http://www.nthposition.com/sexdrugsampthe.phpSex, Drugs & the CIAby
Douglas Valentine
Barbara Crowley Smithe was nineteen years old in January 1953. She
was full-figured, sexy and smart, with dark hair, blue eyes, and
a trace of Irish freckles. She lived in Manhattan with her husband
Eliot Smithe, and their 20-month old daughter, Valerie.
People who knew Barbara said she was a vibrant, happy young woman,
but that she became confused about her sexuality, and gradually
lost her self-esteem.
Her friends did not know why, but she began to have angry confrontations
with Eliot. Arguments led to rough fights and a separation in 1957.
Two extra-martial affairs engendered a haunting sense of guilt,
guilt led to depression, depression dissolved into despair, and
ultimately Barbara succumbed to paranoia.
At her psychiatrist's advice Barbara was admitted to Stony Lodge
Hospital in December 1958. Before long she and Eliot divorced, and
Valerie went to live with Eliot's parents. Institutionalized for
much of the next twenty years, Barbara died of leukemia in February
1978, without ever telling Eliot the secret she took to her grave--the
stunning secret that may very well explain her descent into mental
illness.
Indeed, Barbara's mental breakdown may be traced to the night of
January 11th, 1953, when--without her knowledge or consent--she
was given a dose of LSD by an agent of the Central Intelligence
Agency. After that incredible night, her short, sad life was never
the same.
MKULTRAWhy would the CIA want to give LSD to a nineteen-year-old woman
with an infant in her arms? What did Barbara Smithe have to do with
pressing matters of National Security?
The official explanation dates to 1951, when the CIA received an
unsubstantiated report that the Soviet Union was about to corner
the world market in LSD. The Soviets were thought to be perfecting
drug-induced "brainwashing" techniques, and the CIA reeled at the
prospect of Russian agents dumping LSD into New York's water supply,
and then using insidious Communist propaganda to turn drug addled
American citizens against their own government.
While this frightening scenario never did materialize, the CIA was
able to use it as a pretext to start testing LSD on friends and
foes alike. The spy agency's ultimate objective was to develop the
capability to entrap and blackmail spies, diplomats, and
politicians--ours, as well as theirs.
The CIA called its experimental LSD "mind-control" project MKULTRA.
After a year of conducting MKULTRA experiments in laboratories,
the CIA's researchers decided they needed to start testing LSD in
"real life"settings. In order to do this, however, they needed a "front," so
they asked Harry Anslinger, the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau
of Narcotics (FBN), to provide them with an agent who was capable
of finding suitable test subjects within the arcane setting of
narcotics control. Subjects were to be FBN informants, drug addicts
and drug peddlers, prostitutes, pornographers, and other degenerate
underworld characters--in other words, people who were already
compromised by their deviant behaviors, and would be unable to
complain to the police if they were damaged during the LSD experiments.
The Double ManThe man Anslinger selected for the MKULTRA job was George Hunter
White. A highly successful and flamboyant federal narcotic agent
since1935, White's claim to fame was a 1937 undercover case he made
against the notorious drug smuggling Sino-American trade association,
the Hip Sing T'ong. Posing as John Wilson, the nephew of his "Uncle
Sam" (a hitherto unknown hood who was forming a new drug syndicate),
White crossed the country contracting with Hip Sing T'ong members
for huge purchases of opium.
According to legend, White, a Caucasian, was initiated into the
T'ong, swearing to accept "death by fire" should he ever break its
sacred oath of secrecy. The investigation climaxed in November 1937
with a series of spectacular mass arrests, including several
prominent Mafiosi. The case cemented White's status as the FBN's
top agent, and subsequently involved him its most important, secret
investigations.
At five feet, seven inches tall, and weighing a rotund 200 pounds,
White, who shaved his head completely bald, was the image of a
tough detective, the kind who made bad guys tip their hats and
speak politely to cops. A native of California, he was ebullient
and brash, and as a former crime reporter for the San Francisco
Call Bulletin, had a nose for sniffing out trouble.
And trouble was what White enjoyed more than anything else. Rough
and tough and good with his fists, White led his fellow federal
agents into many a fight with the country's most vicious hoods.
More importantly, his many newspaper contacts were always available
to his publicity hunger boss, and after he extricated Anslinger's
stepson from an undisclosed legal problem, White became the
Commissioner's favorite and most trusted agent.
The main reason White was given the MKULTRA LSD testing assignment,
was that he had acquired clandestine drug testing experience during
the Second World War. In 1943 he had been transferred from the FBN
to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Assigned to the spy
agency as a counter-intelligence officer, Major White became deeply
involved in OSS "truth drug" experiments, in which distilled
marijuana was used in the interrogation of prisoners of war,
suspected double agents, and conscientious objectors. White's 'truth
drug" experiments continued until at least 1947.
White also was selected for the MKULTRA assignment because he was
a disgruntled employee. After the war he had returned to the FBN
and by 1950 was serving in New York City, where, apart from his
work as a federal narcotic agent, he participated in a number of
sensitive "political"
investigations for the U.S. Government. Among his special assignments,
White worked briefly with Assistant U.S. Attorney Roy Cohn and
Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) rooting Communists out of the CIA
and the State Department, and from mid-1950 until early 1951 he
served as the chief investigator for Senator Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
in a nationwide expose of organized crime. But White was impetuous
and overstepped his bounds. First he incurred Harry Truman's wrath
by attempting to link the President to organized crime in Kansas
City. And in early 1951 he was fired from the Kefauver Committee
for leaking classified information. But the final blow came a few
months later when the Kefauver Committee aired allegations that
New York Governor Thomas Dewey had commuted Lucky Luciano's prison
sentence for a sizable campaign contribution. The allegation was
base on a memorandum White had written in 1947, and in retaliation,
the sullied Governor banished White from New York.
