Let's do some highlights of MKUltra because it is a can of worms! We'll talk Sidney Gottlieb America's 'poisoner in chief' who used LSD (and other drugs) to try to reprogram minds. Spoiler - you cannot do that.
Let's do some highlights of MKUltra because it is a can of worms! We'll talk Sidney Gottlieb America's 'poisoner in chief' who used LSD (and other drugs) to try to reprogram minds. Spoiler - you cannot do that.
Source
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=poisoner+in+chief&i=stripbooks&adgrpid=183397944181&hvadid=779569029006&hvdev=c&hvexpln=0&hvlocphy=9031388&hvnetw=g&hvocijid=1797291272736522472--&hvqmt=e&hvrand=1797291272736522472&hvtargid=kwd-813245151278&hydadcr=22536_13821197_8233&mcid=b8bb19d08331358680d1db8c8161b8af&tag=googhydr-20&ref=pd_sl_81f3pp8mjh_e
Taylor: My cousin had a baby this morning. His name is Jackson
>> Taylor: In the matter of the people of State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA097. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not.
>> Taylor: What your country can do for you. Hello. Hello, Taylor. How are you?
>> Taylor: Good, how are you?
>> Taylor: Good. Getting all your festivities wrapped up for Thanksgiving, I take it?
>> Taylor: Yep. They would be wrapped up by now. Yeah. You know what?
>> Taylor: Thanksgiving already happened. Never mind.
>> Taylor: I'm sure it went fine. Yeah, yeah, it was great. Can. Super exciting. Actually. It is. It is pre Thanksgiving when we're recording this, but my cousin had a baby this morning.
>> Taylor: No way.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Super exciting. His name is Jackson. He's huge. He was £9 12 oz.
>> Taylor: Holy moly.
>> Taylor: And yeah, just congratulations to Kelsey and Justin and I'm super excited.
>> Taylor: Congrats, Kelsey and Justin. Where do they live?
>> Taylor: They live in Nebraska. Nice.
>> Taylor: Yes, very cool. Yeah, yeah, that sounds. Yeah, nine pounds. That's a Nebraska baby. That sounds great.
>> Taylor: It does sound like good. A good, healthy American boy is 9 pounds 12 ounces. Exactly. Yeah.
>> Taylor: He's future linebacker for the Huskers.
>> Taylor: Exactly. Exactly.
>> Taylor: Sweet. Well, I think. Oh yeah. You're gonna introduce us.
>> Taylor: I'm ready. Yeah.
Taylor: Are you gonna do a season related topic for us? No
Welcome to Dooms to Fail. We bring you historical disasters and failures and I am Taylor, joined by fars. It is. It is the season. We are in deep in the holidays and have been a good time.
>> Taylor: Tis the season.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Are you gonna do a season related topic for us?
>> Taylor: No, I didn't even think about it, but I mean, maybe next time because it'll still be the season.
>> Taylor: We're in the season.
>> Taylor: I don't know. Why not? It'll still be part of the season. Yeah. Actually, well, I have one that I've been trying. I've been thinking about for a while and I wanted to do like a series, but I. It's just. There's just so much. So I'm just kind of doing the highlights and then maybe I will dig into more things a little bit deeper. But I'm going to tell you about Sidney Gottlieb and CIA mind control.
>> Taylor: Ooh, is this MK Ultra stuff?
>> Taylor: Yes. Fun.
>> Taylor: That's a huge topic.
>> Taylor: It's too much. I listened to obviously like the super old last podcast one and then like it was essentially when they were doing book reports and it was a book report on the book the Poisoner in Chief, which I did read also. So I have a little of that in my head and then I just have some like highlights of what what this man and his group did to, you know, willing and unwilling participants in the name of Science. Quote, quote, quote. Yeah, not great. It's not great.
>> Taylor: I did like it. I. I did like those days though, where the government would do insane things and then you'd find out about it like 100 years later.
>> Taylor: I mean, we know.
>> Taylor: So why still happening?
>> Taylor: No, exactly. So a couple. Yes, I'm sure. And then also that something really topical happened today that I'm going to get to kind of in the middle. And then also, oh, I was going to say they destroyed like 95% of their stuff, like MK Ultra. So you don't really know what they did. You know, this is the stuff that they like allowed us to know that they did, which is bad.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Taylor: And then like, so the stuff that they really did is probably much, much worse. Fun.
>> Taylor: I will tell you this. I know I have been. I've. I've known some. It's weird. The Unabomber is how I know about MK Ultra the most.
>> Taylor: Right. Because that's what I wanted to get into. I wanted to like roll it into the Unabomber and then Ted Kaczynski, because he's so fascinating on his own. The whole thing. Yeah.
>> Taylor: I'll be avenged. Yes. But I. I don't know the details because I've only been on periphery of it, never went that deep into it. So this will be a very educational experience. Experience, I think.
>> Taylor: I hope so. I hope so.
MK ultra was a CIA program that attempted to control people's minds
So MK ultra, which I'll talk about, like what exactly that means and what that was, but essentially what the United states government, the CIA, was trying to do in like the 50s, 60s and 70s, was to find a way to do, like real full mind control, like take your brain, scramble it, turn you into someone else. Like remove all of your memories, remove everything that makes far as far as. And make fars into a robot and have you do whatever we want you to do. Essentially, you can't do that. At the end they were like, yeah, I know.
