Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control
Stephen Kinzer
Top 10 Best Quotes
“That substance was a paralytic poison called saxitoxin that can be extracted from infected shellfish. It is related to the algae that cause red tide and other waterborne infections. In a highly concentrated dose, like the one compounded at Fort Detrick, it can kill within seconds.”
“AMERICANS SHOULD HAVE been able to celebrate the release of 7,200 soldiers from Communist prisons after an armistice ended the fighting in Korea in July 1953. Instead they recoiled in shock. Many prisoners, it turned out, had written statements criticizing the United States or praising Communism. Some had confessed to committing war crimes. Twenty-one chose to stay behind in North Korea or China. The Pentagon announced that they were considered deserters and would be executed if found.”
“While the Americans protected veterans of Unit 731, the Soviets captured twelve of them and charged them with war crimes. All were convicted and given prison terms ranging from two to twenty-five years. Their trials were not widely publicized.”
“Whenever a scientist they coveted turned out to have a blemish on his record, they rewrote his biography. They systematically expunged references to membership in the SS, collaboration with the Gestapo, abuse of slave laborers, and experiments on human subjects. Applicants who had been rated by interrogators as “ardent Nazi” were re-categorized as “not an ardent Nazi.”
“Thus did the man responsible for directing the dissection of thousands of living prisoners during wartime, along with those who worked with him, escape punishment. Unlike their German counterparts, however, they were not brought to the United States. Instead the Japanese scientists were installed at laboratories and detention centers in East Asia. There they helped Americans conceive and carry out experiments on human subjects that could not be legally conducted in the United States.”
“The image of CIA men traipsing through Mexican villages in search of a fungus that would help them defeat Communism seems outlandish in retrospect. Gottlieb, however, saw the “magic mushroom” the same way he saw LSD and every other substance he was investigating. All were potential weapons of covert war.”
“The Independent said he was “living vindication for conspiracy theorists that there is nothing, however evil, pointless or even lunatic, that unaccountable intelligence agencies will not get up to in the pursuit of their secret wars.”
“The Bedford Street complex was about to become something unique: a CIA “safe house” in the heart of New York to which unsuspecting citizens would be lured and surreptitiously drugged, with the goal of finding ways to fight Communism.”
“Some CIA officers thought of the FBI as a haven for dumb cops and ham-fisted thugs. FBI agents, returning the favor, considered CIA men amateurish prima donnas and, as one put it, “mostly rich boys, trust fund snobs who thought they were God’s answer to all the world’s ills.”
“SHOULD EVERYONE WHO helped run the Nazi machine be prosecuted for war crimes, or could some be brought to work for the U.S. government instead?”
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