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John Lisle (2025) - MK Ultra and Operation Midnight Climax · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap, and before we get going, please
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  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
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  our latest episodes in your feed.
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  But for our deep dive today, we are jumping into, well, one of
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  the most chilling historical accounts we have ever covered.
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  It's pretty dark stuff. It is.
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  We're analyzing the conversation around the book project, Mind
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  Control, Sydney Gatotleb, the CIA, and the tragedy of MK
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  Ultra, and our mission for this deep dive is pretty simple,
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  really. We want to uncover the true
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  origins of the CIA's mind control experiments.
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  And the just shocking lack of oversight and the devastating
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  consequences it had for, you know, American citizens and even
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  global policy, you know, for so many people, the idea of a
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  government running these huge mind control programs, it just
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  sounds like a conspiracy theory. It does, but this research
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  proves it was tragically, shockingly real.
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  And what we want to highlight for you is that these programs
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  didn't just, you know, spring out of nowhere.
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  They had a. Blueprint.
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  They had a blueprint, often an absurd 1 inherited from earlier
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  wartime intelligence efforts. We're going to reveal the
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  systemic failures, the broken checks and balances that let
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  these things run for decades. OK, so let's start with the
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  architect of this the main guy, Sidney Kotlib.
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  Sidney Kotlib Yeah, he was the CIA chemist who was put in
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  charge of MK Ultra. But if he's the architect, where
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  did he get the foundation? I mean, he couldn't have just
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  come up with this all on his own.
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  No, not at all. When Kotlib started, he wasn't
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  an expert in breaking the human mind.
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  He needed institutional knowledge.
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  So he went straight back to the files of the agency that came
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  before the CIA. The OSS.
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  The OSS exactly the Office of Strategic Services from World
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  War 2. And the key figure there was a
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  man named Stanley Lovable. Who ran their R&D branch, which
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  I love. This had the nickname of The
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  Dirty tricks department. It's a fitting name.
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  Lovable's group was, yes, inventing weapons and forging
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  documents, but they were also the very first to really
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  experiment with truth drugs. So Gatleb just picked up where
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  level left off. He inherited and then scaled it
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  all up. Basically, he found the perfect
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  systemic loophole to get around any kind of ethical research.
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  And those early OSS truth drug trials, they are just wild.
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  The substance they chose wasn't what you'd expect.
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  No, this wasn't LSD yet. They were using PHC acetate.
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  Wow. Yeah, they would find captured
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  agents inject this THC acetate into cigarettes and then, you
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  know, have the agent smoke them. Just to get them high.
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  Pretty much the goal was fascinatingly low tech.
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  It wasn't to force the truth out of them, it was simply to lower
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  their inhibition so they talk more.
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  How did they even measure? That they actually counted the
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  words per minute. They found that after dosing a
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  subject would speed about 40% more.
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  So as a truth serum it was a total failure, but just to get
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  someone rambling a success. And here is where the just the
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  systemic hypocrisy really kicks in.
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  The double standards. Oh absolutely.
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  The man leading the huge public crusade against marijuana at the
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  time? Harry Anslinger.
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  He was at the same time overseeing the use of that exact
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  same substance for these intelligence experiments.
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  It's the ultimate indicator, isn't it?
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  From the very beginning, this kind of intelligence work
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  operated completely outside of public morality or
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  accountability. What the public was told was
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  dangerous and illegal. The intelligence community was
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  actively weaponizing with 0 oversight because they felt it
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  was necessary. This complete lack of an ethical
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  anchor is the direct ancestor of MK Ultra.
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  So we moved from those limited OSS experiments to the full
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  scope of MK Ultra. And this wasn't just one lab.
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  So how big was this thing? It was massive.
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  MK Ultra was an umbrella for 149 separate sub projects and
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  Gottleb didn't run them from CIA headquarters.
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  They were farmed out, right? Exactly.
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  Contracted out to independent researchers in hospitals, in
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  prisons, universities, they used what they called cut out
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  organizations like shell foundations or medical research
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  groups to hide the funding trail.
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  So the CIA's hands were technically clean.
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  That was the idea, to keep it completely hidden, and some of
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  the most awful abuses happened in these outsource centers,
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  especially the Lexington Narcotic Farm.
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  Which was supposed to be a place for people to get off drugs.
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  Right. It was a federal facility for
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  addicts, and this is where a psychiatrist named Harris Isbell
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  ran his studies. He was testing things like
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  psilocybin, LSD and shockingly, heroin supplied by Guitar Lab.
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  Heroin. Why heroin?
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  The CIA was intensely interested in it.
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  They wanted to learn how to induce a rapid addiction and
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  captured agents. They believed that the
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  withdrawal symptoms could be the perfect leverage point in an
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  interrogation. That is just a whole other level
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  of evil. But the way they recruited
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  people there, the prisoners and addicts who were supposed to be
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  getting treatment. It's a spectacular failure of
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  human ethics. The incentive system they
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  created is just. It's mind boggling.
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  What was the choice they gave them?