>> Taylor: Manchurian Candidate was not a real story.
>> Taylor: Exactly. And that actually came out in the middle of this and made people even kind of more excited and more scared because they're like, maybe this could happen. That you could, you know, train a soldier to like, with a keyword. And I also, I think I heard this later, but it's like Zoolander. You know when they. Like when you hear this song, you're going to kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia.
>> Taylor: Oh, yeah.
>> Taylor: It's exactly that. Like, that's what they were trying to do, which they learned that you cannot do after all this time that they tried.
>> Taylor: Turns out the human Brain is more complicated than we think.
>> Taylor: I mean, you can certainly destroy a human brain, but you can't put something back in it.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Taylor: You know, once you scramble those eggs, you can't unscramble them.
>> Taylor: Exhibit A, Ted Kaczynski.
>> Taylor: Yes, exactly. Exactly. So you can't. You can't fix it. You can ruin it, but you can't fix it. All of it. All the stuff that they did, they ruined people's minds, they ruined people's lives. They did obviously, like, consult with and work with Nazis, because we've talked about this before, like, in, like, science and engineering, like, technical engineering. Like, you know, you brought over the rocket scientists from Germany because we wanted that they were, like, learning a lot of stuff. We want to know what they learned. And in these, like, human experiments, like, it won't. I won't really get into it more than this, but, like, the stuff that the Nazis and. And the Japanese were doing to people in their, like, prisoners and in the concentration camps and stuff was, like, stuff that no one has ever done before or since because it was so bad. And a lot of it also was for nothing. You know, like, when Mengele is trying to, like, sew a head on someone's shoulder, it's not for, like, yeah, what.
>> Taylor: Are you going to learn from that?
>> Taylor: That's not going to work. You know what I mean? But it. But. But you also, like, that was the only time that people were able to, like, do it and write it down. Like, able to. It means, like, they just, like, did it and whatever.
>> Taylor: You know, If I remember correctly, a lot of the hypothermia stuff, though, was helpful. Like, we wouldn't have known a lot about how the body reacts to it.
>> Taylor: That's fair. But they did that with. By, like, you know, freezing cold.
>> Taylor: I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying.
>> Taylor: No, exactly. No, I see. I. Yes, that. That. That's. It's interesting because some of those experiments, like, you shouldn't have been able to do, but they did it anyway. So did we learn stuff? I. I guess you should learn that stuff, you know.
>> Taylor: Right. You don't need to sew three legs on a person.
>> Taylor: Yeah. There's no medical crap. Yeah, right. Yeah. But in the end, you can't do it.
Sidney Gottlieb is the mastermind behind many mind control programs
But let's start with Sidney Gottlieb. He's the person who is, like, the mastermind behind a lot of this, a lot of the, like, mind control programs. I'm going to tell you about a couple specific programs that. That they did but he's essentially always kind of been a little old man. Even though of course he was young at one point. But he just like feels like a little old man. If you are picturing him, just picture a little old man. He wrote, he's a little old man. But first he was a baby. He was born August 3, 1918 in New York City to Hungarian Jewish immigrants. He had a stutter and a club foot which made him ineligible to fight in World War II. So some of these people who are. And I think this isn't exclusive to got leave it or to World War II. Like there are people who work in the government and work in the CIA and whatever these places that physically could not work in the army, they still want to serve their country and the quotes and do stuff. So that's why he did that. He was super smart. He's a scientist. He got a chemistry degrees from the University of Wisconsin and Caltech. And he joined the CIA in 1951. He was in the TSS, which is the technical service staff of the CIA. So his job is to figure out mind control and to make gadgets. So like, that part's kind of fun. It's definitely gadgets, like James Bond gadgets. It was fun, you know, so they called his part of the CIA the gadget shop. So it included mind control, poisons, drugs, you know, gadgets, things like. Like he really did make things like poison lipstick and you know, like the different. He experimented with different types of pills that like you could take with you when you were flying over enemy lines. And if you crash, do you like what, you know, you have your fake tooth that you bite or whatever to like to. To die by suicide. So you don't give anything away. He. They're the people who tried to like kill Castro with like the exploding cigar. I remember this, you know, or they tried to like poison Castro so that his beard would fall off so he'd be powerful.
>> Taylor: Like, that's why I have a beard, actually.
>> Taylor: Yeah. If you didn't have it like that one time, the one time you didn't have it, I felt like you were way less powerful.
>> Taylor: And you were right to think that.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, yeah, like silly stuff like that. But they had. I mean, basically I feel like that image you have of like going into that like James Bond gadget shop and then like. Or like Austin Powers, you know, and they're showing you all those like funny things, like, that's it. That's. That's really what we're looking at. Nice. You know, it's Fun. Yeah, like, that part's kind of fun. I mean, they did try to kill a lot of people and did kill people with these things, like, you know, whatever. But have the idea of having, like, you know, a shoe with a knife in it, like, that's fun.
