MKUltra & the CIA's Poisoner in Chief Sidney Gottlieb w/ Stephen Kinzer | Rik's Mind Podcast Ep 108
Stephen Kinzer
Author, Journalist & Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs, Brown University’s Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs
During the early days of the Cold War, the CIA became convinced that the Soviets had discovered how to control the human mind. In response, the American CIA began its own secret program, called MK-ULTRA, to search for a drug that could weaponize the human mind against America and capitalism’s enemies.
MK-ULTRA, in operation from the 1950s until the early '60s, was created and run by a chemist named Sidney Gottlieb. Today’s guest journalist and author Stephen Kinzer, who spent several years investigating the program for his book “Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control”, calls the operation the "most sustained search in history for techniques of mind control."
Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. His articles and books have led the Washington Post to place him "among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling."
Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire.
From 1983 to 1989, Kinzer was the New York Times bureau chief in Nicaragua. In that post he covered war and upheaval in Central America. He also wrote two books about the region. One of them, co-authored with Stephen Schlesinger, is Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. The other one, Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua, is a social and political portrait that the New Yorker called "impressive for the refinement of its writing and also the breadth of its subject matter." Columbia University awarded Kinzer its Maria Moors Cabot prize for outstanding coverage of Latin America.
From 1990 to 1996 Kinzer was posted in Germany. He was chief of the New York Times bureau in Bonn, and after German unification became chief of the Berlin bureau. From there he covered the emergence of post-Communist Europe, including wars in the former Yugoslavia.
In 1996 Kinzer was named chief of the newly opened New York Times bureau in Istanbul, Turkey. He spent four years there, traveling widely in Turkey and in the new nations of Central Asia and the Caucasus. After completing this assignment, Kinzer published Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds.
In 2006 Kinzer published Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. It recounts the 14 times the United States has overthrown foreign governments. Kinzer seeks to explain why these interventions were carried out and what their long-term effects have been. He has made several trips to Iran, and is the author of All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. It tells how the CIA overthrew Iran's nationalist government in 1953.
Kinzer wrote about Africa in his book A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa called it "a fascinating account of a near-miracle unfolding before our very eyes.”
In 2010 Kinzer published Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future, which Huffington Post called “a bold exercise in reimagining the United States’ big links in the Middle East.”
Kinzer’s next book, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War, was widely praised. Reviewers called it sparkling, riveting, gripping, bracing, and disturbing. The Wall Street Journal called it a “fluently written, ingeniously researched, thrillerish work of popular history.”
In 2017 Kinzer published The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire. His newest book, published in 2019, is "Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control."
After leaving the Times in 2005, Kinzer taught journalism, political science, and international relations at Northwestern University and Boston University. He is now a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and writes a world affairs column for The Boston Globe.
While posted in Turkey, Kinzer hosted the country’s first radio show devoted to blues music. He is the author of the entry on Jelly Roll Morton in The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge.
In 2008 Kinzer was awarded an honorary doctorate by Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. The citation said that "those of us who have had the pleasure of hearing his lectures or talking to him informally will probably never see the world in the same way again."
The University of Scranton awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate in 2010. “Where there has been turmoil in the world and history has shifted, Stephen Kinzer has been there,” the citation said. “Neither bullets, bombs nor beating could dull his sharp determination to bring injustice and strife to light.”
You can find more about Stephen and his work on his official website stephenkinzer.com or on twitter @stephenkinzer
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Show Notes:
Stephen Kinzer | Official Website
Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs | Brown University
The most important lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Stephen Kinzer | The Boston Globe
The protests in Iran could be a turning point by Stephen Kinzer | The Boston Globe
Sidney Gottlieb obituary: The real Manchurian Candidate by Godfrey Hodgson | The Guardian
The Coldest by Ted Gup (2001) | The Washington Post
Human Experimentation at Unit 731 | Pacific Atrocities Education
In 1950, the U.S. Released a Bioweapon in San Francisco by Helen Thompson | Smithsonian Magazine