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  The participants were given this terrible choice for taking part
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  in these drug trials. Their reward could be a positive
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  parole letter and 100 bucks or or they could go straight to the
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  drug bank window and get a needle full of heroin as an
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  immediate reward. Wait, so they were actively
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  fueling addiction in a place that was designed for
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  rehabilitation? Yes, all because the CIA saw
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  addiction as a strategic tool to be weaponized.
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  The idea that the state would do that willingly create addiction
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  just to study how to leverage it, it's just deeply disturbing.
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  And if the Narcotic Farm was about ethical failure, Operation
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  Midnight Climax was about just pure, utter recklessness.
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  That's when things went from a sort of clinical experimentation
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  to, well, to just chaos. This was a bizarre operation in
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  San Francisco run by another OSS veteran named George White.
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  And what was he doing? They rented apartments, dressed
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  them up like brothels, put in two way mirrors, cameras and
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  they would just dose unwitting Johns with LSD.
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  Men who came to see prostitutes had no idea what was happening.
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  And they weren't even looking for secrets.
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  What was the? Point They were just observing
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  their reactions to the drug, and as the source material reveals,
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  it seems like they were just just doing it for the fun of it.
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  And this wasn't abstract. It ruined people's lives.
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  The story of the US Marshall Wayne Ritchie just encapsulates
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  that perfectly. It really does.
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  Richie was at a Christmas party at the Federal Building in San
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  Francisco. George White spiked the punch
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  bowl with LSD. And Richie had no idea.
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  No idea. He had an immediate severe
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  psychotic break. He went home, grabbed his
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  service revolvers, and then tried to rob a bar, believing
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  this insane act would somehow fix problems in his life.
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  And he lost everything. He lost his career, his sanity
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  was permanently damaged and the truly shocking part is he only
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  found out why. He only found out the truth 30
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  or 40 years later. He read an article about NK
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  Ultra and saw a photo of George White's diary and in it was a
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  casual entry just detailing the Federal Building Christmas party
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  dosing. His life is destroyed and for
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  them it was just a throwaway line in a diary.
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  It just shows the utter sense of untouchability these guys felt.
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  So beyond the chemical stuff, the projects also went deep into
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  psychological warfare. So Project 68 with the Canadian
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  psychiatrist Doctor Ewan Cameron.
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  Cameron was a very respected figure at the time, but he had
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  this belief that he could cure mental illness by essentially
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  reducing patients to a blank slate.
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  Total mind destruction and then. Exactly, and Gottalb was excited
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  because this looked like a non chemical way to break a subject.
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  And the methods he used were just systematically horrifying.
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  It was all about inducing total stress and dependency.
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  That's right. The process involved forcing
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  patients into chemical comas, sometimes for months at a time.
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  He'd put them in sensory deprivation chambers, goggles,
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  earmuffs, cardboard tubes over their arms for weeks.
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  And the electric shocks. Repeated electric shocks?
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  Yes, sometimes 40 times the normal therapeutic dose, trying
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  to induce an infantile state. And then there was his signature
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  technique, the kekic driving, forcing a patient to listen to
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  looped negative messages, sometimes their own voice
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  recorded, criticizing themselves for thousands and thousands of
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  hours. It was designed to completely
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  shatter their identity. And the human cost here is just
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  There's the story of Mary Morrow.
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  A doctor tragic case. She was a resident doctor
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  training under Cameron and she actually administered some of
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  these awful shock treatments herself, but then she had a
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  period of depression. So Cameron convinced her to
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  become a patient. He did, and she was then
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  subjected to the exact same extreme electric shock
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  treatments which left her and I quote babbling and incontinent.
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  A respected Dr. turned into a broken subject by the very
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  methods she helped implement it's.
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  Horrible. But what's so fascinating, if
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  you look at the operational side of it, all of these expensive,
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  ruinous drug and shock experiments, they were basically
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  useless for their main goal, right?
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  For getting intelligence. That is the core irony of the
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  whole program. The actual drugs, LSDTHC, all of
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  it were useless for reliably getting secrets.
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  People either rambled nonsense or went silent.
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  So I keep going. Because the psychological threat
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  was incredibly powerful. If an interrogator could
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  convince a subject they had been dosed with a truth serum or that
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  they've been hypnotized, their resistance just crumbled.
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  It gave them an out. It gave them an excuse to talk.
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  They could rationalize it by thinking, well, I couldn't have
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  stopped myself. The drug made me do it.
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  It took the ethical burden off of them.
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  So when the internal experiments proved ineffective and, you
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  know, highly controversial, the CIA just pivoted.
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  They started applying these bizarre techniques to foreign
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  policy targets. And most famously, to Fidel
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  Castro. Right.
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  It's the next logical step in that cycle of secrecy, isn't it?
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  When the domestic stuff gets too embarrassing, you just turn the
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  focus outward. Exactly.
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  Gottlieb's team and developed all these plots to discredit
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  Castro. They wanted to attack his image,
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  his prestige, which they thought was the core of his power.
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  I remember reading about the plots to mess with his
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  appearance. They were absurd.
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  They really were. One plan was to spike his cigars
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  with LSD, so he talked complete gibberish during a big public
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  speech. And then there was the beard.
