On 17 Nov 2005 04:50:55 GMT, Mark Shippey <colonel@anti-grey.net> wrote:
Earl Dombroski <earl.dombroski@gmail.com> wrote:
I for one prefer not to wear the rose-coloured glasses of Jordi LaForge
and go overboard on anything.
I think the idea of all abductions being EM related is, in fact,
underboard.
There. I said it.
And speaking of "overboard"...... "Arrrghhhh matey, Vallee might have to
walk the plank on this EM abduction theory, that he may."
http://www.whale.to/b/cannon.html
The Controllers: A New Hypothesis of Alien Abductions
By Martin Cannon
Table of Contents
I. Introduction. 1
The Problem.. 1
The Hypothesis. 3
II. The Technology. 6
A Brief Overview.. 6
Implants. 8
Subsequent Electrode Implant Research. 10
Abductee Implants. 12
A Question of Timing. 13
The Quandary. 14
Remote Hypnosis. 15
That’s Entrainment 19
Wave Your Brain Goodbye. 20
Final Thoughts on “The Wave”. 24
III. Applications. 26
Palle Hardrup’s “Guardian Angel”. 27
Screen Memory. 30
The Super Spy. 32
Bases of Suspicion. 37
The Scandinavian Connection. 38
Helicopters and Discs. 39
The Military and Mind Control 40
The Ultimate Motive For Mind Control 43
IV. Abductions. 46
The Hill Case and the “Advanced” Aliens. 47
Arms and the Abductee. 50
“They Will Think It’s Flying Saucers”. 52
Glimpses of the Controllers. 54
Cults. 55
Grounds For Further Research. 57
Final Thoughts. 59
Selected Bibliography on Mind Control 61
I. Introduction
One wag has dubbed the problem “Terra and the Pirates.”
The pirates, ostensibly, are marauders from another solar system;
their victims include a growing number of troubled human beings who insist
that they’ve been shanghaied by these otherworldly visitors. An outlandish
scenario — yet through the works of such authors as Budd Hopkins[1] and
Whitley Strieber,[2] the “alien abduction” syndrome has seized the public
imagination. Indeed, tales of UFO contact threaten to lapse into
fashionability, even though, as I have elsewhere noted,[3] they may still
inflict a formidable social price upon the claimant.
Some time ago, I began to research these claims, concentrating my
studies on the social and political environment surrounding the events. As I
studied, the project grew and its scope widened. Indeed, I began to feel as
though I’d gone digging through familiar terrain only to unearth Gomorrah.
These excavations may have disgorged a solution.
The Problem
Among ufologists, the term “abduction” has come to refer to an
infinitely-confounding experience, or matrix of experiences, shared by a
dizzying number of individuals, who claim that travellers from the stars
have scooped them out of their beds, or snatched them from their cars, and
subjected them to interrogations, quasi-medical examinations, and
“instruction” periods. Usually, these sessions are said to occur within
alien spacecraft; frequently, the stories include terrifying details
reminiscent of the tortures inflicted in Germany’s death camps. The
abductees often (though not always) lose all memory of these events; they
find themselves back in their cars or beds, unable to account for hours of
“missing time.” Hypnosis, or some other trigger, can bring back these
haunted hours in an explosion of recollection — and as the smoke clears, an
abductee will often spot a trail of similar experiences, stretching all the
way back to childhood.
Perhaps the oddest fact of these odd tales: Many abductees, for all
their vividly-recollected agonies, claim to love their alien tormentors.
That’s the word I’ve heard repeatedly: love.
Within the community of “scientific ufologists” — those lonely,
all-too little-heard advocates of a reasonable and open-minded debate on
matters saucerological — these claims have elicited cautious interest and a
commendable restraint from conclusion-hopping. Outside the higher realms of
scientific ufology, the situation is, alas, quite different. In the popular
press, in both the “straight” and sensationalist media, within that
journalistic realm where issues are defined and public opinion solidified
(despite a frequently superficial approach to matters of evidence and
investigation) abduction scenarios have elicited two basic reactions: that
of the Believer and the Skeptic.
The Believers — and here we should note that “Believers” and
“abductees” are two groups whose memberships overlap but are in no way
congruent — accept such stories at face value. They accept, despite the
seeming absurdity of these tales, the internal contradictions, the askew
logic of narrative construction, the severe discontinuity of emotional
response to the actions described. The Believers believe, despite reports
that their beloved “space brothers” use vile and inhuman tactics of medical
examination — senseless procedures most of us (and certainly the vanguard of
an advanced race) would be ashamed to inflict on an animal. The Believers
believe, despite the difficulty of reconciling these unsettling tales with
their own deliriums of benevolent off-worlders.
Occasionally, the rough notes of a rationalization are offered: “The
aliens don’t know what they are doing,” we hear; or “Some aliens are bad.”
Yet the Believers confound their own reasoning when they insist on ascribing
the wisdom of the ages and the beneficence of the angels to their beloved
visitors. The aliens allegedly know enough about our society to go about
their business undetected by the local authorities and the general public;
they communicate with the abductees in human tongue; they concern themselves
with details of the percipients’ innermost lives — yet they remain so
ignorant of our culture as to be unaware of the basic moral precepts
concerning the dignity of the individual and the right to
self-determination. Such dichotomies don’t bother Believers; they are the
faithful, and faith is assumed to have its mysteries. Sancta Simplicitas.
Conversely, the Skeptics dismiss these stories out of hand. They
dismiss, despite the intriguing confirmatory details: the multiple witness
events, the physical traces left by the ufonauts, the scars and implants
left on the abductees. The skeptics scoff, though the abductees tell stories
similar in detail — even certain tiny details, not known to the general
public.
Philip Klass is a debunker who, through his appearances on such
television programs as Nova and Nightline, has been in a position to affect
much of the public debate on UFOs. In his interesting but poorly-documented
work on abductions,[4] Klass claims that “abduction” is a psychological
disease, spread by those who write about it. This argument exactly resembles
the professional press-basher’s frequent assertion that terrorism
metastasizes through media exposure. Yet for all the millions of words
expectorated by newsfolk on the subject of terrorism, terrorist actions
remain quite rare, as any statistician (though few politicians) will admit,
and verifiable linkage between crimes and their coverage remains to be
found. For that matter, there have also been books — bestsellers, even — on
unicorns and gnomes. People who claim to see those creatures are few.
Abductees are plentiful.
Both Believer and Skeptic, in my opinion, miss the real story. Both
make the same mistake: They connect the abduction phenomenon to the
forty-year history of UFO sightings, and they apply their prejudices about
the latter to the controversy about the former.
At first, the link seems natural. Shouldn’t our thoughts about UFOs
color our thoughts about UFO abductions?
No.
They may well be separate issues. Or, rather, they are connected only
in this: The myth of the UFO has provided an effective cover story for an
entirely different sort of mystery. Remove yourself from the
Believer/Skeptic dialectic, and you will see the third alternative.
As we examine this alternative, we will, of necessity, stray far from
the saucers. We must turn our face from the paranormal and concentrate on
the occult — if, by “occult,” we mean secret.
I posit that the abductees have been abducted. Yet they are also
spewing fantasy — or, more precisely, they have been given a set of lies to
repeat and believe. If my hypothesis proves true, then we must accept the
following: The kidnapping is real. The fear is real. The pain is real. The
instruction is real. But the little grey men from Zeti Reticuli are not
real; they are constructs, Halloween masks meant to disguise the real faces
of the controllers. The abductors may not be visitors from Beyond; rather,
they may be a symptom of the carcinoma which blackens our body politic.
The fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.
The Hypothesis
Substantial evidence exists linking members of this country’s
intelligence community (including the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Office of Naval
Intelligence) with the esoteric technology of mind control. For decades,
“spy-chiatrists” working behind the scenes — on college campuses, in
CIA-sponsored institutes, and (most heinously) in prisons have experimented
with the erasure of memory, hypnotic resistance to torture, truth serums,
post-hypnotic suggestion, rapid induction of hypnosis, electronic
stimulation of the brain, non-ionizing radiation, microwave induction of
intracerebral “voices,” and a host of even more disturbing technologies.
Some of the projects exploring these areas were ARTICHOKE, BLUEBIRD,
PANDORA, MKDELTA, MKSEARCH and the infamous MKULTRA.
I have read nearly every available book on these projects, as well as
the relevant congressional testimony.[5] I have also spent much time in
university libraries researching relevant articles, contacting other
researchers (who have graciously allowed me access to their files), and
conducting interviews. Moreover, I traveled to Washington, DC to review the
files John Marks compiled when he wrote The Search for the “Manchurian
Candidate.”[6] These files include some 20,000 pages of CIA and Defense
Department documents, interviews, scientific articles, letters, etc. The
views presented here are the result of extensive and ongoing research.
As a result of this research, I have come to the following
conclusions:
1. Although misleading (and occasionally perjured) testimony before
Congress indicated that the CIA’s “brainwashing” efforts met with little
success,[7] striking advances were, in fact, made in this field. As CIA
veteran Miles Copeland once admitted to a reporter, “The congressional
subcommittee which went into this sort of thing got only the barest
glimpse.”[8]
2. Clandestine research into thought manipulation has not stopped,
despite CIA protestations that it no longer sponsors such studies. Victor
Marchetti, 14-year veteran of the CIA and author of the renown expose, The
CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, confirmed in a 1977 interview that the
mind control research continues, and that CIA claims to the contrary are a
“cover story.”[9]
3. The Central Intelligence Agency was not the only government agency
involved in this research.[10] Indeed, many branches of our government took
part in these studies — including NASA, the Atomic Energy Commission, as
well as all branches of the Defense Department.
To these conclusions I would append the following — not as
firmly-established historical fact, but as a working hypothesis and grounds
for investigation:
4. The “UFO abduction” phenomenon might be a continuation of
clandestine mind control operations.
I recognize the difficulties this thesis might present to those
readers emotionally wedded to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, or to those
whose political Weltanschauung disallows any such suspicions. Still, the
open-minded student of abductions should consider the possibilities.
Certainly, we are not being narrow-minded if we ask researchers to exhaust
all terrestrial explanations before looking heavenward.
Granted, this particular explanation may, at first, seem as bizarre as
the phenomenon itself. But I invite the skeptical reader to examine the work
of George Estabrooks, a seminal theorist on the use of hypnosis in warfare,
and a veteran of Project MKULTRA. Estabrooks once amused himself during a
party by covertly hypnotizing two friends, who were led to believe that the
Prime Minister of England had just arrived; Estabrooks’ victims spent an
hour conversing with, and even serving drinks to, the esteemed visitor.[11]
For ufologists, this incident raises an inescapable question: If the
Mesmeric arts can successfully evoke a non-existent Prime Minister, why
can’t a representative from the Pleiades be similarly induced?
But there is much more to the present day technology of mind control
than mere hypnosis — and many good reasons to suspect that UFO abduction
accounts are an artifact of continuing brainwashing/behavior modification
experiments. Moreover, I intend to demonstrate that, by using UFO mythology
as a cover story, the experimenters may have solved the major problem with
the work conducted in the 1950s — “the disposal problem,” i.e., the question
of “What do we do with the victims?”
If, in these pages, I seem to stray from the subject of the saucers, I
plead for patience. Before I attempt to link UFO abductions with mind
control experiments, I must first show that this technology exists. Much of
the forthcoming is an introduction to the topic of mind control — what it
is, and how it works.
II. The Technology
A Brief Overview
In the early days of World War II, George Estabrooks, of Colgate
University, wrote to the Department of War, describing in breathless terms
the possible uses of hypnosis in warfare.[12] The Army was intrigued;
Estabrooks had a job. The true history of Estabrooks’ wartime collaboration
with the CID, FBI[13] and other agencies may never be told: After the war,
he burned his diary pages covering the years 1940-45, and thereafter avoided
discussing his continuing government work with anyone, even with close
members of the family.[14] Occasionally, he strongly intimated that his work
involved the creation of hypno-programmed couriers and hypnotically-induced
split personalities, but whether he succeeded in these areas remains a
controversial point. Nevertheless, the eccentric and flamboyant Estabrooks
remains a pivotal figure in the early history of clandestine behavioral
research.
Which is not to say that he worked alone. World War II was the first
conflict in which the human brain became a field of battle, where invading
forces were led by the most notable names in psychology and pharmacology. On
both sides, the war spurred furious efforts to create a “truth drug” for use
in interrogating prisoners. General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, director of
the OSS, tasked his crack team — including Dr. Winifred Overhulser, Dr.
Edward Strecker, Harry J. Anslinger and George White — to modify human
perception and behavior through chemical means; their “medicine cabinet”
included scopolamine, peyote, barbiturates, mescaline, and marijuana. (This
research had its amusing side: Donovan’s “psychic warriors” conducted many
extensive and expensive trials before deciding that the best method of
administering tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana, was
via the cigarette. Any jazz musician could have told them as much.)[15]
Simultaneously, the notorious Nazi doctors at Dachau experimented with
mescaline as a means of eliminating the victim’s will to resist. Jews,
Slavs, gypsies, and other “Untermenschen” in the camp were surreptitiously
slipped the drug; later, mescaline was combined with hypnosis.[16] The
results of these tests were made available to the United States after the
War.
In 1947, the Navy conducted the first known post-war mind control
program, Project CHATTER, which continued the drug experiments. Decades
later, journalists and investigators still haven’t uncovered much
information about this project — or, indeed, about any of the military’s
other excursions into this field. We know that the Army eventually founded
operations THIRD CHANCE and DERBY HAT; other project names remain
mysterious, though the existence of these programs is unquestionable.
The newly-formed CIA plunged into this cesspool in 1950, with Project
BLUEBIRD, rechristened ARTICHOKE in 1951. To establish a “cover story” for
this research, the CIA funded a propaganda effort designed to convince the
world that the Communist Bloc had devised insidious new methods of
re-shaping the human will; the CIA’s own efforts could therefore, if
exposed, be explained as an attempt to “catch up” with Soviet and Chinese
work. The primary promoter of this “line” was one Edward Hunter, a CIA
contract employee operating undercover as a journalist, and, later, a
prominent member of the John Birch society. (Hunter was an OSS veteran of
the China theatre — the same spawning grounds which produced Richard Helms,
Howard Hunt, Mitch Werbell, Fred Chrisman, Paul Helliwell and a host of
other noteworthies who came to dominate that strange land where the worlds
of intelligence and right-wing extremism meet.[17]) Hunter offered
“brainwashing” as the explanation for the numerous confessions signed by
American prisoners of war during the Korean War and (generally) un-recanted
upon the prisoners’ repatriation. These confessions alleged that the United
States used germ warfare in the Korean conflict, a claim which the American
public of the time found impossible to accept. Many years later, however,
investigative reporters discovered that Japan’s germ warfare specialists
(who had wreaked incalculable terror on the conquered Chinese during WWII)
had been mustered into the American national security apparat — and that the
knowledge gleaned from Japan’s horrifying germ warfare experiments probably
was used in Korea, just as the “brainwashed” soldiers had indicated.[18]
Thus, we now know that the entire brainwashing scare of the 1950s
constituted a CIA hoax perpetrated upon the American public: CIA deputy
director Richard Helms admitted as much when, in 1963, he told the Warren
Commission that Soviet mind control research consistently lagged years
behind American efforts.[19]
When the CIA’s mind control program was transferred from the Office of
Security to the Technical Services Staff (TSS) in 1953, the name changed
again — to MKULTRA.[20] Many consider this wide-ranging “octopus” project —
whose tentacles twined through the corridors of numerous universities and
around the necks of an army of scientists — the most ominous operation in
CIA’s catalogue of atrocity. Through MKULTRA, the Agency created an umbrella
program of a positively Joycean scope, designed to ferret out all possible
means of invading what George Orwell once called “the space between our
ears” (Later still, in 1962, mind control research was transferred to the
Office of Research and Development; project cryptonyms remain
unrevealed.[21])
What was studied? Everything — including hypnosis, conditioning,
sensory deprivation, drugs, religious cults, microwaves, psycho-surgery,
brain implants, and even ESP. When MKULTRA “leaked” to the public during the
great CIA investigations of the 1970s, public attention focused most heavily
on drug experimentation and the work with ESP.[22] Mystery still shrouds
another area of study, the area which seems to have most interested ORD:
psychoelectronics. This research may prove key to our understanding of the
UFO abduction phenomenon.
Implants
Perhaps the most interesting pieces of evidence surrounding the
abduction phenomenon are the intracerebral implants allegedly visible in the
X-rays and MRI scans of many abductees.[23] Indeed, abductees often describe
operations in which needles are inserted into the brain; more frequently
still, they report implantation of foreign objects through the sinus
cavities. Many abduction specialists assume that these intracranial
incursions must be the handiwork of scientists from the stars.
Unfortunately, these researchers have failed to familiarize themselves with
certain little-heralded advances in terrestrial technology.
The abductees’ implants strongly suggest a technological lineage which
can be traced to a device known as a “stimoceiver,” invented in the late
’50s-early ’60s by a neuroscientist named Jose Delgado. The stimoceiver is a
miniature depth electrode which can receive and transmit electronic signals
over FM radio waves. By stimulating a correctly-positioned stimoceiver, an
outside operator can wield a surprising degree of control over the subject’s
responses.
The most famous example of the stimoceiver in action occurred in a
Madrid bull ring. Delgado “wired” the bull before stepping into the ring,
entirely unprotected. Furious for gore, the bull charged toward the doctor —
then stopped, just before reaching him. The technician-turned-toreador had
halted the animal by simply pushing a button on a black box, held in the
hand.[24]
Delgado’s Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized
Society[25] remains the sole, full-length, popularly-written work on
intracerebral implants and electronic stimulation of the brain (ESB). (The
book’s ominous title and unconvincing philosophical rationales for mass mind
control prompted an unfavorable public reaction — which may have deterred
other researchers from publishing on this theme for a general audience.)
While subsequent work has long since superceded the techniques described in
this book, Delgado’s achievements were seminal. His animal and human
experiments clearly demonstrate that the experimenter can electronically
induce emotions and behavior: Under certain conditions, the extremes of
temperament — rage, lust, fatigue, etc. — can be elicited by an outside
operator as easily as an organist might call forth a C-major chord.
Delgado writes: “Radio stimulation of different points in the amygdala
and hippocampus in the four patients produced a variety of effects,
including pleasant sensations, elation, deep, thoughtful concentration, odd
feelings, super relaxation, colored visions, and other responses.”[26] The
evocative phrase “colored vision” clearly indicates remotely-induced
hallucination; we will detail later how these hallucinations may be
“controlled” by an outside operator.
Speaking in 1966 — and reflecting research undertaken years previous —
Delgado asserted that his experiments “support the distasteful conclusion
that motion, emotion, and behavior can be directed by electrical forces and
that humans can be controlled like robots by push buttons.”[27] He even
prophesied a day when brain control could be turned over to non-human
operators, by establishing two-way radio communication between the implanted
brain and a computer.[28]
Of one experimental subject, Delgado notes that “the patient expressed
the successive sensations of fainting, fright and floating around. These
‘floating’ feelings were repeatedly evoked on different days by stimulation
of the same point...”[29] Ufologists may recognize the similarity of this
sequence of events to abductee reports of the opening minutes of their
experiences.[30] Under subsequent hypnosis, the abductee could be instructed
to misremember the cause of this floating sensation.
In a fascinating series of experiments, Delgado attached the
stimoceiver to the tympanic membrane, thereby transforming the ear into a
sort of microphone. An assistant would whisper “How are you?” into the ear
of a suitably “fixed” cat, and Delgado could hear the words over a
loudspeaker in the next room. The application of this technology to the spy
trade should be readily apparent. According to Victor Marchetti, The Agency
once attempted a highly-sophisticated extension of this basic idea, in which
radio implants were attached to a cat’s cochlea, to facilitate the
pinpointing of specific conversations, freed from extraneous surrounding
noises.[31] Such “advances” exacerbate the already-imposing level of
Twentieth-Century paranoia: Not only can our phones be tapped and mail
checked, but even Tabby may be spying on us!
Yet the ramifications of this technology may go even deeper than
Marchetti indicates. I presume that if a suitably-wired subject’s inner ear
can be made into a microphone, it can also be made into a loudspeaker — one
possible explanation for the “voices” heard by abductees.[32] Indeed, I have
personally viewed a strange, opalescent implant within the ear canal of an
abductee. I see no reason to ascribe this device to alien intrusion — more
than likely, the “intruders” in this case were the technological inheritors
of the Delgado legacy. Indeed, not many years after Delgado’s experiments
with the cat, Ralph Schwitzgebel devised a “bug-in-the-ear” via which a
therapist — odd term, under the circumstances — can communicate with his
subject.[33]
Subsequent Electrode Implant Research
Other researchers have made notable contributions to this field.
