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Tripping · Operation Midnight Climax

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: When Sydney Gottlieb recruited George White to be the CIA's
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: secret weapon in the Cold War, White didn't get much training.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: What would you teach a guy like White anyway? During
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: World War Two? He'd been taught to kill with his
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: bare hands, to wire explosives, to interrogate people. He could
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: have used some tips on what to do if someone
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: he dozed with LSD had a psychotic episode, but that
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: never came up. Back in ninety three, Gottlieb did want
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: White to attend one top secret CIA class, a class
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: where the teacher could impart wisdom that no one would win.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: The CIA had. Gottlieb wanted White to take lessons from
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: a man who had learned his trade from Harry Houdini.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: The CIA needed White to become a magician, not stage
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: magic where women saw it in half. Instead, White needed
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: a crash course in close up magic. Things like card
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: tricks and coins that appear behind your ears. It's more subtle,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: more personal. Sometimes magicians call them slight of hand tricks.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: A lot of people think the magician is simply moving
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: their hands faster than the eye can see. That's not
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: really true. The human hand can't move faster than the eye. Instead,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the trick is to get the eye looking elsewhere while
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the magician executes the trick. That's the real sleight of hand,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: tricking the brain. While it can take years or even
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: decades to master, most people can be taught the basics
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: of this direction fairly easily if they have a good teacher.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: So Godly recruited a magician named John Mulholland. He wanted
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Mulholland to teach CIA operatives how to use the tricks
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: of the magician's trade to follow through on their cove
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: at activities. It was a form of social engineering. How
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: could they divert a person's attention elsewhere? When Gottlie realized
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Mulholland could teach them all of that and more, he
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: prepared an oath of secrecy for the magician to sign.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: He arranged for Mulholland to arrive at a hotel in
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: New York City to meet with his prized operative, the
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: same hotel where CIA employee Frank Olsen had fallen out
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: of a window. And that's how one of the most
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: respected magicians of the era wound up shaking hands with
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: George White, setting the state for what would be White's
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: most audacious project yet, using the art of magic to
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: drug people unwittingly. This one was called MK Ultra sub
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Project four. It's how George White would later make San
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Francisco's sanity disappear. For I Heart Radio, this is Operation
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Midnight Climax. I'm your host, Noel Brown, and this is
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: episode seven Tripping Current one a second home in. George
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: White needed a lifeline. His right hand man, Ike Feldman,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: had just screwed up by turning their secret CIA funded
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: brothel into front page news. That year, the pair started
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: working with a drug kingpin named Ronaldo Red Ferrari, sort
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: of the Tony Montana of the day. Ferrari owned the
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: city's heroin business, and he ruled over San Francisco with
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: an iron fist cross Ferrari and he could make you vanish,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: not magic, Vanish, but dead and bury Vanish dumped off
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: the Golden gate Bridge Vanish. But White and Feldman weren't intimidated.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: White was still working two jobs. By day, he worked
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: as a district supervisor for the Narcotics Bureau, and at night,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: well you know. But to keep his day job going,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: he needed to keep making drug busts, so he did
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: double duty at the brothel. When he wasn't luring John's
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: applying them with LSD for his experiments, he used the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: pad to entertain and entrapped dope pushers. And that's what
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: George White did with Ferrari. To convince Ferrari that his
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: colleague Feldman was a major player in the drug scene,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: White started throwing elaborate parties at the address. Oddly, all
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: those lewed photos and tacky decorations White had put on
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: the walls helped his case. To anyone with an eye,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: it looked cheap, tawdry, but to gangsters it seemed like
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: drug money couture some tasteful mafia decor. All these parties
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: did the trick. Feldman convinced Ferrari he was the real deal,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: or as he put it, quote legitimately illegitimate. He paid
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: them sixty dollars for thirteen ounces of heroin, and as
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: they talked, business, microphones all over the apartment picked up
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: every word. Feldman helped indict Ferrari and his associates on
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: conspiracy to traffic in narcotics. It was good, solid police work,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: but it also threw a wrench in White's plants. When
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Feldman took the stand in April nineteen fifty six, he
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: had to describe as undercover work in detail, including giving
