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Brainwash · Operation Midnight Climax

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: What do you wear when a mobster comes over for
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: a drink? Do you expect to be padded down to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: make sure you're not wearing a wire? What if he
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: already knows you're a cop? Do you dress up? Maybe
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: a tweed suit and tie. It's hard to figure out
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: what mafia casual is, especially when you're a narcotics officer.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: So we don't know what George White was wearing when
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the mobster came to his door. That part wasn't in
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: the file. But when Sydney got leave, the CIA's chief
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: chemist and head of the MK Ultra drug experimentation program
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: pulled the confidential report on George White. This is what
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: it said about that May meeting. First, White took a
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: cigarette pack and began knocking out a few of the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: smokes onto a table nearby. He had a vial of
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: liquid th hc acetate. Holding up the vial to the light,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: White plunged a syringe into the top, piercing the rubber
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: seal and drawing the solution through the needle. Then he
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: pierced the syringe into the cigarette, then another. He did
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: this patiently, one at a time, making sure the solution
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: drenched the tobacco. Every time he finished with a cigarette,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: he put it in a shot glass vertically so any
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: excess liquid would drain out, And once the smokes were dry,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: he returned them to the pack like they've never been touched.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Then he put a brand new cellophane wrapper on the
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: box like it was unopened, like it had just tumbled
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: out of a dime store vending machine. White kept his
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: own untampered cigarettes separate. It's probably safe to say he
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: smoked one or two before he heard the knock at
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the door. In walks August del Gracio, a k A.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Little Aggie. He strolls in like he's been there before.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: That's because he has. Even though White and Little Aggie
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: are on opposing sides of the law, White the celebrated
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: narco agent and Aggie a made man, the two have
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: grown close. A few years prior, White could have arrested
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Little Aggie in an opium bust, but he let him go.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: It's a weird way to bond. But then again, White
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: needed sources, and Little Aggie was connected Lucky Luciano Meyer Lansky.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: He knew them all. The two started hanging out, going
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: to each other's homes. They shared drinks, played chess, so
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: when Little Aggie came over that afternoon, it was business
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: as usual. They knocked a few back and made small talk.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: I want to smoke, Aggie here, you're a guest. Save
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: them for later, Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, I'll take a smoke.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Listen to you. I got a guy poked outside waiting
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: for me, So I got maybe twenty minutes. Sure. Little
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Aggie takes a drag. He feels relaxed, more relaxed than
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: he's ever been, and he starts to talk and talk
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: about infourmants he'd been forced to kill, about men he
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: could have murdered if White needed them to disappear, about
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: a top secret plan to use the notorious mobster Lucky
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Luciano to help with the Allied occupation of Italy during
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the war. Geo anything I'm telling you, I know, Loggy.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Do you repeat anything at all? It would get me killed.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: You understand that I'm dead. It's a doornail, I know, Boggy.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: You don't have to worry. You can trust me. The
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: fuck the funk you say that for? Say? What dead?
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Is it doing nail? Why is it doingaille gotta be dead?