>> Taylor: That's so cool. It's a special gadget.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
Sydney Gottlieb becomes head of TSS in 1967
So in 1967, Gottlieb becomes head of the TSS, and this is when he becomes officially the Poisoner in Chief is what they call him. And that's, like, the name of the book I read about as well. He's going to retire in 1973. And so the whole time that Sydney Gottlieb is traveling the world, learning about poisons, doing all these drugs, drugging all these people. He did the drugs himself a lot of the times, drugging all these people, trying to stage his assassination plots, doing all these things. Him and his wife live on, like, a farm outside of D.C. they, like, barely have electricity, so in the morning, he'll, like, milk his goats and, like, tend to his crops and then go into D.C. and do all this, like, 1960s, like, spy s***.
>> Taylor: It's a nice contrast, I think.
>> Taylor: I know. It was kind of fun. So after he retires, he sell. They sell everything, him and his wife. They have four kids, but they sell all their stuff and they travel the world to try to, like, help people. So they work in, like. Like, leper colonies and places in India with extreme poverty, and, like, try to help. But while they're there doing all these things, like, in their retirement, looking like, you know, a sweet little old couple trying to help people around the world, he gets called back to a congressional hearing in the mid-1970s because he does get in trouble. It is a little bit like, you couldn't. You shouldn't have done that there. The hearings, a lot of them, some of them were led by Senator Ted Kennedy when he was a senator, who also, you know, is a smidge guilty of things himself.
>> Taylor: Chipper, quiet.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Super quack.
>> Taylor: Something like that. Yeah. Like Chappaquiddick.
>> Taylor: Chappaquiddick.
>> Taylor: I don't know if it's. If it's a Massachusetts town, then who the knows how it's pronounced?
>> Taylor: Do you remember that story about him after that woman died and he went back to his hotel room, like, after calling out of the car, and then he ended up calling the hotel and saying there's people playing loud music next door to get him to shut up. I was like, that has to be the definition of privilege. You just killed somebody.
>> Taylor: You Just killed someone. Anyway, we can talk about that later. We'll definitely, probably get to that. But he. Gottlieb was going to, in these hearings, have a lot of. I don't remember happening. I don't remember. I don't remember doing that. I don't remember what happened. I can't recall. You know, so he doesn't really confess to. To anything. But the stuff that he did was. Was compared to, you know, the defenses that people said at Nuremberg, you know, being like, you know, this was for, like, the. The greater good and for what we were thinking we were doing, and I was following orders and things like that. And also the stuff that he learned out of, like, the cruelty of it. It's very similar to the stuff that they were saying, you know, after. After World War II as well. Eventually the stuff that MK Ultra and Gottlieb had done were ruled immoral and unconstitutional.
Dan Carlin released a new Common Sense podcast this morning
Which reminds me of the thing that happened this morning, is this morning, Dan Carlin released a new Common Sense, which he liked very rarely does. It's his other podcast that says hardcore history.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I start. I start checking Common Sense because it's like he goes years between releasing them.
>> Taylor: Absolutely. He did. Well, he did one this morning, and I listened to it while I was Thanksgiving shopping at the Walmart. Essentially, he is mad, as we all should be, about the thing that happened this week where the President was like, well, the couple Democrats put out a thing that was like, if you are in the military and you're asked to do something illegal, don't do it. You know. Oh, yeah. And then the President said, well, them saying don't follow orders is like treason and they should be executed. So, like, everyone's just like, in and uproar. Yes, but, you know, there are plenty of times in American history when the people who did the thing that they weren't supposed to do, even if it was ordered for them, do get in trouble later. You know, like, they like, there's some terrible things that happen in Vietnam where, like, people like, you know, these terrible mass killings and gang rapes and these terrible sexual assaults and awful things that they did over there. And they were like, following orders. And when they got back, they got in trouble for it, you know, because, like, you should. You. You are not a robot. You are supposed to have your own moral compass and be like, I'm not doing that.
>> Taylor: Orders they followed. Or were they just like rogue crazy people?
>> Taylor: Those were. Those were in, like, the melee incident, which is so terrible, is one of the things that I, like, looked At. To research and it's too awful. I can't. Was too awful. But they, like one person, I think was like, let's do this. Like, had everybody do it and then they just like, kept doing it. Like, they just like, didn't. They were their orders. Everyone was doing it. I think, you know, people who didn't do it, who didn't participate in like, the terrible assaults and all and murder and all of that, they got medals afterwards and everybody else that got in.
>> Taylor: Trouble, because I remember a full metal jacket, they were like, just sniping people off the helicopter. But that wasn't like ordered to do that. That was just a crazy person.
>> Taylor: Yeah, Yeah. I don't know. But, like, the bottom line is if someone tells you to use a thing and you know it's morally wrong, you don't have to do it.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Taylor: You shouldn't do it. You know, you should be able to. You are. You are your own person. You are not a part of a machine. So. But Gottlieb's, you know, answer was like, I don't remember doing a lot of these things and whatever, you know, blah, blah, blah, when like, he very much did. And he very much gave the orders to do a lot of these things as well. He died at the age of 80. His cause of death is not disclosed by his family, but it's. I mean, he probably died by suicide after everyone kind of knew what he had. Had done, you know, like after the trials and stuff. 80s.
