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The Pad · Operation Midnight Climax

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: If you dig through the boxes at Stanford University, you
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: can find George White's autobiography. It's called A Diet of Danger,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: and it's exactly as pulpy as it sounds. I am
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: George Hunter White, and my parents must have been clairvoyant.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I've been a hunter of men all my life. I've
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: had to do it because it was a vitally important job.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I've had to do it because I've loved doing it.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Evan wild, gruel, intense and fantastic moment of it. That's
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: not dedication, that's addiction. All the highlights are in the book,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: tales of Turkish drug busts, Chinese opium gang initiations, encounters
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: with spies and killers. But the problem with the George
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: White version is he left out some important details. The
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: memories George White preferred to keep a secret, like this one.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: It's ninety two and George White is boarding the subway.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: The subway system in New York City is built to
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: be safe, and it is safe, but that's just the
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: train itself. Passenger behavior is different. You can get mugged, harassed, threatened,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: or you can board a car with nothing amiss, no
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: sign of trouble, anywhere, and then you can step off
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: into a nightmare. There's no record of where George White
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: got on, but at some point in the ride, White
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: reaches into while maybe his pocket, maybe a briefcase. He
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: tried to erase the details. But here's what we do
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: know what he feels. The time is right, White sprays
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: an aerosol container into the air, an invisible mist. There's
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: not much of it, just enough to affect a handful
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: of people. The people in the car began to feel strange,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: I think, uncomfortable, some panic. Odds are children were on board?
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Hallucinations are inevitable. Did the walls start to bend? Did
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the air change? Did people start to hear things? Maybe
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: they're crying or giggling or vominate. No one will have
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: any idea what happened or why. White takes notes, He
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: records the panic, then he vanishes. Later he'll write a
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: summary of the LSD experiment in his diary quote the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: subway test was a success. Pleased with the results, George
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: White will do it again and again and again. He
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: will become a dispensary of hallucinations, a chemical, says resolute
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: in his search for a drug that could bend the
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: will of the men and women he hunted. It started
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: as a government assignment. It would become an obsession. That's
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: not dedication, that's addiction. For I Heart Radio, this is
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Operation Midnight Climax and I Heart original podcast. I'm your
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: host Noel Brown. And this is chapter three the Pad,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Part one in the Lab. Back in nineteen forty three,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Albert Hoffman, the man who discovered LSD, was working as
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: a chemist for sand Dos, a pharmaceutical company in Basil, Switzerland.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: He was born in nineteen o six, the son of
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: a locksmith, and considering what Hoffman wound up doing providing
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: a key to access hidden states of consciousness that feels appropriate,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Hoffman attended the University of Zurich to study chemistry and
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: later went to work for sand Does. He quickly became
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: interested in ergate, a fungus that was blamed for mass
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: outbreaks of poisonings as far back as the Middle Ages,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: but when used judiciously and with care, it also held
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: considerable promise as a treatment for migraines. Attempts were being
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: made to take what was useful from ergat and leave
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: the harmful side effects behind, using ergotoxine, a synthetic derivative.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Hoffman produced lysergic acid diethyla or LSD in nineteen thirty eight.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Then he got sidetracked with other work. But Hoffman never
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: forgot LSD. He wanted to explore it more, to see
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: if it could be useful for something. On April sixteenth,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, he was working with the compound when
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: he began to feel odd, restless, dizzy. He left work
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: early and went home, whereas imagination, he said, was extremely stimulated.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: For over two hours, Hoffman gave himself to a cascade
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: of vivid pictures, shapes, and colors. It was a censorial experience,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: one that left him with a smile on his face.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Here's what Hoffman wrote to his supervisor, Arthur Stall as
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: a kind of workplace accident report, shortly after his experience
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: last Friday, April sixte I was forced to interrupt my
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and proceed home. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: with intense kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: this condition faded away. Retracing his steps, Hoffman discovered a
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: tiny amount of LSD had been absorbed through his fingers
