Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA by John Lisle
Major thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for
providing me with an advanced copy of John Lisle’s deeply researched book about
a horrible hidden history in America’s intelligence agency Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA. I am
fascinated by this period not only because it was classified for many years,
but also because it is so shocking that the American government would allow
indiscriminate human testing with drugs and other forms of psychological
torture even after the Belmont Report. However, I think that Lisle recognizes
how this kind of thinking and action are part of the continuous pendulum that
swings back and forth across American history. He states this argument well in one of the
last chapters that provides a kind of analysis and evaluation of MKULTRA and its
impact on later clandestine actions of intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA:
“As the previous examples show,
MKULTRA was not a fluke. Rather, it was the norm in a system that lacks
meaningful external oversight and lets perpetrators of abuses avoid
accountability for their actions, a system in which the vicious cycle of
secrecy pushes the pendulum too far toward security at the expense of liberty.”
I really appreciated this insight, and I think it is
something that is lacking in other books about MKULTRA and Gottlieb. I’ve read
a few books about this topic, and Chaos by Tom O’Neill and Poisoner in Chief by Stephen Kinzer both explore similar grounds, yet also delved
into specific areas, with Kinzer’s book providing an overview of Gottlieb’s
career and various projects in the CIA. What separates Lisle’s book is the
deposition transcripts that were used as much of the basis for each of the
chapters. These provide some important insight into the various projects that
Gottlieb was involved in, and also serve as launching points for Lisle to
explore these projects and the individuals who were affected by them. At first,
it was a little jarring to read through these transcripts and I wished that Lesle
provided some insight into the organization of the book; however, about ¼ of
the way through the book, I got used to this approach and actually appreciated
how these transcripts helped to inform the other parts of the chapter.
Furthermore, they also allowed Lisle to take a broader approach than Kinzer or
O’Neill and examine many of the sub-projects that were included under the
MKULTRA program. Readers also learn how the project initially developed in
response to the belief that prisoners of war taken by North Korea and individuals
in other Communist countries (especial Cardinal Mindszenty from Hungary) experienced
a kind of through reform (or informally known as brainwashing). Not really
aware that this kind of shift could be the result of coercive physical punishment
like torture, the American government enlisted scientists and psychologists to explore
the various questions related to mind control, wondering if it were possible to
not only alter one’s belief system and values, but also to possibly alter their
behavior. As Lisle notes in the final chapters and epilogue, this secretive collaboration
between intelligence agencies, psychologists, especially behaviorists, and
scientists was also what we later found out about in the war on terror and the
1980s war on Communism that brought about the Iran Contra Scandal. As Lisle notes,
it’s this kind of fear of other ideologies that ends up deferring power to intelligence, which leads
to secrecy, which invites further abuse. It’s a common thread we see in the fight
against Communism, the fight against terrorism, and even now with the “belief”
that America is under attack by immigrants, although it seems like the abuses are
much more blatant, telegraphed and promoted online to send a message. One of
the other interesting conclusions that Lisle draws in regards to programs like
MKULTRA is the role of that conspiracy theories play in furthering these
abuses. Lisle shows how the CIA has not really addressed this scandal, and the
fact that Gottlieb and others destroyed the files leads to an absence of
evidence. “All claims need some empirical support to have any credibility. Yet
in the twisted world of conspiracy theories, an absence of evidence is itself
evidence of a cover-up. Nothing is proven, nothing can be disproven.” Lisle
explains that many have gone on to use these kinds of absences to connect dots
and create their own theories and beliefs for various outcomes and events. One
example is school shootings and the belief that these are used as a pretext to
remove guns from people. Another is the various reasons for COVID closures and
how this is a scheme by the “deep state” to engage in various actions that will
take away liberty. Lisle goes on to write “Like McCarthyism during the Red
Scare, these sensational claims generate fear, which generates coverage, which
generates converts. Ironically, the conspiracy theorists have managed to
manipulate more people than MKULTRA ever did,” providing an interesting current
analogy to what is happening now with all of the disinformation and “flooding
the zone” to not only manipulate people, but also as a means to call to action,
using fear as a primal motivator. I really appreciated this insight and
analysis that Lisle provides to link up that idea about how behaviorist
techniques are often employed in our current political climate. Lisle also
makes a note about how the political landscape in America also further allows
this kind of approach where there is limited governance and more focus on
appealing to emotion- winning the minds through the hearts—and how this also
contributes to the limited oversight in intelligence abuse. It’s an interesting
idea and throughline that I don’t recall was in some of these other books (or
documentaries like Wormwood and Chaos, based on the O’Neill
book).
Lisle reviews some of the other cases that were in Kinzer’s
book, notably the Frank Olson tragedy (which was the basis for the Wormwood documentary
series). Lisle also explores the roles that other agents and psychiatrists
played in MKULTRA’s research. In particular, there is time spent on the abuse
perpetrated by George White in Operation Midnight Climax, where he used safe
houses in San Francisco and New York to drug people on the fringes of society. The
unwitting drugging of these people was due to the belief that they were less
likely to report the abuses or even question the drugging. Lisle also shares
the attempted follow up that happened after President Ford’s inquiry into CIA misdeeds,
and it was sad to see how these single drugging may have induced paranoia and
mental illness in some of the victims. Similarly, Lisle also highlights the
abuses perpetrated by Dr. Ewen Cameron, a Canadian psychologist whose
experiments in mind control were horrific. Kinzer also explored Cameron’s
abuses in Poisoner in Chief, and Cameron was also the subject of CBC
podcast. However, Lisle focuses more on the patients and what they endured, and
also follows up on some of their lives and the consequences of Cameron’s abuse.
One of his most notorious attempts to erase and reprogram individuals was
through a process called “psychic driving” where patients were forced to listen
to tape loops, often words or phrases they despised or were upsetting to them,
while in a continued drug-induced state for weeks at a time. As Lisle notes,
many times the effects were catastrophic, reducing adult subjects to infant
like states where they were unable to care for themselves. In the end of the
book, Lisle also follows a lawyer for some of these victims, Joseph Raugh, who sought
compensation from the US and the Canadian governments for these wrongdoings.
This examination of the pursuit of justice was also interesting to see, as
Lisle documents the challenges that Raugh experienced in attempting to challenge
the secretive agencies involved in these abuses.
I really enjoyed learning more about this topic through
Lisle’s research and reporting. At first, I was a little concerned that this
was going to be similar to Kinzer’s book, but Lisle approach is to go for more
breadth while also taking some more depth with those projects and people who
were involved in the peripheries of MKULTRA. Furthermore, I thought that the
final chapters that detail the consequences of MKULTRA in fueling further
conspiracies as well as other clandestine programs enacted under the guise of
protecting and securing America were some of the strongest in the book. It was
an apt and timely conclusion to draw as we continue to witness daily attempts
at a form of mind control through disinformation (or censorship through noise),
conspiracy theories, and the kind of methodologies employed by cults to manipulate
and modify behavior (The BITE method-Behavior, Information, Thought, and
Emotion). This section was especially important in becoming a more critical
consumer of information, whether it is through the media, online, or in print.
I’m glad that Lisle’s book adds some additional insight and ideas into the
discussion about MKULTRA and the history of these kinds of clandestine
operations in America. Furthermore, Lisle’s analysis presents important
messages for the current climate of information, both real and fabricated, why
it is important to be critical when consuming information. Highly recommended
book!
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