Robert G. Heath, of Tulane University, who has implanted as many as
125 electrodes in his subjects, achieved his greatest notoriety by
attempting to “cure” homosexuality through ESB. In his experiments, he
discovered that he could control his patients’ memory, (a feat which,
applied in the ufological context, may account for the phenomenon of
“missing time”); he could also induce sexual arousal, fear, pleasure, and
hallucinations.[34]
Heath and another researcher, James Olds,[35] have independently
illustrated that areas of the brain in and near the hypothalamus have, when
electronically stimulated, what has been described as “rewarding” and
“aversive” effects. Both animals and men, when given the means to induce
their own ESB of the brain’s pleasure centers, will stimulate themselves at
a tremendous rate, ignoring such basic drives as hunger and thirst.[36]
(Using fixed electrodes of his own invention, John C. Lilly had accomplished
similar effects in the early 1950s.[37]) Anyone who has studied the
abduction phenomenon will find himself on familiar territory here, for the
abductee accounts are replete with stories of bewildering and inappropriate
sexual response countered by extremely painful stimuli — operant
conditioning, at its most extreme, and most insidious, for here we see a
form of conditioning in which the manipulator renders himself invisible.
Indeed, B.F. Skinner-esque aversive therapy, remotely applied, was Heath’s
prescription for “healing” homosexuality.[38]
Ralph Schwitzgebel and his brother Robert have produced a panoply of
devices for tracking individuals over long ranges; they may be considered
the creators of the “electronic house arrest” devices recently approved by
the courts.[39] Schwitzgebel devices could be used for tracking all the
physical and neurological signs of a “patient” within a quarter of a
mile,[40] thereby lifting the distance limitations which restricted Delgado.
In Ralph Schwitzgebel’s initial work, application of this technology
to ESB seems to have been limited to cumbersome brain implants with
protruding wires. But the technology was soon miniaturized, and a scheme was
proposed whereby radio receivers would be mounted on utility poles
throughout a given city, thereby providing 24-hour-a-day monitoring
capability.[41] Like Heath, Schwitzgebel was much exercised about
homosexuality and the use of intracranial devices to combat sexual
deviation. But he has also spoken ominously about applying his devices to
“socially troublesome persons”...which, of course, could mean anyone.[42]
Bryan Robinson, of the Yerkes primate laboratory has conducted
fascinating simian research on the use of remote ESB in a social context. He
could cause mothers to ignore their offspring, despite the babies’ cries. He
could turn submission into dominance, and vice-versa.[43]
Perhaps the most disturbing wanderer in this mind-field is Joseph A.
Meyer, of the National Security Agency, the most formidable and secretive
component of America’s national security complex. Meyer has proposed
implanting roughly half of all Americans arrested — not necessarily
convicted — of any crime; the numbers of “subscribers” (his euphemism) would
run into the tens of millions. “Subscribers” could be monitored continually
by computer wherever they went. Meyer, who has carefully worked out the
economics of his mass-implantation system, asserts that taxpayer liability
should be reduced by forcing subscribers to “rent” the implant from the
State. Implants are cheaper and more efficient than police, Meyer suggests,
since the call to crime is relentless for the poor “urban dweller” — who,
this spook-scientist admits in a surprisingly candid aside, is fundamentally
unnecessary to a post-industrial economy. “Urban dweller” may be another of
Meyer’s euphemisms: He uses New York’s Harlem as his model community in
working out the details of his mind-management system.[44]
Abductee Implants
If we are to take seriously abductee accounts of brain implants, we
must consider the possibility that the implanters, properly perceived, don’t
look much like the “greys” pictured on Strieber’s dustjackets. Instead, the
visitors may resemble Dr. Meyer and his brethren. We would thus have an
explanation for both the reports of abductee brain implants and, as we shall
see, the “scoop marks” and other scars visible on other parts of the
abductees’ bodies. We would also have an explanation for the reports of
individuals suffering personality change after contact with the UFO
phenomenon.
Skeptics might counter that the time factor of UFO abductions
disallows this possibility. If estimates of “missing time” are correct, the
abductions rarely take longer than one-to-three hours. Wouldn’t a brain
surgeon, operating under less-than-ideal conditions (perhaps in a mobile
unit) need more time?
No — not if we accept the claims of a Florida doctor named Daniel Man.
He recently proposed a draconian solution to the overblown “missing children
problem,” by suggesting a program wherein America’s youngsters would be
implanted with tiny transmitters in order to track the children
continuously. Man brags that the operation can be done right in the office —
and would take less than 20 minutes.[45]
Conceivably, it might take a tad longer in the field.
A Question of Timing
The history of brain implantation, as gleaned from the open
literature, is certainly disquieting. Yet this history has almost certainly
been censored, and the dates manipulated in a nigh-Orwellian fashion. When
dealing with research funded by the engines of national security, one can
never know the true origin date of any individual scientific advance.
However, if we listen carefully to the scientists who have pioneered this
research, we may hear whispers, faint but unmistakable, hinting that
remotely-applied ESB originated earlier than published studies would
indicate.
In his autobiography The Scientist, John C. Lilly (who would later
achieve a cultish renown for his work with dolphins, drugs and sensory
deprivation) records a conversation he had with the director of the National
Institute of Mental Health — in 1953. The director asked Lilly to brief the
CIA, FBI, NSA and the various military intelligence services on his work
using electrodes to stimulate directly the pleasure and pain centers of the
brain. Lilly refused, noting, in his reply:
Dr. Antoine Remond, using our techniques in Paris, has demonstrated
that this method of stimulation of the brain can be applied to the human
without the help of the neurosurgeon; he is doing it in his office in Paris
without neurosurgical supervision. This means that anybody with the proper
apparatus can carry this out on a person covertly, with no external signs
that electrodes have been used on that person. I feel that if this technique
got into the hands of a secret agency, they would have total control over a
human being and be able to change his beliefs extremely quickly, leaving
little evidence of what they had done.[46]
Lilly’s assertion of the moral high ground here is interesting.
Despite his avowed phobia against secrecy, a careful reading of The
Scientist reveals that he continued to do work useful to this country’s
national security apparatus. His sensory deprivation experiments expanded
upon the work of ARTICHOKE’s Maitland Baldwin, and even his dolphin research
has — perhaps inadvertently proved useful in naval warfare.[47] One should
note that Lilly’s work on monkeys carried a “secret” classification, and
that NIMH was a common CIA funding conduit.[48]
But the most important aspect of Lilly’s statement is its date. 1953?
How far back does radio-controlled ESB go? Alas, I have not yet seen
Remond’s work — if it is available in the open literature. In the documents
made available to Marks, the earliest reference to remotely-applied ESB is a
1959 financial document pertaining to MKULTRA subproject 94. The general
subproject descriptions sent to the CIA’s financial department rarely
contain much information, and rarely change from year to year, leaving us
little idea as to when this subproject began.
Unfortunately, even the Freedom of Information Act couldn’t pry loose
much information on electronic mind control techniques, though we know a
great deal of study was done in these areas. We have, for example, only four
pages on subproject 94 — by comparison, a veritable flood of documents were
released on the use of drugs in mind control. (Whenever an author tells us
that MKULTRA met with little success, the reference is to drug testing.) On
this point, I must criticize John Marks: His book never mentions that
roughly 20-25 percent of the MKULTRA subprojects are “dark” — i.e., little
or no information was ever made available, despite lawyers and FOIA
requests. Marks seems to feel that the only information worth having is the
information he received. We know, however, that research into
psychoelectronics was extensive; indeed, statements of project goals dating
from ARTICHOKE and BLUEBIRD days clearly identify this area as a high
priority. Marks’ anonymous informant, jocularly named “Deep Trance,” even
told a previous interviewer that, beginning in 1963, the CIA and military’s
mind control efforts strongly emphasized electronics.[49] I therefore assume
— not rashly, I hope — that the “dark” MKULTRA subprojects concerned matters
such as brain implants, microwaves, ESB, and related technologies.
I make an issue of the timing and secrecy involved in this research to
underscore three points: 1. We can never know with certainty the true origin
dates of the various brainwashing methods — often, we discover that
techniques which seem impossibly futuristic actually originated in the 19th
century. (Pioneering ESB research was conducted in 1898, by J.R. Ewald,
professor of physiology at Straussbourg.[50]) 2. The open literature almost
certainly gives a bowdlerized view of the actual research. 3.
Lavishly-funded clandestine researchers — unrestrained by peer review or the
need for strict controls — can achieve far more rapid progress than
scientists on “the outside.”
Potential critics should keep these points in mind should they attempt
to invalidate the “mind control” thesis of UFO abductions by citing an
abduction account which antedates Delgado.
The Quandary
We have amply demonstrated, then, that as far back as the 1960s — and
possibly earlier still — scientists have had the capability to create
implants similar to those now purportedly visible in abductee MRI scans.
Indeed, we have no notion just how advanced this technology has become,
since the popular press stopped reporting on brain implantation in the
1970s. The research has no doubt continued, albeit in a less public fashion.
In fact, scientists such as Delgado have cast their eye far beyond the
implants; ESB effects can now be elicited with microwaves and other forms of
electromagnetic radiation, used with and without electrodes.
So why — if we take UFO abduction accounts at face value — are the
“advanced aliens” using an old technology, an Earth technology, a technology
which may soon be rendered obsolescent, if it hasn’t been so rendered
already? I am reminded of the charming anachronisms in the old Flash Gordon
serials, where swords and spaceships clashed continually.
Do they also watch black-and-white television on Zeta Reticuli?
Remote Hypnosis
Hypnosis provides the (highly controversial) key which opens the door
to many abduction accounts.[51] And obviously, if my thesis is correct,
hypnosis plays a large part in the abduction itself. One thing we know with
certainty: Since the earliest days of project BLUEBIRD, the CIA’s
spy-chiatrists spent enormous sums mastering Mesmer’s art.
I cannot here give even a brief summary of hypnosis, nor even of the
CIA’s studies in this area. (Fortunately, FOIA requests were rather more
successful in shaking loose information on this topic than in the area of
psychoelectronics.) Here, we will concentrate on a particularly intriguing
allegation — one heard faintly, but persistently, for the past twenty years
by those who would investigate the shadow side of politics.
If this allegation proves true, hypnosis is not necessarily a
person-to-person affair.
The abductee — or the mind control victim — need not have physical
contact with a hypnotist for hypnotic suggestion to take effect; trance
could be induced, and suggestions made, via the intracerebral transmitters
described above. The concept sounds like something out of Huxley’s or
Orwell’s most masochistic fantasies. Yet remote hypnosis was first reported
— using allegedly parapsychological means — in the early 1930s, by L.L.
Vasiliev, Professor of Physiology in the University of Leningrad.[52] Later,
other scientists attempted to accomplish the same goal, using less mystic
means.
Over the years, certain journalists have asserted that the CIA has
mastered a technology call RHIC-EDOM. RHIC means “Radio Hypnotic
Intracerebral Control.” EDOM stands for “Electronic Dissolution of Memory.”
Together, these techniques can — allegedly — remotely induce hypnotic
trance, deliver suggestions to the subject, and erase all memory for both
the instruction period and the act which the subject is asked to perform.
RHIC uses the stimoceiver, or a microminiaturized offspring of that
technology to induce a hypnotic state. Interestingly, this technique is also
reputed to involve the use of intramuscular implants, a detail strikingly
reminiscent of the “scars” mentioned in Budd Hopkin’s Missing Time.
Apparently, these implants are stimulated to induce a post-hypnotic
suggestion.
EDOM is nothing more than “missing time” itself — the erasure of
memory from consciousness through the blockage of synaptic transmission in
certain areas of the brain. By jamming the brain’s synapses through a
surfeit of acetylcholine, neural transmission along selected pathways can be
effectively stilled. According to the proponents of RHIC-EDOM, acetylcholine
production can be affected by electromagnetic means. (Modern research in the
psycho-physiological effects of microwaves confirm this proposition.)
Does RHIC-EDOM exist? In our discussion of Delgado’s work, I have
already cited a strange little book (published in 1969) titled Were We
Controlled?, written by one Lincoln Lawrence, a former FBI agent turned
journalist. (The name is a pseudonym; I know his real identity.) This work
deals at length with RHIC-EDOM; a careful comparison of Lawrence’s work with
MKULTRA files declassified ten years later indicates a strong possibility
that the writer did indeed have “inside” sources.
Here is how Lawrence describes RHIC in action:
It is the ultra-sophisticated application of post-hypnotic suggestion
triggered at will [italics in original] by radio transmission. It is a
recurring hypnotic state, re-induced automatically at intervals by the same
radio control. An individual is brought under hypnosis. This can be done
either with his knowledge — or without it by use of narco-hypnosis, which
can be brought into play under many guises. He is then programmed to perform
certain actions and maintain certain attitudes upon radio signal.[53]
Other authors have mentioned this technique — specifically Walter
Bowart (in his book Operation Mind Control) and journalist James Moore, who,
in a 1975 issue of a periodical called Modern People, claimed to have
secured a 350-page manual, prepared in 1963, on RHIC-EDOM.[54] He received
the manual from CIA sources, although — interestingly — the technique is
said to have originated in the military.
The following quote by Moore on RHIC should prove especially
intriguing to abduction researchers who have confronted odd “personality
shifts” in abductees:
Medically, these radio signals are directed to certain parts of the
brain. When a part of your brain receives a tiny electrical impulse from
outside sources, such as vision, hearing, etc., an emotion is produced —
anger at the sight of a gang of boys beating an old woman, for example. The
same emotion of anger can be created by artificial radio signals sent to
your brain by a controller. You could instantly feel the same white-hot
anger without any apparent reason.[55]
Lawrence’s sources imparted an even more tantalizing — and frightening
— revelation:
...there is already in use a small EDOM generator-transmitter which
can be concealed on the body of the person. Contact with this person — a
casual handshake or even just a touch — transmits a tiny electronic charge
plus an ultra-sonic signal tone which for a short while will disturb the
time orientation of the person affected.[56]
If RHIC-EDOM exists, it goes a long way toward providing an earthbound
rationale for alien abductions — or, at least, certain aspects of them. The
phenomenon of “missing time” is no longer mysterious. Abductee implants,
both intracerebral and otherwise, are explained. And note the reference to a
“recurring hypnotic state, re-induced automatically by the same radio
command.” This situation may account for “repeater” abductees who, after
their initial encounter, have regular sessions of “missing time” and
abduction — even while a bed-mate sleeps undisturbed.
At present, I cannot claim conclusively that RHIC-EDOM is real. To my
knowledge, the only official questioning of a CIA representative concerning
these techniques occurred in 1977, during Senate hearings on CIA drug
testing. Senator Richard Schweicker had the following interchange with Dr.
Sidney Gottlieb, an important MKULTRA administrator:
Schweicker: Some of the projects under MKULTRA involved hypnosis, is
that correct?
Gottlieb: Yes.
Schweicker: Did any of these projects involve something called radio
hypnotic intracerebral control, which is a combination, as I understand it,
in layman’s terms, of radio transmissions and hypnosis.
Gottlieb: My answer is “No.”
Schweicker: None whatsoever?
Gottlieb: Well, I am trying to be responsive to the terms that you
used. As I remember it, there was a current interest, running interest, all
the time in what affects people’s standing in the field of radio energy
have, and it could easily have been that somewhere in many projects, someone
was trying to see if you could hypnotize someone easier if he was standing
in a radio beam. That would seem like a reasonable piece of research to do.
Schweicker went on to mention that he had heard testimony that radar
(i.e., microwaves) had been used to wipe out memory in animals; Gottlieb
responded, “I can believe that, Senator.”[57]
Gottlieb’s blandishments do not comfort much. For one thing, the good
doctor did not always provide thoroughly candid testimony. (During the same
hearing he averred that 99 percent on the CIA’s research had been openly
published; if so, why are so many MKULTRA subprojects still “dark,” and why
does the Agency still go to great lengths to protect the identities of its
scientists?[58]) We should also recognize that the CIA’s operations are
compartmentalized on a “need-to-know” basis; Gottlieb may not have had
access to the information requested by Schweicker. Note that the MKULTRA
rubric circumscribed Gottlieb’s statement: RHIC-EDOM might have been the
focus of another program. (There were several others: MKNAOMI, MKACTION,
MKSEARCH, etc.) Also keep in mind the revelation by “Deep Trance” that the
CIA concentrated on psychoelectronics after the termination of MKULTRA in
1963. Most significantly: RHIC-EDOM is described by both Lawrence and Moore
as a product of military research; Gottlieb spoke only of matters pertaining
to CIA. He may thus have spoken truthfully — at least in a strictly
technical sense — while still misleading the Congressional interlocutors.
Personally, I believe that the RHIC-EDOM story deserves a great deal
of further research. I find it significant that when Dr. Petter Lindstrom
examined X-rays of Robert Naesland, a Swedish victim of brain-implantation,
the doctor authoritatively cited Were We Controlled? in his letter of
response.[59] This is the same Dr. Lindstrom noted for his pioneering use of
ultrasonics in neurosurgery.[60] Lincoln Lawrence’s book has received a
strong endorsement indeed.
Bowart’s Operation Mind Control contains a significant interview with
an intelligence agent knowledgeable in these areas. Granted, the reader has
every right to adopt a skeptical attitude toward information culled from
anonymous sources; still, one should note that this operative’s statements
confirm, in pertinent part, Lincoln Lawrence’s thesis.[61]
Most importantly: The open literature on brain-wave entrainment and
the behavioral effects of electromagnetic radiation substantiates much of
the RHIC-EDOM story — as we shall see.
That’s Entrainment
Robert Anton Wilson, an author with a devoted cult following, recently
has taken to promoting a new generation of “mind machines” designed to
promote creativity, stimulate learning, and alter consciousness — i.e.,
provide a drug-less high. Interestingly, these machines can also induce
“Out-of-Body-Experiences,” in which the percipient mentally “travels” to
another location while his body remains at rest.[62] This rapidly-developing
technology has spawned a technological equivalent to the drug culture;
indeed, the aficionados of the electronic buzz even have their own magazine,
Reality Hackers. I strongly suspect that we will hear much of these machines
in the future.
One such device is called the “hemi-synch.” This headphone-like
invention produces slightly different frequencies in each ear; the brain
calculates the difference between these frequencies, resulting in a rhythm
known as the “binaural beat.” The brain “entrains” itself to this beat —
that is, the subject’s EEG slows down or speeds up to keep pace with its
electronic running partner.[63]
The brain has a “beat” of its own.
This rhythm was first discovered in 1924 by the German psychiatrist
Hans Berger, who recorded cerebral voltages as part of a telepathy
study.[64] He noted two distinct frequencies: alpha (8-13 cycles per
second), associated with a relaxed, alert state, and beta (14-30 cycles per
second), produced during states of agitation and intense mental
concentration. Later, other rhythms were noted, which are particularly
important for our present purposes: theta (4-7 cycles per second), a
hypnogogic state, and delta (.5 to 3.5 cycles per second), generally found
in sleeping subjects.[65]
The hemi-synch — and related mind-machines — can produce alpha or
theta waves, on demand, according to the operator’s wishes. A
suitably-entrained brain is much more responsive to suggestion, and is even
likely to experience vivid hallucinations.
I have spoken to several UFO abductees who describe a “stereophonic
sound” effect — exactly similar to that produced by the hemi-synch —
preceding many “encounters.” Of course, one usually administers the
hemi-synch via headphones, but I see no reason why the effect cannot be
transmitted via the above-described stimoceiver. Again, I remind the reader
of the abductee with an implant just inside her ear canal.
There’s more than one way to entrain a brain. Michael Hutchison’s
excellent book Mega Brain details the author’s personal experiences with
many such devices — the Alpha-stim, TENS, the Synchro-energizer,
Tranquilite, etc. He recounts dazzling, Dali-esque hallucinations, as a
result of using this mind-expanding technology; moreover, he offers a
seductive argument that these devices may represent a true breakthrough in
consciousness-control, thereby fulfilling the dashed dream of the
hallucinogenic ’60s.
I wish to avoid a knee-jerk Luddite response to these fascinating
wonder-boxes. At the same time, I recognize the dangers involved. What about
the possibility of an outside operator literally “changing our minds” by
altering our brainwaves without our knowledge or permission? If these
machines can induce a hypnotic state, what’s to stop a skilled hypnotist
from making use of this state?
