Project mind control Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the tragedy of MKULTRA

During the period immediately following WWII, as the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union ratcheted up, the Central Intelligence Agency came into its own as the source of ethically dubious intelligence-gathering research programs. One of these programs involved developing ways of influencing, or outright controlling, the minds of targeted individuals. While this may sound like the science-fictional premise of a thriller film, author Lisle's (The Dirty Tricks Department, 2023) detailed research indicates what the CIA was up to was frighteningly real, involving the use of posthypnotic commands, psychotropic drug therapy, torture, and worse. As Lisle unveils the life stories of the various players, readers are shown how distressingly easy it is for normally decent people to justify heinous acts in the name of patriotism, an idea that has resonance in the present day. Lisle's account can be read on multiple levels, from true-life spy thriller to dark history, from which vital lessons can be drawn, but it's unsettling on any level.

Historian Lisle (The Dirty Tricks Department) offers new insight into the CIA's notorious MKULTRA program in this enthralling account. Lisle gained access to previously unknown depositions (823 pages of material) in five civil rights cases filed against the program and its head, Sidney Gottlieb, by its victims. Among them were prisoners used "as guinea pigs in secret drug experiments," one of whom described "horrible periods of living nightmares" and another who "tried to kill himself by... chewing off his own arm." The depositions, Lisle writes, offer unprecedented access to "the minds of those who perpetrated" the program's "infamous acts," including its mind control experiments involving LSD, in which unwitting victims were dosed with the drug, and which were ultimately intended to create "remote control" assassins. (MKULTRA was also involved in direct assassination attempts, including a plot to poison Patrice Lumumba.) Lisle tracks the program from its origins dosing fellow CIA employees to its sprawling use of frontmen, or "cutouts," to carry out experiments, keeping his narrative concise by sticking close to the depositions (one of Gottlieb's more chilling assertions: "We had no trouble whatsoever recruiting" the cutouts. "I don't remember anybody ever saying, 'I would rather not work on this'"). Declining to delve into conspiracy (the mind control experiments were not successful, he reassures), Lisle instead pinpoints institutional failures that led to a feedback loop of secrecy. It's a stark portrait of horrifying government abuse. (May)