>> Taylor: Pretty old. How long was it after the trial and then he killed himself?
>> Taylor: Not that long. A couple years. Yeah. Yeah.
Operation Sea Spray with the US Navy poisoned San Francisco in 1950
So, okay, let's talk about some of the specifics that happens. And we're going to cover like a whole s*** ton of time between like 1950 and 19, just some of the absolute crazy shenanigans of the CIA was up to. So before Gottlieb got into his role in 1950. I don't know if you've heard of this. Have you heard of Operation Sea Spray with the US Navy poisoned in San Francisco?
>> Taylor: No.
>> Taylor: So this is like the Wikipedia for. Page for. This is really small and I do want to, like, dig in more because I think that there's. This is just so wild. But in 1950, from September 20 to September 27, the U.S. navy from the San Francisco Bay sprayed San Francisco with two different types of bacteria to see how far it would go. And it wasn't like. It wasn't meant to like, kill people, but it was meant to be able to be traceable in the people to See if you could, like, mass poison an entire, like, port city. They didn't tell anyone in San Francisco they were doing it, including, like, the government. Like, no one knew. So they just, like, parked their boats outside and sprayed bacteria into the city. They monitored it in 43 locations all over San Francisco Bay. They were able to track that nearly all of the 800,000 residents of San Francisco breathed in the bacteria. So they were able to be like, oh, we could totally poison an entire city and do it this way. One person died. He got, like, really bad pneumonia, and a bunch 11 people got really bad UTIs because it was, like, some sort of, like, bacteria that would do that. So, like, it was. It didn't hurt a ton of people, but it hurt some people. And then some researchers think that later, some of the reasons that infections from, like, intravenous drug use and things in San Francisco were worse than other places, because these people had been exposed to that bacteria when they were kids in the 50s.
>> Taylor: It's kind of like lead causing more serial killers kind of thing.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, potentially. Potentially. But they. Yeah, they just went, like, why don't we see if we can poison a city? Let's do San Francisco. And they just, like, went to it. So that's wild. So right as Gottlieb is starting to work in the TSS in, like, 1950, 51.
>> Taylor: Wait, Taylor, what if it made a bunch of really smart engineers, though? Like, what if this was a good thing?
>> Taylor: I feel like. I think the engineers moved to San Francisco, and it starts somewhere, but maybe that's how we got to where we are. We should poison more people and see what happens there.
>> Taylor: Should poison more people. Yes.
>> Taylor: You said it first, so that sounds like a good idea. So one of the projects that started when he. When got leap started, he. When he got into the tss, was already happening. It was Project Bluebird, which turned into being called Project Artichoke. They named it. They renamed it project Artichoke in 1951 because it was Dulles favorite food. It's weird.
>> Taylor: Weird.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And I know there's so much about Dulles that we should learn, too, about all the s*** that he did. But at Camp King, which was in West US Germany, and in some places in the United States, it was just the initial things like, how can we kind of control what someone thinks or control what they say or, like, get information out of them? And they used, like, drugs, hypnosis, isolation, electric shock. Just try to get people to either, like, confess things or to be able to, like, get them just Tell them things and have it, like, hidden in their brain. And again, like, just like the Manchurian Candidate in Zoolander, like we were saying, like, the Manchurian Candidate was a movie that came out, but, like, it was a soldier who was programmed to kill some. Someone with, like, a keyword. What word am I trying to. I don't remember.
>> Taylor: I don't remember what. Yeah, I don't remember the.
>> Taylor: But it's like something happens and he's supposed to kill someone and then not remember, just, like, be a totally different person. So then there's nothing to confess because you don't remember doing it, and you can do it, like, whenever. So they're just able to, like, say something and you commit this murder that you don't remember, you never remember anything happened, and then you're able to, like, kind of get away, you know, is the idea. And so because the movie came out, which was a work of fiction, that also kind of escalated the. Or, like, amplified the idea to the CIA and to the American public that, like, China and the USSR or the Soviet Union, like, they are already doing this, you know, but they weren't. They couldn't do it either, because you can't.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Taylor: But we had this idea that they were doing it already, so that kind of amped up the way that we did it. And then this. So Project Artichoke feeds into MK Ultra. So the MK of MK Ultra doesn't mean anything. It's just like a initials that mean this is part of the tss. But they. They can't be, like, traced back to anything. It's just like arbitrary initials.
>> Taylor: So, so is this. Is it its own separate program or is it an assortment of programs?
>> Taylor: It's an assortment of programs. So they focus on different things. So Artichoke was kind of like a little bit of everything. So like, drugs, hypnosis, whatever. So it's MK Ultra, which will. I'll talk about some more things. As with drugs, there's also. Once I talk about MK Ultra, I'll talk about MK Naomi. And that one is more like biological toxins and gadgets. So there's like, synthetic drugs, like in, like, LSD is the MK Ultra, and then MK Naomi is more of, like, poison darts and gadgets, if that makes sense.
>> Taylor: Yeah, it's fun.