Granted, most of these devices require some physical interaction with
the subject. But a tool called the Bio-Pacer can, according to its
manufacturer, produce a number of mood altering frequencies — without
attachment to the subject. Indeed, the Bio-Pacer III (a high-powered
version) can affect an entire room. This device costs $275, according to the
most recent price sheet available.[66] What sort of machine might $27,500
buy? Or $275,000? What effects, what ranges might a million-dollar machine
be capable of?
The military certainly has that sort of money.
And they’re certainly interested in this sort of technology, according
to Michael Hutchison. His interview with an informant named Joseph Light
elicited some particularly provocative revelations. According to Light:
There are important elements in the scientific community, powerful
people, who are very much interested in these areas...but they have to keep
most of their work secret. Because as soon as they start to publish some of
these sensitive things, they have problems in their lives. You see, they
work on research grants, and if you follow the research being done, you find
that as soon as these scientists publish something about this, their
research funds are cut off. There are areas in bioelectric research where
very simple techniques and devices can have mind-boggling effects.
Conceivably, if you have a crazed person with a bit of a technical
background, he can do a lot of damage.[67]
This last statement is particularly evocative. In 1984, a violent
neo-Nazi group called The Order (responsible for the murder of talk-show
host Alan Berg) established contact with two government scientists engaged
in clandestine research to project chemical imbalances and render targeted
individuals docile via certain frequencies of electronic waves. For $100,000
the scientists were willing to deliver this information.[68]
Thus, at least one group of crazed individuals almost got the goods.
Wave Your Brain Goodbye
Every Senator and Congressional representative has a “wavie” file. So
do many state representatives. Wavies have even pled their case to private
institutions such as the Christic Institute.[69]
And who are the wavies?
They claim to be victims of clandestine bombardment with non-ionizing
radiation — or microwaves. They report sudden changes in psychological
states, alteration of sleep patterns, intracerebral voices and other sounds,
and physiological effects. Most people never realize how many wavies there
are in this country. I’ve spoken to a number of wavies myself.
Are these troubled individuals seeking an exterior rationale for their
mental problems? Maybe. Indeed, I’m sure that such is the case in many
instances. But the fact is that the literature on the behavioral effects of
microwaves, extra-low-frequencies (ELF) and ultra-sonics is such that we
cannot blithely dismiss all such claims.
For decades, American science and industry tried to convince the
population that microwaves could have no adverse effects on human beings at
sub-thermal levels — in other words, the attitude was, “If it can’t burn
you, it can’t hurt you.” This approach became increasingly difficult to
defend as reports mounted of microwave-induced physiological effects.
Technicians described “hearing” certain radar installations; users of radar
telescopes began developing cataracts at an appallingly high rate.[70] The
Soviets had long recognized the strange and sometimes subtle effects of
these radio frequencies, which is why their exposure standards have always
been much stricter.
Soviet microwave bombardment of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow prompted
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Project PANDORA (later
renamed), whose ostensible goal was to determine whether these pulsations
(reportedly 10 cycles per second, which puts them in the alpha range) could
be used for the purposes of mind control. I suspect that the “war on
Tchaikovsky Street,” as I call it,[71] was used, at least in part, as a
cover story for DARPA mind control research, and that the stories floated in
the news (via, for example, Jack Anderson’s column) about Soviet remote
brainwashing served the same propaganda purposes as did the bleatings of
Edward Hunter during the 1950s.[72]
What can low-level microwaves do to the mind?
According to a DIA report released under the Freedom of Information
Act,[73] microwaves can induce metabolic changes, alter brain functions, and
disrupt behavior patterns. PANDORA discovered that pulsed microwaves can
create leaks in the blood/brain barrier, induce heart seizures, and create
behavioral disorganization.[74] In 1970, a RAND Corporation scientist
reported that microwaves could be used to promote insomnia, fatigue,
irritability, memory loss, and hallucinations.[75]
Perhaps the most significant work in this area has been produced by
Dr. W. Ross Adey at the University of Southern California. He determined
that behavior and emotional states can be altered without electrodes —
simply by placing the subject in an electromagnetic field. By directing a
carrier frequency to stimulate the brain and using amplitude modulation to
“shape” the wave into a mimicry of a desired EEG frequency, he was able to
impose a 4.5 cps theta rhythm on his subjects — a frequency which he
previously measured in the hippocampus during avoidance learning. Thus, he
could externally condition the mind towards an aversive reaction.[76] (Adey
has also done extensive work on the use of electrodes in animals.[77])
According to another prominent microwave scientist, Allen Frey, other
frequencies could — in animal studies — induce docility.[78]
The controversial researcher Andrijah Puharich asserts that “a weak (1
mW) 4 Hz magnetic sine wave will modify human brain waves in 6 to 10
seconds. The psychological effects of a 4 Hz sine magnetic wave are negative
— causing dizziness, nausea, headache, and can lead to vomiting.”
Conversely, an 8 Hz magnetic sine wave has beneficial effects.[79] Though
some writers question Puharich’s integrity (perhaps correctly, considering
his involvement in the confused tale of Uri Geller), his claims here seem in
line with the findings of less-flamboyant experimenters.
As investigative journalist Anne Keeler writes:
Specific frequencies at low intensities can predictably influence
sensory processes... pleasantness-unpleasantness, strain-relaxation, and
excitement-quiescence can be created with the fields. Negative feelings and
avoidance are strong biological phenomena and relate to survival. Feelings
are the true basis of much “decision-making” and often occur as subthreshold
impressions... Ideas including names [my italics] can be synchronized with
the feelings that the fields induce.[80]
Adey and compatriots have compiled an entire library of frequencies
and pulsation rates which can affect the mind and nervous system. Some of
these effects can be extremely bizarre. For example, engineer Tom Jarski, in
an attempt to replicate the seminal work of F. Cazamalli, found that a
particular frequency caused a ringing sensation in the ears of his subjects
— who felt strangely compelled to bite the experimenters![81] On the other
hand, the diet-conscious may be intrigued by the finding that rats exposed
to ELF (extra-low-frequency) waves failed to gain weight normally.[82]
For our present purposes, the most significant electromagnetic
research findings concern microwave signals modulated by hypnoidal EEG
frequencies. Microwaves can act much like the “hemi-synch” device previously
described — that is, they can entrain the brain to theta rhythms.[83] I need
not emphasize the implications of remotely synchronizing the brain to
resonate at a frequency conducive to sleep, or to hypnosis.
Trance may be remotely induced — but can it be directed? Yes. Recall
the intracerebral voices mentioned earlier in our discussion of Delgado. The
same effect can be produced by “the wave.” Frey demonstrated in the early
1960s that microwaves could produce booming, hissing, buzzing, and other
intracerebral static (this phenomenon is now called “the Frey effect”); in
1973, Dr. Joseph Sharp, of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research,
expanded on Frey’s work in an experiment where the subject — in this case,
Sharp himself — “heard” and understood spoken words delivered via a
pulsed-microwave analog of the speaker’s sound vibrations.[84]
Dr. Robert Becker comments that “Such a device has obvious
applications in covert operations designed to drive a target crazy with
‘voices’ or deliver undetectable instructions to a programmed assassin.”[85]
In other words, we now have, at the push of a button, the technology either
to inflict an electronic Gaslight — or to create a true Manchurian
Candidate. Indeed, the former capability could effectively disguise the
latter. Who will listen to the victims, when the electronically-induced
hallucinations they recount exactly parallel the classical signals of
paranoid schizophrenia and/or temporal lobe epilepsy?
Perhaps the most ominous revelations, however, concern the mysterious
work of J.F. Schapitz, who in 1974 filed a plan to explore the interaction
of radio frequencies and hypnosis. He proposed the following:
In this investigation it will be shown that the spoken word of the
hypnotist may be conveyed by modulated electromagnetic energy directly into
the subconscious parts of the human brain [my italics] — i.e., without
employing any technical devices for receiving or transcoding the messages
and without the person exposed to such influence having a chance to control
the information input consciously.
He outlined an experiment, innocent in its immediate effects yet
chilling in its implications, whereby subjects would be implanted with the
subconscious suggestion to leave the lab and buy a particular item; this
action would be triggered by a certain cue word or action. Schapitz felt
certain that the subjects would rationalize the behavior — in other words,
the subject would seize upon any excuse, however thin, to chalk up his
actions to the working of free will.[86] His instincts on this latter point
coalesce perfectly with findings of professional hypnotists.[87]
Schapitz’s work was funded by the Department of Defense. Despite FOIA
requests, the results have never been publicly revealed.[88]
Final Thoughts on “The Wave”
I must again offer a caveat about possible disparities between the
“official” record of electromagnetism’s psychological effects and the hidden
history. Once more, we face a question of timing. How long ago did this
research really begin?
In the early years of this century, Nikola Tesla seems to have
stumbled upon certain of the behavioral effects of electromagnetic
exposure.[89] Cazamalli, mentioned earlier, conducted his studies in the
1930s. In 1934, E.L. Chaffe and R.U. Light published a paper on “A Method
for the Remote Control of Electrical Stimulation of the Nervous System.”[90]
From the very beginning of their work with microwaves, the Soviets explored
the more subtle physiological effects of electromagnetism — and despite the
bleatings of certain right-wing alarmists[91] that an “electromagnetic gap”
separates us from Soviet advances, East European literature in this area has
been closely monitored for decades by the West. ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD project
outlines, dating from the early 1950s, prominently mention the need to
explore all possible uses of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Another point worth mentioning concerns the combination of EMR and
miniature brain electrodes. The father of the stimoceiver, Dr. J.M.R.
Delgado, has recently conducted experiments in which monkeys are exposed to
electromagnetic fields, thereby eliciting a wide range of behavioral effects
— one monkey might fly into a volcanic rage while, just a few feet away, his
simian partner begins to nod off. Fascinatingly, when monkeys with brain
implants felt “the wave,” the effects were greatly intensified. Apparently,
these tiny electrodes can act as an amplifier of the electromagnetic
effect.[92]
This last point is important to our “alien abduction” thesis. Critics
might counter that any burst of microwave energy powerful enough to have
truly remote effects would probably also create a thermal reaction. That is,
if a clandestine operator propagated a “wave” from outside an abductee’s
bedroom (say, from a low-flying helicopter), or from a truck travelling
alongside the subject’s car), the power necessary to do the job might be
such that the microwave would cook the target before it got a chance to
launder his thoughts. Our abductee would end up like the victim of the
microwave “hit” in the finale of Jerzy Kozinsky’s Cockpit.
It’s a fair criticism. But Delgado’s work may give us our solution.
Once an abductee has been implanted — and if we are to trust hypnotic
regression accounts of abductees at all, the first implanting session may
occur in childhood — the chip-in-the-brain would act as an intensifier of
the signal. Such an individual could have any number of “UFO” experiences
while his or her bed partner dozes comfortably.
Furthermore, recent reports indicate that a “waver” can achieve
pinpoint accuracy without the use of Delgado-style implants. In 1985,
volunteers at the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, were
exposed to microwave beams as part of an experiment sponsored by the
Department of Energy and the New York State Department of Health. As The
Arizona Republic[93] described the experiment, “A matched control group sat
in the same room without being bombarded by non-ionizing radiation.” [My
italics.] Apparently, one can focus “the wave” quite narrowly — a fact which
has wide implications for abductees.
III. Applications
So we now have some idea of the tools available to the
“spy-chiatrists.” How have these tools been used?
This question necessarily involves some detective work. The Central
Intelligence Agency, under duress, provided some, though not enough,
documentation of its efforts to commandeer “the space between our ears.” We
know that these efforts were extensive, long-term, and at least partially
successful. We know also that these experiments used human subjects. But
who? When?
One paradox of this line of inquiry is that, for many readers, the
victims elicit sympathy only insofar as they remain anonymous.
Intellectually, we realize that MKULTRA and its allied projects must have
affected hundreds, probably thousands, of individuals. Yet we react with
deep suspicion whenever one of these individuals steps forward and
identifies himself, or whenever an independent investigator argues that mind
control has directed some newsworthy person’s otherwise inexplicable
actions. Where, the skeptic may rightfully ask, is the documentation
supporting such accusations? Most of the MKULTRA “paper trail” was
(allegedly) burnt at Richard Helms’ order; what’s left has been censored,
leaving black ink smudges wherever the names originally appeared. Claimed
mind control victims can, for the most part, only give us testimony — and
how reliable can such testimony be, especially in light of the fact that one
purpose of MKULTRA was to induce insanity? Anyone asserting that he was
victimized by the program might well be seeking an extrinsic excuse for his
own psychopathology. If you say that you are a manufactured madman, you were
probably mad to begin with: Catch 22.
When John Marks wrote The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate” he
received numerous letters from people insisting that they had been drugged,
“waved,” or otherwise abused by the CIA or the military. Most of these
communications went directly into his crank file. Perhaps many deserved that
destination; I know of at least one that did not.[94]
Marks did, however, devote much attention to Val Orlikov, a former
“patient” of perhaps the most notorious figure in the annals of American
medical crime: Dr. Ewen Cameron, a CIA-funded scientist heading the Allan
Memorial Institute at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Cameron, a
highly-respected mental health researcher,[95] experimented with a technique
he called “psychic driving,” a brainwashing program which involved
inflicting upon a subject an endless tape loop blaring selected messages,
16-to-24 hours a day, combined with massive electroshock and LSD. The
project’s “guinea pigs” were patients who had come to Allan Memorial with
relatively minor psychological complaints. Cameron’s experiments failed and
his theories were discredited, which may explain why the CIA and its
apologists now feel relatively comfortable discussing the Frankensteinian
efforts at Allan Memorial, as opposed to more successful work elsewhere.
Orlikov’s testimony has received much respectful attention from those
writers who have examined MKULTRA, and correctly so. When I studied the
files at the National Security Archives, I was particularly keen to read her
original letters to John Marks, for these pages had led to the unmasking of
an especially heinous CIA project. The letters, interestingly enough, proved
just as vague, disjointed, and bizarre as similar correspondence which
researchers routinely dismiss. Orlikov can’t be blamed for the hazy nature
of her recollections; a certain amount of fog is to be expected, given the
nature of the crime perpetrated against her. The important point is that her
story, ultimately, was found to be true. All of which leads me to wonder:
Why did her claims prompt investigation when those of others prompt only
dismissal? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that Orlikov’s husband became
a Canadian Member of Parliament. Any victims of CIA experimentation who wish
to be taken seriously ought, perhaps, first make sure to marry well.
Of course, we can easily forgive previous writers and readers whose
researches into MKULTRA have been biased in favor of complacency.[96] But we
can’t let this natural prejudice cripple our present investigation. Let us
examine, then, a few of the “horror stories” from the mind control
literature and highlight possible correlations to abductee testimony.
Palle Hardrup’s “Guardian Angel”
As mentioned previously, I have not delved much into the subject of
hypnosis in this paper — primarily because of space and time limitations,
but also because discussions of the possibilities of hypnosis per se tend to
cloud the issue of its use in conjunction with the above-mentioned
electronic techniques. Obviously, however, hypnosis is a major weapon in the
mind controller’s armament; in a forthcoming full-length work, I intend to
deal with this subject at much greater length.
Needless to say, one of the primary objectives of MKULTRA and related
projects was to determine whether one could hypnotically induce someone to
commit an anti-social act. This possibility remains one of the most
hotly-debated issues in hypnosis, for conventional wisdom asserts that no
individual can be hypnotized to commit an action which violates his interior
moral code. Martin Orne, editor of the prestigious International Journal of
Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis agrees with this axiom,[97] and he is in
a position to codify much of the established view on this topic. Orne,
however, is a veteran of MKULTRA, and furthermore seems to have lied — at
least in his original communications — to author John Marks about his
witting involvement with subproject 84.[98] While I respect much of Orne’s
ground-breaking work, his pronouncements do not hold, for this layman, an
Olympian unassailability.
To be sure, many other hypnosis experts, untainted by Company
connections, also discount the possibility that anti-social actions can be
induced. But a number of highly-experienced professionals — including Milton
Kline, William Kroger, George Estabrooks, John Watkins, and Herbert Spiegel
— have argued that such actions can, at least to some degree, be elicited by
an outside manipulator.
Occasionally, claims of hypnotically-induced anti-social behavior find
their way into the courtroom; one such case, which led to the incarceration
of the hypnotist, was the Palle Hardrup affair. This incident occurred in
Denmark in 1951.[99] Palle Hardrup robbed a bank, killing a guard in the
process, and later claimed that he had been instructed to do so by the
hypnotist Bjorn Nielsen. Nielsen eventually confessed to having engineered
the crime as a test of his hypnotic abilities.
The most significant aspect of this incident concerns the “pose”
Nielsen adopted to work his malicious designs. During the hypnosis sessions,
Nielsen hypnotically suggested that he was Hardrup’s “guardian angel,”
represented by the letter X. Hardrup testified that “There is another room
next door where Nielsen and I go and talk on our own. It is there that my
guardian spirit usually comes and talks to me. Nielsen says that X has a
task for me.”
One of these tasks was arranging for Hardrup’s girlfriend to have sex
with the hypnotist. The other tasks, he mentioned, included robbery and
murder. Nielsen convinced his victim that “X” wanted the robbery funds to be
used for worthwhile political goals. The end, Hardrup was told, justified
the means.
Compare this scenario to that encountered in the typical contactee
case, in which alien “guardians” convince their victims/subjects that the
encounter will eventually serve some unspecified “higher purpose.” Indeed,
in my interviews with abductees who have established a “long-term”
relationship with their visitors, I have found that some of them originally
believed themselves in contact with Hardrup-like angelic guardians. Only in
recent years was the “angel” pose discarded and the true “alien” form
revealed.
Thus we have one possible means of overcoming the proposition that
hypnosis cannot induce anti-social behavior. If a hypnotist lacks scruples,
and has access to a particularly susceptible subject, he can induce a
misperceived reality. Actions which we would abhor in an everyday context
become acceptable in specialized circumstances: A citizen who could never
commit murder on a suburban street might, if drafted into an army, kill on
the field of battle. In hypnosis, the mind becomes that battlefield. In the
words of Dr. John Watkins,
We behave on the basis of our perceptions. If our perceptions of a
situation can be altered so as to cause us to misconstrue it, or to develop
a false belief, then our behavior in relation to it will be drastically
altered. It is precisely in the area of changing perceptions that the
hypnotic modality demonstrates its most powerful effects. Hallucinations
both under hypnosis, and posthypnotic, can easily be induced in the
suggestible subject. He can be made to ignore painful stimuli, be apparently
unable to hear loud sounds, and “see” individuals who are not present [my
italics]. Moreover, attitudes and beliefs can be initiated in him which are
quite abnormal and often contrary to those which he previously held.[100]
If traditional hypnosis, unaided, can achieve such changes in
perception, one can only imagine the possibilities inherent in the
combination of hypnotic techniques with the psychoelectronic research
previously described.
Scientists such as Orne and Milton Erickson[101] have taken issue with
Watkins’ assertions. But the Hardrup case would appear to bear Watkins out.
If someone can be convinced that he, like Jeanne D’Arc, acts under the
influence of a supernatural higher power, then previously unthinkable
capabilities may be evinced and “impossible” actions carried forth. Indeed,
when we consider the extreme personality changes — and occasionally, the
heinous actions — elicited by leaders of certain cults, and occult
groups,[102] we understand the desirability of installing a hypnotic “cover
story” within a supernatural matrix. People will do for God — or the Devil,
or the Space Brothers — what they would not do otherwise.
The date of the Hardrup affair corresponds to the institution of
BLUEBIRD/ ARTICHOKE; it doesn’t require much imagination to see how this
case could have served as a model to the scientists researching those and
subsequent projects.
Screen Memory
According to declassified documents in the Marks files, a major
difficulty faced by the MKULTRA researchers concerned the “disposal
problem.” What to do with the victims of CIA-sponsored electroshock,
hypnosis, and drug experimentation? The Company resorted to distressing, but
characteristic, tactics: They disposed of their human guinea pigs by
incarcerating them in insane asylums, by performing icepick lobotomies, and
by ordering “executive actions.”[103]
A more sophisticated solution had to be found. One of the goals of the
CIA’s mind control efforts was the erasure of memory via hypnosis (and
drugs, electronics, lobotomies, etc.); not only would this hide what
occurred during the experimental indoctrination/programming sessions, it
would prove useful in the field. “Amnesia was a big goal,” confirms Victor
Marchetti, who points out its usefulness in dealing with contract agents:
“After you’ve done it, the agent doesn’t even know what he’s done...you send
him in, he does the job. When he comes out, you clean his head out.”[104]
The big problem: Despite hypnotically-induced amnesia, there would be
memory leaks — snippets of the repressed material would arise spontaneously,
in dreams, as flashbacks, etc. A proposed solution: give the subject a
“screen memory,” a false story; thus, even if he starts to recall the
material, he will recall it incorrectly.
