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

Description

The bestselling creator of All the Shah’s Men and The Brothers tells the magnificent tale of the person who oversaw the CIA’s mystery drug and thoughts-regulate experiments of the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s.

The visionary chemist Sidney Gottlieb used to be the CIA’s grasp magician and gentlehearted torturer―the company’s “poisoner in Leader.” As head of the MK-ULTRA thoughts regulate challenge, he directed brutal experiments at mystery prisons on 3 continents. He made capsules, powders, and potions that might kill or maim and not using a hint―together with a few meant for Fidel Castro and different overseas leaders. He paid prostitutes to trap purchasers to CIA-run bordellos, the place they had been secretly dosed with thoughts-changing medication. His experiments unfold LSD throughout the USA, making him a hidden godfather of the Nineteen Sixties counterculture. For years he used to be the executive provider of Undercover agent equipment utilized by CIA officials around the globe.

Stephen Kinzer, creator of groundbreaking books approximately U.S. clandestine operations, attracts on new documentary analysis and authentic interviews to carry to lifestyles probably the most robust unknown American citizens of the 20th century. Gottlieb’s reckless experiments on “expendable” human topics destroyed many lives, but he regarded as himself deeply religious. He lived in a far off cabin with out operating water, contemplated, and rose sooner than morning time to exploit his goats.

During his twenty- years on the CIA, Gottlieb labored Within the private secrecy. Handiest considering the fact that his dying has it transform imaginable to piece in combination his magnificent profession on the intersection of maximum technological know-how and covert motion. Poisoner in Leader reveals him as a clandestine conjurer on an epic scale.

An Amazon Easiest E-book of September 2019: Point out “thoughts regulate” and also you’re sure to elicit visions of Rasputin, Svengali, or Mesmer, well-known creeps stated to carry Nearly preternatural powers of persuasion over much less disciplined minds. However passion in deep, subliminal affect of others is going way past the salons and séances of might-be mystics. Within the Nineteen Fifties, Sidney Gottlieb used to be a light-mannered executive chemist who lived in a cabin Within the woods of Virginia together with his circle of relatives, pursuing a country, religious lifestyles with out electrical energy or operating water. However he additionally had a knack for paperwork that coexisted along patriotic zeal, which led him to the highest of PROJECT MK-ULTRA, the CIA’s clandestine pursuit of substances and methods meant for thoughts-regulate and political assassination. He pioneered “black web sites” in Europe and Asia, mystery prisons the place – with the assistance of the darkest minds that ran the camps of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan – he carried out his psyche-busting experiments, together with torture and the management of LSD. Nearly unbelievably, MK-ULTRA used to be Handiest a part of his legacy, which incorporates the improvement of a 007-worth poisoned cigar intended for Fidel Castro, and the growth of his “fact serum” experiments to unwitting American sellers (see additionally: Errol Morris’s documentary, Wormwood). It’s slightly the C.V., one that earned him the sobriquets “Black Sorcerer,” “Grimy Trickster,” and now “Poisoner in Leader” –the forthright name of Stephen Kinzer’s thoughts-blowing biography. Because the creator of Overthrow and The Brothers, Kinzer is easily versed Within the research of shadowy household intelligence products and services, and Poisoner in Chief in a similar fashion attracts from the smartly of posthumously declassified fabrics and authentic interviews to craft a meticulous mosaic of an advanced paradox of a person. Undercover agent-lit is a burgeoning subgenre full of many exciting and eye-commencing books, However Gottlieb’s tale is a will have to-learn for any espionage aficionado. —Jon Foro, Amazon E-book Review