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: in the lab while he was working. It had hallucinogenic properties.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Being a man of science, Hoffman felt the need to
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: pursue this discovery, but the first dose had been accidental.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: He didn't know how much he had taken, so he
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: decided to start out light, really light. He only ingested
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: zero point to five milligrams. Hoffman thought he was being careful,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: but this was far, far too much. Oh no no.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: In his notes, he quickly scribbled what had happened people,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: my teenthe taken diluted with about ten c seas of water,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: caseless saboteen o clock beginning, dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: symptoms of paraly system, desired to mouse twenty o'clock, most severe. Chris.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: If his first trip was a pleasure, Hoffman's second experience
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: with LSD tugged at the limit of his sanity. Familiar
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: objects in pieces of furniture assumed grotesque throughout the big forms.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Your lady next door scarcely rains brought me milk and
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: of course drank more than two leaders. She was no
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: longer be shidious, witch colored mask. Hoffman felt possessed by
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: a demon, He wrote and began to scream, Terrified he
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: was going insane, livid he might actually die as a
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: consequence of the very substance he had brought into the world.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Worst of all, Hoffman recalled was the acoustic perceptions. Every
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: noise was realized visually. He could see sounds. Despite his trip,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Hoffman knew LSD held potential, provided it could be dosed properly.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Sandals engaged in a series of animal experiments, observing mice
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: on acid and cats who suddenly became terrified of them.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Chimpanzees abandoned their sense of social order, fish swam in
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: irregular patterns, spiders spun immaculately proportioned webs at low doses,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: and sagging confused webs at higher doses. Drugs that could
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: produce this kind of sensation were nothing new. People have
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: been searching for the divine truth for thousands of years,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: back to the Aztecs and Mayan's hemp and peyote were
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: thought to harbor secrets of the mind. Mescalin was the
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: first to be synthesized in a chemically pure environment. What
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Hoffman and his colleagues at Sandoz discovered was that at
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: a low enough dose, as little as one millionth of
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: a gram, LSD could produce a different kind of euphoria,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: a breakdown of the ego that acted as a barrier
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: between the self and the road to improvement. Hoffman had
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: grand ideas for LSD in treating addiction and as an
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: aid in psychotherapy. Scientists began to study it with those
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: hopes in mind, but there was always the risk, the
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: risk of euphoria giving way to psych catic attacks or
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: feelings of omnipotence. Like any drug, it would need to
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: be carefully studied and subjects would have to be observed
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: in controlled conditions. In the wrong hands, at the wrong dose,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: LSD would become a nightmare without beginning or end. Hoffman
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: soon lost his grip on LSD, and so did the
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: scientific research community. By the late nineteen forties, it became taboo,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: too dangerous to pursue was a legitimate medical treatment. Hoffman
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: took to calling it his problem child. Well, Hoffman was
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: never involved with him. K Ultra Sandoz was. In nineteen
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: fifty three, got Leave heard that the KGB was attempting
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: to buy what amounted to the world's supply of pure LSD,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: obviously for nefarious purposes. It was possible that KGB had
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: already bought fifty million doses. In a panic, got Leave
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: dispatched one of his under links to intervene. The man
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: reported back that Sandoz had ten kilograms available for sale.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Remember LSD is activated in the tiniest doses imaginable. Gottlie
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: bought all of it before the Soviet Union could. He
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: spent two hundred and forty thousand dollars on the Sandos supply,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and then realized his operative, as good as he might
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: be an international espionage was extremely bad at math. Sandoz
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: didn't have ten kilograms. They had ten milligrams. The operative
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: was off by a factor of one million. That's all
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: they had made in the ten years since Hoffman discovered it. Still,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Gotti bought it all. It arrived in a barrel about
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: the size and shape of an oil drum, with hundreds
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: of thousands of doses in that barrel, a virtually unlimited
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: supply of nightmares that could be artificially induced. Sandoz agreed
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: to supply the CIA with a hundred grams a week,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: fresh off their LSD production line, and it got Leave's insistence.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: They also refused any further orders from Russia or China
