Mayhem and Murder

In the 1950s, the CIA conducted highly controversial research on mind-altering drugs to prepare for brain warfare with global superpowers. But after a checkered past, George White’s off-the-books Operation Midnight Climax took whatever flimsy rulebook the CIA had and threw it out the window.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
In the nineteen fifties, you couldn't get away with a
whole lot on radio or television. Lucy and Ricky were
still sleeping in separate beds. No one was broadcasting anything
related to sex, sitcom kids or immaculate conceptions. But if
you were living in the Telegraph Hill section of San
Francisco in n things were slightly different. Flip around the

(00:28):
radio dial and you might hear something unusual, something the
FCC would never ever approve of. A radio antenna at
Chestnut Street streamed sounds from inside one of the bedrooms.
Depending on who was listening to the frequency, the radio

(00:51):
dial might be snapped off abruptly, embarrassed parents struggling to
explain those sounds to their kids, but others would stay
tuned in, eager to hear what came next. The people
of Telegraph Hill had no idea a CIA operation was
happening inside the apartment and that it's chief investigator, a

(01:12):
man named George White, decided to broadcast the sounds of
sex workers and John's going at it. They didn't know
he was on a mission from the CIA to find
out whether sex and drugs could win the Cold War.
That White had explicit permission to give LSD and virtually
any other drug to anyone, anywhere, for any reason or

(01:37):
no reason at all. They couldn't know that as they
were listening, he was secretly watching from behind a two
way mirror, sipping a martini. George White had arrived. He
was in charge of the CIA's newest experiment, one that
would explore the effect of sex and drugs on subject acts.

(02:02):
The fate of the nation depended on it. Officially, it
was known as m k Ultra Subproject forty two, but
White had another name for it. He called it Operation
Midnight Climax. For I Heart Radio, I'm Noel Brown, and

(02:51):
this is Operation Midnight Climax, Chapter one Mayhem and Murder M.
If you're even remotely familiar with the seedier chapters in
American history, you've probably heard of mk Ultra. This was
the top secret CIA program that sanctioned the use of

(03:12):
psychoactive drugs on American citizens. The agency used shady psychiatrists, prisons,
and mental institutions to execute these studies. The goal was
to see how spies and other operatives could use these
drugs to our national advantage in the field. Whether it
was MK ULTRA or another government agency. Some of these

(03:35):
experiments felt like something a four year old would think up.
It wasn't just drugs either. Some agents injected plutonium into soldiers.
At a school in Massachusetts, kids in the science club
were fed irradiated oatmeal to see how well they absorbed
iron and calcium. And in nineteen sixty two, a psychiatrist

(03:56):
drugged an elephant with LSD. The poor thing keeled over debt,
and we learned elephants can't handle a bad trip. For
a good portion of the twentieth century, US government officials
were out of their collective mind, and one of the
most irresponsible things they ever did, even worse than giving

(04:18):
an elephant l s D, was recruiting George Hunter White,
And that was all thanks to a man named Sydney Gottlieb.
Part one not FBI material. Back in ninety two, Sydney

(04:38):
Gottlieb was working as the chief chemist for the CIA.
On paper, he was a straight laced patriot, but godly
had a few secrets too, And when George White's FBI
file landed on his desk, Sidney Gottlieb saw something. White
had already applied to be a federal agent a few times.

(04:59):
The first time was an May nineteen thirty four. This
is what the official report read. The interview reflected. The
White parents and one sister resided in al Hamburg, California,
where his father was city manager. White studied sociology at
Oregon State College from nineteen twenty four to six, dropping
from the university to take a position with the Red

(05:20):
Cross in Los Angeles. Nothing too unusual so far, California
kid drops out of college to soak up some sun
and ride waves. He went bodysurfing a lot. White became
a first aid director for the Red Cross before resigning
to become a police reporter for the San Francisco Bulletin.
What the report doesn't mention is that White like newspaper