>> Taylor: There's a couple different projects. So MK Ultra basically is like, how can we do mind control with drugs? So LSD had been, like, discovered. It comes from, like, the ergot that they thought maybe that makes people crazy, like, the things. And, like, it does do that. But it doesn't. Obviously doesn't create witches, which we learned in the Salem wish trials, but still, it's like a natural occurring thing. And they had, like, found it and stuff, like, synthesized it, and now they're trying to figure out how.
Gottlieb himself was one of the first people to start taking LSD
What to do with it and how to experiment it with it. So Gottlieb himself was, like, one of the first people to start taking LSD to see what would happen. So there's, like, notebooks of his where he's like, things are fine. Then he's like, I see things. I feel really excited and, like, really lightheaded and, like, whatever. So he's, like, going through this, like, acid trip and, like, writing it down. So they started. He did a lot of it. He did. He did take a lot of it. But I think, you know, he liked it.
>> Taylor: Yeah, of course.
>> Taylor: You know, it reminded me of. My husband used to work at a cannabis company in California, and they had, like, a meeting. He wasn't in the meeting, but his friends were, where they were, like, taste testing, like, 10 different vape pens. And, like, I'm like, you can't take taste test 10 different weed pens. It's like, the first one that I was like, oh, it's mellow. My, like, number 10. They were like, brownies. I don't know, just like, someone do.
>> Taylor: A food run, talking.
>> Taylor: One guy was taking a nap. Like, what is. How are you supposed to do that? But he was doing a lot of that. But Gottlieb did hundreds of experiments with lsd. Sometimes people knew that they were being drugged, sometimes they didn't. So they would say, like, sign up and try it and, you know, kind of write down what happens and see what happens. Or they would do things like at the holiday party, they. They put LSD in the punch because they wanted to see if it made the secretaries more flirty.
>> Taylor: That's kind of nuts.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And again, like, Gottlieb did the drugs himself. There are reports that, like, he would just, like, get really high in LSD and sleep with everybody's wives because they were all high in lsd. So just, like, having these, like, you know, just like, the LSD parties you imagine hippies having, because that's. It turns into, like, once it gets out into the world. And then there's things that, like, I think it's Clark Gable started taking, like, microdosing, and he, like, felt much better. So, like, it's like, it gets out quickly from this, you know? So they would drug children in mental hospitals they have, for lsd. In their cereal to see what would happen to them. They would drug people in jails because they're like both children and people in jail are not willing participants in these experiments. You know.
>> Taylor: That'S probably not the worst thing they could have done to them.
>> Taylor: No.
>> Taylor: I mean, they could deprive them of.
>> Taylor: Lsd, but no, it's bad.
CIA employee Frank Olsen was drugged with LSD for 140 days
So talk about. Do we talk about Whitey Bulger recently?
>> Taylor: Probably.
>> Taylor: So he, you know, he's like the, that mobster guy, but when he was in jail, they gave. They drugged him with LSD every day straight, like 140 days. Yeah.
>> Taylor: Wait, so I think he was part of MK Ultra.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Okay.
>> Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. So, like, they would drug him with like a high dose of LSD every day for like over 100 days. You're gonna go crazy, you know, like, that's like. And they put you in isolation and they do all these things and they like, are like watching you like you're in a cage, you know, so it's not like you get like one fun trip. It's like they're drugging you every single day and leaving you like a. A room with like, no light, you know. They also tried to like, you know, give LSD to. To Castro to like, do it while he was in, like, doing a. They didn't do this, but the plan was to do it while he was doing a press conference to make him look crazy, you know, I like how.
>> Taylor: Their answer to every problem was lsd.
>> Taylor: It really is. It really is. It's like throw LLC and see what happens. They like have this idea that isn't true, and they could have figured out wasn't true much earlier. The LSD was the thing to be able to like, wipe your mind, implant it with something, and then, you know, be able to do a thing even though it wasn't. So they. One thing that they did that was particularly awful is to a CIA employee named Frank Olsen. So Frank Olson was a scientist. He worked in the army and in the CIA, and he worked at Fort Detrick in like, in experiments. And like, just like in like they're like in like the lab there. And it was a place where there was. And I mean, we're not going to get into this, but there's a lot of animal testing going on. You know, like we're talking about the humans, but like the amount of animals that were killed during this is incomprehensible, you know, And Frank Olson is like, seems like a good guy. He's like a calm, sensitive man. And this starting to like, rub on him. You know, obviously, like, this is bad. His son says about his dad. His. His son says, quote, he'd come to work in the morning and see piles of dead monkeys. That messes with you. He wasn't the right guy for that. So Frank Olson's, like, already upset.
