التسلسل الزمني: وكالة الاستخبارات المركزية الأمريكية والعلوم السلوكية: السيطرة على العقل، تجارب المخدرات، وبرنامج إم كاي-ألترا (MKULTRA).

 

Chronology: The CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments and MKULTRA.

June 13, 1942

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt creates the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the principal U.S. military intelligence agency during World War II. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 13)

October 31, 1942

The National Research Council activates a "truth drug" committee under the direction of Dr. Winfred Overholser to explore the utility of using drugs during interrogations of prisoners of war. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 6)

January 1, 1943

The "truth drug" committee is transferred to the purview of the OSS. The committee soon starts testing marijuana and mescaline on subjects provided by the Manhattan Project. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 6)

March 9, 1943

Camp Detrick is established at Detrick Field, a former National Guard airfield near Frederick, Maryland, and becomes the headquarters of the U.S. Army Biological Weapons Laboratories. Camp Detrick is later designated Fort Detrick. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 17)

Spring 1943

Frank Olson begins work in the Biological Warfare Laboratories at Camp Detrick, Maryland, and is soon named acting chief of the Special Operations Division, a position he would hold until 1953. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 110-112; John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 83)

April 16, 1943

Dr. Albert Hofmann accidentally discovers d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) at the Sandoz laboratory in Basel, Switzerland. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 3-4; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 34-35)

May 27, 1943

The OSS conducts its first field test of marijuana-laced cigarettes on New York gangster August Del Gracio. The experiment is administered by George Hunter White, a former Army captain and Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent then serving in the OSS and who had been working with Del Gracio to keep enemy agents out of New York City during World War II. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 7)

1944

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill requests "bomblets filled with anthrax spores" from President Roosevelt. The U.S. begins to work on the order but is not finished by the time the war ends in August 1945. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 19)

May 14, 1945

The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps captures Kurt Blome--deputy surgeon general and director of biological warfare research for the Nazi regime--and confronts him with evidence that he had helped engineer lethal chemicals that were used on concentration camp victims. The next month, Blome tells the Chemical Warfare Service interrogators about Hitler's secret biological warfare program and says that the Soviets had taken over the primary Nazi bioweapons lab and had captured its top scientist, Walter Schreiber. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 11; Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Nazi Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 75-78, 159-165)

August 26, 1946

At Nuremberg, former Nazi surgeon general Walter Schreiber, who was himself involved in war crimes, is presented as a witness against his former colleagues by the Soviet deputy chief prosecutor. On the stand, Schreiber describes the Nazi bacteriological warfare program operated under Dr. Karl Blome. (Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Nazi Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 233-34)

September 3, 1946

In a secret order, President Harry Truman authorizes Operation Paperclip, under which the U.S. would bring in over 700 scientists and technicians who had served the Nazi government. Several chemical and biological warfare specialists, former members of the Nazi Party, are assigned to Camp Detrick. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 21-22)

1947

The U.S. Navy initiates Project Chatter to develop a "truth drug" that could make a person betray secrets. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 38)

Spring 1947

At Edgewood Arsenal, U.S. scientists begin to test the effects of the tabun nerve agent on soldiers placed inside a "gassing chamber for human tests." (Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Nazi Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 288)

July 26, 1947

President Truman signs the National Security Act establishing the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, and restructuring the War Department under a new name: the Department of Defense. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 29; Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Nazi Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 287)

August 1947

The "Nuremberg Code" outlining moral and ethical principles for human experimentation—including that subjects be volunteers who have given informed consent—is read into the record during the Nazi "Doctors' Trial." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 46)

August 27, 1947

Kurt Blome, who directed Nazi biological weapons research, is acquitted in the Nuremberg "Doctors' Trial." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 30-31)

November 10, 1947

Shortly after his acquittal at Nuremberg, Kurt Blome meets with officers from the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and tells them about the Nazi biological warfare program. The U.S. scientists are especially interested in information about human testing, but he is not offered a Paperclip contract due to his recent acquittal in the Nuremberg trial. (Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Nazi Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 292-98)

1948

The Committee on Biological Warfare recommends to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal "the development of biological agents as covert and paramilitary weapons." (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 65)

October 18, 1948

After securing a professorship in East Berlin, former Nazi regime surgeon general Dr. Walter Schreiber escapes to West Berlin and surrenders to the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 42-43; Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Nazi Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 322-33)

1949

LSD arrives in the United States after physicians from Boston Psychopathic Hospital request and receive samples from Sandoz laboratory. Psychiatrist Robert Hyde, the assistant superintendent at the hospital, becomes the first American to take LSD. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 57-58; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 298-301)

February 24, 1949

A CIA memo to security office chief Paul Gaynor transmits concerns stemming from the show trial of Cardinal József Mindszenty of Hungary, who earlier that month confessed to crimes of treason he seemingly did not commit, leading CIA officials to suspect the Soviets had drugged or hypnotized him. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), xvi, 23; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 164; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 202)

Spring 1949

The Special Operations Division (SOD) is established by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps at Camp Detrick and is tasked with finding ways to employ chemicals in covert operations for the CIA. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 33)

Summer 1949

The Office of Scientific Intelligence is established at the CIA. In June, its first director, Dr. Willard Machle, travels to Europe to develop "special interrogation methods" to be used against suspected Soviet agents at Camp King in Germany. (Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Nazi Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 320; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 203-04)

Late-Summer 1949

A CIA team led by Morse Allen of the Security Office travels to Western Europe to investigate possible Soviet use of drugs and hypnosis in their interrogation and intelligence programs, in the process interrogating hundreds of suspected informants and returning POWs. Upon return, Allen urges the creation of "security validation teams" that would "be trained in the use of drugs and operational hypnosis" and that would conduct "polygraph screening of all CIA personnel," handle any "loyalty cases," and other "special security categories." (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 23; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 209-10)