(05:41):
work because it brought him close to the action, you know,
the action, Chasing leads, shadowing subjects, digging for clues, putting
yourself in harm's way. The truth is he'd liked danger,
but at a certain point reporting wasn't close enough. As

(06:02):
White once said, newspapering is all right, but it makes
a bystander out of you. I want to get out
on the field where the game is going on. That
was the other thing for White. It wasn't just the action.
It was about the game, the battle of wits and
sometimes fists. That's what White wanted. That's why he was

(06:23):
applying to the FBI. But the file made it clear
he wasn't a fit. According to Gottlieb's report, his personality, approach,
and appearance were not up to the bureau standards. Agents
who got to know White would later say he was
lone wolf, someone who didn't want to be a member

(06:43):
of any team. He was prone to slapping people he
didn't like with a black jack. A black jack, by
the way, is a leather satchel with lead in it.
He carried it to smack people. That was White. He
got dressed every morning knowing he might have to pummel
someone and play and accordingly, but the file didn't name there.

(07:04):
Even though White wasn't FBI material, the report made it
clear that George White had been wartime material. In fact,
George White had undergone top secret training by British intelligence
to be a secret agent. He'd attended real life spy school.
It's where White learned to be dangerous, Part two, the

(07:37):
James Bond Finishing School before the CIA was formed in
ninety seven. It had a precursor, the Office of Strategic
Services or OSS. The OSS needed men who could be
molded into operatives that used subterfuge and deception. They needed
men like George White. By this time, White was passed

(08:00):
the newspaper reporting he took up a job as a
private investigator. When the FBI rejected him, he joined the
newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics to be a dope buster.
His work meant chasing down dealers of everything from marijuana
to cocaine, but it also meant tailing people working under
cover and getting into violent altercations. It was spy stuff.

(08:22):
The OSS realized, with a little fine tuning, White could
be a major asset. And that's where Camp X came
into play, or, as White used to call it, the
School of Mayhem and Murder rumor has it Ian Fleming.
The James Bond author was trained at Camp X, and

(08:45):
the special training school has a storied, if secretive history.
Opened in nineteen forty one, one day before the Pearl
Harbor attacks, Camp X cater to British and American recruits.
Students spent their days learning the art of guerrilla warfare
and in Cove operations over four weeks, located on two
seventy acres of farmland on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario.

(09:08):
Recruits got a crash course and everything from parachuting to
burglary to learning how to kill someone quickly and silently.
Years later, when the CIA would establish their own training
facility known as the Farm, the nickname would be a
nod to the farm land at Camp X. But by
all accounts, Camp X instituted a new style of warfare.

(09:31):
Here's a sample from the official training manual. Being conspicuous
avoid all limelight by being an average citizen in appearance
and conduct. Be tidy. You will be a cog in
a very large machine, But that blending in always served
a larger purpose. Your aim is to kill your opponent

(09:53):
as quickly as possible. A prisoner is generally a handicap,
so forget the Queensberry rules. If you need to search
a prisoner, it's best to kill him first. White had
found his home. He was one of the first eight
Americans ever sent to Camp X for training. There was
no better action, no bigger game than intelligence operations. This

(10:17):
was a place to sharpen his sword. Students learned to
blow up bridges to operate Thompson's submachine guns to parachute
off ninety foot towers. There were martial arts classes that
showcased moves to incapacitate and kill. Instructors recommended hiding razor
blades and the brim of caps and slashing enemies in

(10:39):
the throat. At night, men would be roused from a
sound sleep a pistol thrust in their hand. Dazed, they
try to navigate a maze and locate targets dressed like
Nazi soldiers. This wasn't a game. The pistols had live rounds.
Instructors watched from the hind sandbacks. Targets would pop up,

(11:03):
who were expected to put two rounds into each one.
Speakers piped in the sound of footsteps and conversations in German.
The corridors had uneven floors that made standing straight difficult.
It was a little like being on drugs. During one
live round session, a trainee was shot and killed by accident.