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: and agreed to inform the CIA when anyone else inquired
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: about the drug. For better or worse, the CIA had
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: a monopoly on l s D. From Hoffman's fingers, it
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: went to Sandas, from Sandos to Gotlieb, and from Gotlieb
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: to George Hunter White. No one stopped to heed Hoffman's warnings.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: The biggest danger, Hoffman said, was giving l s D
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  Speaker 1: to someone without their knowledge in an uncontrolled setting at random,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: where harmless noises can turn, Hoffman said, into torment and
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: a psychotic crisis would be inevitable. Part two Alias For
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: George Why to immerse himself in the CIA role, He
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: would have to stop being George White, and that wouldn't
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: be easy. For all of his training at Camp X
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and the Narcotics Bureau, White still looked very much like
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: a cop. He had the cops stare, the cops walk,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the swagger that comes with having a gun on your
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: hip and a badge on your belt. It's a hard
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: thing to shake, but he did it. Like a superhero.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: He developed a guy's for his CIA heroics a secret
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: identity at the time, White was fond of meeting his
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: assortment of criminals and killers at the American Museum of
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Natural History to obtain information, debrief informants, or threaten them
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: with his power and influence. It was a good place
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: to disappear in a crowd. Inside the museum was a
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  Speaker 1: section devoted to gems, named after famous financier JP Morgan,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: a trustee of the museum and a frequent donor. In
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: honor of his contributions, the museum dubbed the Gem section
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: the JP Morgan Hall of Gems, or just Morgan Hall.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: White like the sound of that, so he took it
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: on as Azaleas Morgan Hall. Morgan Hall was a sensitive
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: soul in the fiction of White's mind. He worked as
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: a merchant seaman clad in a peacoat, which helped explain
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: his calloused and weather warning steer here. But Morgan Hall
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: was also an aspiring artist, a painter and sculptor. He
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: was a supporter of the Beat generation, poets like Alan
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: ginsburg In, writers like Jack Kerouac, artists who were resisting
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: conservative views and taking control of the post war culture.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Later they'd be dubbed Beat Nicks after the Russian Sputnik
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: satellite that would go up in nineteen fifty seven. J
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover, that famously tolerant FBI director, said in nineteen
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: sixty that communists, eggheads, and beat Nicks were among the
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: country's great enemies. They were stereotyped as drug users who
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: wanted to reframe the status quo of America. They were
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: another danger to baked in moral values to the CIA
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: that made them expendable minds. If Beatenis were viable drug
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: experimentation candidates, Morgan Hall was in the right place. A
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Fox and a Henhouse White lived at fifty nine West
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: twelfth Street in Greenwich Village. The Hotel Albert in the
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: village had been a haven for Mark Twain, Walt Whitman,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and Jackson Pollock. Bob Dylan lived in Greenwich Village. It
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: had an atmosphere. It was alive, thriving like minds crowding
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: together in bars, in bohemian coffee houses and street corners.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: The smell of marijuana hung in the air. There was
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: sexual liberation. It was a perfect place for the kinds
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: of activities Morgan Hall like to get into, and for
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: the kinds of people Sidney Gottlieb wanted to dose with LSD.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Imagine a doctor or lawyer racing into a police station
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: insisting he'd been drugged. Now imagine a young man stumbling
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: in from the village, already presumed to be high. Most
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: of the time, New York would be White's home base
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: until early ninet. For now, at least, it was perfect.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: With money he had gotten from Gotlieb in the CIA,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: White rented a second apartment in Greenwich Village at one
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Bedford Street. After all, drugging people in his own apartment
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: would be poor form. In writing Gotlieb. White bemoaned how
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: difficult it was to arrange for a lease and utilities
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: under an alias, how people wanted references and paperwork with
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: his name on them. Morgan Hall, he said, was becoming
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: a bit of a Jekyl and Hide situation. And while
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: he was right about that, White equipped the apartment, which
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: he liked to refer to as the Pad, with a
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: well stocked bar and plenty of paintings and sculptures to
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: reinforce his cover story of being a struggling artist. He
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: had murals painted on the walls, and there were other
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: kinds of decorations too, hidden microphones and two A mirrors
