38. CIA Mind Control: America’s Secret Cartel (Ep 4)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Classified – Episode 38: "CIA Mind Control: America’s Secret Cartel"

Introduction to MKUltra and Sidney Gottlieb (00:02 – 01:31)

In this riveting episode of The Rest Is Classified, hosts David McCloskey and Gordon Corera delve deep into the clandestine operations of the CIA’s MKUltra program, exploring its origins, execution, and lasting impact on both intelligence operations and popular culture. The episode opens with a brief historical setting, introducing Sidney Gottlieb, the mastermind behind MKUltra. Gottlieb's 1977 Senate testimony is highlighted, where he emphasizes the "threat of the magnitude of national survival" posed by adversaries possessing unknown mind control capabilities ([00:21] - Gordon Corera).

Influence of Popular Culture on MKUltra (01:31 – 08:08)

McCloskey and Corera examine the symbiotic relationship between MKUltra and the burgeoning realm of science fiction and popular media during the mid-20th century. Gottlieb acknowledges that films like Gaslight (1944) and novels such as The Manchurian Candidate (1959) not only reflected contemporary fears of mind control but also inspired the CIA’s real-life experiments. As Corera aptly puts it, “the same kind of thing with MKUltra, where people are seeing things in popular culture and going, well, we must be able to do that” ([03:07] - Gordon Corera). This interplay fueled both the agency's ambitions and the public’s imagination regarding mind manipulation.

MKUltra's Impact on 60s Counterculture (08:08 – 18:52)

The hosts trace how MKUltra inadvertently propelled the 1960s counterculture movement. By supplying LSD through clandestine channels, the CIA unintentionally became the "original dealer of LSD in the United States," leading to widespread recreational use and the emergence of iconic figures influenced by the drug. Corera remarks on this irony, stating, “It's deeply ironic, isn't it, that the kind of button-down organization the CIA is, having fueled it, the CIA having done more than perhaps anyone else to provide the means for people to tune in and drop out” ([12:48] - Gordon Corera). Prominent personalities, including John Lennon, benefitted from CIA-supplied LSD, reshaping societal norms and sparking movements that emphasized personal freedom and consciousness expansion.

Decline and Destruction of MKUltra Documents (18:52 – 27:44)

As the 1970s dawned, MKUltra began to unravel amidst growing skepticism and governmental scrutiny. In January 1973, Gottlieb and then-CIA Director Richard Helms made the controversial decision to destroy MKUltra records to prevent public exposure. Gottlieb narrates the gravity of this action, “the order … to destroy a bunch of these MKUltra files” ([24:07] - Sidney Gottlieb). This cover-up effort ultimately failed as Congressional investigations, particularly the Church Committee, sought transparency regarding the agency's covert activities. By June 1973, Gottlieb retired, his legacy tainted by the program’s notorious reputation, yet paradoxically awarded the CIA’s highest honor, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal ([25:30] - Gordon Corera).

Gottlieb's Retirement and Later Life (27:44 – 34:05)

Post-retirement, Gottlieb sought solace in a humble, eco-friendly lifestyle, embodying the very counterculture he inadvertently influenced. Settling into a solar-powered home in Virginia, he engaged in community service as a speech pathologist and immersed himself in spirituality and nature. Despite his attempts to distance himself from his past, Gottlieb's involvement in MKUltra kept pulling him back into the spotlight. The Olson family’s lawsuit against the CIA and subsequent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests further exposed the depths of MKUltra’s unethical experiments, forcing Gottlieb to testify under a pseudonym, Joseph Scheider ([28:07] - Sidney Gottlieb).

Revelations and Legacy of MKUltra (34:05 – 38:42)

As documents emerged, the public became more aware of MKUltra’s extensive reach, encompassing 149 sub-projects, spanning 80 institutions, and involving colleges, prisons, and hospitals. The hosts discuss the profound ethical breaches and the program’s eventual dissolution by 1963. Gottlieb’s dual identity—as both a CIA operative and a community-focused retiree—underscores the complex legacy of MKUltra. Corera reflects, “MK Ultra, as we discussed, was itself influenced by this wave of fiction, film… MK ULTRA itself is kind of fueling a new wave of conspiracy” ([37:58] - Gordon Corera). The episode emphasizes that MKUltra was not an isolated aberration but part of a longstanding struggle over cognitive control and manipulation.

Modern Reflections on MKUltra and Mind Control (38:42 – End)

Concluding the episode, McCloskey and Corera explore the enduring fascination with mind control and its modern manifestations. They draw parallels between MKUltra’s ambitions and contemporary concerns over algorithmic manipulation, cognitive biometrics, and social media’s influence on public perception. As Corera notes, “the human brain being at the center of conflict, of warfare, of intelligence work” remains a pertinent issue today, albeit through different technological avenues ([39:33] - Gordon Corera). The discussion also touches on the resurgence of interest in psychedelics for mental health and wellness, contrasting their therapeutic applications with their historical use in mind control experiments.

