35. ⁠CIA Mind Control: The Next Frontier (Ep 1)

Summary

The Rest Is Classified: Episode 35 – CIA Mind Control: The New Frontier (Ep 1)

Hosts: David McCloskey & Gordon Corera
Release Date: April 6, 2025
Podcast Description: The Rest Is Classified delves into the clandestine world of espionage, unveiling real-life spy stories, intelligence secrets, and the power dynamics influencing global events. In Episode 35, titled “CIA Mind Control: The New Frontier (Ep 1),” hosts David McCloskey, a former CIA analyst and spy novelist, and Gordon Corera, a veteran security correspondent, explore the secretive MKUltra program and the life of Sidney Gottlieb, the mastermind behind CIA’s mind control experiments.

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1. Introduction to CIA Mind Control and MKUltra

The episode opens with a brief and amusing advertisement featuring Meghan Trainor’s song lyrics interspersed with snippets of conversation between David McCloskey and Gordon Corera. However, the hosts quickly steer the discussion toward the serious topic at hand—CIA mind control programs during the Cold War era.

Notable Quote:

Gordon Corera [02:22]: "I'm Gordon Corera."
David McCloskey [02:23]: "And I'm David McCloskey."

The hosts introduce the main subject of the episode: the CIA's endeavor into mind control through the MKUltra program, spearheaded by Sidney Gottlieb. They set the stage by highlighting the historical context of the Cold War and the fear of Soviet advancements in mind manipulation.

2. The Genesis of MKUltra and Sidney Gottlieb’s Introduction

Gordon Corera elaborates on MKUltra, describing it as a sprawling series of projects and experiments initiated in the early 1950s. These projects aimed to explore the potential of controlling and manipulating the human psyche, inspired by intelligence suggesting Soviet advancements in similar techniques.

Notable Quote:

Gordon Corera [02:49]: "Programs under the rather wonderful codename MKUltra, in which the CIA, I'm shocked to say, conducted experiments on unwitting Americans to see if there was a way of doing what Alan Dulles was suggesting the Soviets were doing, which was manipulating that malleable human mind."
David McCloskey [03:10]: "That's right, Gordon. We are starting a new series on MKUltra and the CIA's search in the early days of the Cold War."

3. Cold War Context and Soviet Influence

The discussion transitions to the broader Cold War environment, emphasizing the pervasive fear within the CIA that the Soviet Union had made significant strides in mind control techniques. This paranoia fueled the CIA’s commitment to developing their own mind control methods to counter perceived Soviet threats.

Notable Quotes:

David McCloskey [21:01]: "Well, it is in this early period of the Cold War that the CIA starts to think it actually has practical intelligence to suggest that the Soviet Union or kind of a communist front more generally, is making significant advances on mind control techniques."

Gordon Corera [23:05]: "Because it's the only way in their mind they can explain some of these strange goings on."

4. Sidney Gottlieb: Early Life and Motivations

The hosts delve into the biography of Sidney Gottlieb, outlining his challenging childhood marked by physical disabilities and a stutter. Despite these hardships, Gottlieb’s strong-willed nature and academic prowess led him to pursue a career in chemistry and eventually join the CIA.

Notable Quotes:

David McCloskey [07:14]: "He’s got this stutter and this limp that I think really shapes so much of his early years."

Gordon Corera [09:09]: "He's quite left wing, isn't he, as a young man? So for all that kind of patriotic side and loving America, he's not some kind of right-wing, traditional uber patriot capitalist guy, is he?"

5. The Establishment of CIA’s Mind Control Programs: Bluebird and Artichoke

The episode explores the inception of the CIA’s mind control programs, initially named Bluebird and later rebranded as Artichoke. These programs focused on developing methods to interrogate and control individuals using various coercive techniques, including drugs, hypnosis, and other psychological manipulations.

Notable Quotes:

David McCloskey [27:37]: "I am convinced that it is possible, by means of the techniques of psychochemical warfare, to conquer an enemy without wholesale killing of his people and the mass destruction of his property."

Gordon Corera [32:54]: "So these are largely outside of the US, though, rather than inside of the US at this point."

6. Gottlieb’s Role in Advancing CIA’s Mind Control Agenda

Upon joining the CIA in 1951, Gottlieb became the central figure in advancing the agency's mind control research. His scientific expertise and insatiable curiosity positioned him to oversee and expand the scope of MKUltra, integrating a range of experimental techniques aimed at manipulating human behavior and cognition.

Notable Quotes:

David McCloskey [36:04]: "So Sidd Gottlieb applies for a job to the CIA because, as we mentioned earlier, he wants to serve. I think, in his view, he's got this very interesting profile for the CIA. He's a chemist. Right."

Gordon Corera [38:58]: "But people found it easier to explain it by brainwashing."

7. Ethical Implications and Covert Operations

The hosts critically examine the ethical ramifications of the CIA's mind control experiments. Programs like Artichoke involved harsh and often inhumane methods, including the use of psychotropic drugs, hypnosis, and even consideration of medical torture techniques. These operations were conducted with minimal oversight, raising significant moral and legal concerns.

Notable Quotes:

David McCloskey [42:11]: "I mean, it's basically medical torture. That's what we're talking about."

Gordon Corera [43:02]: "It does sound like torture, though, basically."

8. Transition to MKUltra and Legacy of Mind Control Programs

As the Cold War intensified, the CIA’s mind control initiatives evolved into the more expansive and infamous MKUltra program. The episode hints at the interconnectedness of these early programs and the later developments that would significantly impact public perception and ethical standards regarding governmental experimentation on individuals.

Notable Quotes:

David McCloskey [43:10]: "So, Sid Gottlieb applies for a job to the CIA because, as we mentioned earlier, he wants to serve."

Gordon Corera [43:23]: "We'll see you next time."

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Conclusion

Episode 35 of The Rest Is Classified meticulously chronicles the origins and development of the CIA’s mind control programs during the early Cold War, spotlighting Sidney Gottlieb’s pivotal role. Through engaging dialogue and insightful analysis, David McCloskey and Gordon Corera unveil the clandestine operations that sought to manipulate the human mind, revealing a dark chapter in intelligence history. This episode serves as the first installment in a series that promises to delve deeper into the complexities and ramifications of MKUltra and related endeavors.

