I hope this question isn't too broad and too NSFW. I'm interested in sex workers and the role they play in espionage organizations. Operation Midnight Climax seems to be one of the only known examples of the CIA employing sex workers (that I found at least). However, I'm curious about further reading on this topic - how did it get started in the US/CIA? Are there other known operations that employed sex workers? Have any of these sex workers given interviews recently? How did they pick out the sex workers and what training did they get?
(As an aside, if anyone wants to DM me with other examples of sex work+espionage in history, please do so. I'm looking for as much info as I can get on the subject)
We don't have an interview with any of the sex workers involved, but we do have one with the person who hired them.
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The CIA's obsession with Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) began with a report received by Allen Dulles (later CIA Director) that the KGB had purchased 50 million doses worth of LSD from a laboratory in Switzerland. Dulles had been interested in the idea of truth serums and mind control -- other drugs had been experimented with during WWII without much success -- and this gave the germ of the idea that LSD might work (it was rumored to be the most powerful mind control agent ever discovered).
After investigation it was discovered the lab in question (Sandoz Laboratories, they're still around) had only produced a fraction of the rumored amount and the KGB had actually purchased only 10 grams.
Still, the US was interested, and they bought the lab's remaining stock (not that much, but presumably they were able to secure more). A plan was eventually devised masterminded by George H. White of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (and CIA consultant) where an apartment would be set up in New York and uniwitting subjects would be brought in and dosed with LSD while watched behind a one-way mirror.
The results were, as White said, unpredictable, and he named the drug "Stormy". Experiments continued, inside and outside the New York apartment, including in prisons.
San Francisco was another secret location, and that's where the sex was mixed in. George H. White called it Operation Midnight Climax. The one-way mirror was still in; the office portion was covered with bondage posters and Toulouse-Latrec cancan dancers.
White hired a man named Ike Feldman, who had been undercover in the Bay Area crime scene. According to Feldman, he had a dialogue with White like this:
White: You've been doing one hell of a job as an undercover man. Now I'm gonna give you another assignment. We want you to test these mind-bending drugs.
Feldman: Why the hell do you want to test mind-bending drugs?
White: Have you ever heard of The Manchurian Candidate? Well, that's why we have to test these drugs, to find out if they can be used to brainwash people.
Now, on to your question: you suggest there was "training" involved. This was not the case. Feldman took on a new element to his criminal persona in order to recruit sex workers who "all thought I was a racketeer". That is, the women didn't know they were working for the CIA! Feldman paid them $50 to $100 per night to take johns to the apartment where they would receive the LSD dose via drugged drink (as usual) and have sex with the women (this was the new part).
Feldman explains the purpose was to try to bring out more of the imagined "truth serum" effect: "with these drugs, you could get information without having to abuse people". In addition to LSD, the CIA tested sex-enhancement drugs, like papavarine (intended to be injected directly into the penis). One incident Feldman recalls involves having sex workers lure some Russian sailors from a boat in dock and combining LSD with a drug White called the "Sextender".
There was, as a later ethics report indicated, "no informed consent, no real independent review, and no follow-up to assess damage."
One other story Feldman tells -- and I don't have independent verification on this, but it's reasonably plausible -- is that they asked Feldman to have a Cuban woman on his "payroll" help with one of the schemes to get Castro (LSD-laced cigars; they never made it to Castro). This is the closest I know of to a sex worker from Midnight Climax being involved in anything more than an experiment, but even if she was asked, she wasn't involved with the final plot.
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Hooper, T. (2012). Operation Midnight Climax: How the CIA Dosed SF Citizens with LSD. SF Weekly.
Marks, J. (1979). The search for the "Manchurian candidate": The CIA and mind control. New York: Times Books.
Ross, C. A. (2007). Ethics of CIA and military contracting by psychiatrists and psychologists. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, 9(1), 25.
Stratton, R. (March 1994). Altered States of America. Spin Magazine.