The CIA’s Operation ‘Midnight Climax’ Was Exactly What It Sounded Like
Agents lured johns to brothels for drug-laced encounters
By Darien Cavanaugh
War is Boring
War is Boring
September 21, 2016
On April 13,
1953, CIA director Allen Dulles authorized Project MKULTRA, the
controversial series of experiments aimed at developing mind control
techniques and discovering a “truth drug.”
Agents dosed subjects with
LSD and other psychotropic narcotics, hypnotized them, and exposed them
to radiation and electroshock therapy. Some of the participants
volunteered, but others did so unwillingly and unwittingly.
The CIA attempted to destroy
all records of the program, leaving behind only seven boxes of official
files overlooked during the document purge. But a few stories survived.
One of the strangest revolves around a series of uncontrolled
experiments named Operation Midnight Climax.
CIA operatives involved with
Midnight Climax hired prostitutes in San Francisco to lure clients back
to brothels. Once there, the agents secretly drugged their targets and
watched them engage in sexual activities from behind a two-way mirror.
America’s spies began searching for mind-control substances
during World War II. As the conflict raged, the Office of Strategic
Services, the precursor of the CIA, implemented a truth-drug program in
hopes of discovering a means to coerce prisoners-of-war to reveal their
secrets during interrogations.
The OSS initially toyed with a
concentrated liquid form of marijuana rather than the newly discovered
LSD, according to journalist Gary Kamiya writing in the San Francisco Chronicle. George White, an OSS captain and ex-federal narcotics agent, gave the first dose to a New York mobster in 1943.
“Every
(subject) but one — and he didn’t smoke — gave us more information than
we had before,” one of White’s colleagues recalled. However, the
results were ultimately deemed “inconclusive,” Kamiya wrote.
As World War II ended and the Korean War intensified, the CIA and the Pentagon grew concerned over reports
that foreign intelligence agencies had developed brainwashing methods
of their own. These rumors inspired the classic Cold War film The Manchurian Candidate.
MKULTRA was, at least in part, a response to this perceived threat.
Sidney Gottlieb, the
head of the Chemical Division of the CIA’s Technical Services Division,
urged Dulles to approve testing LSD as a potential mind control or
brainwashing substance.
Dulles agreed.
Gottlieb brought White, a
“rock-em, sock-em cop not overly carried away with playing spook” into
the program as a “consultant,” according to one account.
White started in Greenwich
Village, where he administered “LSD, knockout drops and marijuana to his
unwitting ‘guests’ using food, drinks, and cigarettes, then tried to
get them to talk,” Kamiya wrote.
It didn’t take White long to
veer the experiments in the direction of illicit sex. He transferred to
San Francisco in 1955 and set up a brothel in the city’s Telegraph Hill
neighborhood. He wanted the spot to have “a French whorehouse look,” Kamiya added.
The operative decorated the
walls with Toulouse-Lautrec prints, photos of can-can dancers, and
images of women in bondage and S&M scenarios. To complete the setup,
he installed two-way mirrors for agents to sit behind and watch.
“It
was supposed to look rich, but it was furnished like crap,” one
narcotics agent who frequented the location told John Marks, author of The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate:” The CIA and Mind Control.
The prostitutes
picked up the johns at local bars and brought them back to the makeshift
brothel. White his fellow agents preferred men from working class or
financially disadvantaged backgrounds. The idea was that subjects with
limited social status would attract the least attention, and be less
likely to cause any issues.
“An
unsuspecting john would think he had bought a night of pleasure, go
back to a strange apartment, and wind up zonked,” Marks wrote.
Of course, official documents
employed vague, bureaucratic language when portraying the encounters. A
report was written by Gottlieb that survived the purge described the
process as follows: “Certain individuals [the prostitutes] would
covertly administer this material [the drugs] to other people [the
johns] in accordance with [White’s] instructions.”
White paid the women with agency funds and chits “they could use for favors such as getting out of jail,” Kamiya added.
Gottlieb was aware the
financial scheme could be dangerous. “Due to the highly unorthodox
nature of these activities and the considerable risk incurred by these
individuals, it is impossible to require that they provide a receipt for
these payments or that they indicate the precise manner in which funds
were spent,” he wrote in his report.
But the MKULTRA team
considered the first San Francisco safe house such a success that they
opened a second one across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County. White
also oversaw this operation.
“You could bring people in for quickies after lunch,” one MKULTRA agent told Marks of the Telegraph Hill address.
The suburban Marin County
location, on the other hand, provided a greater sense of isolation and
secrecy, allowing for more elaborate — and ridiculous — experiments.
Marks wrote:
“There TSS [Technical Services Staff] scientists tested such MKULTRA specialties as stink bombs, itching and sneezing powders, and diarrhea inducers. TSS’s Ray Treichler, the Stanford chemist, sent these harassment substances out to California for testing by White, along with such delivery systems as a mechanical launcher that could throw foul-smelling objects 100 yards, glass ampules that could be stepped on in a crowd to release any of Treichler’s powders, a fine hypodermic needle to inject drugs through the cork in a whine bottle, and drug coated swizzle sticks.”
The secret doping experiments didn’t end there, nor did the operatives’ choice of drugs and targets stay
confined to johns. “If we were scared enough of a drug not to try it
out on ourselves, we sent it to San Francisco,” a CIA source told Marks.
Wayne Ritchie, a deputy U.S.
Marshal, unknowingly drank an LSD contaminated beverage at a Christmas
party. Out of his mind, he attempted to rob a bar at gunpoint, according
to a haunting account at S.F. Weekly. He resigned from the Marshals Service but avoided jail.
White’s journal indicated he was also at the party. Ritchie went on to sue the U.S. government but was unable to prove the CIA dosed him.
The agency shut down MKULTRA in the late 1960s after John Vance of the CIA’s inspector general’s office discovered the experiments. However, two related programs, MKSEARCH and Project OFTEN, continued until 1972 and 1973, respectively.
There were real human victims as a result of these programs, including at least one death. Numerous subjects suffered permanent mental and psychological degradation.
At the least, Operation
Midnight Climax was a failure and an embarrassment for the CIA. It
provided inconclusive, unscientific results with scant actionable
intelligence applications. It besmirched the reputation of the CIA, both
in terms of ethics and practicality, and negatively affected the lives
of hundreds of people.
Reprinted from War is Boring.
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