Notable Quotes:

• Gordon Corera (00:51): “Extremely difficult, extremely sensitive, but above all to be very urgent and important.”
• Sidney Gottlieb (01:27): “Threat of the magnitude of national survival.”
• Gordon Corera (03:07): “People are seeing things in popular culture and going, well, we must be able to do that.”
• Gordon Corera (12:48): “Having fueled it, the CIA having done more than perhaps anyone else to provide the means for people to tune in and drop out.”
• Sidney Gottlieb (24:07): “All of a sudden you want all these boxes incinerated.”
• Gordon Corera (37:58): “MK ULTRA itself is kind of fueling a new wave of conspiracy.”
• Gordon Corera (39:33): “The human brain being at the center of conflict, of warfare, of intelligence work.”

Conclusion:

Episode 38 of The Rest Is Classified provides a comprehensive and engaging exploration of MKUltra, meticulously tracing its inception, operational complexities, cultural intersections, and enduring legacy. Through insightful discussions and compelling narratives, McCloskey and Corera illuminate the shadowy corridors of CIA operations and their ripple effects across society. This episode not only sheds light on historical events but also prompts listeners to reflect on contemporary issues surrounding cognitive manipulation and the ethical boundaries of intelligence work.

Transcript

[Meghan Trainor]

Meghan Trainor, Laundry retrainer.

Meghan Trainor. You're tossing out my gunky laundry detergent bottle.

[Gordon Carrera]

Ooey.

[Meghan Trainor]

It's got that booty, that juicy boom boom.

That gunk, that alive arm and hammer power sheets. Toss like this.

Cause I toss like this. I wash like this. It's a no mess. Laundry blaze arm and hammer power sheets. More power to.

[Gordon Carrera]

I would like this committee to know that I considered all this work at the time it was done and in the context of circumstances that were extant in that period to be extremely unpleasant.

[David McCloskey]

Extremely difficult, extremely sensitive, but above all to be very urgent and important. I realised that it's difficult to reconstruct.

[Gordon Carrera]

Those times and that atmosphere today in this room. The feeling that we had was that.

[David McCloskey]

There was a real possibility that potential enemies, those enemies that were showing specific.

[Gordon Carrera]

Aggressive intentions at that time, possess capabilities in this field that we knew nothing about. And the possession of those capabilities, possible possession, combined with our own ignorance about it, seemed to us to pose a.

[David McCloskey]

Threat of the magnitude of national survival.

[Gordon Carrera]

Welcome to the Rest is classified. I'm Gordon Carrera.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And I'm David McCloskey.

[David McCloskey]

And that was Sidney Gottlieb in testimony to the senate committee in 1977.

[Gordon Carrera]

And we've been looking at the story of Sidney Gottlieb and the MKUltra program.

[David McCloskey]

The CIA's quest to control the human mind.

[Gordon Carrera]

Dark, weird, crazy, bizarre. We're gonna look, particularly in this last episode, I guess, at the legacy of MKUltra, how it comes out in the public, but also how it shapes popular culture. And it's shaped in some ways by popular culture as well, isn't it, David?

[Unknown]

Well, that's right.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And you know, we've spent three episodes now sort of going deeper and deeper into the dark world of MK ultra. And it's now easy to sort of look back in horror, not only at the ethics, but to see the quest.

[Unknown]

As sort of a fantasy, right?

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And one thing that we haven't talked much about, and I think it's helpful to kind of set up the end game of MK ULTRA and how it eventually comes to light is the idea that you could control someone's mind, which Gottlieb was on a quest for that power. It's also coming to him and sort.

[Unknown]

Of infusing him and the team around.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Him from outside, from popular culture itself, right? And from film fiction, comic books.

[Unknown]

All of this content that's being produced in kind of the 40s and 50s.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Is having its own effect inside the.

[Unknown]

CIA itself, which really is every Spy, author's dream.

[Gordon Carrera]

Gordon, you get that, don't you, with James Bond and Ian Fleming in that people go to CIA people and say, can you do this? Like, you know, can you create a gadget like in the James Bond movies? So it's the same kind of thing with MK Ultra, isn't it? Where people are. Are seeing things in popular culture and going, well, we must be able to do that, or can they do that? Therefore, we must be able to do it. So there is this bit where a lot of these ideas about science and about the human mind are out there in popular culture in this period, aren't they? And they're feeding then into the CIA and what it's trying to do.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I mean, to take one example, Gordon, the film Gaslight, which comes out in 1944, it's the origin of the word gaslighting features. Ingrid Bergman, I believe, won an Academy Award for her role portraying a woman.

[Unknown]

Whose husband more or less takes control.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Of her mind through what Gottlieb would.

[Unknown]

Have called sensory deprivation.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

In the Zeitgeist is this idea that a human can control another human's mind.

[Unknown]

Control their decision making.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Right. And the big one, 1959, the Manchurian candidate, a book that comes out in the States.

[Unknown]

MK ULTRA is in full swing at.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

This point in time.

[Unknown]

And it's about an infantry platoon fighting.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

In Korea where they're captured, they're taken to a lab where communist scientists are.

[Unknown]

Conducting mind control experiments.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And the soldiers are essentially reprogrammed to.

[Unknown]

Believe that their sergeants saved their lives during combat.

[Gordon Carrera]

For my dedicated research to this pod, I watched the film version of this.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Oh, that's dedication, Gordon.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's dedication. I'm willing to watch films for the sake of the podcast which has got Frank sinatra in it.

[David McCloskey]

1962.