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the address of the safe house to Chestnut Street. The
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: San Francisco Examiner printed the details. Oh for fox sake,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: ike for White, it was no different than installing a
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: huge Neon sign out front that flashed the word police
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: at visitors for the second time in his CIA career.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: White worried that his project was in danger of being
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: shut down. And if George White didn't have the blessing
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: and resources of the CIA, what did he have? His
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: pet birds, his leather working. It wasn't enough. He wanted
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: needed something bigger. But Sydney Gottlie, White's boss, was less worried.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: He reassured him, after all, word hadn't really spread in
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: the media. Unless he'd read the Telegraph that day, you
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have picked up on the news at all. Plus,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: as got Leap told White, the experiment was going so
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: well that no one at the CIA was in any
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: hurry to abandon it. In fact, Gottlie gave White the
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: green light to open a second safe house in the
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: town of Mill Valley in Marin County, far from the
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: city lights. But over the years White had become increasingly reckless,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: and his new neighbors started to notice. Late at night
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: they'd hear commotion. Peering outside, they'd see men with shoulder
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: holsters chasing women, all in various stages of undress. One night,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: possibly inebriated, White hidden neighbor's car. He sent got leave
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: the bill for the damage, another lapse in judgment, since well,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: it's not a good idea to make insurance claims when
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: you're working on a top secret project. White had always
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: mixed business with pleasure. Serious investigations lived side by side
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: with hedonism for hedonism's sake. When White through parties at
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: the safe house, not only did he invite CIA operatives,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: but he also called in friends from the Narcotics Bureau
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: and even San Francisco police officers. Plus there were escorts, drugs,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: and booze. Lots of booze. White kept sending got leap
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: invoices for his alcohol supply, which seemed to be growing
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: at the rate of a small liquor store. And it
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: wasn't just the booze. Over the years, White had developed
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: reputation for experimenting with any drug, and not just on
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: unsuspecting civilians, on himself. Anything CIA operatives were scared of
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: was sent to San Francisco, where White would try it
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: out on his own. One day, got Leap set along
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: the canister that contained an experimental tear gas. White set
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: it down, Feldman activated him, and they both ran through it.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: They soon collapsed in a heap of coughing and burning eyes.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: On another occasion, gott Leap showed up with a dart
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: gun and went for a drive with White en Feldman.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Like a marksman. He aimed at a tree and fired.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Nothing happened, but when Feldman drove by the same tree
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: a few days later, it was dead. Feldman thought they
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: had just witnessed agent orange, the toxin that would be
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: used in Vietnam a few years later. At times, the
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: new safe house in Marin County resembled a novelty toy factory,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: with new chemicals showing up at White store like presents
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: for him to play test. In one package, White and
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: his men found weapons grade stink bombs, and while it
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: sounds like a gag gift, the CIA was sincere about it.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Operatives wondered if a target could be ridiculed and embarrassed
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: for smelling bad enough, or if an extreme foul smell
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: could make an entire crowd disperse. The stories of the
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: experiments have kind of a blooper real quality. When White's
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: agent decided to target a small demonstration with the stink bomb,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: he went up to a hotel room where he could
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: drop the tiny ampule into the crowd, but it bounced
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: off the window cell and spilled back into his own room.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: They were itching and sneezing powders and special needles to
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: inject drugs through wine corks without being detected, but not
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: all of the ideas were so childlike, and LSD was
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: still the agency's primary concern. A plan was hatched to
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: finally see what an aerosolized version of the drug could
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: do in an enclosed room full of people. White could
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: experiment it with this back in New York City on
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: a subway car, but this would be a more potent dose.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: They arranged for a big blowout, with White and his
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: agents canvassing San Francisco for party goers, promising an abundance
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: of booze and women. The plan was to pack people
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: up into their new safe house, where White planned on
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: dousing them in a plume of LSD. There was just
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: one problem. It was a very hot Californian day and
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: it was impossible to keep the doors and windows shut.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: The LSD just dissipated into the air. The grand plan
