The Super Spy
Among the released BLUEBIRD/ARTICHOKE/MKULTRA papers was the following handwritten memorandum, unsigned and undated:
I have developed a technic which is safe and secure (free from international censorship). It has to do with the conditioning of our own people. I can accomplish this as a one-man job.
The method is the production of hypnosis by means of simple oral medication. Then (with no further medication) the hypnosis is re-enforced daily during the following three or four days.
Each individual is conditioned against revealing any information to an enemy, even though subjected to hypnosis or drugging. If preferable, he may be conditioned to give false information rather than no information.
In the margin of this document, one of Marks’ assistants wrote, “Is this Wendt?” The reference here is to G. Richard Wendt, a professor employed by project CHATTER who, in 1951, led both his Naval employers and the CIA on a mind control merry-goose-chase, when an experiment similar to that described above failed to produce results.[113]
Even if the above memorandum does describe an operational failure (and the tactics described in this memo do not seem very feasible to me), we should not rest complacent. We now know that, in at least one case, more sophisticated techniques made the above scenario a reality.
I refer to the case of Candy Jones.
Her story has filled at least one book [114] and ought, one day, to give rise to another. Obviously, I cannot here give all the details of this fascinating and frightening narrative. But a précis is mandatory.
Ms. Jones (born Jessica Wilcox) achieved star status as a model during World War II, and later established her own modelling agency. An FBI man requested her to allow her place of business to be used as a “mail drop” for the Bureau and “another government agency” (presumably, the CIA); Candy, deeply patriotic, accepted the proposition gladly. Toiling on the fringes of the clandestine world, Candy eventually came into contact with a “Dr. Gilbert Jensen,” who worked, in turn, with a “Dr. Marshall Burger.” (Both names are pseudonyms.)
Unknown to her, these doctors had been employed as “spy-chiatrists” by the CIA. Using a job interview as a cover, Jensen induced hypnosis, found Candy to be a particularly responsive subject – and proceeded to use her as other scientists would use a rhesus monkey. She became a test subject for the CIA’s mind control program.
Her job – insofar as it is known – was to provide a clandestine courier service.[115]
Estabrooks had outlined the basic idea years earlier: Induce hypnosis via a disguised technique, give the messenger information to memorize, hypnotically “erase” the message from conscious memory, and install a post-hypnotic suggestion that the message (now buried within the subconscious) will be brought forth only upon a specific cue. If the hypnotist can create such a courier, ultra-security can be guaranteed; even torture won’t cause the messenger to tell what he knows – because he doesn’t know that he knows it.[116]
According to the highly respected Dr. Milton Kline, “Evidence really does exist that has not been published” proving that Estabrooks’ perfect secret agent could be successfully evoked.[117]
Candy was one such success story. Success, in this context, means that she could be – and was – brutally tortured and abused while running assignments for the CIA. All the MKULTRA toys were brought into play: hypnosis, drugs, conditioning and electronics. Using these devices, Jensen and Burger managed to:
― install a “duplicate personality,”
― create amnesia of both the programming sessions and the field assignments,
― turn Candy into a vicious, hate-mongering bigot, the better to isolate her from the rest of humanity (previously, her associates considered her noteworthy for her racial tolerance; her modelling agency was one of the first to break the color barrier), and
— program her to commit suicide at the end of her usefulness to the agency.
The programming techniques used on her were flawed. She breached security when she married famed New York radio personality John Nebel,[118] who, using hypnotic regression, elicited the long-repressed truth. Eventually, the “Other Candy” was bade farewell, and the programming broken.
Skeptics might find Candy’s story as incredible as the abduction accounts – after all, an amateur had conducted her hypnotic regression, and the possibility of confabulation always lurks. Nevertheless, I feel that the veracity of her narrative has been established beyond reasonable doubt. In her hypnotic regression sessions, she recalled being programmed at a government-connected institute in northern California – which, as John Marks’ investigators later proved, was indeed heavily involved with government-funded brainwashing research.[119]
Marks himself believes Candy’s story – not least, because the details of the programming methods used on her were substantiated by documents released after her book was published.[120] Interviews with Milton Kline, Dr. Frances Jakes, John Watkins and others provided the testimony that the programming of Candy Jones was feasible – and Deep Trance substantiated the story.[121]
Recently, the case has received important “indirect” confirmation: Investigators interested in follow-up research have filed FOIA requests with the CIA for all papers relating to Candy Jones. The agency admits that it has a substantial file on her, but refuses to release any part of it. If her tale is false, then why would the CIA be so reluctant to deliver the information? Indeed, why would they have a file in the first place?[122]
The final confirmation of Candy’s tale requires a revelation – one which I make with some trepidation, even though the individual named is dead.
“Marshall Burger” was really Dr. William Kroger.[123]
Kroger, long associated with the espionage establishment, had written the following in 1963:
“…a good subject can be hypnotized to deliver secret information. The memory of this message could be covered by an artificially-induced amnesia. In the event that he should be captured, he naturally could not remember that he had ever been given the message…however, since he had been given a post-hypnotic suggestion, the message would be subject to recall through a specific cue.”[124]
If Candy confabulated her story, why did she name this particular scientist, who, writing theoretically in 1963, predicted the subsequent events in her life?[125]
After l’Affair Jones, Kroger transferred his base of operations to UCLA – specifically, to the Neuropsychiatric Institute run by Dr. Louis Jolyon West, an MKULTRA veteran. There he wrote Hypnosis and Behavior Modification,[126] with a preface by Martin Orne (another MKULTRA veteran) and H.J. Eysenck (still another MKULTRA veteran).