[Gordon Carrera]

And it is still a great movie in which he is working out that one of his fellow soldiers has been reprogrammed by this weird collection of kind of communist scientists to be effectively turned into an assassin. And he's told to play solitaire when he sees the Queen of Diamonds. He is then able to be suggested to any kind of course of action, including in this case, killing a presidential candidate. It's all very, very strange, but very watchable and it still stands up as a great film. And Frank Sinatra is pretty good in it. But it's also bizarre because it comes out in 1960, I think the film.

[Unknown]

The book was out in 59, so.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

It'S right in the MK Ultra era.

[David McCloskey]

And then 63, Kennedy gets assassinated by a Gunman. So you can see in this period.

[Gordon Carrera]

At the time, it's playing into this world where people asking, well, could someone be reprogrammed into being an assassin? And you can see how this takes.

[David McCloskey]

Off in popular culture and in the popular mythology.

[Gordon Carrera]

And it's also this, this wider understanding of brainwashing, isn't it? Which is sci fi is getting big in the 50s. The aliens can come and take over your mind. And I always remember that theory, which is that this is all really the fear of communists through this period in the 50s, which is the idea that the communists can reprogram people's brains. You might not even be able to tell that they've been reprogrammed and they're an alien communist. But it's in the Zeitgeist at this period, isn't it? The idea of being able to control.

[David McCloskey]

The human mind and not know about.

[Gordon Carrera]

It and do it for dark purposes.

[Unknown]

It is exactly the thing that Gottlieb feared, right? That the plot of that novel and.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Movie communist led is exactly the thing.

[Unknown]

That Gottlieb is trying to defend against.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And it's also exactly the thing that.

[Unknown]

He is trying to possess.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Exactly, is the ability to control someone else's mind.

[Unknown]

Show them the Queen of Diamonds and.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Then all of a sudden they'll do anything for you. You mentioned sci fi, Gordon. I mean, pulp kind of sci fi.

[Unknown]

In this period has some great examples.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Of the same, the Zeitgeist filtering into a different genre. There's a 1952 novella called the Brain.

[Unknown]

Stealers of Mars, which is a great title.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I'm going to try to steal that title for a book. It was a quote in there.

[Unknown]

That old bird just opened up my neck and poured a new set of brains in.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And that is exactly what Gottlieb was trying to do, is pour a new.

[Unknown]

Set of brains into somebody, right through.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Psychic driving or de patterning or lsd, whatever the pathway was, to kind of get that control. There is just an absolute public fascination in this period with brainwashing.

[David McCloskey]

The great British novel and then film.

[Gordon Carrera]

Of this is the Ipcress file, which is 1962, in which people are being kidnapped by Soviet agents and they are subject to that psychic driving process we talked about in the last episode, in which people are broken down by audio messages being repeatedly prayed into their brains to allow them to be turned into kind of malleable agents. And Ipcres stands for the induction of psychoneurosis by conditioned reflex with stress.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Could have been a Dr. Cameron paper.

[Gordon Carrera]

Dr. Cameron figure is almost there. And then the great film with Michael Caine comes out in 1965 with the slightly crazy sound effects and you're getting into the 60s, slightly hallucinogenic feel to the film as well. So it's very much into the popular culture, isn't it?

[David McCloskey]

This idea of mind control, it even.

[Gordon Carrera]

Though as we've established previously, it doesn't.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Really work well, that's the crazy thing is that I think as the idea in the popular culture, the fear is beginning to take hold that the communists have some mind control capability and could use it. You see that reflected in the Manchurian Candidate. Ironically, this is exactly the period in.

[Unknown]

The kind of the late 50s and.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Early 60s where Gottlieb is starting to.

[Unknown]

Become convinced that it's actually not possible.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And a CIA psychologist who worked with Ghalib said later, you know, the Manchurian.

[Unknown]

Candidate as a movie really set us.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Back a long time because it made.

[Unknown]

Something impossible look plausible.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

You could almost draw a line from Brave New world in the 1930s to MK Ultra to the Ipkris file.

[Unknown]

There's a weird ping ponging effect between.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

National security work, spy agencies and film and TV that ideas go both directions.

[Gordon Carrera]

So popular culture is influencing MK ULTRA by making people think we want to be able to do that. But in turn MK ULTRA is going to in an amazing way seep out.

[David McCloskey]

Into popular culture and shape the popular.

[Gordon Carrera]

Culture of the 60s. And that's because of this role that LSD is going to play and the CIA is going to play as the progenitor, the dealer of helping spread lsd. I mean, is that going too far to say? CIA was behind the emergence of counterculture and hippie dom in the 60s? Maybe that's going a little bit far.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

But I don't think so. It certainly contributed by being essentially the Heisenberg. The CIA is the original dealer of.

[Unknown]

LSD in the United States. The CIA incubates it.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I guess it's kind of a lab leak, Gordon, you could say, where the CIA has LSD and supplies LSD for.

[Unknown]

MK Ultra experiments through these kind of subcontracting partners.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Right. And let's take Dr. Harold Abramson.

[Unknown]

He's the psychiatrist seen by Frank Olson.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

In New York before Frank Olson jumps out the window of his hotel.

[Unknown]

So he's got access to this LSD.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Supply and is researching it.

[Unknown]

And he would throw dinner parties where.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

He would serve a meal and then he would give everyone a drink that.

[Unknown]

Contained 40 micrograms of LSD. Time magazine is reporting on this in 1955.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I mean by the late 50s LSD has become kind of the rage in.

