Doomed to Fail - 227: Don't try the punch - Sidney Gottlieb & MKUltra

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Let's do some highlights of MKUltra because it is a can of worms! We'll talk Sidney Gottlieb America's 'poisoner in chief' who used LSD (and other drugs) to try to reprogram minds. Spoiler - you cannot do that. Sourcehttps://www.amazon.com/s?k=poisoner+in+chief&i=stripbooks&adgrpid=183397944181&hvadid=779569029006&hvdev=c&hvexpln=0&hvlocphy=9031388&hvnetw=g&hvocijid=1797291272736522472--&hvqmt=e&hvrand=1797291272736522472&hvtargid=kwd-813245151278&hydadcr=22536_13821197_8233&mcid=b8bb19d08331358680d1db8c8161b8af&tag=googhydr-20&ref=pd_sl_81f3pp8mjh_e Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A. 019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Hello, hello, Taylor. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. Getting all your festivities wrapped up for Thanksgiving, I take it? Yep, they would be wrapped up by now. Yeah. Actually, yeah, you know what? Thanks a thing already happened.

I'm sure it went fine. It was great. Yeah, yeah, it was great. He's super exciting. Actually, it is pre- Thanksgiving when we're recording this, but my cousin had a baby this morning. No way. Yeah, super exciting. His name is Jackson.

He's huge. He was nine pounds, 12 ounces. Holy moly. And yeah, just congratulations to Kelsey and Justin, and I'm super excited. Congrats, Kelsey and Justin. Where do they live? They live in Nebraska. Nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds, yeah, nine pounds. It's a Nebraska baby. It does sound like a good, a good, healthy American boy. It's nine pounds, 12 pounds,

exactly. Yeah, he's a future linebacker for the Huskers. Exactly, exactly. Sweet. Well, I think to, oh yeah,

you're going to introduce us. I'm ready, yeah. Welcome to Dooms to Fail. We bring you historical disasters and failures. And I am Taylor joined by Fars. It is the season. We're in deep in the holidays and have been a good time.

Tis the season. Yeah. Are you going to do a season-related a topic for us? No, I don't even think about it. But, I mean, maybe next time, because it will still be the season. Yes. We're in the seasons. I don't know.

Why not? This will be part of the season. Yeah, actually, well, I have one that I've been trying, I've been thinking about for a while. And I wanted to do, like, a series, but I, it's just, there's just so much. So I'm just kind of doing the highlights. And then maybe I will dig into more things a little bit deeper. But I'm going to tell you about Sydney guys. Latlib and CIA mind control.

Ooh, is this MK Ultra stuff? Yes. Fun. That's a huge topic. It's too much. I listened to, I was like the super old last podcast one. And then like it was essentially when they were doing book reports. And it was a book report on the book, the Poisoner in Chief, which I did read also.

So I have a little bit of that in my head. And then I just have some like highlights of what what this man and his group did to, you know, willing and unwilling. in the name of science quote quote quote yeah not great it's not great i did like it i did like those days though where the government would do the same things and then you'd find out about like a hundred years later i mean we know so it's still happening no exactly so a couple yes i'm sure and then also that something really topical happened today then i'm going to get you kind of in the middle and then also um oh what was i going to say um um um They destroyed, like, 95% of their stuff, like, MK.K. Ultra.

So you didn't really know what they did. You know, this is the stuff that they, like, allowed us to know that they did, which is bad. Yeah. And then, like, so the stuff that they really did is probably much, much worse. Fun. I will tell you this. I know, I have been, I've known some, it's weird. The Unabomber is how I know about MK. Ultra the most.

Right. Because that's what I wanted to get into. I wanted to, like, roll it into the Unabomber and then Ted Kaczynski, because he's so fascinating on his own. the whole thing, yeah. I'll be avenged. Yes, but I don't know the details because I've only been on the periphery of it,

never went that deep into it. So this will be a very educational experience, I think. I hope so. I hope so. So M.K. Ultra, which I'll talk about like what exactly that means and what that was, but essentially what the United States government, the CIA was trying to do in like the 50s, 60s and 70s,

was to find a way to do like real full mind control like take your brain scramble it turn you into someone else like remove all of your memories remove everything that makes far as far as and make far as into a robot and have you do whatever we want you to do essentially um you can't do that at the end they were like yeah i know mentoring canada was not a real story exactly and that actually came out in the middle of this and made people even kind of more excited and more scared because they're like maybe this could happen that you could you know train a soldier to like with a keyword and also i think heard this later but it's like zoolander you know when they like when you hear this song you're

going to kill the prime minister of malaysia oh yeah it's exactly that like that's what they were trying to do um which they learn that you cannot do after all this time of they tried turns out the human brain is more complicated than we i mean you can certainly destroy human brain, but you can't put something back in it. Right. You know, once you scramble those eggs, you can't unscramble them. Examinate, Ted Kaczynski. Yes, exactly.