August 1949

Inspired by the results of the tabun nerve agent tests at Edgewood Arsenal, technical director L. Wilson Greene publishes an influential paper, "Psycho-chemical Warfare: A New Concept of War," in which he argues for the development of weapons that incapacitate but do not kill, including "hallucinogenic or psychotomimetic drugs…whose effects mimic insanity or psychosis." (Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Nazi Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 288-89)

November 1949

Former Nazi surgeon general Walter Schreiber becomes the lead physician at the Camp King interrogation facility in Oberursel, Germany. The CIA seeks to bring him to the U.S. as a consultant through Operation Paperclip, but the contract is canceled after revelations about his involvement in war crimes, and he moves to Argentina. (Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Nazi Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 331-33, 347, 350-63; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 44-45)

1950

Oklahoma psychologist John Gittinger begins work on the development of a Personality Assessment System (PAS) for the CIA. Gittinger claims that the system "makes possible the assessment of fundamental discrepancies between the surface personality and the underlying personality structure—discrepancies that produce tension, conflict, and anxiety." (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 176)

1950

Scientists at Camp Detrick led by Dr. Harold Batchelor complete work on the "One-Million-Liter Test Sphere," an "airtight spherical chamber" in which human and animal subjects could be exposed to various toxins and gases. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 57; Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Nazi Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 290-91)

April 20, 1950

CIA director Roscoe Hillenkoetter authorizes Project Bluebird under the CIA's Office of Security and led by Col. Sheffield Edwards. The project establishes interrogation teams consisting of a psychiatrist, a polygraph expert trained in hypnosis, and a technician who would conduct experiments to explore "the possibility of control of an individual by application of Special Interrogation techniques." (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 24; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 211; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 38-39)

July-August 1950

The first Bluebird team travels to Tokyo, Japan, to test behavioral techniques on suspected double agents during the Korean War. Operating under the cover of performing polygraph work, they give four subjects combinations of the depressant sodium amytal and the stimulant Benzedrine in an attempt to induce amnesia. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 25; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 211)

Early September 1950

1950/09/04

Army scientist Frank Olson is transferred from the Physical Defense Division of the Chemical Corps to the SOD. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 60)

September 20, 1950

CIA propaganda expert Edward Hunter coins the term "brainwashing" in an article in the Miami News warning that the Chinese had developed a sophisticated mind control program. The article is later expanded into a book called Brain-Washing in Red China. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 53-54; Marks 133-34)

October 1950

The Bluebird team in Tokyo uses "advanced" interrogation techniques on 25 North Korean prisoners of war. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 25)

October 1950

Walter Bedell Smith becomes director of the CIA and hires OSS veteran Allen Dulles as a consultant. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 39)

Late 1950

CIA Security Chief Morse Allen becomes the head of Bluebird program. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 25)

Late 1950

Under the Chatter program, the U.S. Navy gives a $300,000 grant to the Psychology Department of the University of Rochester to study the effects of heroin on humans. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 59)

December 1950

Morse Allen and the Bluebird team investigate "electro-sleep" and shock therapy experiments being conducted in a Richmond, Virginia, hospital with the hope of finding a way to put people in a deep sleep without drugs. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 27; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 57)

1951

The CIA learns through the military that the Soviets have obtained approximately 50 million doses of LSD from Sandoz laboratories in Switzerland. The intelligence turns out to be false but raises concern about what the Soviets might do with so much of the powerful drug. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 70-71; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 85)

1951

CIA and SOD officials begin to carry out experiments on prisoners held at Fort Clayton in the Panama Canal Zone. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 52-53)

January 2, 1951

Allen Dulles is named the CIA's deputy director for plans. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 39)

February 1951

Bluebird officials led by Morse Allen are trained in the art of hypnosis. Allen concludes that hypnosis techniques can be used to control individuals. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 224; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 58; John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 194)

Spring 1951

Former Nazi biological warfare scientist Kurt Blome accepts a CIA offer to come to the U.S. on an Operation Paperclip contract in exchange for sharing his knowledge with officials from the Bluebird project, but the contract never goes through. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 44)

April 1951

The CIA director approves coordination of behavioral research with the Army, Navy, and Air Force intelligence offices. The FBI attends the meeting but declines to cooperate. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 32)

April 1951

CIA and SOD personnel begin making quarterly work retreats at locations outside Washington, D.C., including Lost River, West Virginia, Maryland's Eastern Shore, and Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 60)

May 4, 1951

The scope of Project Bluebird is narrowed to focus on "special interrogation and hypnotism techniques" that can be used for "war and specific Agency problems." Among the questions to be researched is whether an individual can be induced "to murder another individual or group of individuals." (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 223-24)

June 1951

At the first meeting between U.S., British, and Canadian intelligence representatives on potential cooperation in behavioral experiments the participants find "no conclusive evidence" of "revolutionary progress" by the Soviets or the West. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 32-33)

July 13, 1951

Sidney Gottlieb officially starts working for the CIA's Technical Services Staff (TSS) and is quickly promoted to chief of TSS's Chemical Branch. Later that year, he leads a CIA team to Tokyo to oversee the interrogation of four Japanese nationals suspected of working for the Soviet Union. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 48-52, 64; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 103)

August 20, 1951

Allen Dulles orders that the Bluebird program be expanded and reorganized. For security reasons, the new program is designated Artichoke. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 51-52; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 224)

August 23, 1951

Allen Dulles is named deputy director of central intelligence. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 52)

November 30, 1951

Former Nazi biological warfare expert Kurt Blome begins work as head physician at Camp King in Germany. (Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Nazi Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 347)

Late 1951

CIA medical specialist Dr. Harold Abramson guides Sidney Gottlieb through his first experience on LSD. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 60; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 225-26)

1952

The CIA begins to fund LSD research and experiments conducted by Dr. Robert Hyde, the deputy director at Boston Psychopathic Hospital, who uses himself, his researchers, hospital patients, and student volunteers as subjects. Hyde later advises the CIA on using LSD in covert operations and works on four MKUltra subprojects. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 58, 64-65; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 99-100)