[Unknown]

New York high society.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And it's getting out in large part because of these CIA subcontractors and the CIA supported supply that then starts to.

[Unknown]

Come into the market from Eli Lilly. And I say market, not like they were selling it commercially, but it's again coming through these kind of CIA tentacles and networks out into kind of popular high society. Cary Grant, the actor gave a series of interviews to a Hollywood gossip columnist and another one to look magazine that.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Became this kind of glowing profile headlined.

[Unknown]

Curious Story behind the New Cary Grant. And Cary Grant took LSD more than 60 times.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

He said he had found a second.

[Unknown]

Youth and come close to happiness for.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

The first time in his life. And so you start to have these kind of, I guess you'd say today be equivalent of like influencers, elites, celebrities who start to tout the benefits of lsd. And the researchers that the CIA puts LSD in the hands of are really very lax in controlling the drug. And so it starts to get out there. It gets out through research institutions that.

[Unknown]

Again are taking MK Ultra money. And then it gets out to elite groups at universities really on both coasts. And from there it gets into the.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Student population because you actually, you have.

[Unknown]

Professors and researchers and teachers who are.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Making it available in some capacity to their students. So the CIA is kind of the.

[Unknown]

Original dealer for LSD in the United States.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And I mean John Lennon, Gordon, this is quote from John Lennon is absolutely remarkable. He said we must always remember to thank the CIA and the army for lsd. That's what people forget. Everything is the opposite of what it is, isn't it? So get out of the bottle boy and relax.

[Unknown]

They invented LSD to control people and.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

What they did was give us freedom. So people who sort of formed the backbone of elite society and eventually the counterculture in the 60s get access to this through the CIA.

[Gordon Carrera]

I mean it's deeply ironic, isn't it, that the kind of button down organization the CIA there, if you think about it, kind of trying to fight against if you like, the counterculture. And yet there it is having fueled it, the CIA having done more than perhaps anyone else to provide the means for people to tune in and drop out. And I, I know people who aren't.

[David McCloskey]

Watching the video that you've got your.

[Gordon Carrera]

Tie, dye T shirt and your, your, your tinted shades on. That's right, in honor of being a.

[Unknown]

I've been eating strange brownies for most.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Of this episode just in honor of.

[Gordon Carrera]

The CIA's role and your predecessor's role in spreading the counterculture. And everyone can thank them for it.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I'm a company man at heart, Gordon. Okay. I'm just trying to get back to my roots. I mean, some notable people who received LLSD from the CIA, although they didn't know at the time they were getting it from the CIA. A student who took LSD for the first time, Ken Kessie, author of One.

[Unknown]

Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

That came from the CA.

[Unknown]

Grateful Dead tours, Gordon.

Were of course just a traveling LSD.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Fest for the most part. And many of the band's lyrics were written by a poet who credited LSD for his inspiration. Right. And who, like the author of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, first tried LSD as a volunteer at a research project that had been covertly financed by.

[Unknown]

Sitt Gottlieb and MK Ultra.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I mean, even Allen Ginsberg discovered LSD.

[Unknown]

Through the MK Ultra experiments. And he volunteered to become an experimental.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Subject at Stanford University where there were.

[Unknown]

Two psychologists who were secretly working for.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

The CIA on an MK Ultra sub project.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Sidney Gottlieb]

So you have a lot of notable people who got their first hits of this thing because the CIA made it possible.

[David McCloskey]

It is wild.

[Gordon Carrera]

Let's go back to Sid Gottlieb and maybe finish his story as well, because he also ends up strangely part of this counterculture. He becomes a bit of a hippie, which I also find bizarre. I mean, maybe not so bizarre when you think of the kind of person he was. But he tunes in and drops out, doesn't he? As MK Ultra ends, he goes lives on the farm.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

If your mental image, as we've been doing the series of Sid Gottlieb is some kind of mad scientist, you're not right? Because you should actually think about Sid Gottlieb as wearing Birkenstocks and milking his own goats, eating his own food that he's grown. Sid Gottlieb is shopping at Whole Foods. If he existed today, he would have long hair. He'd be wearing the tie dye shirt that Gordon claims that I'm wearing, and he would have Birkenstock sandals on. He's way outside of the US suburban.

[Unknown]

Mainstream in this period.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

He's cultivating his spirituality, trying to live closer to nature. He's a mystic in a lot of ways, Gordon, and.

[Unknown]

And he's trying to discover the secrets of the universe through MK Ultra.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

But he's not a button down kind of guy.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Gordon Carrera]

And we should say MK Ultra, which started in 53. As we said, it didn't really work.

[David McCloskey]

So by the end of the 50s.

[Gordon Carrera]

It'S starting to run down, isn't it? And by the 60s, it's. It's over. Yeah.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And Gottlieb, I think in this later period he gets restless. By the late 50s, you know, MK Ultra at that point is in full swing. But he actually applies and is accepted.

[Unknown]

To become a case officer overseas to.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Do a tour as just a proper sort of collector of foreign intelligence. And he's accepted in Munich. Not much is known about his work in Germany. He's there for two years, but he's really not seems day to day running MK Ultra in that period. And from a character standpoint, you kind of look at this and say Gottlieb.

[Unknown]

Is becoming a company man.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

You know, he's taking a new job because I think he is a wanderlust, but also because I think he senses that as a scientist in an organization that's really run by the case officers, he wants to get that experience to see if he likes it, but also to, I think, position himself for the longer term at CIA. And I think it works because he comes back from Germany in 59 and.

