psychoceramics: (fwd) Mind Control Stuff

[acb @ bruce.cs.monash.edu.au (Andrew C Bulhak)]

From: dmcclain @ runet.edu (Dennis McClain-Furmanski)
Newsgroups: alt.slack,alt.bogus.group,alt.fan.john-winston
Subject: Mind Control Stuff

[Something made me post this. (Just kidding, John.)]

From: nyt @ nyxfer.blythe.org (NY Transfer News Collective)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Mind Control and the Secret State
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Date: 5 Jan 1996 02:13:11 GMT
Message-ID: <4ci1fn$1--@n--.missouri.edu>
Originator: d--@p--.cs.missouri.edu


 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

 From NameBase NewsLine, No. 12, January-March 1996:


                Mind Control and the Secret State

                          by Daniel Brandt

     Last September the CIA confirmed the existence of a 20-year, $20
million research program in "remote viewing," a subvariety of extrasensory
perception. On October 29, a Jack Anderson column added more details, and
Ted Koppel of ABC's Nightline weighed in with a program on November 28,
by which time many newspapers and wire services had picked up the story.
By December, a number of pundits began lamenting this additional evidence
of the CIA's protean power to waste taxpayers' money.

     Curiously, "remote viewing" was an old story, first reported by
Anderson himself on 23 April 1984. Other Anderson columns of U.S. and
Soviet interest in psychic research date back to 1981. Anderson's
October 29 update reported that this project, which for a time was
contracted out to the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), had been scaled
back and put under Pentagon sponsorship, but nevertheless continued.
Although the results of these experiments were reportedly mixed, the
project retains its defenders in Congress: Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-RI) and
Rep. Charlie Rose (D-NC). By 1995, Anderson didn't have an opinion on the
merits of this research, but his 1984 column was supportive. On Nightline,
former CIA director Robert Gates implied that pressure from members of
Congress drove the CIA's original involvement.

     Another of Ted Koppel's CIA guests, identified only as "Norm," was
a technical advisor for CIA deputy director John McMahon and, until 1984,
a coordinator for the SRI tests. "Norm" did mention the "eight-martini"
results from some experiments; this was an in-house term for remote-
viewing results so uncannily successful that observers needed eight
martinis to recover. Still, the general impression from Koppel's show was
dismissive. Only about "fifteen percent" of the experiments, panelists
repeated, produced accurate results. Gates argued that such research,
if undertaken at all, belongs in the academy.

     Not for the first time, however, there's more to this story than
Ted Koppel acknowledges.

     Ingo Swann, who was involved in the SRI project from 1972-1988,
is upset with the media's droll treatment of this revived story. Swann
points out that the original motivation behind the "remote viewing"
project was the fear that the Soviets were investing significant resources
in applied psychic research, and might be making advances. At the time,
at least, such a rationale would have been considered a plausible one to
justify such a small expenditure of intelligence money. Nevertheless,
almost all mention of this element of the story, which had figured
prominently in the first wave of stories on "remote viewing," was dropped
in 1995.

     Furthermore, Swann claims, the "fifteen percent" figure, established
early in the SRI project, represented the baseline accuracy for non-gifted
and untrained persons. U.S. intelligence wanted sixty-five percent
accuracy, and in the later stages of the project, Swann claims, "this
accuracy level was achieved and often consistently exceeded." According to
Swann, the key players in the project, and the documentation supporting
the real story, remain under the strictest security constraints.

     However this may be, Anderson's October 29 story reminds us that ESP
is very much alive as an object of intelligence-community interest. In
addition to "remote viewing" (seeing people, places, and events at a
distance in space and time), another area of interest is the supposed
power of "micro psycho-kinesis" or "Micro-PK" -- the ability to affect
small objects, such as electrical systems, by using the mind. Micro-PK
is one step away from outright telekinesis, and its supposed power has
obvious attractions for the CIA. Imagine being able to erase a computer
tape from a block away, or interfere with the avionics of a jet fighter,
or detonate a warhead.

     Based on the evidence that's on the public record, the dream of
harnessing such power, or even of establishing its existence, may be
somewhat optimistic.