Exactly. So you can't fix it. You can ruin it, but you can't fix it. All of the stuff that they did, they ruined people's minds. They ruined people's lives. They did obviously, like, consult with and work with Nazis, because we've talked about this before, like, in like science and engineering, like technical engineering, like, You know, you brought over the rocket scientists from Germany because we wanted that they were like learning a lot of stuff.

We wanted to know what they learned. And in these like human experiments, like I won't really get into it more than this, but like the stuff that the Nazis and the Japanese were doing to people in their, like, prisoners and in the concentration camps and stuff was like stuff that no one has ever done before or since because it was so bad. And a lot of it also was for nothing. you know like when mangle is trying to like sew a head on someone's shoulder it's not for like yeah what are you going to learn from that that's not going to work you know what I mean but but you also like that was the only time that people were able to like do it and write it down

like able to as means like they just like did it and whatever you know if I remember correctly a lot of the hypothermia stuff though was helpful like we wouldn't have known a lot about how the body reacts to it that's fair but they did that with by like you know freezing cold I'm not saying it's good I'm just saying no exactly no I see I guess that that's that's that's it's interesting because some of those experiments like you shouldn't have been able to do but they did it anyway so like did we learn stuff I guess you should learn that stuff you know right you don't think you're so three-legged on a person yeah

yeah yeah um but in the end you you can't do it um but let's start with sidney gotley he's the person who is like the mastermind behind a lot of this um a lot of the like mind control programs. I'm going to tell you about a couple specific programs that they did. But he's essentially always kind of been a little old man, even though, of course, he was young at one point, but he just feels like a little old man. If you are picturing him, just picture a little old man. He wrote, he's a little old man, but first, he was a baby. He was born August 3, 1918 in New York City to Hungarian Jewish immigrants. He had a stutter and a club foot, which made him ineligible to fight in World War II.

So some of these people who are, and I think this isn't exclusive to Gottlieb or to World War II, like there are people who work in the government and work in the CIA and whatever these places that like physically could not work in like the army. You know, right. They still want to like serve their country. I did quotes and like do stuff. So that's what he did that. He was super smart. He's a scientist.

He got a chemistry degrees from the University of Wisconsin and Kemp. Caltech, and he joined the CIA in 1951. He was in the TSS, which is the technical service staff of the CIA. So his job is to figure out mind control and to make gadgets. So like that part's kind of fun. It's definitely gadgets like James Bond gadgets. It's fun. You know, so they called his part of the CIA the gadget shop.

So it included mind control, poisons, drugs. you know, gadgets, things like, he really did make things like poison lipstick. And, you know, like the different, he experimented with different types of pills that, like, you could take with you when you were flying over enemy lines. And if you crashed, do you, like, you know,

you have your fake tooth that you bite or whatever to, like, to die by suicide so you don't give anything away. He, they're the people who tried to, like, kill Castro with, like, the exploding cigar. I remember this. You know, or they tried to, like, poison Castro, so that is a beard would fall off, so we'd be less powerful. Like... That is...

That is why I have a beard, actually. Yeah. If you didn't have it, like, the one time you didn't have it, I felt like you were way less powerful. And you were right to think that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, silly stuff like that. But they had... I mean, basically, I feel like that image you have of, like, going into that, like, James Bond's gadget shop and then, like, or... like Austin Powers, you know, and they're showing you all those, like, funny things. Like, that's it. That's really what we're looking at. Nice. It's fun. Yeah. Like, that part's kind of fun. I mean, they did try to kill a lot of people and did kill people with these things. Like, you know, whatever. But have the idea of having, like, you know, a shoe with a knife in it. That's fun.

