THE CIA MAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100020015-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 18, 2011
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: February 12, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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TULSA TRIBUNE (OK)
12 February 1986
The CIA man
Z Tribune Correspondent
TRMAN - WHEN JOHN Gittinger was a young
an, his father could recite the county seat of
ecounty in the United States.
n remember being at parties and he would
n!raomeone from some state and tell them what
county they were from," Gittinger says. 'He had
grown up in Iowa on a farm. But he wasn't
suited for farming and liked to read. The only book
he had was the 1889 almanac, so he memorized
every county and every county seat."
Roy Gittinger became a history professor, author
and dean of undergraduates at. the University of
Oklahoma. "Dean Gitt," they called him.
"For a time, he could call by name almost anyone
who had been to the university and usually recall
their maiden name," Gittinger says.
His father's phenomenal memory "terrified"
young Gittinger. "I have a bad memory for names,"
But in his line of work, that would be an advan-
tage.
John Gittinger became the Central Intelligence
Acy's chief psychologist for clandestine ser-
v s. In his work, he had to forget names. And, he
says, "Nine times out of 10 the names I knew
wn't their real names anyway."
IN"1979, AFTER 28 years with the CIA, Gittinger
and his wife, Mary Frances, came home to Nor-
Mari. to retire. They live in a modern house in a
subdivision - a house with no windows on the front.
Inside, it is filled with light, plants, Mrs. Gittinger's
paintings and Gittinger's books.
They are mostly history books - his study is
fi&ed with them. Newspaper front pages heralding
tlVnited State's involvement in various wars, are
matted in red, framed and hung over his desk.
'CIA memorabilia is scarce: a signed photo-
graph of Lyndon Baines Johnson; a photograph
of CIA director Richard Helms awarding Git-
tinger the Distinguished Intelligence Medal in 1973.
Scrawled at the bottom: "To John, whose contribu-
tion. the operation will never forget, Dick."
The citation detailing his contribution is framed
and hung also. The medal sits in its box on his
desk.
"It's the Agency's second-highest award," says
Gittinger. "You have to get shot for the first, so I'm
glad I didn't get it."
Articulate, thoughtful, 68-year-old John Gittinger
wears a gray gotee and constantly smokes a pipe.
The details of this life are secret. And while he says
he would like to reveal some of them, he also
appreciates the mystery the secrecy gives his repu-
tation.
People always think I did more than I did."
AT HE DID, in general terms, is this:
WTHe set up a system by which CIA case
officers could evaluate foreign nationals to deter-
mine whether they would be effective spies in
their own countries.
He assessed and helped rehabilitate defectors.
He helped prepare agents so they wouldn't fall
into traps.
He helped case officers, who recruit and oversee
the agents, interpret human behavior.
He studied cultural attitudes so agents would
understand the people they were dealing with.
He worked up something called. "elite assess-
rnents" - the cultural and psychological makeup of
foreign leaders.
-He became a specialist in understanding brain-
washing techniques.
-Specifically, he briefed President Dwight D. Ei-
senhower before Nikita Khrushchev's visit to the
United States and President John Kennedy before
his visit to Vienna.
He studied prisoners of war following the Korean
conflict to learn Soviet and Chinese brainwashing
teehniques.
;M took LSD as part of the CIA's infamous study
on the effects of that drug.
OR YEARS, GITTINGER operated one of the
IF, - CIA's undercover companies. His was called the
logical Assessment Association. He can tell
this ause, during the Watergate scandals, Chuck
Colson charged that Gittinger had made the psycho-
icical assessment of Daniel Ellsberg, thereby ex-
pmng him and his company. Gittinger says he had
nng to do with Ellsberg.
'lie also was involved in the late 'S0s and early
'OR.'with something known as the Human Ecology
Fund. It funded, unbeknownst to the recipients,
various research projects that the CIA deemed val-
uable. One of the recipients was a Canadian psy-
chiatrist who was doing research on how the human
voice could indicate a person's stress level. But the
psychiatrist also was using LSD as therapy for
his patients. Now some of those patients, includ-
ing the wife of a member of Canadian Parliament,
are suing the CIA for funding the psychiatrist who
administered LSD to them.
Gittinger has been to Canada to give a deposition
in the case.
"".I'm very proud of the things I can't talk about
and least proud of the things I have to talk about,"
he says.
,r'This doctor, who is now dead and didn't even
know he was receiving CIA money, was the former
president of the American Psychiatric Association,
founder of the best psychiatric clinic in Canada and
an acquaintance of a trustee of the Human Ecology
Fund. His research had interesting implications be-
cause he was making initial attempts to mea-
sure stress from voice, which would be good to
know in an interrogation setting. We were interest-
ed in him because of this research, not because of
his use of LSD."