Even the conservative Dr. Orne notes that:
A S [subject] who is able to develop good posthypnotic amnesia will
also respond to suggestions to remember events which did not actually occur.
On awakening, he will fail to recall the real events of the trance and will
instead recall the suggested events. If anything, this phenomenon is easier
to produce than total amnesia, perhaps because it eliminates the subjective
feeling of an empty space in memory.[105]
Not only would the screen memories fill in the uncomfortable blanks in
the subjects’ recollection, they would protect against revelation. One fear
of the MKULTRA scientists was that a hypno-programmed individual used as,
say, a courier, could be un-programmed by another hypnotist, perhaps working
for the enemy. Thus, the MKULTRA scientists decided to instill multiple
personalities — multiple cover stories, if you will — to confuse any
“unauthorized” hypnotist.[106]
One case using this technique centered on an assassin named Luis
Castillo, who, after his capture in the Philippines, was extensively
de-briefed and studied by experts in the employ of the National Bureau of
Investigation, that country’s equivalent to our FBI. Castillo was discovered
to have had at least four separate personalities hypnotically instilled;
each personality could be triggered by a specific cue. In one state, he
claimed to be Sgt. Manuel Angel Ramirez, of the Strategic Air Tactical
Command in South Vietnam; supposedly, “Ramirez” was the illegitimate son of
a certain pipe-smoking, highly-placed CIA official whose initials were
A.D.[107] Another personality claimed to be one of John F. Kennedy’s
assassins.
The main hypnotist involved with this case labelled these hypnotic
alter-egos “Zombie states.” The report on the case stated that “The Zombie
phenomenon referred to here is a somnambulistic behavior displayed by the
subject in a conditioned response to a series of words, phrases, and
statements, apparently unknown to the subject during his normal waking
state.”
Upon Castillo’s repatriation to the United States, the FBI claimed
that he had fabricated the story. In his book Operation Mind Control, Walter
Bowart makes a convincing case against the FBI’s claims. Certainly, many
aspects of the Castillo affair argue for his sincerity — including his
hypnotically-induced insensitivity to pain,[108] his maintenance of the
story (or stories) even when severely inebriated, and his apparently
programmed suicide attempts.
If Castillo told the truth, as I believe he did, then he manifested
both hypnotically-induced multiple personality and pseudomemory. The former
remains controversial; the latter has been repeatedly replicated in
experimental situations.[109]
This point is vitally important for students of the abduction
phenomenon. We cannot assume the accuracy of abduction descriptions given
during subsequent hypnotic regression. Moreover, we cannot even assume the
accuracy of spontaneously-arising recollections (i.e., abduction memories
not elicited through hypnotic regression). Indeed, responsible skeptics have
argued that hypnotic regression may prove inadvertently harmful, in that it
may lock in place a false remembrance. (Note, however, that other
psychiatric professionals consider hypnotic regression the best technique,
however flawed, in unlocking amnesia.[110] For my part, I maintain an
ambivalent and cautious attitude toward the use of hypnosis in abductee
work.)
Granted, it is all too easy for the debunkers to cry “confabulation”
to dismiss hypnotic testimony which does not conform to our preconceptions
about the possible; I do not intend to make this same error. Whenever
skeptics offer the phenomenon of pseudomemory to rationalize abduction
claims, they cite experimental situations in which pseudomemory was
originally created by a hypnotist.[111] These experiments can not be cited
as proof that an individual abductee spontaneously conjured up a fantasy
(which just happens to correspond to the details of hundreds of similar
“fantasies”). Rather, laboratory studies of pseudomemory creation prove my
point: Pseudomemory can be induced by previous hypnosis.[112]
In other words, an abductee may talk of aliens — when the reality was
something else entirely.
In correspondence with me, a noted abduction researcher noted an
instance in which an abductee recounted seeing a helicopter during his
experience; as the abductee testimony progressed, the helicopter turned into
a UFO. During one of the (quite few) regression sessions I attended, I heard
an exactly similar narrative. Hopkins would argue that the helicopter was a
“screen memory” hiding the awful reality of the UFO encounter. But does
Occam’s razor really cut that way? Shouldn’t we also consider the
possibility that the object in question really was a helicopter — which the
abductee was instructed to recall as a UFO?
The Super Spy
Among the released BLUEBIRD/ARTICHOKE/MKULTRA papers was the following
handwritten memorandum, unsigned and undated:
I have developed a technic which is safe and secure (free from
international censorship). It has to do with the conditioning of our own
people. I can accomplish this as a one-man job.
The method is the production of hypnosis by means of simple oral
medication. Then (with no further medication) the hypnosis is re-enforced
daily during the following three or four days.
Each individual is conditioned against revealing any information to an
enemy, even though subjected to hypnosis or drugging. If preferable, he may
be conditioned to give false information rather than no information.
In the margin of this document, one of Marks’ assistants wrote, “Is
this Wendt?” The reference here is to G. Richard Wendt, a professor employed
by project CHATTER who, in 1951, led both his Naval employers and the CIA on
a mind control merry-goose-chase, when an experiment similar to that
described above failed to produce results.[113] Even if the above memorandum
does describe an operational failure (and the tactics described in this memo
do not seem very feasible to me), we should not rest complacent. We now know
that, in at least one case, more sophisticated techniques made the above
scenario a reality.
I refer to the case of Candy Jones.
Her story has filled at least one book[114] and ought, one day, to
give rise to another. Obviously, I cannot here give all the details of this
fascinating and frightening narrative. But a precis is mandatory.
Ms. Jones (born Jessica Wilcox) achieved star status as a model during
World War II, and later established her own modelling agency. An FBI man
requested her to allow her place of business to be used as a “mail drop” for
the Bureau and “another government agency” (presumably, the CIA); Candy,
deeply patriotic, accepted the proposition gladly. Toiling on the fringes of
the clandestine world, Candy eventually came into contact with a “Dr.
Gilbert Jensen,” who worked, in turn, with a “Dr. Marshall Burger.” (Both
names are pseudonyms.) Unknown to her, these doctors had been employed as
“spy-chiatrists” by the CIA. Using a job interview as a cover, Jensen
induced hypnosis, found Candy to be a particularly responsive subject — and
proceeded to use her as other scientists would use a rhesus monkey. She
became a test subject for the CIA’s mind control program.
Her job — insofar as it is known — was to provide a clandestine
courier service.[115] Estabrooks had outlined the basic idea years earlier:
Induce hypnosis via a disguised technique, give the messenger information to
memorize, hypnotically “erase” the message from conscious memory, and
install a post-hypnotic suggestion that the message (now buried within the
subconscious) will be brought forth only upon a specific cue. If the
hypnotist can create such a courier, ultra-security can be guaranteed; even
torture won’t cause the messenger to tell what he knows — because he doesn’t
know that he knows it.[116] According to the highly respected Dr. Milton
Kline, “Evidence really does exist that has not been published” proving that
Estabrooks’ perfect secret agent could be successfully evoked.[117]
Candy was one such success story. Success, in this context, means that
she could be — and was — brutally tortured and abused while running
assignments for the CIA. All the MKULTRA toys were brought into play:
hypnosis, drugs, conditioning — and electronics. Using these devices, Jensen
and Burger managed to:
? install a “duplicate personality,”
? create amnesia of both the programming sessions and the field
assignments,
? turn Candy into a vicious, hate-mongering bigot, the better to isolate
her from the rest of humanity (previously, her associates considered her
noteworthy for her racial tolerance; her modelling agency was one of the
first to break the color barrier), and
— program her to commit suicide at the end of her usefulness to the
agency.
The programming techniques used on her were flawed. She breached
security when she married famed New York radio personality John Nebel,[118]
who, using hypnotic regression, elicited the long-repressed truth.
Eventually, the “Other Candy” was bade farewell, and the programming broken.
Skeptics might find Candy’s story as incredible as the abduction
accounts — after all, an amateur had conducted her hypnotic regression, and
the possibility of confabulation always lurks. Nevertheless, I feel that the
veracity of her narrative has been established beyond reasonable doubt. In
her hypnotic regression sessions, she recalled being programmed at a
government-connected institute in northern California — which, as John
Marks’ investigators later proved, was indeed heavily involved with
government-funded brainwashing research.[119] Marks himself believes Candy’s
story — not least, because the details of the programming methods used on
her were substantiated by documents released after her book was
published.[120] Interviews with Milton Kline, Dr. Frances Jakes, John
Watkins and others provided the testimony that the programming of Candy
Jones was feasible — and Deep Trance substantiated the story.[121]
Recently, the case has received important “indirect” confirmation:
Investigators interested in follow-up research have filed FOIA requests with
the CIA for all papers relating to Candy Jones. The agency admits that it
has a substantial file on her, but refuses to release any part of it. If her
tale is false, then why would the CIA be so reluctant to deliver the
information? Indeed, why would they have a file in the first place?[122]
The final confirmation of Candy’s tale requires a revelation — one
which I make with some trepidation, even though the individual named is
dead.
“Marshall Burger” was really Dr. William Kroger.[123]
Kroger, long associated with the espionage establishment, had written
the following in 1963:
“...a good subject can be hypnotized to deliver secret information.
The memory of this message could be covered by an artificially-induced
amnesia. In the event that he should be captured, he naturally could not
remember that he had ever been given the message...however, since he had
been given a post-hypnotic suggestion, the message would be subject to
recall through a specific cue.”[124]
If Candy confabulated her story, why did she name this particular
scientist, who, writing theoretically in 1963, predicted the subsequent
events in her life?[125]
After l’Affair Jones, Kroger transferred his base of operations to
UCLA — specifically, to the Neuropsychiatric Institute run by Dr. Louis
Jolyon West, an MKULTRA veteran. There he wrote Hypnosis and Behavior
Modification,[126] with a preface by Martin Orne (another MKULTRA veteran)
and H.J. Eysenck (still another MKULTRA veteran). The finale of this opus
contains chilling hints of the possibilities inherent in combining hypnosis
with ESB, implants, and conditioning — though Kroger is careful to point out
that “we are not concerned that man might be conditioned by rewards and
punishments through electronic brain stimulation to be controlled like
robots.”[127] He may not be concerned — but perhaps we ought to be.
The control of Candy Jones gives us much information useful to our
“alien abduction” hypothesis.
1. Her torture sessions — inflicted during her programming by her CIA
masters, and on missions by as-yet mysterious persons — seem strikingly like
the otherwise senselessly painful “examinations” allegedly conducted aboard
alien spacecraft.
2. Her personality shifts roughly parallel those experienced by
certain UFO abductees.
3. Despite her brutalization, she remained “loyal” to Drs. Jensen and
Burger. This bewildering behavior reminds me of my first abductee
interviews, during which I heard ghastly descriptions of UFO torture
sessions — followed by protestations of limitless love for the alien
pain-mongers.
4. Like many abductees, Candy had to attend regular “conditioning”
sessions. Repeated exposure to the programming is necessary to effect
continuous control.
5. To maintain their hammerlock on her mind, Candy’s handlers
programmed her to remain isolated. Specifically, they instilled a deep
paranoia toward other human beings; “outsiders” were probable enemies, out
to use or abuse her. I have seen this pattern consistently in my own work
with abductees.[128] Skeptics would argue that unreasonable abductee fears
probably indicate paranoid schizophrenia — one symptom of which can, indeed,
be hallucinatory experiences. But most abductees are easily hypnotized,
while paranoid schizophrenics are extremely difficult to “put under,”
according to Dr. Edward Simpson-Kallas, a psychiatrist with wide experience
in the area of forensic hypnosis.[129] If, however, those unreasonable fears
had been hypnotically induced, the contradiction is resolved.
6. Candy was the product of an unhappy childhood, hence her propensity
toward multiple personality.[130] Many of the “repeater” abductees I have
interviewed had similarly depressing family histories.[131]
7. The story of Candy Jones also has what we might call a “negative
relevance” to the abduction accounts. Because the Controllers did not
establish a hypnotic cover story, or pseudomemory, the true facts of the
case managed to percolate into her conscious mind. No matter how thorough
the post-hypnotic amnesia, leaks will occur — hence the need for a false
memory, to fill the gap of recollection. The CIA learns from its mistakes.
Candy’s hypno-programming broke down in early 1973 — the year the “alien
disguise” became (if my hypothesis proves correct) standard operating
procedure.[132] (Milton Kline accepted the Candy Jones story, but considered
the job amateurish and inconsistent with the best work done at that
time.[133] Perhaps the major fault was the lack of a pseudomemory cover
story?)
Bases of Suspicion
“Underground base” rumors are as hot as jalapenos in the UFO field
right now, and several of these stories involve abductions.
For example, a sideshow of the famous Bentwaters UFO case involves the
abduction of an airman named Larry Warren to an underground cavity beneath
the military base. There, while in what he later described as “a bit of a
drugged state,” he saw aliens and human beings — military figures — working
side-by-side.[134]
I have spoken to another abductee, Nancy Wright, who was allegedly
taken to an underground chamber ten miles north of Edwards AFB, California.
As this was a multiple-witness event, and Ms. Wright has not attempted to
capitalize on the story for financial gain, I tend to credit her story.[135]
According to abduction researcher Miranda Parks, an elderly couple living in
the vicinity was also abducted in an exactly similar fashion.[136]
In 1979, Paul Bennewitz and Leo Sprinkle researched a particularly
controversial abduction involving a young woman (name unrevealed) who was
apparently taken to a facility where aliens processed fluids and body parts
from a cattle mutilation. This investigation seems to have led to the
government harassment of Bennewitz, in which some form of mind control (or,
as I have previously referred to it, “electronic Gaslight”) may have played
a part.[137]
How do we account for these tales of alleged alien skullduggery
carried out in conjunction with the military? I, for one, cannot credit the
generally-unsubstantiated tales of “cosmic conspiracy” now promulgated by
ex-intelligence agents such as John Lear and William Cooper. While I cannot
assert insincerity on the part of these men, I often wonder if they have
been used as conduits — witting or unwitting — in a sophisticated
disinformation scheme.
A simpler, though no less chilling, explanation for the “base”
abductions may be found in the story of Dr. Louis Jolyon West, now notorious
for his participation in MKULTRA experiments with LSD.[138] Inspired by
Violence and the Brain (a book by Drs. Frank Ervin and Vernon H. Mark which
ascribed inner city turmoil to a “genetic defect” within rebellious blacks),
West proposed, in 1973, a Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence,
where potentially violent individuals could be dealt with prophylactically.
And who were these individuals? According to West’s proposal, the
noteworthy factors indicating a violent predisposition were “sex (male), age
(youthful), ethnicity (black) and urbanicity.” How to deal with them? “...by
implanting tiny electrodes deep within the brain, electrical activity can be
followed in areas that cannot be measured from the surface of the scalp...it
is even possible to record bioelectrical changes in the brains of
freely-moving subjects, through the use of remote monitoring techniques...”
By monitoring the subjects’ EEGs remotely, potentially violent episodes
could be identified.
For our purposes, the most significant aspect of this proposal had to
do with location. In a secret communication to Dr. J.M. Stubblebine,
director of the California State Department of Health (fortunately, this
missive was “leaked” to the public), West disclosed that he intended to
house his Center in an abandoned Nike missile base, whose location was
accessible yet relatively remote. “The site is securely fenced,” West wrote.
“Comparative studies could be carried out there, in an isolated but
convenient location, of experimental model programs, for the alteration of
undesirable behavior.”[139]
Public outcry stopped these plans. But was this scheme truly
eliminated? Or was it merely modified, stripped (temporarily) of its overtly
racial overtones and relocated to some less-accessible spot?
One thing is certain: A CIA “spy-chiatrist” favored secret behavior
control experimentation in a remote military installation. Perhaps someone
within the espionage establishment’s mind-modification divisions still
thinks highly of the idea. If so, the disposal problem would once again rear
its ugly head, should “visitors” to these installations ever reappear in
outside society. Again, a hypno-programmed cover story — the less
believable, the better — would prove invaluable.
The Scandinavian Connection
Many books have been written about abductees, yet few exist about the
victims of mind control. I cannot understand this situation; the reality of
UFOs is still controversial, yet the existence of mind control was verified
in two (heavily compromised) congressional investigations and in thousands
of FOIA documents. Nevertheless, the abductees find many a sympathetic ear,
while those few who dare to proclaim themselves the victims of known
government programs rarely find anyone to hear them out. Our prejudices on
this score are regrettable, for if we listened to the “controllees” we would
hear many details strikingly similar to those mentioned by UFO abductees.
Two cases in point: Martti Koski and Robert Naeslund.
Koski, a Finnish citizen, claims to have been a victim of mind control
experimentation while visiting Canada. Shortly after his experience began,
he attempted to broadcast his situation to the world and draw attention to
his plight. Few listened. Many of his details were bizarre, and not being a
native speaker of English, he could not express himself convincingly to
those he approached for help. Yet many aspects of his story correspond
closely to known details of MKULTRA and related programs.
Naeslund, a Swedish citizen, tells a similar story. Moreover, his
claims were backed by special evidence: X-rays revealed an implant in his
brain. Naeslund actually went to the extreme of having his implant tested by
electronic technicians employed by Hewlett-Packard. A Greek surgeon
performed the necessary trepanation to remove the device.
Many aspects of the Koski and Naeslund stories correspond to my
hypothesis. Koski, for example, was at one point told that the doctors
afflicting him were actually “aliens from Sirius.” At another point, he was
led to believe that he was under the direction of “the Lord.” (As I
previously indicated, manipulation of religious imagery could help induce
anti-social behavior; the subject’s super-ego can be nullified if he
believes that he follows commands from on high. Such manipulation may
explain the more bizarre aspects of Betty Andreasson Luca’s abduction.[140])
Naeslund’s implant was originally placed through his nasal cavity. He
first realized that something terrible had happened to him after an
experience of missing time, followed by an inexplicable nosebleed.
This detail will be instantly familiar to anyone who has studied
abductions; I have encountered it in my own conversations with abductees.
For an excellent example in the UFO literature, I refer the reader to the
case of Susan Ransted, as detailed in Kevin D. Randle’s The UFO
Casebook;[141] the background of alleged contactee Diane Tessman is also
noteworthy in this regard.[142] Intriguingly, I have located a reference in
the open literature to the use, in animal study, of nasally-implanted
electrodes for the measurement of electromagnetic radiation effects.[143]
There are other claimed mind control victims bearing evidence of
implants; note, especially, the fascinating case of James Petit, a
CIA-connected pilot and alleged brainwashing alumnus; X-rays of his cranium
have revealed abductee-style implants — fitting, perhaps, since his body
bears abductee-style scars.[144] Conversely, certain abductees will, if
allowed a thorough and sympathetic hearing, deliver testimony strongly
agreeing with Koski’s narrative.
Helicopters and Disks
The bizarre story of Rex Niles and his sister (not named in news
accounts) may shed interesting light on a variety of abductee cases,
particularly that of Betty and Barney Hill.[145] Niles, the high-rolling
owner of a Woodland Hills defense subcontracting firm (Rex Rep) was fingered
by authorities investigating defense industry kickbacks. He became an
extraordinarily cooperative witness in the investigation — until he was
targeted by his enemies, who allegedly used psychoelectronics as harassment.
The following excerpt from the Los Angeles Times article on Niles is
particularly compelling:
He [Niles] has produced testimony from his sister, a Simi Valley woman
who swears that helicopters have repeatedly circled her home. An engineer
measured 250 watts of microwaves in the atmosphere outside Niles’ house and
found a radioactive disc underneath the dash of his car [my italics].
A former high school friend, Lyn Silverman, claimed that her home
computer went haywire when Niles stepped close to it.
No aliens in this story — yet how similar it is to tales of alien
abduction! The low-flying helicopters, of course, are frequently reported by
abduction victims — the Betty Andreasson Luca case provides the best-known
example.[146] The haywire electronics equipment is also frequently
encountered in putative abduction cases; I have spoken (independently) to
three women who claimed to have been able to disturb or shut off televisions
and stereos simply by walking past the devices; one woman even claimed she
had switched off her TV simply by pointing at it!
