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 Hopkins1 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 these 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.
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 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 the Believers; they are the faithful, and faith is assumed to have its mysteries.
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 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 sight, 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.
Substantial evidence exists linking members of this country's intelligence community (including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Advanvced 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 testimony5. 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:
To these conclusions I would append the following - not as firmly established historical fact, but as a working hypothesis and grounds for investigation:
I recognize the difficulties this thesis might present to those readers emotionally wedded to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, or to those whose political WELTANSHAUUNG disallows any such suspicions. Still, the openminded 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.
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 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 tetrahydrocannibinol, 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 CHAPTER, 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, psychosurgery, 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.
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 PSYCHOCIVILISED SOCIETY25 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 the therapist - odd term, under the circumstances - can communicate with his subject.33
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 appiled, 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 into 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
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.
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 reknown 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 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, CIA and the 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:
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.
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, 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?
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 psycho-electronics.) 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. Vasilev, 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 Hopkins' 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 acetocholine, neural transmission along selected pathways can be effectively stilled. According to the proponents of RHIC-EDOM, acetocholine 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 a 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 "recurring hypnotic state, reinduced 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 representive 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 you used. As I remember it, there was a current
interest, running interest, all the time in what effects 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, 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.
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 frequences 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-sync - 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 wonderboxes. 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.
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 (1mW) 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 dizzyness, 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. Cazzamali, 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 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 intra-cerebral 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 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 electro-magnetic 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
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 eary 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 alarmists91 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 amplifiers 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 an 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 REPUBLIC93 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.
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.
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 presitigious 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 in subproject 94.98 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 surburban 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 Erickson101 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 capabilitites 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.
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 severly 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 wrote of 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?
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 sub-conscious) 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:
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 particualr 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 possibilites 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.
"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.
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 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 electro-magnetic 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.
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] 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 disk 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 disk is especially intriguing. As former FBI agent Ted Gunderson recently explained to my associate Alexander Constantine, magnetic radioactive disks have long been used by the clandestine services as cancer-inducing "silent killers" - i.e., as tools of assassination. Not only that. The disc 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."
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 abduc- tee'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, [Ed: ???] 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 A 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 had 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]
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 tools, thoughtless and effective.
And it is my contention that to create this soldier of the future, the controllers will 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 has 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.
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.
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 ufologists158 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