That's so cool. It was a like a gadget. Yeah. So in 1967, Gottlie becomes head of the TSS, and this is when he becomes officially the Poisoner in Chief is what they call him. And that's, like, the name of the book I read about as well. he's going to retire in 1973. And so the whole time that Sidney Gottlieb is traveling the world, learning about poisons, doing all these drugs, drugging all these people. He did the drugs himself a lot of the times,

drugging all these people, trying to stage his assassination plots, doing all these things. He and his wife live on like a farm outside of D.C. They like barely have electricity. So in the morning he'll like milk his goats and like tend to do his crops. and then go into D.C. and do all this, like, 1960s, like, spy shit. It's nice contrast, I think. I know. It was kind of fun.

So after he retires, he sell, they sell everything, him and his wife. They have four kids, but they sell all their stuff, and they travel the world to try to, like, help people. So they work in, like, like, um, like leper colonies and the places in India, like, with extreme poverty and, like, try to help. But while they're there doing all these things, like in their retirement, looking like, you know, a sweet little old couple trying to help. people around the world. He gets called back to a congressional hearing in the mid-1970s because he does get in trouble. It is a little bit like you couldn't, you shouldn't have done that. There, the hearings, a lot of them, some of them were led by Senator Ted Kennedy when he was a senator who also, you know, is a smidge guilty of things himself.

Chippaquayak. Yeah. Chappaquiac. I'm like that. Chappaquic? I don't know. If it's a Massachusetts town, then who the fuck knows how it's pronounced? Do you mean that story about him after that woman died and he went back to his hotel room, like after calling out of the car? And then he ended up calling the hotel and saying there's people playing loud music next door to get him to shut up. And I was like, that has to be the definition of privilege. He just killed somebody.

You just killed someone. Anyway, we can talk about that later. We'll definitely probably get to that. But he got like he was going to in these hearings. have a lot of, I don't remember happening. I don't remember, I don't remember doing that. I don't remember what happened. I can't recall, you know.

So who doesn't really confess to anything? But the stuff that he did was, was compared to, you know, the defenses that people said at Nuremberg, and, you know, being like, you know, this was for, like, the greater good and for what we were thinking we were doing, and I was following orders and things like that. And also the stuff that he learned out of, like, the cruelty of it, it's very similar to the stuff that they were saying. you know, after, after World War II as well.

Eventually, the stuff that M.K. Ultra and Gottlieb had done were ruled immoral and unconstitutional. Which reminds me of the thing that happened this morning is this morning, Dan Carlin released a new common sense, which he like very rarely does. It's his other podcast that besides hardcore history. Yeah, I stopped checking a common sense because it's like, he was years between releasing them. Absolutely. He did, well, he did one this morning and I listened to it while I was Thanksgiving shopping. at the Walmart. Essentially, he is mad, as we all should be, about the thing that happened this week where the president was like, well, the couple Democrats put out a thing that was like,

if you were in the military and you're asked to do something illegal, don't do it, you know? Oh, yeah. I love this. And then the president said, well, them saying don't follow orders is like treason and they should be executed. So like everyone's just like. In an uproar. Yes. But, you know, there are plenty of times in American history when the people who did the thing that they weren't supposed to do, even if it was ordered for them, do get in trouble later, you know? Like, there's some terrible things that happen in Vietnam where, like, people, like, you know, these terrible mass killings and gang rapes and these terrible sexual assaults and awful things that they did over there. And they were, like, following orders. And when they got back, they got in trouble for it, you know, because, like, you should, you are not a robot. You were supposed to have your own moral compass and be like, I.

I'm not doing that. Were those orders they followed, or were they just, like, rogue crazy people? Those were in, like, the melee incident, which is so terrible. It's one of the things that I, like, looked at to research and it's too awful. I can't. It's too awful. But they, like, one person, I think, was like, let's do this, like, had everybody do it. And then they just, like, kept doing it.

Like, they just, like, didn't. They were their orders that everyone was doing it, I think. You know? People who didn't do it, who didn't participate in, like, the. terrible assaults and murder and all of that they got medals afterwards and everybody else that got in trouble because I remember in full metal jacket they were like just typing people off the helicopter but that wasn't like ordered to do that that was just a crazy person

yeah yeah I don't know but like the bottom line is if someone tells you to use something and you know it's morally wrong you don't have to do it right you shouldn't do it you know you should be able to you are you are your own person you are not part of a machine so um but got leaves you know answer was like i don't remember doing a lot of these things and whatever you know blah blah when like he very much did and he very much gave the orders to do a lot of these things as well um he died at the age of 80 um his cause of death is not disclosed by his family but um it's i mean he probably died by suicide after everyone kind of knew what he had