[Unknown]

One of his kind of primary patrons, guy named Richard Helms, who will go.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

On to run the agency, is running the Directorate of Operations at the time. And Gottlieb is promoted, so he becomes the deputy chief of the Technical Services Division.

[Unknown]

So he had been running the chemical division before his tour in Germany.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Now he's the deputy chief of the.

[Unknown]

Whole Technical Services piece of CIA. And it has expanded massively in the 50s. And this organization is not just running MKUltra. I mean, MK Ultra is probably one.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Minor slice of what the Technical Services Division is doing.

[Unknown]

It has hundreds of people working on essentially the CIA's gadgetry, right?

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Cameras, graphology, disguise. And he's got a lot more, a.

[Unknown]

Lot more on his plate.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And so, you know, I think again, MK Ultra starts in 53. By 63 it's done, but it's starting to wind down. Even in the early 60s it had.

[Unknown]

Included 149 sub projects over its 10 years, spent $10 million at 80 institutions.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Including three prisons, 12 hospitals, 15 research institutes and 44 colleges and universities. And it's by 63 all wound down.

[Unknown]

All those safe houses and brothels and.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

All of those grants are closed.

[Unknown]

And by 63, Gottlieb is spending his time on other responsibilities inside that Technical Services division.

[Gordon Carrera]

And he's spending his time with the.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Family, gardening, you know, making homemade bread.

[Unknown]

Taking sailing lessons and Swimming.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

You know, we had mentioned, I think in the first episode, he owned this kind of very rustic cabin in Vienna, Virginia.

[Unknown]

They actually, the family expands, the cabin.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Gets some more space, they build a swimming pool. So he's got a very happy family.

[Unknown]

Life in this period, it seems.

[Gordon Carrera]

So there with Gottlieb probably thinking this.

[David McCloskey]

Is all in the past.

[Gordon Carrera]

MKUltra and it's a locked box. He's going to discover though that it's going to suddenly be cracked open in a few years time. So let's take a break and when we come back, we'll look at how MKUltra finally comes to light and what its final legacy is.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

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[Gordon Carrera]

Welcome back. So we left Sidney Gottlieb living on the farm, eating raw vegetables, thinking MK ULTRA was the past, locked away. But David, it's gonna all come out.

[David McCloskey]

Into the light, isn't it, in the 1970s.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Well, and in early 73, again, we're gonna have the nexus of MK Ultra.

[Unknown]

And Watergate here, because in early 73.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Gordon Richard Helms, who at that point.

[Unknown]

Is the CIA director and one of.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Sidney Gottlieb's biggest fans, is fired by Nixon when the Watergate scandal breaks, which again, that'll be a story that we cover on a later episode on this pod because it's worthy of one on its own. But the essential outline is that Helms.

[Unknown]

Refused to help Nixon in the COVID up. And so Helms gets booted.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Now, with Helms fired, he and Sidney Gottlieb make the very sensible decision to.

[Unknown]

Destroy all of the records associated with MK Ultra.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And the exact tenor of that conversation is a bit unclear. But a CIA psychologist who had access to both guys around this time has maintained that Gottlieb told Helms, let this die with us.

[Unknown]

And Helms agreed and responded, it was our bath. Let us clean the tub.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

So there's an order actually given from.

[Unknown]

Helms out to the Record center that the CIA at the time maintained out.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

In Warrenton, Virginia, and it is an.

[Unknown]

Order to destroy a bunch of these MK Ultra documents.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Now, the records People didn't want to do this. And there actually was some back and forth and, you know, I think obviously they felt like this, this did not seem appropriate. Right. It's a cover up, like this guy's.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And all of a sudden you want all these boxes incinerated.

[Unknown]

Gottlieb personally drives out to the Record.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Center to present the order from helms. And on January 30th of 1973, the.

[Unknown]

Boxes of MK Ultra files are incinerated.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And Gottlieb does the same with the files in his office safe as a secretary. Destroy those files. Now there's a new Director of Central Intelligence who's brought in, comes in to clean house. And so Gottlieb at this point is.

[Unknown]

Kind of a marked man. And I think he's marked in three ways.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

One is he's a Helms protege. Helms is gone. Two, Gottlieb is absolutely notorious for MK Ultra, which is no longer well thought.

[Unknown]

Of at this point because it had been a failure and illegal.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And Gottlieb is inside the Technical Services Division and the Technical Services Division for reasons we'll go into much more detail in. And that Watergate pod was connected to the Watergate break in. So Gottlieb, for Those kind of three strikes, he's pushed out.

[Unknown]

He retires on 30 June 1973.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Before departing, he is awarded one of.

[Unknown]

The agency's highest honors, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

The citation that accompanies that. Gordon has still not been declassified, but he received the award, quote, for performance.

[Unknown]

Of outstanding services or for achievement of a distinctly exceptional nature.

[Gordon Carrera]

And he's only 55. So he goes back onto the farm, although they go to the farm. But then he travels the world. It's a fascinating period, isn't it? He goes to Australia, Africa, India, working.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

At a leper colony.

[Gordon Carrera]

Element of atonement, do you think, in his later life for what he's done? He does some interesting work, doesn't he, with children and other things. And you do kind of wonder if this is a man who knows he's done some dark things and needs to repent or atone for it.