Dewey's edict was a disappointment to White, whose ambition at the
time was to serve as the FBN's district supervisor in New York.
But White was too important to be dismissed offhand: the MKULTRA
Program, which was to be established in New York, was already in
the works, and so Commissioner Anslinger simply reassigned him as
district supervisor in Boston. But White was rarely there. Instead
he kept his apartment in New York while awaiting his final security
clearance from the CIA. He was still an employee of the FBN, but
he was bitter about the roadblock in his narcotic law enforcement
career, and was hoping to find steady employment with the CIA. In
this spirit George White willingly and energetically embarked on
his CIA, MKULTRA assignment.
Partners in CrimeAlthough George White had notoriety and powerful friends, and
existed above the law as one of Espionage Establishment's "protected
few," he was a deeply conflicted man. His first wife, Ruth, deserted
him in 1945, calling him "a fat slob," and according to psychological
reports compiled while he was applying for employment with the CIA,
White compensated for that humiliation by seeking attention, and
by hurting people. This was the third reason why the CIA accepted
him for the MKULTRA job: George White was a sadist-masochist with
an unquenchable thirst for alcohol, kinky sex, and power.
The archetypal Double Man, White, however, had the ability to charm
as well as to repulse, and on 18 August 1951 he married his second
wife, Albertine Calef, a clothing buyer at the Abraham and Strauss
department store in Brooklyn. Described as a "bubbly" woman, Tine
was born in New York of Egyptian Jewish parents. When interviewed
for this article, Tine expressed nothing but devotion to the memory
of her former husband. She described him as "effective and punctual,
a great raconteur, a voracious reader of non-fiction books, and a
very good writer." According to her, George White was a liberal
Democrat who never picked a fight or resorted to strong-arm tactics.
Tine apparently turned a blind eye toward her husband's deviant
behavior.
They shared a comfortable apartment at 59 West 12th Street in
Greenwich Village, and hob-nodded with politicians, diplomats, law
enforcement officials, artists and writers. Tine thoroughly enjoyed
the fast company her husband kept, and in order to maintain her
exciting lifestyle, she stood by and did nothing when he poisoned
Barbara Smithe with LSD. Indeed, when this writer asked her what
George White did to Barbara on the night of January 11th, 1953,
the 80 plus year old woman descended into a string of expletives
that would have embarrassed a sailor. Her tirade left this writer
with the firm impression that she was thoroughly capable of having
been White's accomplice in his dirty work.
The Fatal FlawBy 1952 White's advancement within the FBN had come to a halt, and
he was seeking full-time employment with the CIA. For both parties,
the timing could not have been better. In April 1952 White was
introduced to Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, a club-footed, stuttering,
Brooklyn-born officer in the CIA's Technical Services Division and
chief of its nascent MKULTRA drug-testing program. White and Gottlieb
formed an immediate rapport, and when White's background check was
completed in July 1952, Dr. Gottlieb hired him. For the next 13
years, White conducted MKULRA experiments, first in New York City
from 1952 through 1955, and then in San Francisco from 1955 until
his retirement from the FBN in 1965.
White's sadistic streak, underworld contacts, flexible status with
the FBN, and experience in "truth drug" experiments, combined to
make him the perfect choice to begin testing LSD on unsuspecting
American citizens. But White was an anomaly who secretly resented
the elitists who ran the CIA. He also had literary ambitions, and
against strict CIA regulations he kept a diary of his daily
activities.
According to his diary (portions of which were released to this
writer as part of a 1994 Freedom of Information Act Request), White
conducted his first LSD experiment on 21 September 1952 on a hapless
hoodlum named "Tony".
White did not record the results of that initial test, but his
diary indicates that he met regularly through November with Dr.
Gottlieb and other top CIA officials regarding his LSD experiments.
Notably, these meetings were only one side of his Jekyll-Hyde
personality; White simultaneously was working undercover on federal
narcotic cases and in that capacity he posed alternately as a
merchant seaman or a bohemian artist, and consorted with a vast
array of underworld characters, all of whom were involved in vice,
including drugs, prostitution, gambling, and pornography.
It was under his assumed, bohemian artist persona that White would
entrap most of his MKULTRA victims, including Barbara Smithe, whom
he first met on December 28th, 1952.
The SwingersIn order to avoid a lawsuit filed by this writer in federal district
court, the CIA in February 2000 released approximately 90 pages
from White's diary.
The CIA censors were required to redact the names of White's victims,
but they inadvertently released a set of pages naming several of
the victims, including Barbara Smithe and her husband, Eliot.
Eliot Smithe was located through a computer search, and generously
agreed to speak on the record both about his brief association with
George White, and the strange event that occurred in New York on
January 11th, 1953--an event Eliot was unaware of until he received
a letter, dated 18 July 1979, from CIA officer Frank Laubinger of
the Victims Task Force. The startling letter informed Eliot that
the CIA, at the request of Congress, was investigating the MKULTRA
Program, and that George White might have given Eliot's recently
deceased wife a surreptitious dose of LSD.
Born in 1926 and raised in a suburb of New York, Eliot was attending
Upsala College in New Jersey when, through a mutual friend, he met
Barbara Crowley on a blind date. Barbara was sixteen and a high
school senior from East Orange. They started going steady and when
Barbara became pregnant, Eliot, on his father's advice, asked her
to marry him.