had done you know like after the trials and stuff 80's pretty old how long was it after the trial and then he killed himself um not that long okay let's talk about some of the specifics that happens we're going to cover like a whole shit ton of time between like 1950 and 1970 just some of the absolute crazy shenanigans of the CIA was up to so before gotley got into his role in 1950 i don't know if you've heard of this have you heard of operation sea spray with the u.s navy poison in San Francisco? No. So this is like the Wikipedia for page for this is really small and I do want to like dig in more

because I think that there's this is just so wild. But in 1950 from September 20th to September 27th, the U.S. Navy from the San Francisco Bay sprayed San Francisco with two different types of bacteria to see how far it would go. And it wasn't like it wasn't meant to like kill people, but it was. meant to be able to be traceable in the people to see if you could like mass poison an entire port city they didn't tell anyone in san francisco they were doing it including like the government like no one knew so they just like parked their boats outside and sprayed bacteria into the city they monitored it in 43 locations all over san francisco bay they were able to track that

nearly all of the 800 000 residents of san francisco breathed in the bacteria so they were able to be like oh, we could totally poison an entire city and do it this way. One person died. He got like really bad pneumonia and 11 people got really bad UTIs because it was like some sort of like bacteria that would do that. So like it didn't hurt a ton of people, but it hurt

some people. And then some researchers think that later some of the reasons that infections from like intravenous drug use and things in San Francisco were worse than other places because these people had been exposed to that bacteria when they were kids in the 50s. It's kind of like lead, causing more serial killers kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, potentially, potentially. But they, yeah, they just went, like, why don't we saving employees in the city? Let's do San Francisco. And they just, like, winded it. So, that's wild. So right as Gottlie is starting to work in the TSS in, like, 1950, 51. Wait, Taylor, what if it made a bunch of really smart engineers, though? Like, what if this was a good thing?

I feel like that, didn't that? I think the Azure has moved to San Francisco. I had to start somewhere. But maybe. Maybe it's how we got to where we are. We should poison more people and see what happens. There's poison more people, yes. That's what we're only the same to each.

You said it first, so that sounds like a good idea. So one of the projects that started when he, when Gottlie started, when he got into the TSS, it was already happening. It was Project Bluebird, which turned into being called, Project Artichoke. They named it. They renamed it Project Artichoke in 1951 because it was Dulles' favorite food. It's weird. Weird. Yeah. And I know there's so much about Dulles that we should learn too about all the shit that he did. But at Camp King, which was in West Germany and in some places in the United States, it was just the initial things like how can we kind of

control what someone thinks or control what they say or like get information out of them? And they used like drugs, hypnosis, isolation, electric shock, just try to get people that either confess things or to be able to like get them, just tell them things and have it like hidden in their brain. And again, like just like the mentoring candidate in Zulander, like we were saying, like the maturing candidate was a movie that came out, but like it was a soldier who was programmed to kill someone with like a keyword. What word am I trying to? I don't remember. I don't remember what, yeah, I don't remember the details. But it's like something happens and he's supposed to kill someone and then not remember.

Just be a totally different person. So then there's nothing to confess because you don't remember doing it. And you can do it like whenever. So they're just able to like say something and you commit this murder that you don't remember. You don't remember anything happened. And then you're able to like kind of get away, you know, is the idea. And so because the movie came out, which was a work of fiction, that also kind of

escalated the or like amplified the idea to the CIA and to the American public that like China and the USSR. or the Soviet Union, they are already doing this, you know, but they weren't. They couldn't do it either because you can't. Right. But we had this idea that they were doing it already. So that kind of amped up the way that we did it. And then this, so Project Artichoke feeds into MK Ultra. So the MK of MK Ultra doesn't mean anything. It's just like a initials that mean this is part of the TSS,

but they can't be like traced back to anything. It's just like an arbitrary initials. So is this is it its own separate program or is it an assortment of programs? It's an assortment of programs. So they focus on different things. So artichoke was kind of like a little bit of everything. So like drugs, hypnosis, whatever. So there's MK Ultra, which will, I'll talk about some more things that's with drugs. There's also, once I talk about MK Ultra, I'll talk about MK Naomi.

And that one is more like biological toxins and gadgets. So there's like synthetic drugs. And LSD is the MK Ultra, and then MK Naomi is more of like poison darts and gadgets, if that makes sense. Yeah, it's fun. So a couple different projects. So MK Ultra basically is like, how can we do mind control with drugs? So LSD had been like discovered. It comes from like the ergot that they thought maybe that makes people crazy, like the things.

