I guess there are some things we shouldn't have done.

Sydney Gottlieb, otherwise known as the black sorcerer or poisoner in chief was one of the driving forces in the MKULTRA program. When World War II developed, his club foot prevented military service so he sought other ways to serve. When it was over, Gottlieb had no problems working with the scientists of the defeated enemy Allen Dulles brought in to the CIA. He took an interest in Jolly West and became his mentor.

With a background in agriculture and biochemistry, Gottlieb joined the CIA in 1951. He already had advanced knowledge of poisons and as assigned to the bio-warfare program at Fort Detrick in Maryland. He began working on Project Bluebird in developing “special interrogation” techniques at black sites such as Camp King in Germany. The goal was to break down mental control that prevented the prisoners from giving desired information. They were using various drugs but were not getting the job done.

A few months later Gottlieb was named head of the Chemical Division of the Technical Services Staff and Project Bluebird was expanded into Project Artichoke. They were searching for the “holy grail” of interrogation, a truth serum that would break down the prisoner's resistance. They tried THC, cocaine, heroin, and mescaline without the required results. Then Gottlieb began working with LSD. Initially, there was not a large supply so he traveled to the producer in Germany and bought up all that was available.

Testing the new drug on himself and other volunteers yielded interesting but limited results and lead him to be head of all mind control programs and the creation of the greatly expanded program called MKULTRA. A scientist who valued the results of his research over the human cost, he had no problem testing his concoctions on human subjects in mental institutions, prisons and on other “expendables” in black sites around the world.

Mental patients looking for treatment for simple depression were subjected to chemical and physical treatments that broke them psychologically. Some committed suicide and some were merely damaged for the rest of their lives. As word of the excesses of MKULTRA leaked out, there were some lawsuits, but nothing to make up for the suffering people endured.

He even dosed some of his colleagues, including Frank Olson, with LSD at a retreat in Maryland. This was the final straw for Olson, confirming he had to get out of the CIA bio-warfare program. Unfortunately he was never able to do that and he was dead in about a week.

Interestingly, when he retired from the CIA in 1973 he lived in a environmentally friendly home near Culpeper VA where he “raised goats, ate yogurt, and advocated peace and environmentalism.” Gottlieb and his wife traveled the world for a while spending several months in India working with a leper hospital.

Eventually they came back and moved to California for a while to spend some time with their grand children. While there, he earned a masters degree in speech pathology which he used upon returning to Virginia as he worked with middle and high schoolers with problems – all the while growing their own food on their land.

There was a time shortly after he retired that he met with Frank Olson's family. The closest Sydney Gottlieb came to an apology was when he admitted to them that there were things he probably shouldn't have done.

Poisoner in Chief
by Stephen Kinzer


The visionary chemist Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s master magician and gentlehearted torturer―the agency’s “poisoner in chief.” As head of the MK-ULTRA mind control project, he directed brutal experiments at secret prisons on three continents. He made pills, powders, and potions that could kill or maim without a trace―including some intended for Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders. He paid prostitutes to lure clients to CIA-run bordellos, where they were secretly dosed with mind-altering drugs. His experiments spread LSD across the United States, making him a hidden godfather of the 1960s counterculture. For years he was the chief supplier of spy tools used by CIA officers around the world.

Stephen Kinzer, author of groundbreaking books about U.S. clandestine operations, draws on new documentary research and original interviews to bring to life one of the most powerful unknown Americans of the twentieth century. Gottlieb’s reckless experiments on “expendable” human subjects destroyed many lives, yet he considered himself deeply spiritual. He lived in a remote cabin without running water, meditated, and rose before dawn to milk his goats.

During his twenty-two years at the CIA, Gottlieb worked in the deepest secrecy. Only since his death has it become possible to piece together his astonishing career at the intersection of extreme science and covert action. Poisoner in Chief reveals him as a clandestine conjurer on an epic scale.