1952

Gottlieb, Frank Olson of Army SOD, and SOD chief Dr. John Schwab attend a Chemical Corps conference at Edgewood Arsenal on "the use of psychochemicals as a new concept of warfare." SOD Chemical Corps scientific director Dr. L. Wilson Greene tells conference attendees: "I'm convinced that it is possible, through the techniques of psychochemical warfare, to conquer an enemy without the wholesale killing of his people or destroying his property." Greene is especially excited about LSD, which he says "is ideally suited for both tactical and strategic situations" and refers attendees to Olson, who he says "could better explain" that such substances "can be disseminated only as aerosols." Gottlieb later remembers that he was "fascinated by the ideas Greene was advancing." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 62-63; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 61-64)

1952

Morse Allen visits the CIA's Villa Schuster safe house in West Germany to test "dangerous combinations of drugs such as Benzedrine and Pentathol-Natrium on Russian captives." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 57)

February 15, 1952

The Office of Scientific Intelligence proposes giving a private doctor "$100,000 to develop Bluebird-related ‘neurosurgical techniques—presumably lobotomy-connected," though it is not known whether this project is ultimately funded. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 28)

Early 1952

Four Artichoke teams are deployed in West Germany, Japan, France, and South Korea. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 56; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 229)

April 1952

CIA director Smith establishes the Artichoke Committee to oversee the project's operations. Frank Olson is named to the committee the next month. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 230)

April 24, 1952

A CIA memo describes a variety of projects that should be undertaken under Artichoke, including the development of "gas guns" and "poisons" and experiments to test the viability of "monotonous sounds," "concussion," "electroshock," and "induced sleep" as means to gain "hypnotic control of an individual." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 55)

May 1952

TSS enters into an agreement with the Army biological research center's Special Operations Division in Fort Detrick, MD to develop germ weapons for CIA use, naming the program MKNaomi. (New York Times, "Colby Describes C.I.A. Poison Work," Sept. 17, 1975; John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 61; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 36-37)

May 1952

Federal narcotics agent George White travels to Washington on the invitation of Gottlieb, who had recently heard about White's experience with OSS "truth serum" tests during World War II and wanted to talk to him about LSD. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 77)

June 9, 1952

George White meets Gottlieb in New York and agrees to run a CIA safehouse in Manhattan that would be used as a site for drug experiments. White writes in his diary: "Gottlieb proposed I be a CIA consultant—I agree." (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 96-97; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 77-78)

August 1952

Three Navy men—Dr. Samuel Thompson, G. Richard Wendt, and a Naval intelligence agent—travel to Frankfurt, Germany, for Operation Castigate. Wendt, who claimed to have developed a special truth-drug concoction—later revealed to be Dexamyl—administers this drug to five subjects (three defectors, a double agent, and a suspected double agent) at two agency warehouses in the countryside outside of Frankfurt. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 41-42)

September 19, 1952

George Kennan, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, is oddly undiplomatic at a press conference in Berlin. Agency officials suspect Kennan may have been drugged or subjected to some other form of Soviet mind control. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 102-03)

October 1952

Morse Allen, head of the Artichoke program, holds a meeting with drug experts. After one tells Allen about a Mexican shrub called piule that has narcotic properties, he sends Agency scientists to Mexico to collect samples. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 114; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 156)

January 8, 1953

Professional tennis player Harold Blauer dies while under treatment at the New York State Psychiatric Institute after forced injections of a mescaline derivative. The institute is in the middle of a two-year contract with Camp Detrick's Special Operations Division to study the effect of chemical warfare agents on human beings. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 72; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 159, 162-63)

January 11, 1953

George White secretly doses several unwitting people with LSD at the safehouse he runs for Gottlieb in Manhattan, including Barbara Smithe, who is there with her 20-month-old baby, and Clarice Stein, who worked with White's wife. Stein gets "the horrors," according to White's diary. (Douglas Valentine, "Sex, Drugs and the CIA," Counterpunch, June 19, 2002)

Early 1953

Olson steps down from his position as acting chief of the Special Operations Division, citing the stresses of the job. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 112; Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Nazi Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 367-68)

Early 1953

A CIA scientist travels to Mexico in search of the shrub piule and other plants of "high narcotic and toxic value and interest to Artichoke." (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 11)

Early 1953

Gottlieb goes overseas with hallucinogens (most likely LSD) to test them on unwitting subjects. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 73)

February 26, 1953

Allen Dulles becomes director of central intelligence. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 67-68)

March 1953

The CIA contracts Dr. James Moore, a chemist working at Detroit's Parke, Davis & Company, to study the substances collected by agents in Mexico. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 117)

March 31, 1953

Former Army officer and top CIA official James Kronthal is found dead outside of his Georgetown residence in Washington, D.C., after dining with CIA director Allen Dulles at his home earlier that evening. As CIA security officials secretly listened, Dulles had confronted Kronthal with evidence he had been blackmailed into serving as a double agent for the Nazis during WWII and later for the Soviet Union. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 70; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 133-34)

April 3, 1953

In a memo to CIA director Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, chief of operations at the Directorate of Plans, recommends that the Agency expand an "extremely sensitive" mind control research program that would investigate the potential to "develop a capability in the covert use of biological and chemical materials" in "present and future clandestine operations." A second category of research under the program is completely redacted in the declassified memo. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 60-61; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 69-71)

April 7, 1953

In a memo to the CIA Medical Division, Marshall Chadwell, head of the Office of Strategic Intelligence, says that the Agency has recruited personnel from various government agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the military for the Artichoke project. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 227)

April 10, 1953

CIA director Allen Dulles makes a public statement at Princeton University about communist brainwashing: "We in the West are somewhat handicapped in getting all the details … There are few survivors, and we have no human guinea pigs to try these extraordinary techniques." (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 139; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 71-72)

April 13, 1953

CIA director Allen Dulles approves the MKUltra program, establishing a covert biological and chemical program under Sidney Gottlieb and Willis Gibbons of TSS, who will operate without the normal financial controls. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 61; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 73; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 282)