Disclaimer: The content discussed in this episode pertains to historical events and covert government programs. The ethical implications and human rights concerns surrounding these operations are profoundly significant and continue to influence contemporary discussions on intelligence practices and governmental accountability.

Transcript

[Meghan Trainor]

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[David McClarskey]

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[Meghan Trainor]

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[Unknown]

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[Gordon Carrera]

It's like you've been on something already.

[Unknown]

70 micrograms of LSD, man.

[David McClarskey]

Gordon, you just look like a purple, fuzzy shaped being that I'm communing with.

[Gordon Carrera]

People who only listen to this, or rather watch it might think that's what I actually look like. Anyway, that's normal.

[David McClarskey]

You look fuzzier than normal, Gordon.

[Gordon Carrera]

Okay, great. We might call it, in its new form, brain warfare. The target of this warfare is the.

[Unknown]

Minds of men on a collective and on an individual basis. Its aim is to condition the mind so that it no longer reacts on.

[Gordon Carrera]

A free will or rational basis, but.

[Unknown]

A response to impulses implanted from outside. The human mind is the most delicate of instruments. It's so finely adjusted, so susceptible to the impact of outside influences, that it is proving malleable in the hands of sinister men. The Soviets are now using brain perversion as one of their main weapons in prosecuting the Cold War. Some of these techniques are so subtle and so abhorrent to our way of.

[Gordon Carrera]

Life that we have recoiled from facing up to them.

[Unknown]

We in the west are somewhat handicapped in brain warfare. We have no human guinea pigs to try these extraordinary techniques. Well, welcome to the Rest is classified.

[Gordon Carrera]

I'm Gordon Carrera.

[David McClarskey]

And I'm David McClarskey.

[Unknown]

And that was friend of the pod.

[Gordon Carrera]

CIA Director Alan Dulles, giving a talk.

[Unknown]

Which he makes public in April 1953.

[Gordon Carrera]

On the stakes of brain warfare and.

[Unknown]

Mind control as seen from the early.

[Gordon Carrera]

Days of the Cold War. And that's gonna be our subject of this series, isn't it, David?

[Unknown]

The sprawling world of CIA mind control.

[Gordon Carrera]

Programs under the rather wonderful codename MKUltra, in which the CIA, I'm shocked to say, conducted experiments on unwitting Americans to see if there was a way of doing what Alan Dulles was suggesting the.

[Unknown]

Soviets were doing, which was manipulating that malleable human mind.

[David McClarskey]

That's right, Gordon. We are starting a new series on.

[Unknown]

MK Ultra and the CIA's search in the early days of the Cold War.

[David McClarskey]

For sort of a pathway into the human psyche to see if it could.

[Unknown]

Be controlled, if it could be manipulated.

[David McClarskey]

If it could be changed. And, Gordon, we are going to tell this story through the life and times.

[Unknown]

Of a very extraordinary chemist named Sidney.

[David McClarskey]

Gottlieb, who was the bureaucratic manager and.

[Unknown]

Mastermind of MK ultra.

[David McClarskey]

This kind of really sprawling series of projects and experiments and funding for mind control work throughout much of the 1950s.

[Gordon Carrera]

Including, it has to be said, early use of LSD and psychotropic drugs, which are going to do strange things to the human brain and which we're going to be learning about. I hadn't quite appreciated the full role of a CIA in hippie culture of the 1960s that emerges, but I think we'll be looking at that.

[Unknown]

And it is also a subject which.

[Gordon Carrera]

Has got resonances in popular culture because it comes through in all kinds of.

[Unknown]

Famous movies, whether it's the Manchurian Candidate or the Ipcrest Files here in the uk. But also it kind of resonates through to the modern day, doesn't it, in.

[Gordon Carrera]

Terms of this idea that the brain and the human mind is actually the focus of cognitive warfare, of trying to control and manipulate it.

[Unknown]

Oh, and we should say that Gordon.

[David McClarskey]

And I, in preparation for this episode, have sampled all manner of substances in order to just get the firsthand research. Spot on.

[Gordon Carrera]

Are you currently microdosing? Are you? Are you? Because I'm not.

[David McClarskey]

Just in case, if at any point, Gordon just sort of trails off, you know, why, or myself, I should say. So just.

[Unknown]

Just be on the lookout for that.

[David McClarskey]

So, I mean, this is a story. It really does have everything right, Gordon, as you went through that list, I mean, we have a massive, really abuse of government power, trampling of constitutional rights.

[Unknown]

CIA dirty tricks in its early years.

[David McClarskey]

We have a chapter of a story.

[Unknown]

That continues today in the search for.

[David McClarskey]

Mastery of the cognitive battlefield brain warfare, as Alan Dulles says. And we have this, I think, really fascinating perspective on the CIA is kind of the first cartel to bring LSD.

[Unknown]

Into the United States. Really like patient zero for LSD and LSD culture in the 60s in the States is the Central Intelligence Agency.

[David McClarskey]

But to sort of bound all of this Stuff we're gonna, as we said, talk about it through the life and.

[Unknown]

Times of Sid Gottlieb.

[David McClarskey]

So maybe we start with him and his life.

[Gordon Carrera]

You described him as a bureaucratic manager. I don't think that does justice to the character of Sidney Gottlieb, who is straight out of a fictional novel.

[David McClarskey]

I think throughout this series I'm gonna refer to Sid Gottlieb in the most anodyne, bureaucratic terms possible, despite all of.

[Unknown]

The insane adventures that he will have.

[David McClarskey]

So gor, you will continue to call me out and try to make him seem more colorful. So two books, I think, just right.

[Unknown]

Up front, are important to mention on Gottlieb and are really critical to the.

[David McClarskey]

Story we're gonna tell.

[Unknown]

One of them is Stephen Kinzer's book Poisoner in Chief.

[David McClarskey]

Great title.

