’s photograph was publicly released for the first time. Despite the detailed revelations, no investigator or senator fully grasped the extent of his operations, which remained largely secret. Gottlieb's public testimony, often marked by claims of hazy memory, allowed him to deflect detailed questioning, successfully protecting most of his secrets.

Legacy

Sidney Gottlieb died in 1999 at the age of 80. His funeral was private. Obituary writers, despite knowing enough about him to be "tantalised," offered varied assessments, ranging from "genius striving to explore the frontiers of the human mind" to "Poisoner, assassin, and pimp" and "everything you have dreamed of in a mad scientist in a pulp novel about the CIA, except that he was real." Comparisons were drawn to Nazi doctors like Josef Mengele due to his human experimentation.

Gottlieb spent his career in Washington’s secret world, directing the CIA’s most systematic search for mind control techniques and serving as its chief poison maker. While his MKUltra research ultimately concluded that predictable mind control was a myth, his work had a lasting, unintended impact: the widespread leakage of LSD from CIA-sponsored experiments into the American counterculture, profoundly shaping a generation and fueling a movement dedicated to challenging established norms. His life demonstrated a deep Individualism, a relentless pursuit of knowledge, and a willingness to operate outside conventional ethical limits to protect national security. His story remains a potent symbol of unchecked intelligence power and the moral complexities of covert operations.

Source:

Poisoner in Chief Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control,

by Stephen Kinzer