     But this fact hasn't stopped a strange band of specialists, many
of whom have government connections, from staking out careers at the
intersection of, so to speak, ESP, the Pentagon, and the CIA: where
people interested in parapsychology work with those interested in weapons
research and mind control. These would-be psi-spooks turn up occasionally
on talk shows and at conferences on "nonlethal defense." Their ranks
include companies like PSI-TECH in Albuquerque, founded by Maj. Edward A.
Dames, and figures such as Col. John B. Alexander of the Los Alamos
National Laboratory, who was featured in the February 1995 issue of Wired
magazine. Dames and Alexander and a dozen more blend in with spookier
types who shun publicity but who show up at UFO and New Age gatherings.
One is ex-Naval Intelligence officer C.B. Scott Jones, a former aide to
Sen. Claiborne Pell.

     Once again, it's likely that Ted Koppel doesn't have the whole
story. It's also likely that he wouldn't be cleared to report it if he
did. Still, the piddling pool of dollars so far devoted to this research
strongly implies that, if the figure is accurate, intelligence-funded
parapsychological research has been a bust.

     The uncounted millions the CIA has spent on mind control suggest just
the opposite. As with "remote viewing," the attraction of a successful
mind control program to the CIA is obvious, and has long been explicitly
acknowledged as such. The "Manchurian Candidate" scenario -- in which a
programmed zombie-assassin responds to a post-hypnotic trigger, performs
the act, and does not remember it later -- is one ideal type of successful
mind control. A reliable truth serum, long the object of a CIA quest,
would be another. Both of these are operational uses of mind control, its
so-called "second front."

     This term comes from former CIA director Allen Dulles. In 1953,
Dulles, speaking before a national meeting of Princeton alumni,
distinguished two fronts in the then-current "battle for men's minds":
a "first front" of mass indoctrination through censorship and propaganda,
and a "second front" of individual "brainwashing" and "brain changing."
Before an audience of fellow Ivy Leaguers, Dulles skipped the usual
pieties about democracy. The same year, Dulles approved the CIA's
notorious MKULTRA project, and exempted it from normal CIA financial
controls.

     The distinction between Dulles's "two fronts" eventually becomes
difficult to sustain, like the distinction between, say, sociology and
psychology. Still, this distinction can be useful in roughing out a
spectrum of known mind-control techniques.

     For example, one powerful tool for inducing ideological and
behavioral change is social pressure in a controlled environment. The
"brainwashing" employed during the Korean War did not involve the use
drugs or hypnosis. The Chinese merely used the same techniques that they
employed on the population at large, but with more intensity, greater
control, and additional rewards and punishments such as food and sleep
deprivation. Yet this frighteningly simple program was enough to crank up
the brainwashing scare in the U.S. Some researchers now suspect that this
hysterical episode had its origins in CIA-generated propaganda, designed
to give the CIA the political space needed to research more sophisticated
mind-control techniques.

     Many undergraduates learn about the experiments conducted by Solomon
Asch in the 1950s, which demonstrated that expressed opinions can be
easily manipulated by social pressure, even in obvious cases, such as
whether Line A is longer than Line B on a particular card. And Stanley
Milgram showed that many unwitting research subjects would administer a
series of escalating electric shocks to another, even to the point of an
apparent heart attack, simply because a white-coated lab assistant asked
them to continue. Milgram's research suggests that a "Manchurian Candidate"
already exists in many of us, and that all that's required to bring him
out may be a bit of propaganda. The historical evidence for blind human
obedience that could be cited here is very familiar, and very depressing.

     Still, there's evidence that Pentagon planners are uneasy about
potential unruliness among the mass populations Dulles identified as mind
control's "first front." Princeton alumni may perhaps follow and accept
arguments that U.S. interests are at stake in Bosnia, but their sons are
unlikely to be on the scene defending those supposed interests. The urban
or Appalachian infantryman, and the family he comes from, may have other
ideas.

     Elite unease on this point may lie behind Pentagon enthusiasm for
the new wrinkle in military force that goes by the name "nonlethal" or
"less-than-lethal." Its very claim to embody a "humanitarian" form of
warfare is a weapon in Dulles's "battle for men's minds."

     Nonlethal technology becomes important in a discussion of mind
control, as it involves something very close to it, in a form which
might be used to control large populations. The propaganda aspect of
"humanitarian warfare" is merely a sideshow; it's the technology itself
that enlists the enthusiasm of Pentagon planners and law enforcement
officials. Much of this "friendly force" technology involves
electromagnetic fields and directed-energy radiation, and ultrasound or
infrasound weapons -- the same technology that's currently of interest
in brain-stimulation and mind-control research.