"I was confused, not in love," he explains. "But it was the right
thing to do, and I thought love would follow."
Eliot and Barbara were married in September 1950 and their daughter,
Valerie, was born the following May. Eliot went go work for the
family business, the F. L. Smithe Machine Company, and Barbara
stayed at home and took care of their child. She was a good mother,
but naive, with no real interests of her own. Eliot was seven years
older and far more worldly wise.
He'd spent two years in the Navy and was a college graduate with
a degree in English literature, so Barbara tended to follow his
lead in everything.
Unfortunately, Eliot abused his power over Barbara, and projected
his personal problem onto his young wife. His biggest problem was,
in his own words, that he liked to "skirt the edge." He describes
himself as "immature, irresponsible, and erratic," and confesses
that he had tried psychotherapy as a way of understanding and
controlling his sexual compulsions. But the compulsions persisted,
even after he married Barbara. Their first apartment was on 168th
Street and Riverside Drive, but they soon moved to 74th Street and
Columbus Avenue, in Eliot's words, "to be closer to the action."
"The action" was promiscuous sex in the swinging Greenwich Village
scene.
Long before he met Barbara, Eliot had been indulging his sexual
fantasies in the Village, and at one fateful party he met Gil Fox,
a writer of soft-core pornography. Gil's books dealt with lesbian
sex in an inhibited 1950's fashion, referring, for example, to a
woman's "secret place." But sex clearly was the subject, and bringing
the reader to climax through masturbation at certain points in the
narrative was, according to Gil, the object.
Something of a sexual predator, Gil immediately recognized that
Eliot was looking for sexual adventures and he invited Eliot, and
Eliot's current girlfriend (not Barbara), to participate in a
"foursome" with him and his attractive wife, Pat.
"Gil was a charmer," Eliot recalls, "so we agreed. But it wasn't
a success.
He asked me to peel Pat's stocking off with my teeth, and I tried,
but I found myself getting red with rage. It was impossible for me
to act against my will. Luckily Gil realized this and told Pat to
let me go, which she did.
They treated me with kid gloves and because of that we remained
friends. We decided to forgot the whole thing."
After he married Barbara, Eliot continued to socialize with Gil
and Pat Fox.
In fact, Gil dedicated his book, And Baby Makes Three, to Barbara
and Eliot Smithe.
It was through Gil that Barbara and Eliot met George White.
Sex & Drugs & CIA SchemesGil Fox served in the U.S. Army Air Force as a bombardier in the
Second World War, and in 1948 he graduated from Bolling Green
College in Ohio with a degree in musicology. At Bolling Green he
met Pat, whom he describes as the most beautiful girl on campus.
They were married in their junior year and after graduation moved
to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where Gil taught music.
But Gil wasn't your typical trombone teacher. His real interest
was in writing about sexual deviation, especially lesbians and
fetishes. Pat shared his interests and after tiring of Chapel Hill,
they moved to New York in 1950. A Chapel Hill resident who enjoyed
spanking provided Gil with a letter of introduction to John Willie,
an artist whose specialty was drawing pictures of women wearing
high heels. Gil met Willie at a bar on McDougal Street and began
writing pornographic novels for Willie's Woodford Press.
Shortly thereafter Gil decided to self-publish. He set up Vixen
Press at his apartment at 125 Christopher Street, and began writing
a book a month under the aliases Dallas Mayo, Paul V. Russo, and
Kimberly Kemp.
The first mention of Gil Fox in George White's diary occurs on 6
November 1952.
"I knew George well," Gil explains. "Extremely well, in a strange
way.
George was into high heels. That was his major fetish, and we met
through John Willie. Willie was putting out a little magazine called
Bizarre that featured women in high heels, and White liked it. He
liked my books too, and he asked me to write about high heels.
"Later I did a semi-analysis of him," Gil explains. "As a child,
White had been infatuated with an aunt who wore high heels. He was
an interesting guy with a sensitive side. He loved to hold and pet
little birds, like canaries.
But he was a gin drunk. He drank morning noon and night. At parties
he would prepare two pitchers of martinis, one for everyone else,
and one for himself. He was playing out his sexual fantasies too.
One time Pat and I went with him to see his hooker girlfriend at
a hotel. She tied him up and strapped him to the bed and whipped
his ass. She had on high heels.
"Tine knew George was playing around," Gil adds, "but she was a
social climber and she pushed him to succeed. At the time George
was big into the New York mayoral election. The candidate he was
backing, Rudolph Halley, had been chief of staff on the Kefauver
Committee and was running for mayor on the Fusion Party ticket. If
Halley won the election, he was going to make George the Commissioner
of the NYPD.
"Anyway, as long as Tine wore high heeled boots, George tolerated
her. He would lace her into a special pair of high heeled boots.
Those high-heeled boots made up their sex life together."
An entry in White's diary notes that he and Tine had the Foxes to
their apartment for drinks on Friday night, November 28th, 1952.
Kai Jurgenson, a drama professor from Chapel Hill, and Kai's wife,
Jo, were also present--and White dosed them all with LSD. The
subjects, White wrote in his diary, had a "delayed reaction" and
not until the following day did Gil call him regarding Pat's
"symptoms." Gil, according to White's diary, was "puzzled."
As Gil recalls: "We were all boozing and smoking pot in those days,
including George, and one night George gave us LSD. He slipped it
to us secretly. Kai and Jo were visiting us at Christopher Street
and we went to the Whites. Afterwards we went slumming around the
Lower Village. It was snowing. We stopped the car on Cornelius
Street and the snow was red and green and blue--a thousand beautiful
colors--and we were dancing in the street. Jo thought she had lace
gloves up to her elbows. Then we went into a lesbian bar, but that
freaked-out Pat and Jo. Pat had trouble coming off the trip, and
Jo later went wacko, like Eliot's wife. And Jo eventually divorced
Kai too.
