The CIA ran an LSD-fueled brothel – it's a $10m mansion now

Operation Midnight Climax: How CIA ran an LSD-fueled brothel from a San Francisco safe house at the height of the Cold War to see if ‘truth serum’ hallucinogens could be weaponized against the Soviets

• The CIA set up the illegal experiment to find a ‘truth drug’ which could be used in a new breed of ‘brain warfare’
• The brothel was run out of a safehouse in one of San Francisco’s poshest neighborhoods 
• American men were lured to the property by prostitutes and pumped with drugs without their knowledge 

At the peak of the Cold War – as the US grew increasingly concerned over reports that the Soviet Union had used mind control techniques on American prisoners – the CIA set up an astonishing illegal experiment.

Its plan was to find a ‘truth drug’ which could be used in interrogations, forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.

Operation Midnight Climax, established in 1954, was based in an LSD-fueled brothel, run out of a safehouse in one of San Francisco’s poshest neighborhoods. The purpose? To see if hallucinogens could be weaponized against the Soviets in a new breed of ‘brain warfare’. 

Unwitting American men were lured back to the property by prostitutes to have sex,  and were then pumped with drugs without their knowledge as CIA agents watched from the other side of a two-way mirror. 

The home has since been turned into a four-story mansion, complete with six bedrooms and seven bathrooms, and sold for more than $10million in October 2015.

Operation Midnight Climax was led by CIA agent George Hunter White

The home at 225 Chestnut Street has since been turned into a four-story mansion, complete with six bedrooms and seven bathrooms, and sold for more than $10million in October 2015 

It last sold in October 2015 for $10.7million and serves as a luxury home worlds away from the LSD-brothel it used to serve as

The hidden brothel at 225 Chestnut Street was run by federal agents for eight years until 1963, and was orchestrated by George Hunter White, who had been a captain in the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA’s predecessor, and an agent in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. 

The agency was obsessed with finding a mind control drug to force prisoners to reveal their secrets, and turned their attention to LSD, an unbelievably powerful drug that had been developed by Swiss chemist Doctor Albert Hofmann about a decade earlier, in 1943.

The technical branch of the CIA quickly latched on to its potential and chemist Doctor Sidney Gottlieb persuaded his colleagues to investigate it as a spy tool.

CIA director Allen Dulles approved a program for the ‘covert use of biological and chemical materials’ on April 13, 1953. It was called MKULTRA and started with an initial budget of $300,000 – about $3.4million in today’s money.

It experimented with drugs including mescaline, psilocybin, morphine and amphetamines and Gottlieb preferred to use them on people without their knowledge – often on prisoners, drug addicts, mentally and terminally ill patients. 

Gottlieb then approved an MKULTRA subproject on LSD in June 1953, with a much smaller budget of $40,290. 

Operation Midnight Climax was born, and White was hired to run a safe house for LSD testing initially in New York’s Greenwich Village, which then transferred to San Francisco in 1955.

He rented an apartment on Telegraph Hill and spent $4,000 decorating the place to make it look like French brothel, furnishing it with a picture of a French can-can dancer, Toulouse-Lautrec posters and photos of women in bondage. 

A narcotics agent who regularly visited the apartment told former Foreign Service Officer John Marks: ‘It was supposed to look rich but it was furnished like crap.’

White then bugged the place and installed a two-way mirror where he would sit on a portable toilet and drink from a pitcher of martini he kept in the fridge and watch what unfolded. 

The prostitutes who took part in the operation were paid with favors they could use to get out of jail or exchange for $100 cash.

The agents played on the fact prostitution was illegal at the time, and that the sex workers and their clients were unlikely to report anything to the police. 

The hidden brothel was run by federal agents for eight years until 1963 to test the effects of LSD on unsuspecting visitors

The CIA set up the illegal experiment in Telegraph Hill to find a ‘truth drug’ which could be used in interrogations

Doctor Sidney Gottlieb persuaded the CIA to investigate LSD as a spy tool

It experimented with drugs including mescaline, psilocybin, morphine and amphetamines and Gottlieb (left) preferred to use them on people without their knowledge

They would meet the unsuspecting men in local bars and lure them back to the brothel where they would be drugged with LSD, knockout drops and marijuana concealed in food, drinks and cigarettes.

