Project mind control : Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the tragedy of MKULTRA
(2025)

Nonfiction

Book

Call Numbers:
NEW HISTORY

Availability

Locations Call Number Status
New & Popular History NEW HISTORY Available

Details

PUBLISHED
New York : St. Martin's Press, 2025
©2025
EDITION
First edition
DESCRIPTION

x, 292 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm

ISBN/ISSN
9781250338747, 1250338743 :, 1250338743, 9781250338747
LANGUAGE
English
NOTES

Prologue -- The outsider -- Bluebird and artichoke -- The origins of MKULTRA -- LSD -- Deep Creek -- The Frank Olson incident -- Operation Midnight Climax -- Overseas operations -- The cutouts -- Psychic driving -- Depatterning -- The wild West -- Prison experiments -- Subprojects -- Assassination -- Close but no cigar -- Disillusion and dissolution -- Torture -- Technical Services -- Keeping secrets -- The family jewels -- The investigations -- The hearings -- Victims task force -- The lawsuits -- Old wounds -- The viscious cycle of secrecy -- History loves irony -- Epilogue -- Acknowledgments -- Appendix -- Notes -- References -- Index

"The inside story of the CIA's secret mind control project, MKULTRA, using never-before-seen testimony from the perpetrators themselves. Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA's most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous-even deadly-experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the movements of animals via electrodes implanted into their brains. His goal was to develop methods of mind control that could turn someone into a real-life "Manchurian candidate." In conjunction with MKULTRA, Gottlieb also plotted the assassination of foreign leaders and created spy gear for undercover agents. The details of his career, however, have long been shrouded in mystery. Upon retiring from the CIA in 1973, he tossed his files into an incinerator. As a result, much of what happened under MKULTRA was thought to be lost-until now. Historian John Lisle has uncovered dozens of depositions containing new information about MKULTRA, straight from the mouths of its perpetrators. For the first time, Gottlieb and his underlings divulge what they did, why they did it, how they got away with it, and much more. Additionally, Lisle highlights the dramatic story of MKULTRA's victims, from their terrible treatment to their dogged pursuit of justice. The consequences of MKULTRA still reverberate throughout American society. Project Mind Control is the definitive account of this most disturbing of chapters in CIA history"-- Provided by publisher