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know the one one on the cigarette. Shit,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I got it, I gotta go. I got a guy outside.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: I only got twenty minutes. You've been here over two hours, Aggie. Well,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: now it really gotta fucking go. This meeting, which George
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: White dutifully recorded in his diaries, was the beginning of
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: something big. Nine years later, this all appears in the
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: report that Sydney Gottlieb is looking through, and at that
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: moment got Leave decides there's no better man to handle
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: his top secret search for a truth drug than George White.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: If George White could manipulate a mobster sworn to protect
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: the secrets of the Familia with an old fashioned wartime
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: truth serum, what could he do with something potent? What
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: secrets could he uncover with the full support of the
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: CIA and a supply of L s D. The world
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: was about to find out from my Heart radio, this
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: is Operation Midnight Climax. And I heard original podcast. I'm
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Noel Brown and this is chapter two Brainwash, Part one,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Criminal Friends. What was George White up to before he
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: landed on the CIA's radar. It's all on the report
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: on Sydney Gottlieb's desk in ninety three, George White was
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: working for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. He's
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: been traveling the globe on all sorts of crazy missions,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: from arming insurgents in Africa to finding out where, when,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: and how drug smugglers are getting their illicit goods into
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the US. Then one day White gets a call from
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: the head of the OSS, Bill Donovan. He's known as
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: wild Bill, and Wild Bill has a special request. Scientists
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington have developed an intriguing
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: drug from one of the primary compounds in marijuana liquid THHC.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: But this isn't just a joint in liquid form. It's
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: highly concentrated, the way dish soap promises to clean fifty
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: plates with one drop. A few puffs and you're gone.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: In the preliminary tests, subjects given the extracts start talking freely,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: divulging all sorts of information. Wild Bill has a hunch
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: this could be the fabled truth drug the government has
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: been looking for, the one the Nazis are already rumored
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: to have in their possession, and his scientists have already
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: experimented with how to deliver it. They've tried it as
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: a vapor, they've burned it over charcoal. Finally, they settled
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: on a solution that could be injected into cigarettes. The
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: method is so smart and deceptively easy, after all, what's
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: more natural than offering someone a smoke? But a wild
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Bill needs to test this out, and he needs the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: kind of subjects the OSS wouldn't care about, the kind
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: of people the os s could overlook, so he calls
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: George White, someone with criminal friends. Wild Bill wants to
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: know just how talkative someone with real secrets might get,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: what sort of things a mobster might reveal while knowing
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: the cost. After all, in the mafia's line of work,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: loose tongues get removed with hedge clippers, So he tells
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: White to expect a package. Then he tells him how
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: to use it, and White agrees, but before he starts
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: calling up criminals, he tries it out on himself. White
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: sits alone in his apartment and starts smoking a soaked cigarette,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and almost immediately he understands. George White smokes himself unconscious,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: and when he comes to, he scribbles a note in
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: his diary knocked out pretty good stuff. Brother. Once White
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: says on a dose that seems to relax him without
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: causing him to become catatonic. White Nose just who to call.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: A former drug dealer, Little Aggie was reformed. According to White,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Aggie owned a number of bridle shops in New York,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: run by his brother and sisters. He ran a clean business,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: allegedly supposedly the Italian mobster at a soft spot for me.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: He took to dropping by my apartment evenings to play chess,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: at which he was terrible. They talked, Little Aggie laughed.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Under the influence, he was a different man. Sure he
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: spoke about heroin and informants and hits and Luciano. He'd
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: spoken of these things before, but never in such detail,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: never so freely. One part of him seemed to be
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: aware he was talking too much, but the other part
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: didn't care. So you popped him, Well, yeah, and I
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: could pop anyone else you need to meet tube Gio.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: White had two observations coming out of his conversation with
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Little Aggie. For one, it seemed like the marijuana had
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: been a rousing success. Little Aggie forgot he had a
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: driver waiting outside. Seemed to forget he belonged to a
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: very tribal organization that would kill him for saying the
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: things he told his friend Geo. But White also had
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: a second thought, which he shared with wild Bill. Was
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: the OSS really looking to get into bed with Lucky Luciano?
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: The least trustworthy ally possible at the time. Luciano was
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: in prison serving a thirty to fifty year sentence for
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: running the largest organized prostitution ring in America. Springing him
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and then asking for his help offended White in a
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: fundamental way. Sure, he was friends with Little Aggie, but
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: that was to gather information. He didn't trust a mafia