"I was angry at George for that," Gil concludes. "It turned out to
be a bad thing to do to people, but we didn't realize it at the
time."
Indeed, on December 14th the Foxes again socialized with the Whites,
as if nothing unusual had happened. And considering the proclivities
of the Foxes and their milieu, to a large extent that was true.
January 11th, 1953"I was into people on the edge," Eliot explains, "and Gil said he
knew some people over on the West Side that I might like to meet.
I'm not trying to make excuses but I was twenty-five going on
seventeen, and the Foxes were our friends, and I had no idea that
White was a government agent. So Barbara and I went to see them.
"I remember George was fat and bull-like, with a large head and
knots on the back of his neck. He was gruff, but wore a nice suit
and was well spoken.
Tine was in her thirties and very pretty. I had an immediate sexual
attraction to her--which White recognized. He showed me a closet
full of her shoes, the kind with spiked heels. He was trying to
find out what fetishes I was interested in, and he alluded to Tine,
who was the bait, and was aware she was bait. Barbara was very good
looking too, and it was obvious that they were trying to get us
into a sex scene. But because White was so gross I moved away and
there never was one."
At least, there never was a sex scene with Eliot.
Eliot enjoyed the fact that his wife, like Pat Fox and Tine White,
attracted men. But while he was away on a business trip, the Whites
invited Barbara back to their place for dinner and drinks. It was
January 11th, 1953, and Barbara was so naive and so trusting that
she brought along her twenty-month old baby, Valerie.
Two other women were present that evening: Clarice Stein, a co-worker
of Tine's at Abraham & Strauss; and Francine Kramer, a linen buyer
at Macy's and a good friend of Tine's. As White noted in his diary,
Francine unexpectedly stopped by later that evening and interrupted
the LSD experiment he was conducting on Barbara and Clarice.
It was an experiment that ended traumatically for Clarice. As White
scribbled in his diary, Clarice got "the Horrors".
After being notified by the Victims Task Force that she too may
have been one of White's test subjects, Clarice wrote a letter to
the CIA describing what happened that night. In the letter, dated
November 12th, 1979, she explained that she lived nearby in the
Village and often went to the Whites' apartment after work. She
recalled that Barbara was present with her baby daughter that
fateful evening, and that George White served martinis, after which
Barbara, Tine, and Clarice embarked on a "laughing jag."
When Clarice got home, multi-colored images appeared whenever she
closed her eyes. She became frightened but when she called White,
he told her not to bother him. He hung up the phone. Her fear
evolved into abject terror. She promised herself that if she never
fell asleep again, she "would kill myself."
Clarice tried calling White three or four more times that night,
each time begging him to tell her what he had put in her drink so
she could call her doctor and ask for something to counteract it.
White was unsympathetic and hung up every time.
Finally in the morning Clarice called a friend (she did not want
to alarm her parents), who remained with her until the symptoms
subsided and she fell asleep later that night. Several days elapsed
before she returned to work, where, out of necessity, she continued
to have a professional relationship with Tine. Resentful and hurt,
Clarice cooled their friendship for several months. And yet even
though she could never forgive George White, she ineluctably drifted
back into his captivating social scene. To this day, Clarice remains
friends with Tine.
Her Secret HeartFor some reason, Barbara never told Eliot about her LSD experience.
This is one of the great mysteries of her mental illness. Why didn't
she tell?
It was not until CIA officer Frank Laubinger wrote to him in July
1979, on behalf of the Victims Task Force, that Eliot learned that
his wife had been given LSD. Barbara had died from cancer a mere
seven months earlier. She and Eliot had separated in 1957 after a
tumultuous marriage, and he'd had little contact with her for over
twenty years. Then Laubinger's letter unlocked all of his repressed
memories and emotions.
"Barbara was healthy in the early days of our marriage," Eliot
recalls. "She was a good wife and mother and I never sensed that
she fooled around. But I never knew what was in her secret heart.
I can't remember exactly when she began to deteriorate, but it was
several years into our marriage, and it got progressively worse.
We started going for counseling, but that didn't help, and eventually
we separated. She went to live with her parents and later, out of
a desire to possess her, I called and asked for a reconciliation.
"When I got to her house she was cowering in a corner. She thought
the Mafia was out to get her. Her parents were unable to cope with
the problem, so on our psychiatrist's advice I admitted her to
Stony Lodge Hospital in December 1958. Not long after that we got
divorced, and Valerie went to live with my parents.
"I can't explain why Barbara broke down," Eliot says matter-of-factly.
"The psychiatrist told me I was partially to blame, and it's true
that I wasn't the best supporter. But after talking with Laubinger,
I was ready to accept the possibility that her problems were the
result of a reaction to the LSD.
Laubinger implied that the LSD experiment had contributed to her
mental illness, so I decided to sue the CIA."
Wrangling with the CIAIn October 1979, Eliot hired the law firm of Rogovin, Stern, and
Huge to represent him on a contingency basis and to seek compensation
from the CIA on the premise that Barbara's mental illness was caused
by a surreptitious dose of LSD administered by George White. There
was just one catch. Senior partner Mitchell Rogovin, a former
assistant attorney general in the Johnson administration, had worked
for the CIA on a number of occasions, and that raised the specter
of a conflict of interest. But Rogovin assured Eliot that the CIA's
General Counsel did not anticipate any problems in that respect.