April 13, 1953

Gottlieb meets magician John Mulholland in New York, and Mulholland agrees to train CIA officers the arts of deception. Mulholland later agrees to produce a manual on "sleight-of-hand practices." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 90)

May 1953

Former OSS "truth drug" researcher Dr. James Hamilton of Stanford University is awarded $4,650 under MKUltra Subproject 2 for "the study of possible synergistic action of drugs which may be appropriate for use in abolishing consciousness" and to study "methods to enable the administration of drugs to patients without their knowledge." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 99; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 283)

Mid-1953

The CIA learns through military intelligence sources that Sandoz wants to sell 10 kilograms of LSD—enough for 100 million doses—on the open market. The CIA and the Defense Department agree that the Agency should buy all of it, only to find that Sandoz actually only had only 10 grams of the drug in stock. In the end, Sandoz agrees to produce 100 grams of LSD per week for the CIA. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 85-86; John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 70-71)

Mid-1953

The CIA asks Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Company to develop a batch of LSD. By late-1954, the company develops a streamlined way to manufacture LSD without the rare ergot fungus. TSS officials inform Allen Dulles that Lilly's advances meant the government could "buy LSD in ‘tonnage quantities,' which made it a potential chemical-warfare agent.'" (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 71-72; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 130; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 186)

Mid-1953

SOD has compiled a list of "nearly 150 lethal substances" that it had tested on animals. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 320)

June 2, 1953

Robert Lashbrook receives Sidney Gottlieb, Willis Gibbons, and TSS research chairman Admiral Luis de Florez's approval for MKUltra Subproject 6, the goal of which is to develop "a reliable source of lysergic acid derivatives [LSD] within the U.S." and "aims to extend the isolation and testing program of the hypnotic products from the Rivea species of plants." (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 153)

June 8, 1953

In his diary, George White writes, "CIA—got final clearance and sign contract as ‘consultant'—met Gottlieb." Later that year, using the alias "Morgan Hall," White would begin to lure unsuspecting people into a CIA safe house in Greenwich Village to be unwittingly dosed with LSD and other substances. The safe house is also used to test new surveillance equipment. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 78-79; John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 99)

June 24, 1953

Morse Allen and an Agency associate take a trip to Toughkenamon, Pennsylvania, "the largest mushroom-growing area in the world," for a meeting with the heads of the U.S. mushroom industry. According to Allen, the meeting "was primarily signed to obtain a ‘foothold' in the center of the mushroom-growing industry where, if requirements for mushroom growing were demanded, it would be done by professionals in the trade." Mushroom executives reluctantly agree to work with the Agency. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 116)

July 1953

Gottlieb travels to Lexington, Kentucky, to meet Harris Isbell, the research director of the Addiction Research Center, and agrees to his earlier request for the CIA to provide him "a reasonably large quantity" of LSD to study "the mental and other pharmacological effects produced by the chronic administration" of LSD on human subjects, most of them federal prisoners. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 94-96)

July 1953

The Federal Narcotics Bureau assigns George White to a three-month CIA consultancy to begin on August 1. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 281)

July 3, 1953

Over the next two years, Harold Abramson steers $76,420 to Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York for work on MKUltra Subprojects 7 and 23. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 285)

September 4, 1953

The Sandoz company in Basel, Switzerland, informs the CIA that the company's attitude about the value of studying LSD had significantly changed in the past year. A CIA officer reports that the company "‘had become alarmed at the ethical and moral problems involved,' which he thought ‘improbable,' or that the company had experienced ‘serious accidents,' which the author also viewed as ‘improbable.'" (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 150)

Fall 1953

Gottlieb travels to East Asia to take part in "P-1" interrogations of prisoners who had been given LSD unwittingly. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 106)

November 18, 1953

Gottlieb and Lashbrook of TSS host a three-day retreat with MKNaomi collaborators from the Army's Special Operations Division at Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland. Guests include SOD chief Vincent Ruwet, former acting chief Frank Olson, and SOD founder John Schwab. The next day, Olson and several others unknowingly drink glasses of liqueur that Gottlieb had spiked with LSD. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 79-80; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 113-14)

November 23-24, 1953

After meeting with Olson at Fort Detrick, Ruwet believes that Olson needs "psychiatric attention" and refers the matter to Gottlieb and Lashbrook, who arrange for Olson to see Dr. Harold Abramson, who had been conducting LSD tests for the CIA. Abramson meets with Olson and Lashbrook at the Statler Hotel in New York City and gives Olson a cocktail of bourbon and Nembutal, a barbiturate used in hypnosis and to slow down the nervous system. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 85-87; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 113-17; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 108, 111)

November 24, 1953

CIA Security Office chief Sheffield Edwards chairs an Artichoke meeting in Washington, during which the "Berlin Poison" case is discussed. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 80)

November 25, 1953

In the morning, Ruwet and Lashbrook take Olson to see magician John Mulholland, who has been working on a CIA contract related to the art of hypnosis. Olson reportedly feels uncomfortable and flees from the building. At a later appointment, Abramson determines Olson can go home to Maryland the next day for Thanksgiving. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 87; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 119-20; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 112)

November 26, 1953

Ruwet, Lashbrook, and Olson fly back to Washington, but Olson reportedly does not want to return home in his mental state. Ruwet suggests he fly back to New York to see Abramson again. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 88; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 120)

November 27, 1953

Lashbrook and Olson travel back to New York and stay at the Statler Hotel. Abramson convinces Olson to check into a Maryland sanitarium upon returning home. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 88; Kinser, 119-20)

November 28, 1953

At 2:25 a.m., Olson falls to his death from the 10th-floor window of the Statler Hotel in New York City. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 88-89; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 121; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 115)

November 28, 1953

At 3:00 a.m., Gottlieb calls Ruwet and tells him to go to Olson's home and inform his wife of his death. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 123)

November 28, 1953

At 4:30 a.m., CIA security officer Bernard Doran receives a call from Gottlieb who tells him there had been "an incident in a hotel in New York City, involving a death," and that his assistant Robert Lashbrook, who was in the room at the time, was on the scene waiting for instructions. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 26)