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: man to lead the US to victory in World War Two,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: so he old Wild Bill to stay away from criminal gangs.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: He said, Little Aggie had told him some concerning things.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: I don't think the OSS is gonna let Luciana out
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: of President Aggie. There's some very powerful people who can
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: make that happen to you. You ain't see. Wild Bill agreed,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: and the OSS never employed him, but Luciana would come
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: back to haunt White later in a major way. For
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: the moment, White had more pressing issues. While Bill wanted
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: him to take his show on the road literally, the
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: OSS tasked White with continuing his reefer madness experiment in
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: new and creative ways. He was sent to interrogate thirty
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: American soldiers in Atlanta who were suspected of being closet communists.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: White was armed with intelligence folders on each one so
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: we could ask leading questions. One by one, they puffed
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: on White's magic cigarettes, oblivious to what was inside of them.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: One by one, their defiance dissolved in a puff of smoke.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Nearly all of them gave White information he didn't have
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: before he walked into the room. The effects seemed to
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: materialize within fifteen minutes and lasted for thirty to ninety minutes,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: just enough of a window of time to climb inside
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: their minds and grab what he could. Part two, The
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Manhattan Project. This was the end result of two billion
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: dollars spent on research and production of years of feverish labor.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Johanna's atomic power ahead of the enemy. The energy that
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: generates the heat of the Sun and operates the solar
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: system comes under the will of human kind. White visited
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the side dentists working on the atomic bomb. The OSS
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: wanted to know if the lab boys would discuss classified
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: information under the influence. Let's just pause for a second
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: to acknowledge how bonkers this is someone somewhere signed off
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: on an experiment to give an untested solution of liquid
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: marijuana to the men responsible for designing the most dangerous
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: weapon in mankind? Do you really want people who can
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: summon the end of the world getting high in the
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: middle of their work day. These weren't necessarily cigarettes either.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: White injected their food and drink with it, sprayed it
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: on tissue paper they used on their faces. Then he
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: and another operative tried to get information. After all, it's
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: something the enemy might do. Thankfully, no one talked. Considering
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: the government's track record for disposing of national security threats,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: it was for the best. Throughout his travels, White was
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: partnered with a Harvard law grad to it from OSS.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: His name is lost to redacted documents, but we do
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: know the man would later confess that no one at
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: the OSS would ever accept a cigarette from him again.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: While Bill sent the pair across the South cigarettes at
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: the ready, and their styles didn't exactly mesh. George Hunter
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: White was reckless. He parked his car illegally wherever he wanted.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: He used his gun as a prop to scare waiters.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: One night at the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, White
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: pulled out his twenty two automatic and shot his initials
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: into the ceiling of their hotel room. G h W.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: It took him several clips. It was like he wanted
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: to sign his work, like he was making history and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: wanted people to know. George White, rejected by the FBI,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: had finally arrived. But this was just the start of
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: his depraved adventures, an audition for the real work that
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: would begin. When Sydney Gottlieb first pulled out his file
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: in September, the American public was introduced to a new term, brainwashing.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: It was coined by a journalist named Edward Hunter, who
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: was writing about the dangers of the Communist Party for
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: the Miami Daily News. Communists in China, Hunter road, we're
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: using terrifying technique to turn their people into mindless, obedient robots.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Edward Hunter's story scared a few people, but largely passed
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: without notice. Then reports started circulating of Americans who were
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: captured during the Korean War confessing to biological warfare. A
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: colonel who had been shot down over Korea admitted to
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: war crimes, so did other soldiers. These captured Americans insisted
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: they had dropped anthrax in North Korea over civilians. Whether
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: that's what really happened is still debated seventy years later.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: They implored the U. S Government to end the war
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: and signed confessions testifying to their heinous deeds. Some refused
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: to be repatriated. Others stood up in support of communism.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Would an American soldier really denounce his own country? For
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: those in the highest levels of government, there was a
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: simple explanation. Some kind of potion must have warped the
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: prisoners minds, Something must have happened suddenly. Edward Hunter's warning
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: didn't seem so hysterical. Brainwashing was a convenient explanation, and
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: it wasn't exactly Edward Hunter's idea. Hunter was a CIA propagandist,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: a journalist willing and able to spread the agency's message
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: when the call came, and the call did come, to
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: communicate to Americans that the Russians and Chinese were on
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: the forefront of what came to be known as brain warfare.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: According to Dominic street Field's book Brainwash, the CIA captured
