Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control

The best-selling author of All the Shah’s Men and The Brothers tells the astonishing story of the man who oversaw the CIA’s secret drug and mind-control experiments of the 1950s and ’60s.The visionary chemist Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s master magician and gentlehearted torturer - the agency’s “poisoner in chief.” As head of the MK-ULTRA mind control project, he directed brutal experiments at secret prisons on three continents.

He made pills, powders, and potions that could kill or maim without a trace - including some intended for Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders.

He paid prostitutes to lure clients to CIA-run bordellos, where they were secretly dosed with mind-altering drugs.

His experiments spread LSD across the United States, making him a hidden godfather of the 1960s counterculture.