[Unknown]

And the other is John Lyle's book, which is actually coming out here in just a few months, called Project Mind Control. Both deal with Gottlieb and his work on MK Ultra. Both are exceptional reads.

[David McClarskey]

Gottlieb.

[Unknown]

Young Gottlieb Gordon. He grows up in the Bronx. He is born to Hungarian Jewish immigrants.

[David McClarskey]

Who left in the early 20th century, I'd say.

[Unknown]

Gottlieb is born in 1918.

[David McClarskey]

His parents are in the garment business. They own a sweatshop in New York. He's the youngest of four kids. And he grows up in a really.

[Unknown]

Bustling Jewish neighborhood where many of the families are practicing.

[David McClarskey]

Many of them are first generation immigrants to the United States. Everybody knows everybody, and I think you could say the American dream here in.

[Unknown]

This context is real, Right? They are.

[David McClarskey]

And Gottlieb is, and this will be a theme through the story, a very patriotic person, someone who kind of, I think, sees America as a country that brought in his parents, gave him a home. It's going to kind of filter through so much of the story we're going to talk about now. There are a couple bits of his childhood that I think do bear mention for this story. So Gottlieb is born with clubbed feet.

[Unknown]

And for most of his childhood, he really can't walk. His mom carries him everywhere.

[David McClarskey]

He actually walks for the first time.

[Unknown]

Kind of on his own, but with braces when he's around 12 years old, after he's had several operations. And he's gonna have a kind of.

[David McClarskey]

Lifelong limp that's associated with that club foot. He's gonna wear prosthetic shoes for the.

[Unknown]

Entirety of his life.

[David McClarskey]

He's also got a stutter that a lot of the time is manageable.

[Unknown]

But when he's stressed, becomes very pronounced.

[David McClarskey]

So he's harassed at school for the obvious reasons. And I'm not able to find a picture of young Gottlieb, right, like a.

[Unknown]

Childhood picture of the man.

[David McClarskey]

Don't know what he looks like, but.

[Unknown]

He'S got this stutter and this limp that I think really shapes so much of his early years.

I'm channeling Peter Sellers as Dr. Stranger.

[Gordon Carrera]

Love though, in my image of him. But that may be unfair, but given there's no other pictorial, you know, reference point, that's what I've got for you.

[Unknown]

We have our first evidence of Gordon's acid trip here.

[David McClarskey]

His LSD is feeding him wild images of young Sid Gottlieb. But Gottlieb is very strong willed. I think he's very smart. He perseveres through this. He reminds me a bit of the.

[Unknown]

Long shadow of Klaus Fuchs over our podcast.

[David McClarskey]

He reminds me a little bit of Klaus Fuchs right in that Fuchs was sickly anemic as a kid, but he.

[Unknown]

Ended up having this very sort of strong willed spirit.

[David McClarskey]

And I think you see that with Gottlieb.

[Unknown]

One of the things I find interesting.

[Gordon Carrera]

Though is he's quite left wing, isn't he, as a young man? So for all that kind of patriotic side and loving America, he's not some kind of right wing, traditional uber patriot capitalist guy, is he?

[Unknown]

No, I mean, he will join the Young People Socialist League.

[David McClarskey]

He'll later on tell people pretty openly.

[Unknown]

That he was a socialist in his youth.

[David McClarskey]

I mean, he's growing up in the 20s and 30s, it's not uncommon common. He's never a member of the Communist Party or anything like that.

[Unknown]

But he's a young sort of socialist.

[David McClarskey]

And he goes to City College in.

[Unknown]

New York, known as Harvard of the.

[David McClarskey]

Proletariat, studies German physics. He takes speech courses to work on a stutter.

[Unknown]

He's very interested in agricultural biology.

[David McClarskey]

Kind of unclear exactly why, but the.

[Unknown]

Field fascinates him from a young age.

[David McClarskey]

And he writes to someone and this name will be important later, named Ira Baldwin at the University of Wisconsin, who's really kind of a mountain in the field. And he gets admitted to uw, the University of Wisconsin, and Baldwin starts to take Gottlieb under his wing.

[Unknown]

He ends up majoring in chemistry.

[David McClarskey]

His senior thesis, by the way, Gordon.

[Unknown]

Was entitled Studies on Ascorbic Acid in Cow Peas.

[David McClarskey]

So CIA man all over him. From an early age he's moved by.

[Unknown]

Conditions he had seen in those sweatshops.

[David McClarskey]

As we Said he's kind of got.

[Unknown]

The socialist left leaning bent to him.

[David McClarskey]

And on Baldwin's recommendation, Gottlieb is admitted to graduate school in California, where in 1943, he's going to earn a doctorate in biochemistry. And in California, Gottlieb's life is changed forever in a couple ways. The first one is that he meets the woman who'll become his wife, named Margaret Moore.

[Unknown]

She's the daughter of a Presbyterian missionary to India.

[David McClarskey]

She's studying to be a preschool teacher. You'd think. They don't seem to have a lot in common, and yet they're both, I think.

[Unknown]

And again, this is going to be.

[David McClarskey]

A theme of Gottlieb's entire life. They're very spiritually restless.

[Unknown]

So Gottlieb has become estranged from his parents, Judaism.

[David McClarskey]

And Margaret, his soon to be wife.

[Unknown]

Has parted ways with her father's and her family's Christianity.

[David McClarskey]

And in both of them, you see this kind of very early desire for understanding, this kind of quest for an.

[Unknown]

Almost mystical understanding of the universe and.

[David McClarskey]

Ourselves beyond the bounds of what you'd call maybe ordinary religion, which sounds very.

[Gordon Carrera]

California, which is where he is. It's the 40s, so the war is going on, but he's not directly involved in it at that point.

[David McClarskey]

Well, and this is the other, I think, major kind of factor that starts.

[Unknown]

To shape him in this time.

[David McClarskey]

So he marries Margaret when he's 24. And while they're in California, Gordon, he's rejected by the draft.

[Unknown]

Right.

[David McClarskey]

It's 1943, 1944.

[Unknown]

He's denied entrance into the military because.

[David McClarskey]

Of his limp due to his club foot.