November 28, 1953

At 5:40 a.m., Doran, Edwards, and Willis Gibbons, head of TSS, meet in Gottlieb's office for a briefing on the death of Olson. Gottlieb tells Edwards about the LSD experiment at Deep Creek Lake. Edwards dispatches a "special security officer" to the Statler Hotel. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 27-28)

November 28, 1953

Edwards sends CIA agent James McCord to the Statler Hotel to meet with Lashbrook. In a subsequent report, McCord says he overheard Abramson tell Lashbrook "that the operation was dangerous" and that he was "worried about whether or not the deal was in jeopardy." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 124)

November 30, 1953

CIA director Allen Dulles orders Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick to investigate Frank Olson's death. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 89; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 126-27; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 99)

December 3, 1953

CIA Security Agent James McCord meets with the New York City 14th precinct to discuss their investigation of Frank Olson's death. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 120-21)

December 4, 1953

CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick meets with Abramson at CIA headquarters in Washington, D.C. Abramson also sits down with the Agency's general counsel, Lawrence Houston, to discuss his "observations on Frank Olson." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 127; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 138-39)

December 9, 1953

CIA General Counsel Lawrence Houston concludes that "the death of Dr. Olson is the result of circumstances arising out of an experiment undertaken in the course of his official duties for the U.S. Government" and finds "a direct causal connection between the experiment and his death." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 126; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 145)

December 17, 1953

A CIA "tech squad" visits the safehouse run by George White at 81 Bedford Street in Manhattan to upgrade sound and other equipment. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 185)

December 18, 1953

CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick issues his final report on Frank Olson's death to DCI Allen Dulles. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 127; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 141)

Late 1953

DCI Allen Dulles asks neurologist Dr. Harold Wolff of Cornell University Medical College to conduct a study on communist brainwashing techniques on behalf of the Agency. Wolff and colleague Lawrence Hinkle eventually conclude that Communists were using neither drugs nor hypnosis in their interrogations and had not made important advances in brainwashing techniques, as had been feared. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 135-38, 157)

1953-1954

The CIA requests a briefing from Dr. John Lilly of the National Institutes of Health on his "brain mapping" research using monkeys and his work on a sensory-deprivation tank Agency officials believed might be useful for interrogation purposes. Lilly decides not to work with the CIA. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 152)

1954

Under MKUltra Subproject 9, Dr. Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University begins a series of CIA-directed drug experiments on prisoners held in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 97; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 301-04)

February 19, 1954

Using two secretaries as his subjects, Morse Allen successfully simulates the creation of a "Manchurian Candidate," or programmed assassin. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 195)

Spring 1954

Dr. Robert Hyde of Boston Psychopathic Hospital recruits six Harvard seniors, the first of hundreds of area college students to participate in CIA-directed LSD experiments under his direction. None of the subjects are told of the CIA's involvement in the project. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 298-300; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 99)

April 1954

A CIA memorandum addressed to Dulles and others says that LSD "appears to be better adapted than known drugs to both interrogation of prisoners and use against troops or civilians." (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 185)

Summer 1954

Artichoke director Morse Allen pushes his higher-ups at CIA to allow him to try "terminal experiments" in which they would hypnotize a presumed double agent and program him to make an assassination attempt, but the operation is never carried out and control over human behavior experiments soon passes to the MKUltra program under Gottlieb. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 196-98)

Late 1954

Eli Lilly & Company develops a streamlined way to manufacture LSD without using the rare ergot fungus. In a memo, the TSS chief informs Allen Dulles that advances meant that "in a matter of months LSD could be available in tonnage quantities." (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 71-72; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 130; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 186)

December 1954

Through the Human Ecology Society, the CIA funds a project led by Dr. Harold Wolff to understand the behavior of Chinese refugees in the U.S. and, it is hoped, turn them into "people willing to work for the CIA." The project ends in early 1955 when Gottlieb and TSS take over Artichoke projects under MKUltra. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 160-62).

Early 1955

Gottlieb and TSS assume most of the functions of the Artichoke program from the Office of Security and Morse Allen, including the Human Ecology Society. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 162)

1955

The CIA's Morse Allen corresponds with Dr. Maitland Baldwin at the National Institutes of Health about the use of isolation techniques during interrogation. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 137)

1955

At the urging of Dr. Charles Geschickter, a professor of pathology at Georgetown University, the CIA provides $375,000 toward the construction of a new medical facility at Georgetown University Hospital. In return, Geschickter agrees to let the CIA use one-sixth of the new "Gorman Annex" as its "hospital safehouse" and to provide "human patients and volunteers for experimental use." (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 217; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 149-51)

1955-58

Through the Human Ecology Society, the CIA funds a study on criminal sexual offenders at Ionia State Hospital in Michigan. Officials test LSD, marijuana, and hypnosis on 26 witting and unwitting inmates. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 165)

June 29, 1955

R. Gordon Wasson, vice president of J.P. Morgan & Co., travels to Oaxaca Mexico and is introduced to hallucinogenic mushrooms in Huautla de Jiménez. The CIA and James Moore hear about Wasson's experience, and Moore writes Wasson asking to accompany him on his next trip to Mexico. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 122)

Late 1955

White and Gottlieb set up a new CIA safehouse in San Francisco that becomes the operational center of Operation Midnight Climax. White later establishes another safehouse in nearby Marin County. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 100, 107-08)

December 3, 1955

In a report to Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson, CIA director Allen Dulles reveals some aspects of the MKUltra program. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 151-52)

1956

Under MKUltra Subproject 58, Wasson, Moore, and French mushroom expert Roger Heim travel to Huautla de Jiménez and take the same hallucinogenic mushrooms Wasson had taken the year prior. Moore brings samples back to the University of Delaware, where he has continued to maintain a research contract with the CIA through the Geschickter Fund. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 118-23)