[Unknown]

I'll offer my hot take on this.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I mean, the, the biographies of Gottlieb, I think, do directly connect his desire to spend his retirement kind of really.

[Unknown]

In service to his fellow man.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And I think there's no question that when he looked back on MK Ultra, he didn't look back fondly on much of what happened. I think the atonement bit is Overplayed here. I think that he, prior to MK.

[Unknown]

Ultra, had shown that he was an absolute wanderlust.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I think this kind of hippie counterculture thing is very much in the water.

[Unknown]

I mean, at this point it's the 70s, right?

[Sidney Gottlieb]

So I think the atonement bit is.

[Unknown]

Kind of overplayed, to be honest with you.

[Gordon Carrera]

But his quiet retirement is not going to last long, is it? Because by the mid-70s, you've got a very interesting period in which some of the CIA's dirty laundry is going to be exposed for lots of reasons to do with spying on anti war activists, the legacy of Watergate, all these things. So you get congressional committees which are investigating the CIA. This is the famous Church pike committees, which are going through the CIA's dirty laundry and just putting it all out into the public. And that is going to include MKUltra and Gottlieb himself.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Well, and so Gottlieb is actually called back to testify. So he's in India when his name.

[Unknown]

In the public domain essentially becomes attached to MK Ultra. And he and his wife Margaret are.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Just about to begin a bus tour.

[Unknown]

Of the Middle east when he is summoned back to testify on the Hill.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And of course, you know, he gets connected with a lawyer right away and he, he demands and receives immunity from prosecution as long as he testifies. And In October of 1975, he begins answering questions.

[Unknown]

He provides 40 hours of testimony in.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

A skiff, secure compartment and information facility. So basically a place that's been scanned for bugs and things like that does that on Capitol Hill.

[Unknown]

Much of it is on MK Ultra, although he also has, and I'm sure.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

We'Ll cover this in later pods too. I mean, he's got a set of side projects, I guess you'd say, that deal with poisons. Right. So that is also covered. And this hearing in 1975 is really.

[Unknown]

The first of several public testimonies that he'll provide.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And for many of the questions, Golly.

[Unknown]

Basically says, I don't remember the classic response.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

The answers are so vague as to.

[Unknown]

Almost be useless in many cases.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I mean, his lawyer secures a deal.

[Unknown]

To keep Gottlieb's name out of the.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Official record and he's gonna be identified.

[Unknown]

By a pseudonym in this Hill hearing.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Joseph Scheider, he chose Gottlieb, chose that name. And just remember that because we'll come back to it at the very end.

[Unknown]

So eventually all of this just starts.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

To come out into the public domain. At that point when he's testifying, his name has not yet appeared in the papers. Eventually the New York Times is going to run a story describing Gottlieb as.

[Unknown]

Chief of the CIA's testing of LSD.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

They print his picture, by the way, in that picture, which is one of the few pictures of him that actually exists, kind of looks like a distinguished older man. He looks like a professor or someone who runs a bank. The Olson family is going to end.

[Unknown]

Up filing a suit against the CIA.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

There's a blitz of FOIA requests.

[Gordon Carrera]

Freedom of Information Act. Yeah, yeah.

[Unknown]

That bring thousands of pages of MK Ultra records into the public domain. Eventually a book is going to come out in the late 70s on the CIA's quest for mind control.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

So Gottlieb, amid all of this, you know, he and his wife, they retired first to Northern California.

[Unknown]

Gottlieb actually gets a master's in speech therapy.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Now, remember, he has a pretty pronounced.

[Unknown]

Especially when he's under stress, a pretty pronounced stutter. So he actually gets a master's in.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Speech therapy to be able to actually teach it in schools. They go back to Virginia, settle there, and again, this is where the hippiness comes in.

[Unknown]

They build a 5,000 square foot sort.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Of eco home, solar powered home in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains. And he's also really involved in the community. You know, he's again, he's volunteering in local middle and high schools as a speech pathologist. He does get a visit from the Olson family.

[Unknown]

They come to see him and ask questions.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And Gottlieb talks to them about Frank Olson. And Gottlieb says, and I think this is true, I think he says that.

[Unknown]

Frank Olson was given LSD to see.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

What would happen if one of our.

[Unknown]

Scientists was captured and then interrogated. Right.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And this meeting with Ghalib apparently is where Olson's son Eric is going to.

[Unknown]

Come away convinced that his father was.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Murdered by the CIA. And Gottlieb's last days, he's piled on with legal trouble. There's lawsuits that are being brought pretty regularly against the CIA by people who.

[Unknown]

Had unwittingly participated in MK Ultra experiments by Dr. Cameron's patients in Canada. It all gets settled out of court.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

But, you know, I think there's a lot of legal trouble that he finds.

[Unknown]

Himself in in his later years.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And then March of 1999, he dies, age 80 from pneumonia and congestive heart failure. And the obituaries Gordon, on Gottlieb are.

[Unknown]

Fascinating because every single one of them.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I think, really tries to grapple with this contradiction between the granola crunching, speech.

[Unknown]

Pathologist who's volunteering in the local community.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And living and working at the leper colony with the incredibly brutal and harsh work he did at the CIA.

[Unknown]

And all this information is coming out in this period.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I mean, there's even one, just to.

