III. Applications
So we now have some idea of the tools available to the “spy-chiatrists.” How have these tools been used?
This question necessarily involves some detective work. The Central Intelligence Agency, under duress, provided some, though not enough, documentation of its efforts to commandeer “the space between our ears.” We know that these efforts were extensive, long-term, and at least partially successful. We know also that these experiments used human subjects. But who? When?
One paradox of this line of inquiry is that, for many readers, the victims elicit sympathy only insofar as they remain anonymous. Intellectually, we realize that MKULTRA and its allied projects must have affected hundreds, probably thousands, of individuals.
Yet we react with deep suspicion whenever one of these individuals steps forward and identifies himself, or whenever an independent investigator argues that mind control has directed some newsworthy person’s otherwise inexplicable actions. Where, the skeptic may rightfully ask, is the documentation supporting such accusations? Most of the MKULTRA “paper trail” was (allegedly) burnt at Richard Helms’ order; what’s left has been censored, leaving black ink smudges wherever the names originally appeared.
Claimed mind control victims can, for the most part, only give us testimony – and how reliable can such testimony be, especially in light of the fact that one purpose of MKULTRA was to induce insanity? Anyone asserting that he was victimized by the program might well be seeking an extrinsic excuse for his own psychopathology. If you say that you are a manufactured madman, you were probably mad to begin with: Catch 22.
When John Marks wrote The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate” he received numerous letters from people insisting that they had been drugged, “waved,” or otherwise abused by the CIA or the military. Most of these communications went directly into his crank file. Perhaps many deserved that destination; I know of at least one that did not.[94]
Marks did, however, devote much attention to Val Orlikov, a former “patient” of perhaps the most notorious figure in the annals of American medical crime:
Dr. Ewen Cameron, a CIA-funded scientist heading the Allan Memorial Institute at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Cameron, a highly-respected mental health researcher,[95] experimented with a technique he called “psychic driving,” a brainwashing program which involved inflicting upon a subject an endless tape loop blaring selected messages, 16-to-24 hours a day, combined with massive electroshock and LSD. The project’s “guinea pigs” were patients who had come to Allan Memorial with relatively minor psychological complaints.
Cameron’s experiments failed and his theories were discredited, which may explain why the CIA and its apologists now feel relatively comfortable discussing the Frankensteinian efforts at Allan Memorial, as opposed to more successful work elsewhere.
Orlikov’s testimony has received much respectful attention from those writers who have examined MKULTRA, and correctly so. When I studied the files at the National Security Archives, I was particularly keen to read her original letters to John Marks, for these pages had led to the unmasking of an especially heinous CIA project.
The letters, interestingly enough, proved just as vague, disjointed, and bizarre as similar correspondence which researchers routinely dismiss. Orlikov can’t be blamed for the hazy nature of her recollections; a certain amount of fog is to be expected, given the nature of the crime perpetrated against her. The important point is that her story, ultimately, was found to be true. All of which leads me to wonder: Why did her claims prompt investigation when those of others prompt only dismissal?
Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that Orlikov’s husband became a Canadian Member of Parliament. Any victims of CIA experimentation who wish to be taken seriously ought, perhaps, first make sure to marry well.
Of course, we can easily forgive previous writers and readers whose researches into MKULTRA have been biased in favor of complacency.[96] But we can’t let this natural prejudice cripple our present investigation.
Let us examine, then, a few of the “horror stories” from the mind control literature and highlight possible correlations to abductee testimony.
Palle Hardrup’s “Guardian Angel”
As mentioned previously, I have not delved much into the subject of hypnosis in this paper – primarily because of space and time limitations, but also because discussions of the possibilities of hypnosis per se tend to cloud the issue of its use in conjunction with the above-mentioned electronic techniques.
Obviously, however, hypnosis is a major weapon in the mind controller’s armament; in a forthcoming full-length work, I intend to deal with this subject at much greater length.
Needless to say, one of the primary objectives of MKULTRA and related projects was to determine whether one could hypnotically induce someone to commit an anti-social act. This possibility remains one of the most hotly-debated issues in hypnosis, for conventional wisdom asserts that no individual can be hypnotized to commit an action which violates his interior moral code.
Martin Orne, editor of the prestigious International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis agrees with this axiom,[97] and he is in a position to codify much of the established view on this topic. Orne, however, is a veteran of MKULTRA, and furthermore seems to have lied – at least in his original communications – to author John Marks about his witting involvement with subproject 84.[98]
While I respect much of Orne’s ground-breaking work, his pronouncements do not hold, for this layman, an Olympian unassailability.
