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A review by swally2005
Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephen Kinzer
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced
4.0
Sydney Gottlieb and all of his co-conspirators at the CIA are fucking monsters. Sometimes I wish I believed in the existence of a literal hell--fire and brimstone, etc.--if only so that I could take comfort in knowing that men like him would end up there. I have no idea how the son of Jewish immigrants who fled to America to avoid the turmoil in Germany during the beginnings of Hitler's rise to power, can justify all of the terrible things that he did, which were exactly the same, if not worse, than the horrors that Nazi doctors inflicted upon their victims in concentration camps during the Holocaust. The ability of this man to rationalize such bifurcated existences and morals, in regards to the reported differences between his home and professional lives really makes me wonder if he was just a sociopath--incapable of any actual true empathy, and was just really good at masking himself outside of work.
It certainly seems to me that many of the colleagues he recruited and surrounded himself with during his years running MK-Ultra were sociopathic. George Hunter White, for example, makes no effort to hide his proclivities, and even outs himself in his own correspondence, writing (after his retirement) to Gottlieb to thank him for recruiting him, "I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?"
One would think that CIA psychologists would be able to ferret out these types of dangerous personalities in their background checks and block them from hire, but it seems most of those psychologists and the higher-ups were extreme hypocrites, as many were engaged in highly unethical, cruel, sociopathic, and/or deviant behaviors that are supposedly frowned upon at the Agency, but were somehow able to run rampant and unchecked for decades.
As the author states, one of the only consolations about the existence of MK-Ultra, and all the horrors that Gottlieb and his people committed, is that he ultimately failed in his objective. I also find it a kind of karmic justice that though the CIA were the ones responsible for bringing LSD into the mainstream population, it ultimately helped to create the hippies and counter-culture movement of the 60s, which essentially became the bane of every American governmental institution. As Kinzer writes, "the drug that Gottlieb and his CIA colleagues hoped would allow them to control humanity had the opposite effect. It fueled a generational revolt unlike any in American history."
This is an extremely difficult, but necessary, and informative read. Steven Kinzer does an excellent job of shedding light into one of the CIA's most shadowy figures, as well as one of it most secretive programs. I cannot even fathom the amount of effort it must have taken to research this. I only wish that Gottlieb and all the others were still alive when book this came out, so that they could've had to at least bear witness to the amount of fallout and bad press that this book brought to their "legacies," since it seems like all the other attempts to hold them accountable for these atrocities has failed.
The one critical note I have has nothing to do with the content of the book or the writing itself, but of the audiobook version. For some reason, the narrator decided it was a good idea to try to imitate Gottlieb's stutter (because it was mentioned that he struggled with a stutter throughout his life) when reading quotes of his in the book. He would also affect strange accents for some of the other people mentioned in this book, at times. It was really weird and off-putting. Even when he wasn't doing either of these things, his narration style just seemed kind of stilted, with weird pauses, and also harsh--almost like he was shouting at times. Just do yourselves a favor and skip the audiobook entirely, and just read the actual book.
It certainly seems to me that many of the colleagues he recruited and surrounded himself with during his years running MK-Ultra were sociopathic. George Hunter White, for example, makes no effort to hide his proclivities, and even outs himself in his own correspondence, writing (after his retirement) to Gottlieb to thank him for recruiting him, "I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?"
One would think that CIA psychologists would be able to ferret out these types of dangerous personalities in their background checks and block them from hire, but it seems most of those psychologists and the higher-ups were extreme hypocrites, as many were engaged in highly unethical, cruel, sociopathic, and/or deviant behaviors that are supposedly frowned upon at the Agency, but were somehow able to run rampant and unchecked for decades.
As the author states, one of the only consolations about the existence of MK-Ultra, and all the horrors that Gottlieb and his people committed, is that he ultimately failed in his objective. I also find it a kind of karmic justice that though the CIA were the ones responsible for bringing LSD into the mainstream population, it ultimately helped to create the hippies and counter-culture movement of the 60s, which essentially became the bane of every American governmental institution. As Kinzer writes, "the drug that Gottlieb and his CIA colleagues hoped would allow them to control humanity had the opposite effect. It fueled a generational revolt unlike any in American history."
This is an extremely difficult, but necessary, and informative read. Steven Kinzer does an excellent job of shedding light into one of the CIA's most shadowy figures, as well as one of it most secretive programs. I cannot even fathom the amount of effort it must have taken to research this. I only wish that Gottlieb and all the others were still alive when book this came out, so that they could've had to at least bear witness to the amount of fallout and bad press that this book brought to their "legacies," since it seems like all the other attempts to hold them accountable for these atrocities has failed.
The one critical note I have has nothing to do with the content of the book or the writing itself, but of the audiobook version. For some reason, the narrator decided it was a good idea to try to imitate Gottlieb's stutter (because it was mentioned that he struggled with a stutter throughout his life) when reading quotes of his in the book. He would also affect strange accents for some of the other people mentioned in this book, at times. It was really weird and off-putting. Even when he wasn't doing either of these things, his narration style just seemed kind of stilted, with weird pauses, and also harsh--almost like he was shouting at times. Just do yourselves a favor and skip the audiobook entirely, and just read the actual book.