>> Taylor: No, I would have gone ballistic.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So he's like, I'm a scientist, but I can't. I cannot handle this. And, you know, he saw humans tortured with these drugs with hypnosis. Like, there's a whole subplot of, like, they had a magician come in and try to hypnotize people and, like, all this other stuff. But. So Frank is kind of, like, starting to feel like, this is not for me. I don't. I don't love this. But he's really, really high up in. In MK Ultra and in. In this. So in 19, 1951, there was a village in France that was actually really poisoned by ergot poisoning. So he is, like, one of the handful of people who visited that place to see, like, what happens there. So he was, like, really, really high up. There aren't a lot of people who know. It's like less than 20 people really know what they're doing, and Frank Olson is one of them, but he's starting to kind of not be able to handle it. So in. On November 18, 1953, they have a retreat. So they have, like, a little cabin retreat a couple times a year for all the guys that are in, like, high up in this project. They get together, sit in the cabin, and they do drugs, basically. And at this party, there are eight guys from Fort Detrick, eight scientists, and four scientists from the CIA, including Sidney Gottlieb. And the second night, they're having dinner, and Gottlieb is like, surprise. There was a ton of drugs in dinner. You've all been super drugged. Like, let's see what happens. Like, they kind of maybe should have expected it, but, like, they didn't know they were gonna be drugged, like, to this extent at this level. On day two, they said, you've been drugged with a truth serum. But, like, it was. It was definitely lsd. And Frank was not okay. He was very, very, very upset. And he was one of the first. One of the. Again, the few people who knew all sorts of things, all of these secrets. And when he got home a couple days later, he was still very jittery, like, very upset, very confused. And he said to his wife, quote, I've made a terrible mistake. We don't know what he meant by that. And we don't know what Frank's mistake was. Did he. Did they do like a fake interrogation and he, like, spilled the beans immediately? Did he realize, wait, spill what beans? Like that. Like someone, like, pretended to. Like someone, like, pretend to kidnap him and be like, tell me about MK Ultra. And he did, you know, not supposed to, right? He's supposed to be like, totally closed lipped about all of this. Did he realize how up this was once he was drugged by accident, you know, and be like, this is the last thing. So he was basically like losing his mind. So that was like, November 22nd. He gets home on November 24th. So less like a week later, after he goes on this trip, he tries to resign and he tells his wife, he says, I tried to quit, they wouldn't let me leave, but they want to take me to psychiatric treatment because they're afraid that I might hurt you because I am feeling so messed up right now. So his wife is like, okay, like, it's Thanksgiving. Like, okay, you know, like, go.
Frank Olson jumped out of a New York hotel window in 1953
And he leaves and he says, like, I'll be back. I'm gonna go away for like a week, get some help, and then I'll be able to come back to the family. They don't take him to treatment. A couple big CIA guys take him to New York City and they like, hang out, they go to the theater, they like, go out to dinner. They just like, kind of like do stuff. And on November 28th, again, this is 1953. Frank Olson falls from the 10th floor of the Statler Hotel in New York City, which is now the Hotel Pennsylvania. He was sharing a room with another agent at that time. When the police get there again, it's 2 o' clock in the morning. They find the other guy in the. Just sitting in the bathroom, just like using the bathroom and being like, oh, hey, what's going on? Like, he didn't notice that Frank was gone. And then they know from an operator who connected a call right before, after Frank fell, before the police got there, that the other guy called someone else, who we think is Gottlieb, and said, well, he's gone. Another person said, well, that's too bad. And that was it. Later. Okay, so, like, the way that Frank Olson jumped out this window, this is what the night manager said about this. He said, quote, in all my years in the hotel business, I never encountered a case where someone got up in the middle of the night, ran across a dark room in his underwear, avoiding two beds, and dove through a closed window with a Shade of curtains drawn. So for him to have died by suicide, he would have had to take a running start from one side of the room, go through the curtains and through the window, which seems really hard.
>> Taylor: Yeah, Right.
>> Taylor: But the window was shattered and, like. And he had, like, those kind of wounds on him when they found him on the ground. So they were like, oh, he died by suicide. But it feels very, very suspicious.
>> Taylor: Right, yeah, of course.
>> Taylor: So his first thought before you said.
>> Taylor: Anything was, say, kill them.
>> Taylor: Of course. So his family is like, no. And they sued. And they sued for years. Like, they didn't get any resolutions until, like, the 2010s. But in the 1990s, they did exhume Frank's body, and they did find that he was probably hit on the head first and then thrown out the window.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Or dose him with more lsd. That seemed to work.
>> Taylor: I mean, if I'm gonna throw you out the window, I'm gonna open the window first. But what do I know?
>> Taylor: You can't open the window.
>> Taylor: What do you mean?
>> Taylor: Was the window openable?
>> Taylor: Oh, I mean, I feel like probably because it was 1953. I don't know. You're right. That you can't open hotel windows now. But, like, I wonder when that became a rule.
>> Taylor: But then it would make more sense if you're gonna kill him by throwing him out the window, that you'd open the window because then it makes it more compelling that he killed himself.
>> Taylor: That's what I'm saying.
>> Taylor: Throw him through the window.
>> Taylor: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Taylor: If I was going through the window, I would open the window first and then throw you on the window. I'm not going to add to my stuff to do to try to break the window with your body.
>> Taylor: Right, right.
>> Taylor: That seems really hard. Right. So anyway, poor Frick Olson. Poor Frick Olson's family, you know, who had to, like, live with that for ever. Yeah. A week that ruined his life. So those are some MK Ultra things. There's also MK Naomi, named after one of the secretaries named Naomi. This one was more like biological agents. So the darts, which we also learned in our episode about Greek Fire, how people have been poisoning darts forever. You know, you can, like, rub the end of a dart on, like, a poison frog or, like, a snake or something, and. And make sure that you, like, really, really kill people. They had darts that were specifically made to, like, not kill dogs, but, like, make dogs, like, pass out because they have a dog. If, like, someone's coming at you with a dog, you know?