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: connected to an adjoining apartment he'd also rented out. This was,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: in the language of law enforcement, a safe house, a
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: place for the CIA to conduct clandestine business under surveillance.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Here's how one observer described the place. Apartment one Sea
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: is disguised as an artist studio, consists of a bedroom,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: large living room, kitchen, net, and bath. The kitchen has
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: been fully stocked with the best of foods, silver utensils, etcetera.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: The bedroom has been decorated in a style attractive to
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: the feminine sex. The linen, closet and bathroom have been
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: completely equipped with all essentials for use of both male
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: and female occupants. The living room contains a well stocked bar,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: over which has been placed a television set. A radio
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: phonograph combination has been purchased and will be placed to
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: conceal a portion of a doorway which is been cut
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: between apartments one Sea and one bat and at the
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: top of which opening will be placed an X ray mirror.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: The report added that visitors to eighty one Bedford could
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: be compromised. White's comrade in this Cold War operation was
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: a narcotics agent named Pierre Lafitte, whom he had often
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: worked with on narcotics busts. Lafitte would play a much
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: bigger role in White's life, but for now he was
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: a sidekick. To celebrate their new assignment, White and Lafitte
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: took a trip to Las Vegas and tried out their
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: new weapon. They tripped. White had no hesitation, learning about
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: what he was dealing with firsthand. He would take LSD
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: dozens of times in his life, approaching it with an
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: academics attitude. He claimed a kind of immunity from its effects,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: insisting that unlike virtually everyone else, he had developed a
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: tolerance Lafitte had not. He called the Vegas ex speariment
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: another world of visions and horrors. When the apartment had
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: been equipped and White and Lafitte returned from their Vegas experiment,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: White gut dressed as Morgan Hall, sporting a turtleneck in beret.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Then he went hunting. White began stalking in coffee houses
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: and jazz clubs. He liked hanging out at Chumley's, a
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: one time speakeasy just one block from the pad. He
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: sat patiently at tables and bars, nodding in time with
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: the sounds, striking up conversations with strangers. This was his
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: favorite part. He had already earned the trust of mobsters.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: The thrill for White wasn't duping people he already knew,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: or leveraging the power he had over them to get
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: what he wanted. The thrill was in winning the confidence
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: of a stranger. From there, White would spin tales of
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: his artistic endeavors, his thoughts on politics, his experience as
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: at sea. It was a seduction. The climax was and sex.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: It was someone who'd been a stranger hours before being
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: won over by Morgan Hall. It's easy to imagine the
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: words of the FBI ringing in White's ears, how he
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: was unfit for duty. Look at him now working for
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: the CIA on the new frontier of psychological warfare. Kiss
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Mask j Edgar White was well read and often more
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: culturally informed than his demeanor led on. He spoke fluent,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: beat nick, totally at ease, with a tone of the
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: counterculture movement. The people talking to White were on the
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: fringes of society, seamen who might be involved in the
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: drug trafficking trade at ports, artists who spoke with joints
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: dangling from their lips, as he talked and smiled, they
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: couldn't detect the animosity that simmered beneath his surface. The
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Beat generation had a reputation for drug use, opioids, weed.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: These people would have been terrified of George White, but
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: they liked Morgan Hall. Well, Jackson Pollock is wonderful. But
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: if you're into abstract expression uts, Yeah. Man, there's all
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: kinds of crazy shit out there. I've got some stuff,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: some books. You should see back of the pad. It's
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: just a block away. I'm gay. If you are, I'm
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: always gay. Hall and his friend would walk back to
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: eighty one. Bedford White would not at the two way
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: mirror mounted over the phonograph. Beyond it in the apartment
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: was Lafitte or another colleague cradling a notebook, prepared to
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: observe whatever happened next. You want to drink, sure, some gin,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: some ice, one ampule of LSD, and then there would
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: be time to sit back and watch the show. Where
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: do you buy your weed? What's your dad's name? Have
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: you ever been on the moon? What's your social Security number?
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Try here? Where did you buy it from? You know what?