     A partial list of aggressive promoters of this new technology
includes Oak Ridge National Lab, Sandia National Laboratories, Science
Applications International Corporation, MITRE Corporation, Lawrence
Livermore National Lab, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. In the
1996 defense authorization bill, Congress earmarked $37.2 million to
investigate nonlethal technologies. And this money looks like a mere
ante in the game.

     U.S. interest in this "less-than-lethal" technology dates back to
the early 1960s, when the State Department became aware of low-energy
microwave radiation directed at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Under the
name "Project Pandora," secret research into the Moscow radiation
continued for ten years -- before embassy employees were informed that
they were on the receiving end. Researchers initially assumed that the
microwaves were designed to activate bugging devices. But when a large
number of illnesses were reported at the embassy, a review of Soviet
scientific journals revealed that the Soviets believed microwaves
affected cell membranes and increased the excitability of nerve cells.

     Officially, the incidence of illness at the embassy was ultimately
blamed on the U.S. shortwave transmitting antenna on the embassy roof,
which leaked energy and contributed to the unhealthy environment. Still,
the secrecy surrounding Project Pandora encouraged further speculation
within the U.S. intelligence community and elsewhere. For instance,
researchers knew that a low-energy microwave beam could be modulated with
an "audiogram," and actually convey a recognizable message into an
irradiated brain. This led some U.S. spooks to suspect that the Soviets
had been attempting to practice mind control on the embassy staff.

     Such history brings us back to the situation of the restless public
in our own jittery, pre-millennial U.S. Today, there seems to be a
dramatic increase in the number of "wavies," those who feel they are
being harassed by non-ionizing radiation such as radio or sound waves.
Nevertheless, there is little evidence to support their belief that the
secret state, despite its obvious interest in nonlethal technology, is
supporting applied research on unsuspecting average citizens. Several
alternative explanations suggest themselves.

     First of all, the treatment of mental illness over the past few
decades has changed dramatically -- from an institutional approach, to an
out-patient, community-based system that relies on prescription drugs to
control symptoms and behavior. Greater numbers of sufferers of paranoia,
freed from institutions, are also free to exercise their First Amendment
rights. Furthermore, the power to express oneself has been enhanced by
technology -- everything from personal photocopying machines and desktop
publishing, to fax machines and now the Internet. And on the Internet,
almost everyone can find soulmates.

     And "wavies" can make the case that they deserve the benefit of a
doubt. Revelations about the Cold War secret state, from the CIA documents
released in the 1970s to last year's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation
Experiments (which investigated ionizing radiation only), have produced a
social environment in which it can seem difficult to rule out anyone's
claim, no matter how paranoid-sounding. Finally, there is the modern
problem of "pollution" in the broadest sense: from electromagnetic and
chemical, and including simple noise. Human reactions to this pollution,
which is a new phenomenon in the history of our species, apparently vary
by orders of magnitude. Those who are ultra-sensitive may feel harassed,
even if no one is intentionally targeting them.

     To a disinterested observer, the claims of the "wavies" are perhaps
no more bizarre than the claims of those who have experienced profound
religious conversions. The point is not to belittle anyone's beliefs, but
rather to establish that social factors often determine what we consider
to be credible. For thousands of years societies have found it useful to
allow sufficient space for religion. Only recently has social space opened
up for the claims of "wavies." The increase in their numbers is thus
predictable, irrespective of whether the secret state is behind their
problems or not. (It isn't, in my opinion.)

     This brings us to the "second front" mentioned by Allen Dulles in
1953: the technology of mind control applied on an individual level.
Whereas non-ionizing radiation can be "broadcast" to large populations,
techniques such as psychosurgery, implants, and electronic stimulation of
the brain (ESB) are administered on a case-by-case basis. More exotic
techniques, whose scientific status and potential effectiveness remain
uncertain, include radio hypnotic intra-cerebral control and hypnotic
dissolution of memory (RHIC-EDOM), and the use of induced "screen memory"
and multiple personality disorder (MPD) for cover purposes.

     The closest parallel to the "wavies" within this second front
include those who feel that implants were forced on them, sometimes during
childhood. Such beliefs obviously tap deep fears in the popular psyche.
The season premier of "The X Files" showed FBI agent Scully discovering
that someone had planted a microchip near the base of her skull. And
accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh apparently claims that an
implant was inserted under his skin, for tracking purposes, during the
Gulf War.