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: to attempt a mass hallucination went out the literal window.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: White and gottlieb were disappointed by these attempts, but White
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: still felt he was close to something with LSD. The
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Chestnut Streets safe house had been compromised, and luring people
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: back to another safe house was offering diminishing returns, so
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: White decided to return to his roots and go back
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: to dosing everyday civilians. This time, though, he would have
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: to go out into the world and hunt them on
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: their turf in the field, just like a real CIA operative.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: He'd had to slip them drugged without being caught, and
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: he had those skills because there was a magician on
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the payroll. Part two new tricks. When Sydney gottlie was
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: getting MK Ultra off the ground, there was no such
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: thing as two out there or two unusual. The CIA
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: was determined to unlock the secrets of mind control in
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: any way possible, and that's how George White found himself
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: in the conference room of the Hotel Roosevelt in nine
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: taking a crash course in sleight of hand from John Mulholland. Okay,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: now where's the card, George? Hopefully not up your ass.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Magicians don't have quite the same cache in the twenty
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: one century. A few have streaming shows. David Copperfield still
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: books Las Vegas. But before people had a surplus of
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: entertainment options, they came out and drove to see magicians
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: ply their trade on stage. Illusionists were celebrities. They also
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: lived by a code. You can't ask a magician how
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: they did a trick. Well, you can, but you won't
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: get an answer. You can find someone YouTube, of course,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: and there's always speculation. Sometimes a magician reveals their secrets
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: out of necessity. That's how David Copperfield found himself discussing
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: how a disappearing act was done. He was sued after
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: a member of his audience was injured during a performance.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: So how did Sydney Gottlieb convinced John Mulholland to break
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: the magicians omerta their code of silence? The same way
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: he got everything else he wanted by appealing to Mulholland's
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: sense of patriotism. Mulholland had earned a tremendous amount of
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: respect among his peers. Born in Chicago in eight he'd
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: fallen in love with magic at the age of five,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: but by the time he was twenty he was working
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: for who enim Holland performed for small audiences in New
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: York City and for sultan's and kings. He toured the
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: world and even edited a magic journal, The Sphinx, which
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: is kind of like the New England Journal of Medicine
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: for conjurors, and he enjoyed teaching magic as much as
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: performing it. Mulholland had a library of over four thousand
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: magic books. He lectured on magic, he wrote books on magic.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Gottlieb had seen him perform and was struck by how
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: easily he could fool audience members watching his every move
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: even though he was just a few feet away. He
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: was a man possessed of secret knowledge, a concept the
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: CIA and Gottlieb could only admire. Mulholland had done work
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: on behalf of the country before he performed during USO tours.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: He was a proud American, a trait that Gotlieb hoped
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: to exploit, so he got in touch with Moholland and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: told he wanted him to write a manual and Trickery
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: and Deception, particular early on the most effective methods for
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: putting a substance in a person's drink without the mark
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: being aware of it, something like slipping an enemy agents
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: and making yes John something like that. More or less,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Mulholland was eager to assist a dapper man in his fifties.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: He put off his other obligations and quickly got to
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: work on what he officially called some operational applications of
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: the Art of Deception. Like most CIA manuals involving espionage,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: it wasn't supposed to see the light of day. While
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: there had always been rumors a CIA Magician's Manual sounded
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: to Kuki to actually exists, but in two thousand seven,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: authors H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace found the only
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: known surviving copy of the complete manual. In the text,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Mulholland tutors the reader on how to execute slight of
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: hand for the purposes of espionage. The basic principle and
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: performing a trick is to do it's of the secret
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: actions are not observed. A trick does not fool the eye,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: but fools the brain. Nowhere does the text mentioned the CIA. Instead,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Maholland calls operatives performers or tricksters, and they weren't drugging subjects.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: They were performing tricks. Deception, he pointed out, isn't about
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: rapid hand movements. It's about getting the spectator to look elsewhere.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: As outlined in the manual, one of Moholland's favorite methods
