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Sex, Drugs & the CIA
by Douglas Valentine
[Editors' Note: We are once again pleased to publish an exclusive
investigative report by Douglas Valentine, author of The Phoenix
Program, the best book on the CIA's assassination program in Vietnam.
This time Valentine, who has just put the finishing touches on
Strength of the Wolf (a history of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics
and the origins of the war on drugs), explores one of the Agency's
more disgusting chapters, the doping of unsuspecting American
citizens with LSD. With the Bush administration and members of
congress from both parties clamoring to unfetter the spy Agency in
the wake of 9/11, this cautionary tale from the CIA's recent past
couldn't come at a more apt time. For more on George Hunter White and
the CIA's MK-Ultra program read our book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and
the Press.--jsc/ac]
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.
MKULTRA
Why 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 Man
The 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, MKLUTRA
assignment.
Partners in Crime
Although 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, 1952, 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 Flaw
By 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 Swingers
In 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 Schemes
Gil 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 Heart
For 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 CIA
In 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 Revealed
Barbara 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 Doubts
Eliot 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."
Part Three
Reconstructing History
What 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 Pieces
Mitchell 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 Relationship
Entries 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 LSD
Deviants 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.
Epilogue
Clarice 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. 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.
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.
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 www.douglasvalentine.com
He can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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