[Unknown]

But he really wants to find a way to serve.

[David McClarskey]

You know, again, he's a patriot. And you think about the psychology of someone who wanted to join but basically sat on the sidelines while the United States fought the Second World War.

[Unknown]

So he's deeply motivated to do something.

[David McClarskey]

But he's not able to.

[Unknown]

And then in the fall of 43, they move.

[David McClarskey]

The couple moves. They're married now. Takoma Park, Maryland, which is a D.C. suburb. He's researching soil for the Department of Agriculture.

[Unknown]

Later, he gets transferred to the fda, the Food and Drug Administration. He's developing tests to measure the presence.

[David McClarskey]

Of drugs in the human body.

[Unknown]

Starting to get a little bit bored.

[David McClarskey]

In 48, he gets a new job.

[Unknown]

At the National Research Council. He's studying plant diseases and fungicides. Changes jobs again, becomes a research associate.

[David McClarskey]

At the University of Maryland. He's studying the metabolism of fungi. So you've got this Guy who's smart, he's a wanderlust.

[Unknown]

His wife is also a wanderlust.

[David McClarskey]

I think he gets bored easily, it's fair to say. You can see by kind of his movement through these jobs in these early years. And he and his wife start this very, almost kind of proto hippie lifestyle in this era. So they find a rustic cabin near Vienna, Virginia, out on 15 acres. And it's almost impossible to imagine this now with the sort of sprawl outside of dc, but this was a time.

[Unknown]

When Vienna, Virginia was like in the woods.

[David McClarskey]

They got no electricity, they move in, they have four kids, they settle into this family life. Gottlieb spends a lot of time with.

[Unknown]

His family, seems to have really good relationships with his kids, even as adults. He milks the goats that they keep.

[David McClarskey]

They're keeping kind of a mini farm out on this compound. And he's really got kind of no.

[Unknown]

Clear path out of this mid level research on pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals.

[David McClarskey]

So again, he's bored, he wants to do something else. And he'll recall in this period of kind of the late 40s that his.

[Unknown]

Old mentor from Wisconsin, Ira Baldwin, had.

[David McClarskey]

Guided other students in the program into this exciting and pretty secretive work during the war. But Gottlieb had been too young to participate in it when he was at Wisconsin. So what was Baldwin doing to answer that question? We kind of need to take a quick trip into Nazi Germany and Imperial.

[Unknown]

Japan of the war to find out.

[David McClarskey]

Because Baldwin is working essentially on the response to the German and Japanese biowarfare programs, toxin programs. These two countries, Germany and Japan, during the war had accumulated massive stores of information on both poisons and mind control.

[Unknown]

Which are going to be two areas of Gottlieb's interest and fascination for the.

[David McClarskey]

Rest of his life.

[Gordon Carrera]

And I guess the key point is that both Japan and Nazi Germany had done some pretty dark things by taking advantage of prisoners to conduct experiments on real people. I mean, we know obviously some of the Nazi stuff is pretty well known, but Japan as well, they'd really been experimenting with what you can do to.

[Unknown]

People under extreme conditions, including the human mind, including with toxins.

[Gordon Carrera]

And I guess the US and the UK had learned about it by the.

[Unknown]

End of the war, by this period.

[David McClarskey]

That's right. So in the camps in, in Nazi Germany, for example, they'd fed mescaline and other psychoactive drugs to concentration camp inmates.

[Unknown]

Did experiment, sort of aimed at finding ways you could control the human mind.

[David McClarskey]

Or shatter the psyche. That kind of experimentation, as you mentioned, you know, you Sort of can't do that in theory. You have to actually do it on people. It's very dark. But there were senior sort of Nazi scientists who after the war knew more than almost anybody about these experiments and sort of the possibilities and limits of controlling the human mind.

[Unknown]

And it's a similar story in Japan.

[David McClarskey]

A lot of experiments had been conducted in occupied Manchuria by a group called unit 731. I mean, it's a really sort of.

[Unknown]

Profoundly disturbing log of experiments that are conducted.

[David McClarskey]

But at the end of the war, Ira Baldwin, this old mentor Sid Gottlieb, had kind of led the US answer.

[Unknown]

To Germany and Japan's biowar programs.

[David McClarskey]

Now, chemical warfare, which had caused maybe.

[Unknown]

A million casualties during the First World.

[David McClarskey]

War, was already very well known and studied. But biological warfare, which had been banned by the Geneva protocols in the 20s.

[Unknown]

Was something very new.

[David McClarskey]

And Baldwin had led the work during.

[Unknown]

The war on whether a country could.

[David McClarskey]

Build at an industrial scale a massive quantity of deadly germs or toxins.

[Unknown]

And he's established what's later going to.

[David McClarskey]

Become the headquarters of the Army's biological warfare labs at Dietrich Field in Maryland. Later this will become Camp Dietrich.

[Unknown]

And scientists there have produced an industrial.

[David McClarskey]

Quantity of sort of anthrax spores.

[Unknown]

They bred mosquitoes infected with yellow fever.

[David McClarskey]

And Gordon, this is for you. They've even developed a pigeon bomb, a bird whose feathers were sort of infected with toxic spores. And for those listening to the pod who are not aware, Gordon is a.

[Unknown]

Pigeon fanatic and lover of those noble birds.

[David McClarskey]

And so I'm going to let him address this.

[Unknown]

I wasn't aware of the toxic pigeon.

[Gordon Carrera]

Because I knew that they tried to.

[Unknown]

Train pigeons to be guided missiles during.

[Gordon Carrera]

The Second World War. But the toxic spore laden pigeon is just another sign of how badly treated these birds are. And it's disappointing, that's all. I'll say that that was happening in the US it is.

[David McClarskey]

This is, this is one of many times in these episodes where Gordon Carrera is going to be very disappointed with what's going on.

[Gordon Carrera]

So maybe there with toxic pigeon. Let's maybe take a break at Camp Dietrich with this sense of what's been going on during the war. And when we come back, we'll look.

[Unknown]

At the start of the Cold War.