And like it does do that, but it obviously doesn't create witches, which we learned in the Salem Wish Trail. but still it's like a natural occurring thing and they had like found it and synthesized it and now they're trying to figure out how what to do with it and how to experiment it with it so Gottlieb himself was like one of the first people to start taking LSD to see what would happen so there's like notebooks of his where he's like things are fine then he's like I see things I feel really excited and like really lightheaded and like whatever so he's like going through this like acid trip and like writing it down so they started he did a lot of it he did he did take a lot of it but I think you know he liked it yeah of course you know um it reminded me my husband used to work at a cannabis company in california and they had like a meeting he wasn't in the meeting but his friends were where they were like taste testing like 10 different vape pens and like I'm like you can't take taste test 10 different weed pens it's like the first one that it was like oh it's mellow my like number 10 they were like brownies yeah just like someone do a food run talked about one guy was taking a nap like what he's how he was supposed to do that but he was doing a lot of

of that. But Gottlieb did hundreds of experiments with LSD. Sometimes people knew that they were being drugged. Sometimes they didn't. So they would say like sign up and try it and you know kind of write down what happens and see what happens. Or they would do things like

at the holiday party they put LSD in the punch because they wanted to see if it made the secretaries more flirty. That's kind of nuts. Yeah. And again like Gottlieb did the drugs himself. There are reports that like he would just like get really high LSD and sleep with everybody's wives because they were all high at LSD.

So just like having these like, you know, just like the LSD parties you imagine hippies having because it turns into, like, once it gets out into the world. And then there's things that like, I think as Clark Gable started taking like microdosing and he like felt much better. So like it's like it gets out quickly from this, you know. So they were drug children in mental hospitals. They have put LSD and their cereal to see what would happen to them. they would drug people in jails

because they're like both children and people in jail are not willing participants in these experiments, you know? That's probably not the worst thing they could have done to them. No, I mean, it's not. But no, it's bad.

So do we talk about Whitey Bulgar recently? Probably. So he's like that mobster guy, but when he was in jail, they drugged him with LSD every day straight. You took 140 days. Yeah. Wait, so I think he was part of them, K. Ultra.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So, like, they would drug him with, like, a high dose of LSD every day for, like, over 100 days. Like, that's not good. You're going to go crazy, you know? Like, that's, like, and they put you in isolation, and they do all these things, and they, like, are, like, watching you, like, you're in a cage, you know?

So it's not like you get, like, one fun trip. It's, like, they're drugging you every single day and leaving you, like, a room with, like, no light, you know? they also tried to like you know give lSD to to Castro to like do it while he was in like doing a um they didn't do this but the plan was to do it while he was doing a press conference to make him look crazy you know i like how their answer to every problem was LSD it really is it really is it's like throw LSD and see what happens they like have this idea that isn't true and they could have figured out wasn't true much earlier the LSD was the thing to be able to like wipe your mind implant it with something and then you know, be able to do a thing even though it wasn't. So they, one thing that they did that was particularly awful is to a CIA employee named Frank Olson. So Frank Olson was a scientist. He worked in the army and in the CIA and he worked at Fort Dietrich in, like, in experiments and like just like in like their, like in like the lab there. And it was a place where there was and I mean, we're not going to get into this but there's a lot of animal testing going on you know like we're talking about the humans

but like the amount of animals that were killed during this is incomprehensible you know and frank olson is like seems like a good guy he's like a calm sensitive man and this starting to like rub on him you know obviously like this is bad his son um says about his dad his his son says quote he'd come to work in the morning and see piles of dead monkeys that messes with you he wasn't the right guy for that. So Frank Olson's like already upset. No, I would have gotten ballistic. Yeah. So he's like, I'm a scientist, but I can't, I cannot handle this. And, you know, he saw humans tortured with these drugs, with hypnosis. Like, there's a whole subplot of like they had a magician come in and try to hypnotize people and like all those other stuff. But so Frank is kind of like starting to feel like

this is not for me. I don't, I don't love this. But he's really, really high up in, in M.K. Ultra and in in this. So in 1951, there was a village in France that was actually really poisoned by Ergot poisoning. So he was like one of the handful of people who visited that place to see like what happens there. So he was like really, really high up. There aren't a lot of people who know. It's like less than 20 people really know what they're doing. And Frank Olson is one of them. But he's starting to kind of not be able to handle it. So in a November 18th, 1953, they have a retreat. So they have like a little cabin retreat a couple times a year for all the guys that are in like high up in this project they get together it's in the cabin and they do drugs basically and at this party um there are eight guys from fort detrick eight scientists and four scientists from the CIA including sydney