But the radioactive disc is especially intriguing. As former FBI agent
Ted Gunderson recently explained to my associate Alexander Constantine,
magnetic radioactive discs have long been used by the clandestine services
as cancer-inducing “silent killers” — i.e., as tools of assassination. Not
only that. The disk calls to mind one little-remembered detail of the Hill
case — the dozen-or-so circular “shiny spots,” each the size of a silver
dollar, found on the trunk of her car directly after the abduction. A
compass needle reacted wildly when placed near these spots. Could they have
marked the location where an electromagnetic or radioactive device, similar
to that found by Niles, was placed on the car? (Such a device might have
been held to the spot magnetically, hence the circular impressions.) If so,
then the disorienting EMR could have helped induce the Hills’ “UFO
sighting.”
The Military and Mind Control
Some time ago, I attended hypnotic regression sessions in which the
subject — a claimed UFO abductee — recalled undergoing a mysterious “brain
operation” at a veteran’s hospital in California. The operation was
performed by human beings, not aliens. Interestingly, this same hospital was
mentioned in two other cases I encountered. These other claims were not made
by abductees, but by people alleged to have been victims of mind control
experimentation.
One of these claimants, a former Navy SEAL who undertook numerous
dangerous missions in Vietnam, favorably impressed me with the wealth of
detail in his story.[147] This individual — I’ve taken to calling him “the
trained SEAL” — had received specialized combat training at a military base
in California; he claims that at one point during this training he was
drugged, hypnotized, possibly placed under some form of electronic control,
and subjected to the extremes of pain/pleasure operant conditioning. One
peculiar detail of his story concerns the “reward” aspect of the
conditioning: When properly acquiescent, he was given unlimited sexual
access to a woman who, the SEAL avers, was herself the victim of
brainwashing!
Unbelievable as this last claim may seem, I found it oddly resonant
when I later interviewed a prominent abductee in the Southern California
area, who bravely offered me details on a puzzling, albeit quite delicate,
incident in her past. Still an attractive woman, she recalled for me —
indeed, seemed strangely compelled to describe — an early love affair with a
young soldier training at a military base near her home. She cannot recall
the soldier’s name. All she remembers is that one day he started living at
her family’s house; she has no memory of how the arrangement began, and her
parents have never felt comfortable discussing the matter. Although
unattracted to this soldier, she felt compelled to become intimate with him,
adopting a pliant, obeisant attitude that was quite out of character for
her. Later, the soldier went on to covert missions in Vietnam.
Of course, a young person’s psycho-sexual development is never smooth,
and the incident related above may merely have represented one peculiarly
upsetting bump in that notoriously rough road. Still, some of the details of
this story — particularly the parents’ attitude, the woman’s personality
shift, and her subsequent memory lapses — are striking, and I treat with
respect the abductee’s intuition that this minor enigma in her personal
history could, if properly understood, shed light on her later “missing
time” experiences.
Could the “trained SEAL” have been right? Was there, is there, a
coterie of hypno-programmed soldiers conducting particularly hazardous
missions? And do the programmers have at their disposal a “ladies’
auxiliary,” so to speak, of hypnotized camp followers?
If the SEAL’s story stood alone, skeptics could easily dismiss it
(provided they did not sit, as I did, face-to-face with the story’s teller,
listening to all the grisly and unsettling details). But other veterans have
added their voices to this grim tale. Daniel Sheehan, of the Christic
Institute, claims that his organization has spoken to half-a-dozen
individuals with narratives similar to my SEAL informant. All had received
“processing,” so to speak, within the context of standard military training;
after programming and specialized combat instruction by mercenaries, the
recruits were placed “on hold,” to be used as situations arose — and some of
those situations occurred within the United States.[148]
Walter Bowart began his own researches into mind control by placing an
ad in “Soldier-Of-Fortune”-style publications, asking for correspondence
from veterans who experienced inexplicable lapses in memory or strange
behavior modification techniques while serving in Vietnam; he received over
100 replies. Bowart devoted an entire chapter to one of these respondents —
an Air Force veteran named David, who ended his four-year tour of duty
recalling only that he had spent the time “having fun, skin diving, laying
on the beach, collecting shells...It never dawned on me until later that I
must have done something while I was in the service.” (An obvious example of
screen memory.) He was also “assigned” a girlfriend whose name he cannot now
recall, despite the length and deep intimacy of the affair.[149] The
parallels to the SEAL’s story and the abductee’s account should be obvious.
We even have a confession, of sorts, from a scientist who specialized
in one aspect of this sort of training. Lt. Commander Thomas Narut, of the
U.S. Naval Hospital at the NATO headquarters in Naples, Florida, admitted
during a lecture in Oslo that recruits in Naples underwent
“Clockwork-Orange”-style behavior modification sessions. Trainees would be
strapped into chairs with their eyelids clamped open while watching films of
industrial accidents and African circumcision ceremonies — films frequently
used by psychologists as a means of inducing stress in experimental
situations. Unlike the protagonist in Clockwork Orange, who learned
revulsion at the sight of violence, Narut’s soldiers were taught to accept
and enjoy bloodshed, to view it with equanimity. Similar techniques were
used to dehumanize potential enemies. Graduates of this program became, in
Narut’s words, “hit men and assassins,” to be placed in American embassies
throughout the world.
When questioned by reporters about these claims, the American
government denied the story; Narut — after a long incommunicado period and
apparent coercion — later explained to journalists that he had merely spoken
theoretically. If so, why did he originally describe the behavior
modification procedure as an ongoing program?[150]
And while it may seem frivolous to return to the subject of abductions
after examining such grim data, I should remind the reader of the many
abduction accounts in which abductees recall being forced to watch certain
stress-inducing motion pictures. The aliens, it seems, have learned a few
lessons from Dr. Narut.
Narut, of course, concentrated on selective programming of individual
American soldiers; on the other side of the mind control spectrum, Defense
Department specialists have also concentrated on methods to render entire
enemy battalions “combat ineffective.” Electromagnetic weaponry, intended to
wipe out the aggression of the enemy, is the province of DARPA, under the
direction of Dr. Jack Verona. These projects remain fairly mysterious; we do
know, however, that one operation, SLEEPING BEAUTY, employed the services of
Dr. Michael Persinger, a scientist who has expressed interesting views
regarding UFOs.
Persinger discovered a method of using ELF waves to induce the brain’s
MAST cells to release histamine; should a battlefield commander wish to
subject his enemy to mass bouts of vomiting, Persinger’s trick could do the
job even faster than a Tobe Hooper movie. The method works on animals. “The
question,” writes mind control researcher Larry Collins, “is how to get from
point A to point B without violating one of the most rigorous commandments
of Government ethics — thou shalt not conduct experiments like that on human
beings.”[151]
If Collins studied the record a little more carefully, he might
realize that the government hasn’t always regarded this commandment as
something graven in stone. As Milton Kline put it:
“Ethical factors involved in most research would preclude having
positive results. Those ethical factors don’t always hold with government
research. The research which has given really positive results has not been
limited by ethical constraints.”[152] [My italics.]
The Ultimate Motive For Mind Control
Hypnosis hard-liners of the Orne school would almost certainly dismiss
the foregoing veterans’ accounts of the use of hypnosis, drugs and
behavioral conditioning on American fighting men. Why, the skeptics would
ask, would anyone attempt to create a “Manchurian Candidate” when the
military services, using entirely conventional means, can create a “Rambo”?
There have always been recruits for even the most hazardous duties; what
need of hypnosis?
The need, in fact, is absolute.
The modern battlefield has little place for the traditional soldier.
Advanced weaponry requires an increasing level of technical sophistication,
which in turn requires a cool-headed operator. But the all-too-human
combatant — though capable of extraordinary acts of courage under the most
stressful conditions imaginable — does not possess inexhaustible reserves of
sang-froid. Eventually, breakdowns will occur. Per-capita psychiatric
casualties have increased dramatically in each successive American conflict.
As Richard Gabriel, the excellent historian of the role of psychiatry in
warfare, writes:
Modern warfare has become so lethal and so intense that only the
already insane can endure it...Modern war requiring continuous combat will
increase the degree of fatigue on the soldier to heretofore unknown levels.
Physical fatigue — especially the lack of sleep — will increase the rate of
psychiatric casualties enormously. Other factors — high rates of indirect
fire, night fighting, lack of food, constant stress, large numbers of
casualties — will ensure that the number of psychiatric casualties will
reach disastrous proportions. And the number of casualties will overburden
the medical structure to the point of collapse.
The ability to treat psychiatric casualties will all but disappear.
There will be no safe forward areas in which to treat soldiers debilitated
by mental collapse. The technology of modern war has made such locations
functionally obsolete...[153]
According to Gabriel, the military intends to meet this challenge by
creating “the chemical soldier,” a designer-drugged zombie in fighting man’s
uniform:
On the battlefields of the future we will witness a true clash of
ignorant armies, armies ignorant of their own emotions and even of the
reasons for which they fight. Soldiers on all sides will be reduced to
fearless chemical automatons who fight simply because they can do nothing
else...Once the chemical genie is out of the bottle, the full range of human
mental and physical actions become targets for chemical control...Today it
is already possible by chemical or electrical stimulation to increase the
aggression levels of the human being by stimulating the amygdala, a section
of the brain known to control aggression and rage. Such “human potential
engineering” is already a partial reality and the necessary technical
knowledge increases every day.[154]
While this passage speaks of drugs and electronics, we can safely
assume that the planners of battle would not refrain from using any other
promising technique.
Gabriel writes primarily of large-scale battle scenarios, but based on
his information, we can fairly deduce that the mind-controlled soldier will
also play a role in the surgical strike, the covert operation, the
infiltration behind enemy lines by units of the Special Forces. On such
missions, United States personnel have increasingly relied on torture as a
means of interrogation and intimidation,[155] and as such barbarism becomes
standard procedure the American fighting man of the future will need to find
within himself unprecedented reserves of brutality. Will the average
recruit, culled from the nation’s suburbs and reared on traditional ideals,
possess such reserves?
Vietnam proved that the soldier, despite a barrage of propaganda
intended to cloud his discernment, will sense the difference between
fighting for legitimate defense interests and fighting to protect political
hegemony. To forestall this realization, or to render it irrelevant,
military planners must withdraw the human combatant and replace him with a
new species of warrior. The soldier of the future will not discern; he will
merely do. He will not be a butcher; he will be the butcher’s knife — a tool
among other tools, thoughtless and effective.
And it is my contention that to create this soldier of the future, the
controllers need a continuing program, one designed to test each new method
and combination of methods for conquering the human mind. One primary goal
of this program must include expanding the human capacity for stress and
violence. Subjects enrolled in such experimental procedures will experience
pain, and will learn to accept the pain. Eventually, they will learn to
inflict it, without remorse or even remembrance. The nation who first
creates this new soldier will possess a decisive advantage on the
“conventional” battlefield — as will the nation which first develops a means
of using mass mind control techniques to disable entire enemy platoons. This
paramount military necessity is the reason why I will never believe any
unconvincing reassurances that our nation’s clandestine scientists have
foregone or will forego research into behavior modification. This research
will never be mere history. What’s past is present, and today’s covert
experimentation will become tomorrow’s basic training.
A prototype of the future warrior may already be with us. The Navy
SEAL I interviewed spoke in horrifying detail of dismemberment without
emotion, of rape as routine, of killing without affect. And then forgetting
that he had killed. Even years later, he could not recall the stories behind
many of the wounds on his own body. He claims that whenever he would need
the services of the veteran’s hospital, doctors would re-hypnotize him
shortly after his admission, while a physician specifically cleared for such
work would examine his medical history, which was highly classified and kept
under lock and key.
According to the SEAL’s testimony, his memory block cracked little by
little, as a result of events too complex to recount here. Finally, years
after Vietnam, he was able to remember what he did.
Amnesia was a blessing.
IV. Abductions
Press and public now regard abductees as tony curiosities, yet
science, for the most part, still banishes their tales to the domain of the
damned, as Charles Fort defined damnation. So too with claimed victims of
mind control. The Voice of Authority tells us that MKULTRA belongs to
history; like Hasdrubal and Hitler, it threatened once, but no more. Anyone
insisting otherwise must be silenced by glib rationalization and selective
inattention.
Yet these two topics — UFO abductions and mind control — have more in
common than their mutual ostracization. The data overlap. If we could chart
these phenomena on a Venn diagram, we would see a surprisingly large
intersection between the two circles of information. It is this overlap I
seek to address.
Note, however, that I can not address all the other interesting and
important issues raised by the UFO abduction experience. For example, I have
written, admittedly rather vaguely, of nasal implants reported by abductees
— the sort of detail which might place an account in the “high strangeness”
category, and of course, a detail central to my thesis. But what percentage
of the percipients speak of such implants? A truly scientific analysis would
provide a figure. Unfortunately, I haven’t the resources to compile a
sufficiently large abductee sample from which one could draw statistics. Nor
can I make an over-arching qualitative analysis, measuring the value of
“high strangeness” reports against other abductee claims. All I can do is
note the available literature, and leave the reader to wonder, as I do,
whether the compilers of that literature concentrated on exceptional cases
or were biased in favor of the less fantastic abductee accounts. I have
supplemented readings of the abduction literature with my own interviews
with percipients — which, since abductees tend to know other abductees, can
give a surprisingly wide view of the phenomenon. This view has been
broadened still further by my talks and correspondence with other members of
the UFO community.
Of course, we must recognize the difference between testimony and
proof. No one can state definitively that abduction reports have a basis in
objective reality (however misperceived). Ultimately, all we have are
stories. Some of these stories may be of questionable veracity; others may
be contaminated by investigator bias; many are insufficiently detailed. No
one research paper can resolve all abduction controversies, and many
necessary battles must be fought on other fields.
Still, the testimony won’t go away — and we certainly have enough to
allow for comparisons. I maintain that an unprejudiced overview of abduction
reports in the popular press and the less-familiar material on mind control
will demonstrate a striking correlation. Once other abduction researchers
have been educated in the ways of MKULTRA (and this paper is intended as an
introductory text) they may note a similar pattern. If so, we can then begin
to write a revisionist history of the phenomenon.
The abduction enigma contains within it sub-mysteries that slide into
the mind control scenario with surprising ease, even elegance — mysteries
which fit the E.T. hypothesis as uncomfortably as a size 10 foot fits into a
size 8 shoe. As we have seen, the MKULTRA thesis explains the reports of
abductee intracerebral implants (particularly reports involving nosebleeds),
unusual scars, “telepathic” communication (i.e., externally induced
intracerebral voices) concurrent with or following the abduction encounter,
allegations that some abductees hear unusual sound effects (similar to those
created by the hemi-synch and cognate devices), haywire electronic devices
in abductee homes, personality shifts, “training films,” manipulation of
religious imagery, and missing time. Needless to say, the thesis of
clandestine government experimentation readily accounts for abductee claims
of human beings “working” with the aliens, and for the government harassment
that plays so prominent a role in certain abductee reports.
Let’s look at some more correlations.
The Hill Case and the “Advanced” Aliens
Earlier, I asked, “Do the aliens also watch black-and-white
television?” in reference to their alleged use of old-fashioned, Terra-style
brain implantation devices. Abduction accounts abound in other examples of
alien “retro-technology.” The most striking example can be found in the
Betty and Barney Hill incident, the details of which are too well-known to
recount here.[156] As we have already glimpsed during our discussion of the
Rex Niles affair, the Hills’ “interrupted journey” abounds in data which,
taken together, permits the construction of an alternative explanation.
At one point during the alleged UFO abduction, the “examiners”
inserted a needle in Betty Hill’s navel, telling her that this practice
constituted a test for pregnancy.[157] Some ufologists[158] rashly assume
that Betty Hill’s “pregnancy test” is evidence of advanced extraterrestrial
technology, since her 1961 account pre-dates the official announcement of
amniocentesis, which does indeed make use of a needle inserted into the
navel. But we now have much less invasive means of testing for pregnancy
than amniocentesis. True, amniocentesis is still sometimes used to gather
information about the fetus, but the wielders of a highly evolved technology
would certainly use other methods of determining the existence of pregnancy
in the first place.
Betty Hill’s testimony reminds us of certain other abduction accounts,
which contain descriptions of “healings” surprisingly similar to the
procedures associated with still-experimental electromagnetic therapy
techniques, such as those described in Robert O. Becker’s The Body Electric.
For example, abductee Deanna Dube described for me an abduction-related
“regeneration” of her long-damaged heart; had she been familiar with
Becker’s work,[159] she might have been a bit less rapid to ascribe her
healing to otherworldly influences.
Medical breakthroughs often undergo years of testing before their
official “discovery.” For some of these tests, finding volunteers presents a
major obstacle. If we accept the proposition that the Hill incident
originated in an external and objective stimulus, we must then ask ourselves
which scenario is more likely: Did Betty Hill encounter human beings using a
technique ten years ahead of its time? Or did she encounter aliens
(reputedly a “billion years ahead of us”) using science from eons before
their time?
One must also ask why Betty Hill’s aliens seemed to have no grasp of
basic human concepts (such as how we measure time) — yet they knew enough
about us to speak English fluently and had even mastered our slang. Were
these real aliens, or humans engaging in theatricals (and occasionally
muffing their lines)? For that matter, why did Betty Hill originally recall
her abductors as humanoid, only later describing them as aliens?
The Hill case provided a particularly controversial piece of evidence
— the celebrated “star map” recalled by Betty Hill under hypnosis. In later
years, an Ohio schoolteacher named Marjorie Fish made an ingenious and
laudable attempt to discover a match for this map by constructing an
elaborate three-dimensional model of nearby star systems; whether she
succeeded remains a matter for keen debate.[160] For now, I prefer to avoid
taking sides in this dispute and will confine myself to insisting that
pro-ET ufologists answer (without resorting to glib ripostes) a point first
raised by Jacques Vallee: The map makes no sense as a navigational aid.
Vallee notes that, even if we grant the Fish interpretation, the stars are
not drawn to scale — and at any rate, alien spaceships would surely be
navigated the same way we guide our own spacecraft: via computers and
telemetry.[161] The validity of the Fish interpretation is irrelevant; the
point is that any such chart would have no value to an interstellar
star-farer.
Fish’s work raises other controversies: Allegedly, the map points to
Zeta Reticuli as the aliens’ home system and pictures Zeta Reticuli as a
single star, a view consistent with scientific opinion of the 1960s. Yet in
later years scientists discovered that Zeta Reticuli is binary.[162]
Moreover, how did our abductee manage to remember so accurately a complex
chart glimpsed in passing? Even allowing for the possibility of increased
accuracy of recollection under hypnotic regression, the memory feat here
seems remarkable. Consider the circumstances of the abduction: Kafka on
hallucinogens couldn’t have conceived of the nightmare vision confronting
Betty Hill that night — yet for some reason this particular arrangement of
stars emerged as her most intensely-detailed recollection of the experience.
This memory (if not confabulated during regression, a possibility we
should always weigh) is comprehensible only as an example of
artificially-induced hypermnesia. In other words, Betty Hill was directed to
store that chart within her subconscious. The celebrated star map ought to
be recognized for what it was: a prop, a seemingly-confirmatory
circumstantial detail meant to convince her — and perhaps us — of the
reality of her abduction.
The question of motive arises. Why — if my thesis is correct — were
these two fairly innocuous individuals chosen for this new variation on the
old MKULTRA tricks?
The selection might, of course, have been arbitrary. Or perhaps
circumstances now irretrievably lost to history rendered the couple a
convenient target. Interestingly, Barney Hill had become acquainted (through
church functions) with the head of Air Force intelligence at Pease Air Force
Base; perhaps this relationship first brought the Hills to the attention of
members of the intelligence community. Arguably, the Hills could have been
fingered for a wide variety of reasons; as a general rule, the clandestine
services prefer to satisfy a number of itches with one scratch.
In fact, the espionage establishment had one particularly compelling
reason to focus on the Hills. Barney Hill (a black man) and his wife held
important positions in several civil rights organizations, including the
NAACP.[163] The abduction took place during the 1960s, when the NAACP and
allied groups fell victim to an increasingly paranoid series of attacks from
the FBI and other governmental agencies (under operations COINTELPRO, CHAOS,
GARDEN PLOT, etc.).[164] At that time, infiltration of civil rights groups
proved a difficult chore; while most left-leaning groups provided easy
targets for FBI stooges, the average undercover operative would have had an
exceptionally difficult time posing as a black activist. (In 1961, the only
black people on the FBI’s payroll were the servants in J. Edgar Hoover’s
home.)
In light of these facts, we should recall Victor Marchetti’s anecdote
about the cat that the CIA had “wired for sound.” Perhaps an ambitious
covert scientist proposed a similar experiment, in which a human being would
play the role that had once been assigned to the unfortunate feline? As
Estabrooks noted, the ultimate espionage agent would be the spy who doesn’t
know he is a spy. Barney Hill, a well-regarded figure with a
near-genius-level IQ, was a safe bet to obtain a leadership role in any
group he joined; he would have been remarkably well-positioned, had any
outsiders wished to use his ears to overhear prominent black organizers in
confidential discussion.