On the contrary, Rogovin told Eliot that the CIA had expressed a
desire to settle the case rather than litigate.
Laubinger, meanwhile, had contacted Clarice, and she too had decided
to sue the CIA. She was living in Florida with her husband Sol
Smithline, a retired attorney who represented her in the case.
Clarice had developed a rare type of cancer, and in her claim
against the CIA her physician stated his belief that the cancer
might have originated with the surreptitious dose of LSD.
Treatments for the cancer had saddled Clarice with diabetes, glaucoma
and cataracts, and she was suing the CIA for $150,000 in damages.
Clarice already was suing the CIA when Eliot hired the Rogovin law
firm.
They never actually met, but through Laubinger they became aware
of each other's cases, and they decided to join forces, at which
point Sol Smithline gave the Rogovin law firm a copy of Clarice's
claim. Barbara, of course, had died of cancer in February 1978,
and the fact that both women had developed cancer led all of the
plaintiffs to the inevitable conclusion that there was a causal
relationship between the LSD and the cancer. Taken together the
separate cases were a powerful one-two punch, and Eliot, based on
Rogovin's assurances, was certain the CIA would settle without a
fight.
Unanticipated problems developed, however, when the Rogovin law
firm began to research the long-term effects of LSD. The firm asked
several qualified doctors if there could have been a causal
relationship between the surreptitious dose of LSD and Barbara's
breakdown several years later, but a "qualified maybe" was the
unanimous response.
The CIA had reached the same conclusion and on February 15th, 1980,
shortly after the Rogovin law firm completed its research, CIA
attorney William Allard sent a letter to the Smithlines characterizing
their offer as "excessive" and asserting that there were no facts
on which to base the belief that Clarice's problems were caused by
LSD. Allard said her fright and anxiety had been limited to a few
days, and the only provable problem was the brief strain on her
friendship with Tine. Allard made the Smithlines a counter-offer
of $5000.
On March 1st the Smithlines lowered their price to $110,000. In
the letter to the CIA, Clarice said that the anxiety and terror of
the LSD trip had left an indelible stamp on her memory. She still
got an icy reaction whenever she recalled the incident.
On March 21st Allard again denied her claim and shortly thereafter
Clarice settled for $15,000--and a gratuitous visit to CIA headquarters
in Langley, Virginia.
Meanwhile, as Rogovin informed Eliot, the CIA changed its strategy.
Instead of settling, it decided to face the bad publicity a lawsuit
might generate.
But Eliot pressed ahead and on May 16th 1980 he submitted a $2,500,000
Claim for Damage, Injury, and Death against the CIA. The Claim
argued that Barbara began to manifest the mental problems that
contributed to her divorce from Eliot, and her inability to care
for Valerie, only after White slipped her an undetermined dosage
of LSD.
The Claim also argued that LSD contributed to Barbara's death. It
noted that White's boss, Dr. Gottlieb, had monitored the LSD tests,
but had made no effort to inform Barbara, even though he later
became aware of her subsequent mental problems.
Notably, Dr. Gottlieb in 1972 and 1973 destroyed all MKULTRA
operational files, including White's reports, in order to cover
their tracks.
The CIA's response was predictable in light of the Smithline case.
On July 28th 1980, CIA General Counsel Daniel B. Silver responded
to Eliot's Claim by saying there was no evidence that Barbara was
ever given LSD. Despite Clarice's testimony, Silver said it was
impossible "to reconstruct the details of the unfortunate and
reprehensible course of conduct followed by George White."
Seeking to bolster its case, the Rogovin firm sought a court order
for medical records from Stony Lodge Hospital, and it contacted
Barbara's psychiatrist. With these two actions, the case fell apart.
What the Medical Records RevealedBarbara was admitted to Stony Lodge Hospital on December 2nd, 1958
when she was only 25 years old. Dr. Milton Berger, the psychiatrist
who had been treating her for over a year, referred her there. A
Clinical Summary composed during her initial intake described
Barbara as "above average intelligence" and "rather attractive".
But her hair was disheveled, and she was apprehensive, confused,
and restless. She was agreeable and tried to cooperate, but her
thoughts were scattered. She was depressed and afraid that gangsters
planned to get rid of her because she had talked much about the
labor rackets. She felt her telephone was tapped and that "they"
were listening. She expressed feelings of guilt about two affairs
she had had after her separation from Eliot. She felt she was paying
for her wrongdoing.
Barbara was diagnosed as having had "a symptomatic schizophrenic
episode."
Several days of testing followed this initial intake. During these
tests Barbara seemed fatigued and perplexed, with motor retardation.
She said her marriage was bad to begin with. "My husband kept
threatening to kill me and I felt someone was going to kill me--shoot
me," she told the doctors.
Barbara felt rejected by Eliot. She sensed that he didn't like her
or think much of her as a person, because he constantly tried to
get her to change her appearance and behavior. He demanded that
she wear tight clothes and pretend to be different people--a ballet
dancer in one instance, a burlesque queen in another--to satisfy
whatever fantasy he had at the moment. Seeking his approval, she
would pose for him and act sexy in front of other men.
Eliot would get angry if they did notice her, or if they did not.
Either way she lost, but for some reason, Barbara blamed herself.
"I would just never try to make a go of things, and I'd keep going
out to try to find someone else to fall in love with," she said.
Barbara described herself as follows: "I find myself very confused.
I have a short span of interest, and my mind wanders. I used to
think I was so right, but now I see that I did a lot of things that
caused a lot of friction."
