Uncharter Waters

He fixed her a standard drink, chin ice a floater of acid. An hour passed. It wasn't long before King found herself roaming the New York City streets, her mind entering dimensions she never knew existed. White didn't chase her. He never chased anyone. His experiments lack curiosity. He only cared about the short term reaction. What a person did in the hours, days, weeks, or even years following their

dosing didn't matter to him. When Linda King climbed to the rooftop of her apartment building that night, wondering if she should dive off the edge to quell her sudden feeling of despair, White wasn't around he was home, fast asleep, but someone was there to help. Her name was Albertine. Her friends called her team or Teeny. She worked as a buyer for retail stores in New York. She was friends with King. Together, the two of them drove to

Lenox Hill Hospital. King in a state of hysteria, Albertine soothing her, It's going to be okay, relax. George did something. He gave me something. What did he give me? Get you checked out? Okay? Come on, come on in At Lennox Hill, Linda couldn't articulate what had happened, only that she felt drugged. There was nothing to do but let it pass. As the hours ticked by, King kept telling anyone who would listen that a man named George White had done this to her. They needed to remember the

name George White. Eighty one Bedford Street, George White. Alberteen stood by passively. She wanted to help her friend, but she was growing uncomfortable with Linda's chant of George White, George White, Someone find George White. Alberteen knew exactly where to find George White. That's because she was married to him. For I Heart Radio, this is Operation Midnight Climax, and I heart original podcast I'm your host Noel Brown and

this is chapter four Uncharted Waters, Part one. Love and Marriage. Albertin and George White were married in nineteen fifty one, just before White relocated to New York. It was White's third marriage. He'd been married briefly. In nineteen thirty three. He divorced his first wife after just a year general incompatibility. In the nineteen forties, he married his second wife, Ruth. She left him while he was serving abroad. They weren't

a happy couple. For all of White's bravado, for all the drug peddlers he pushed around, and all the gunfights he got into, he wilted in front of Ruth. She verbally abused him, insulting his weight, calling him a slob. White would harbor a lifelong resentment over those slights. But Albertine was different. She didn't see a callous narcotics cop. She saw White as good at his job, effective, punctual. She liked punctual. She liked that his picture made it

into the newspapers after big drug busts. She liked that he was well read and well traveled, even if he left dead bodies in his wake. And he had powerful friends, like mayoral candidate Rudolph Halle, who once to promised to make White commissioner of the New York Police Departments. For white, Albertine represented a step up society's ladder. She was a

clothing buyer, She knew fashion. She always looked spectacular. White enjoyed taking her out and showing her off, watching men as they admired her, and sometimes he didn't mind if they did more than that. George and Albertin were swingers, a couple who didn't mind if one or both got into bed with a third or even fourth party. But this wasn't swinging in the Internet age, where partners swapping

on an app would hardly be newsworthy. This was the early nineteen fifties, when sex in America was still a taboo subject. Alfred Kinsey had just caused a stir publishing his research into American sex lives. The first issue of Playboy was just around the corner, and while nudity was tolerated, anything beyond that would have been a problem. Porn movies

were still known as stag films. If you wanted to watch people having sex, you'd have to know someone who could hang up a bedsheet and set up a thirty five millimeter projector. White was in the right place at the right time. If he'd been in Middle America, he'd be run out of town, But in Greenwich Village he could be more open. It was the sort of scene you could casually say you and your wife enjoyed the

company of others without fear. So White developed a third identity want Apart from White the narcotics cop and Morgan Hall, the CIA operative, he didn't give this one a name. In a sense, it was White's real self, the one who didn't have to hide anything, his occupation, his badge, his stash of LSD. In White's Greenwich Village, he could be anyone he it, and what he wanted was to be more than a swinger. He wanted to be kinky. One of White's first friends in the city was John

Alexander Kutz. His fans knew him as John Willie, an artist and fetish photographer. Willie specialized in depictions of women trust up in corsets and heels, imprisoned for some imagined fantasy scenario. Willie even published a magazine devoted to such content called Bizarre. Like a lot of fringe adult publications of the era, there wasn't actually any sex depicted. In bizarre there wasn't even nudity. The authorities considered the material

depraved and morally corrosive. Willie took pains to avoid anything that might raise the ire of people who could block his magazine, but it was still dangerous business. Publishers of similar material were routinely rated by authorities, their books and magazines ceased and brought before congressional hearings. Reading these magazines, let alone publishing them, wasn't anything you wanted to brag about.

