
Poisoner in Chief
Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control
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Narrated by:
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James Linkin
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By:
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Stephen Kinzer
About this listen
2019 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year
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. For years he was the chief supplier of spy tools used by CIA officers around the world.
Stephen Kinzer, author of groundbreaking books about US clandestine operations, draws on new documentary research and original interviews to bring to life one of the most powerful unknown Americans of the 20th century. Gottlieb’s reckless experiments on “expendable” human subjects destroyed many lives, yet he considered himself deeply spiritual. He lived in a remote cabin without running water, meditated, and rose before dawn to milk his goats.
During his 22 years at the CIA, Gottlieb worked in the deepest secrecy. Only since his death has it become possible to piece together his astonishing career at the intersection of extreme science and covert action. Poisoner in Chief reveals him as a clandestine conjurer on an epic scale.
©2019 Stephen Kinzer (P)2019 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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MK Ultra Dark Labs
- 1959-1975 Testimonial Report
- By: A. Starfire
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Starfire was born into the Illuminati and orphaned when her parents died in a plane crash. Starfire was donated to Project Monarch, a CIA intelligence program. Starfire's program was designed by Operation Paperclip Nazi scientists recruited into the American space program during the 1960's. The program was funded during the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations. She describes the effects of test vaccines paired to electromagnetic frequency generators to influence brain waves. By using wavelength technology, she recounts attempts by the space program to modify behavior using links to ...
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Highly improbable
- By Dallaspilot on 04-14-25
By: A. Starfire
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A Thousand Hills
- Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Paul Kagame grew up as a wretched refugee. He and a group of comrades, determined to force their way back home after a generation of exile, designed one of the most audacious covert operations in the history of clandestine war. Then, after taking power, they amazed the world by stabilizing and reviving their devastated country.
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Best Most Comprehensive Work on Rwanda
- By Greg on 07-30-10
By: Stephen Kinzer
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The CIA as Organized Crime
- How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World
- By: Douglas Valentine
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of three books on CIA operations, Douglas Valentine began his research into the agency's activities when CIA director William Colby gave him free access to interview agency officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. It was a permission Colby was to regret. The CIA would eventually rescind it and made every effort to impede publication of The Phoenix Program, which documented an elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture, and assassination in Vietnam.
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The CIA as Organized Crime: A personal perspective
- By Ray Robles on 09-13-17
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Operation Mockingbird
- The Controversial History of the CIA’s Efforts to Manipulate American Media Outlets
- By: Charles River Editors
- Narrated by: Colin Fluxman
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Freedom of the press isn’t just a fundamental right in America but a key part of the democratic process. When the United States secured its independence against Britain in the War of Independence in 1783, there was no certainty about what the new country would look like in terms of national governance. In 1787, delegates from the various states convened in Philadelphia to draft a constitution that would define this.
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Limited
- By Cozz on 11-27-24
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The Ghost
- The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton
- By: Jefferson Morley
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Ghost, investigative reporter Jefferson Morley tells Angleton's dramatic story, from his friendship with the poet Ezra Pound through the underground gay milieu of mid-century Washington to the Kennedy assassination to the Watergate scandal. From the agency's MKULTRA mind-control experiments to the wars of the Mideast, Angleton wielded far more power than anyone knew.
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Flawed Superpatriot
- By Bubblehog on 11-23-17
By: Jefferson Morley
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Reset
- Iran, Turkey, and America's Future
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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What can the United States do to help realize its dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East? Stephen Kinzer offers a surprising answer in this paradigm-shifting book. Two countries in the region, he argues, are America's logical partners in the 21st century: Turkey and Iran.
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challenges stereotypes
- By R.S. on 06-14-10
By: Stephen Kinzer
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Scorpions' Dance
- The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate
- By: Jefferson Morley
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Scorpions' Dance by intelligence expert and investigative journalist Jefferson Morley reveals the Watergate scandal in a completely new light: as the culmination of a concealed, deadly power struggle between President Richard Nixon and CIA Director Richard Helms. After the Watergate burglary on June 17, 1972, Nixon was desperate to shut down the FBI's investigation. He sought Helms' support and asked that the CIA intervene—knowing that most of the Watergate burglars were retired CIA agents, contractors, or long-term assets. The two now circled each other like scorpions.
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Excellent and detailed history
- By Matt on 02-25-23
By: Jefferson Morley
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Hidden History
- An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics
- By: Donald Jeffries
- Narrated by: Lars Mikaelson
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The US government has spent half the time covering up conspiracies as it has spent helping the American people. In Hidden History, you will see the amount of effort over the past fifty years that our government has dedicated to lying and covering up the truth to the world. Starting with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Don Jeffries chronicles a wide variety of issues that have plagued our country's history.
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Good information with too much opinion.
- By humble on 12-29-19
By: Donald Jeffries
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Project Mind Control
- Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA
- By: John Lisle
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous—even deadly—experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the movements of animals via electrodes implanted into their brains. His goal was to develop methods of mind control that could turn someone into a real-life “Manchurian candidate.”
By: John Lisle
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The Devil's Chessboard
- Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
- By: David Talbot
- Narrated by: Peter Altschuler
- Length: 25 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the man who transformed the CIA into the most powerful - and secretive - colossus in Washington, from the founder of Salon.com and author of the New York Times best seller Brothers.
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Disturbing. Makes you question the company line.
