Sidney Gottlieb
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Sidney Gottlieb (August 3, 1918 – March 7, 1999) was an American military psychiatrist and chemist probably best-known for his involvement with the Central Intelligence Agency's mind control program MKULTRA.
Sidney was born in the Bronx under the name Joseph Schneider . He received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. A stutterer from childhood, Gottlieb got a master's degree in speech therapy. He also had a club foot, but this did not stop him from practicing folk dancing, a lifelong passion.
In 1951, Sidney Gottlieb joined the Central Intelligence Agency. As a poison expert, he headed the chemical division of the Technical Services Staff (TSS). Sidney became known as the "Black Sorcerer" and the "Dirty Trickster". He supervised preparations of lethal poisons and experiments in mind control.
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[edit] MKULTRA
In April 1953 Sidney Gottlieb headed the secret Project MKULTRA which was activated on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles. Gottlieb was known for administration of LSD and other psycho-active drugs to unwitting subjects and for financing psychiatric research and development of "techniques that would crush the human psyche to the point that it would admit anything." He sponsored physicians such as Ewen Cameron and Harris Isbell in controversial psychiatric research that used unwitting humans as guinea pigs. Many people suffered serious adverse affects consequent of research financed by Gottlieb and the Rockefeller Foundation.
In March 1960, under The Cuban Project, a CIA plan approved by President Eisenhower and under the direction of CIA Directorate for Plans, Richard Bissell, Gottlieb came up with ideas to spray Fidel Castro's television studio with LSD and to saturate Castro's shoes with thallium so that the hair of his beard would fall out. Gottlieb also hatched schemes to assassinate Castro, including the use of a poisoned cigar, a poisoned wetsuit, an exploding conch shell, and a poisonous fountain pen.
After U.S. president Eisenhower, in August 1960, ordered the assassination of Congolese prime minister Lumumba, a secret agent was sent by the CIA to deliver a tube of poisonous toothpaste, of the same brand used by Lumumba, to a CIA contact named Larry Devlin. The toothpaste was to be secretly switched with Lumumba's personal toothpaste. Devlin, however, in his undercover work had come to admire Lumumba and could not in good conscience murder him. So Devlin abandoned his CIA mission.
Some historians speculate that the CIA eventually played some role in the events that transpired in those weeks before Lumumba was murdered in January 1961. The US government has never made an official statement to the Congolese people.
He also tried to have Iraq's General Abdul Karim Qassim's handkerchief contaminated with botulinum. Less known was an operation within the CIA's Phoenix Program in Vietnam where a team of CIA psychologists performed mind control experiments on NLF suspects being detained at Bien Hoa Prison outside of Saigon.
Gottlieb is said to have played a role in funding investigation into paranormal phenomena, including remote viewing.
[edit] Sources
- President 'ordered murder' of Congo leader by Martin Kettle, The Guardian, Thursday August 10, 2000
- Tempelsman's Man Weighs In on the Murder of Patrice Lumumba by Suzan Mazur
[edit] References
- "The Diaries Of a CIA Operative", by John Jacobs, Washington Post, September 5, 1977, A1
- The Secret History of the CIA, by Joseph J. Trento, Prima Lifestyles, 1st edition (October, 2001), ISBN 0-7615-2562-9