Applying Freudian theories that were popular at the time, the
doctors diagnosed Barbara as having psychosexual confusion, problems
with authority, and a "precarious contact with reality." They said
she was a chronic paranoid with depression superimposed--that she
had doubts about her feminine identity, felt inadequate in personal
relationships, viewed her environment as rejecting and hostile,
and had a suicidal preoccupation.
The most damaging information for Eliot's lawsuit came from Barbara's
psychiatrist, Dr. Berger, who informed the Rogovin firm that he
would testify as a "hostile witness" against Eliot. Berger said
that Barbara told him that Eliot was associating with racketeers,
abused her verbally, and threatened her with a knife.
Despite the fact that there was hearsay evidence that Dr. Berger
had made sexual advances toward Barbara while she was his patient,
Eliot's lawyers considered his testimony to be a death warrant.
They abandoned the case in April 1981, saying it was too difficult
to prove a causal relationship between a dose of LSD administered
in 1953, and Barbara's breakdown in 1958.
Furthermore, the medical reports were specious, and the CIA would
certainly use them to discredit Eliot. The final nail in the coffin
was the possibility that Barbara's father may also have suffered
from paranoia.
"I should have settled right away," Eliot concedes, "but the climate
changed and the law firm abdicated. I was kind of tired of it by
then, anyway. They said they would help me find another lawyer,
but they didn't. Then they sent me a bill for about $1000. I never
paid it, and they never asked again."
Lingering DoubtsEliot denies having any underworld connections. He did carry a
knife for a while, and he admits that this frightened Barbara. But
they were squabbling over alimony at the time, and Eliot believes
that their legal hassles may have motivated her to exaggerate her
concerns to Dr. Berger.
He does, however, admit that he played a role in her breakdown. "I
harassed her for a year after she kicked me out," he confesses. "I
thought of her as a possession. For me it was always just a sexual
attraction."
Perhaps subconsciously, Eliot may have wanted the relationship to
end. On the day she kicked him out, he appeared before his wife
and daughter (deleted at Eliot's request).
For all of these reasons, Eliot felt remorse. After Barbara was
re-admitted to Stony Lodge in 1962, he visited her and discovered
that the doctors had, in his opinion, damaged her brain with
electroshock. "They called it "regressive therapy"," he explains,
"but they never were able to reconstruct her personality."
Reconstructing HistoryWhat emerges from the story so far is the likelihood that Barbara
secretly went to the Whites' apartment looking for something she
could never obtain from Eliot. Had Eliot been a caring and supportive
husband, she might not have gone. Or she might have trusted him
enough to tell him about her visit and the bizarre experience that
ensued.
Possibly she enjoyed the LSD trip. But considering the paranoia
she developed later in life, it's more likely that she, like Clarice,
was traumatized, and that she buried the trauma in her subconscious
mind, like a war veteran burying some horrible combat experience,
only to have it emerge years later as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
It is possible, too, that the CIA was responsible for exacerbating
the seeds of doubt, guilt, and self-loathing that evolved into
Barbara's paranoia.
White put LSD in her drink while she was in a compromising position.
She was with her infant daughter, without her husband. In a similar
situation, Clarice decided not to tell her parents--the authority
figures in her life at the time.
The overwhelming question is, what exactly happened to Barbara that
night?
Clarice cannot recall if Barbara left the Whites' apartment before
her.
Because she was tripping on LSD, she cannot even recall walking
home. She wonders why George White would do such a horrible thing
to a friend, let alone to a woman with a baby?
Did White take advantage of Barbara while she was defenseless under
the influence of LSD? Eliot wonders if White molested Barbara? If
White did abuse her while she was out of her mind on LSD, would
she risk telling Eliot, whom she knew to be jealous at worst, and
unsympathetic at best?
It is agonizing to imagine Barbara's predicament. How did she manage
to care for her child? Like Clarice, did she fear she might never
fall asleep again?
That terrifying thought made Clarice contemplate suicide. Did it
also plant the first suicidal thoughts in Barbara's mind?
Clarice does not recall what happened to Barbara that night, and
Tine isn't saying. So none of these questions will ever be answered.
But plenty of evidence suggests that the CIA conspired to conceal
the truth about what really happened on the evening of January
11th, 1953.
The Missing PiecesMitchell Rogovin initially told Eliot that his prior relationship
with the CIA was unrelated to the case. Later, however, he advised
Eliot that the CIA did intend to assert a conflict if the case went
to trial. Does that mean that Rogovin, in some way, was involved
in the MKULTRA Program?
In addition, the Rogovin firm may have given Eliot misinformation
about a crucial matter of law. In a February 8, 1980 internal
memorandum, the Rogovin firm said that Eliot could not sue the
federal government for battery, because White was working for the
CIA at the time he dosed Barbara.
But in testimony before the Senate in 1977, Gottlieb said that
White was being paid directly by the CIA for only three to six
months. Gottlieb could not remember the time frame, but he testified
that all of the operations White conducted involved Bureau of
Narcotics interests. A May 1953 entry in White's diary indicates
that he returned to the Bureau of Narcotics that month. And if
White was only on the CIA's payroll for three months, as Gottlieb
testified, then he was a bona fide federal law enforcement officer
when he dosed Barbara with LSD. The government could have been
sued.
Another questionable incident occurred in early 1981, when Rogovin
met with John Blake, the Staff Director of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, whom he described to Eliot as "a former
Deputy Director of the CIA." In fact, Blake had been the CIA's
Deputy Director of Administration, and in that capacity was the
direct supervisor of CIA officer Robert Wiltse, the chief of the
Victims Task Force. According to Rogovin, Blake in turn introduced
him to John Bross, "an old-time CIA man who recently returned from
retirement to the Agency to assist in the transition to the New
CIA Director, William Casey." Rogovin expressed the hope that Bross
would convince the CIA to look more favorably on a pre-lawsuit
settlement. But that never happened, and one must wonder what role
Blake actually played in the negotiations.