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: was the cigarette trick. You're at a bar. It's loud,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: people are everywhere. You're George White, who want to slip
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: some LSD to a person's drink Unknowingly, in this case,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: the bar is the stage and White is the performer.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: His props aren't wands or rabbits. There are things you'd
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: expect to see, cigarettes, matches, coins, pencils. He's managing his
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: targets line of site, in this case primal curiosity about fire.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: This is the routine for the spectator who spokes the instant.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: The performer sees the spectator take a cigarette, cigar, or pipe.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: He takes the packet of matches from his pocket, tears
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: off one match, and holds packet and match ready to
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: ignite the match. He does these things openly because what
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: he does can only be looked upon it as a
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: friendly and courteous gesture. Let me get that for you, buddy.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: As soon as the spectator is ready to light up,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the performers should hold the matches close to the spectator
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: and strike the one match. The flame comes up to
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: their face. That's all, they're looking at the fire in
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: front of their eyes, and while their attention is fixated,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: White is up to something else. As soon as the
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: spectator has a proper light, performers should begin to lean
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: back to his previous position. The left hand, which has
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: been held still since the match was struck. He's brought
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: over the mouth of the glass or cup, and the
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: pill dropped into the liquid. And, as Mulholland reminds the reader,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: a small action will not be noticed while making a
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: broader gesture for which there is an obvious reason. Mulholland
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: had more tricks, pills that could be brushed off the
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: side of a coin into a drink, stuffing a pill
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: in the folds of the hand. He was fond of
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: a loaded pencil which had a hollow body. The trickster
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: would offer to give someone directions or write something down,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: and when he pointed to something on the paper and
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: got the targets attention, the pencil would be tipped over,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: releasing a liquid or powder into the person's drink. But
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: above all, Mulholland had one important piece of guidance. Looks stupid.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: A person who looked alert, like they were really concentrating
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: would be unusual. After all, everyone in a bar is
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: having a good time. In Mulholland's manual, and in at
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: least four meetings with the magician, George White was taught
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: these finer points of delivering practically any drug he wanted, anywhere,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: at any time. It gave him freedom at a time
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: he needed it the most. It didn't matter that Ike
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Feldman had entered two Chestnut Street into the court record.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: He didn't have to stay inside an apartment. He was
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: no longer in captivity. Mulholland, for his part, had no
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: idea what his skills were being used for. Though he
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: must have suspected such training could deliver drugs or even
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: deadly poisons to the enemy, he couldn't know his work
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: was being co opted by the CIA to experiment on
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: American citizens. He didn't know his sleight of hand would
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: be used to terrorize San Francisco and allowed George White
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: to practice a very dark and very sinister side of magic.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: John Mulholland had been taught magic to bring joy to people.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: He taught magic to George White without understanding it would
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: only bring fear pert three Street magic. It might have
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: been better if Pheldman hadn't been found out, if he
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: hadn't made the big bust and exposed the Chestnut Street address.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Maybe White would have kept his experiments to John's and
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: low level criminals. But he was feeling emboldened reckless. After all,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: his LSD project had survived multiple people being hospitalized, one death,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: and a relocation. He'd never even been reprimanded for anything
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: he'd done. So with his make believe apartment in jeopardy,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: it seemed like a good time to go out into
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: San Francisco, armed with John Mulholland's techniques and explore the
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: last uncharted frontier of the psychokaout the general public San
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Francisco nightlife in the Tenderloin District, jazz clubs, bars, restaurants,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: a mix of everyone from Blue collar workers to millionaires,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: all out to have a good time. Then a man
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: would appear easy to talk to, offered to light a
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: cigarette for them. Liquid would seep from the matchbook, and
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: then he blend into the background to watch what came next.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: This was George White's favorite part, the shift in consciousness.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: It happened in a blink. One second the world made sense,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: and the next it didn't. Some stayed their eyes growing wide,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: seeing and hearing things their brains couldn't brow, says. More
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: and more matches would be struck, more and more people
