Mind Control and the Secret State
Last September the CIA confirmed the existence
of a 20-year, $20 million research program in "remote viewing," a subvariety
of extrasensory perception. On October 29, a Jack Anderson column added more
details, and Ted Koppel of ABC's Nightline weighed in with a program on
November 28, by which time many newspapers and wire services had picked up the
story. By December, a number of pundits began lamenting this additional
evidence of the CIA's protean power to waste taxpayers' money.
Curiously, "remote viewing" was an old story, first reported by Anderson
himself on 23 April 1984. Other Anderson columns of U.S. and Soviet interest
in psychic research date back to 1981. Anderson's October 29 update reported
that this project, which for a time was contracted out to the Stanford
Research Institute (SRI), had been scaled back and put under Pentagon
sponsorship, but nevertheless continued. Although the results of these
experiments were reportedly mixed, the project retains its defenders in
Congress: Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-RI) and Rep. Charlie Rose (D-NC). By 1995,
Anderson didn't have an opinion on the merits of this research, but his 1984
column was supportive. On Nightline, former CIA director Robert Gates implied
that pressure from members of Congress drove the CIA's original
involvement.
Another of Ted Koppel's CIA guests, identified only as "Norm," was a technical
advisor for CIA deputy director John McMahon and, until 1984, a coordinator
for the SRI tests. "Norm" did mention the "eight-martini" results from some
experiments; this was an in-house term for remote-viewing results so uncannily
successful that observers needed eight martinis to recover. Still, the general
impression from Koppel's show was dismissive. Only about "fifteen percent" of
the experiments, panelists repeated, produced accurate results. Gates argued
that such research, if undertaken at all, belongs in the academy.
Not for the first time, however, there's more to this story than Ted Koppel
acknowledges.
Ingo Swann, who was involved in the SRI project from 1972-1988, is upset with
the media's droll treatment of this revived story. Swann points out that the
original motivation behind the "remote viewing" project was the fear that the
Soviets were investing significant resources in applied psychic research, and
might be making advances. At the time, at least, such a rationale would have
been considered a plausible one to justify such a small expenditure of
intelligence money. Nevertheless, almost all mention of this element of the
story, which had figured prominently in the first wave of stories on "remote
viewing," was dropped in 1995.
Furthermore, Swann claims, the "fifteen percent" figure, established early in
the SRI project, represented the baseline accuracy for non-gifted and
untrained persons. U.S. intelligence wanted sixty-five percent accuracy, and
in the later stages of the project, Swann claims, "this accuracy level was
achieved and often consistently exceeded." According to Swann, the key players
in the project, and the docu-mentation supporting the real story, remain under
the strictest security constraints.
However this may be, Anderson's October 29 story reminds us that ESP is very
much alive as an object of intelligence-community interest. In addition to
"remote viewing" (seeing people, places, and events at a distance in space and
time), another area of interest is the supposed power of "micro psycho-
kinesis" or "Micro-PK" -- the ability to affect small objects, such as
electrical systems, by using the mind. Micro-PK is one step away from outright
telekinesis, and its supposed power has obvious attractions for the CIA.
Imagine being able to erase a computer tape from a block away, or interfere
with the avionics of a jet fighter, or detonate a warhead.
Based on the evidence that's on the public record, the dream of harnessing
such power, or even of establishing its existence, may be somewhat
optimistic.
But this fact hasn't stopped a strange band of specialists, many of whom have
government connections, from staking out careers at the intersection of, so to
speak, ESP, the Pentagon, and the CIA: where people interested in
parapsychology work with those inter-ested in weapons research and mind
control. These would-be psi-spooks turn up occasionally on talk shows and at
conferences on "nonlethal defense." Their ranks include companies like PSI-
TECH in Albuquerque, founded by Maj. Edward A. Dames, and figures such as Col.
John B. Alexander of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who was featured in
the February 1995 issue of Wired magazine. Dames and Alexander and a dozen
more blend in with spookier types who shun publicity but who show up at UFO
and New Age gatherings. One is ex-Naval Intelligence officer C.B. Scott Jones,
a former aide to Sen. Claiborne Pell.
Once again, it's likely that Ted Koppel doesn't have the whole story. It's
also likely that he wouldn't be cleared to report it if he did. Still, the
piddling pool of dollars so far devoted to this research strongly implies
that, if the figure is accurate, intelligence-funded parapsychological
research has been a bust.