[Gordon Carrera]

And how the newly formed CIA gets.

[Unknown]

Into the business of mind control.

[William Dalrymple]

Hello, I'm William Dalrymple.

[Anita Arnand]

And I'm Anita Arnand. And we are the hosts of Empire, also from Goal Hanger.

[William Dalrymple]

And we're here to tell you about our recent miniseries that we've just done on the Troubles.

[Anita Arnand]

In it, we try to get to the very heart of the violent conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the 1960s all the way up to 1998.

[William Dalrymple]

It's something that we both lived through and remember from our childhoods, but younger listeners may not know anything about it. And it's a time when there was division along religious and political lines. Neighbours turned against each other. Residential city streets became battlegrounds. Thousands were killed and the IRA bombed London.

[Anita Arnand]

It seemed as if an end was out of reach. But in 1998, a peace process finally brought those 30 years of violence to an end.

[William Dalrymple]

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In fact, our guest on the miniseries is Patrick Radden Keefe. Now he's the author of the non fiction book that inspired the hit TV drama say Nothing.

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[Anita Arnand]

To hear the full series, just search Empire, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Meghan Trainor]

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[Gordon Carrera]

Welcome back. So we're looking at the CIA and mind control. We've learned a bit about Sid Gottlieb and we've learned a bit about what.

[Unknown]

Happened during the Second World War and.

[Gordon Carrera]

The kind of early days of thinking about experimenting on people. But now, David, we're into the start of the Cold War where the focus really on trying to manipulate people's minds in particular comes into being, doesn't it?

[David McClarskey]

Well, it is in this early period of the Cold War that the CIA starts to think it actually has practical.

[Unknown]

Intelligence to suggest that the Soviet Union or kind of a communist front more generally, is making significant advances on mind control techniques. And there are a number of incidents.

[David McClarskey]

In the late 40s that seem to.

[Unknown]

Add credence to this picture.

[David McClarskey]

And one of the most important is.

[Unknown]

That In February of 1949, the Roman.

[David McClarskey]

Catholic prelate of Hungary kind of appears at a show trial and confesses to some wild charges.

[Unknown]

Things like having Attempted to overthrow the government, steal the royal crown, re establish the Austro Hungarian empire.

[David McClarskey]

Really nutty stuff. Apparently he didn't even recognize his own mother. And CIA officers watching this trial had.

[Unknown]

Focused on the way this guy had behaved and he'd confessed to the crime.

[David McClarskey]

He had obviously hadn't committed these crimes.

[Unknown]

He's totally disoriented, he's speaking in kind.

[David McClarskey]

Of a flat monotone. And it conjures up images for a lot of these CIA guys of Stalin's show trials a decade before where you had defendants that behaved in insane ways who, you know, admitted to crimes or.

[Unknown]

Confessed crimes that they hadn't actually committed.

[David McClarskey]

And the CIA starts to think, well, have these people been drugged or hypnotized? And you go back to the kind of late 19th century it was Russians.

[Unknown]

Who had pioneered this field of behavioral conditioning.

[Gordon Carrera]

Pavlov's dog.

[David McClarskey]

Yeah, salivating at the sound of, of the bell. And surely the CIA thinks the Russians have made some recent advances.

[Gordon Carrera]

And this is a pattern, isn't it?

[Unknown]

And it's a really interesting pattern in.

[Gordon Carrera]

The early Cold War where each side thinks the other side is doing it, whether it's mind control or something else, and therefore we better do it. And I think each side thinks the other has got this kind of possible new technology and therefore they have to push ahead in order to find it. And mind control definitely is one where.

[Unknown]

The CIA does seem to be convinced that the communists have mastered it somehow.

[Gordon Carrera]

Because it's the only way in their mind they can explain some of these strange goings on.

[David McClarskey]

It's playground logic. But I guess you'd say it's playground.

[Unknown]

Logic because it's deeply embedded in us as humans from a very early age that if you think somebody else might.

[David McClarskey]

Be doing something, even if you cannot fully prove it, oftentimes the safest course.

[Unknown]

Of action would be to do that very thing to protect yourself.

[David McClarskey]

And so, you know, the CIA starts to think, well, we need to get something going to counter this. Now I would say in the early years of the Korean War, the intensity of the CIA spheres ratchets up even further because you have captured American POWs who will testify that the US had used bioweapons and germ infected insect bombs. Now none of that's true, but the.

[Unknown]

CIA wonders essentially the same question that.

[David McClarskey]

They had with the Roman Catholic sort of prelate in Hungary or the show trials, which is why are people confessing to things that they haven't committed? Now we're looking at this from the lens of 20, 25 and decades having Passed.

[Unknown]

And we're no longer in kind of.

[David McClarskey]

The absolute hot house of the early Cold War years. But no evidence of any of these kind of more elaborate mind control techniques ever emerged. I mean, it's kind of run of.

[Unknown]

The mill stuff, traditional forms of torture.

[David McClarskey]

And coercion that elicited these confessions.

[Unknown]

But what's so interesting is there's some captured Americans who decide they want to.

[Gordon Carrera]

Stay in North Korea and the only explanation is that they've been brainwashed. It's a really interesting feature that people seem to struggle to believe that people can have changed their views or come to a different set of views unless they were somehow manipulated into do it by some kind of secret program. And that seems to be a theme which is here it gets into that slightly paranoid early Cold War period where you're going to get kind of red scares, a fear that the Soviets are also ahead. They, you know, they get the bomb in 1949, they're moving ahead scientifically. So there's a kind of paranoia which you also see, don't you, in this talk about aliens. And UFO films are also coming out this time where people's minds are being taken over and they look like ordinary Americans, but actually they've been taken over by aliens. And again, it's the idea that people.

[Unknown]

Can be brainwashed and taken over and.

[Gordon Carrera]

That seems to be the only way they can explain some of these things.

[Unknown]

Like they're seeing in North Korea, when as you said, actually the evidence is.

[Gordon Carrera]

These are just people who may be broken down by the pressure of detention often, or that they've come to sometimes, these beliefs genuinely.

[Unknown]

George Blake famously is a British intelligence.

