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Mind Control and the
Secret State
Mind Control and the Internet by Tom Porter
From NameBase NewsLine, No. 12, January-March 1996:
Mind Control and the Secret
State
by Daniel Brandt
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 documentation
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 interested 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 acknowledged 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 difficult 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 important
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
technology 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 transmitting 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 difficult 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 belittle
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 "broadcast" 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 identification
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. Sufficient
control over the flow of information 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 questionable 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 played a more marginal role. Researcher 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 accommodated 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 unable
to review the complete record." In fact, most of the MKULTRA records were
destroyed in 1973 by the order of Richard Helms, who waived an internal CIA
regulation to do so. It was also the practice of MKULTRA to maintain as few
records as possible.
If ESP, waves, implants, satanic ritual
abuse and post-hypnotic robots aren't sufficient, recently the subject of mind
control has been intertwined with UFOs. Seemingly jealous of the credibility
enjoyed by victims of alien abduction, researcher Julianne McKinney promotes the
view that the entire UFO phenomenon was created by the secret state. A more
thorough researcher, Martin Cannon, also promotes this view. In a long monograph
titled "The Controllers," he explains the UFO phenomenon as a "screen memory"
cover story induced by U.S. intelligence to protect their own mind-control
experiments.
On the other hand, the implicit
assumption behind McKinney and Cannon that it must be either/or -- either aliens
from outer space or spooks with a bag of secret tricks -- seems arbitrary. If
the ethically-challenged U.S. intelligence community has proven anything during
the last half- century, it's that they would not find it objectionable to work
on behalf of aliens from outer space, and against the interests of humankind.
Another possible scenario is that aliens
are real, U.S. intelligence knows more than they are telling, and they send out
disinformation agents to keep the issue at merely a low simmer. By muddying the
waters with kook-biz, they keep it from becoming officially-credible spook-biz,
at which point it might boil over into eschatology, mass hysteria, and
vigilantism.
UFO researchers have recently become
interested in the Aviary, a group of former and current U.S. spooks, along with
some defense- contracting scientists, who may or may not have official status.
Apparently the mission of this group is to discredit any serious research into
UFOs. Its members include Col. John B. Alexander, Harold Puthoff from the remote
viewing project, and Jack Vorona of the Defense Intelligence Agency (formerly
the boss of Michael Persinger). The names of others are floating around the
Internet as well.
Some Aviarians claim to be UFOlogists
themselves, or are friendly and good-natured with other UFOlogists, and some
genuine UFO researchers are quick to squabble with other researchers. This makes
it nearly impossible to sort out who is disinforming whom, and difficult to
distinguish the white hats from the black hats. Since he began looking into the
Aviary, British researcher Armen Victorian has been burgled eight times, his car
broken into three times, his telephone tapped, and a bug was discovered in his
home. All this happened courtesy of British intelligence and police, reportedly
as a favor for the CIA.
Something is going on here, and chances
are excellent that it's not happening merely for our general amusement. Whoever
the men in black turn out to be, it's not the casually-titillated viewer of "The
X Files" that worries them. Instead, it's the relentless researchers who track
their careers and publicize their deeds, hoping that one day the state will have
no secrets, and that those who live off of its impoverished taxpayers will, in
the end, be held accountable.
Those involved in parapsychology, mind
control, and UFOlogy who have government connections make up a small community;
the same names reappear constantly. Ranged against them are the independent
researchers -- also a small community. Leaving aside Laurance Rockefeller, who
is funding some activity in this area, presumably out of personal interest,
there don't appear to be mysterious sums of money floating around. That means
the field is open for dedicated researchers with modest resources. And that's
the good news, because we need to be watching every move the psi-spooks make.
Sidebar from NameBase
NewsLine, No. 12, January-March 1996:
Mind Control and the Internet
by Tom Porter
The Internet is a prodigious source of
information, but using it has been compared to "trying to sip from a firehose."
Access to this flood of data comes at a price: Net researchers spend much of
their time sifting the valuable from the dubious from the insane. Never has this
been more true than in dealing with Net resources on the topic of mind control.
To begin with, there is the problem of
definition. "Mind control" has been taken to mean many different things, and all
these definitions have their advocates on the Net. Some of the discussion on the
Internet involves the purported harassment of individuals for the purpose of
disorienting them, or decreasing their ability to discuss issues of importance.