Another CIA idea turned sour - tragically sour
- was the anonymous administration of LSD in the
early to mid-'50s. Uncovered in the mid-'70s by the
Rockefeller Commission, the LSD experiments and
tqeit fatal consequences are well known. One par-
ticipant, Frank Olson, jumped to his death from a
New York City hotel room a week after he had
ingested LSD. It wasn't until the commission report
that the Olson family learned of the experiment and
th `cause of his suicide.
That was when Gittinger heard of the Olson
incident too, though he had been involved in the
experiments himself. In fact, it was the Olson inci-
dent that brought Gittinger into the experiments.
Hgwwas assigned to help predict how people would
react.
''(3lttinger was a personal friend of the man who
accompanied Olson to New York to see a psychia-
trist.
It ruined the man's career," says Gittinger. "Be-
ui>d
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cause he didn't keep him. from jumping, but more,
becaum'he was a friend of-.Olson's and itwas a
terriblk shattering experience. He was unable to be
BUT I7t' WASN'T . Rockefeller Commis-
sion's that learned what had
happened friend, x connection w.$th the.
Olson tragedy.
"I was only in th# area .q$'the agency for.
three or four years out of 28," says:Gittingsr::` But I
have had to live with It, and I'm still having. troubiq
with ILA, wish I'd never been Involved. but tha
Monday morning quarterback's hindsight."
At the time, Gittinger says he felt the experf-
ments were justified.
"There was a belief at the time that the Soviets
had esoteric brainwasbers because startling things
had happened. Prisoners: of war from Korea were
making confessions that were not true. They con-
fessed they had dropped germ bombs and that
wasn't true.
"LSD was a brand new drug. This was long-before
the drug culture. No one was experimenting,with it
except us. No one believes they think we'Wanted
to use it for mind control, but we were not experi-
menting to use It. We were trying to find Wt If it
was possible that the Soviets and Chineilp were
using it. ..,
"Now we know that it was through the Interroga
tors' pressure that the American pilots made such
confessions. The Chinese were convinced that
American pilots had dropped the bombs,,and now,
we know that if you are convinced of something,
there are certain methods that will cause certain
kinds of people to crack and admit anything..That's
why confessions aren't as admissiable in court
now - because false confessions can be forced."
Of his own personal experience with LSD, he
says, "It was one of the most ghastly experi-
ences I've had. I learned a lot about how people with
my kind of personality would react."
The participants had agreed in principal to take
LSD over the next few months but they would not be
told when they were given it.
"If we'd known more, we would have done it
differently," he says now. "One of the reasons
we were terrified - and it seems absurd now -
but because it Is tasteless and odorless, we were
afraid it could be put in an air conditioning system
or a city's water supply. It turned out that it couldn't
be put into an air conditioner system and it would
take a lot to influence a whole town."
B Y HIS OWN system, the Gittinger Personality
Assessment System, Gittinger determined that
he has a personality with what he calls an E factor,
that is, he responds to his environment. And when he
ingested LSD, the walls seemed to be closing in
around him and he began to shake violently.
Olson, he says, was also an E.
"We were more careful about experimentation
after that. LSD is a great imitator. It exaggerates
certain characteristics. Paranoics become more
paranoic; people with manias become more mania-
cal. Olson couldn't get away from the fact. that he
thought he was losing his mind.
"The Olson tragedy haunts me. I can live with it
because I had nothing to do with it. I wonder what I
would have done if I had been directly involved.".
Gittinger says he feels good about most of his
career. And he feels the charges against the CIA -
that it ignored moral restrictions in the interest of
national security - are blown out of proportion.
"I don't feel we were as guilty of ignoring moral
restrictions as we were accused of. Some of it was
blown out of proportion. The people I knew in the
y~ 20
CIA were sincere, dedicated, moral peopThe,
thought what they.we~redoing was rigghht. If alytljing
we, didn't catch up to the United States' chaa lug
morals. But I think we are falsely accused in genera.
a1. TM's not to justify our mistakes, but as an
agency, policy, .I think it had an ethical frame-
work.'
S t gathering has to be done in secret,
for this. We've alwhad the democracy isn't geared
system in a democracy mocracparadox of , intell-
gence
's
difficult." y - thank God, but ut It's
THE CITATION ON the wall specifically attrib-
utes Gittinger's contribution-to the agency to
his research of behavior and his creation of the
perspnofity assessment system.
