Sidney Gottlieb authorized secret funds to target unwitting subjects

By June Hargrove · August 9, 2026

Unwitting subjects were targeted with physiologically active materials in a clandestine safehouse where the agency deliberately ensured no paper trail existed for the spending.

On August 17, 1956, Sidney Gottlieb, the Chief of the Technical Services Staff's Chemical Division, wrote a one-page memorandum for the record. The document, labeled Top Secret, was not meant for a wide audience, but it eventually became a piece of evidence in a 1983 deposition. The memorandum concerns the financial accounting—or the lack thereof—for a CIA safehouse operated by George White, a federal narcotics agent.

According to the file's catalogue entry, the safehouse was used for "conducting experiments involving the covert administration of physiologically active materials to unwitting subjects." This was categorized as Subproject 42 of the MKULTRA program. In the memo, Gottlieb addresses the problem of how to handle the money being spent on these operations. In any other government branch, spending requires a trail. Here, Gottlieb argues that the standard rules do not apply.

"Highly Unorthodox Nature"

Government accounting typically relies on receipts, vouchers, and precise ledgers to track the use of public funds. Gottlieb, however, contends that such requirements are impractical for the activities overseen by George White. He writes that the "highly unorthodox nature of these activities and the considerable risk incurred" by White and his associates created a situation where traditional oversight was impossible.

Because of this risk, Gottlieb asserts that it was "impossible to require that they provide a receipt for these payments of that they indicate the precise manner in which the funds were spent." The memorandum effectively creates a financial black hole, authorizing expenditures that leave no paper trail of what was purchased or how the money was deployed in the field. The "considerable risk" cited by Gottlieb is not specified in the memorandum, but the context is the covert administration of substances to people who did not know they were being targeted.

Document imagery from nsarchive.gwu.edu From the files: nsarchive.gwu.edu

George White

George White's role in the operation was that of an operator. As a federal narcotics agent, he possessed the cover and the tactical experience to run a safehouse. The memorandum establishes him as the primary point of contact for the funds in question. While the record focuses on the accounting, it confirms that White was tasked with the physical implementation of Subproject 42, managing the environment where the "physiologically active materials" were administered.

This pattern of utilizing agents for the administration of substances to the public was a hallmark of the broader MKULTRA effort. While this specific document focuses on the money, it places White in a direct line of command under Gottlieb. The lack of receipts was not a failure of bookkeeping, but a deliberate policy decision made by the Chief of the Chemical Division to protect the secrecy of the safehouse and the identities of those involved.

The Allan Memorial Institute

The 1956 memorandum resurfaced decades later during a lawsuit brought by Velma "Val" Orlikow. Orlikow had been a patient at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal. The archive's description of the document notes that the Institute was the site of "some of the most horrific MKULTRA experiments."

Public records indicate that the Institute was associated with Donald Ewen Cameron, a Scottish-born psychiatrist who served as president of the American Psychiatric Association from 1952 to 1953 and the World Psychiatric Association from 1961 to 1966. Cameron is known in the public record for his role in unethical medical experiments and the development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the CIA. The connection between Gottlieb's unreceipted safehouses and the clinical experiments conducted by Cameron in Montreal illustrates a dual track of MKULTRA: one occurring in managed clinical settings and another occurring in clandestine safehouses run by agents like George White.

Other records regarding these activities exist in various archives. The Internet Archive holds files on MKULTRA Subproject 83 and Subproject 42, while the National Security Archive contains a 1963 memorandum from CIA Inspector General John S. Earman regarding the program. There are also 195 pages of Top Secret testimony from Sidney Gottlieb given to the U.S. Senate on October 18, 1975.

Despite the later testimonies and the legal depositions of the 1980s, the 1956 memorandum remains a primary record of the program's early financial logic. It documents a specific moment where the agency decided that the nature of the work—the targeting of unwitting subjects—rendered the basic requirement of a government receipt obsolete. The record leaves the exact amount of the "certain expenditures" mentioned in the title unspecified, leaving the true cost of George White's safehouse unknown.