Remembering Sid, McMurtrie, and Larry

Dr. Sidney Gottlieb (a Ph.D. in chemistry), was my boss in Washington at the time I served in Laos. G. McMurtrie Godley replaced William Sullivan as ambassador to Laos, and Larry Devlin replaced Ted Shackley as CIA Chief of Station in Laos. Each of these men touched my life in an intertwined manner. As I search the Web, I am reminded that Sid, McMurtrie, and Larry are dead. As is Ted Shackley.

Dr. Sid was an anomaly wrapped in an enigma, as they say. He held a Ph.D. in chemistry. He stuttered, had a clubfoot, and drank goat's milk from the herd of goats he raised in suburban Virginia. Behind his desk was a large painting of a nude woman. The fact that CIA clandestine offices don't have much foot traffic off the street allows you some leeway in your office decorations. He was Chief, Technical Services Division (TSD), in the CIA during much of my tenure there.

In fact, I had not the slightest clue that Dr. Gottlieb was involved in a plot to poison Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. It was only years later that I read the published reports and realized that the CIA station chief in the Congo at that time was Larry Devlin, who was later my station chief in Laos. So I was only able to delve into the tangled web through published sources many years after I left the Agency.

Again it was only through published works that I learned many years later that Dr. Gottlieb was in charge of an experimental program which used various drugs, including LSD, in an attempt at mind control of sorts. A foreign asset (spy) might be affected in one way or another by certain drugs - and other interesting speculations. It is alleged that Dr. G. put LSD in the coffee in his private office to see how it might affect those who drank coffee with him. Upon reflection, on the few occasions I was in that office, I think I drink orange juice. Good choice, as it turns out.

(One book you must read - if it is still in print - if you love all this CIA conspiracy stuff is: "The CIA and Mind Control - The Search For The 'Manchurian Candidate' " by John Marks. I think it was in this book that I first learned of Dr. Gottlieb's involvement in the drug experimentation program in CIA. It frankly came as quite a shock, and had I known the information at the time I served under Dr. G, it would have negatively colored my opinion of him. That is not the sort of activity I would have wanted to have been associated with - or had my division associated with.)

As an aside as to what kind of a person it took to do clandestine technical operations, I shall always treasure the response of the boss of my particular section. Periodically, we were asked to report to headquarters to have a "conversation" with an Agency shrink. One day my boss got the call. He told them that he was not coming to headquarters. He said that anybody who would do this sort of work had to be crazy and what the hell was the point of talking to a shrink about it. And he didn't go for the appointment. He was killed in a car crash not too many years later. While driving alone - he hit a tree.

Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of newly independent Congo. The U.S. administration, apparently for fear that he might tilt towards the Russian Communists, wanted him dead. A BBC transcript from October 21, 2000, quotes Larry Devlin, the then CIA station chief in Leopoldville, as saying, "President Eisenhower said, indicated in one way or another, 'let's get rid of this man.' "

While CIA station chief in Leopoldville, Congo, Larry Devlin received orders from Washington to await the arrival of Joe from Paris. Joe from Paris turned out to be Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, my old boss at TSD. Dr. Gottlieb was carrying with him a tube of poisoned toothpaste. It was Larry Devlin's job to get that toothpaste somehow into Lumumba's bathroom. Devlin was quoted later as saying that he never was in favor of killing Lumumba, and that he later threw the toothpaste tube into the Congo River.

Lumumba was captured by local opposition as he tried to flee. In a long series of public exhibitions and beatings and private torturing, he finally died on January 17, 1961. There is no evidence that the CIA was involved in his death.

So, in a strange confluence of events, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb was my boss at TSD, and Larry Devlin came to Laos as CIA station chief. G. McMurtrie Godley in the late 1960s was posted as Ambassador to Laos, replacing William H. Sullivan. Ironically, G. McMurtrie Godley was named Ambassador to the Congo in 1964 - after the Lumumba debacle. In one of my Outback columns, I noted that an ambassador to Laos had me come to his residence to help him set up a projector for some home movies he and his wife had taken on vacation, later invited me back just to chat and sip some Cognac, and invited my wife and I to a formal dinner at his residence. That was Amb. Godley.

Even though he had no direct line of responsibility for me, it was Amb. Godley who tried to convince me to extend for a second tour in Laos. My admiration for Amb. Godley did not rise to the level of going through two more years of hell. No thank you, was my quick answer. Of the people I met in the State Department around the world, G. McMurtrie Godley was one of the good guys, for sure.

You may remember seeing a salt-and-pepper gray-haired man sitting next to Henry Kissinger at the Paris peace talks - to attempt to end the Vietnam war. That was Amb. William H. Sullivan, who was ambassador during the first part of my tour in Laos. I never became personally acquainted with Amb. Sullivan, although he swam almost daily laps in the pool as the U.S.A.I.D. compound, where we all hung out in off hours. Amb. Sullivan, like so many of his counterparts, had his share of close calls. In 1979, Iranian guerrillas stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, trapping Ambassador Sullivan and 100 staff members. Forces of the Ayatollah Khomeini later freed them. But the incident foreshadowed the embassy takeover in November.

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Richard Rhodes