Alex’s Reviews > Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control > Status Update

"Gottlieb saw himself as a spiritual person. By most definitions, though, true spirituality means that a measure of compassion and mindfulness informs every aspect of a person’s life. That was not the case with Gottlieb. Neither his scientific curiosity, his sense of patriotism, or his acts of private charity justify his years of heinous assaults on the lives of others."

"He [Helms] made the same choice Gottlieb and Lashbrook made: keep secrets and lie under oath. They saw it as the patriotic alternative. It also happened to be the one most likely to protect them from opprobrium and prosecution."

Gottliebs end was tragic, but it was also entirely his own doing. While he has tried to do good and apparently succeeded, it seems to me that he never did any good at all to one of his many victims.

"The murder of the CIA station chief in Athens after anti-CIA campaigners had published his name and address contributed to a backlash against further investigation."
Both of which were already known, as Stockwell wrote.

Gottlieb had a very good lawyer.

According to Gottliebs lawyer:
"As an academic exercise, Sid could go on confidently about the rightness of his activities. But he wasn’t so comfortable talking about individual cases or real people whose lives were affected. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t enthusiastic about talking about Olson."

"The Olson family called a press conference. On the day before it was to be held, Eric Olson invited the reporter Seymour Hersh to the family home in Frederick. Hersh was characteristically blunt.
“This must be the most goddamn incurious family in the United States!” he marveled. “How you could have lived with that bullshit story for twenty-two years is beyond me.”"

Just read about the Israeli plot to create a Manchurian Candidate. How can some people suck so hard at their job?

"“The Israelis spent three months in 1968 trying to transform a Palestinian prisoner into a programmed killer,” according to a study of Mossad’s assassination program. “Within five hours of being released to carry out his mission, he had turned himself in to the local police, handed over his pistol and explained that Israeli intelligence had tried to brainwash him into killing Arafat.”"

In 1968, three Vietnamese prisoners had probes installed in their brain. Then they were put into a room, given knifes, ans the probes were activated to put them into a homicidal frenzy. Nothing happened. Afterwards, some Green Berets shot the prisoners and burned the bodies.