(11:24):
The instructors treated it as though someone had stubbed the toe.
The day's schedule went on uninterrupted. As one CIA psychologist
later observed, camp Ax was best suited for sociopathic characters.
George White thrived at Camp AX, and if he didn't

(11:45):
seem to have any hesitation about killing, maybe it's because
he'd done it before Part three, getting into drugs. Let's
go back and get into George White's life before spy School.

(12:07):
Long before he arrived at Camp X, White had sent
applications to every major law enforcement agency in the country,
but the FBI and other prestigious agencies didn't want White.
He was too rough, too abrasive, not the Ivy League
types these agencies were looking for. Normally, that would have

(12:28):
been the end of it, but in the nineteen thirties,
a new opportunity opened up. As the illicit drug trade
began to grow, the government established the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
The Narcotics Bureau has been called the most successful law
enforcement initiative in American history, but a big part of
that is because they were able to invent their villain Weed.

(12:53):
As the Great Depression loomed, federal agencies started to lose funding.
The head of the Narcotics Bureau, Harry and Slinger, came
up with a scheme to ensure his department would coast
through the depression. He made a villain of marijuana. Anslinger
was one of the people who lobbied to make possession
of felony. He claimed it could cause psychosis or insanity.

(13:16):
In his crusade, Anslinger consulted thirty experts looking for some
kind of medical backing. When twenty nine of them could
find no reason marijuana should be considered dangerous, an sling
are stuck with the one who agreed with him, And
of course, there was a sinister racial component to this strategy,
which tied marijuana to Mexican immigrants in the black community.

(13:38):
By ninety seven, Congress essentially criminalized the drug with the
Marijuana Tacks Act. So, after a raft of rejections, George
White applied to the Narcotics Bureau. He got a letter
of endorsement from Senator William Gibbs McAdoo, a friend of
the family, and in nineteen thirty six George White only

(14:00):
got his chance to wear a badge. He was now
George White, Agent for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. But
it wasn't long before he fucked it up. An slinger
dispatched White to San Francisco, where he was told to
pose as a pimp in an effort to find heroin dealers.

(14:20):
The plan was simple, earn a dealer's trust, buy some heroin,
then make an arrest. But White was learning on the job,
so when a heroin dealer agreed to sell some heroin
to White, took White's money and then told White to
wait right there while he went and got his stash.
White trusted him. Let's cut this story short, because you know,

(14:42):
the heroin dealer isn't coming back. White was out his money,
which came out of his own paycheck, so he tried again.
This time, he told a different dealer, a man named
Tuffie Jackson, that he'd follow him back to his house
to make sure he didn't take off with the cash,
and off they went. White walked into Toffy's house and

(15:03):
forked over the cash. I got you wait here, I'll
be right there. Toffy Jackson didn't come back at all.
It wasn't long before White tracked down Toughy so as
politely as he could, White inquired as to the status
of their business transaction, Where's my fucking money? Things escalated quickly.

(15:30):
White identified himself as a cop and drew his gun,
but tough He wasn't going to be stopped. He pulled
a knife and charged White, so he shot Tough. He
took a point blank in the head, and well, look,
it's just a bad idea to get into confrontations with
people named Toffee. The bullet bounced off tough He's skull

(15:52):
and he kept coming. So he shot again, this time
aiming for Toffy's stomach. The bullet would hit its mark
and tough He would bleed out. So it wasn't a
great first day for White. He lost money to one
drug dealer, killed another. Oh and one more thing. When

(16:14):
White had asked the homeowner where he could find tough He,
he had told him to check the local park. So
this gunfight. It took place in full view of people
feeding pigeons and pushing babies and strollers. White didn't get fired,
but he did get demoted to Seattle. He was years

(16:37):
away from Camp Ax, and from the look of things,
he'd never get there with a track record like this.
But Seattle is where George White turned it all around
Part four Weaponized. When people in Seattle saw George White