The uncounted millions the CIA has spent on mind control suggest just the
opposite. As with "remote viewing," the attraction of a successful mind
control program to the CIA is obvious, and has long been explicitly acknow-
ledged as such. The "Manchurian Candidate" scenario -- in which a programmed
zombie-assassin responds to a post-hypnotic trigger, performs the act, and
does not remember it later -- is one ideal type of successful mind control. A
reliable truth serum, long the object of a CIA quest, would be another. Both
of these are operational uses of mind control, its so-called "second
front."
This term comes from former CIA director Allen Dulles. In 1953, Dulles,
speaking before a national meeting of Princeton alumni, distinguished two
fronts in the then-current "battle for men's minds": a "first front" of mass
indoctrination through censorship and propaganda, and a "second front" of
individual "brainwashing" and "brain changing." Before an audience of fellow
Ivy Leaguers, Dulles skipped the usual pieties about democracy. The same year,
Dulles approved the CIA's notorious MKULTRA project, and exempted it from
normal CIA financial controls.
The distinction between Dulles's "two fronts" eventually becomes diffi-cult to
sustain, like the distinction between, say, sociology and psychology. Still,
this distinction can be useful in roughing out a spectrum of known mind-
control techniques.
For example, one powerful tool for inducing ideological and behavioral change
is social pressure in a controlled environment. The "brainwashing" employed
during the Korean War did not involve the use drugs or hypnosis. The Chinese
merely used the same techniques that they employed on the population at large,
but with more intensity, greater control, and additional rewards and
punishments such as food and sleep deprivation. Yet this frighteningly simple
program was enough to crank up the brainwashing scare in the U.S. Some
researchers now suspect that this hysterical episode had its origins in CIA-
generated propaganda, designed to give the CIA the political space needed to
research more sophisticated mind-control techniques.
Many undergraduates learn about the experiments conducted by Solomon Asch in
the 1950s, which demonstrated that expressed opinions can be easily
manipulated by social pressure, even in obvious cases, such as whether Line A
is longer than Line B on a particular card. And Stanley Milgram showed that
many unwitting research subjects would administer a series of escalating
electric shocks to another, even to the point of an apparent heart attack,
simply because a white-coated lab assistant asked them to continue. Milgram's
research suggests that a "Manchurian Candidate" already exists in many of us,
and that all that's required to bring him out may be a bit of propaganda. The
historical evidence for blind human obedience that could be cited here is very
familiar, and very depressing.
Still, there's evidence that Pentagon planners are uneasy about potential
unruliness among the mass populations Dulles identified as mind control's
"first front." Princeton alumni may perhaps follow and accept arguments that
U.S. interests are at stake in Bosnia, but their sons are unlikely to be on
the scene defending those supposed interests. The urban or Appalachian
infantryman, and the family he comes from, may have other ideas.
Elite unease on this point may lie behind Pentagon enthusiasm for the new
wrinkle in military force that goes by the name "nonlethal" or "less-than-
lethal." Its very claim to embody a "humanitarian" form of warfare is a weapon
in Dulles's "battle for men's minds."
Nonlethal technology becomes im-portant in a discussion of mind control, as it
involves something very close to it, in a form which might be used to control
large populations. The propaganda aspect of "humanitarian warfare" is merely a
sideshow; it's the technology itself that enlists the enthusiasm of Pentagon
planners and law enforcement officials. Much of this "friendly force"
technology involves electromagnetic fields and directed-energy radiation, and
ultrasound or infrasound weapons -- the same tech-nology that's currently of
interest in brain-stimulation and mind-control research.
A partial list of aggressive promoters of this new technology includes Oak
Ridge National Lab, Sandia National Laboratories, Science Applications
International Corporation, MITRE Corporation, Lawrence Livermore National Lab,
and Los Alamos National Laboratory. In the 1996 defense authorization bill,
Congress earmarked $37.2 million to investigate nonlethal technologies. And
this money looks like a mere ante in the game.
U.S. interest in this "less-than-lethal" technology dates back to the early
1960s, when the State Department became aware of low-energy microwave
radiation directed at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Under the name "Project
Pandora," secret research into the Moscow radiation continued for ten years --
before embassy employees were informed that they were on the receiving end.