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: stumbling into a waking nightmare. Sometimes White would come to them,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: sometimes they'd come to White. An old Cia trick to
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: attract attention in a social setting was to start playing
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: with drink coasters. An operative would seem unusually interested in them,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: trying to peel them apart. Someone would come up and
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: ask what they were doing. You see, Heineken is doing
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: this promotion where they're stuffing fifty bucks into random coasters.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: You gotta take them apart to find out. No kidding, no,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: no kidding. Hey look here. White would have already slipped
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: a gimmick coaster into the pile, pulling out a crisp
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: fifty dollar bill. Money was like a flashing sign, and
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: he would quickly find himself the center of attention. Later,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: no one would remember that anyone approached them. They would
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: only recall being in a group taking a sip, then
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: watching the floor fall out from under them. These were
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: the kinds of bars and clubs that had live entertainment bands, singers,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: and one local attraction was a woman named Ruth Kelly.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Kelly was a stunning figure on stage, and White came
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: to see her over and over again. Soon he began
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: to wonder if Ruth Kelly might want to learn more
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: about White's swinging lifestyle. One night, before she went on stage,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: he walked up and whispered something into her ear, something
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: salacious and unwelcome. Kelly rejected White. White had faced rejection
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: countless times in his life, from law enforcement agencies that
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: didn't need him, to wives who didn't want him. Even
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the CIA job had been held up by a year's
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: worth of background checks. White by this point was drinking
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: more heavily than ever, more out of control than ever,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: and so he did something that not even Sydney Gottley
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: would have signed off on. He administered l s d
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: out of spite. That's okay, miss Kelly. Here, let me
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: get that for you, and he did it just before
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Ruth Kelly went on stage in front of hundreds of people.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: This was something else. Kelly began her set without problems,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: but after just a couple of songs, the acid turned
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: the audience faces into masks. The applause pounded her head.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Kelly could see the words she sang, she could feel
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the stage floating, and somewhere in the crowd was the
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: face of George White, smiling with horns. Ruth Kelly finished
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: her set without betraying that her mind was split into
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: pieces the minute. The second she was done with her
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: last song, she raced off the stage and jumped into
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: a cab. She remained in a state of panic for days.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: She didn't know what had happened, only that her psyche
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: seemed to explode as soon as she had rejected the
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: advances of the strange man with bright, cold blue eyes.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: The psychological basis for this routine is that a small
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: action will not be noticed when it is done while
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: making a broader gesture, for which there is an obvious reason.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: White never stopped. The bars of North Beach were overcome
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: by White and other operatives dosing people with LSD and
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: other drugs and hoping they'd stick around long enough to
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: have an observable reaction. Those that ran off into the
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: night weren't followed. No one will ever know how many
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: people shook it off and how many couldn't. In the
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: San Francisco of the late nineteen fifties, going out for
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: a good time give you a reasonable chance of having
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: your mind destroyed. White sadistics was getting stronger, and with
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: it a kind of self loathing was setting in. In
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: just a few short years, he would write, a good
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: policeman is the ultimate action arm of the legislature, the judiciary,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and the executive, the thin blue line between order and chaos.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: It is time to consider the consequences of such stresses
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: upon an average human who becomes a policeman who must
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: not only cope with his own book of rules, but
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: also with the ever president, vociferous criticism from the press, citizens,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: review boards, the courts, prosecutors, and even his own superiors, who,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: when the heat arrives, pass it down. One day, a
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: technician walked into White safe house to checks some of
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: the surveillance equipment. He hadn't been expected. The only occupant
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: inside was George White, who was sitting in front of
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: the two way mirror he normally sat on the other
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: side of in order to monitor to the sexual escapades
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: in the apartment. The man looked at White, who was
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: clearly drunk, so drunk he didn't even seem to realize
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: the technician had arrived and thought it was better to
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: come back another day. And then George White held up