godlieb and the second night they're having dinner and gotlib is like surprise there was a ton of drugs in dinner you've all been super drugged like let's see what happens and like they kind of maybe should have expected it but like they didn't know they're going to be drugged like to this extent at to this level on day two. They said, you've been drugged with a truth serum, but, like, it was definitely LSD. And Frank was not okay. He was very, very, very upset. And he was one of the, one of the, again, the few people who knew all sorts of things,

all of these secrets. And when he got home a couple of days later, he was still very jittery, like very upset, very confused. And he said to his wife, quote, I've made a terrible mistake. And we don't know what he meant by that. And we don't know what Frank's mistake was. did he did they do like a fake interrogation

and he like spilled the beans immediately did he realize we'd spill what beans like that like someone like pretended to like did someone like pretend to kidnap him and be like

tell me about MK Ultra and he did you know because I'm not supposed to he's supposed to be like totally close-lipped about all of this did he realize how fucked up this was once he was drugged by accident you know

and be like this is the last thing So he was basically, like, losing his mind. So that was, like, November 22nd, he gets home. On November 24th, so less like a week later after he goes on this trip, he tries to resign. And he tells his wife, he says, I tried to quit. They wouldn't let me leave, but they want to take me to psychiatric treatment because they're afraid that I might hurt you because I am feeling so messed up right now. So his wife is like, okay, like, it's Thanksgiving, like, okay, you know, go.

And he leaves and he says, like, I'll be. back. I'm going to go away for like a week, get some help, and then I'll be able to come back to the family. They don't take him to treatment. A couple of big CIA guys take him to New York City and they like hang out. They go to the theater. They go out to dinner. They just kind of like do stuff. And on November 28th, again, this is 1953. Frank Olson falls from the 10th floor of the Staler Hotel in New York City, which is now the hotel Pennsylvania. He was sharing a room with another agent at that time. When the police get there, again, it's 2 o'clock in the morning. They find the other guy just sitting in the bathroom, just like using the bathroom.

I mean, like, oh, hey, what's going on? Like, he didn't notice that Frank was gone. And then they know from an operator who connected a call right before, after Frank fell, before the police got there, that the other guy called someone else who we think is Ghalib and said, well, he's gone. Another person said, well, that's too bad. And that was it. Later, okay, so like, the way that Frank also jumped out of this window. This is what the night manager said about this. He said, quote, In all my years in the hotel business, I never encountered a case where someone got up in the middle of the night, ran across a dark room in his underwear, avoiding two beds, and dove through a closed window with the shade of curtains drawn. So for him to have died by suicide, he would have

had to take a running start from one side of the room, go through the curtains, and through the window, which seems really hard. Yeah. Right. But the window was shattered and like, and he had like those, like the kind of wounds on him when they found him on the ground. So they were like, oh, he died by suicide, but it feels very, very suspicious, right? Yeah, of course. So his family. Before he said anything was say, killed him. Of course. So his family is like, no. And they sued. And they sued for years. Like they didn't get any resolutions until like the 2010s. But in the 1990s, they did exhume Frank's body. And they did find. that he was probably hit on the head first and then thrown out the window. Yeah, or dosing with more LSD. That seemed to work. I mean, if I'm going to throw you out the window,

I'm going to open the window first. But what do I know? But you can't open the window. What do you mean? Was the window openable? Oh, I mean, I feel like probably because it was 1953. I don't know.

You're right that you can't open hotel windows now. But like, I wonder when that became a rule. But then it would make more sense if we're going to kill him by throwing him out the window. that you'd open the window, because then it makes it more compelling that he killed himself. That's what I'm saying. Why would you throw him through the window? Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Right. If I was going to open the window first, I'd throw him out of the window. I'm not going to add to my stuff to do to try to break the window with your body. Right, right. That seems hard. That seems really hard. Yeah. So, anyway, poor Frick Olsen, a poor Frick Olson's family, you know, who had to, like, live with that for ever. Yeah. It's like a week that ruined his life. So, there's some M.