>> Taylor: Yeah, you gotta slow down somehow.
Florence is reading a book about the Dutch Resistance during WWII
>> Taylor: So I learned also this week, another side quest. My daughter is whatever book she reads in school, I try to read, too, so I could talk to her about them. Right? And we. She. She's reading a book next called Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, who wrote the Giver and if you read the Giver.
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Taylor: So I remember reading A Number of the Stars when I was Florence's age. And it is about a family who has to help hide their neighbors who are Jewish during the Dutch Resistance during World War II. I remember reading it and feeling like, I hope if the time comes, I'm brave enough to hide my friends in my attic. You know, I'm really excited they're reading now. I cried the entire time, like, reading it. And I texted her teacher. I was like, I cried. Like, I'm happy you're reading this because it's really important to know. But an interesting, like, fun scientific fact that I learned in Number of the Stars that is true is that what they did in the book is they're trying to, you know, hide people in the bottom of a boat and get them to Sweden to safety. And then. But the gestap comes and they have dogs to, like, sniff for the people. So what they would do in the Dutch Resistance is they had handkerchiefs, so you couldn't tell anything was wrong with the handkerchief if you were looking at it. But the handkerchief was doused in rabbit's blood and cocaine, which made any dog who sniffed it lose its sense of smell.
>> Taylor: Seriously?
>> Taylor: Yeah. Isn't that interesting?
>> Taylor: Wait, is that real or fiction?
>> Taylor: That's real. So that was in the fiction story, but it's a real thing that happened. I looked it up because I was like, what was on the handkerchief? Like, what is it? So it would, like, numb the dogs, like, nasal passages enough so the dog would, like. You'd be like, I don't have anything to hide. And then you'd, like, open up your bag, and the dog would go through your bag, and you'd have a handkerchief in there. And the dog would smell it. Like, it would. You know. And then. Then the dog would. Then they'd be like, oh, now the dog has to go check the boat. And the dog would go check the boat, and it wouldn't smell anybody else because it lost its sense of smell.
>> Taylor: That's wild.
>> Taylor: I know.
>> Taylor: What a night that is. You got to go source and kill a rabbit.
>> Taylor: And then.
>> Taylor: That is a rough.
>> Taylor: I talked to two different guys for that. My rabbit guy. Yeah.
>> Taylor: You can't go to the same guy for that.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Isn't that, isn't that cool? I don't know. Like this. Yeah. Something. Something to know. So they also worked with shellfish toxins and cobra venom and all of that stuff. And so this is something that like in the 1970s, everyone's like, all right, we need to calm down. We cannot continue to stare at each other with piles of bioweapons behind us. You know, like, we can't, we have to, we can't do this. Like, this can't be something that we do. And there's things also that like, you know, Gottlieb tried to assassinate a dictator in Africa with poison and you know, all the Castro stuff. And then like later, Gerald Ford, he's gonna be the one that says that we can't use assassination as something that we do as part of our, like, tactics in the United States. And Nixon similarly, like before, this is going to be going to say we need to destroy all of these bioweapons. So in 1970, Nixon orders all them destroyed it. But of course they're not all destroyed. Don't be dumb. I wouldn't destroy everything if you told me to destroy my life's work.
>> Taylor: Right, yeah.
>> Taylor: So the one thing that we found pretty quickly, but I'm sure there's still some s*** out there. One CIA scientist kept 11 grams of shellfish toxin, enough to kill hundreds of people in a lab refrigerator. Just kind of like hid it in the back of the refrigerator and it was found in five years later in 1975. So I'm sure there's plenty of like old a** places where these things still exist.
>> Taylor: Yeah, of course. Yeah. All that LLC didn't just disappear, right, In San Francisco.
>> Taylor: Yeah, exactly.
Operation Midnight Climax was a way to test if people give up secrets
So one more thing that they did also in San Francisco. So again, there's so much more that they did. But this is some of the highlights is they did another one called Operation Midnight Climax, which is like the pervious name ever. And exactly what you think it would be. It was a way to see if both after having sex and after being drugged, if you're more likely to give up secrets. Which I feel like, yeah, probably, you know, like especially they would do things like lure men to these safe houses in New York City and in San Francisco. They had them like dressed, you know, I feel like the vibe is like opium den cool, you know, and they would bring them there and like, you know, they, they discover things that like, I don't know, feel like, feel pretty obvious. But like, if the sex worker stays with you longer after it, you're done. Then you're gonna tell her things.
>> Taylor: Sure.
>> Taylor: Because you're gonna think that she likes you. You know, it's all traps. Yeah. So but they would do that. But they would also like dose everyone with LSD in this. So like hundreds of people were, were dosed, did it for over 10 years and they didn't do, they didn't, they didn't learn anything. They didn't use any scientific method. There was no control group, nothing. They would just like go ahead and do this. They would watch through like two way windows and listen through like microwave. Microwaves, microphones that were like in like the outlets and stuff. So just like they're just like really being pervs. Hence the pervy name, Minute Climax.
>> Taylor: How many tons of LSD was being produced in this time period?