To be sure, many other hypnosis experts, untainted by Company connections, also discount the possibility that anti-social actions can be induced. But a number of highly-experienced professionals – including Milton Kline, William Kroger, George Estabrooks, John Watkins, and Herbert Spiegel – have argued that such actions can, at least to some degree, be elicited by an outside manipulator.
Occasionally, claims of hypnotically-induced anti-social behavior find their way into the courtroom; one such case, which led to the incarceration of the hypnotist, was the Palle Hardrup affair. This incident occurred in Denmark in 1951.[99]
Palle Hardrup robbed a bank, killing a guard in the process, and later claimed that he had been instructed to do so by the hypnotist Bjorn Nielsen. Nielsen eventually confessed to having engineered the crime as a test of his hypnotic abilities.
The most significant aspect of this incident concerns the “pose” Nielsen adopted to work his malicious designs. During the hypnosis sessions, Nielsen hypnotically suggested that he was Hardrup’s “guardian angel,” represented by the letter X. Hardrup testified that “There is another room next door where Nielsen and I go and talk on our own. It is there that my guardian spirit usually comes and talks to me. Nielsen says that X has a task for me.”
One of these tasks was arranging for Hardrup’s girlfriend to have sex with the hypnotist. The other tasks, he mentioned, included robbery and murder. Nielsen convinced his victim that “X” wanted the robbery funds to be used for worthwhile political goals. The end, Hardrup was told, justified the means.
Compare this scenario to that encountered in the typical contactee case, in which alien “guardians” convince their victims/subjects that the encounter will eventually serve some unspecified “higher purpose.” Indeed, in my interviews with abductees who have established a “long-term” relationship with their visitors, I have found that some of them originally believed themselves in contact with Hardrup-like angelic guardians. Only in recent years was the “angel” pose discarded and the true “alien” form revealed.
Thus we have one possible means of overcoming the proposition that hypnosis cannot induce anti-social behavior. If a hypnotist lacks scruples, and has access to a particularly susceptible subject, he can induce a misperceived reality. Actions which we would abhor in an everyday context become acceptable in specialized circumstances: A citizen who could never commit murder on a suburban street might, if drafted into an army, kill on the field of battle.
In hypnosis, the mind becomes that battlefield. In the words of Dr. John Watkins,
We behave on the basis of our perceptions. If our perceptions of a situation can be altered so as to cause us to misconstrue it, or to develop a false belief, then our behavior in relation to it will be drastically altered.
It is precisely in the area of changing perceptions that the hypnotic modality demonstrates its most powerful effects. Hallucinations both under hypnosis, and posthypnotic, can easily be induced in the suggestible subject.
He can be made to ignore painful stimuli, be apparently unable to hear loud sounds, and “see” individuals who are not present [my italics]. Moreover, attitudes and beliefs can be initiated in him which are quite abnormal and often contrary to those which he previously held.[100]
If traditional hypnosis, unaided, can achieve such changes in perception, one can only imagine the possibilities inherent in the combination of hypnotic techniques with the psychoelectronic research previously described.
Scientists such as Orne and Milton Erickson [101] have taken issue with Watkins’ assertions.
But the Hardrup case would appear to bear Watkins out. If someone can be convinced that he, like Jeanne D’Arc, acts under the influence of a supernatural higher power, then previously unthinkable capabilities may be evinced and “impossible” actions carried forth. Indeed, when we consider the extreme personality changes – and occasionally, the heinous actions – elicited by leaders of certain cults, and occult groups,[102] we understand the desirability of installing a hypnotic “cover story” within a supernatural matrix. People will do for God – or the Devil, or the Space Brothers – what they would not do otherwise.
The date of the Hardrup affair corresponds to the institution of BLUEBIRD/ ARTICHOKE; it doesn’t require much imagination to see how this case could have served as a model to the scientists researching those and subsequent projects.
Screen Memory
According to declassified documents in the Marks files, a major difficulty faced by the MKULTRA researchers concerned the “disposal problem.” What to do with the victims of CIA-sponsored electroshock, hypnosis, and drug experimentation? The Company resorted to distressing, but characteristic, tactics: They disposed of their human guinea pigs by incarcerating them in insane asylums, by performing icepick lobotomies, and by ordering “executive actions.”[103]
A more sophisticated solution had to be found. One of the goals of the CIA’s mind control efforts was the erasure of memory via hypnosis (and drugs, electronics, lobotomies, etc.); not only would this hide what occurred during the experimental indoctrination/programming sessions, it would prove useful in the field.