     Identification implants, which are passive devices that respond to an
energy source and return an identification number, are similar to the bar
codes at the checkout counter in a grocery store. Today's pet owners can
have these devices implanted in their pets. But anyone who confuses this
simple technology with a chip that tells them what to do is already in
trouble. Such a person should consider turning off the television, logging
off the Internet, and checking out a few books from the local library. ID
technology is ominous for those concerned with surveillance and privacy,
but it has little to do with mind control.

     Granted, there are experimental "stimoceiver" implants that can
stimulate the brain through electrodes. Mind-control enthusiast Jose
Delgado became briefly famous when he stopped a charging bull in its
tracks with such a device in 1964. Even allowing for electronic
miniaturization since then, or for the fact that finely-tuned microwaves
can achieve the same results as implanted electrodes, ESB would still
seem to be impractical as a mind-control device. At best it appears to
stimulate various emotions, and might be used for behavioral conditioning
in a controlled environment. This is still quite crude as a control
device. It would be simpler and more reliable to arrange a fatal accident.

     The combination of surveillance technology and implanted aversion
therapy conjures up the vision of a society of victim-robots, with
monitors on every utility pole and computers administering the
conditioning. But the necessary infrastructure would be frightfully
expensive.

     And no doubt unnecessary. Sufficient control over the flow of
information in society can yield results very similar to those that could
be achieved by mind-control implants installed in every individual. Thus
the flaw in the reasoning of many researchers: the mind-control techniques
that have them so worried are usually the most difficult techniques one
can possibly imagine. For those who would seek total control, plain,
old-fashioned information control -- leavened with a few fascist
techniques -- will do nicely, thank you.

     In 1973, former MKULTRA researcher Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West, from
the Department of Psychiatry at UCLA, convinced California and federal
officials to sponsor a Violence Center. Governor Ronald Reagan mentioned
the proposed Center in glowing terms in a speech on January 11, and the
federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) approved a
$750,000 grant. By this time the federal government, through LEAA, the
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Bureau of Prisons, and
the CIA, was operating or funding numerous behavior modification programs
in prisons, schools, and hospitals. In response to protests from UCLA
students and faculty, the LEAA announced that it would ban the use of its
funds for "psychosurgery, medical research, behavior modification --
including aversion therapy -- and chemotherapy."

     A year later Louis West was still hoping to obtain funds from NIMH,
but by then it was too late for his proposal. Until the 1970s it was not
unusual for mental health professionals to propose programs that would
screen children for the purpose of early diagnosis and treatment of the
potentially violent. But by the 1970s the trend was in the other
direction, as some states enacted laws that made it more difficult to
confine someone involuntarily as a mental patient. By the 1990s the shoe
is securely on the other foot.

     Twenty years ago it was fashionable for clinicians to blame urban
unrest and similar phenomena on the behavior of individuals. Now,
however, the individual can disclaim responsibility for his actions by
blaming external agencies. Numerous persons have gone public with
accusations of strange events during their childhood, suggesting that they
were used as guinea pigs for mysterious men in white coats. Some of their
evidence seems sufficiently solid to require further investigation, and
more cases are emerging all the time.

     On 15 March 1995, two patients of New Orleans therapist Valerie Wolf
testified before the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.
Although this was outside the purview of the Committee, they were permitted
to testify because some of the names of CIA-connected researchers they
mentioned were already familiar to the Committee. These two women
remembered sessions when they were around eight years old that involved
electric shocks, hypnosis, shots with needles, x-rays, sexual abuse, and
even training in intelligence tradecraft. One case occurred from 1972-1976
and the other in 1958. This testimony was not covered by the media.

     Although the recollections of the two women were spontaneous and did
not involve regression therapy, there is also a cottage industry developing
around memories of child abuse in general. For the most part these are not
connected with government research, and perhaps many are the result of
questionable techniques used by social workers, therapists, police and
prosecutors to elicit testimony from children. Juries are becoming more
skeptical of many of these cases. This issue has even assumed the
dimensions of a religious crusade -- Christian fundamentalists worry about
evil in the New Age movement, and are on the lookout for cases of "satanic
ritual abuse" of children. Others believe the CIA has turned children into
split-personality sex slaves for operational use.