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: You Lucian? What about my Omansky? Are you a communist,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: describe the color blue to me on your wife, your
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: girl friend, where it does utiful flowers, beautiful waterfuls. You
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: see him is born another drinks. Like a school report,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: White would write down the dosage of LSD and the
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: subject's reaction. Were they talkative, scared, catatonic? Did they answer questions?
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Did they abandon discretion? Did they lose their ship? He'd
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: take copious notes and send them all back to Gottlieb
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: at a post office in Washington. This was the climax,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: wasn't it the moment that justified what George White was doing.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: In a letter written years before, he described his thought
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: process when he finished a report. It may come as
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: a surprise to you, but as far back as the
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: O S S. I firmly believe that all information collected
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: in the field was sent post haste to Washington, filed
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: in funereal gray steel cabinets by purified acolytes. Then, so
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: the rumor went on Sunday, the high priests were gathered
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: a kneel and pray before these repositories of sacred writings.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: The missionaries in the field were happy in their faith.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: The fruit of their labors was being used to propitiate
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the angry gods. White was a sarcastic son of a bitch.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: By writing down the details and clinical way absolved him
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: of responsibility. It was for the greater good. The bureaucratic
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: forms proved it. For the first time. The CIA was
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: getting real, unadulterated field coverage of LSD, collected and curated
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: by Morgan Hall. Everything was going exactly according to plan,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: well almost everything. It wasn't long before other people started
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: showing up the path, people like newspaper reporters, narcotics officers,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: and an informant, not one of George White's informants, but
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: someone informing on George White Part three the informant. White
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: always wanted to be an fb EI agent, and even
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: though the agency declared him unfit for duty, it doesn't
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: mean they forgot about him. When White accused New York
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Governor Thomas Dewey of making a secret deal with mobster
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Lucky Luciano, he caught the attention of the governor. Do
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: He wanted to know more about the man sullying his name,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: so he asked the FBI to send along some information.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: They were all the typical biographical mentions along with something
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: a little more interesting. The FBI had made contact with
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: the liaison in New York, someone who not only knew
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: George White, but knew George White was up to something
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: at eighty one Bedford Street on behalf of the CIA.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: In fact, it was a Narcotics Bureau agent, the same
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: one who wrote the description of the pad. In addition
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: to notifying Governor Dewey, the report went directly to FBI
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Director Jay Edker Hoover, who knew all about George White,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: specifically White's love of publicity for his drug busts. He
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: wanted to know exactly what White was up to intelligence
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: agencies love spying on other intelligence agencies. Here's part of
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: that report. A confidential informant of this office advised on
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: July one that his former supervisor in the Bureau of Narcotics,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: George White, has become associated with CIA in an ultra
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: secret assignment. White and the CIA have rented dual apartments
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: at eighty one Bedford Street. In one of these apartments
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: has been set up a bar in quarters for entertainment,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: while the other apartment is being used by CIA for
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: the purpose of taking motion pictures through an X ray mirror.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: White indicated to the informant that no one in the
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Bureau of Narcotics or the CIA was aware of his
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: apartment or his association therewith except Commissioner Harry Anslinger of
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: the Narcotics Bureau and top officials of the CIA. The
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: FBI and Hoover knew White was up to something, but
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: they didn't know what. So agents pressed the informant for
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: more information. They were die to know what White, the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Maverick dope buster, was doing in league with the CIA.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: One agent even dismissed the informants report, saying it hardly
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: seemed plausible that White and the CIA were working together.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: It didn't smell right. It wasn't White a maniac? What
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: function could he serve? More intelligence needed to be gathered
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: most discreetly. The informant continued to hang around the pad, White,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: seemingly oblivious to his curiosity. He picked up bits of
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: information here and there. The recording equipment seemed odd, so
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: did the rumors there was drug experimentation going on. Finally,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: the informant managed to get his hands on two vials
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: of liquid that were stored in the pad. One was