Finally, a July 1978 memorandum from John Blake to the Director of
Central Intelligence, Stansfield Turner, refers to a strategy paper
for defending the CIA against lawsuits by victims of the MKULTRA
Program. The CIA's Assistant General Counsel Anthony Lapham composed
the paper. While serving as a special assistant to Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury David Acheson in the mid-1960s, Lapham
was responsible for liaison with the CIA regarding its relationship
with the Bureau of Narcotics. In this capacity Lapham was aware of
the existence and purpose of several MKULTRA "safehouses," the
first of which was established by George White in Greenwich Village
in June 1953. Indeed, in 1966, Lapham directed FBN agent Andrew
Tartaglino to shut down a second MKULTRA safehouse on 13th Street
in New York.
Furthermore, on January 23rd, 1967, Lapham met with Dr. Sidney
Gottlieb and several other CIA and Treasury officials in sensitive
discussions concerning an investigation by Senator Edward Long
(D-MS). As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Invasion of Privacy,
Long was probing allegations of illegal wiretapping by various
branches of the U.S. government, and his staff had stumbled on the
existence of the MKULTRA safehouses. A January 30th, 1967 memorandum,
written by Gottlieb, records the CIA's on-going efforts to conceal
its involvement with the MKULTRA safehouses from Senator Long. When
asked if the CIA was using the Narcotics Bureau as a "front" for
domestic operations, Gottlieb said no. He told the Treasury Department
officials that the "pads" were only used for routine narcotics
operations.
Lapham knew this wasn't true. And ten years later he designed the
CIA's strategy against MKULTRA-related lawsuits. If anyone had a
conflict of interest in the Victims Task Force case it was Tony
Lapham. But his activities have never been questioned, let alone
investigated.
The Causal RelationshipEntries in his diary conclusively prove that George White gave
Barbara Smithe LSD. A surreptitious dose of LSD is battery, and
Clarice testified that it was delivered to Barbara. So why didn't
Rogovin pursue this issue?
Why did he emphasize the potential damage of Dr. Berger's testimony
instead, when there was hearsay evidence that Berger had made sexual
advances toward Barbara while she was his patient?
Considering this, one must also wonder if the electroshock treatments
were prescribed for Barbara's benefit, or if they were designed to
erase memories of George White from her troubled mind?
Although his firm generated evidence to support the theory that
LSD was the "precipitating agent" in Barbara's paranoia, Rogovin
seems to have ignored it. As the Rogovin firm noted in a January
15, 1980 report it provided to Eliot, LSD was thought to precipitate
a "model fit" of schizophrenia. There was a consensus in the research
community that LSD flashbacks could occur and cause mental illness,
and there was agreement that unwitting ingestion was an important
contributing factor to adverse LSD reactions. Unwitting ingestion
represented "a maximally stressful event because the perceptual
and ideational distortions then occur without the saving knowledge
that they were drug induced and temporary."
One researcher concluded, "the hallucinogenic experience is so
striking that many subsequent disturbances may be attributed to it
without further justification."
Even the CIA had uncovered evidence that LSD may have caused
Barbara's breakdown. A year before the Rogovin firm conducted its
research into LSD, Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield
Turner, in a letter dated January 10th, 1979, asked the Department
of Health Education and Welfare (HEW) to study the problem. In his
personal response to Turner, HEW Administrator Joseph A. Califano
said, "We believe it may be assumed that where studies with these
drugs were conducted in academic institutions by reputable
investigators, any short-term consequences would have been detected.
But if the CIA administered these drugs to persons under other
circumstances, we believe you should take all possible steps to
ascertain whether any individuals might have been injured as a
consequence of their participation in such research."
George White gave Barbara Smithe LSD in his apartment, while she
was with her 20-month old daughter, and yet the Rogovin firm decided
to drop the case. Why?
Lowlifes on LSDDeviants were not the only subject population of the CIA's LSD
experiments.
As an August 1963 report on MKLUTRA, authored by the CIA Inspector
General John Earman, clearly stated, "the effectiveness of the
substances on individuals at all social levels, high and low, native
American and foreign, is of great significance and testing has been
performed on a variety of individuals within these categories."
Entries in George White's diary indicate that several MKLUTRA
victims were dosed at a safehouse he rented with CIA money in
Greenwich Village. In June 1953 White received $4100 from Dr.
Gottlieb. He deposited the money in the National City Bank and used
it to rent an apartment at 81 Bedford Street.
Helping White decorate the apartment with Toulouse-Lautrec posters
was his "Special Employee" Pierre Lafitte, who also hired prostitutes
to lure victims into White's lair. Also assisting White were Gil
and Pat Fox.
"Tine knew that George was dosing people," Gil Fox explains. "It
was his job, and when George was working LSD he rented an apartment
in the Village at 81 Bedford Street. He set himself up as an
artist/painter named Morgan Hall. He had Pat, who was an artist,
paint murals on the walls."
Other people helped White as well, including other FBN agents, and
White's close friend Irwin Eisenberg. A wealthy industrialist from
California, Eisenberg owned an expensive home in Larchmont, New
York. White often visited Eisenberg there, and in his diary he
describes swimming in the estate's spacious pool.
