{"id":72,"date":"2023-04-06T15:12:39","date_gmt":"2023-04-06T21:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.paskainos.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/06\/true-men-liars-and-the-failures-that-worked-part-2-2\/"},"modified":"2023-04-06T17:55:46","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T23:55:46","slug":"true-men-liars-and-the-failures-that-worked-part-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.paskainos.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/06\/true-men-liars-and-the-failures-that-worked-part-2-2\/","title":{"rendered":"True Men, Liars, and the Failures That Worked &#8211; Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Tale of Two Assassination Plots<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>\u201cHe fancied himself a technological promoter and entrepreneur. He wanted to know, could you assassinate someone without anyone ever finding out about it?\u201d<\/p><cite>-Sidney Gottlieb on Richard Bissell<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Sidney Gottlieb had already explained to his lawyer Terry Lenzner how his work with the CIA as Chief of the Technical Services Division had involved developing poisonous methods to kill Fidel Castro, including \u201ca monogrammed handkerchief dipped in poison, exploding cigars, poisoned wet suits.\u201d He also learned about President Eisenhower approving a plot to insert deadly toxin developed by Gottlieb for insertion into Patrice Lumumba\u2019s food or toothpaste. What bothered the pair about the U.S. Senate committee was that in documents released to the public before the 1975 hearing, Gottlieb\u2019s name remained unexpunged for all to read, whereas other CIA personnel had a shield of secrecy with their names redacted. Fearing his client would be made a scapegoat, his lawyer sought and received immunity for Gottlieb in exchange for testifying before the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gottlieb preferred to explain his case to the public, thinking they would understand his aims and service to the country. Lenzner believed that revealing his participation in assassination plots in the name of national security would not serve to win Gottlieb public sympathy. \u201cLook, Sid, the goal here is to keep you out of the newspapers and, at a minimum, out of jail,\u201d Lenzner explained to him. \u201cYou don\u2019t understand how this works. You could very well become the fall guy in this whole investigation.\u201d The Manhattan District Attorney was also pursuing an investigation into Frank Olson\u2019s death. \u201cThey could try to pin Olson\u2019s death on you.\u201d The immunity request with the Church Committee delayed Gottlieb\u2019s participation until such time that interest in the committee was waning, playing into their \u201cslowdown strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The hearing had been going well in Lenzner\u2019s eyes, until Senator Robert Schweiker handed them a document. \u201cDr. Gottlieb,\u201d he said. \u201cCan you tell me what this memo is about?\u201d It bore the ominous title of \u201cHealth Alteration Committee.\u201d Despite an agreement with the Committee to share materials in advance, this memo caught them by surprise. Having been in charge of the Committee, Gottlieb knew the answer to Schweiker\u2019s question but he remained quiet. Gottlieb then whispered to Lenzner, \u201cI need to talk to you about this.\u201d Lenzner pretended Gottlieb\u2019s heart condition was acting up to buy them time to discuss the matter in private.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>A Contemptible Face<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gottlieb revealed to his lawyer that the Health Alteration Committee memorandum contained a plot regarding a Communist official in Iraq that the CIA had \u201cwanted to get rid of.\u201d The State Department had described the official as \u201cextremely aggressive&#8230;anti-Western to the point of hatred&#8230;and has given important support for the success of Communism and Soviet policy in Iraq.\u201d The target was Colonel Fadhil \u2019Abbas al-Mahdawi, who had \u201cassumed a role of one of the most powerful of the military leaders\u201d in Iraq as President of the Higher Military Court, also known as the \u201cPeople\u2019s Court.\u201d Whereas Lumumba had sealed his fate through lacking in eye contact when speaking with U.S. representatives, Mahdawi did himself no favors by being an avowed Communist with an unfortunate physical appearance, according to U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Jernegan. While expressing his displeasure to Iraqi leader Abd al-Karim Qasim with regard to the People\u2019s Court, Jernegan felt that \u201cone difficulty was that the head of the court was his cousin, Mahdawi, who was really the most detestable man I think I&#8217;ve ever seen. He looked detestable; he had a nasty face. And his actions as president of the court sometimes were almost incredible.\u201d Qasim would reply, \u201cOh well, you know really he\u2019s not so bad. Mahdawi\u2019s not so bad as you think. The people demand that we have trials of people who have betrayed their trust.\u201d Jernegan was frustrated with this obstinance: \u201cI never got anywhere.\u201d The U.S. took special note of Mahdawi\u2019s provocative statements during a January 12, 1959 trial:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMy late father was a butcher. I pride myself on the fact that I am a self-made man from a poor family. I am proud that the people have made me the President of the Court to defend the rights of the poor and oppressed. My father was a butcher who slaughtered sheep. I am a butcher of traitors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By February 1960, the CIA\u2019s Near East Division was ready to take action against Mahdawi, seeking approval from the Health Alteration Committee, an apt term which CIA Director Allen Dulles found to be a humorous euphemism for assassination. The written proposal to remove Mahdawi, approved in April, took a middle ground between incapacitation and murder, in keeping with the committee name: \u201cWe do not consciously seek subject\u2019s permanent removal from the scene; we also do not object should this complication develop.\u201d As to their rationale, there were the surface-level explanations: Mahdawi\u2019s kangaroo court, his relationship with the Soviets, and then there was oil, as Anne E. Tazewell explained in <em>A Good Spy Leaves No Trace<\/em>: \u201cMy father [James M. Eichelberger] was part of a euphemistically named \u2018Iraqi Health Alteration Committee\u2019\u2026 [Iraq] demanded that the Anglo-American-owned Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) share 20 percent of the ownership and 55 percent of the profits with the Iraqi government. When the IPC rejected this proposal, Qasim issued a law to take away 99.5 percent of the IPC\u2019s ownership and establish an Iraqi national oil company to oversee the export of its oil&#8230;protecting Western oil interests was the real driver.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[\u2026]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more at: <a href=\"https:\/\/thememoryhole.substack.com\/p\/true-men-liars-and-the-failures-that-07a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/thememoryhole.substack.com\/p\/true-men-liars-and-the-failures-that-07a<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Tale of Two Assassination Plots &nbsp; TMH &nbsp; \u201cHe fancied himself a technological promoter and entrepreneur. He wanted to know, could you assassinate someone without anyone ever finding out about it?\u201d -Sidney Gottlieb on Richard Bissell Sidney Gottlieb had already explained to his lawyer Terry Lenzner how his work with the CIA as Chief [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-deep-dive"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>True Men, Liars, and the Failures That Worked - Part 2 - News Scraper Sandbox<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/wp.paskainos.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/06\/true-men-liars-and-the-failures-that-worked-part-2-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"True Men, Liars, and the Failures That Worked - Part 2 - News Scraper Sandbox\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Tale of Two Assassination Plots &nbsp; TMH &nbsp; \u201cHe fancied himself a technological promoter and entrepreneur. 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