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