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  Yes, the beard. The plan was to slip thallium
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  salts, which is a depilatory, into his shoes.
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  They hoped his beard would fall out.
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  Why? What was the thinking there?
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  The idea was that stripping him of his beer would strip him of
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  his masculine allure, like the biblical Samson, and that would
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  somehow destroy his authority with the people.
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  It sounds like a plot from a spy comedy and if that failed they
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  just moved on to propaganda. Pure propaganda.
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  They photoshopped images of Castro surrounded by huge
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  amounts of food and beautiful women with the caption My ration
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  is different. To try and stir up resentment
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  among the Cuban people who were dealing with rationing.
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  It was pure psychological warfare trying to create class
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  presentment. And when discrediting him didn't
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  work, they moved on to assassination, trying to use his
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  love of scuba diving against him.
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  They did. There were two major plots
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  there. First, they planned to plant a
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  beautiful but explosive seashell where he liked to dive, hoping
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  he'd pick it up. And that failed because.
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  They couldn't actually find a shell they thought was big
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  enough or interesting enough to realistically get his attention.
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  Unbelievable. What was the second plan?
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  To gift him a diving suit that was laced with poison or some
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  kind of dangerous fungus. That also failed because the
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  lawyer they were going to use to deliver the gift had already
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  just given Castro a brand new diving suit, so their gift was
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  redundant. So the whole thing was marked by
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  this just almost cartoonish incompetence.
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  Completely. OK, so after years of systemic
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  abuse, illegal experiments, failed assassinations, what
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  happened? Where was the accountability for
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  the men who ran this? There was very, very little.
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  The source material shows a profound lack of oversight, even
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  from within the CIA. We have to talk about the
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  Inspector General, the IG, that's the CI as internal
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  watchdog. And they knew about this They.
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  Absolutely knew Internal IG Reports 1 from 1963 explicitly
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  called the MK Ultra projects illegal and unethical, but the
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  IG didn't act. Why not?
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  One former IG later admitted that he was afraid of losing his
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  job if he really pushed the issue or tried to get the
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  program shut down. South fear professional blowback
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  trumped the ethical imperative. That's where the structure just
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  completely fails. And in the end, they just
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  decided to erase the evidence. That's right.
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  When Sidney Gitotlib and the CIA director Richard Helms retired,
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  they illegally incinerated most of the MK Ultra files.
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  Could get Talib ever explain why?
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  He was eventually pressed about it years later during
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  depositions and he finally broke down.
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  He admitted he destroyed the records because, quote, he was
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  embarrassed by it. Embarrassed by the destruction
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  of lives and the unbelievable waste of money.
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  Exactly. But the arrogance of the men on
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  the ground, the operators, that is maybe best summed up by
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  George White, the guy from Operation Midnight Climax.
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  The brothels, the. Brothels.
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  In a letter to Gatotleb, George White wrote, and I have to quote
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  this. I toiled in the vineyards
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  wholeheartedly because it was fun, fun, fun.
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  Where else could a red blooded American boy lie, cheat, steal,
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  rape and pillage with a sanction and blessing of the All Highest?
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  That quote is the ultimate indictment, isn't it?
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  It's a system where accountability has completely
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  vanished, allowing people to wrap up their depravity in the
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  flag of national security. And the victims did eventually
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  sue in the 1980s, yeah, but they weren't met with, you know, some
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  sweeping justice. No, the lawsuit was settled out
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  of court for $750,000. Which was split among all the
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  plaintiffs, A paltry sum for the lifelong damage they suffered.
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  But, and this is the silver lining, This is why we even have
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  this. Book The deposition Survive.
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  The depositions and the testimonies detailing the horror
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  they survived, the settlement process, they became part of the
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  public record that formed the basis of this whole
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  investigation. So if we connect all this back
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  to the bigger picture, the author of the book identifies
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  what he calls the vicious cycle of secrecy.
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  It's the perfect summary of the whole thing.
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  Secrecy creates plausible deniability.
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  That deniability leads to reckless behavior like MK Ultra.
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  Which then leads to massive internal embarrassment.
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  And that embarrassment demands even more secrecy to cover up
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  the mistakes, and the cycle just perpetuates itself over and
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  over. And the whole story really
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  demonstrates that the structural failures a broken internal
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  watchdog and unwilling Congress leaders who put their careers
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  over ethics that's often more dangerous than anyone mad
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  scientist. Which brings up a really
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  important question for you, the listener, about Government
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  Accountability today. We should really listen to the
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  warning from Daniel Shore who reflected on these times.
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  What did he say? He said to dread the day when
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  the press sings nothing but the praises of those in power and
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  Congress says there are no abuses to investigate.
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  That day, he warned, is when liberty is truly lost.
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  The power of both internal and external checks on power is
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  everything. So as you reflect on this deep
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  dive, consider that power dynamic.
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  When does the government's need for security overwhelm a
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  citizen's right to safety? And what mechanisms, beyond just
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  public outcry, can actually stop a vicious cycle of secrecy once
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  it gets going?