“Amnesia was a big goal,” confirms Victor Marchetti, who points out its usefulness in dealing with contract agents:
“After you’ve done it, the agent doesn’t even know what he’s done…you send him in, he does the job. When he comes out, you clean his head out.”[104]
The big problem: Despite hypnotically-induced amnesia, there would be memory leaks – snippets of the repressed material would arise spontaneously, in dreams, as flashbacks, etc. A proposed solution: give the subject a “screen memory,” a false story; thus, even if he starts to recall the material, he will recall it incorrectly.
Even the conservative Dr. Orne notes that:
A S [subject] who is able to develop good posthypnotic amnesia will also respond to suggestions to remember events which did not actually occur. On awakening, he will fail to recall the real events of the trance and will instead recall the suggested events. If anything, this phenomenon is easier to produce than total amnesia, perhaps because it eliminates the subjective feeling of an empty space in memory.[105]
Not only would the screen memories fill in the uncomfortable blanks in the subjects’ recollection, they would protect against revelation.
One fear of the MKULTRA scientists was that a hypno-programmed individual used as, say, a courier, could be un-programmed by another hypnotist, perhaps working for the enemy. Thus, the MKULTRA scientists decided to instill multiple personalities – multiple cover stories, if you will – to confuse any “unauthorized” hypnotist.[106]
One case using this technique centered on an assassin named Luis Castillo, who, after his capture in the Philippines, was extensively de-briefed and studied by experts in the employ of the National Bureau of Investigation, that country’s equivalent to our FBI.
Castillo was discovered to have had at least four separate personalities hypnotically instilled; each personality could be triggered by a specific cue. In one state, he claimed to be Sgt. Manuel Angel Ramirez, of the Strategic Air Tactical Command in South Vietnam; supposedly, “Ramirez” was the illegitimate son of a certain pipe-smoking, highly-placed CIA official whose initials were A.D.[107]
Another personality claimed to be one of John F. Kennedy’s assassins.
The main hypnotist involved with this case labelled these hypnotic alter-egos “Zombie states.”
The report on the case stated that,
“The Zombie phenomenon referred to here is a somnambulistic behavior displayed by the subject in a conditioned response to a series of words, phrases, and statements, apparently unknown to the subject during his normal waking state.”
Upon Castillo’s repatriation to the United States, the FBI claimed that he had fabricated the story. In his book Operation Mind Control, Walter Bowart makes a convincing case against the FBI’s claims. Certainly, many aspects of the Castillo affair argue for his sincerity – including his hypnotically-induced insensitivity to pain,[108] his maintenance of the story (or stories) even when severely inebriated, and his apparently programmed suicide attempts.
If Castillo told the truth, as I believe he did, then he manifested both hypnotically-induced multiple personality and pseudomemory. The former remains controversial; the latter has been repeatedly replicated in experimental situations.[109]
This point is vitally important for students of the abduction phenomenon. We cannot assume the accuracy of abduction descriptions given during subsequent hypnotic regression. Moreover, we cannot even assume the accuracy of spontaneously-arising recollections (i.e., abduction memories not elicited through hypnotic regression).
Indeed, responsible skeptics have argued that hypnotic regression may prove inadvertently harmful, in that it may lock in place a false remembrance. (Note, however, that other psychiatric professionals consider hypnotic regression the best technique, however flawed, in unlocking amnesia.[110] For my part, I maintain an ambivalent and cautious attitude toward the use of hypnosis in abductee work.)
Granted, it is all too easy for the debunkers to cry “confabulation” to dismiss hypnotic testimony which does not conform to our preconceptions about the possible; I do not intend to make this same error. Whenever skeptics offer the phenomenon of pseudomemory to rationalize abduction claims, they cite experimental situations in which pseudomemory was originally created by a hypnotist.[111]
These experiments can not be cited as proof that an individual abductee spontaneously conjured up a fantasy (which just happens to correspond to the details of hundreds of similar “fantasies”). Rather, laboratory studies of pseudomemory creation prove my point: Pseudomemory can be induced by previous hypnosis.[112]
In other words, an abductee may talk of aliens – when the reality was something else entirely.
In correspondence with me, a noted abduction researcher noted an instance in which an abductee recounted seeing a helicopter during his experience; as the abductee testimony progressed, the helicopter turned into a UFO. During one of the (quite few) regression sessions I attended, I heard an exactly similar narrative. Hopkins would argue that the helicopter was a “screen memory” hiding the awful reality of the UFO encounter. But does Occam’s razor really cut that way?
Shouldn’t we also consider the possibility that the object in question really was a helicopter – which the abductee was instructed to recall as a UFO?