Thin map evidently knows o r g
ood
spies and how to keep them 411F ft-
says they don't all petforra as tad.
The majo. thing I've leased about.-human
nature is how jittle I know, be says. It,WX0
complicated and so diverse. y
act the way I thought they
would Oft meeee
the -rise to the occasion and in :
fal oar cases then
l.
"Id=afty,,you are looking for ideolo~c '
peo
motivated,' says the psycholo t. ' q-~e: targe#-
ing a SovIet blo,eountry, you Ike them to believe in
the American Ideals.. Unfortunately, it is the nature
of the business that this is not the primary reason
someone becomes an agent. Largely it is monetary.,
And they are disappointed in their 'ob, having.
difficulty with their wives; havingl failed in some
discouraged. They They h~temotional t pro bledisgrunted,
li e
alcoholism.
"The ideal is to try t someone who will
remain undercover ~ de informa-
tion that is valuable. I Icky business. You just
don't know how well will produce."
GITTINGER INT WITH the CIA in
1950, one year a it was formed, without
knowing who was doing the interview.
He had done his graduate work in psychology at
OU then trained youth for the Works Project Ad-
minsitration. But his dream was to teach high
school, so he became the first director of guidance
at Classen High School in Oklahoma City.
When World War Ir broke out, he signed up with
the Navy and served as an aviation psychologist for
four and a half years.
Following the war, he joined the University of
Tulsa faculty as assistant professor of psychology
and assistant dean of men, then worked a year for
the Veterans Administration as a vocational guid-
ance counselor. But it was while he was a staff
psychologist at the mental hospital in Norman (he
was the first,) that he received the letter inviting
him to Washington, D.C., to interview for a position
as a "government psychologist."
He joined the CIA as part of the assessment staff,
helping select case officers for the clandestine ser-
vices. The rest is secret.
After traveling the world and living tales that he
can only tell his wife, retirement in Norman would
seem rather tame.
"That's partly why we're here," says Gittinger.
"And it's where I grew up. And two of my grandchil-
dren live here. The other two live in Massachusetts
and we didn't want to winter in Massachusetts."
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HIS SON IS listed as one of this country's leading
neuro-ophthalmologists, an accomplisbm
that makes his father extremely pronda
"I don't feel I am in any way, shape Or form sa.
academically disciplined as either my father or my
son ... I never could do arithmetic. The rest of my
family was always smarter. My brother and sister
both graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
Though he remembers hisI d "
childhood as "very
pleasant," he says he did have a certain amount of
stress at being `Dean Gitt's son."
"I always had a considerable amount of difficulty
making friends. I was a loner, a nod- cipating
observer. Watching was interestin Wme.
"I was always in awe of my fat 'and extremely
road. i i$a4 p. !! y tip n - parents. I was a
Pate-in-life child and I think my parents were t
low with me."
Though he shared his fither's paw for history.
We choice of a carder In psycholioog~y ,vin psycholo.
gy wals''a relatively new and fore ig~ n idea, was ppw
one he feels his parents were glad about. They neve,
knew of his work for the CIA.
His children didn't know he worked for the CIA
until they were grown and married - his daughter
to the son of a CIA staffer, his son to a woman who
had no affection for the agency.
Mary Frances always knew, but, says Gitttiinngger,
"She had to live a very strange life. And it took a
pretty good soldier for me to disappear and for her,
not to know where or why or toward what ends Ske
handled it well and fended for herself."
When the Gittingers moved to Japan to open a
branch office of the "company," she ran the of
fice.
Gittinger will not write-his memoirs
ly because he signed a secrecy agreement, brut
mostly, he claims, because he can't write well.
Instead, he spends his time reading history mostly biography, the result of his insatiable curi-
osity about human behavior - working crossword
puzzles, attending football games, traveling to
places the CIA never sent him, like to the Caribbean
on a jazz cruise, or to Alaska on The "Love Boat."
He spends a little time each week as a consultant
to counselors at OU's medical clinic and to those
universities and law enforcement agencies who use
Gittinger's assessment system. Once a year he goes
to Nelsonville, Ohio, where an institute is devoted to
the Gittinger personality assessment tem.
"They treat me like a guru *nsl I like the
attention," he says, smiling.
The watcher, the non-participating observer, he
seems to have chosen a career well suited for him,
so for his old stomping grounds, the CIA, he is
sometimes reflective, but never in u
"With the terrorism and exposure 9f the CIA
people overseas these days, its re dangerous
now. It must be more difficult.,j' shadowy,
shadowy world."
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