This includes the use of less-than-lethal technologies such as microwave or ELF
irradiation, sonics, and other techniques. Ed Light and Julianne McKinney argue
that such harassment is real.
Other research and commentary on the Net
concerns individual mind control by means of what I call "structured abuse," and
what L. Ron Hubbard once identified as "drug/pain/hypnosis" conditioning.
Discussions on this topic can be found on many pages related to satanic ritual
abuse, alien abductions, and the "false memory syndrome" debate. This area is
where my research efforts are concentrated.
Exploring mind control on the Net is
complicated by the fact that many of the most active participants claim they are
also victims. Their intensity is understandable; if I had been subjected to the
abuses claimed by these authors, I would certainly want to publicize them. Ed
Light hosts the Freedom of Thought Foundation home page and tells his story
there. Alan Yu has contributed extensively to the alt.mindcontrol Usenet
newsgroup on this subject. Another self-identified victim who has posted
extensively is Glen Nichols.[1]
Many of the claims that such people make
may seem incredible. Still, we know that in the past intelligence agencies have
committed crimes they called "research." The Rockefeller Commission and the
Church Committee in the 1970s exposed some of the horrors of the CIA's MKULTRA
programs, and it remains extremely likely that much more remains hidden.
Having spoken to several purported
survivors of trauma-based mind control who had significant although not
conclusive corroborating evidence, I am inclined to give these people the
benefit of the doubt. Many survivors of conventional abuse endure additional
suffering because of their difficulty in revealing what happened to them, and in
persuading others of the reality of their abuse. I try to achieve a balance
between acceptance of and skepticism toward survivors' stories, and then try to
seek independent corroboration.
The Net is a particularly fertile field
for anyone investigating possible links between satanic ritual abuse and mind
control. There's a Net site that supports every imaginable position, from False
Memory Syndrome Foundation's iron-clad skepticism to fundamentalist pages
proclaiming tens of thousands of abuse victims per year.[2] My own opinion is
that the application of "structured abuse" to young children, combined with
classical conditioning techniques, could create alternate personalities that
could be easily controlled and manipulated. This would not require complex
technology, only secrecy and ruthlessness.
Any group capable of such techniques
would see "benefits" in the existence of such slaves. Some claim that purported
"satanic ritual abuse" can be a cover for experiments by intelligence agencies.
My own opinion is that this claim ought not to be rejected out of hand. The CIA
has a record of distancing itself from morally-indefensible operations by using
fronts and cutouts. A similar case has been made for "alien abductions." Perhaps
the best-known discussion of possible links between mind control and alien
abductions is Martin Cannon's monograph "The Controllers," available in several
forms from many sites.[3] Cannon claims that some alien abductions are cover for
mind-control efforts, and represent an attempt to deal with victims' memories of
such procedures. Variations of Cannon's view can be found in Usenet discussions
of "alien abductions" as cover for the implantation of microchips to track
and/or control individuals. Again, even these claims seem to me to deserve
airing. The CIA has a history of attempting to manipulate the existence of cults
and other mass- psychological phenomena to advance its objectives.
And the same could be true of the
Internet. On the Net, information flows rapidly, and is often impossible to
verify. Anonymous rumors can easily be inserted into the data-stream. Paranoia
about poisoned sources can easily overtake a researcher. As a topic for serious
discussion on the Net, "UFOlogy" already seems to have self-destructed, and
"mind control" may be next. The welcome freewheeling quality of Net discourse is
offset by the possibility that important subjects can be trivialized, and then
disappear.
What is a researcher on this topic to
do? Valuable though the Net and its e-mail community are, the Net's greatest
value remains that of a pointer to other sources: potential interviews;
journals; and, yes, even books.
1. Ed Light runs the Mind Control Fourm
home page at:
http://www.mindcontrolforums.com this is the old site.
Glen Nichols' and Alan Yu's stories can be found there as well.
2. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation
is at: http://iquest.com/~fitz/fmsf/
Hopeful Hands, a religiously-oriented satanic ritual abuse page is at:
http://www.mother.com/~clburger/hopeful/homepage.htm
3. The Controllers is available at:
http://www.lablinks.com/sumeria/cosmo/control.html
Thomas Porter, from Winston-Salem NC, is
a software engineer by necessity and a researcher by desire. He is the author of
a Web site titled "Government Research into ESP and Mind Control" at:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/T_Porter
The NameBase home page is at:
http://ursula.blythe.org/NameBase/bookindx.html
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