ORIGINS / THE CHEMIST
The CIA chemist who ran it.
RECORD / AT A GLANCE
DOCUMENTED
Gottlieb’s role in MKULTRA, the Lumumba poison and the 1973 destruction is documented. His closed 1975 testimony, released in 2025, adds his own words.
THE EVENTS / THE CLAIM / THE RECORD
1951
The chemist joins the agency’s technical staff.
September 1960
A CIA scientist, “Joseph Scheider” in the Senate report, carries lethal biological material to the Congo.
15 October 1975
Gottlieb is questioned by Church Committee staff for four days.
30 October 2025
The National Security Archive releases the transcripts.
READ THE FILE
The CIA’s poisoner was a real man with real victims.
From LSD to Lumumba.
Open an article for its evidence, labeled AI assessment and numbered sources. Read the complete static edition ↗
WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT THIS FILE
2 claims people make about this file, each rated documented, partly true, disputed, unproven or false. Think a rating is wrong? Use Dispute or Support, or join the Discussion.
He was the CIA’s technical chief for MKULTRA.
Who says it: CIA records.
He oversaw unwitting dosing, including Olson’s, and prepared poison for Lumumba. He was never charged.
Who says it: Senate records.
OPEN THE RECORD
Numbered citations in each article identify the relevant sources. These records have different purposes and evidentiary weight.
Covers the Lumumba and Castro plots. The CIA scientist called “Joseph Scheider” in the report is Sidney Gottlieb, later named publicly.
Publishes Sidney Gottlieb’s closed October 1975 testimony to Church Committee staff, with related CIA documents.
173-page official scan. Prepared statements, questions and answers are distinguished; Appendix A reprints the relevant Church Committee investigation. Printed page numbers differ from PDF page indices.
The committee’s 1976 account of BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, MKDELTA, MKNAOMI, MKSEARCH, the Olson case, the 1973 destruction and the Army’s overseas LSD interrogations. Written before the 1977 discovery of the financial files.
← The MKUltra File hub: the history, the full timeline and every file
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The CIA’s poisoner was a real man with real victims.
Claims about a secret government chemist who drugged people and made poisons for murders sound like fiction. They describe Sidney Gottlieb. [1][2] Believers argue that a man who did that could have done much more that was never written down, and that his destruction of the files in 1973 was meant to make sure no one would ever know. [3]
Covers the Lumumba and Castro plots. The CIA scientist called “Joseph Scheider” in the report is Sidney Gottlieb, later named publicly.
Publishes Sidney Gottlieb’s closed October 1975 testimony to Church Committee staff, with related CIA documents.
173-page official scan. Prepared statements, questions and answers are distinguished; Appendix A reprints the relevant Church Committee investigation. Printed page numbers differ from PDF page indices.
From LSD to Lumumba.
The Church Committee’s 1975 report on assassination plots describes a CIA scientist, called “Joseph Scheider”, who prepared “toxic biological materials” and carried them to the CIA station in Leopoldville in September 1960 with instructions to assassinate Patrice Lumumba. The poison was never used; Lumumba was killed by Congolese rivals in January 1961. “Scheider” was Gottlieb. [1]
In his closed testimony in October 1975, published in 2025, Gottlieb said the drug work produced “as many failures as successes” and was “probably not a high pay-off program”. He described LSD as a way to make someone “behave erratically for the purpose of his colleagues losing faith in his ability to act responsibly”. [2]
Gottlieb joined the CIA in 1951. He ran the chemical branch and later the Technical Services Division, and approved the unwitting testing. In January 1973 he carried out the destruction of MKULTRA records. He retired and was never charged. [2][3][4]
What we can’t tell you. Gottlieb was never charged. His account of his own motives comes from interviews he gave decades later.
Covers the Lumumba and Castro plots. The CIA scientist called “Joseph Scheider” in the report is Sidney Gottlieb, later named publicly.
Publishes Sidney Gottlieb’s closed October 1975 testimony to Church Committee staff, with related CIA documents.
The committee’s 1976 account of BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, MKDELTA, MKNAOMI, MKSEARCH, the Olson case, the 1973 destruction and the Army’s overseas LSD interrogations. Written before the 1977 discovery of the financial files.
173-page official scan. Prepared statements, questions and answers are distinguished; Appendix A reprints the relevant Church Committee investigation. Printed page numbers differ from PDF page indices.
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