     In 1992 the False Memory Syndrome Foundation began in Philadelphia.
This organization criticizes the practice of regression therapy when it's
used to bring out memories of traumatic childhood experiences. FMSF
considers these repressed memories of incest and sexual abuse to be
objectively false, and devastating to family life in general. There's a
growing split over this issue among psychology professionals. To confuse
the situation further, FMSF has some on their Board of Advisors who may
want to cover up their own work. One is Louis West, another is Martin
Orne, one of the key MKULTRA researchers in hypnosis, and a third is
Michael Persinger, who did research on the effects of electromagnetic
radiation on the brain for a Pentagon weapons project.

     Regression therapy could be a threat to the techniques the CIA may
have secretly developed involving the use of hypnosis. Shortly after Pearl
Harbor, George Estabrooks, chairman of the Department of Psychology at
Colgate University, was called to Washington by the War Department. As one
of the leading authorities on hypnosis, Estabrooks was asked to evaluate
how it might be used by the enemy. In 1943 he wrote a book, expanded in a
second edition fourteen years later, that included a discussion of the use
of hypnotism in warfare. In his opinion, one in five adult humans are
capable of being placed in a trance so deep that they will have no memory
of it. They could be hypnotized secretly by using a disguised technique,
and given a post-hypnotic suggestion. Estabrooks suggested that a dual
personality could be constructed with hypnosis, thereby creating the
perfect double agent with an unshakable cover.

     Estabrooks' theories regarding hypnosis are disputed by many experts
today. Frequently the entire topic is dismissed with the notion, promoted
by Martin Orne and others, that a hypnotist cannot induce a person to
perform an act that this person would otherwise find objectionable. But
this in itself appears to be a cover story; if the trance is deep enough,
an imaginary social environment can be constructed through which an
otherwise objectionable act becomes necessary and heroic. Murdering Hitler
during wartime would not be considered criminal, for example. It may even
be easier than this: in 1951 in Denmark, Palle Hardrup robbed a bank and
killed a guard, and then claimed that hypnotist Bjorn Nielsen told him to
do it. Nielsen eventually confessed that Hardrup was a test of his
hypnotic techniques, which included telling Hardrup that the money from
the robbery was a means to a noble end. Hardrup had become Nielsen's
robot, and Nielsen was convicted.

     In 1976 a book by Donald Bain titled "The Control of Candy Jones"
was published by Playboy Press. This one-of-a-kind book is the story
Candy Jones, who was America's leading cover girl during the forties and
fifties. In 1960 Jones fell on hard times and agreed to act as a courier
for the CIA. An excellent subject for hypnosis, Jones became the plaything
of a CIA psychiatrist who used her to exhibit his mastery of mind-control
techniques. This psychiatrist used hypnosis and drugs to develop a second
personality within Jones over a period of 12 years. This second personality
took the form of a courier who could be triggered by telephone with
particular sounds, and after the mission was completed and the normal
personality resumed, did not remember anything.

     These missions were elaborate, and frequently involved world travel
to deliver messages. According to the book, Jones and other victims were
once even subjected to torture at a seminar at CIA headquarters, as a
means of demonstrating this psychiatrist's control over his subjects.

     Jones married New York radio talk-show host Long John Nebel in 1972.
An amateur hypnotist, Nebel stumbled onto her secret personality, and
began unravelling the story over many subsequent sessions. Author Donald
Bain, a family friend, was invited to reconstruct the story from more than
200 hours of taped sessions between Jones and Nebel. Various researchers
have confirmed some pieces of the story, but Bain did not name the major
CIA psychiatrist involved, nor did he name a second psychiatrist who
played a more marginal role. Researcher Martin Cannon recently identified
this second psychiatrist as the late William Kroger, who was an associate
of Louis West, Martin Orne, and another MKULTRA veteran, H.J. Eysenck.
Whatever the truth is behind Candy Jones -- and it's difficult to see the
book as an elaborate hoax -- there's no question that hypnotist George
Estabrooks raised issues that the CIA took seriously in secret research
for at least 25 years.

     The MKULTRA implementing documents specified that "additional
avenues to the control of human behavior" were to include "radiation,
electroshock, various fields of psychology, sociology, and anthropology,
graphology, harassment substances, and paramilitary devices and materials."
The word "radiation" gave the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation
Experiments a reason to request a search of records on human
experimentation from the CIA. Their final report, released last October,
expressed dissatisfaction with the CIA's response, and recommended that
the CIA get their act together so that legitimate requests can be
accommodated better in the future.

