Wormwood

Pairs well with: plaid suits, elaborate cocktails, a blanket to hide under for the rest of your life, and maybe more cigarettes. Just don’t let your cocktail out of your sight for a moment.

Dr. Sidney Gottlieb’s approval of an MKULTRA subproject on LSD.

Watch it if you feel yourself becoming a little bit sympathetic for the FBI in the Trump era. Although it is about the CIA, this is guaranteed to immunize you from forgetting the darkness of the United States security apparatus and its allegiances.

This docuseries, directed by expert filmmaker and story teller Errol Morris, goes beyond the MKUltra premise that it starts with and gets more and more upsetting, linking the sci-fi mind control premise (although it’s true, not fiction) to contemporary military operations. Much of the series was eye-opening and shocking even for a cynical anarchist who studies Latin America like me.

I believe it is only episode two or three when one of the family’s lawyers describes seeing the “burn bowls” inside of the agency. These instruments were meant for quick and regular document destruction.

You can learn more about Frank Olson (the subject of the documentary) and his son’s ongoing struggle for justice here.

Also recommended: everything Errol Morris has directed, including

• Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (experts on mole rats and hedge sculpture!)
• The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (somehow not a boring talking head documentary!)
• Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (about the electric chair, yet watchable)
• Gates of Heaven (film about a pet cemetary that made Werner Herzog eat his shoe)
• The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld (it will cure whatever trust you have left in authority and war-mongering after the Fog of War)
• The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography (will remind you life is still worth living after watching Donald Rumsfeld, without being cliché)