Summary of Stephen Kinzer's Poisoner in Chief

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Sidney Gottlieb was a psychic voyager who spent his career deep inside Washington’s secret world. He retired in 1973 and spent the second half of the twentieth century traveling the world and helping the needy. But in 1975, he was summoned home and had to defend himself against accusations of mind control.
#2 After his death, Gottlieb faded into obscurity. He was known as the dark sorcerer for his conjuring in the most sinister recesses of the CIA, and he was also named the maddest mad scientist in a book about the world’s worst people, places, and things.
#3 Sidney Gottlieb, the man who developed the CIA’s mind-control drugs, grew up in the Bronx. His family was Jewish, and they escaped oppression in Europe. They settled in America, and Gottlieb learned Hebrew, had a bar mitzvah, and studied hard.
#4 Sidney Gottlieb was a teenager in New York who was ostracized for his disability, but he emerged determined to excel. He studied advanced German and won high grades in math, physics, and chemistry. He took two courses in public speaking, and he was able to walk without braces for the first time at the age of twelve.

Sujets

• United States
• 20th century

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 06 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669380641
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Stephen Kinzer's Poisoner in Chief
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Sidney Gottlieb was a psychic voyager who spent his career deep inside Washington’s secret world. He retired in 1973 and spent the second half of the twentieth century traveling the world and helping the needy. But in 1975, he was summoned home and had to defend himself against accusations of mind control.

#2

After his death, Gottlieb faded into obscurity. He was known as the dark sorcerer for his conjuring in the most sinister recesses of the CIA, and he was also named the maddest mad scientist in a book about the world’s worst people, places, and things.

#3

Sidney Gottlieb, the man who developed the CIA’s mind-control drugs, grew up in the Bronx. His family was Jewish, and they escaped oppression in Europe. They settled in America, and Gottlieb learned Hebrew, had a bar mitzvah, and studied hard.

#4

Sidney Gottlieb was a teenager in New York who was ostracized for his disability, but he emerged determined to excel. He studied advanced German and won high grades in math, physics, and chemistry. He took two courses in public speaking, and he was able to walk without braces for the first time at the age of twelve.

#5

Gottlieb’s life changed in two important ways during his time at California Institute of Technology. He met a woman who would become his wife, and he began to feel a spiritual restlessness that he couldn’t explain.

#6

Gottlieb was shaped by his time in California. He was rejected by the Selective Service System in 1943, and instead decided to find another way to serve the country. He became a research associate at the University of Maryland, studying the metabolism of fungi.

#7

While he was happy with his family life, Gottlieb was frustrated with his lack of progress in the scientific field. He had no clear path out of his mid-level research on pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The city of Munich was the birthplace of the Nazi Party, so hunting Nazis was a priority for the US Army’s Counterintelligence Corps. They compiled lists, followed leads, and arrested suspects.

#2

The American army captured Blome in 1945, and interrogators confronted him with a letter from Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS and a principal architect of the Holocaust. In it, Himmler directed Blome to produce toxins that could be used to kill concentration camp inmates who were suffering from tuberculosis.

#3

In 1941, Japanese forces were using germs as weapons, killing thousands of soldiers and civilians by dropping anthrax bomblets, releasing infected insects, and poisoning water supplies with cholera virus. The American government decided to study the possibilities of bio-weapons.

#4

Baldwin was America’s first bio-warrior, and he was given the task of developing a bio-weapon program by the army. He was a civilian, and his title was created for him: scientific director of the newly formed army Biological Warfare Laboratories.

#5

Ira Baldwin was the man in charge of finding a site for the new bio-weapons complex. He chose Detrick Field, a former National Guard air base outside Frederick, Maryland. Everything about Camp Detrick was secrecy.

#6

The American government hired thousands of scientists to work at Camp Detrick, and they were all excited to be working on something secret. They were developing bio-weapons, and they needed tons of anthrax spores to fill Britain’s order.

#7

After the war, the US captured several Nazi spies, and wanted to grant them immunity from prosecution and allow them to work for the American government. President Roosevelt refused, saying he wasn’t prepared to authorize the giving of guarantees.

#8

The letter and the spirit of this directive were never followed. The American government established a new covert service, the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, to find and recruit Nazi scientists.

#9

After the war, the Chemical Warfare Service was upgraded in importance and renamed the Chemical Corps. Its commanders watched enviously as Nazi spies were brought under American protection and as, soon afterward, the welcome was extended to Nazi rocket scientists.

#10

After Japan surrendered, several Japanese officers told American interrogators that Japan had maintained a secret germ warfare program. They mentioned rumors that poisons had been tested on human subjects at a base called Unit 731, in the occupied Chinese region of Manchuria.

#11

In 1936, Ishii was given a plot of land south of Harbin, China, to build a lab where he could conduct experiments on human subjects. Between 1936 and 1942, he received at least 3,000 and possibly as many as 12,000 logs, which were destined for excruciating death.

#12

The Japanese government arrested and executed the last 150 logs of Unit 731, but they could not find any proof. In the last days of the war, Ishii had ordered the execution of the last 150 prisoners, told his men that they must take the secret to the grave, and gave them cyanide capsules if they were arrested.

#13

The American government granted amnesty to Ishii and all who had worked with him at Unit 731, and he began turning over boxes of documents. They were full of uniquely valuable data about how various toxins affect the human body, how these toxins can be spread, and what dosage levels kill most effectively.

#14