>> Taylor: I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know how much LSD is the right amount to. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe that's something I don't, I don't, I don't feel like I don't have that graph that like this much, this much LSD. You like really like techno music and this much LSD.
>> Taylor: But I feel like, I feel like this 20 year period we probably produce more LSD in that 20 year year period that any time after combined.
>> Taylor: I think that's probably true because every.
>> Taylor: Story is like just LSD dose and.
>> Taylor: They were trying, they were really, really, really, really, really trying to make it work.
>> Taylor: I know. It's like when they were trying to make fetch work.
>> Taylor: Yeah. You're like, I, I bought a lot of this. We have to make it work.
>> Taylor: We gotta make it work.
>> Taylor: You know, like if you, you know, I bought, I bought too much turkey. We're all eating turkey for the next six months.
>> Taylor: They kept going to the Costco of lsd.
>> Taylor: Exactly, exactly. And taxpayers paid for it and we didn't learn anything and a lot of people's lives were ruined.
>> Taylor: But now San Francisco is like super groovy.
>> Taylor: And the good news is we learned our lesson and now you can totally trust the government.
>> Taylor: You totally trust everything.
>> Taylor: So all as well. America.
>> Taylor: Do you remember that one last podcast episode about Timothy McVeigh where he was in the cell next to Ted Kaczynski and apparently Ted Kaczynski like told somebody that he didn't like Timothy McVeigh because he was too liberal minded.
>> Taylor: Hor Ted Kaczynski. Honestly, I do think we'll talk about him eventually. But I mean if you don't know what we're talking about, he was definitely part of MK Ultra when he was at Harvard. Also, I didn't even mention they went. They did this at a ton of, like, universities. And, like, if they started naming them in a list in the book, and the list is, like, three pages long, it's, like, hundreds of universities to, like, college kids, you know, And Ted Kaczynski obviously was one of them, and that messed with him. And he also. The uni in uni bomber means university, because he was mad at universities. You know, I don't feel like you knew that right away.
>> Taylor: University and airline.
>> Taylor: But that doesn't spell unique.
>> Taylor: No, it's. You know, it's not uni.
Taylor: Please cover your drinks. Buy test strips so you can see if your drinks are drugged
>> Taylor: Oh, okay. I'm back. I'm back on board. University and airline.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Fun times.
>> Taylor: That's it. That's my story. Fun times. Please cover your drinks. I feel like I used to in New York City, obviously, like, in a. Feels like a simpler time, but I would, like, smoke cigarettes and go to bars, and then, like, first for a while, you could smoke cigarettes in bars, which is literally the best. You come home, you smell disgusting. It's great. Super fun. We used to, like, take off our clothes in the kitchen. We lived in Italy. And then hang them outside at night so they give her the smoke. Great. But then after they began smoking in bars, you do go outside, and some bars had, like, a coaster that you put over your drink that said, I'm outside smoking brb.
>> Taylor: Is that wild?
>> Taylor: I cannot believe that I was not murdered like this. Absolutely insane. Please cover your drinks. Buy the little strips so you can see if your drinks are drugged. Like, do all those things. Be careful.
>> Taylor: There are stories. So I. Okay. As. Even as a man, like, I would never leave my dream unattended, because now there's stories of people in Austin where men will go out drinking, and then some girl will be like, hey, come back to my place. And then the guy just wakes up the next day with all of his, like, his wallet and phone and everything and his keys.
>> Taylor: He doesn't wake up. He's like, those guys in the river in Austin.
>> Taylor: Or that. Or one of those guys.
>> Taylor: I know. I think one of my guy friends, he. I think we think that he picked up a drink that belonged to a woman, and they, like, switched drinks that he didn't know, and he absolutely was drugged, and it was terrible. My. My sister was drugged at a club one time. It was terrible. It's terrible. Be careful.
>> Taylor: Yeah, cover your drinks.
>> Taylor: Don't Trust. Buy test strips. If someone in the government invites you over for dinner and you get there and everything. Disco ball and everything's covered in velvet.
>> Taylor: If it looks like an opium den, then that's your sign.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. It's like, if you get in there and it's like you and seven CIA men and they're all winking at you, I think you could go home. Not the victim. Blame. We just. Now that we know. Now you know. Don't do that.
>> Taylor: Very careful. Yeah, well, thanks for sharing, Taylor. Do we have any stories or not?
>> Taylor: No, I have no stories.
>> Taylor: Letters.
>> Taylor: I got nothing new. No. All right, I'm. I'm done. But please, please, please, please tell your friends. I feel like we forgot to tell people to do that. Please do that for Christmas. Tell your friends for us. You don't have to buy us anything. Stop sending us gifts. Just tell your friends.
>> Taylor: We get so many gifts. Guys, you really got to stop sending us gifts.
>> Taylor: Stop sending gifts. Just tell your friends.
>> Taylor: But write to us, right to us@diminutive podmail.com. tell us your thoughts, and we would love to hear them and then read them out on the air.
>> Taylor: We would.
>> Taylor: Sweet.
>> Taylor: Thank you.
>> Taylor: We'll go ahead and cut off there. Thank you, Taylor.
>> Taylor: Thanks.