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: a gun, a revolver. The technician froze. He knew White,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: but he also knew White was a drinker. White just
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: kept staring at himself in the mirror, like he was
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: waiting for the man he saw in his reflection to
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: provide some kind of answer. Then he aimed the gun
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: at himself, at the man in the mirror, and fired.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: The technician recoiled. Then he looked and saw a white
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: globe had collapsed on the surface of the mirror. It
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: was a dummy round a piece of wax. White kept
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: staring at himself. The technician left. White remained behind, ruling
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: over a tiny fiefdom of safe houses. In the end,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: George White hadn't won the Cold War. He hadn't exposed
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: the secrets of mind control. He was a man sitting
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: on a portable toilet, watching people have sex and getting high.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Maybe the only mind game being played was the one
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Sydney gottlie had played on George White. He had taken
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: a man desperate for respect and recognition and given him
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: a job. No man of real moral consequence would ever
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: agree to to experiment on American civilians. That was Gottlieb's
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: big question, wondering if a man could be made to
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: do anything given the proper motivation, tools and drugs. MK
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Ultra was always about altering a person's behavior. In that
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: moment in front of the mirror, George White may have
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: realized he wasn't just running the experiment, He was the experiment.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: In every trip, there's a high, the elation, the sense
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: everything is so perfect and so right that the feeling
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: will never end. And then inevitably there's the come down
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: when reality intrudes. Good morning, Mr Irman, Good morning. Sometimes
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: it's because the effects of the drugs were off. Sometimes
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: it's because someone intervenes and breaks the spell. In three,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: the CIA's Inspector General was a man named John Eyerman.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: His role was to evaluate the CIA's various projects, including
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: ones that the CIA director might not have even been
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: aware of. As the new guy, Erman wanted to examine
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: everything going on in the agency. He didn't have allegiances,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: not yet anyway, and the crumbs have passed approved wouls
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: weren't necessarily off limits to him. Earmen like looking under
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: the rug for those crumbs. He liked picking them up
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: and wondering where they had come from. One day, Earman
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: was looking at paperwork filed under god Leib's division. It
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: was a routine inspection when he came across an expense
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: report filed by George White. There was a forty four
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: dollar charge for a telescope, a thousand dollar bill for
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: just a few days worth of booze, and a modest
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: thirty one dollars to pay off the woman whose car
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: wide and damaged like a thread in a sweater. Earman
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: began tugging, and the more he tugged, the more things unraveled.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: George White was writing checks to prostitutes for services rendered.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Memos detailed experimentations on unwitting subjects with LSD, sedatives, uppers, downers,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: erection pills, weed, poisoned darts, and trees stink bombs. Very
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: few people within the CIA were aware of him k Ultra,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: not even the new director, a man named John McCone,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: who had been appointed by President John F. Kennedy. And
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: the more Erman read, the more alarmed he got. For
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: the first time in the ten years that Sydney Gottlieb
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: and George White had been on a psychedelic rampage, someone
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: of the CIA was finally looking into their work, and
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: for the first time, someone was wondering if Sydney Gottlieb
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: and George White were out of their fucking minds. What
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: they were doing was illegal and immoral. Erman wrote a
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: twenty four page report he would delivered to maccone. In it,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: he reported in explicit detail the crime that was taking place,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: one perpetuated by the highest levels of the CIA, and
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: one that was putting the freedom of citizens in jeopardy,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: the very same freedoms Gottlieb insisted he was trying to protect. Suddenly,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of people had a lot of questions for
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: George White, But like any great performer, he had one
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: final trick up his sleeve. George White was about to
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: make himself disappear. Operation Midnight Climax is hosted by Noel Brown.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: This show's written by Jake Rosson, editing, sound design and
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: mixing by Ernie Indra Dat and Natasha Jacobs. Original music
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: by Aaron Kaufman. Research and fact checking by Austin Thompson
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: and Maurice Brown. Show logo by Lucy Keen Tiny Yeah
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Special thanks to Enzo Salucci, Spencer Gibson, David Crumholtz, Vanessa Crumholtz,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Ryan Murdoch and Ted Ramy. Julian Weller is our supervising producer.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Jason English and Mangesha Ticketer. See
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: you next week.