WASHINGTON, Va. (AP) -- Sidney Gottlieb, who oversaw CIA experiments during the Cold War that included the use of LSD and other mind-altering drugs on unwitting test subjects, has died at age 80.
Gottlieb died Sunday in this small town near the Blue Ridge Mountains where he had spent his final years tending to dying people in a hospice. His family withheld the cause of his death.The CIA experiments with psychedelics, a project called MKUltra, began at a time when the agency feared the Soviet Union might use LSD as a chemical weapon or that China would perfect brainwashing techniques.
"We were in a World War II mode," John Gittinger, a CIA psychologist who described Gottlieb as one of the most brilliant men he had ever known, told The New York Times. "The war never really ended for us."
During the 1950s and early '60s, the CIA gave psychedelic drugs to hundreds of Americans who were unaware that they were part of the agency's experiments on mind control.
The subjects ranged from prisoners and mental patients to military officers and college students. At least one subject died, others went insane and others were damaged psychologically, according to firsthand testimony, government documents and court records.
Shortly before his retirement in 1972, Gottlieb concluded that the experiments had been useless.
Gottlieb was also involved in CIA assassination plots, the Times reported. During the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, he carried out orders to develop a poison handkerchief to kill an Iraqi colonel, toxic gifts for Fidel Castro and a poison dart to kill a leftist leader in the Congo. None of the plots succeeded.
After leaving the CIA, Gottlieb and his wife, Margaret, ran a leprosy hospital in India for 18 months.