Project MKUltra
In April 1953 Gottlieb became head of the secret Project MKUltra, which was activated on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles. In this capacity, he administered LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs to unwitting subjects and financed psychiatric research and development of "techniques that would crush the human psyche to the point that it would admit anything". He sponsored physicians such as Ewen Cameron and Harris Isbell in controversial psychiatric research including nonconsensual human experiments. He was named as the person who gave Army bacteriologist Frank Olson LSD, leading to Olson's death.