January 1956

Dr. D. Ewen Cameron publishes a paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry on "psychic driving," a technique that uses drugs, isolation, and exposure to repetitive recorded messages to "de-pattern" and "re-pattern" the human brain. The paper catches the attention of CIA scientists, who send Maitland Baldwin, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, to recruit him for MKUltra Subproject 68, which would operate as a grant from the Human Ecology Society, a CIA front. During the next several years, over 100 people admitted to the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, Canada, under Cameron's care for minor psychological problems "became unwitting or unwilling subjects in an extreme form of behavioral experimentation." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 138-39; John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 144)

March 1956

Gottlieb and TSS back a project led by Harold Wolff and the Human Ecology Society to research the factors that cause people to defect and work against their own governments. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 162-63)

April 2, 1956

Wolff and Hinkle of Cornell University Medical College issue a report on "Communist Brainwashing Techniques" solicited by Allen Dulles in 1953, finding that communist regimes did not have "any magical weapon—no drugs, exotic mental ray-guns, or other fanciful machines," but rather relied on "skillful, if brutal, applications of police methods." (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 134-36, 157)

June 1956

After the Hungarian uprising, the CIA funds a study by Wolff and the Human Ecology Society looking at 70 Hungarian refugees and what drove them to defect. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 163)

June 20, 1956

The pilot of the first operational U-2 flight out of Wiesbaden, Germany, carries with him a cyanide poison ampule prepared by Gottlieb. In later missions, U-2 pilots, including Francis Gary Powers, would carry another of Gottlieb's creations: a pin laced with concentrated shellfish poison hidden inside a silver dollar. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 171)

Late 1956 - Early 1957

Allan Memorial Institute patient Val Orkilow, under treatment for postpartum depression, is unwillingly dosed with LSD as many as 14 times over several months. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 148-49)

1957

Dr. D. Ewan Cameron's CIA funding is officially granted, and he begins conducting sensory-deprivation and "psychic driving" experiments on patients at Allan Memorial Institute at McGill University in Canada. In one experiment, a female patient is left in a sensory deprivation "box" for 35 days. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 146-47)

1957

Psychiatrist Robert Hyde moves from Boston Psychopathic Hospital to Butler Health Center in Providence, Rhode Island, where he uses Gittinger's Personality Assessment System to evaluate the effects of alcohol on people in social situations. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 180-81)

March 1957

MKUltra officials fund a Rutgers University study intended to "to throw as much light as possible on the sociology of the communist system in the throes of revolution." Sociologists Richard Stephenson and Jay Schulman interview 70 Hungarian refugees in New York City and travel to Europe to interview Hungarian leftists. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 164)

Mid 1957

The CIA terminates the formal relationship between the Human Ecology Society and Cornell University and reorganizes under the leadership of Air Force Lt. Col. James Monroe, with Wolff and Hinkle sitting atop the board of directors. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 166-67)

September 1957

Gottlieb transfers to Munich and spends two years there as a CIA case officer. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 160-161)

1958

Through the Human Ecology Society, the CIA funds a University of Oklahoma study on the behavior of teenage gang members and their willingness to "defect" from their groups. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 170)

1958

While stationed in Munich, Gottlieb commissions "a special research study of handwriting analysis," which later becomes MKUltra Subproject 83. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 193-94)

1959

Through the Human Ecology Society, the CIA commissions a five-year study from University of Illinois professor Charles Osgood to examine how people in different cultures express ideas, feelings, and values, which the Agency sees as "directly relevant" to covert operations. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 168-69)

January 1, 1959

Richard Bissell replaces Frank Wisner as the CIA's deputy director for plans and makes Gottlieb his chief "scientific adviser" on use of chemical and biological agents in covert operations. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 112; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 163)

Early 1960

Gottlieb and others form the Health Alteration Committee within the Clandestine Services to organize and carry out assassinations of foreign government leaders. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 176)

February 23, 1960

The CIA Technical Services Staff is renamed the Technical Services Division (TSD) (Report. Central Intelligence Agency, "Office of Technical Services: 50 Years Supporting Operations," 2001)

Spring 1960

The Health Alteration Committee approves an operation to "disable" an Iraqi colonel suspected to be promoting Soviet interests. Gottlieb sends the colonel a monogrammed handkerchief infected with the incapacitating agent brucellosis. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 81)

April 21, 1960

Gottlieb writes a memo titled "Scientific and Technical Problems in Covert Action Operations" in which he reports that they had so far not been able to develop an effective knockout pill, truth serum, aphrodisiac, or recruitment pill. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 195)

May 13, 1960

President Dwight Eisenhower orders the assassination of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and Gottlieb and his Technical Services Division are tasked with developing poisons and devices that could be used to do so. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 180-85)

June 1960

TSD launches a joint program with the Agency's Counterintelligence Staff to explore the use of hypnosis and induced amnesia on unwitting subjects. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 202)

August 18, 1960

Eisenhower tells Dulles and Bissell that Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba should be "eliminated." Bissell subsequently orders Gottlieb to develop a poison that could be used against an African leader but does not identify Lumumba as the target. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 176-77; John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 81)

September 26, 1960

Gottlieb arrives in Leopoldville, Congo, to deliver a poison kit to the CIA station chief to be used against Lumumba. Two months later, Lumumba is captured, imprisoned and ultimately killed by his political enemies, and the poison is never used. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 175-79)

October 1960

The MKUltra program pays a consultant $9,000 to research ways to hypnotize unwitting people. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 202)

1961

The CIA works with the South Korean government to establish the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. CIA agents use personality tests developed by MKUltra consultants like John Gittinger to help select agents for the South Korean agency. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 190)

1961

The Human Ecology Society changes its name to the Human Ecology Fund. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 159)

1961

A third MKUltra safehouse opens in New York under the supervision of federal narcotics agent Charles Siragusa. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 107)

April 1961

The TSD chief reports that they have a "production capability" in "brain simulation" and are "close to having debugged a prototype system whereby dogs can be guided along specific courses." (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 224-25)

November 29, 1961

John McCone becomes director of central intelligence.