Of course, many intelligence professionals would counter this
suggestion by reminding us that eavesdroppers on the civil rights movement
had plenty of less-flamboyant methods: Bugging, “black bag” jobs, paying for
information, etc. The point is valid. But if the technology to create a
“human bug” was developed circa 1961 — and there is documentation suggesting
that such was indeed the case[165] — the intelligence agencies would surely
have wanted to test the possibilities in the field. And considering the
expense of such a test, why not conduct the experiment in such a way as to
reap the maximum benefits? Why not choose a Barney Hill?
Arms and the Abductee
Budd Hopkins told the following story during his lecture at the Los
Angeles “Whole Life Expo.”[166] He considers the case “very good...lots of
corroborating witnesses for parts of it.” Though not, presumably, for this
part:
Hopkins’ informant, after the by-now familiar UFO abduction, was given
a gun by the aliens. Not a Buck Rogers laser weapon — this was something
Dirty Harry might have packed.
The abductee was also given someone to shoot. Not a little grey alien
— another human being, tied to a chair. The “visitors” told their armed
abductee that this captive had done “evil on the earth, and he’s a bad
person. You have to kill him.” If the abductee didn’t do as asked, he would
never leave the ship.
The captive proclaimed his innocence, and pleaded for his life. The
abductee, caught in the middle of all this, became quite upset. (Worth
noting: he seems to have at least considered the aliens’ request to shoot
someone he had never met.) Ultimately, the abductee turned the gun on the
aliens, and said, “Nobody’s going to get shot here.”
According to Hopkins, “The aliens said ‘Fine. Very good.’ They took
the gun from him; the man [presumably, the captive] got up, walked away,
disappeared, and they went on to the next thing.” Obviously, this little
drama had been staged — a test of some sort.
I submit that this surreal incident is incomprehensible as either an
example of alien incursion or of “Klass-ical” confabulation. The scenario
described here exactly parallels numerous experiments in the hypnotic
induction of anti-social action as revealed both in the standard hypnosis
literature and in declassified ARTICHOKE/MKULTRA documents. For example,
compare Hopkins’ account to the following, in which Ludwig Mayer, a
prominent German hypnosis researcher, describes a classic experiment in the
hypnotic induction of criminal action:
I gave a revolver to an elderly and readily suggestible man whom I had
just hypnotized. The revolver had just been loaded by Mr. H. with a
percussion cap. I explained to [the subject], while pointing to Mr. H., that
Mr. H. was a very wicked man whom he should shoot to kill. With great
determination he took the revolver and fired a shot directly at Mr. H. Mr.
H. fell down pretending to be wounded. I then explained to my subject that
the fellow was not yet quite dead, and that he should give him another
bullet, which he did without further ado.[167]
Of course, if a conservative hypnosis specialist were asked to comment
on the above account, he would quickly point out that hypnotic suggestions
which work in an experimental situation would not easily succeed outside the
laboratory; on some level, the subject will probably sense whether or not
he’s playing the game for real.[168] Similarly, a conservative abduction
researcher would, in reviewing Hopkins’ material, emphasize the problems
inherent in using testimony derived during regression, where the threat of
confabulation lurks. I’ll concede both arguments — for the moment — only to
insist that they are beside the point. The matter of primary importance, the
sticking point which neither Klass nor Hopkins can comfortably confront, is
the convergence of detail between Mayer’s hypnosis experiment and the
testing event related by Hopkins’ abductee. Why are these two stories so
similar? Did the good Dr. Mayer take pupils from Sirius?[169]
Hopkins says he knows of other instances in which abductees found
themselves in similar crucibles. So do I.
One person I spoke to can remember (sans hypnosis) being handed a gun
inside a ziplock baggy, and receiving instructions that she will have to use
this weapon “on a job.” Early in my interviews with her (and with no
prompting from me) she recited an apparent cue drilled into her
consciousness by the “entities” (as she calls them): “When you see the
light, you will do it tonight,” followed by the command, “Execute.” (One can
only speculate as to how such commands would be used in the field; we will
discuss later the use of photovoltaic hypnotic induction.) Though her
personal feelings toward firearms are decidedly negative, she vividly
describes periods in her “everyday” life when she feels an uncharacteristic,
yet overpowering urge to be near a gun — a quasi-sexual desire to pick one
up and touch the metal.[170]
She is not alone. Another has been so affected by gun fever that he
became a security guard, just to be near the things.[171] The abductees I
have spoken to connect this sudden surge of Ramboism to the UFO experience.
But I suggest that the UFO experience may be merely a cover story for
another type of training entirely.
One of the primary goals of BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, and MKULTRA was to
determine whether mind control could be used to facilitate “executive
action” — i.e., assassination.[172]
It isn’t difficult to imagine the media’s reaction if a public figure
were murdered by someone acting at the behest of the “space brothers.” Who
would dare to speak of conspiracy under such circumstances? The hidden
controllers could choose a myth structure that conforms to the abductee’s
personality, then pose as higher beings, who would whisper violence into the
ear of the percipient. Using this ruse, the trick that scientists such as
Ludwig Mayer could perform in the lab might now be accomplished in the
field. As Estabrooks’ associate Jack Tracktir (professor of hypnotherapy at
Baylor University) explained to John Marks, anti-social acts can be induced
with “no conscience involved” once the proper pretext has been created.[173]
“They Will Think It’s Flying Saucers”
Jenny Randles contributes an anecdote from Great Britain which
dovetails nicely with this hypothesis.
In 1965, “Margary” (a pseudonym) lived in Birmingham with her husband,
who one night told her to prepare her for a “shock and a test.” As Randles
describes what she calls a “rogue case”:
They got into his car and drove off, although her memory of the trip
became hazy and confused and she does not know where they went. Then she was
in a room that was dimly lit and there were people standing around a long
table or flat bed. She was out on it and seemed “drugged” and unable to
resist. The most memorable of the men was tall and thin with a long nose and
white beard. He had thick eyebrows and supposedly said to Margary, “Remember
the eyebrows, honey.” A strange medical examination, using odd equipment,
was performed on her.
Both the husband and the scientists, using (apparently) hypnotic
techniques, flooded her mind with images that, she was told, would be
understood only in the future. According to Randles, “At one point one of
the ‘examiners’ in the room said to Margary in a tone that made it seem as
if he were amused, ‘They will think it’s flying saucers.’” The husband also
revealed that he had a second identity. After the abduction, this husband
(am I going too far to assume his employment with MI6 or some cognate
agency?) left, never to be seen again.[174] Margary did not recall the
abduction until 1978.
This affair can only baffle a researcher who insists on fitting all
abduction accounts into the ET hypothesis; once we free ourselves from that
set of assumptions, explanations come easily. I interpret this incident as a
case in which the controllers applied the flying saucer cover story
sloppily, or to an insufficiently receptive subject. If my thesis is
correct, the UFO “hypnotic hoax” technique would still have been fairly new
in 1965, particularly outside the United States; perhaps the manipulators
hadn’t yet got the hang of it. The odd comment about the scientist’s
eyebrows may refer to an item of disguise donned for the occasion. The
unscrupulous hypnotist, unsure about his ability to induce an impenetrable
amnesia — and mindful of the price paid by his forerunners in mesmeric
criminality[175] — would understandably want to hedge his bets; by indulging
in the British penchant for theatrics, he could further protect his
anonymity.
A similar incident was brought to my attention by researcher Robert
Durant. The relevant excerpt of his letter follows:
“Now I want to turn to a case that I have been investigating for
several months. The subject is an abductee. Standard abduction scenario.
Twice regressed under hypnosis, the first time by a well-known abduction
researcher, the second time by a psychologist with parapsychology
connections.
In the course of many hours of listening to the subject, I discovered
that she has had close personal contact over a long period of time with
several individuals who have federal intelligence connections. She was
hypnotized many years ago as part of a TV program devoted to hypnosis. Her
abductions began shortly after she attended several long sessions at a
laboratory where, ostensibly, she was being tested for ESP abilities. Two
other people who were “tested” at this same laboratory have also had
abductions. All three were told by the lab to join a local UFO group. During
her abductions, the principal alien spoke to the subject in the English
language in a normal manner, not via telepathy. She recognized the voice,
which was at one time that of her very close friend of yesteryear who was
then and is now employed by the CIA. The other voice was that of an
individual who works in Washington, has what I will call very strong federal
connections as well as a finger in just about every ufological pie, and who
just happened to bump into her at the aforementioned laboratory. He also
anticipated, in the course of telephone conversations, her abductions. When
the subject confronted him about this and the voice, he claimed to be
psychic.” (!)[176]
The “ESP” connection is suggestive; the MKULTRA documents betray an
astonishing interest on the part of the intelligence agencies in matters
parapsychological.
Some researchers would object that examples such as this are rare;
most abductions contain no such overt indications of intelligence
involvement. But have investigators looked for them? As mentioned in the
introduction, a false dichotomy limits much ufological thought; as long as
the abduction argument swings between the ET hypothesis and purely
psychological theories, researchers will not recognize the relevance of
certain key items of background data.
Glimpses of the Controllers
In an interview with me, a northern-California abductee — call him
“Peter” — reported an experience which was conducted not by a small grey
alien, but by a human being. The percipient called this man a “doctor.” He
gave a description of this individual, and even provided a drawing.
Some time after I gathered this information, a southern-California
abductee told me her story — which included a description of this very same
“doctor.” The physical details were so strikingly similar as to erase
coincidence. This woman is a leading member of a Los Angeles-based UFO
group; three other women in this group report abduction encounters with the
same individual.[177]
Perhaps those three women were fantasists, attaching themselves to
another’s narrative. But my northern informant never met these people. Why
did he describe the same “doctor”?
One of the abductees I have dealt with insisted, under hypnosis, that
her abduction experience brought her to a certain house in the Los Angeles
area. She was able to provide directions to the house, even though she had
no conscious memory of ever being there. I later learned that this house is
indeed occupied by a scientist who formerly (and perhaps currently)
conducted clandestine research on mind control technology.
This same abductee described a clandestine brain operation of some
sort she underwent in childhood. The neurosurgeon was a human being, not an
alien. She even recalled the name. (Note: This is not the same individual
referred to above.) When I heard the name, it meant nothing to me — but
later I learned that there really was a scientist of that name who
specialized in electrode implant research.
Licia Davidson is a thoughtful and articulate abductee, whose
fascinating story closely parallels many found in the abductee literature —
except for one unusual detail. In an interview with me, she described an
unsettling recollection of a human being, dressed normally, holding a black
box with a protruding antenna. This odd snippet of memory did not coincide
with the general thrust of her abduction narrative. Could this remembrance
represent an all-too-brief segment of accurately-perceived reality
interrupting her hypnotically-induced “screen memory”? Peter clearly recalls
seeing a similar box during his abduction.
Interestingly, Licia resides in the Los Angeles suburb of Tujunga
Canyon, a prominent spot on the abduction map: Many of the abductees I have
spoken to first had unusual experiences while living in this area. Near
Tujunga Canyon, in Mt. Pacifico, is a hidden former Nike missile base; more
than one abductee has described odd, seemingly inexplicable military
activity around this location.[178] The reader will recall the connection of
Nike missile bases to the disturbing story of Dr. L. Jolyon West, a veteran
of MKULTRA.
Cults
Some abductees I have spoken to have been directed to join certain
religious/philosophical sects. These cults often bear close examination.
The leaders of these groups tend to be “ex”-CIA operatives, or Special
Forces veterans. They are often linked through personal relations, even
though they espouse widely varying traditions. I have heard unsettling
reports that the leaders of some of these groups have used hypnosis, drugs,
or “mind machines” on their charges. Members of these cults have reported
periods of missing time during ceremonies or “study periods.”
I strongly urge abduction researchers to examine closely any small
“occult” groups an abductee might join. For example, one familiar leader of
the UFO fringe — a man well-known for his espousal of the doctrine of “love
and light” — is Virgil Armstrong, a close personal friend of General John
Singlaub, the notorious Iran-Contra player, who recently headed the
neo-fascist World Anti-Communist League. Armstrong, who also happens to be
an ex-Green Beret and former CIA operative, figured into my inquiry in an
interesting fashion: An abductee of my acquaintance was told — by her
“entities,” naturally — to seek out this UFO spokesman and join his
“sky-watch” activities, which, my source alleges, included a mass
channelling session intended to send debilitating “negative” vibrations to
Constantine Chernenko, then the leader of the Soviet Union. Of course,
intracerebral voices may have a purely psychological origin, so Armstrong
can hardly be held to task for the abductee’s original “directive.”[179]
Still, his past associations with military intelligence inevitably bring
disturbing possibilities to mind.
Even more ominous than possible ties between UFO cults and the
intelligence community are the cults’ links with the shadowy I AM group,
founded by Guy Ballard in the 1930s.[180] According to researcher David
Stupple, “If you look at the contactee groups today, you’ll see that most of
the stable, larger ones are actually neo-I AM groups, with some sort of tie
to Ballard’s organization.”[181] This cult, therefore, bears investigation.
Guy Ballard’s “Mighty I AM Religious Activity,” grew, in large part,
out of William Dudley Pelly’s Silver Shirts, an American Nazi
organization.[182] Although Ballard himself never openly proclaimed Nazi
affiliation, his movement was tinged with an extremely right-wing political
philosophy, and in secret meetings he “decreed” the death of President
Franklin Roosevelt.[183] The I AM philosophy derived from Theosophy, and, in
this author’s estimation, bears a more-than-cursory resemblance to the
Theosophically-based teachings that informed the proto-Nazi German occult
lodges.[184]
After the war, Pelley (who had been imprisoned for sedition during the
hostilities) headed an occult-oriented organization called Soulcraft, based
in Noblesville, Indiana. Another Soulcraft employee was the controversial
contactee George Hunt Williamson (real name: Michel d’Obrenovic), who
co-authored UFOs Confidential with John McCoy, a proponent of the theory
that a Jewish banking conspiracy was preventing disclosure of the solution
to the UFO mystery.[185] Later, Williamson founded the I AM-oriented
Brotherhood of the Seven Rays in Peru.[186] Another famed contactee, George
Van Tassel, was associated with Pelley and with the notoriously anti-Semitic
Reverend Wesley Swift (founder of the group which metamorphosed into the
Aryan nations).[187]
The most visible modern offspring of I AM is Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s
Church Universal and Triumphant, a group best-known for its massive arms
caches in underground bunkers. CUT was recently exposed in Covert Action
Information Bulletin as a conduit of CIA funds,[188] and according to
researcher John Judge, has ties to organizations allied to the World
Anti-Communist League.[189] Prophet is becoming involved in abduction
research and has sponsored presentations by Budd Hopkins and other prominent
investigators. In his book The Armstrong Report: ET’s and UFO’s: They Need
Us, We Don’t Need Them [sic.][190], Virgil Armstrong directs troubled
abductees toward Prophet’s group. (Perhaps not insignificantly, he also
suggests that abductees plagued by implants alleviate their problem by
turning to “the I AM force” within.[191])
Another UFO channeller, Frederick Von Mierers, has promulgated both a
cult with a strong I AM orientation[192] and an apparent con-game involving
over-appraised gemstones. Mierers is an anti-Semite who contends that the
Holocaust never happened and that the Jews control the world’s wealth.
UFORUM is a flying saucer organization popular with Los Angeles-area
abductees; its founder is Penny Harper, a member of a radical Scientology
breakaway group which connects the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard with
pronouncements against “The Illuminati” (a mythical secret society) and
other betes noir familiar from right-wing conspiracy literature. Harper
directs members of her group to read The Spotlight, an extremist tabloid
(published by Willis Carto’s Liberty Lobby) which denies the reality of the
Holocaust and posits a “Zionist” scheme to control the world.[193]
More than one unwary abductee has fallen in with groups such as those
listed above. It isn’t difficult to imagine how some of these questionable
groups might mold an abductee’s recollection of his experience — and perhaps
help direct his future actions.
Some modern abductees, with otherwise-strong claims, claim encounters
with blond, “Nordic” aliens reminiscent of the early contactee era. Surely,
the “Nordic” appearance of these aliens sprang from the dubious spiritual
tradition of Van Tassell, Ballard, Pelley, McCoy, etc. Why, then, are some
modern abductees seeing these very same other-worldly Uebermenschen?
One abductee of my acquaintance claims to have had beneficial
experiences with these “blond” aliens — who, he believes, came originally
from the Pleiades. Interestingly, in the late 1960s, the psychopathically
anti-Semitic Rev. Wesley Swift predicted this odd twist in the abduction
tale. In a broadcast “sermon,” he spoke at length about UFOs, claiming that
there were “good” aliens and “bad” aliens. The good ones, he insisted, were
tall, blond Aryans — who hailed from the pleiades. He made this
pronouncement long before the current trends in abduction lore.
Could some of the abductions be conducted by an extreme right-wing
element within the national security establishment? Disagreeable as the
possibility seems, we should note that the “lunatic right” is represented in
all other walks of life; certainly hard-rightists have taken positions
within the military-intelligence complex as well.
Grounds For Further Research
John Keel’s ground-breaking Operation Trojan Horse, written in an era
when abductees still came under the category of “contactees,” includes the
following intriguing data, gleaned from Keel’s extensive field work:
Contactees often find themselves suddenly miles from home without
knowing how they got there. They either have induced amnesia, wiping out all
memory of the trip, or they were taken over by some means and made the trip
in a blacked-out state. Should they encounter a friend on the way, the
friend would probably note that their eyes seemed glassy and their behavior
seemed peculiar. But if the friend spoke to them, he might receive a curt
reply.
In the language of the contactees this process is called being
used...I have known silent contactees to disappear from their homes for long
periods, and when they returned, they had little or no recollection of where
they had been. One girl sent me a postcard from the Bahama Islands — which
surprised me because I knew she was very poor. When she returned, she told
me that she had only one memory of the trip. She said she remembered getting
off a jet at an airport — she shouldn’t recall getting on the jet or making
the trip — and there “Indians” met her and took her baggage...The next thing
she knew she was back home again.[194]
Puzzling indeed — unless one has read The Control of Candy Jones,
which speaks of Candy’s “blacked out” periods, during which she travelled to
Taiwan as a CIA courier, adopting her second personality. The mind control
explanation perfectly solves all the mysteries in the above excerpt — save,
perhaps, the odd remark about “Indians.”
Hickson and Mendez’ UFO Contact At Pascagoula contains the interesting
information that Charles Hickson awakes at night feeling that he is on the
verge of re-awakening some terribly important memory connected with his
encounter — yet ostensibly he can account for every moment of his adventure.
Hickson also received a letter from an apparent abductee who claims
that the grey aliens are actually automatons of some sort — perhaps an
unconscious recognition of the unreality of the hypnotically-induced “cover
story.”[195] In this light, the film version of Communion — whose screenplay
was written by Whitley Strieber — takes on a new interest: The abduction
sequences contain inexplicable images indicating that the “greys” are really
props, or masks.
Communion and Transformation contain passages detailing what seems to
be a hazily-recalled Candy-Jones-style espionage adventure, in which
Strieber was shanghaied by a “coach” and a “nurse” (both human beings) who
apparently drugged him.[196] Recall the example of Keel’s informants.
Moreover, Transformation contains lengthy descriptions of alien beings
working in apparent collusion with human beings.
Abductee Christa Tilton also recalls both human beings and aliens
playing a part in her experience. Ever since her abduction, she claims, she
has been “shadowed” by a mysterious federal agent she calls John
Wallis.[197] Christa’s husband, Tom Adams, has confirmed Wallis’
existence.[198]
In his Report On Communion, Ed Conroy — who seems to have become a
participant in, and not merely an observer of, the phenomenon — describes
harassment by helicopters, which as we have already noted, seems to be quite
a common occurrence in abductee situations.[199] Researchers blithely assume
that these incidents represent governmental attempts to spy on UFO
percipients. But this assertion is ridiculous. Helicopters are extremely
expensive to operate, and the engines of espionage have perfected numerous
alternative methods to gather information. After all, we now have a fairly
extensive bibliography of FBI, CIA, and military efforts to spy on numerous
movements favoring domestic social change. Why have no veterans of CHAOS or
COINTELPRO (either victim or victimizer) spoken of helicopters? Obviously
the choppers serve some other purpose beyond mere surveillance. One
possibility might be the propagation of electromagnetic waves which might
affect the perceptions/ behaviors of an implanted individual. (Indeed, I
have heard rumors of helicopters being used in electronic “crowd control”
operations in Vietnam and elsewhere; alas, the information is far from
hard.)