The CIA was also keen to observe how sex could be used to get a man to open up – and whether extra sexual favors could help get the men to talk. 

But an observer noticed they were open to discuss anything anyway and said: ‘We found the guy was focused solely on hormonal needs. He was not thinking of his career or anything else at that point.’ 

The short period after intercourse – when the men expected the women to move on to the next client in a hurry – proved to be the most effective time to gather information. This is when the subjects became emotionally vulnerable, and wanted to stay longer. 

As their search for subjects grew, CIA agents began venturing outside the apartment to drug people with acid and other drugs in restaurants, bars and beaches, where they would slip it into people’s drinks. 

‘If we were scared enough of a drug not to try it out on ourselves, we sent it to San Francisco,’ a CIA source told Marks. 

At first the agents targeted working class men, but soon began luring in targets from all layers of society back to the safe house. 

The project ran for eight years until 1963, when it was shut down by the CIA’s inspector general John Earman. The San Francisco joint was eventually closed in 1965.

‘I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?,’ White is claimed to have said. 

Perhaps surprisingly, only one death has been associated with the program. Frank Olson, a high-ranking scientist who worked for the CIA and the Army’s Biological Warfare Laboratories, is said to have killed himself after Gottlieb slipped LSD into his drink and it sparked a mental health crisis. 

In the days after Olson was drugged, he had asked to leave the program. He had been paranoid and disoriented and depressed. 

Frank Olson is said to have killed himself in 1953 after Gottlieb slipped LSD into his drink. He jumped out of a 10th-floor window in New York

President Gerald Ford met privately with the family of Olson and apologized on behalf of the US Government for the scientist’s suicide after he was secretly given LSD by the CIA

He fell to his death from of a 10th-floor window in New York City in 1953. And while Gottlieb would always maintain that he’d sent Olson to Manhattan to receive psychiatric treatment and that his death was suicide or an accident, Olson’s family believe that his desire to leave the CIA’s most clandestine project led to his murder.

The MKULTRA program was only briefly put on hold.

Decades later. Olson’s son had his father’s body exhumed and a new autopsy performed.

The pathologist noted that, although Olson landed on his back, the skull above his left eye was disfigured. He changed the manner of death from suicide to misadventure.

The same year that Olson died, Gottlieb wrote a CIA handbook on assassination. One of the methods he recommended was ‘the contrived accident.’

He wrote: ‘The most efficient accident… is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. It will usually be necessary to stun or drug the subject before dropping him. A rock or heavy stone will do…

‘Blows should be directed to the temple.’

Olson’s family sued the government for wrongful death and were awarded a $750,000 settlement and received personal apologies from President Gerald Ford and then CIA Director William Colby.  

The agency destroyed most of the files relating to MKULTRA and Operation Midnight Climax in 1973 so it is not known how many people’s lives and minds were damaged or destroyed by the illegal experiment. 

Gottlieb is said to have told his agents never to write down any details of what they were doing. 

And to make matters worse, it reportedly produced nothing of value for the spy agency and they never came close to discovering a ‘truth drug’ to use against America’s enemies. 

A congressional report in 1977 described the program as offensive, unethical and illegal.

White quickly moved out of San Francisco following the end of the project and retired from the federal government later that year.

The property, which boasts magical views of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge, was eventually converted into a private residence

He moved to Stinson Beach, where he became the chief of the local fire department, according to his autobiography, and died a few years later in 1975, aged 67, from liver cirrhosis. 

Gottlieb later estimated that he himself had taken LSD more than 200 times. He retired on June 30, 1973 and was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal – one of the agency’s highest orders.

Not long after, he and his wife Margaret decided to sell everything, board a freighter from San Francisco to Australia and travel the world doing volunteer work and seeking spiritual fulfilment.

Gottlieb thought he had destroyed all proof of the past but the truth finally caught up with him.

The scandal was first exposed by New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh in 1974 and it led to subsequent investigations on the illegal spying of Americans.

Gottlieb died in 1999 at the age of 80 – with the New York Times describing him as ‘a kind of genius.’

The property on Chestnut Street, which boasts magical views of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge, was eventually converted into a private residence. 

It last sold in October 2015 for $10.7million and serves as a luxury home worlds away from its seedy past.

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