But like minds tend to congregate. If you're John Willie, maybe you value having a friend who might be able to steer some vice cops clear of your business. If you're George White, you like the fact that John Willie is connected to a scene you want to be a part of. It wasn't long before John Willie introduced George White to a man he'd get along with. He lived just a few blocks away. His name was Gil Fox. Like White, he had an alter ego to several of them.

Dallas Mayo was one, Paul V. Russo was another. Kimberly Kemp under pseudonyms. Fox wrote erotic novels with titles like a Touch of Depravity and The Trouble with Redheads. Often there were lesbian storylines. This was, for a time incredibly taboo, so much so that Fox didn't have a lot of source material to call from. I would watch old movies and imagine the man and woman as two women and reimagine it as a lesbian scene. I'd pull a whole scene from the Late Show and write it down and

then put it in a box. The night pool ideas from the box. But that wasn't the only place Fox got ideas. Fox and his wife Pat had what would today be called an ethically non monogamous marriage. Sometimes they hopped in someone else's bed, either together or apart. Pat could provide details of her encounters with other women. Fox also got inspiration from friends like George White. You know, I like high heels a lot high old woman as well. There's just something about it. Do you think you could

right a scene with two women wearing high heels. Books of this type were often sold by bookstores run by the mafia, another reason law enforcement was so interested in them. But Gil's books and John Willie's magazines weren't the only way White could indulge his fetishes. Albertein knew about his fascination with high heels. She watched his White filled up an entire closet with them for her use and his pleasure.

According to Gil, who had intimate knowledge of White's life behind closed doors, one of White's favorite scenarios would be to take a pair of knee high boots and carefully lace them up for Albertein. Gil's wife, Pat also instructed Alberteen on other fetishes, like spanking. When White wanted or needed something more extreme, he might solicit the company of a professional. Once White invited Gil and Pat to his hotel room. When they walked in, they saw White stripped

down to his underwear. Tied to the bed. Near him was a dominatrix, a whip being cracked across White's ample backside, and yes, she was wearing high heels. If White had been in two loveless, relatively sexless marriages, he was making up for lost time. Greenwich Village was a path to indulging in anything he wanted. It was a playground. As sexual escapades go. It was all relatively harmless. Gill and Pat Fox regarded George and Albertine as like minds. All

of them were into kink. The two couples trusted one another. Though Gill and Pat didn't know George was working for the CIA, his extracurricular work wasn't disclosed to them, so he thought nothing of it when White invited them over for drinks. Gil had been around White long enough to know he was an alcoholic. White favored gin, but wasn't picky. He regularly started his drinking in the morning and continued

through the day. That detail matters. If there's one thing you want out of someone conducting an illicit CIA experiment with powerful haucinogenic drugs, it's probably sobriety, and that wasn't something White could offer. But just how bad was White's problem? Bad enough that when he was on assignment with the Narcotics Bureau to chase a trail of heroin to Turkey, he passed out drunk in front of a suspect while undercover. The criminal went through his pockets and found his badge.

White barely escaped with his life years later, with LSD in his possession, he was, in all likelihood drunk on the night of November two when he welcomed the Foxes to his apartment. We know the date because it's an entry in White's diary. For him, it was a very special occasion. He was about to take his LSD experimentation into uncharted waters. Part two Dinner Parties. Gill and Pat Fox arrived at White's apartment his real apartment, not as

Morgan Hall residents, and said hello to Kai Jerkinson. Kai was a drama professor from Chapel Hill and another interesting wrinkle in White's personality. His circle of friends included murderers, informants, mayoral candidate, swingers, and apparently professors. All of them found something alluring about White. For the criminals, fraternizing with a cop felt empowering, like they were getting a peek at the other side. For more respectable members of society it

was the opposite. White felt dangerous, unpredictable. They just didn't quite understand the danger until it was too late. Welcome everyone, Pat, you look like a million yil. How's the magnum opus coming? Well, come on in and meet the Jerkinson's Tenas getting dinner ready, The Foxes chatted with Kai and Joe Jurgensen while White busied himself at the bar. One thing Gil had noticed about White was that he liked mixing two pictures of martinis at his parties. One was for himself, because again