According to CIA officer Laubinger, Eisenberg was a "benefactor of
the arts" who in 1953 was sponsoring the career of Linda King, an aspiring
New York actress. An entry in White's diary notes that he invited
Linda to the Bedford "pad" on 12 September 1953. A subsequent entry
indicates that Linda became "psychotic" and that Tine took her to
Lenox Hills Hospital on East 77th Street and Park Avenue. When
Linda arrived at the hospital she claimed White had "drugged" her.
But nothing came of the incident. Evidently the CIA arranged an
accommodation with the medical department of the New York City
Police department to protect White from any hassles with victims.
"We knew he was a federal narcotic agent and was giving people
LSD," Gil Fox says. "He would invite people to Bedford pad, dose
them with LSD, and then take photographs of them through a two-way
mirror. But I never got into it.
We weren't interested in that aspect of his life. He wanted to keep
that aspect of his lifestyle secret. At the time LSD was great fun,
that's all.
Then sub-agent Olson walked out the window, and that's when the
shit hit the fan."
On 26 November 1953, Defense Department employee Frank Olson, who
had been working on the MKULTRA Program, allegedly ran through a
window and fell to his death from the tenth floor of the Statler
Hotel in New York City.
Several days before, Olson had been given a surreptitious dose of
LSD by Dr. Gottlieb. Olson's death was ruled a suicide by the CIA and the
NYPD.
EpilogueClarice Smithline never forgave George White. She describes him as
a mean man who drank all day and kept lots of guns on the table.
Once he crushed her curtains because, he said, they were too pretty.
But she respected him, too. After he retired as the FBN's District
Supervisor in San Francisco, White invited his father to live with
him and Tine at their apartment in town. There was a fire in the
apartment and George rescued his father. But he could not get back
inside to save his beloved parrot.
"Why," Clarice asks, "did he dose his friends with LSD?"
The short answer is, so the CIA could learn how to entrap and
discredit people. In one alleged case, White, on behalf of his
friend, New York mayoral candidate Rudolph Halley, slipped LSD to
an opposition speaker at a Halley political rally.
That is what MKULTRA was all about: entrapping and compromising
politicians, friends and foes alike. It is well known within the
intelligence research community that the CIA tried to dose Fidel
Castro with LSD, and that the FBI made illegal tapes of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. engaging in extra-marital sex, in a blatant attempt
to force him out of politics.
This is the truly frightening aspect of MKULTRA, and it was known
not only to espionage insiders like Anthony Lapham, but also to
the Victims Task Force. As Frank Laubinger recalls, the Victims
Task Force was led to believe that White "was mixing it up with
drug dealers; that he would slip it to people to aide in their
debriefings. But there was no evidence White was giving pot to drug
dealers."
Instead, White was giving LSD to average, vulnerable people like
Barbara Smithe.
"Why give them LSD then let them wander into the night?" Laubinger
asked this writer. "Was it a lark? Was he serious? This is not
standard scientific procedure."
Indeed.
"We were interested to find out why," Laubinger concludes, "and we
would have stayed with it for several years, but the powers that
be told us to put it behind us."
Laubinger pauses. "If they really wanted to find out what happened,
it would have been investigated by Congress."
And if not for the fact that so many Congresspersons have stayed
at CIA safehouses, that might actually be a valid course of action.
The Known Victims
Barbara Smithe: died of cancer after suffering serious mental
problems.
Valerie Smithe: lives in a foreign country.
Clarice Stein Smithline: settled with the Whites and the CIA.
Francine Kramer: when contacted by CIA officer Frank Laubinger she
was courteous, but did not recall who was present on the night of
11 January 1953.
Gil and Pat Fox: swingers who didn't really care.
Kai Jurgenson: never found
Jo Jurgenson: advised by her psychiatrist not to assist the Victims
Task Force.
Linda King: never found by the Victims Task Force. There was no
record at Lenox Hills Hospital, and when Laubinger contacted White's
childhood friend, Irwin Eisenberg, he was on his deathbed and did
not want to be bothered. She is said to be living in Los Angeles,
her home for over 50 years.
Herman Ginsberg and his wife Bobbie: Herman Ginsberg was an executive
with Crown Cork & Seal. White's diary indicates they were dosed on
13 September 1953 at the Bedford "pad." White wrote that Herman
told him of a "psychic transformation" after using "the hypertension
drug." When contacted by CIA officer Frank Laubinger, Ginsberg was
not helpful and said he did not believe they had been dosed.
Ruth Kelly: a dancer in San Francisco, never found by the Victims
Task Forcer, said to be alive and well and living in Miami.
Laubinger could not find Pierre Lafitte either, despite the combined
efforts of the DEA , CIA and FBI, and the knowledge that he lived
in and operated a restaurant in New Orleans.
George White: in 1963 he became seriously ill with cirrhosis of
the liver and by 1965 his weight was down to 135 pounds. Upon his
retirement he was appointed fire marshal in Stimson Beach, California.
He continued to drink and surround himself with adoring deviants
until his death in 1975. (White wrote famous letter to Sid Gottlieb,
in which he said: "I was a very minor missionary, actually a heretic,
but I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun,
fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill,
cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of
the All-Highest?")
Albertine White: the only person who knows the truth.Douglas Valentine is the author of The Hotel Tacloban, The Phoenix
Program, and TDY, all of which are available through iUniverse.com.
For information about Mr. Valentine and his books and articles,
please visit his website at http://www.douglasvalentine.com
by American Dream » Sat Jul 13, 2013 1:51 pm 
A review of Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth, by Sasha Lilley, David McNally, Eddie Yuen and James Davis (Oakland: PM Press, 2012, 178 pp.). Also available at Toward Freedom and ZNet:
by: Robert Greenfield