Early 1962

DCI McCone forces Bissell to retire as deputy director of plans and replaces him with Richard Helms. Helms later makes Gottlieb deputy director of the Technical Services Division (TSD), which is to focus on supporting CIA operations. Research and development projects that were previously led by Gottlieb are transferred to the Office of Research and Development under Dr. Stephen Aldrich. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 191-92, Marks, 224)

1962

CIA psychologist John Gittinger and his associates from the Human Ecology Fund move HEF headquarters from New York to the offices of Psychological Assessment Associates in Washington, D.C. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 179)

August 1962

Tusko, an elephant kept at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City, dies after being injected with 300,000 micrograms of LSD by University of Oklahoma psychiatrist Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West, who had worked on MKUltra projects aimed at inducing "suggestibility" and "dissociative states." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 262; John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 63)

1963

The CIA's MKUltra project officially ends. Unofficially and under different auspices, many of the MKUltra subprojects continue with Agency funding. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 154)

July 1963

In Mexico City, the first test under the joint TSD-Counterintelligence Staff program to hypnotize and induce amnesia in unwitting subjects ends in failure when the hypnotist gets cold feet. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 203)

July 26, 1963

CIA Inspector General John Earman submits a report on MKUltra to DCI John McCone recommending that the scope of the project be narrowed, that tighter controls be put in place, and that CIA end the human testing program. In a subsequent memo, Gottlieb acknowledges that the program "had less and less relevance to current clandestine operations," calling the tools "too unpredictable" and noting how officers had "shown a discerning and perhaps commendable distaste for using these materials and techniques." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 197)

August 14, 1963

In a review of TSD programs, CIA Inspector General John Earman discovers the safehouses run by Gottlieb and White to conduct drug experiments. He subsequently writes a memo recommending the safehouses be shut down. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 108-09; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 386-87, 391)

1964

MKUltra is terminated, and its current projects continue under the name MKSearch, described as a program "to develop a capability to manipulate human behavior in a predictable manner through the use of drugs." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 203; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 306-07)

1964

The CIA spends $30,000 to maintain safehouses in several U.S. cities run by George White and other federal narcotics agents. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 213)

1964

Dr. D. Ewan Cameron retires as director of the Allan Memorial Institute, and his successor, Dr. Robert Cleghorn, commissions a review of Cameron's extreme sensory-deprivation and depatterning experiments. The investigation concludes that there is no clinical proof of the efficacy of Cameron's treatments. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 149-50)

February 1964

KGB agent Yuri Nosenko defects to the United States and is kept in solitary confinement and interrogated dozens of times over three years. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 154-56)

1965

TSD shuts down its San Francisco safehouse. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 109; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 391)

March 30, 1965

In a memo to the CIA, Dr. James Hamilton describes experiments underway since 1962 in which inmates at Vacaville prison in California have been given radioactive iodine to test the viability of "covert marking systems." The experiments at Vacaville continue through 1968. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 294; Washington Post, Oct. 5, 1978; Los Angeles Times, Oct. 13, 1977)

1966

TSD shuts down the New York City safehouse. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 109; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 391)

1966

A CIA team led by psychologist John Gittinger works with the U.S. Agency for International Development's Public Safety Mission to set up an anti-terrorist police unit to fight the Tupamaro guerrillas in Uruguay. The group uses the Personality Assessment System developed by Gittinger during the 1950s to screen candidates for the new police force. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 190-91)

1966

Former head of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division J. C. King forms the Amazon Natural Drug Company as a cover to search South America for toxic and psychoactive plants of interest to the Agency. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 218)

May 30, 1966

California bans LSD. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 189)

June 30, 1966

Richard Helms becomes director of central intelligence, replacing William Raborn, who held the position less than a year. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 203)

1967

The CIA terminates projects researching ways to control animal behavior, including the aborted "Acoustic Kitty" project, under which the Agency tried to train cats to acts as mobile listening devices. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 202-03)

1967

A summary of work under MKNaomi says that the joint CIA-Army chemical and biological warfare program has two goals: to "stockpile severely incapacitating and lethal materials" for use by TSD and to "maintain in operational readiness special and unique items for the dissemination of chemical and biological materials." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 225)

1967

The CIA sends a group of Cuban exiles to France to sabotage a shipment of machine lubricants destined for Cuba. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 212)

1968

CIA's Office of Research and Development (ORD) sets up a joint project with the Army Chemical Corps at Edgewood, Maryland, called Project Often to study the effects of different drugs on animals and humans and organize the findings into a computerized database. Tests are conducted on military volunteers and on inmates at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia. The project is terminated in 1973. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 227)

1968

During the Vietnam War, a CIA medical team travels to Saigon to perform behavior control experiments on North Vietnamese prisoners. The physicians implant electrodes in the brains of three POWs in a failed attempt to force them to fight one another. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 206-07)

November 25, 1969

President Richard Nixon renounces the use of biological warfare, and SOD stops manufacturing and stockpiling bacteriological agents for the CIA. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 93; New York Times, Nov. 26, 1969)

1970

MKNaomi, the joint Army-CIA chemical and biological warfare program in operation since 1952, comes to an end. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 307)

1971

MKUltra collaborator Dr. Carl Pfeiffer destroys records related to LSD experiments he conducted on prisoners at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 263)

1971

John Marks reads an article about dissident CIA officer Victor Marchetti and goes to visit him. Marchetti tells Marks that he is planning to write an exposé of the agency. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), xii)

1971

At the request of the White House, the CIA's medical office prepares a psychological profile of Daniel Ellsberg, the former Pentagon employee who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the media. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 184)

July 10, 1972

With only four subprojects remaining, Gottlieb requests the termination of the MKSearch program, successor to MKUltra. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 218-19, 246)

November 1972

After Marchetti's plan to write a book about the CIA is leaked to the Agency and he is forced to submit a manuscript for review, he asks John Marks to help him write the book. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), xii)