he had some kind of vendetta against his liver. The other was for guests. The two pictures served a different purpose, though White wanted to keep the pictures separate so he could add a little something extra to one of them to liven up the proceedings. Drinks for everyone, come on my own recipe. The Whites, Foxes, and Jorgenson's began to party, drinking, dancing, talking about their Thanksgiving celebrations, talking about the holiday season

and about New York and their plans. Then the couples piled into a car and began driving in the lower village. Gil noticed it had started snowing, and he admired the white flakes falling. After a few minutes, Gil stopped smiling. The snow was beautiful, it was maybe the most beautiful snow he'd ever seen, But there was something different about him. It began to change colors. The snow was lit up,

switching from blue to green to yellow. Gil looked or at his wife, Pat, who held an expression of pleasant disbelief. Then he looked at Joe Jerkinson, who was holding her arms out in front of herself like a ballet dancer. Joe would later say she was admiring an ornate pair of opera gloves that had materialized out of thin air. White, having imbibed Martini after Martini, was looking at all of it like the mad Hatter having a party. There was Gil enjoying a winter snowstorm on a clear night, and

Pat quiet, Kay and Joe look nervous. They all decided it would be a good idea to pile into a lesbian bar, but Pat and Joe began freaking out and wanted to go home. The night had come to an ignoble conclusion. What could the c i A learn from this? How to average couples responded to being dosed with LSD? Did White even report the incident to Sydney Gottlieb or did he keep it to himself knowing these people weren't

part of the profile gott Leap wanted. He was supposed to be dosing criminals and outcasts, so he could have plausible deniability if they ever reported him. Was he doing it to win the Cold War? Or was George White doing it just for fun. There were two important lessons White learned that night about consequences for Kai and Joe Jurgensen to educated, upper class professionals. They were livid they knew why had dosed them, and Joe refused to forgive

White for what he deemed a harmless stunt. She felt violated Her marriage toc I didn't last either. The two divorced a few years later. The Foxes were another story. They too were angry with White, who had betrayed their trust. But the fox has also fancied themselves liberal thinkers on the outskirts of society, Gil challenging conventions this erotic work, and Pat an enthusiastic partner in their swinging lifestyle. In another city, in another life, they might have gone to

the police. In Greenwich Village of the nineteen fifties, LSD was around. It was part of the lifestyle. Unlike the Jurgenson's, the Foxes decided to stay in White's orbit. In fact, they did more than that. The Foxes actually helped White grow as pool of subjects, and this time the consequences would be far more serious than technicolor snow Elliott and Barbara Smythe were married in September nineteen, Elliott was an employee at the F. L. Smythe Machine Company, his family's business.

After Barbara gave birth to their daughter, Valerie, Elliott persuaded his beautiful new bride to relocate to Greenwich Village. He had heard the siren call of the neighborhood's contemporary are attitudes about socializing and sex. Elliott wanted to swing. Elliott had actually swung with the Foxes before. He and his previous girlfriend once had a foursome with Gil and Pad, and he wanted to continue the dynamic with his new wife. But with Valerie their daughter, swinging didn't seem to be

in the cards. Free time was harder to come by. Gil introduced Elliott to White and the two struck up their own friendship. Well, they were friendly, but what really made an impression on Elliott was Albertine, a vivacious woman with poise and style. White noticed he always noticed when men admired his wife, and he made it clear that

they were open to just about anything. The first time Elliott and Barbara went over to White's apartment, White showed him the shoe closet, heels of every color, size and variety from basic pumps to the elaborate lacea boots that Albertine and strutted around in for White's enjoyment. This was White's toy chest. He only showed it to a select few, but he liked Elliott and he really liked Barbara Swinger.

Math is always a little hard to define. There's what a couple may want, and there's what each individual wants. Elliott wanted Albertine in or out of high heels. Albertine was attracted to Elliott. White was attracted to Barbara. But and here's where the Brakes get pumped, Barbara wasn't into White. It was always a dice roll how people perceived him. Some found his bad boy menace appealing, others didn't, and

