Paul Robeson and MKULTRA

By Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn
http://www.eatthestate.org, Volume 3, #33, 5-12-99

“Paul Robeson, the black actor, singer, and political radical,
may have been a victim of CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb’s MK-ULTRA
program. We have previously noted Gottlieb’s death and outlined his
career of infamy. In the spring of 1961, Robeson planned to visit
Havana, Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. The trip never
came off because Robeson fell ill in Moscow, where he had gone to give
several lectures and concerts. At the time, it was reported that Robeson
had suffered a heart attack. But in fact Robeson had slashed his wrists
in a suicide attempt after suffering hallucinations and severe
depression. The symptoms came on following a surprise party thrown for
him at his Moscow hotel.

Robeson’s son, Paul Robeson, Jr., has investigated his father’s
illness for more than 30 years. He believes that his father was slipped
a synthetic hallucinogen called BZ by U.S. intelligence operatives at
the party in Moscow. The party was hosted by anti-Soviet dissidents
funded by the CIA.

Robeson Jr. visited his father in the hospital the day after the
suicide attempt. Robeson told his son that he felt extreme paranoia and
thought that the walls of the room were moving. He said he had locked
himself in his bedroom and was overcome by a powerful sense of emptiness
and depression before he tried to take his own life.

Robeson left Moscow for London, where he was admitted to Priory
Hospital. There he was turned over to psychiatrists who forced him to
endure 54 electro-shock treatments. At the time, electro-shock, in
combination with psycho-active drugs, was a favored technique of CIA
behavior modification. It turned out that the doctors treating Robeson
in London and, later, in New York were CIA contractors. The timing of
Robeson’s trip to Cuba was certainly a crucial factor. Three weeks after
the Moscow party, the CIA launched its disastrous invasion of Cuba at
the Bay of Pigs. It’s impossible to underestimate Robeson’s threat, as
he was perceived by the U.S. government as the most famous black radical
in the world. Through the 1950s Robeson commanded worldwide attention
and esteem. He was the Nelson Mandela and Mohammed Ali of his time. He
spoke more than twenty languages, including Russian, Chinese, and
several African languages. Robeson was also on close terms with Nehru,
Jomo Kenyatta, and other Third World leaders. His embrace of Castro in
Havana would have seriously undermined U.S. efforts to overthrow the new
Cuban government.

Another pressing concern for the U.S. government at the time was
Robeson’s announced intentions to return to the United States and assume
a leading role in the emerging civil rights movement. Like the family of
Martin Luther King, Robeson had been under official surveillance for
decades. As early as 1935, British intelligence had been looking at
Robeson’s activities. In 1943, the Office of Strategic Services, World
War II predecessor to the CIA, opened a file on him. In 1947, Robeson
was nearly killed in a car crash. It later turned out that the left
wheel of the car had been monkey-wrenched. In the 1950s, Robeson was
targeted by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist hearings. The
campaign effectively sabotaged his acting and singing career in the
states.

Robeson never recovered from the drugging and the follow-up
treatments from CIA-linked doctors and shrinks. He died in 1977.
Robeson, Jr. has been pushing the U.S. to release classified documents
regarding his father. He has already unearthed some damning stuff,
including an FBI “status of health” report on Robeson created in April
of 1961. “The fact that such a file was opened at all is sinister in
itself,” Robeson recently told the London Sunday Times. “It indicates a
degree of prior knowledge that something was about to happen to him.”

Robeson’s case has chilling parallels to the fate of another
black man who was slipped CIA-concocted hallucinogens, Sgt. James
Thornwell. Thornwell was a U.S. Army sergeant working in a NATO office
in Orleans, France, in 1961 (the same year Robeson was drugged), when he
came under suspicion of having stolen documents. Thornwell, who
maintained his innocence, was interrogated, hypnotized and harassed by
U.S. intelligence officers. When he persisted in proclaiming his
innocence, Thornwell was secretly given LSD for several days by his
interrogators, during which time he was forced to undergo aggressive
questioning, replete with racial slurs and threats. At one point, the
CIA men threatened “to extend the [hallucinatory] state indefinitely,
even to a point of permanent insanity.” The agents apparently
consummated their promise. Thornwell experienced an irreversible mental
crisis. He eventually committed suicide at his Maryland home. There was
never any evidence that he had anything to do with the missing NATO
papers.

–Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn

” – <https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/CIA-Robeson.html>