     One problem is the compartmentation of the CIA's record-keeping
systems. Another is that the CIA immediately decided that the Committee's
purview was restricted only to ionizing radiation -- the type of radiation
of interest in nuclear testing, as opposed to the electromagnetic and
sound waves that might be used for mind control. Finally, those documents
that the CIA did release were heavily redacted. The Committee noted that
they had "received numerous queries about MKULTRA and the other related
programs from scholars, journalists, and citizens who have been unable to
review the complete record." In fact, most of the MKULTRA records were
destroyed in 1973 by the order of Richard Helms, who waived an internal
CIA regulation to do so. It was also the practice of MKULTRA to maintain
as few records as possible.

     If ESP, waves, implants, satanic ritual abuse and post-hypnotic
robots aren't sufficient, recently the subject of mind control has been
intertwined with UFOs. Seemingly jealous of the credibility enjoyed by
victims of alien abduction, researcher Julianne McKinney promotes the view
that the entire UFO phenomenon was created by the secret state. A more
thorough researcher, Martin Cannon, also promotes this view. In a long
monograph titled "The Controllers," he explains the UFO phenomenon as a
"screen memory" cover story induced by U.S. intelligence to protect their
own mind-control experiments.

     On the other hand, the implicit assumption behind McKinney and Cannon
that it must be either/or -- either aliens from outer space or spooks with
a bag of secret tricks -- seems arbitrary. If the ethically-challenged
U.S. intelligence community has proven anything during the last half-
century, it's that they would not find it objectionable to work on behalf
of aliens from outer space, and against the interests of humankind.

     Another possible scenario is that aliens are real, U.S. intelligence
knows more than they are telling, and they send out disinformation agents
to keep the issue at merely a low simmer. By muddying the waters with
kook-biz, they keep it from becoming officially-credible spook-biz, at
which point it might boil over into eschatology, mass hysteria, and
vigilantism.

     UFO researchers have recently become interested in the Aviary,
a group of former and current U.S. spooks, along with some defense-
contracting scientists, who may or may not have official status.
Apparently the mission of this group is to discredit any serious research
into UFOs. Its members include Col. John B. Alexander, Harold Puthoff from
the remote viewing project, and Jack Vorona of the Defense Intelligence
Agency (formerly the boss of Michael Persinger). The names of others are
floating around the Internet as well.

     Some Aviarians claim to be UFOlogists themselves, or are friendly and
good-natured with other UFOlogists, and some genuine UFO researchers are
quick to squabble with other researchers. This makes it nearly impossible
to sort out who is disinforming whom, and difficult to distinguish the
white hats from the black hats. Since he began looking into the Aviary,
British researcher Armen Victorian has been burgled eight times, his car
broken into three times, his telephone tapped, and a bug was discovered in
his home. All this happened courtesy of British intelligence and police,
reportedly as a favor for the CIA.

     Something is going on here, and chances are excellent that it's not
happening merely for our general amusement. Whoever the men in black turn
out to be, it's not the casually-titillated viewer of "The X Files" that
worries them. Instead, it's the relentless researchers who track their
careers and publicize their deeds, hoping that one day the state will have
no secrets, and that those who live off of its impoverished taxpayers
will, in the end, be held accountable.

     Those involved in parapsychology, mind control, and UFOlogy who have
government connections make up a small community; the same names reappear
constantly. Ranged against them are the independent researchers -- also a
small community. Leaving aside Laurence Rockefeller, who is funding some
activity in this area, presumably out of personal interest, there don't
appear to be mysterious sums of money floating around. That means the
field is open for dedicated researchers with modest resources. And that's
the good news, because we need to be watching every move the psi-spooks
make.


Sidebar from NameBase NewsLine, No. 12, January-March 1996:

                     Mind Control and the Internet

                              by Tom Porter

     The Internet is a prodigious source of information, but using it has
been compared to "trying to sip from a firehose." Access to this flood of
data comes at a price: Net researchers spend much of their time sifting
the valuable from the dubious from the insane. Never has this been more
true than in dealing with Net resources on the topic of mind control.

     To begin with, there is the problem of definition. "Mind control"
has been taken to mean many different things, and all these definitions
have their advocates on the Net. Some of the discussion on the Internet
involves the purported harassment of individuals for the purpose of
disorienting them, or decreasing their ability to discuss issues of
importance. This includes the use of less-than-lethal technologies such
as microwave or ELF irradiation, sonics, and other techniques. Ed Light
and Julianne McKinney argue that such harassment is real.