Barbara didn't. Ordinarily that would have been fine, with the couple still socializing, still trading stories, maybe Elliott and Albertine stealing some time together. But reject Shin was something White didn't like. His first wife had rejected him, his second wife had rejected him. The FBI George White's personality, approach and appearance is not up to FBI standards. Right, there was a pattern before, he hadn't been able to respond

to it. But now things were different. On January eleven, NFTE, just a few weeks after the Smythes visited, George and Albertine invited Barbara over, just Barbara. Elliott was away on a business trip, but that was okay. Barbara could come by herself, but she brought a sidekick, her baby, Valerie, who was just twenty months old. There was someone else in the apartment too, a friend named Clarice Stein, who

worked with Albertine. While she liked Albertine, she had apprehensions about why gil Fox had never told Elliott or Barbara about White's hobby, the one that had put him in an LSD snowstorm. He should have in the apartment. Barbara put Valerie down and started talking with Clarice and Albertine about the apparel business. White tended bar mixing his standard two pictures of Martinis, one for him, one for the guests. They started drinking, Barbara keeping herself to one because of

the baby. It took about fifteen minutes before the laughing started. Something was funny. Barbara, Clarice, and Albertine began laughing hysterically, uncontrollably, like nitrous oxide was being pumped into the room, their drinks slashed over the rim of the glass from her bassinet. Valerie watches her mother seemed to be in good spirits. But remember what the chemist Albert Hoffman said about his discovery about LSD and about the dangers it posed when

it was outside of a highly controlled environment. The danger of a psychotic reaction is especially great if l s D is given to someone without his or her knowledge. The conditions for the positive outcome of an l s D experiment reside in the milieu of the experiment, the person's present, their appearance, their traits. Barbara, you don't look so good, you're feeling okay. The acoustic milieu is equally significant. Even harmless noises can turn to torment. LSD tends to

intensify the actual psychic state. A feeling of happiness can be heightened to bliss, a depression can deepen to despair. It's danger to take LSD in a disturbed, unhappy frame of mind or in a state of fear. The probability that the experiment will end in a psychic breakdown is then quite high. Before Barbara Smith could say more, there was a knock at the door. It was Francine Kramer, one of Albertin's coworkers. She seemed to be an intrusion

of reality. Francine watched as both Barbara and Clarice gathered their things, Barbara scooping up Valerie and went out into the night, Out into an uncontrolled environment, out to explore a world bursting with their fears, the fear of being a new mother, the amplified feelings of despair that can accompany the arrival of a living being. You're now responsible for all of it. Naked Present, m Part three, Untouchable.

Clarice and Barbara went their separate ways. Clarisse arrived home and, still in a state of terror, picked up her telephone and called White, demanding to know what he had done to her. Yeah, George, George, I'm so scared. What's happening, Clarice? You know what time it is? George? Should I see a doctor? You should stop calling? Go to sleep, George, George. Clarisse called again and again she begged him to tell her what he had given her so she could get

something to counteract it. Each time White hung up, he had gotten whatever information he wanted out of his experiment. He had no interest in consoling her. In his diary, he wrote just a four chilling words. Clarice got the horrors Barbara had made at home with Valerie safely. She didn't call White. She didn't even tell Elliot what had happened. He had no idea that night would change the course of both of their lives. Barbara grew distant. She was

prone to increasing bouts of depression. If it had started as something expected, the kind of bleak moods knew mothers sometimes experience, it had blossomed into something far more serious. Elliott, I need to tell you something, and I need you to promise to believe me. I think the mafia is after me. The encroaching paranoia put a strain on their marriage.

Barbara withdrew more and more, fearing her phones were tapped by She agreed it was best to be admitted to Stony Lodge Hospital, where she was diagnosed as a chronic paranoid with depression. She expressed fears Elliott was trying to kill her. Her marriage didn't survive this day. She and Elliott soon divorced, with Valerie being placed with Elliott's parents. A woman with a new child with a happy home life was by nineteen sixty two receiving a lecture shock therapy.

Over time, LSD researchers reputable ones would reinforce the idea that people receiving doses unknowingly were at the greatest risk for adverse reactions. They couldn't ease their minds by reassuring themselves it was a drug induced episode and only temporary traumatic flashbacks could persist for years, well beyond the initial

window of hallucinations. It would be a long long time before Elliott found out what happened at George White's apartment that night in nine By that time, Barbara would be dead, having spent the remaining two decades of her life and institutions we know George White had little compassion for his subjects, like so many others. He left Barbara then for herself. But what about Albertine? She had driven Linda King to

the hospital. Did she share white sampathy? Did you really not care that her friends were being irreparably damaged by his actions? In two thousand two, journalist Douglas Valentine interviewed Albertine. It was Valentine who first revealed the connection between gil Fox and George White in his two thousand two series for CounterPunch dot Org. Albertine was Valentine wrote, a sweet woman, measured in her responses, professing to have little knowledge of