[Unknown]

Kind of paint the contrast. And there's even one report that comes.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Out, Gordon, about a MK Ultra subcontractor.

[Unknown]

Who had run experiments in which he.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Had taken the head off of one.

[Unknown]

Monkey and tried to attach it onto the body of another.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I mean, so you have this insane contrast of the hippie Gottlieb with the guy who's funding the monkey decapitation research. How do you square those two things?

[Gordon Carrera]

I guess the point with Gottlieb is a scientist who was just given license to do whatever he wants. He's given license by the Cold War, and by this sense, well, your enemies are doing it, so you've got to do it. And he's given license in terms of the money and resources to pursue the kind of weirdest, darkest avenues that science could take him down. That's how I think of him.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Yeah, that's right. And I thought one of the more.

[Unknown]

Interesting commentaries on kind of Gottlieb's legacy.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Was there's a great history that's been written of the.

[Unknown]

The CIA's Office of Technical Service, right.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Which is in Gottlieb's day, the Technical Services Division, or Technical Services staff. And that is essentially the CIA's gadget shop. And the history notes that all of the obituaries, and they pull out the WaPo. The Washington Post obituary for this WaPo.

[Unknown]

Devoted 11 of its 12 paragraphs to mind control and poisons, ignoring everything else.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

That Gottlieb did to, quote, break the.

[Unknown]

Back of KGB counterintelligence.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Gottlieb was the longest serving chief of.

[Unknown]

The Technical Services staff.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

So that, I guess, curiosity, that idea of a scientist who's just sort of.

[Unknown]

Got a tremendous amount of funding and.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

The full force and kind of faith.

[Unknown]

Of the US Government and the CIA at his back.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

That's Gottlieb.

[Unknown]

And it extended from mind control to.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Poisons to how do you build concealed.

[Unknown]

Devices and compartments to hide documents in for your assets?

[Sidney Gottlieb]

It's this wide gamut of.

[Unknown]

Of knowledge that he was after.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And I think one of the most.

[Unknown]

Maybe more interesting questions, rather than what.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Does everybody else think about Sidney Gottlieb? Is what did he think of himself?

[Unknown]

Like, who did he think he was?

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And I mentioned earlier that the pseudonym.

[Unknown]

He used when he was Testifying in.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Front of the Senate was Joseph Scheider. And Gottlieb chose that pseudonym. You wonder, okay, what does that mean? Who is Joseph Scheider? So Joseph scheider was a 19th century New York tobacconist.

[Unknown]

And there's a very interesting lithograph on the tobacco packages.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And Stephen Kinsner talks about this brilliantly.

[Unknown]

And Poisoner in Chief.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

The picture shows a hooded monk kind of staring out with this very serious gaze.

[Unknown]

In one hand he's got a set of playing cards, and in the other.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

He'S got a very long pipe and smokes coming out of the pipe. There's a very mystical, almost kind of Rasputin vibe. Or this guy could be like a.

[Unknown]

1960S hippie cult leader. Right.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And I think that monk is Gottlieb's.

[Unknown]

Sort of self reflection.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Right.

[Unknown]

Kinzer wrote, he's a mysterious guardian of esoteric knowledge. Alluring, but at the same time unsettling.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Drawing inspiration from a pipe to peer into the human soul. And I think that that is what Gottlieb thought he was doing.

[Gordon Carrera]

A kind of cult leader. Scientists gone amok. So that's Gottlieb. When we look back at MK Ultra, it is one of the strangest stories of the CIA's histories. Without doubt one of the darkest. It's hard not to reflect on it as something which was out of control, where there was a lack of oversight of morality, of thinking about what the consequences were of testing on all those people, including the own officers. I just think I can't see it in any other way than that. I know it was part of the Cold War and that fear of the other side are doing it, so we have to do it. Which is something you see justifying things in all kinds of, you know, places and times. But it does seem this was a period where things were out of control.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

It's interesting, Gordon, because I think a lot of the histories of MK ULTRA and the biographies of Gottlieb really focus on this idea of, well, it's a kind of a security versus liberty story where we gave the CIA a blank check to just, you know, run roughshod.

[Unknown]

Over ordinary Americans and to entrap them.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Give them drugs, put them in situations where they're being subjected to awful sort of psychiatric tortures. I mean, and that is definitely a piece of the legacy because it was.

[Unknown]

Really an outgrowth of a CIA that.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Was totally unconstrained and operating in a very unlawful way.

[Unknown]

Absolutely.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And there's sort of a bureaucratic morality tale around, well, how do you properly oversee an intelligence agency. Right. And there's something to that. But again, I'm not sure either of those are the most interesting kind of legacies of MK ultra. I mean, one of them. We talked about fiction, right. I think a very interesting legacy is MK ultra, as we discussed, was itself influenced by this wave of fiction, film.

[Unknown]

TV, comic books coming out in the.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

30S, 40s and 50s, that framed the.

[Unknown]

Communist threat in terms of mind control.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And Ghalib and his companions were after that sort of holy grail. But now in 2025, looking back, we.

[Unknown]

See that MKUltra itself is influencing the fiction.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I mean, I think maybe a bit of a stretch, but I think you probably don't get Jason Bourne. You know, guy waking up, his memory has been wiped by a secretive government program. You don't get Jason Bourne without MK Ultra, maybe. And so MK ULTRA itself is kind of fueling a new wave of conspiracy.