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: in a screw top container, one was in the same
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: kind of ampule used to house the LSD dosents. He
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: immediately forward both to the FBI, who turned them over
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: to their laboratory analysts. Here was proof White and the
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: CIA were up to something elicit, maybe illegal. When the
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: FBI got the lab report back, they found table salt.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: The most talented chemists at the FBI were unable to
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: identify the compound, saying only that it appeared to be
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: some kind of organic material in a dilute solution of
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: sodium chloride or salt. The other vial had chloral hydrate.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: At the time, it was a rather common sedative that
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: was the solution in the screw top fial. Neither one
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: was the smoking gun the FBI had been hoping for.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: The FBI had once again underestimated George White. An FBI
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: memo advised the informant to tread carefully. White it red
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: had been told the FBI was sniffing around, and the
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: c I a likely Sydney Gottlieb told White to be
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: on the lookout. Leaving an ampulate deluted table salt for
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: the FBI chemists to examine was one way he could
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: give them the middle finger, the same one he'd been
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: giving them for years. White may have been clever enough
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: to out with the FBI, but he was still showing
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: signs of recklessness. Why was White discussing the fact that
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: he was working with the CIA with anyone? Why, as
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: the informant related, did White invite a newspaper reporter named
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Ed Reid to the pad. That's not a very covert idea.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: More importantly, what was White doing with the chloral hydrate
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: the sedative? Wasn't he supposed to be focusing on the
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: effects of LSD. White scribbled in his diary fleeting mentions
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: of sodium pentethal are barbiturate, thought to have truth, ser impossibilities,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: and nembutal another sedative. He was dispensing one drug after
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: another like a pharmacist on speed. Much later, when Sidney
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Gottlieb was asked to justify the work of George White,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: he said that White had freedom. He could per cure
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: any kind of drug he wanted, not just LSD, anything, morphine, mescaline, opium, cocaine.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: He didn't ask, and White didn't offer. Procurement and use
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: were up to White, at least that was Gottlieb's story.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: But if White was using a sedative. Was it to
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: help someone come down from a bad trip or something else?
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: What exactly was George White doing at eight one Bedford
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Street that was escaping the attention of both the CIA
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: and the FBI. And just how far away from the
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: mission had he departed? George White almost immediately broke off
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: from the mission, statement of m k Ultra, he wasn't
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: limiting himself to criminals and dealers. He released a small
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: amount of LSD on a New York subway car, a
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: microcosm of Gottlieb's dream of dozing an entire town. And
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: then there was the case of Linda King. Linda was
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: an aspiring actress with a benefactor, a man named Irwin Eisenberg.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: White and Eisenberg were close friends. Eisenberg had a home
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: in Large Mountain, New York, which White visited on a
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: regular basis. Eisenberg was wealthy, cultured, and rich, and wanted
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: to help King with her acting career by making introductions
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: through Eisenberg. White met King. Of course, White couldn't help
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: with her show business aspirations, but she still liked him.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: He was just the kind of friendly face he'd see
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: on a subway On September twelfth, nineteen fifty three, White
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: invited King to come have a drink with him at
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: the Pad at eighty one Bedford Street. Linda King wasn't
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: a killer, or a dealer or a beat nick. She
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: was a friend. But by the end of the night
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: she was seeing things unimaginable things. White made a note
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: in his diary King, he wrote, got psychotic. He had
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: dosed her with LSD. King was taken to Lennox Hill
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Hospital and as doctor shined the light into her widened
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: pupils and asked her what had happened, King insisted she
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: had been drugged. When doctors asked by whom King could
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: only utter two words, George White. Operation Midnight Climax is
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: hosted by Noel Brown. The show is written by Jake Rosin, editing,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: sound design and mixing by Ernie Indradatte and Natasha Jacobs.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Original music by Aaron Kaufman, Research and fact working by
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Austin Thompson and Maurica Brown. Show logo by Lucy Quintanilla.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Special thanks to Spencer Gibson, David Crumholtz, Vanessa crum Holtz,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Ted Ramie and Jason Thompson, Julian Weller, is our supervising producer.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Jason English and Mangesh had Ticketer.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: See you next week.