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: two Russian agents in Ninette. They were carrying small plastic
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: cylinders filled with liquid. Under questioning, the Russians said these
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: powerful dlug We'll tell them human into zombie. They will
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: do whatever they are told. The really scary part, no
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: CIA chemists could identify it. Now, imagine you're the c
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: i A. You've just been told the enemy has mastered
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the art of chemical mind control. And it wasn't just
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: a report. Soldiers were actually defecting. Weird drugs were turning
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: up everywhere. Remember this was the era of Joe McCarthy,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: the Second Red Scare. Paranoia gripped the agency. Every single
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: drug available had to be rounded up and evaluated for
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: possible use against the United States. The effects needed to
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: be known. This was priority one. Alan Dullas, the CIA's director,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: believed this operation could determine the very survival of the
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: United States. In fact, Dallas gave a speech in ninety
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: three that touched on the topic. In the past few years,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: we have become accustomed to hearing much about the battle
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: from men's minds. We might call it brain warfare. Its
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: aim is to condition the mind so it no longer
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: reacts on a three wheel or rational basis, but responds
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: to impulses implanted from outside. If we are to counter
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: this kind of warfare, we must understand the technique. The
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Soviet Is adopting to control men's minds. For the CIA,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: brain warfare was no hypothetical scenario. Dulles appointed Gotlieb was
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: the chief of the Chemical division of the Technical Services Staff,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: and Gottlieb promptly got to work. His staff of CIA
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and Army chemical scientists raced to evaluate drugs for their
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: mind controlling potential. The drugs were a new challenge for Gotlieb.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: In the early days, CIA chemists worked on the sort
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: of thing you'd find in a kid's spy movie, stink
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: bombs and exploding cookie dough. But under Gottlieb, the work evolved.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Operating from an Army base in Fort Dietrich, Maryland, his
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: team brewed countless recipes of sabotage from by chilling hum
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: toxins too paralyzing agents. They formulated deadly liquids from shellfish
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: toxins and crocodile bile, and the herbal stuff things like
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: mescaline and marijuana were combed for their truth seeking properties.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: No question was too outrageous. Could they dissolve a concrete
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: wall with a chemical? Could they induce amnesia? The projects
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: had code names like Bluebird because they wanted tight lipped
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: in formants to sing. Gottli was unassuming in appearance, tall, thin,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: with a stutter, but he was ruthless about his work.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: An absolute monster, and he ushered in a horrifying chapter
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: of American history. In ninety one, when four Japanese men
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: were suspected of working for the Soviet Union, Gottlieb escorted
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: a group of scientists to Tokyo. The team injected the
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: men with stimm lens and depressants until they confessed. They
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: were tortured without a trial, without anything resembling justice. All
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: four men were executed and dumped into Tokyo Bay. Gottlieb
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: repeated the protocol with twenty five prisoners of war in
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: North Korea. They refused to renounce Communism, they too, were executed.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Gottlieb would even board a plane headed for the Congo
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: with an unknown toxin meant to assist in the CIA
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: sanctioned assassination of the country's prime minister. Gottlieb wound up
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: throwing the substance in the river because too much time
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: had passed and it had grown unstable, but the prime
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: minister would live just another few weeks before he was
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: reported dead. The CIA denied having anything to do with it.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Dallas had officers pursuing non chemical means to hypnosis, electroshock therapy,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: brain surgery, and as they worked, the CIA inched closer
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: to their goal of brainwashing someone, convincing someone to act
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: in a manner contrary to their nature. A CIA psychiatrist,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: for example, successfully induced an office secretary into a state
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: of sleep. Then he told another secretary to wake her up,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: and if she couldn't, she should pick up the gun
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: and shoot. The secretary couldn't wake up her colleague, so
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: she picked up the gun, took aim, and fired. Of course,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: it wasn't loaded. While homicidal secretaries seemed like a promising start,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: this kind of experimentation could only go so far. After all,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: these were government employees who had agreed to be subjects.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: On some level, they were complicit, They wanted to follow orders.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: It would be another matter entirely to coerce the enemy
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: into confessing, and no external force seemed capable of doing that.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: It had to be something chemical, something to make the
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: brain pliable, malleable, something that left it impressionable. Remember, Americans
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: were coming home denouncing domestic ideals, turning their backs on
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: the country, and the CIA wasn't just in the business
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: of identifying intelligence threats. They were, in many ways a
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: defense agency. The enemy was waging a war of neurons now,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and Alan Dallas believed the fate of the United States
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: of America rested on it. So that's where Sidney Gottlieb
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: found himself surrounded by psychologists looking to hack into brains
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: through brute force. The stakes impossibly high. He kept looking