[Gordon Carrera]

Officer who gets captured in Korea and ends up, you know, later being discovered to be a communist. Everyone says, well, he must have been.

[Unknown]

Brainwashed when he was captured in Korea.

[Gordon Carrera]

And actually the evidence is he just.

[Unknown]

Genuinely ideologically became a communist.

[Gordon Carrera]

But people found it easier to explain it by brainwashing.

[Unknown]

It does become a catch all, I.

[David McClarskey]

Think, and it is almost impossible, I think, to overstate the paranoia that was.

[Unknown]

Felt in particular inside institutions such as the CIA in these early years of the Cold War.

[David McClarskey]

I mean, again, listeners in 2025 will sort of look back on this and almost laugh and say, how did you.

[Unknown]

Come to these conclusions?

[David McClarskey]

But what we're describing here, these were not fringe ideas, right? During the early years of the Cold War, this was the base assessment of the CIA and its leadership that the Soviets, Communists more broadly were absolutely working on and developing very powerful mind control techniques. And this is where we talked before the break, about Camp Dietrich. This kind of bio warfare lab after the Second World War ends.

[Unknown]

Now, the US up until 1949, has a nuclear monopoly.

[David McClarskey]

And so Dietrich is kind of a.

[Unknown]

Little bit on the outs here, out.

[David McClarskey]

Of favor, because American policymakers sort of look at biowarfare and say, well, we have nukes. Why would we need any of this? And what's very interesting is that this. This kind of fear of Soviet mind control starts to give the crew at.

[Unknown]

Camp Dietrich a new mission. And a special operations division is set.

[David McClarskey]

Up to establish, really, a study of.

[Unknown]

The coercive use of drugs. You know, could you control someone's mind?

[David McClarskey]

Could you establish a pathway into someone's mind with drugs?

[Unknown]

And a senior official at Camp Dietrich is going to write a very influential report in the late 40s which concludes.

[David McClarskey]

I'll read it.

[Unknown]

I am convinced that it is possible, by means of the techniques of psychochemical warfare, to conquer an enemy without wholesale.

[David McClarskey]

Killing of his people and the mass.

[Unknown]

Destruction of his property.

[David McClarskey]

Now, that report is read by the.

[Unknown]

Head of the CIA at the time.

[David McClarskey]

Who then goes to President Truman to.

[Unknown]

Authorize drug research and give that job to the CIA. And Truman agrees.

And we should say, the CIA has.

[Gordon Carrera]

Just been established, hasn't it? And, I mean, as we've talked about in some of our previous episodes, in some of our original episodes, it's quite a piratical organization this time. It's pretty freewheeling. There's not much in terms of kind of legal or other controls of what it's doing.

[Unknown]

Not much, much oversight.

[Gordon Carrera]

It's kind of given a blank check where it means. It's kind of unleashed into areas which are perhaps, you know, surprising.

[David McClarskey]

Now, looking back, it's two years old in 1949, and sort of behaves that.

[Unknown]

Way in many respects, a toddler. The legal and oversight environment is.

[David McClarskey]

Is nothing like what we have today.

[Unknown]

And the Central Intelligence Agency act of 1949, the CIA is established in 47.

[David McClarskey]

But this act sort of establishes more of the legislative basis for the agency that gave the CIA the ability to.

[Unknown]

Spend unvouchured funds and freed it from.

[David McClarskey]

Disclosing to Congress who its employees were and what they did. So the CIA is operating kind of.

[Unknown]

On an island of its own and.

[David McClarskey]

Has now, in the midst of this incredible, almost panic about Soviet intentions, Communist.

[Unknown]

Intentions, not only just with mind control.

[David McClarskey]

But more broadly, Mao has won the Chinese civil war. You know, in the early 50s, North Korea invades South Korea. There's the Red Scare in the States, and kind of this rise of McCarthyism and it's panic about communists at all levels of government. And in the middle of this, you give this very, as you said, Gordon, piratical organization the mission to go out and really chart the nexus of mind control and covert operations. But I think you can see. And again, bring this to Gottlieb for a second. One of the themes about Sid Gottlieb that is just a feature of his entire life is he is insatiably curious. And I do think if you're giving somebody like that the mission to go out and understand sort of the.

[Unknown]

The promise and perils of mind control.

[David McClarskey]

And how you might apply that into this kind of brand new world of clandestine operations in the early Cold War, what patriotic American wouldn't stand up and join that mission?

[Gordon Carrera]

It depends on what you end up doing, David. I think that's, as we'll discover, it.

[Unknown]

Gets a little bit darker than just.

[Gordon Carrera]

Simply patriotic Americans doing their. Doing their duty. Because the CIA, I guess, is looking for. When we talk about mind control, it's often more about truth serums, isn't it? It's about trying to understand how to break people down so that they will talk to you and either give you the truth or understand what the other side might be doing to try and brainwash people.

[Unknown]

That seems to be the focus of.

[Gordon Carrera]

Some of these original programs that the CIA is working on, isn't it?

[David McClarskey]

The original goal is very much to aid in interrogations, I think we could say. And they're blending the polygraph drugs and hypnotism for use on prisoners in interrogations to extract information from unwilling subjects, to study how you might prevent that extraction from occurring on your own people and really elusively. But, you know, for people like Gottlieb.

[Unknown]

This is kind of the holy grail.

[David McClarskey]

Is could we control somebody's actions?

[Unknown]

Is there a way for us to.

[David McClarskey]

Control the behavior of an individual who does not want to be controlled? There is a lot of focus in.

[Unknown]

These early years on hypnosis. The CIA actually found a stage hypnotist.

[David McClarskey]

In New York who would often have.

[Unknown]

Sex with otherwise unwilling women after placing them in a hypnotic trance, or at least this is what he claimed to the CIA.

[David McClarskey]

And the CIA officers don't do that clear in saying that. But they do bring these techniques back to the CIA. They try to hypnotize their secretaries and.

[Unknown]

Do things like convince them they're on a beach vacation in Florida.

