Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control
The bestselling author of All the Shah’s Men and The Brothers tells the astonishing story of the man who oversaw the CIA’s secret drug and mind-control experiments of the 1950s and ’60s.
The visionary chemist Sidney Gottlieb
was the CIA’s master magician and gentlehearted torturer―the agency’s “poisoner in chief.” As head of the MK-ULTRA mind control project, he directed brutal experiments at secret prisons on three continents. He made pills, powders, and potions that could kill or maim without a trace―including some intended for Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders. He paid prostitutes to lure clients to CIA-run bordellos, where they were secretly dosed with mind-altering drugs.
To purchase:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Hudson Booksellers | iBooks
The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire
My new book is available for order here. Paperback edition, January 24, 2018
From a summary of the book at Amazon.com:
The bestselling author of Overthrow and The Brothers brings to life the forgotten political debate that set America’s interventionist course in the world for the twentieth century and beyond.
How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat―until the cycle begins again.
No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether to intervene in a foreign country. Every argument over America’s role in the world grows from this one. It all starts here
Interview on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’ with Terry Gross
When they were making a decision about carrying out some earth-shattering operation; they never had to consult anyone else. … They served as a reverberating echo chamber for their own shared certainties.
– Stephen Kinzer on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’ with Terry Gross
The Brothers
My new book is a joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today’s world.
During the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world.
John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, I place their extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. I use the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world?
Welcome to StephenKinzer.com
This site is dedicated to the work of author and journalist Stephen Kinzer, who the Washington Post has placed “among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.”