(17:03):
roughing up a man on crutches, they probably thought he
was insane, but White knew something they didn't. Inside the
man's crutch was a hollowed out space. Once you pulled
off the rubber tip, you'd find a stash of morphine.
Arresting the dealer would have been a nice rebound, but
White wanted more. At just twenty eight years old and

(17:25):
with less than a year on duty, he wanted to
build a career case. So White scared the dealer and
turned him into an informant. In less than an hour,
White was standing face to face with his supplier in
a hotel room, a man named Lum Get. Get didn't
want to go to jail. He offered White what he

(17:46):
called the big men, the real heavyweights. This was much
bigger than a few guys selling drugs. Get worked for
the Hip Sing Tong, a massive Chinese gang that had
a presence not only in Seattle, but across the country.
White was still a rookie agent, but no agent had

(18:07):
ever infiltrated a Chinese opium gang before. He had a
good plan. He claimed to be a purchasing agent for
a West Coast narcotic syndicate in need of a new supplier.
The agency gave him the green light. Before long, White
had managed to land an intro to Jimmy Wong a
Tongue member who shipped drugs via mail order. White went

(18:30):
to New York to meet Wong in person. The bureau
set him up in a room that was wired for sound,
the same kind of setup that would soon play a
big role in his life. With agents recording, White got
Wong to admit he could sell him everything from morphine
to opium to cocaine. It was far more than White

(18:51):
even had the approval or funds to buy. Get. Also
introduced White to a gunman for the syndicate who was
offering drugs even cheaper than long. They got along well,
and pretty soon the gunman made White an offer that
knocked him for a loop, a chance to become a
full fledged member of the Hip Sing Tong. For close

(19:13):
to a year, White collected incriminating information on the gang
from the inside. On November nineteenth nine, seven agents rated
locations all across the country. Over fifty arrests were made,
including several members of the Italian mafia. It was one
of the most spectacular takedowns of a drug syndicate in

(19:35):
the history of law enforcement, and it belonged primarily to
George White. He was a hero in the Elliott Ness mode,
posing for pictures with an opium pipe in one hand
and a Tommy gun in the other. The FBI hadn't
wanted him, but look at George White. Now, he'd mauled
a guy on crutches and chase that lead all the

(19:58):
way to a fiery altar of drug empire. For most cops,
most people, this would have been it the big score.
White got a promotion to New York, which he had
fallen in love with. He had won the game. Except
this wasn't it. This wasn't White's climax, not even close.

(20:23):
There was still Camp X and a chance to put
those spy skills to the test. White's FBI file gets
into other chapters of his life, like his time abroad.
It's a few years later and White's been recruited by
the OSS and is finishing up his training at Camp X,

(20:43):
all of it based on his work as a decorated
narcotics agent who somehow managed to become a card carrying
member of a Chinese criminal enterprise. After his training, he
goes to Cairo, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, observing the
narcotics trade in territory and reporting back to the Narcotics Bureau.

(21:04):
No narcotics officer had ever crossed oceans to do his job.
White was weaponized now. The OSS hadn't sent him to
espionage school for fun. This was war. The fate of
the free world was on the line. In Turkey, he

(21:26):
convinced a gang of heroin dealers to sell to him.
They agree, but only if you'll allow himself to be
escorted to an undisclosed location. White memorizes the number of
their gas meter and calls the utility company to get
the address, which he gave to his partners. The guy
was good. In nineteen forty three, White is dispatched to Calcutta, India,

(21:50):
where Allied forces relied heavily on getting shipments of supplies
at the port. But the port had been repeatedly attacked
by air bombardments, which pointed to a spy somewhere nearby.
With all the skills he'd accumulated in the Narcotics Bureau
and at Camp X, White is told to find the
man and resolve the problem. White disguises himself as a longshoreman.