[David McClarskey]

And there's very mixed results in these hypnotic experiments at CIA. No one is actually quite sure if it's working or if the secretaries are sort of humoring them. But there is kind of this, this dip into this world of could we get somebody who might have access to an office or access to secrets or.

[Unknown]

Access to a safe.

[David McClarskey]

Could you hypnotize them and get them to go and collect the secrets for you? Or could you hypnotize someone to go and kill a foreign leader of a.

[Unknown]

Pro communist country or something like that? Right.

[David McClarskey]

These would be the kind of use cases, I think, in Gottlieb's mind And.

[Unknown]

In the CIA's mind in those early years. Yeah.

[Gordon Carrera]

Which of course, the hypnotizing to kill a foreign leader becomes.

[Unknown]

And we'll look at fiction at a later point. But you know, the Manchurian Candidate is the famous notion that you could perhaps.

[Gordon Carrera]

Train people to be hypnotized and then signaled by something and then carry out some dastardly act. So again, you have this kind of.

[Unknown]

Overlap between fact and fiction, which we'll see again and again in this. And so there seems to be a.

[Gordon Carrera]

Lot of experimentation at this early days in the 50s on.

[Unknown]

On that specifically in trying to, to.

[Gordon Carrera]

Work out how to do it well.

[David McClarskey]

And Alan Dulles, whose quote you read at the beginning of this episode, he is brought back to the CIA in early 1951. At that time he's not yet the director, but he's going to manage the agency's covert operations. And he'll note, and he kind of.

[Unknown]

Said this, or alluded to it in.

[David McClarskey]

The quote, Gordon, is that the problem that the CIA has is that, well.

[Unknown]

We can't do a lot of this.

[David McClarskey]

Research in the United States. We cannot or shouldn't be doing a lot of this research on, on Americans. And so the locusts will kind of.

[Unknown]

Shift outside of the States or move.

[David McClarskey]

Outside of the States.

[Unknown]

There's a detention center in West Germany.

[David McClarskey]

Called Camp King that the CIA will send teams to. It becomes kind of a test site for conducting mind control experiments on, you know, defectors or captured prisoners. It's kind of a CIA black site, you might say. It's kind of this spacious and elegant.

[Unknown]

Villa, but in the basement is this.

[David McClarskey]

Complex of bricked in storerooms. It's overseen or managed by CIA officers and a staff doctor named Doc Fischer.

[Unknown]

Who'S a German physician who had been former surgeon general of the Nazi army and a man who had overseen some.

[David McClarskey]

Of those experiments we talked about at concentration camps.

[Unknown]

He'd been captured by the Red army, then taken a professorship in East Germany before he snuck over the border into.

[David McClarskey]

West Germany and He's running, with the sort of help of the CIA, this broader network of prisons in the country where they're doing these kind of Bluebird experiments to understand, basically, what could we get a prisoner to tell us if they don't want to talk?

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, part of that system of using Nazi scientists, which they used in all kinds of areas as well, and similar things, I think, in Japan as well, where they're running these experiments.

[Unknown]

So these are largely outside of the US Though, rather than inside of the.

[Gordon Carrera]

US at this point.

[David McClarskey]

That's right. And I mean, they're doing things like they're subjecting prisoners to hypnosis. They're doing this also, you mentioned, outside the States. They're doing this also in Japan, doing some of these experiments on captured North.

[Unknown]

Korean soldiers, you know, using hypnosis, electroshock. And the goal being to kind of.

[David McClarskey]

Induce violent reactions, put people to sleep, wake them up to see if they can coerce them into providing information that they shouldn't. And if all of this sounds sort of chaotic and disorganized, it's because it is. And one of the major problems that Dulles and the CIA have in these.

[Unknown]

In these years of working on Bluebird.

[David McClarskey]

Is that they don't really have the.

[Unknown]

Scientific expertise necessary to answer any of the questions that they really want to.

[Gordon Carrera]

Answer, which is where someone like Sid.

[Unknown]

Gottlieb might come in, I guess, at.

[Gordon Carrera]

This point, someone who is a chemist and a scientist and, as we said.

[Unknown]

Very curious by his background.

That's right.

[David McClarskey]

So Sid Gottlieb applies for a job to the CIA because, as we mentioned earlier, he wants to serve.

[Unknown]

He missed the war.

[David McClarskey]

I think, in his view, he's got this very interesting profile for the CIA. He's a chemist. Right.

[Unknown]

He's a scientist.

[David McClarskey]

And he's got connections to Ira Baldwin, who helped set up Camp Dietrich. So Gottlieb applies for a job at the CIA.

[Unknown]

He enters on duty on July 13th of 1951.

[David McClarskey]

And thus begins, as Stephen Kinzer says in his book Poisoner in Chief, the.

[Unknown]

Beginning of a career at the bizarre intersection of extreme science and covert action.

[David McClarskey]

And Gottlieb, when he joins it, kind of seems like he was signing up.

[Unknown]

For a new adventure.

[David McClarskey]

Again, we have this kind of wanderlust spirit.

[Unknown]

Right.

[David McClarskey]

So Gottlieb knows they needed a chemist, but that's about it, and said he didn't understand anything else they needed. He would try it for six months and see how it went. And what quickly ends up happening is that he gets thrust into the kind of technical services staff, which at the time at the CIA is very small.

[Unknown]

It's probably a few dozen people.

[David McClarskey]

And this Bluebird project that the TSS staff is involved in is very sprawling, but it's disorganized and lacking complete focus. And Gottlieb is joining in the early years of the Korean War, where, as we mentioned, the fear of communist brainwashing.

[Unknown]

In particular coming out of the Korean.

[David McClarskey]

War is hitting a fever pitch. I mean, there's a New Republic headline from this era, Communist brainwashing, Are we Prepared? And you get references to some of these prisoners essentially having been fed or.

[Unknown]

Given psychoactive drugs to get them to.

[David McClarskey]

Say anti American things or to lie about their experiences.

[Unknown]

So Gottlieb's kind of entering the CIA in the middle of that fever because.

[Gordon Carrera]

No one could understand why anyone would say anything anti American.

[Unknown]

No one can understand.