Contactee Eldon Kerfoot has written of his suspicions that human
manipulators, not aliens, may be the ultimate puppeteers engineering his
experiences. He describes a sudden compulsion to kill a fellow veteran of
the Korean conflict — a man Kerfoot had no logical reason to distrust or
dislike, yet whom he “sensed” to have been a traitor to his country.
Fortunately, the assassination never materialized.[200] But the situation
exactly parallels incidents described in released ARTICHOKE documents
concerning the remote hypnotic induction of anti-social behavior.
One last speculation:
Renato Vesco’s Intercept But Don’t Shoot[201] outlines a fascinating
scenario for the “secret weapon” hypothesis of UFOs. Vesco points out that
if these devices are one day to be used in a superpower conflict, the
attacking power would be well-served by the myth of the UFO as an
extra-terrestrial craft, for the besieged nation would not know the true
nature of its opponent. Perhaps, then, one purpose of the UFO abductions is
to engender and maintain the legend of the little grey aliens. For the
hidden manipulators, the abductions could be, in and of themselves, a
propaganda coup.
Final Thoughts
I do not insist dogmatically on the scenario that I have outlined. I
do not wish to dissuade abduction researchers from exploring other avenues —
indeed, I strongly encourage such work to continue. Nor can I easily account
for some aspects of the abduction narratives — for example, any suggestions
I could offer concerning the reports of genetic experimentation would be
extremely speculative.
But I do insist on a fair hearing of this hypothesis. Criticism is
encouraged; that which does not destroy my thesis will make it stronger. I
ask only that my critics refrain from intellectual laziness; mere
differences in world-view do not constitute a valid attack. God is found in
the details.
I recognize the dangers inherent in making this thesis public. New and
distressing abductee confabulations may result. I would prefer that the
audience for this paper be restricted to abduction researchers, not victims,
who might be unduly influenced. However, in a society that prides itself on
its ostensibly free press, such restrictions are unthinkable. Therefore, I
can only beg any abduction victims who might read this paper to attempt a
superhuman objectivity. The thesis I have outlined is promising, and (should
trepanation ever provide us with an example of an actual abductee implant)
susceptible of proof. But mine is not the only hypothesis. The abductee’s
unrewarding task is to report what he or she has experienced as truthfully
as possible, untainted by outside speculation.
Whether or not future investigation proves UFO abductions to be a
product of mind control experimentation, I feel that this paper has, at
least, provided evidence of a serious danger facing those who hold fast to
the ideals of individual freedom. We cannot long ignore this menace.
A spectre haunts the democratic nations — the spectre of
technofascism. All the powers of the espionage empire and the scientific
establishment have entered into an unholy alliance to evoke this spectre:
Psychiatrist and spy, Dulles and Delgado, microwave specialists and
clandestine operators.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste — and a worse thing to commandeer.
Selected Bibliography on Mind Control
Acid Dreams, by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain (Grove, 1985). Outstanding
work on MKULTRA and drugs.
The Body Electric, by Robert Becker (Morrow, 1985). Important.
The Brain Changers, by Maya Pines (Signet, 1973). Outdated, but an excellent
chapter on the stimoceiver and related technologies.
Brain Control, by Elliot Valenstein (John Wiley and Sons, 1973). Highly
conservative; outdated; still worth reading.
CIA Papers, compiled by the Capitol Information Associates (POB 8275, Ann
Arbor, Michigan, 48107). Interesting selection of MKULTRA documents.
The Control of Candy Jones, by Donald Bain (Playboy Press, 1976). Mandatory
reading.
Human Drug Testing By the CIA, hearings before the Subcommittee on Health
and Scientific Research of the Committee On Human Resources, United States
Senate (Government Printing Office, 1977).
Hypnotism, by George Estabrooks (Dutton, 1957). See especially the chapters
on hypnosis in warfare and crime. Some modern experts in clinical hypnosis
decry Estabrooks’ work. These “experts” tend to have a history of funding by
CIA cut-outs and military intelligence. I suspect they denounce Estabrooks
not because his work was shoddy, but because he let the cat out of the bag.
Individual Rights and the Federal Role in Behavior Modification, by the
Staff of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee of the
Judiciary, United States Senate (Government Printing Office, 1974).
Megabrain, by Michael Hutchison (Ballantine, 1986). The only popular book on
modern mind machines.
Messengers of Deception, by Jacques Vallee (And/Or, 1979). Vallee has been
criticized, correctly, for including in this book invented “conversations”
with a composite character he calls Major Murphy. But the section on cults
in this book bears a haunting resemblance to stories I have heard in my own
investigations.
The Mind Manipulators, by Opton and Scheflin (Paddington Press, 1978).
Conservative, but extremely useful as a reference work.
Mind Wars, by Ronald McCrae (St. Martin’s Press, 1984).
Operation Mind Control, by Walter Bowart (Dell, 1978). The best single
volume on the subject. Difficult to find; indeed, this book’s rapid
disappearance from bookstores and libraries has aroused the suspicions of
some researchers. (Tom Davis Books, POB 1107, Aptos, CA 95001, carries this
work.)
Physical Control of the Mind, by Jose Delgado (Harper and Row, 1969).
Outdated; still essential.
Project MKULTRA, joint hearing before the Select Committee On Health and
Scientific Research of the Committee On Human Resources, United States
Senate (Government Printing Office, 1977).
Psychic Warfare: Fact or Fiction? edited by John White (Aquarian, 1988). See
especially Michael Rossman’s contribution.
Psychotechnology, Robert L. Schwitzgebel and Ralph K. Schwitzgebel (Holt,
Rhinehart and Winston, 1973).
The Scientist, by John Lilly (expanded edition: Ronin, 1988). Bizarre —
Lilly is an ex-“brainwashing” specialist who claims to be in contact with
aliens. Is he controlled or controlling?
The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”, by John Marks (Bantam, 1978). An
invaluable book. However, many people have made the mistake of assuming it
tells the full story. It does not.
Were We Controlled? by Lincoln Lawrence (University Books, 1967). Explores
possible connections to the JFK assassination. Dr. Petter Lindstrom’s
endorsement of this work makes it mandatory reading.
Who Killed John Lennon? by Fenton Bresler (St. Martin’s Press, 1989).
Interesting thesis concerning the possible use of mind control on Mark David
Chapman. Better in its analysis of Chapman than in its history of mind
control. In my own work, I have encountered data which may help confirm
Bresler’s theory.
The Zapping of America, by Paul Brodeur. (MacLeod [Canadian edition] 1976).
Contains a good chapter on microwave mind control technology.
The important stories of Martti Koski and Robert Naeslund can be obtained by
sending three dollars to: Martti Koski, Kiilinpellontie 2, 21290 Rusko,
FINLAND. Koski’s description of his “programming” sessions should not be
taken at face value: We cannot always trust the perception of someone whose
perception has been altered. His research into the technology of mind
control is solid.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1]. Budd Hopkins, Missing Time (New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1981)
and Intruders (New York: Random House, 1987).
[2]. Whitley Strieber, Communion (New York: Beech Tree Books,1987).
[3]. Cannon, “Psychiatric Abuse of UFO Witness,” UFO magazine, Vol. 3, No. 5
(December, 1988).
[4]. Philip Klass, UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game (Buffalo: Prometheus
Books, 1988). Klass makes some sharp observations, which are undercut by his
refusal to interview abductees directly. The work has no footnotes and
depends heavily on the work of Dr. Martin Orne — of whom more anon.
[5]. See bibliography.
[6]. New York: Bantam Books, 1979.
[7]. See generally Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research In
Behavior Modification, joint hearing before the Select Committee on Health
and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, Unites States
Senate (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1977).
[8]. Robert Eringer, “Secret Agent Man,” Rolling Stone, 1985.
[9]. John Marks interview with Victor Marchetti (Marks files, available at
the National Security Archives, Washington, D.C.).
[10]. In an interview with John Marks, hypnosis expert Milton Kline, a
veteran of clandestine experimentation in this field, averred that his work
for the government continued. Since the interview took place in 1977, years
after the CIA allegedly halted mind control research, we must conclude
either that the CIA lied, or that another agency continued the work. In
another interview with Marks, former Air Force-CIA liaison L. Fletcher
Prouty confirmed that the Department of Defense ran studies either in
conjunction with or parallel to those operated by the CIA. (Marks files.)
[11]. Estabrooks, Hypnosis (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1957 [revised
edition]), 13-14.
[12]. A copy of this letter can be found in the Marks files.
[13]. Estabrooks attracted an eclectic group of friends, including J. Edgar
Hoover and Alan Watts.
[14]. Interview with daughter Doreen Estabrooks, Marks files, Washington,
D.C.
[15]. Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams (New York: Grove Press,
1985) 3-4; Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”, 6-8.
[16]. Marks, ibid. 4-6.
[17]. Edward Hunter, Brainwashing in Red China (New York: Vanguard Press,
1951.). Hunter invented the term “brainwashing” in a September 24, 1950
Miami News article.
[18]. “Japan's germ experiments,” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), May 19,
1982.
[19]. Walter Bowart, Operation Mind Control (New York: Dell, 1978), 191-2,
quoting Warren Commission documents. We cannot fairly derive from this
statement a sanguine attitude about present Soviet capabilities; in this
field, even outdated technology suffices for mischief.
[20]. Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”, 60-61. A folk
etymology has it that the “MK” of MKULTRA stands for “Mind Kontrol.”
According to Marks, TSS prefixed the cryptonyms of all its projects with
these initials. Note, though, that MKULTRA was preceded by a
still-mysterious TSS program called QKHILLTOP.
[21]. Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”, 224-229. Seven
MKULTRA subprojects were continued, under TSS supervision, as MKSEARCH. This
project ended in 1972. CIA apologists often proclaim that “brainwashing”
research ceased in either 1962 or 1972; these blandishments refer to the TSS
projects, not to the ORD work, which remains terra incognita for independent
researchers. Marks discovered that the ORD research was so voluminous that
retrieving documents via FOIA would have proven unthinkably expensive.
[22]. For a description of the research into parapsychology, see Ronald M.
McRae's Mind Wars (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984). The best book
available on a subject which awaits a truly authoritative text.
[23]. Abduction researcher and hypnotherapist Miranda Park, of Lancaster,
California, reports that she has viewed such anomalies in abductee MRI
scans. See also Whitley Strieber, Transformations (New York: Beech Tree
Books, 1988) 246-247. At this writing, both Strieber and Hopkins report
initially promising results in their efforts to document the presence of
these “extras” in abductees.
[24]. Allegedly, the experiment took place in 1964. However, in Were We
Controlled? (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1967), the pseudonymous
“Lincoln Lawrence” makes an interesting argument (on page 36) that the
demonstration took place some years earlier.
[25]. New York: Harper and Row, 1969. Much of Delgado's work was funded by
the Office of Naval Intelligence, a common conduit for CIA funds during the
1950s and '60s. (Gordon Thomas' Journey Into Madness (New York: Bantam,
1989) misleadingly implies that CIA interest in Delgado's work began in
1972.)
[26]. J.M.R. Delgado. “Intracerebral Radio Stimulation and Recording in
Completely Free Patients,” Psychotechnology (Robert L. Schwitzgebel and
Ralph K. Schwitzgebel, editors; New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973):
195.
[27]. David Krech, “Controlling the Mind Controllers,” Think 32
(July-August), 1966.
[28]. Delgado, Physical Control of the Mind.
[29]. Delgado, “Intracerebral Radio Stimulation and Recording in Completely
Free patients,” 195.
[30]. Note, for example, Charles Hickson's account of the Pascagoula
Incident. Charles Hickson and William Mendez, UFO Contact at Pascagoula
(Tucson: Wendelle C. Stevens, 1983).
[31]. John Ranelagh, The Agency (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1986): 208.
Marchetti casts this story in the form of an amusing anecdote: After much
time and expense, a cat was suitably trained and prepared — only, on its
first assignment, to be run over by a taxi. Marchetti neglects to point out
that nothing stopped the Agency from getting another cat. Or from using a
human being.
[32]. Of course, this suggestion raises the knotty question of whether the
abductees suffer from a form of schizophrenia, which may also be
characterized by “voices.” I refer the reader to the work of Hopkins,
Strieber, Thomas Bullard, and others who have described the difficulties of
ascribing all abductions to psychotic states.
[33]. Alan W. Scheflin and Edward M. Opton, Jr., The Mind Manipulators
(London: Paddington Press, 1978), 347.
[34]. Thomas, Journey Into Madness, 276.
[35]. James Olds, “Hypothalamic Substrates of Reward,” in Physiological
Reviews, 1962, 42:554; “Emotional Centers in the Brain,” Science Journal,
1967, 3 (5).
[36]. Vernon Mark and Frank Ervin, Violence and the Brain (New York: Harper
and Row, 1970), chapter 12, excerpted in Individual Rights and the Federal
Role in Behavior Modification, prepared by the Staff of the Subcommittee on
Constitutional Rights of the Committee of the Judiciary, United States
Senate (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1974).
[37]. John Lilly, The Scientist (Berkeley, Ronin Publishing, 1988 [revised
edition]), 90. Monkeys allowed to stimulate themselves continually via ESB
brought themselves to orgasm once every three minutes, sixteen hours a day.
Scientific gatherings throughout the world saw motion pictures of these
experiments, which surely made spectacular cinema.
[38]. Scheflin and Opton, The Mind Manipulators, 336-337. Heath even
monitored his patient's brain responses during the subject's first
heterosexual encounter. Such is the nature of the brave new world before us.
[39]. Robert L. Schwitzgebel and Richard M. Bird, “Sociotechnical Design
Factors in Remote Instrumentation with Humans in Natural Environments,”
Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation, 1970, 2, 99-105.
[40]. Thomas, Journey Into Madness, 277. In the Behavior Research Methods
and Instrumentation article referenced above, Schwitzgebel details how the
radio signals may be fed into a telephone line via a modem and thus analyzed
by a computer anywhere in the world.
[41]. Scheflin and Opton, The Mind Manipulators, 347-349.
[42]. Louis Tackwood and the Citizen's Research and Investigation Committee,
The Glass House Tapes (New York: Avon, 1973), 226.
[43]. Perry London, Behavior Control (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 145.
[44]. Scheflin and Opton, The Mind Manipulators, 351-353; Tackwood, The
Glass House Tapes, 228.
[45]. “Beepers in kids' heads could stop abductors,” Las Vegas Sun, Oct. 27,
1987.
[46]. Lilly, The Scientist, 91.
[47]. Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”, 151-154.
[48]. Interestingly, Lilly has come out of the closet as a sort of
proto-Strieber; The Scientist recounts his close interaction with alien
(though not necessarily extraterrestrial) forces which he labels “solid
state entities.”
[49]. The story of Deep Trance, an MKULTRA “insider” who provided invaluable
information, is somewhat involved. I do not know who Trance is/was and Marks
may not know either. He contacted Trance via the writer of an article
published shortly before research on The Search for the “Manchurian
Candidate” began, addressing his informant “Dear Source whose anonymity I
respect.” I respect it too — hence my reticence to name the aforementioned
article, which may mark a trail to Trance. The fact that I have not followed
this trail would not prevent others from doing so.
[50]. London, Behavior Control, 139.
[51]. See generally, UFO magazine, Vol. 4, No. 2; especially the interesting
contribution by Whitley Strieber.
[52]. Lawrence, Were We Controlled?, 36-37; Anita Gregory, “Introduction to
Leonid L. Vasiliev's Experiments In Distant Influence,” in Psychic Warfare:
Fact Or Fiction (editor: John White) (Nottinghamshire: Aquarian, 1988)
34-57.
[53]. Lawrence, Were We Controlled?, 38.
[54]. Bowart, Operation Mind Control, 261-264.
[55]. Ibid. 263.
[56]. Lawrence, Were We Controlled?, 52.
[57]. Human Drug Testing by the CIA, 202.
[58]. Note especially the Supreme Court's decision in Central Intelligence
Agency et al. v. Sims, et al. (No. 83-1075; decided April 16, 1986). The
egregious and dangerous majority opinion in this case held that disclosure
of the names of scientists and institutions involved in MKULTRA posed an
“unacceptable risk of revealing 'intelligence sources.' The decisions of the
[CIA] Director, who must of course be familiar with 'the whole picture,' as
judges are not, are worthy of great deference...it is conceivable that the
mere explanation of why information must be withheld can convey valuable
information to a foreign intelligence agency.” How do we square this
continuing need for secrecy with the CIA's protestations that MKULTRA
achieved little success, that the studies were conducted within the
Nuremberg statutes governing medical experiments, and that the research was
made available in the open literature?
[59]. Letter, P.A. Lindstrom to Robert Naeslund, July 27, 1983; copy
available from Martti Koski, Kiilinpellontie 2, 21290 Rusko, Finland.
Lindstrom writes that he fully agrees with Lincoln Lawrence, author of Were
We Controlled?
[60]. Bowart, Operation Mind Control, 265. I have attempted without success
to contact Dr. Lindstrom.
[61]. Bowart, Operation Mind Control, 233-249. This interview was reprinted
without attribution in a bizarre compendium of UFO rumors called The Matrix,
compiled by “Valdamar Valerian” (actually John Grace, allegedly a Captain
working for Air Force intelligence).
[62]. Robert Anton Wilson, “Adventures with Head Hardware,” Magical Blend,
23, July 1989.
[63]. Michael Hutchison, Mega Brain (New York: Ballantine, 1986) 199-201;
Gerald Oster, “Auditory Beats in the Brain,” Scientific American, September,
1973.
[64]. Marilyn Ferguson, The Brain Revolution (New York: Taplinger, 1973),
90.
[65]. Ibid., 91-92. The presence of delta in a waking subject can indicate
pathology.
[66]. Bio-Pacer promotional and price sheet, available from Lindemann
Laboratories, 3463 State Street, #264, Santa Barbara, CA 93105.
[67]. Hutchison, Mega Brain, 117-118. Compare Light's observations about
“the grant game” to Sid Gottlieb's protestations that nearly all “mind
control” research was openly published.
[68]. Thomas Martinez and John Gunther, The Brotherhood of Murder (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1988), 230.
[69]. Interview, Sandy Monroe of the Los Angeles office of the Christic
Institute.
[70]. See generally Paul Brodeur, The Zapping of America (Toronto, George J.
MacLeod, 1977).
[71]. Until recently, the American Embassy was on a street named after the
composer.
[72]. It was finally determined that the microwaves were used to receive
transmissions from bugs planted within the embassy. DARPA Director George H.
Heimeier went on record stating that PANDORA was never designed to study
“microwaves as a surveillance tool.” See Anne Keeler, “Remote Mind Control
Technology,” Full Disclosure #15. I would note that the Soviet embassy was
“bugged and waved” in Canada during the 1950s, and according to the Los
Angeles Times (June 5, 1989), the Soviet embassy in Britain had been
similarly affected.
[73]. Ronald I. Adams and R.A. Williams, Biological Effects of
Electromagnetic Radiation (Radiowaves and Microwaves) Eurasian Communist
Countries, (Defense Intelligence Agency, March 1976.) Brodeur notes that
much of the work ascribed to the Soviets in this report was actually first
accomplished by scientists in the United States. Keeler argues that this
report constitutes an example of “mirror imaging” — i.e., parading domestic
advances as a foreign threat, the better to pry funding from a
suitably-fearful Congress.
[74]. Keeler, “Remote Mind Control Technology.”
[75]. R.J. MacGregor, “A Brief Survey of Literature Relating to Influence of
Low Intensity Microwaves on Nervous Function” (Santa Monica: RAND
Corporation, 1970).
[76]. Keeler, “Remote Mind Control Technology.”
[77]. Larry Collins, “Mind Control,” Playboy, January 1990.
[78]. Allan H. Frey, “Behavioral Effects of Electromagnetic Energy,”
Symposium on Biological Effects and Measurements of Radio
Frequencies/Microwaves, DeWitt G. Hazzard, editor (U.S. Department of
Health, Education and Welfare, 1977).
[79]. quoted in The Application of Tesla's Technology in Today's World
(Montreal: Lafferty, Hardwood & Partners, Ltd., 1978).
[80]. Keeler, “Remote Mind Control Technology.”
[81]. L. George Lawrence, “Electronics and Brain Control,” Popular
Electronics, July 1973.
[82]. Susan Schiefelbein, “The Invisible Threat,” Saturday Review, September
15, 1979.
[83]. E. Preston, “Studies on the Nervous System, Cardiovascular Function
and Thermoregulation,” in The Biological Effects of Radio-Frequency and
Microwave Radiation, edited by H.M. Assenheim (Ottawa, Canada: National
Research Council of Canada, 1979), 138-141.