Researchers initially assumed that the microwaves were designed to activate
bugging devices. But when a large number of illnesses were reported at the
embassy, a review of Soviet scientific journals revealed that the Soviets
believed microwaves affected cell membranes and increased the excitability of
nerve cells.
Officially, the incidence of illness at the embassy was ultimately blamed on
the U.S. shortwave trans-mitting antenna on the embassy roof, which leaked
energy and contributed to the unhealthy environment. Still, the secrecy
surrounding Project Pandora encouraged further speculation within the U.S.
intelligence community and elsewhere. For instance, researchers knew that a
low-energy microwave beam could be modulated with an "audiogram," and actually
convey a recognizable message into an irradiated brain. This led some U.S.
spooks to suspect that the Soviets had been attempting to practice mind
control on the embassy staff.
Such history brings us back to the situation of the restless public in our own
jittery, pre-millennial U.S. Today, there seems to be a dramatic increase in
the number of "wavies," those who feel they are being harassed by non-ionizing
radiation such as radio or sound waves. Nevertheless, there is little evidence
to support their belief that the secret state, despite its obvious interest in
nonlethal technology, is supporting applied research on unsuspecting average
citizens. Several alternative explanations suggest themselves.
First of all, the treatment of mental illness over the past few decades has
changed dramatically -- from an institutional approach, to an out-patient,
community-based system that relies on prescription drugs to control symptoms
and behavior. Greater numbers of sufferers of paranoia, freed from
institutions, are also free to exercise their First Amendment rights.
Furthermore, the power to express oneself has been enhanced by technology --
everything from personal photocopying machines and desktop publishing, to fax
machines and now the Internet. And on the Internet, almost everyone can find
soulmates.
And "wavies" can make the case that they deserve the benefit of a doubt.
Revelations about the Cold War secret state, from the CIA documents released
in the 1970s to last year's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
(which investigated ionizing radiation only), have produced a social
environment in which it can seem diffi-cult to rule out anyone's claim, no
matter how paranoid-sounding. Finally, there is the modern problem of
"pollution" in the broadest sense: from electromagnetic and chemical, and
including simple noise. Human reactions to this pollution, which is a new
phenomenon in the history of our species, apparently vary by orders of
magnitude. Those who are ultra-sensitive may feel harassed, even if no one is
intentionally targeting them.
To a disinterested observer, the claims of the "wavies" are perhaps no more
bizarre than the claims of those who have experienced profound religious
conversions. The point is not to be-little anyone's beliefs, but rather to
establish that social factors often determine what we consider to be credible.
For thousands of years societies have found it useful to allow sufficient
space for religion. Only recently has social space opened up for the claims of
"wavies." The increase in their numbers is thus predictable, irrespective of
whether the secret state is behind their problems or not. (It isn't, in my
opinion.)
This brings us to the "second front" mentioned by Allen Dulles in 1953: the
technology of mind control applied on an individual level. Whereas non-
ionizing radiation can be "broad-cast" to large populations, techniques such
as psychosurgery, implants, and electronic stimulation of the brain (ESB) are
administered on a case-by-case basis. More exotic techniques, whose scientific
status and potential effectiveness remain uncertain, include radio hypnotic
intra-cerebral control and hypnotic dissolution of memory (RHIC-EDOM), and the
use of induced "screen memory" and multiple personality disorder (MPD) for
cover purposes.
The closest parallel to the "wavies" within this second front include those
who feel that implants were forced on them, sometimes during childhood. Such
beliefs obviously tap deep fears in the popular psyche. The season premier of
"The X Files" showed FBI agent Scully discovering that someone had planted a
microchip near the base of her skull. And accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy
McVeigh apparently claims that an implant was inserted under his skin, for
tracking purposes, during the Gulf War.
Identification implants, which are passive devices that respond to an energy
source and return an identifi-cation number, are similar to the bar codes at
the checkout counter in a grocery store. Today's pet owners can have these
devices implanted in their pets. But anyone who confuses this simple
technology with a chip that tells them what to do is already in trouble. Such
a person should consider turning off the television, logging off the Internet,
and checking out a few books from the local library. ID technology is ominous
for those concerned with surveillance and privacy, but it has little to do
with mind control.