mk ultra things there's also mk naomi named after one of the secretaries named naomi um this one was more like biological agents so the darts which we also learned in our episode about um greek fire how people have been poisoning darts forever you know you can like rub the end of a dart on like a poison frog or like a snake or something and and make sure that you like really really kill people um they had darts that were specifically made to like not kill dogs but like make dogs like pass out because they have a dog

if like someone's coming at you with a dog you know yeah you gotta slow down somehow so I learned also this week another side quest my daughter is whatever book she reads in school I try to read too so I can talk to her about them right and we she's reading a book next

called Number of the Stars by Lois Lowry who wrote The Giver I don't know if you read the giver yes so I remember reading a number of the stars when I was Florence's age and it is about a family who has to help hide their neighbors who are Jewish during the Dutch resistance during World War II. I remember reading it and feeling like I hope if the time comes I'm brave enough to hide my friends in my attic, you know. I'm really excited

they're reading it out. I cried the entire time like reading it and I texted her teacher. I was like I cried like I'm happy you're reading this because it's really important to know. But an interesting like fun scientific fact that I learned in a number of the stars that is true is that what they did in the book is they're trying to, you know, hide people in the bottom of a boat and get them to Sweden to safety. And then, but the Gashapo comes and they have dogs to, like, sniff for the people. So what they would do in the Dutch resistance is they had handkerchiefs. So you couldn't tell anything it was wrong with the handkerchief if you were looking at it. But the handkerchief was doused in rabbit's blood and cocaine, which made any

dog who sniffed it lose its sense of smell. Seriously? Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Wait, is that real or fiction? That's real. So that was in the fiction story, but it's a real thing that happened. I looked it up because I was like, what was on the handkerchief? Like, what is it? So it would, like, numb the dog's, like, nasal passages enough. So the dog would, like, you'd be like, I don't have anything to hide. And then you'd, like, open up your bag.

And the dog would go through your bag and you'd have a handkerchief in there. And the dog would smell it like, it would, you know? And then the dog would, then they'd be like, oh, now the dog has to go check the boat. And the dog would go check the boat. And it wouldn't smell anybody else because it lost a sense of smell. That's not cool. I know. what a night that is you got to go

sworese and kill a rabbit and then go to your that is a rough I've talked to two different guys for that I got to talk to my rabbit guy yeah you can go to the same guy for that yeah isn't that wasn't that cool I don't know so like there's yeah

something you'd something to know so they also worked with shellfish toxins and cobra venom and all of that stuff and so this is something that like in the 1970s everyone's like all right we need to calm down we cannot continue to stare at each other with piles of bio weapons behind us you know like we can't we have to we can't do this like this can't be something that we do and there's things also that like you know gotly tried to like assassinate a dictator in africa with poison and you know all the castro stuff and then like later gerald ford he's going to be the one that um says that you we can't use assassination as something that we do as part of our, like, tactics in the United States.

And Nixon, similarly, like, before this, is going to be, is going to say we need to destroy all of these bio-weapons. So in 1970, Nixon orders all of them destroyed it. But of course, they're not all destroyed. Don't be dumb. I wouldn't destroy everything if you told me I destroyed my life's work. Right. Yeah.

So the one thing that we found pretty quickly, but I'm sure there's still some shit out there. One CIA scientist kept 11 grams of shellfish toxin. enough to kill hundreds of people in a lab refrigerator, just kind of like hit it in the back of the refrigerator, and it was found five years later in 1975. So I'm sure there's plenty of like old-ass

places where these things still exist. Yeah, of course. All that LSD didn't just disappear. Right, it's all there. Yeah, exactly. So one more thing that they did also in San Francisco. So again, there's so much more that they did,

but this is some of the highlights, is they did another one called Operation Midnight Climax, which is like the perfect. name ever and exactly what you think it would be. It was a way to see if both after having sex and after being drugged, if you're more likely to give up secrets. But I feel like, yeah, probably. I would assume, yeah. Like, especially, they would do things like lure men to these safe houses in New York City and in San Francisco. They had them like dressed, you know, I feel like the vibe is like opium done cool. You know, you know.

Yeah. And they would bring them there. And, like, you know, they discover things that, like, I don't know, feel, like, feel pretty obvious. But, like, if the sex worker stays with you longer after you're done, then you're going to tell her things. Sure. Because you're going to think that she likes you, you know. It's all tracks. Yeah.

So, but they would do that. But they would also, like, dose everyone with LSD in this. So, like, hundreds of people were, were dosed. They did it for over 10 years. And they didn't do, they didn't, they didn't learn anything. They didn't use any scientific method. there was no control group, nothing. They would just, like, go ahead and do this.