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: at files, hoping to find a trace of something promising.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: He rewound back to the Office of Strategic Services and
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: to George White, who had already been tasked years prior
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: with finding a truth drug and if his experience with
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: August del Gracio as any indication White had found it,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: the very same drug White had spent his days arresting
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: people for was the same thing he was dosing people
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: with across the country, you know, for the sake of
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: democracy and a little later for fun. Part three, Meeting
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: of the Minds. Gottlieb's interest in White came at a
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: crucial time for the narcotics agent. There was an opening
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: for the district supervisor's job in New York. White was
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: so certain he'd be selected for duty that he started
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: moving into the vacant office, hanging pictures up on the wall.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: He stayed there for weeks until word came in his supervisor,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Harry Anslinger, couldn't give him the job. New York Governor
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Thomas Dewey despised White. White had stated the mafia was
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: trying to bribe the government to get Lucky Luciano out
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: of prison in order to help the Allied invasion of Italy,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: which fairly directly implicated Dewey. Dewey was the one who
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: commuted Luciano's sentence. White had never forgotten what Little Loggie
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: had said about Luciano, and he wanted to nail someone
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: for it. Unfortunately, it was a bad political move. Fingering
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Dewey put White in the crosshairs of some powerful people.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: This won't be the last time Dewey causes problems for White,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: and once again George White was denied an opportunity he
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: felt he deserved. But Sydney got leave. He had no
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: such concerns. To Gottlieb, George White was everything he could
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: ever ask, a perfect soldier for brain warfare. Not only
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: did White have extensive narcotics experience, he was a trained
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: killer beyond little Loggie, White maintained a network of underworld associates.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: He was a conduit to a world Gottlieb wanted to exploit.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Who better to experiment on than society's unwashed masses the pimps, prostitutes,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: drug dealers, users, and mafia cronies, and George White had
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: access to all of them. Even if the subjects found
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: out and wanted to complain, they'd never go to the police.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Silence was their universal trait. Gottlieb knew he needed White
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: someone to take his lab theories and test them on
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: the streets. Of course, one federal agency doesn't simply plunder
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: the employees of another federal agency without going through the
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: proper channels, So Gottlieb called it's boss Harry Anslinger to
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: get his blessing. Anslinger, who was busy telling the press
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: heroin was now the number one drug scourge in the country,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: didn't have a problem with it. White had long been
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: among his favorite agents. He told Gotlieb if he wanted
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: White part time, that was fine with him. He didn't
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: realize the CIA would soon become White's all consuming obsession.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: In early nineteen fifty two, Gottlieb finally met White in Washington.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: It was the real life equivalent of the Emperor recruiting
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Darth Vader. The CIA chemist would later describe the man
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: he shook hands with as gruff and loudish, but who
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: could turn urbane to a point of eloquence. Gottli was
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: experiencing the dichotomy of White for himself. Rather than sit
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: in a conference room, White suggested another way of getting
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: to know one another. He invited Gottlieb to accompany him
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: to Boston, where he was working on an investigation concerning
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: a small business owner and millionaire who claimed to be
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: working real estate but was clearly profiting from a heroin
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: ring connected to a New York crime family. On the
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: way there, they talked business. I've read about the marijuana
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: experiments you did for the U. S S. It's fascinating stuff.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: I'm knocked my own ass out. You know, do you
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: think it's less than ideal for our purposes? You need
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: to tell me what your purposes are, so Gottlieb did.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: He explained the agency's suspicions that the Soviets had a
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: truth drug in their arsenal and that the country was
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: under substantial communist threat. Some subversive action was needed, actions
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: sanctioned by CIA director Alan Dulles, who had the blessing
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: of President Dwight Eisenhower. The specifics were up to Gottlieb.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of drugs with potential, but we
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: need to be careful of blowback. I mean, if someone
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: catches on you drug them, then maybe they'd go to
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: the police. A criminal might not no, and you know
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: what else, I am the police. Gotlieb and White got along.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: White told Gottlieb about his frustrations over being passed up
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: for government jobs in the past, the feeling he wasn't
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: good enough, and Gottlieb understood the man with a club
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: foot had been rejected for military service. He knew the
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: sting of rejection. Gottlieb walked away from his encounters with
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: White feeling very good about his potential as a CIA consultant,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: and that title wasn't plucked from thin air either. If
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Gotlieb could actually follow through on its plan to drug
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: random civilians, he needed a certain distance from White. He
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: needed to be able to say, George White doesn't work
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: for the CIA, just in case things went wrong. And