(22:17):
He stays inconspicuous an average citizen. White starts to focus
on the owner of a bootmaking shop to preserve his cover.
He has an Army sergeant confront the bootmaker with accusations
he was a spy for the Axis. The conversation doesn't
go well. The bootmaker pulls a knife and lunges for

(22:38):
the sergeant. White pops out and fires twice, hitting the
spy in the chest. The British weren't pleased with their
trigger happy American counterparts, but you couldn't say White wasn't effective.
A couple of gunshots and the air raids stopped? Or
has he put it? I interfered renally with their argument.

(23:04):
When the war was over, White returned to the United
States and resumed his work at the Narcotics Bureau, this
time in Chicago. He'd moved around for the Bureau a lot,
bouncing from one major city to the next, always garnering
attention for high profile cases and busts. In nine he
arrested singer Billie Holiday and her manager for opium possession.

(23:27):
He burst into her hotel room and said she tried
to get rid of the drugs in the toilet. Holiday
denied she was using drugs or that she had any
on her person at the time of her arrest. She
was eventually found not guilty. Perhaps White had planted the
drugs as part of Harry Anslinger's bizarre crusade against Billie
Holiday and Jazz. Still, it was more attention and more notoriety.

(23:53):
The U. S. Treasury, which oversaw the Narcotics Bureau, gave
White their metal for Exceptional Civilian Service. This was George
White's life, a celebrated narcotics agent with some very unusual skills. Still,
White felt destined for more, but the FBI wasn't interested.

(24:14):
The war was over. The only answer was more busts,
just like the ones before them. Except except for that
one day in nineteen fifty two, the day Sydney Gottlieb
opened up George White's file and started reading everything about him.

(24:34):
The Red Cross, the Hip Sing Tong, Camp X Calcutta,
Billie Holiday, everything he'd done in the last decade. Without
knowing it, George White had built a resume that made
him perfect for a job he didn't even know existed,
in a war he didn't know what was happening. Gottlieb,

(24:57):
you'll remember, was the CIA's head chemist, the man in
charge of mk ultra. The Cold War was a time
to explore everything from radioactive oatmeal to l s D.
He was impressed by White's file, but he was fascinated
by one thing in particular. Buried in those pages was

(25:18):
a classified document involving White that detailed a secret chapter
in his life, something that had happened in between Campax
and returning home from the war. It was something so
amazing that Gottli had called up White's boss at the
Narcotics Bureau that very minute and told him the CIA
needed George White. America needed George White, a sociopath who

(25:43):
wouldn't hesitate to interfere terminally with a problem. If it
came down to it, this secret document would change the
course of history. It would destroy a lot of lives,
and it would give George White everything he ever wanted.
The only problem. At that very moment, George White was

(26:04):
in jail this season in Operation Midnight Climax. Secretary couldn't
wake her colleague, so she picked up the gun, took aim,

(26:26):
and fired. America believes its enemies have mastered brainwashing. The
CIA is desperate to catch up. They've enlisted the help
of George White. This is the story of the experiment
Escaping the Lab. The LSD was an aerosolized form so
it could be sprayed over a population. One man going
deep cover, drugging strangers, bugging the CIA brothel, and keeping

(26:51):
meticulous notes on the best ways to so chaos. Sex
workers were on the CIA payroll. Can sex and drugs
win the Cold War? The Sea is willing to do
anything to find out, and along the way, many people
will lose their jobs, others will lose their minds, some
their lives. And the man in the middle of it all,

(27:11):
George White. It was George White. Find George White. Operation
Midnight Climax is hosted by Noel Brown. The show is
written by Jake Ross and editing by Ernie indraw Tat.

(27:34):
Original music by Aaron Kaufman. Research and fact checking by
Austin Thompson and Maurica Brown. Show logo by Lucy Quintinilla.
Special thanks to David Crumholtz, Vanessa crum Holtz, Ted Raymi,
Adam Copeland, Christina Everett, and Ryan Murdoch. Julian Weller is
our supervising producer. Our executive producers are Jason English and

(27:58):
mangesh Had Ticketer