January 30, 1973

In one of his last official acts as DCI, Helms orders the destruction of all records related to MKUltra. Gottlieb also orders his secretary to destroy files on MKUltra and other sensitive matters. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 208-09; John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), ix)

January 31, 1973

Acting on an order from Helms, Gottlieb destroys seven boxes of MKUltra progress reports covering the years 1953-67 and 25 copies of a book titled "LSD-25: Some Un-Psychedelic Implications." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 213)

February 2, 1973

James Schlesinger is named DCI. Soon thereafter, TSD is redesignated as the Office of Technical Services. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 209)

April 1973

John McMahon is named director of the Office of Technical Services, replacing Gottlieb. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 209-10)

May 9, 1973

DCI Schlesinger orders "senior operating officials" at the CIA to report to the Agency's inspector general on any activities, past or present, "which might be considered to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency." Two days later, Schlesinger is named secretary of defense. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), ix; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 212)

June 30, 1973

Gottlieb retires from the CIA. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 210)

August 1973

John Marks and Victor Marchetti finish the manuscript of their book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. After a pre-publication review, the CIA insists on 339 deletions, which the authors eventually negotiate down to 170. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), xii)

September 4, 1973

William Colby takes over as director of central intelligence and is soon handed a report known as the "family jewels," an internal inventory of CIA abuses prepared on the order of previous DCI James Schlesinger. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 213-14)

August 9, 1974

President Richard Nixon resigns, and Gerald Ford is sworn in as the new president. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 214)

December 22, 1974

In the New York Times, Seymour Hersh reveals MHChaos, a CIA program to spy on thousands of U.S. journalists and peace activists that was detailed in the still-secret "family jewels" report. His reporting touches off multiple government investigations of CIA misdeeds that would eventually reveal MKUltra and other behavior control programs. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), ix, 220; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 214; New York Times, Dec. 22, 1974)

January 4, 1975

President Gerald Ford asks Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to lead the President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, informally known as the "Rockefeller Commission." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 214-15)

Early 1975

William Colby, then director of central intelligence, passes on the CIA inspector general's findings on MKUltra to the Rockefeller Commission. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), x)

June 11, 1975

The Rockefeller Commission issues its final report on the CIA's illegal acts. Although it does not name MKUltra, the report finds that the CIA had for years had a program "to test potentially dangerous drugs on unsuspecting US citizens" and that one U.S. official, later identified as Frank Olson, had committed suicide after being dosed with LSD. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 216-17: John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), x)

July 21, 1975

President Ford meets privately with the family of Frank Olson at the White House and apologizes to them for the "uncertainties and anguish" they had experienced. The next day, Ford publicly discloses that Olson was the victim of a secret LSD experiment the Agency had conducted on unwitting subjects. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 219-20)

Mid-1975

Former State Department official John Marks files a Freedom of Information Act request for the declassification of documents given to the Rockefeller Commission by the CIA. In response, the CIA tells Marks that the records of drug-testing were all destroyed on the order of Richard Helms in 1973. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), xiv)

October 7, 1975

After receiving immunity, Gottlieb begins to talk to the Senate select committee established to probe intelligence abuses (Church Committee). (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 225)

April 1976

The Church Committee issues its final report on U.S. intelligence abuses, including a section titled "Testing and Use of Chemical and Biological Agents by the Intelligence Community." (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 231-32)

July 20, 1977

The CIA releases more than 1,000 pages of expense reports related to the MKUltra program to researcher and former State Department official John Marks. (John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), xiv; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 232-33)

September 21, 1977

Gottlieb testifies privately before the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research. Longtime Gottlieb deputy Robert Lashbrook, CIA psychologist Robert Gittinger, and MKUltra collaborator Charles Geschickter also testify. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 236-42)

October 17, 1978

A memorandum from the CIA's executive secretary reveals the existence of an April 15, 1960, order from the DCI's office instructing that some records related to financing of Artichoke and MKUltra operations from 1951-55 be destroyed. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 577-78)

March 1979

The CIA's Victims Task Force (VTF), led by Frank Laubinger of CIA and federal narcotics agent Richard Salmi, begins a six-month probe into identifying any unwitting subjects of CIA drug tests between 1952 and 1963. The relatively limited investigation focuses largely on the safehouses run by George White and ignores CIA-funded experiments at universities, prisons, and mental hospitals, among others. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 574; Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 245)

May 10, 1979

Gottlieb responds by phone to written questions from Frank Laubinger of the Victims Task Force confirming, according to Laubinger's notes, that, "Unwitting testing was performed to explore the full range of the operational use of LSD," but is vague about the details. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 245; H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 576-77)

July 18, 1979

Eliot Smithe receives a letter from Frank Laubinger of the CIA's Victims Task Force, informing him that CIA consultant George White may have secretly given LSD to his now-deceased ex-wife Barbara Smithe on January 11, 1953. Smithe files a lawsuit against the CIA a few months later. Around the same time Clarice Stein Smithline, who was also alleged to have been dosed that night, receives a similar letter from the VTF and also initiates legal action against the CIA. (Douglas Valentine, "Sex, Drugs and the CIA," Counterpunch, June 19, 2002)

1981

Stanley Glickman files a lawsuit under the Federal Torts Claims Act against Gottlieb and Helms for unknowingly dosing him with LSD at a Paris café in 1952 and sending him into a troubled mental state from which he never fully recovered. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 66-67, 255-56)

December 8, 1981

Gottlieb is deposed in a civil lawsuit brought by MKUltra victims against the CIA and its director William Casey. (H.P Albarelli Jr., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2009), 302)

September 19-22, 1995

Gottlieb is deposed in a civil lawsuit brought by the family of MKUltra victim Stanley Glickman. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 65-67)

March 7, 1999

Gottlieb dies in Virginia at age 80. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 259)

June 26, 2006

A federal judge denies the claim brought against the CIA by former federal marshal Wayne Ritchie that he had been unwittingly dosed with LSD at an office Christmas party in 1957, causing him to commit an armed robbery. (Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 147-48)