[Gordon Carrera]

No one could understand it. Unless you've been fed psychotropic drugs. I guess that's the thinking at the time, isn't it?

[David McClarskey]

That's right. It does 70 plus years later seem borderline insane. But many of the things that we're going to talk about in these episodes will sound insane, are insane, and at the time, very, very smart people thought.

[Unknown]

They were absolutely 100 necessary to do, we should say.

[Gordon Carrera]

So Gottlieb joins the CIA at a.

[Unknown]

Newly formed chemical division, which is a.

[Gordon Carrera]

Great, a great title.

[Unknown]

The chemical division inside the technical services.

[David McClarskey]

Staff is what he joins. And Gottlieb, we should say, is joining a CIA that in that era was.

[Unknown]

Pale, male and Yale, for the most part.

[David McClarskey]

And Gottlieb is a fish out of water. Right. We'd argue that he's pale and male, but he's not, definitely not Yale. And he's Jewish, which is a bit out of step for the kind of.

[Unknown]

Patricians of the CIA in that era.

[David McClarskey]

He's not Ivy League educated.

[Unknown]

He went to City College and then.

[David McClarskey]

He went to the University of Wisconsin. So he's kind of this outsider on the inside. And I mean, even things like he's living out in that cabin right, in Vienna, Virginia, he's growing much of his own food and then like bringing it in for lunches. So it does sort of beg this question of why in the world Allen Dulles picks Gottlieb. And one theory which I think is plausible is that Dulles, and this is true, also had a club foot, which I did not know about. Allen Dulles, he had one operation to fix it. But both Dulles and Gottlieb wore prosthetic Shoes. For most of their lives, there would have been, like, a little bit of a limp.

[Unknown]

They probably never talked about this, I'm gonna guess.

[David McClarskey]

I bet there were not many clubfoot support groups at CIA at the time, but it becomes a kind of potentially.

[Unknown]

A bond between the two of them.

[Gordon Carrera]

It's an interesting question, I suppose, because it's hard to understand otherwise, isn't it.

[Unknown]

How Gottlieb fits in in that world.

[David McClarskey]

Yeah, but inside the chemical division at that point, there are a very small, you know, handful of people. Right. So he's. He's clearly an expert. Right. Kinser wrote in his book, over the.

[Unknown]

Next decade, they would stumble together through undiscovered frontiers.

[David McClarskey]

So the two of them, I think.

[Unknown]

Do hit it off.

[David McClarskey]

And Dulles is going to become a patron of Got Leaves and promoter of Gottlieb's work for the remainder of Sid Gottlieb's career. Now, in this period, Bluebird becomes Artichoke. Now that takes on a new. A new codename. Supposedly, Artichokes Were Dulles his favorite vegetable. There's also a theory that it was.

[Unknown]

Named for a murderous New York gangster.

[David McClarskey]

Known as the Artichoke King.

[Unknown]

It also could.

[David McClarskey]

Really? Yes, really. But it was changed because at this.

[Unknown]

Stage, the CIA was letting the military.

[David McClarskey]

In on Bluebird, and the Navy already had a Project Bluebird going, so they.

[Unknown]

They changed the name.

[David McClarskey]

Now, for reasons that we'll come to later, but will undoubtedly be obvious to many listeners right now, is that little is known about the operations and experiments.

[Unknown]

Carried out under Artichoke. Mysteriously, not many documents have survived, but the goals of this project are very, very similar. And Gottlieb will later say Artichoke was.

[David McClarskey]

Really all about how would we interrogate.

[Unknown]

Someone who's hostile and wants to withhold information?

[Gordon Carrera]

How to break them?

[Unknown]

How do you break somebody? Right.

[David McClarskey]

I mean, it's really brutal stuff. The directives to the Artichoke teams are, you know, they're carrying out these interrogations in safe houses.

[Unknown]

This could be, again, in Germany or Japan.

[David McClarskey]

It could be prisoners. It could be defectors. And they had to have bathroom facilities.

[Unknown]

Because occasionally the artichoke techniques produce nausea, vomiting, or other conditions which, quote, made bathroom facilities essential. And the scope is, again, very broad.

[David McClarskey]

They're looking at new chemicals and drugs. How do you deliver them? Things like the effects of, like, high.

[Unknown]

And low pressure on humans.

[David McClarskey]

Effect of sound vibrations, ultra high frequency. They're also looking at things like bacteria, fungi, poisons, plant cultures that can produce high fevers, electroshock, hypnosis, whether electronically induced.

[Unknown]

Sleep could be used as a means.

[David McClarskey]

For gaining control of an individual.

[Unknown]

The Agency drew the line, though, Gordon.

[David McClarskey]

You'Ll be pleased to know, at lobotomies as a measure for use in operations somewhere.

[Unknown]

The rest of it.

[Gordon Carrera]

It does sound like torture, though, basically.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[David McClarskey]

I mean, it's basically medical torture. That's what we're talking about. And by the 1950s, we have artichoke.

[Unknown]

Teams that are out in West Germany.

[David McClarskey]

And France and Japan and South Korea. Sometimes they would be sent out at the request of a CIA station, a local station, to deal with a prisoner. At others, they might want to test a new technique or chemical and kind of put out a call if there were available subjects. And in sometimes. I mean, quite darkly, in coded language, there would be messages in these cables about whether body disposal would be required. So you kind of see this connection right off the bat, before we even.

[Unknown]

Get into the much more sprawling world.

[David McClarskey]

Of MK Ultra, that this nexus of kind of mind control and drugs in.

[Unknown]

Particular, but also all other manner of.

[David McClarskey]

Kind of coercive techniques. It's really dark stuff really quickly.

[Unknown]

And there with Sidney Gottlieb now inside.

[Gordon Carrera]

The CIA at Langley, let's stop.

[Unknown]

And then next time, we'll look at.

[Gordon Carrera]

How this world shifts into the realm of drugs and particularly LSD and its.

[Unknown]

Role in trying to control the human mind.

[Gordon Carrera]

We'll see you next time.

[David McClarskey]

We'll see you next time.