They would watch through, like, two-way windows and listen through, like, microwave microphones that were, like, in, like, the outlets and stuff. So just, like, they're just, like, really being purves, hence the pervy name, Midnight Clavix. How many tons of LSD was being produced in this time period? I don't know. That's a good question.

I don't know how much LSD is the right amount to, I don't know, I don't know, maybe that's something I don't, I don't, I don't think I don't have that graph that like, this much LSD, you like really like techno music and this much LSD. But I feel like, I feel like this 20 year period, we probably produce more LSD in that 20 year period than any time after combined.

I think that's probably true. Because every story is like just LSD dozed. And they were trying, they were really, really, really, really, trying to make it work. I know, it's like when they were trying to make fetch work. Yeah, you're like, I, I bought a lot of We have to make it work. We've got to make it work.

You know, like, if you, you know, I bought, I bought too much turkey. We're all eating turkey for the next six months. Yeah, they just kept going to the Costco of LSD. Exactly, exactly. And taxpayers paid for it, and we didn't learn anything. And a lot of people's lives were ruined. But now San Francisco is, like, super groovy. And the good news is we learned our lesson, and now you can totally trust the government.

They can totally trust everything. So, all as well. Happy Thanksgiving America. Do you remember that one last podcast episode about Timothy McVeigh where he was in the cell next to Ted Kaczynski? And apparently Ted Kaczynski told somebody that he didn't like Timothy McVay because he was too liberal-minded. Or Ted Kaczynski, honestly.

I do think we'll talk about him eventually. But, I mean, if you don't know what we're talking about, he was definitely part of MVP Ultra when he was at Harvard. Also, I didn't even mention they did this at a ton of universities. And like they started naming them in a list in the book and the list is like three pages long.

It's like hundreds of universities to like college kids, you know? And Ted Kaczynski obviously was one of them and that messed with him and he also the uni and uni bomber means university because he was mad at universities, you know? I don't feel like you knew that right away. It's university and airline.

but that doesn't spell uni no it's it's not uni oh okay I'm back I'm back on board University and airline yeah yeah um

yeah fun times that's it that's my story fun times please cover your drinks I feel like I used to in New York City

obviously like in a feels like a simpler time, but I would like smoke cigarettes and go to bars and then like first for a while you can smoke cigarettes in bars, which is literally the best. You come home, you smell disgusting. It's great. Super fun. We used to like take off all clothes in the kitchen and we live in Italy and then hang them outside at night so they can get for the smoke. Great. But then after they began smoking in bars, you'd go outside and some bars had like a coaster that you put over your drink that said, I'm outside smoking, BRB. Is that wild? I cannot believe that I was not murdered. Like, absolutely insane please cover your drinks buy the little strips so you can see if your drinks are drugged like do all those things be careful there's so i okay as even as a man like i would never leave my drink unattended because now there's stories of people in austin where men will go out drinking and then some girl would like hey come back to my place and then the guy just wakes up the next day

with all of his like with wallet and phone and everything and his key he doesn't wake up he's like those guys in the river in Austin. Or one of those guys. I know. I think one of my guy friends, he, I think, we think that he picked up a drink that belonged to a woman and they like switched drinks that he didn't know. And he absolutely was drugged. And it was terrible.

My sister was drugged at a club one time. It was terrible. It's terrible. Be careful. Yeah. Cover your drinks. Don't trust anyone. Definitely.

Buy test strips. If someone in the government. invite you over for dinner and you get there and everything's just go ball and everything's covered in velvet if it looks like an opium den then that's your sign yeah yeah it's like if you get in there and it's like you and seven CIA men and they're all winking at you I think you'd go home not to victim blame we just now that we know now you know don't do that be careful yeah um well thanks for sharing taylor do we have any stories or not stories no i have no stories letters i got nothing new no

i'm i'm done but please please please please tell your friends um i feel like we forgot to tell people to do that let's do that for christmas tell your friends for us you don't even buy us anything stop sending us gifts just tell your friends we get so many gifts guys you really got to stop sending us Stop sending gifts. Just tell your friends. But write to us. Write to us of Duneiffal Pod at Gmo.com. Tell us your thoughts.

And we would love to hear them and then read them out on the air. We would. Thank you. We'll go ahead and cut off there. Thank you, Taylor. Thanks.