Granted, there are experimental "stimoceiver" implants that can stimulate the
brain through electrodes. Mind-control enthusiast Jose Delgado became briefly
famous when he stopped a charging bull in its tracks with such a device in
1964. Even allowing for electronic miniaturization since then, or for the fact
that finely-tuned microwaves can achieve the same results as implanted
electrodes, ESB would still seem to be impractical as a mind-control device.
At best it appears to stimulate various emotions, and might be used for
behavioral conditioning in a controlled environment. This is still quite crude
as a control device. It would be simpler and more reliable to arrange a fatal
accident.
The combination of surveillance technology and implanted aversion therapy
conjures up the vision of a society of victim-robots, with monitors on every
utility pole and computers administering the conditioning. But the necessary
infrastructure would be frightfully expensive.
And no doubt unnecessary. Suffi-cient control over the flow of infor-mation in
society can yield results very similar to those that could be achieved by
mind-control implants installed in every individual. Thus the flaw in the
reasoning of many researchers: the mind-control techniques that have them so
worried are usually the most difficult techniques one can possibly imagine.
For those who would seek total control, plain, old-fashioned information
control -- leavened with a few fascist techniques -- will do nicely, thank
you.
In 1973, former MKULTRA researcher Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West, from the
Department of Psychiatry at UCLA, convinced California and federal officials
to sponsor a Violence Center. Governor Ronald Reagan mentioned the proposed
Center in glowing terms in a speech on January 11, and the federal Law
Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) approved a $750,000 grant. By
this time the federal government, through LEAA, the National Institute of
Mental Health (NIMH), the Bureau of Prisons, and the CIA, was operating or
funding numerous behavior modification programs in prisons, schools, and
hospitals. In response to protests from UCLA students and faculty, the LEAA
announced that it would ban the use of its funds for "psychosurgery, medical
research, behavior modification -- including aversion therapy -- and
chemotherapy."
A year later Louis West was still hoping to obtain funds from NIMH, but by
then it was too late for his proposal. Until the 1970s it was not unusual for
mental health professionals to propose programs that would screen children for
the purpose of early diagnosis and treatment of the potentially violent. But
by the 1970s the trend was in the other direction, as some states enacted laws
that made it more difficult to confine someone involuntarily as a mental
patient. By the 1990s the shoe is securely on the other foot.
Twenty years ago it was fashionable for clinicians to blame urban unrest and
similar phenomena on the behavior of individuals. Now, however, the individual
can disclaim responsibility for his actions by blaming external agencies.
Numerous persons have gone public with accusations of strange events during
their childhood, suggesting that they were used as guinea pigs for mysterious
men in white coats. Some of their evidence seems sufficiently solid to require
further investigation, and more cases are emerging all the time.
On 15 March 1995, two patients of New Orleans therapist Valerie Wolf testified
before the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Although this
was outside the purview of the Committee, they were permitted to testify
because some of the names of CIA-connected researchers they mentioned were
already familiar to the Committee. These two women remembered sessions when
they were around eight years old that involved electric shocks, hypnosis,
shots with needles, x-rays, sexual abuse, and even training in intelligence
tradecraft. One case occurred from 1972-1976 and the other in 1958. This
testimony was not covered by the media.
Although the recollections of the two women were spontaneous and did not
involve regression therapy, there is also a cottage industry developing around
memories of child abuse in general. For the most part these are not connected
with government research, and perhaps many are the result of question- able
techniques used by social workers, therapists, police and prosecutors to
elicit testimony from children. Juries are becoming more skeptical of many of
these cases. This issue has even assumed the dimensions of a religious crusade
-- Christian fundamentalists worry about evil in the New Age movement, and are
on the lookout for cases of "satanic ritual abuse" of children. Others believe
the CIA has turned children into split-personality sex slaves for operational
use.
In 1992 the False Memory Syndrome Foundation began in Philadelphia. This
organization criticizes the practice of regression therapy when it's used to
bring out memories of traumatic childhood experiences. FMSF considers these
repressed memories of incest and sexual abuse to be objectively false, and
devastating to family life in general. There's a growing split over this issue
among psychology professionals. To confuse the situation further, FMSF has
some on their Board of Advisors who may want to cover up their own work. One
is Louis West, another is Martin Orne, one of the key MKULTRA researchers in
hypnosis, and a third is Michael Persinger, who did research on the effects of
electromagnetic radiation on the brain for a Pentagon weapons project.