[84]. Robert O. Becker, The Body Electric (New York: William Morrow, 1985)
318-319.
[85]. Ibid.
[86]. Ibid., 321.
[87]. See Bowart's Operation Mind Control, page 218, for an interesting
example of this “rationalization” process at work in the case of Sirhan
Sirhan, who was convicted for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. In
prison, Sirhan was hypnotized by Dr. Bernard Diamond, who instructed Sirhan
to climb the bars of his cage like a monkey. He did so. After the trance was
removed, Sirhan was shown tapes of his actions; he insisted that he “acted
like a monkey” of his own free will — he claimed he wanted the exercise.
[88]. Keeler suggests that the proposal was revealed only because Schapitz'
sensationalistic implications may have worked to discredit — and therefore
hide — the real research. Personally, I don't accept this argument, but I
respect Keeler's instincts enough to repeat her caveat here.
[89]. Margaret Cheney's Tesla: A Man Out of Time (New York: Dell, 1981), the
most reliable book in the sea of wild speculation surrounding this
extraordinary scientist, confirms Tesla's early work with the psychological
effects of electromagnetic radiation. See especially pages 101-104; note
also the afterword, in which we learn that certain government agencies have
kept important research by Tesla hidden from the general public.
[90]. Noted in Lawrence, Were We Controlled?, 29.
[91]. Particularly one Thomas Bearden of Huntsville, Alabama; I have in my
possession a document written by Bearden associate Andrew Michrowski which
identifies Bearden as an intelligence agent for an undisclosed agency.
[92]. Kathleen McAuliffe, “The Mind Fields,” Omni Magazine, February 1985.
[93]. May 5, 1985.
[94]. I refer to an individual who later wrote a very clear-headed and
thoughtful letter to Dr. Paul Lowinger, who has graciously made his files
available to me. For now, I feel compelled to withhold this person's name.
[95]. Cameron became president of the American Psychiatric Association, the
Canadian Psychiatric Association, and the World Association of
Psychiatrists. He previously sat on the Nuremberg panel, helping to draw up
the statutes governing ethical medical behavior!
[96]. In particular, Opton and Scheflin's overview, though excellent in
scope and detail, continually seeks reassuring interpretations of evidence
which points toward more distressing conclusions.
[97]. Martin T. Orne, “Can a hypnotized subject be compelled to carry out
otherwise unacceptable behavior?” International Journal of Clinical and
Experimental Hypnosis, 1972, vol. 20, 101-117.
[98]. Marks mentions, in a letter to Orne, the latter's claim to have been
an unwitting participant in subproject 84. Yet the papers released
concerning subproject 84 clearly establish the Agency's willingness to put
Orne in the know; Orne's letter admitted to Marks that he was made aware of
his CIA sponsorship (Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”,
172-173). In an interview with Marks, Orne discounted the story of Candy
Jones (which we shall recount later) by insisting that if such an experiment
had occurred “someone in some agency would have come to me.” Why would they
come to him about a super-secret project, unless Orne had a high security
clearance and worked extensively with intelligence agencies? Note also that
Orne conducted extensive studies for the Office of Naval Research from June
1, 1968 to May 31, 1971. He has also been funded by DARPA. Moreover, I
consider noteworthy the fact that Orne somehow became president of the
Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis despite the fact that the
organization had decided not to have a president. (This fact was related to
Marks by a prominent hypnosis specialist in an off-the-record interview that
I probably wasn't supposed to see.)
[99]. The story has been told many times. See Turner and Christian's The
Killing of Robert F. Kennedy, 207-208; also Peter J. Reiter, Antisocial or
Criminal Acts and Hypnosis (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1958).
[100]. John G. Watkins, “Antisocial behavior under hypnosis: Possible or
impossible?” International Journal for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis,
1972, vol. 20, 95-100.
[101]. Milton H. Erickson, “An experimental investigation of the possible
anti-social use of hypnosis,” Psychiatry, 1939, vol. 2. Erickson argues that
if a hypnotist has convinced his subject to misperceive reality, then
resulting actions cannot be considered “anti-social,” for the actions would
be acceptable within the subject's internal reality construct. This argument
strikes me as semantic quibbling.
[102]. See generally Flo Conway and Jim Seigelman, Snapping (New York:
Lippincott, 1978).
[103]. Lee and Schlain, Acid Dreams, 8-9.
[104]. John Marks interview with Victor Marchetti, December 19, 1977 (Marks
files).
[105]. Martin T. Orne, “On the Mechanisms of Posthypnotic Amnesia,” The
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 1966, vol. 14,
121-134. Orne's work with post-hypnotic amnesia was funded by NIMH, the Air
Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of Naval Research. I
should like to hear what innocent explanation, if any, the Air Force has to
offer to explain their interest in post-hypnotic amnesia.
[106]. Bowart, Operation Mind Control, 242-243.
[107]. Obviously Allan Dulles. This may have been a hypnotically-induced
delusion; on the other hand, Dulles' legendary sexual rapacity makes this
claim rather less unlikely than one might first assume.
[108]. Always the best indicator of whether or not hypnosis is genuine; I
can't understand why Orne didn't use this test in the Bianchi case.
[109]. Herbert Spiegel, “Hypnosis and evidence: Help or hindrance,” Ann.
N.Y. Acad. Sci.; 1980, 347, 73-85.
[110]. See, for example, Kroger, Hypnosis and Behavior Modification, 21-22.
[111]. See especially Klass, UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game, 60-61. Orne,
interviewed here, makes reference to the work summarized in his article “The
use and misuse of hypnosis in court” (International Journal of Clinical
Hypnosis, 1979, vol. 27, 311-341.)
[112]. Klass argues that ufologists, in conducting hypnotic regression
sessions, inadvertently cue their subjects. A close reading of his text
reveals that he never proves or claims that such “cues” have taken place in
any individual instance; he simply believes that cueing might have occurred.
Had Klass been more willing to deal with abductees directly, he might have
found evidence of cause and effect; as it stands, his argument really
amounts to no more than a suggestion. For all that, I find his ideas
regarding the running of “clean” hypnotic regression sessions potentially
valuable.
[113]. Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”, 34-37.
[114]. Donald Bain, The Control of Candy Jones (Chicago, Playboy Press,
1976).
[115]. The use of hypnotized couriers in warfare goes back to the 19th
century.
[116]. Estabrooks, Hypnotism, 193-214.
[117]. John Marks interview with Milton Kline, December 22, 1977 (Marks
files). In another interview, Professor Clare Young (a colleague of
Estabrooks' at Colgate University) confirmed that Estabrooks' hypnosis work
for the government has never been published.
[118]. Or could her marriage have been part of the program? “Long John,” as
he was popularly known, was famous in UFO circles, and had provided a forum
for such early-day contactees as Howard Menger. He also knew Jackie Gleason,
a prominent (if unlikely) name in the “crashed disk” rumor vaults. Could
Candy have been assigned to discover what Nebel knew?
[119]. Marks files. John Marks did excellent work on the Candy Jones story;
he erred — almost unforgivably — on the side of conservatism when he refused
to include information about this incident in his book. I know the name of
the institute involved; however, since Candy saw fit to keep this aspect of
her story secret (probably for sound legal reasons), I shall follow her
lead.
[120]. Scheflin and Opton, The Mind Manipulators, 446-447.
[121]. Interviews, Marks files. One of Marks' informants offered the
interesting speculation that Candy's torture sessions were not conducted in
the field, but in the lab — her entire mission might have been a
hypno-programmed fantasy.
[122]. The information about Candy's CIA files stems from a telephone
interview with Candy Jones. A problem looms here: CIA cover stories unravel
like the skin of an onion; once you remove the outer layer, the next lie is
revealed. In the case of Candy Jones, the substrata of buncombe involves
allegations that she willingly complied with the CIA, and used Jensen's
hypnosis experiments as a rationalization for her compliance. Such is the
explanation offered by certain of Marks' informants; alas, Opton and
Scheflin seem to have bought this line. Anyone familiar with the vile acts
of self-degradation to which Candy's programmers subjected her will laugh
this story out of court. No one, short of a severely psychotic masochist,
would willingly undergo what she went through.
[123]. Marks files.
[124]. William Kroger, Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (Philadelphia:
Lippincott, 1963), 299.
[125]. Recently, ufologist Jim Moseley, an acquaintance of Candy's, has
claimed that an unidentified source on the Nebel's “inner circle” once,
off-the-record, pronounced Candy's story “a crock.” This assertion deserves
careful and respectful consideration. Still, Moseley won't identify his
source, and we have no way of telling if this insider spoke from instinct or
certain knowledge, or indeed, what he really meant. Did he feel Candy was
fantasizing or fibbing? If the former, why did her hallucinations match
details of MKULTRA released only after publication of her book? If the
latter, how are we to explain the many hypnotic regression tapes, at least
some of which were made available to outside investigators? (Fairly
elaborate, for a hoax.) In any case, how could Candy have known the fact
(confirmed by Marks' associates) that Kroger taught “Jensen” at a certain
West-coast institute? Why, if the story was “a crock,” would Candy risk
libel suits by naming — to associates and investigators, if not to the
general public — real-life hypnotherapists? All in all, I would suggest that
Moseley's “insider” was speaking glibly, and did not know the true facts.
[126]. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1976.
[127]. Ibid., 415.
[128]. Similar paranoid outbreaks led to the dissolution of Dr. Richard
Neal's UFO abductee group in Los Angeles, according to a telephone interview
I had with Dr. Neal.
[129]. Affidavit of Dr. Simpson-Kallas in the case of Sirhan-Sirhan, 1973;
see Bowart, Operation Mind Control, 225.
[130]. All true MPs have experienced some form of abuse or trauma,
psychological or physical, during childhood.
[131]. One was ritually abused in an occult setting. If I were a
“spy-chiatrist” scouting potential fodder for mind control experiments, I
would seek out abused children from military families. (A military
background would ensure that the “right” doctor gets access to the child.)
Abduction researchers should look for such a pattern.
[132]. I refer here to the vast upsurge in alien abductions which took place
that year; see generally Kevin Randle, The October Scenario (Middle Coast,
1988). Of course, abductions (or, according to my hypothesis, disguised mind
control operations) occurred previous to this year.
[133]. John Marks interview with Milton Kline, December 22, 1977 (Marks
files).
[134]. Brenda Butler et al., Sky Crash, expanded edition (London: Grafton
Books, 1986), 305-321, 354-355.
[135]. Telephone interview with Nancy Wright.
[136]. Telephone interview with Miranda Parks.
[137]. William Moore, “UFOs and the U.S. Government,” Focus, vol. 4, June
30, 1989. Moore's role in the affair strikes me as highly questionable, even
scandalous — although at least here we have one instance of direct and
irrefutable “insider” testimony of government harassment.
[138]. Some have also raised questions about his psychiatric treatment of
Oswald assassin Jack Ruby. I find it odd that a CIA mind control veteran —
who did not reside or practice in Dallas — should have been assigned to the
Ruby case.
[139]. Samuel Chavkin, The Mind Stealers (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1978),
96-107.
[140]. Raymond Fowler, The Andreasson Affair (New York: Prentice Hall,
1979).
[141]. New York: Warner Books, 1989; 198-202.
[142]. Ruth Montgomery, Aliens Among Us (Ballantine, 1985), 49. My article
“Psychiatric Abuse of UFO Witness,” referred to earlier, also documents this
phenomenon.
[143]. Chung-Kwang Chou and Arthur W. Guy, “Quantization of Microwave
Biological Effects,” in Symposium of Biological Effects and Measurement of
Radio Frequency/Microwaves, edited by Dewitt G. Hazzard (U.S. Department of
Health, Education and Welfare, 1977).
[144]. Miami Herald, May 28, 1984 and June 6, 1984; National Examiner, Vol.
22, No. 18, April 30, 1985. Although the Examiner is a supermarket tabloid,
and therefore a questionable source, this periodical has rendered
researchers the service of printing the X-ray of Petit's brain, showing the
implant.
[145]. Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1988.
[146]. Raymond Fowler, The Andreasson Affair, Phase Two (Reward, 1982). This
book includes rare photographs of the unmarked helicopters which have
plagued this abduction victim and her family.
[147]. A mutual friend described for me an incident in which the former
SEAL, mistakenly perceiving a threat, almost instantly felled, and nearly
killed, a man twice his size. Whatever the truth of my informant's other
statements, he certainly has received advanced combat training.
[148]. Fenton Bresler, Who Killed John Lennon? (New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1989), 45-46.
[149]. Bowart, Operation Mind Control, 27-42.
[150]. Denise Winn, The Manipulated Mind (London, Octagon Press, 1983),
72-73; Bresler, Who Killed John Lennon?, 41; see generally: Peter Watson,
War on the Mind (London: Hutchison, 1978) (Watson broke the story on Narut
for the London Times).
[151]. Larry Collins, “Mind Control,” Playboy, January 1990.
[152]. John Marks interview with Milton Kline, December 22, 1977 (Marks
files).
[153]. Richard A. Gabriel, No More Heroes (New York: Hill and Wang, 1987),
124.
[154]. Ibid., 150-151.
[155]. See generally: Mark Lane, Conversations With Americans (Simon and
Shuster, 1970); A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
[156]. John G. Fuller, The Interrupted Journey (New York: Dell, 1966).
[157]. This detail plays a part in other abductions — for example, it crops
up in the Betty Andreasson Luca case. See Raymond Fowler, The Andreasson
Affair (New York: Bantam, 1980), 50-51.
[158]. Stanton Friedman, for example; the reader is referred to his 1988
Whole Life Expo lecture, “UFOs: A Cosmic Watergate.”
[159]. The Body Electric, 196-202.
[160]. The Fish map has received wide discussion; for a representative
sampling, the reader is directed to the aforementioned Friedman lecture
(note 3); Terence Dickenson, “The Zeti Reticuli Incident,” Astronomy,
December, 1974; Klass, UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game, 20-23; and John
Rimmer, The Evidence For Alien Abductions (Weillingborough: Aquarian, 1984),
88-92. Incidentally, Klass has proposed to Friedman a test regarding the
ability to recall such material accurately under hypnotic regression;
Friedman, for reasons best known to himself, declined the offer to
participate.
[161]. Jacques Vallee, Dimensions (Chicago: Contemporary, 1988), 266.
[162]. See Rimmer, The Evidence For Alien Abductions, 91-92. None of this is
meant to denigrate Marjorie Fish, whose work has received universal praise.
[163]. Fuller, The Interrupted Journey, 18-19.
[164]. Athan G. Theoharis and John Stuart Cox, The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and
the Great American Inquisition (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1978), 325; Chip Berlet, “The Hunt for the Red Menace,” Covert Action
Information Bulletin, No. 31 (Winter, 1989); J. Edgar Hoover, COINTELPRO
(memo), March 4, 1968.
[165]. For example, Delgado's work pre-dates the Hill incident. Moreover,
one of the few pages released on MKULTRA subproject 119 concerns “a critical
review of the literature and scientific developments related to the
recording, analysis and interpretation of bioelectric signals from the human
organism, and activation of human behavior by remote means.” The review took
place in 1960-61. Presumably, the CIA wanted to do something with the
information so derived.
[166]. “UFO Abductions Workshop,” Whole Life Expo, March, 1988.
[167]. Ludwig Mayer, Die Technik der Hypnose (Munich: J.F. Lehmanns Verlag,
1953), 225; quoted in: Heinz E. Hammerschlag (translation: John Cohen),
Hypnotism and Crime (Hollywood: Wilshire Book Company, 1957), 24-25.
[168]. Numerous articles discuss this possibility; see, for example, William
C. Coe et al. “An Approach Toward Isolating Factors that Influence
Antisocial Conduct in Hypnosis,” The International Journal of Clinical and
Experimental Hypnosis, 1972, Vol. XX, No. 2, 118-131, as well as other
reports in that issue. The difference between the laboratory and the “field”
settings may account for success of Mayer's experiment and the apparent
failure of the “aliens.”
[169]. For a description of a quite similar experiment conducted under CIA
auspices in 1954, see “CIA Able To Control Minds By Hypnosis, Data Shows,”
The Washington Post, February 19, 1978.
[170]. Abductee interview, “Veronica.” The reader will, I hope, forgive my
use of a pseudonym here. For the most part, I hope to deal in this work with
published cases. Suffice it to say, Veronica's testimony proved fascinating,
troubling, convoluted, and problematical; in spite of all the questions
raised by this case, I still believe it to have substantial bearing on my
thesis. The reader will forgive me for severing relations with this abductee
before completing an investigation; she keeps a mini-armory next to her bed.
[171]. Abductee interview, “Veronica.” At one point, she ran an informal
abductee/contactee group; as a result, she was able to describe many other
cases to me.
[172]. One ARTICHOKE document explicitly details a failed attempt to use
hypnosis to induce the assassination of a foreign leader. The document is
undated; the experiment took place January 8-January 15, 1954. Document
reproduced in CIA Papers, Vol. 1 (Ann Arbor, MI: Capitol Information
Associates, 1986), 39-41.
[173]. John Marks interview of Prof. Jack Tracktir (Marks files).
[174]. Jenny Randles, Abductions (London: Robert Hale, 1988), 52-53.
[175]. As in, for example, the Palle Hardrup affair.
[176]. Private correspondence, Robert Durant to the author.
[177]. Abductee interview, “Polly.” I won't give the facial details here;
suffice it to say that this abductor, like Margary's (noted earlier), has
something of the smell of greasepaint about him.
[178]. The base is mentioned in Ann Druffel's and D. Scott Rogo's The
Tujunga Canyon Contacts (New York: Signet, 1989) [expanded edition], 157.
[179]. On the other hand, Armstrong asks us to accept his own channelled
material, so he would have an awkward time should he choose to challenge the
“psychic impressions” of others.
[180]. Jacques Vallee, Messengers of Deception (Berkeley: And/Or Press,
1979), 192-193.
[181]. Curtis G. Fuller (editor), Proceedings of the First International UFO
Congress (New York: Warner Books, 1980), 307.
[182]. For information on Pelley, see John Roy Carlson, Under Cover (New
York: Dutton, 1943).
[183]. Gerald B. Bryan, Psychic Dictatorship In America (Los Angeles: Truth
Research, 1940). An essential book-length expose of Ballardism. One of
Bryan's sources alleges that Ballard, before founding the I AM group, may
have practiced some variety of black magic.
[184]. The student should carefully compare I AM dogma with the available
information on pre-Third Reich occultism; the best sources are James Webb's
masterful analyses, The Occult Establishment and The Occult Underground (La
Salle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing, 1976).
[185]. Vallee, Messengers Of Deception, 192-194.
[186]. Even a cursory examination of Williamson's Secret of the Andes
(London: Neville Spearman, 1961), written under the pseudonym Brother
Philip, will reveal the I AM connections.
[187]. Personal sources. Van Tassell's “Integration,” a domed structure
allegedly built under extra-terrestrial guidance (located near 29 Palms,
California) prominently displays, to this day, key I AM artifacts such as
the portraits of Jesus and Saint Germain commissioned by Ballard.
[188]. “The Afghan Arms Pipeline,” Covert Action Information Bulletin No. 30
(Summer, 1988).
[189]. Telephone interview with John Judge.
[190]. Village of Oak Creek, Arizona: Entheos, 1989, 119. I can't recall
ever encountering another book title which contained so many grammatical
errors. Armstrong's accomplishment is genuinely impressive.
[191]. For further information on I AM, Prophet's organization, saucer
cults, and other groups, see the appropriate sections of J. Gordon Melton's
Encyclopedia of American Religion.
[192]. Ruth Montgomery, Aliens Among Us (New York: Ballantine, 1985),
128-188.
[193]. Penny Harper, “Are Aliens Taking Over the Earth?” Whole Life Times,
January 1990.
[194]. John A. Keel, Why UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse (New York: Manor
Books, 1970) [paperback edition], 228.
[195]. Hickson and Mendez, UFO Contact At Pascagoula, 242.
[196]. Strieber, Communion, 134; Transformation, 109.
[197]. “Contactee: Firsthand,” UFO magazine, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1989.
[198]. Telephone conversation, Tom Adams.
[199]. Ed Conroy, Report On Communion (New York: William Morrow, 1989),
365-385.
[200]. “Contactee: Firsthand,” UFO magazine, Vol. 3, No. 3.
[201]. New York: Zebra, 1971. See especially note 2, Chap. 9.
[“The Controllers” released circa 1990.]
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sm4csi/nwo/MindControl/TheControllers.htm