     Other research and commentary on the Net concerns individual mind
control by means of what I call "structured abuse," and what L. Ron Hubbard
once identified as "drug/pain/hypnosis" conditioning. Discussions on this
topic can be found on many pages related to satanic ritual abuse, alien
abductions, and the "false memory syndrome" debate. This area is where my
research efforts are concentrated.

     Exploring mind control on the Net is complicated by the fact that
many of the most active participants claim they are also victims. Their
intensity is understandable; if I had been subjected to the abuses claimed
by these authors, I would certainly want to publicize them. Ed Light hosts
the Freedom of Thought Foundation home page and tells his story there.
Alan Yu has contributed extensively to the alt.mindcontrol Usenet newsgroup
on this subject. Another self-identified victim who has posted extensively
is Gary Nichols.[1]

     Many of the claims that such people make may seem incredible. Still,
we know that in the past intelligence agencies have committed crimes they
called "research." The Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee in
the 1970s exposed some of the horrors of the CIA's MKULTRA programs, and
it remains extremely likely that much more remains hidden.

     Having spoken to several purported survivors of trauma-based mind
control who had significant although not conclusive corroborating
evidence, I am inclined to give these people the benefit of the doubt.
Many survivors of conventional abuse endure additional suffering because
of their difficulty in revealing what happened to them, and in persuading
others of the reality of their abuse. I try to achieve a balance between
acceptance of and skepticism toward survivors' stories, and then try to
seek independent corroboration.

     The Net is a particularly fertile field for anyone investigating
possible links between satanic ritual abuse and mind control. There's
a Net site that supports every imaginable position, from False Memory
Syndrome Foundation's iron-clad skepticism to fundamentalist pages
proclaiming tens of thousands of abuse victims per year.[2] My own
opinion is that the application of "structured abuse" to young children,
combined with classical conditioning techniques, could create alternate
personalities that could be easily controlled and manipulated. This would
not require complex technology, only secrecy and ruthlessness.

     Any group capable of such techniques would see "benefits" in the
existence of such slaves. Some claim that purported "satanic ritual abuse"
can be a cover for experiments by intelligence agencies. My own opinion is
that this claim ought not to be rejected out of hand. The CIA has a record
of distancing itself from morally-indefensible operations by using fronts
and cutouts. A similar case has been made for "alien abductions." Perhaps
the best-known discussion of possible links between mind control and alien
abductions is Martin Cannon's monograph "The Controllers," available in
several forms from many sites.[3] Cannon claims that some alien abductions
are cover for mind-control efforts, and represent an attempt to deal with
victims' memories of such procedures. Variations of Cannon's view can
be found in Usenet discussions of "alien abductions" as cover for the
implantation of microchips to track and/or control individuals. Again,
even these claims seem to me to deserve airing. The CIA has a history
of attempting to manipulate the existence of cults and other mass-
psychological phenomena to advance its objectives.

      And the same could be true of the Internet. On the Net, information
flows rapidly, and is often impossible to verify. Anonymous rumors can
easily be inserted into the data-stream. Paranoia about poisoned sources
can easily overtake a researcher. As a topic for serious discussion on the
Net, "UFOlogy" already seems to have self-destructed, and "mind control"
may be next. The welcome freewheeling quality of Net discourse is offset
by the possibility that important subjects can be trivialized, and then
disappear.

     What is a researcher on this topic to do? Valuable though the Net
and its e-mail community are, the Net's greatest value remains that of a
pointer to other sources: potential interviews; journals; and, yes, even
books.


1.   Ed Light runs the Freedom of Thought Foundation home page at:
     http://members.gnn.com/fivestring
     Glen Nichols' and Alan Yu's stories can be found there as well.

2.   The False Memory Syndrome Foundation is at:
     http://iquest.com/~fitz/fmsf/
     Hopeful Hands, a religiously-oriented satanic ritual abuse page is at:
     http://www.mother.com/~clburger/hopeful/homepage.htm

3.   The Controllers is available at:
     http://www.lablinks.com/sumeria/cosmo/control.html

Thomas Porter, from Winston-Salem NC, is a software engineer by
necessity and a researcher by desire. He is the author of a Web
site titled "Government Research into ESP and Mind Control" at:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/T_Porter

...........................................................................
: For references to more information on this topic, search for the proper :
: names found in this essay by using NameBase Online, a cumulative name   :
: index of 500 investigative books, plus 20 years of assorted clippings.  :
:    Free public access:   telnet ursula.blythe.org   login: namebase     :
:.........................................................................:

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