Regression therapy could be a threat to the techniques the CIA may have
secretly developed involving the use of hypnosis. Shortly after Pearl Harbor,
George Estabrooks, chairman of the Department of Psychology at Colgate
University, was called to Washington by the War Department. As one of the
leading authorities on hypnosis, Estabrooks was asked to evaluate how it might
be used by the enemy. In 1943 he wrote a book, expanded in a second edition
fourteen years later, that included a discussion of the use of hypnotism in
warfare. In his opinion, one in five adult humans are capable of being placed
in a trance so deep that they will have no memory of it. They could be
hypnotized secretly by using a disguised technique, and given a post-hypnotic
suggestion. Estabrooks suggested that a dual personality could be constructed
with hypnosis, thereby creating the perfect double agent with an unshakable
cover.
Estabrooks' theories regarding hypnosis are disputed by many experts today.
Frequently the entire topic is dismissed with the notion, promoted by Martin
Orne and others, that a hypnotist cannot induce a person to perform an act
that this person would otherwise find objectionable. But this in itself
appears to be a cover story; if the trance is deep enough, an imaginary social
environment can be constructed through which an otherwise objectionable act
becomes necessary and heroic. Murdering Hitler during wartime would not be
considered criminal, for example. It may even be easier than this: in 1951 in
Denmark, Palle Hardrup robbed a bank and killed a guard, and then claimed that
hypnotist Bjorn Nielsen told him to do it. Nielsen eventually confessed that
Hardrup was a test of his hypnotic techniques, which included telling Hardrup
that the money from the robbery was a means to a noble end. Hardrup had become
Nielsen's robot, and Nielsen was convicted.
In 1976 a book by Donald Bain titled "The Control of Candy Jones" was
published by Playboy Press. This one-of-a-kind book is the story Candy Jones,
who was America's leading cover girl during the forties and fifties. In 1960
Jones fell on hard times and agreed to act as a courier for the CIA. An
excellent subject for hypnosis, Jones became the plaything of a CIA
psychiatrist who used her to exhibit his mastery of mind-control techniques.
This psychiatrist used hypnosis and drugs to develop a second personality
within Jones over a period of 12 years. This second personality took the form
of a courier who could be triggered by telephone with particular sounds, and
after the mission was completed and the normal personality resumed, did not
remember anything.
These missions were elaborate, and frequently involved world travel to deliver
messages. According to the book, Jones and other victims were once even
subjected to torture at a seminar at CIA headquarters, as a means of
demonstrating this psychiatrist's control over his subjects.
Jones married New York radio talk-show host Long John Nebel in 1972. An
amateur hypnotist, Nebel stumbled onto her secret personality, and began
unravelling the story over many subsequent sessions. Author Donald Bain, a
family friend, was invited to reconstruct the story from more than 200 hours
of taped sessions between Jones and Nebel. Various researchers have confirmed
some pieces of the story, but Bain did not name the major CIA psychiatrist
involved, nor did he name a second psychiatrist who Martin Cannon recently
identified this second psychiatrist as the late William Kroger, who was an
associate of Louis West, Martin Orne, and another MKULTRA veteran, H.J.
Eysenck. Whatever the truth is behind Candy Jones -- and it's difficult to
see the book as an elaborate hoax -- there's no question that hypnotist George
Estabrooks raised issues that the CIA took seriously in secret research for at
least 25 years.
The MKULTRA implementing documents specified that "additional avenues to the
control of human behavior" were to include "radiation, electroshock, various
fields of psychology, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment
substances, and paramilitary devices and materials." The word "radiation"
gave the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments a reason to request
a search of records on human experimentation from the CIA. Their final report,
released last October, expressed dissatisfaction with the CIA's response, and
recommended that the CIA get their act together so that legitimate requests
can be accommo-dated better in the future.
One problem is the compartmentation of the CIA's record-keeping systems.
Another is that the CIA immediately decided that the Committee's purview was
restricted only to ionizing radiation -- the type of radiation of interest in
nuclear testing, as opposed to the electromagnetic and sound waves that might
be used for mind control. Finally, those documents that the CIA did release
were heavily redacted. The Committee noted that they had "received numerous
queries about MKULTRA and the other related programs from scholars,
journalists, and citizens who have been >
Transfer interrupted!