[Unknown]

Fiction about mind control.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

But I think maybe the most interesting legacy for me, Gordon, is that I don't really think about Gottlieb himself or MK ULTRA more broadly as an aberration, but as a chapter in a very long kind of history of a struggle.

[Unknown]

For the cognitive battlefield.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And whether it's, you know, it's an.

[Unknown]

MK Ultra, it's lsd, it's psychic, driving.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

These pathways into the human psyche. The brain is so valuable to us.

[Unknown]

As individuals, to corporations, to governments, that.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

The impulses that drove MK ULTRA are alive and well.

[Unknown]

They're evergreen.

[Gordon Carrera]

I mean, the concept of brainwashing is. Is something which emerges in that time and it comes out of the world of totalitarianism and the ability to use propaganda and then perhaps to use drugs, to manipulate people, to reprogram people. But that idea is very much still with us. I mean, you. You still hear talk about the idea of brainwashing, about the manipulation of people, about the phrase cognitive warfare. And you think, you know, a few months ago we did something about TikTok and we were talking about, well, could this be used in theory to manipulate the way people think and to control the way they see the world? So this aspiration, I think, from states and from intelligence agencies to potentially shape.

[David McCloskey]

The human mind, to shape the way.

[Gordon Carrera]

We think, to, if you like, reprogram us, is something that is very much in the current mind. It's just not done with lsd, but we think about doing it with social media. You talk about algorithmic manipulation, and again, it's this idea of the human brain being at the center of conflict, of warfare, of intelligence work and there's worry about it again, when I read stuff in Washington about the concerns that China is developing intelligentized warfare, that it's looking at ways of trying to manipulate people's perceptions, whether it's in Taiwan or the United States. And therefore we must be able to defend and do things to, to combat that. It feels reminiscent of the 50s, just different because you're not doing it through psychic driving or lsd, but through, through modern media techniques.

[Unknown]

So Richard Helms, who had been the.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

CIA director for part of MK Ultra.

[Unknown]

Referred to LSD as the, a bomb of the mind, this power that drugs would have.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

But of course, MK Ultra, one of the major discoveries is that you have no idea where the drugs are actually going to lead you. So they're not an effective way to control the mind.

[Unknown]

I mean, but we are seeing a kind of resurgence in interest in psychedelics.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

In psilocybin, in, you know, dmt. I mean, there are people called psychonauts who are actually like sort of mapping.

[Unknown]

Their journeys into their own minds and.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Souls by virtue of these drugs. And so you have a renewed interest in that and it's not yet being.

[Unknown]

Sort of weaponized by the government.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

But I think you'd have to say that there's sort of the prospect that.

[Unknown]

If powerful therapies are discovered in that.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Space, that there would be interest in potentially weaponizing them. But I think there's sort of the drug angle, which I think right now.

[Unknown]

Has more of a mental health and.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Wellness vibe, to it, right? There's the algorithmic manipulation on social media, TikTok, et cetera. But one of the, I think fascinating things is the idea of, I guess you call them cognitive biometrics. So essentially an implement. It could be implanted like in a wearable device.

[Unknown]

It could be in your AirPods, it could be in a band that kind of goes around your forehead. And essentially what they are are electroencephalography sensors that you wear on your skin. It could even be a small tattoo in some cases.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And what they do is they, they.

[Unknown]

Track the electrical impulses that are inside your brain.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

And what they can help, you know, researchers understand is, well, what sort of.

[Unknown]

Emotions are you experiencing? And we're not here yet, but I.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Think we're actually getting close to a point where you could marry up that data with a large language model like a chatgpt, that could start to turn.

[Unknown]

The neural impulses in your brain into language.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

I don't think we're looking at a.

[Unknown]

Situation like the Manchurian Candidate where all.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Of a sudden you've got these, maybe unbeknownst to you, you've got these sensors.

[Unknown]

In your AirPods and someone shows you the Queen of Diamonds and then you're going after a presidential candidate. But from an intelligence collection standpoint, the.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

Application of being able to understand what's going on in someone's mind, there's real applications there. Like, what if you were able to get those AirPods into the ears of, you know, a foreign leader whose thoughts.

[Unknown]

Were very much interested in.

[Gordon Carrera]

There does seem to be a lot of work on these brain computer interfaces, neuralink, which Elon Musk, amongst others, is working on. Someone who talks about the Woke Mind virus. It's an interesting phrase, isn't it, when you, when you think about the kind of MK Ultra resonances for that, you know, this idea is that it's also a. A way of explaining why people don't think the way you think they should think is to say they've been taken over by some Woke Mind virus. And maybe you can, you can manipulate them or, or reprogram them to understand the truth. You can, you know, red pill, blue pill, all this kind of stuff.

[David McCloskey]

So I think there is something in.

[Gordon Carrera]

That where both technology, drugs, AI and algorithmic information manipulation is very much in the moment right now and is being talked about. So it's a world away from LSD and Sidney Gottlieb, but it's there, and I think it is at the cutting edge of intelligence and defense work. On that note, David, it's been a wild, weird, wacky, dark journey into the world of CIA mind control and Sidney Gottlieb, but hopefully we've not led people on too much of a trip and their mind hasn't been blown too much by where we've taken the trip. So thank you all for listening and we'll see you next time.

[Sidney Gottlieb]

We'll see you next time.