- By KTS on 02-06-16
By: David Talbot
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Kill the Messenger
- How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb
- By: Nick Schou
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Gary Webb is the former San Jose Mercury News reporter whose 1996 "Dark Alliance" series on the so-called CIA-crack cocaine connection created a firestorm of controversy and led to his resignation from the paper amid escalating attacks on his work by the mainstream media. Author and investigative journalist Nick Schou published numerous articles on the controversy and was the only reporter to significantly advance Webb's stories.
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Great!
- By Veronica on 09-29-16
By: Nick Schou
What listeners say about Poisoner in Chief
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- Joel
- 10-16-19
Absolutely Essential History
It is almost beyond belief, and it is beyond belief for most people who only learned what they teach in middle school history class. It is such a savage portrait of institutional "evil," and I don't know any better example for this word than what the CIA has done in its covert and fantastically meglomeniachal quests to conquer and puppet the human mind. The book goes through our history developing and testing biological weapons, even testing (supposedly) benign bacteria mass delivery systems as aerosol spray clouds which were launched on San Franciso. The whole culture of the CIA is at times comically "fear and loathing", where they are surprise dosing eachother regularly and coming up with hair brain ideas of how to discredit Castro with serious plans to make his beard fall out by putting thaleum salts in in his shoes, or regularly conducting "experiments" involving lots of sex with hookers and LSD. and at other times their "work" or obsession is absolutely disturbing and defined by procuring people for prolonged torture and experimentation with electroshock and every other method of pharmacological and "interrogation technique" to try to utterly break and replace their very personality and mind and sense of reality as a tool of war. The book shows how in their mad search for this knowledge of ultimate power, to replace, implant and control another's mind, they kill thousands of "easily expendable" people both overseas, (in the korean war for example), as well as at home in the black prisons of Kentucky. This book does a great and thorough job putting this story together in a way that will make you excited, fascinated and morally disgusted all at once. It makes me reflective on just how deceitfully truncated the prescribed narrative of American history is to leave out this deeply revealing chapter of the American portrait.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Bea
- 08-09-23
Wonderful!!
Kinzer’s writing never ever disappoints!! I loved Linkin’s performance and differential accents, I couldn’t stop listening!
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- Dr. Nguyen Van Phuoc
- 01-07-25
Atrocious Delivery
Took me longer than usual to finish this book. The information is tantalizing but the robotic narrator was worse than Ai narrated audiobooks. I never adjusted to the terrible delivery so I had to listen in shorter sessions than usual. The only thing more heinous than MK Ultra experiments is the torture of listening to this narrator.
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- Kathleen
- 11-23-19
Amazing trove of information on MK Ultra
This is the unbelievable true story of the CIA’s forays into mind control and LSD experimentation, and the program’s bizarre chief scientist Sidney Gottlieb. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in postwar American history and the darker side of the Cold War.
I did not care for the reading of this book, however. The narrator’s tone, tempo and voice inflection were a struggle to endure. We’re the story not so compelling, I would have put it down shortly after starting. Sorry, but it has to be said.
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1 person found this helpful
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- jesse
- 08-14-24
So enlightening!!!
To hear about the experiments that the CIA did on Americans due to “fear” of foreign threats is deplorable. This was an enlightening read
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- L
- 02-04-22
Great read- I don’t understand gripes about the narration
I read this as a follow up to another Kinser book “The Brothers” and was not disappointed. The combined narrative of Gottlieb and the Dulles brothers is nothing short of astounding. I found no issue with the narration- performance is consistent, there are no annoying frequency buildups and it sounds properly de-essed.
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-02-20
Reading Performance is not as bad as they say.
Although he does sound a little different, I did not find the performance to be bad at all. There have been some readers that were hard to listen to on other books, and I feared that might be the case here after reading some reviews, but the performance is fine. I came to this book after reading Chaos, a book on the Manson Family that has some connections.
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- GaffneyMD
- 10-01-19
A fascinating tale of a dark time.
Terry Gross’ (from NPR/WHYY-Philadelphia) interview with Stephen Kinzer about this dark time in US history provoked my interest in the book — which did not disappoint. It is a well-written, well-constricted, and deeply thought provoking story of the post-WWII creation and massive expansion of CIA programs to develop non-atomic weapons of mass destruction.
Amidst the historical underpinnings are details about the personal lives of the players involved in these programs and some of the justifications they used to continue their work over many years.
My only critique has nothing to do the writing itself but of the delivery. In his attempt to add some dramatic flair - Mr. Linkin tries (somewhat unsuccessfully) to mimic a speech impediment of one of the central characters and on occasion (oddly) mis-pronounces some words. However, these slight flaws pale in comparison to the positives.
Would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys a deeper dive into history as well as those who enjoy trying to understand the psychological composition of people who are able to justify human atrocities in service of what they believe is the greater good.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Philip
- 07-14-20
Wow
Incredibly destructive to my well being! To listen to this story raises all the hairs left on my body. It is truly amazing to me that our government not only allows this activity, but turns a blind eye. Incredibly well researched and told. The narrator could better have avoided trying to do the stutter, but overall, it could be gotten through. Just give it time to get in to it, as the whole story is very, very pertinent to our history and our present lives.
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- DIY manAmazon Customer
- 05-06-22
good book
A good listen that gave pertinent information that I didn't know. It enhanced my understanding of the criminal intelligence agency.
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