White CIA activities. But when Valentine mentioned Barbara Smythe, she turned. She began swearing and yelling. Valentine wrote that Albertine quote descended into a string of expletives that would have embarrassed a sailor. Her tirade left his writer with the firm impression that she was thoroughly capable of having been White's accomplice in his dirty work. Albertin refused to discuss it further. Like George White had done with Clarice Stein, she simply

hung up. She didn't want to hear anymore. In all of these cases, each person who trusted George White had a vastly different reaction to his dosing them. Barbara Smythe withdrew, succumbing to the paranoia. Clarice Stein phoned White and essently until she realized his approach was careless and calculating. She eventually drifted back into the White social circle. She was, after all, coworkers with Albertine. Perhaps it was easier to let the whole experience go than to create problems at

her job. The Jurgensen's avoided him entirely, the appeal of his dangerous side having grown too frightening. The Foxes accepted it as a condition of their friendship with White. For a man who enforced morality, it's puzzling to consider White's own version of it and how callous he could be even to friends, though we do know something about his ethics thanks to this passage from his unpublished autobiography Morality. As far as I'm concerned, that's just a word that

describes a current fashion of conduct. The Navajo Indians regarded it as a moral for old people to be permitted to live longer than they were able to take care of themselves. We are moral, so we let our old stars rust brought away in dreary poorhouses or pensioners hubble

type hotels. Our immorality sees nothing really wrong with evictions, civil murder, capital punishment, anti birth control, laws that spawned poverty, loan sharks and hidden charge operators, police brutality, millionaire politicians, and the nuclear pomb. So why should I get bugged about the possibility that I might be immoral in someone's daffy book merely because once upon a time I permitted a generation of Adams to terry in my Eden? Where

was Sidney Gottlieb? And all of this for an operation that CIA director Alan Dulles considered to be paramount and securing the future of the United States. Was anyone aware of white statistic street, that he was extending his psychedelic outreach to include young mothers, that he was consumed by sex and alcohol. Sydney Gottlieb knew all about it, as White continued to give him reports. The two grew closer

when White took up leather working as a hobby. He made Gotleib a belt for his birthday, and he had another gift for Gotlieb the next time. He was in New York. On at least one occasion, with White passed out drunk, got leave and Albertine went into the next room, shut the door and enjoyed the freedom Greenwich Village could bring. In Eden, there was Linda King, the actress who visited White and wound up on the rooftop of an apartment

complex contemplating a step forward. Albertein drove her to the hospital, where she insisted to everyone that George White had done this to her. She wasn't scared of White. She wanted people to know what happened. A police officer from the New York Police Department took her statement, so did a representative from the department's mental health unit. You can imagine. They raced over to George White's apartment, knocked on his door,

demanded answers. Toxicology reports would demonstrate Linda King had been administered LSD if they dug deeper, Barbara Smythe, Clarice Stein Kai, and Joe Jorgensen, and countless others could corroborate King's story that George White was on a psychedelic rampage. That's what

could have and should have happened. But Lynda King didn't take into account one thing that the authorities had already been contacted by the CIA, and the message was simple, if anyone should come in with a complaint about George White, it should be torn up and forgotten. He was on a state sanctioned mission. Whatever happened to Linda King wasn't the business of the New York Police Department. Decades later, a CIA official would try to find Linda King's records

at Lenox Hill Hospital, they didn't exist. George White was something worse than dangerous. He was untouchable. The only thing that could come between White and the CIA's mission to master mind Control was from the game finally went too far. It would take a fall from a tenth story window for George White's fantasy life to finally shatter and for the Snake to no longer be in charge about it. Yeah.

Operation Midnight Climax is hosted by Noel Brown. This show is written by Jake Rosin, editing, sound design and mixing by Ernie Indradad and Natasha Jacobs. Original music by Aaron Kaufman. Research and fact checking by Austin Thompson and Marissa Brown. Show logo by Lucy Quintanilla. Special thanks to Spencer Gibson, David Crumholtz, Vanessa Crumholtz, Ted Raymie, and Jason Thompson. Julian Weller is our supervising producer. Our executive producers are Jason

English and Mangesh a Ticketter. See you next week.