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Sidney Gottlieb

The CIA chemist who ran it.

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The strongest version of this theory

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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]

The sources

  1. Church Committee: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, interim report (20 November 1975) ↗

    Covers the Lumumba and Castro plots. The CIA scientist called “Joseph Scheider” in the report is Sidney Gottlieb, later named publicly.

  2. National Security Archive: The Top Secret Testimony of CIA’s MKULTRA Chief, 50 Years Later (30 October 2025) ↗

    Publishes Sidney Gottlieb’s closed October 1975 testimony to Church Committee staff, with related CIA documents.

  3. US Senate — Project MKULTRA, joint hearing, August 3, 1977 ↗

    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.

What he did and what he said

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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.

The sources

  1. Church Committee: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, interim report (20 November 1975) ↗

    Covers the Lumumba and Castro plots. The CIA scientist called “Joseph Scheider” in the report is Sidney Gottlieb, later named publicly.

  2. National Security Archive: The Top Secret Testimony of CIA’s MKULTRA Chief, 50 Years Later (30 October 2025) ↗

    Publishes Sidney Gottlieb’s closed October 1975 testimony to Church Committee staff, with related CIA documents.

  3. Church Committee: Final Report, Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence (1976), section on testing and use of chemical and biological agents ↗

    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.

  4. US Senate — Project MKULTRA, joint hearing, August 3, 1977 ↗

    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.

WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT THIS FILE

The claims, rated.

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.

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