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: this isn't exactly a spoiler but things were about to
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: go very, very wrong. A company man, Gottlieb, reached out
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: to his supervisors to get the necessary clearances to officially
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: enlist White. But the intelligence world is murky. Gotlie didn't
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: know that another CIA officer, James Angleton, had already contacted
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: White for an earlier drug project. Angleton didn't mention it,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and neither did White. Gottlieb would later say it was
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: all part of the duality of intelligence work in the CIA.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: They even sneak around on one another. When Gottlieb formerly
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: offered White the job, White had to submit to a
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: CIA background check, and while he undoubtedly had a colorful past,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the check lasted for a very long time. One month,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: two months, then six months. The CIA's personnel department seemed
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: to be hung up on George White, and White thought
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: he knew why. Couple of crew cut pipe smoking punks
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: had either known me or heard of me during the
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: OSS days and had decided I was too rough for
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: their league and promptly blackballed me. White had little love
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: for the starched collars of federal officers. To White, they
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: didn't get their hands dirty the way he did. Agents
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: locked themselves in offices reading reports while White was dodging
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: bullets and making cases. One CIA officer would later say
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: White was friends with criminals, prostitutes, drug dealers. They were
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: a little in awe of him, a little scared, and
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: a little dismissive. Officials may have delayed his application because
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: George White was a wrecking ball, but there was also
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: some reluctance in handing over full control of the drug
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: experiments to Gottlieb. The Office of Scientific Intelligence wanted eyes
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: on the projects, so did the Office of Security. There
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: were clearly people within the CIA who didn't want Gottlieb
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: to have the unchecked authority he wound up with. And
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: this part it's important to remember. The chain of command
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: wasn't the CIA, Gottlieb and White. This whole thing was
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Gottlieb show run. However he saw fit. White only had
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: to answer to him. If gottlie was watching White, well,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: who was watching Gottlieb. No one, Alan Dulles had given
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: him total, unrestricted freedom. There was just one wrinkle to
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: recruiting White. At the moment George White was sitting in jail.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: At first, Gotlieb thought White had been caught with a
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: few drug samples he had innocently passed to him during
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: one of their meetings, but then he was told the truth.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: White had actually been thrown in a cell for contempt
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: of court. In front of a judge, he refused to
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: name an informant a grand jury. White told the judge
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: that the last time one of his informants had been identified,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: the man wound up dead in an alley. Gottlieb sprang
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: into action, getting White legal counsel. The lawyer ultimately advised
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: White to name the man in a closed door session.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: While it's not typical to do your recruiting from a
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: jail cell, Gottlieb saw it as a sign of White's valor.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: This was a man who couldn't be shaken from his
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: core values. On January one, nineteen fifty three, Sydney Gottlieb
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: made it official. George White was a CIA consultant. The
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: man who had resented the organization for rejecting him over
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: and over was now bestowed with all of its powers.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: In his diary, White wrote a brief note, gottli proposes,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: I'd be a CIA consultant. I agree. Think about that
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: statement for just a minute. Does it sound unusual to you,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Gottlieb proposes ib as CIA consultants. I agree. In what
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: could be considered his first pertinent act as a CIA consultant,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: White had just written down the real name of his supervisor.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: This wasn't something you were supposed to do. Dating back
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: to Camp X, White had known the value of keeping
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: names out of written material. It was espionage one oh one.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: But just a few minutes into his role in one
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: of the most well guarded secrets in American intelligence, White
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: was scribbling names down. It was a reckless thing to do.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: It broke a rule. It wasn't the only rule George
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: White was about to break next time. On Operation Midnight Climax.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: In one of their first meetings, Sidney Gottlieb handed White
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: an ampull of LSD. This could be the key to everything,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: providing White was willing to make some bold moves on
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: behalf of his country. Without knowing it, White and Gottlieb
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: were about to usher in the psychedelic age. White looked
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: at the ampule and his mind started to turn. He
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: put it in his pocket like a bullet loaded into
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: a chamber, and then he went off in search of
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: a target. Operation Midnight Climax is hosted by Noel Brown.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: This show is written by Jake Ross and editing, sound
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: design and mixing by Ernie indur Dat and Natasha Jacobs.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Original music by Aaron Kaufman. Research and fact checking by
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Austin Thompson and MAURICEA. Brown Show. Logo by Lucy Kingtonia
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Special thanks to David Crumholtz, Vanessa Crumholtz, Ted Ramie and
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Jason Simpson. Julian Weller is our supervising producer. Our executive
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: producers are Jason English and Mangesh had Ticketer. See you
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: next week.