POISONER IN CHIEF - STEPHEN KINZER

Another one that was a long time coming. This is basically the book that CHAOS wanted to be, an overall history of MK-ULTRA and related CIA mind-fuckery as well as a semi-biography of Sidney Gottlieb, the man who ran these programs. MK-ULTRA is one of those things that you hear about growing up, especially as you start to take acid and think about the government and spend time around conspiracy people, but it’s always and purposefully confusing and hard to tell what’s true and what’s paranoia. The whole scope, as outlined in this book, is insane. The line runs like this. After WWII the US government, through Operation Paperclip and other programs, recruited both Nazi and Imperial Japanese doctors that had preformed unethical experiments (giving folks at Treblinka mescaline then interrogating and murdering them, preforming waking vivisection, testing bioweapons on people) most notably, famous Nazi Kurt Blome and Shiro Ishii the guy who ran unit 731. From there it moves to Operations Bluebird and Artichoke, a program wherein American intelligence people drugged then interrogated then killed Nazis and Japanese soldiers. This lead to MK-ULTRA which, eventually, yielded the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual, used in Vietnam, and the Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual, used by right-wing military dictators in Latin America. These same extreme techniques get revived post 9/11, though we’ll probably have to wait 40 years or so to find out exactly what was going on in those interrogations. Turns out the more lurid stuff, the LSD drug stuff, doesn’t work or at least not the way they wanted it to. “Brainwashing was largely a process of isolating a human being, keeping him out of contact, putting him under long stress in relationship to interviewing and interrogation. They could produce any change that may, without having to resort to any kind of esoteric means.” according the CIA psychologist John Gittinger. Between that and sleep deprivation, they ended up not even needing the totally insane methods they developed. They gave LSD to folks for weeks at a time while playing message-filled tapes in total sensory isolation. They injected people with LSD every day for 15 months. They drugged each other so often there are concerns from other, non MK-ULTRA employees, that Gottlieb would spike the punch at the holiday party. Beyond the psychedelic drug stuff, Gottlieb also deployed his knowledge of chemistry to other nefarious ends. He builds devices to kill Castro, he creates poison for Zhou Enlai, he travels to Africa to train a CIA station chief in how to use the poison he created to kill Lumumba. He creates suicide pills for agents on secret missions. It is fucking crazy and it certainly makes you wonder what we don’t know (maybe that Chavez conspiracy deserves a second look), especially since Gottlieb wisely destroyed everything he could when it looked like there might be the slightest suggestion of oversight. Most of the stuff we know about concerns operations in the USA (Midnight Climax, etc) while I’m sure the evilest shit when down in secret prison abroad, which Gottlieb would visit. Like all good conspiracies, the secondary characters are so strange and keep popping up in such strange places it’s hard not to build a web in your mind that connects everything. There’s the famous magician John Mulholland, who creates a manual about how to use sleight-of-hand to surreptitiously drug people. George Hunter White, the drug-addict cop who framed and destroyed Billie Holiday. Jolly West, who features more in CHAOS, who killed an elephant with LSD, worked with Jack Ruby and Patty Hearst, and was around the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic. Whitey Bulger, the famous criminal, was given LSD by IV without his knowledge for 15 months in an Atlanta prison. When he heard about MK-ULTRA in the 70’s he finally figures out what happened to him and vowed to kill the doctor who’d given it to him. It’s also amazing how many moments in counter-culture history the CIA affected. That famous Life article about Maria Sabina? CIA funded. The study that introduced Ken Kessey to acid? CIA funded. The study that introduced Ginsberg to acid? CIA. At one point in the early 50’s the CIA bought and then controlled all of the world’s acid. So much of this was done to counter a perceived Soviet effort to create powerful psych-weapons, and how much of this the USSR was actually doing seems unanswered to me. Perhaps there’s another book about this. Additionally, this book doesn’t go too much into the Frank Olsen stuff, especially w/r/t the US using bio-weapons in the Korean War. Though, for all that stuff, Wormwood does exist. I wonder if reading this book will affect me the next time I take acid (which I try to do every few years or so)? You think of LSD as this groovy accident that the CIA just happened to be interested in during one of their more paranoid moments, Not something that is basically a failed bioweapon. I wonder what book like this I’m going to be reading in 40 years about what the CIA is up to now. My guesses, obviously the rendition stuff, I’m sure they’ve tortured and killed those people. Like I said before, this has got me thinking about Chavez and other possible assassinations. Tho the big one is certainly Epstein, I’m guessing we’ll have to wait about a half century on that stuff. Irregardless, this book was amazing, our government is insane. This is what happens when no one ever gets in trouble for this shit. All these guys live long lives and die with their reputations intact. 25 mind-melting trips.