The finale of this opus contains chilling hints of the possibilities inherent in combining hypnosis with ESB, implants, and conditioning – though Kroger is careful to point out that,
“we are not concerned that man might be conditioned by rewards and punishments through electronic brain stimulation to be controlled like robots.”[127]
He may not be concerned – but perhaps we ought to be.
The control of Candy Jones gives us much information useful to our “alien abduction” hypothesis.
1. Her torture sessions – inflicted during her programming by her CIA masters, and on missions by as-yet mysterious persons – seem strikingly like the otherwise senselessly painful “examinations” allegedly conducted aboard alien spacecraft.
2. Her personality shifts roughly parallel those experienced by certain UFO abductees.
3. Despite her brutalization, she remained “loyal” to Drs. Jensen and Burger. This bewildering behavior reminds me of my first abductee interviews, during which I heard ghastly descriptions of UFO torture sessions – followed by protestations of limitless love for the alien pain-mongers.
4. Like many abductees, Candy had to attend regular “conditioning” sessions. Repeated exposure to the programming is necessary to effect continuous control.
5. To maintain their hammerlock on her mind, Candy’s handlers programmed her to remain isolated. Specifically, they instilled a deep paranoia toward other human beings; “outsiders” were probable enemies, out to use or abuse her. I have seen this pattern consistently in my own work with abductees.[128] Skeptics would argue that unreasonable abductee fears probably indicate paranoid schizophrenia – one symptom of which can, indeed, be hallucinatory experiences. But most abductees are easily hypnotized, while paranoid schizophrenics are extremely difficult to “put under,” according to Dr. Edward Simpson-Kallas, a psychiatrist with wide experience in the area of forensic hypnosis.[129] If, however, those unreasonable fears had been hypnotically induced, the contradiction is resolved.
6. Candy was the product of an unhappy childhood, hence her propensity toward multiple personality.[130] Many of the “repeater” abductees I have interviewed had similarly depressing family histories.[131]
7. The story of Candy Jones also has what we might call a “negative relevance” to the abduction accounts. Because the Controllers did not establish a hypnotic cover story, or pseudomemory, the true facts of the case managed to percolate into her conscious mind. No matter how thorough the post-hypnotic amnesia, leaks will occur – hence the need for a false memory, to fill the gap of recollection. The CIA learns from its mistakes. Candy’s hypno-programming broke down in early 1973 – the year the “alien disguise” became (if my hypothesis proves correct) standard operating procedure.[132] (Milton Kline accepted the Candy Jones story, but considered the job amateurish and inconsistent with the best work done at that time.[133] Perhaps the major fault was the lack of a pseudomemory cover story?)
Bases of Suspicion
“Underground base” rumors are as hot as jalapenos in the UFO field right now, and several of these stories involve abductions.
For example, a sideshow of the famous Bentwaters UFO case involves the abduction of an airman named Larry Warren to an underground cavity beneath the military base. There, while in what he later described as “a bit of a drugged state,” he saw aliens and human beings – military figures – working side-by-side.[134]
I have spoken to another abductee, Nancy Wright, who was allegedly taken to an underground chamber ten miles north of Edwards AFB, California. As this was a multiple-witness event, and Ms. Wright has not attempted to capitalize on the story for financial gain, I tend to credit her story.[135] According to abduction researcher Miranda Parks, an elderly couple living in the vicinity was also abducted in an exactly similar fashion.[136]
In 1979, Paul Bennewitz and Leo Sprinkle researched a particularly controversial abduction involving a young woman (name unrevealed) who was apparently taken to a facility where aliens processed fluids and body parts from a cattle mutilation.
This investigation seems to have led to the government harassment of Bennewitz, in which some form of mind control (or, as I have previously referred to it, “electronic Gaslight”) may have played a part.[137]
How do we account for these tales of alleged alien skullduggery carried out in conjunction with the military? I, for one, cannot credit the generally-unsubstantiated tales of “cosmic conspiracy” now promulgated by ex-intelligence agents such as John Lear and William Cooper.
While I cannot assert insincerity on the part of these men, I often wonder if they have been used as conduits – witting or unwitting – in a sophisticated disinformation scheme.
A simpler, though no less chilling, explanation for the “base” abductions may be found in the story of Dr. Louis Jolyon West, now notorious for his participation in MKULTRA experiments with LSD.[138]
Inspired by Violence and the Brain (a book by Drs. Frank Ervin and Vernon H. Mark which ascribed inner city turmoil to a “genetic defect” within rebellious blacks), West proposed, in 1973, a Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, where potentially violent individuals could be dealt with prophylactically.
And who were these individuals? According to West’s proposal, the noteworthy factors indicating a violent predisposition were “sex (male), age (youthful), ethnicity (black) and urbanicity.”
How to deal with them?
“…by implanting tiny electrodes deep within the brain, electrical activity can be followed in areas that cannot be measured from the surface of the scalp…it is even possible to record bioelectrical changes in the brains of freely-moving subjects, through the use of remote monitoring techniques…”
By monitoring the subjects’ EEGs remotely, potentially violent episodes could be identified.
For our purposes, the most significant aspect of this proposal had to do with location. In a secret communication to Dr. J.M. Stubblebine, director of the California State Department of Health (fortunately, this missive was “leaked” to the public), West disclosed that he intended to house his Center in an abandoned Nike missile base, whose location was accessible yet relatively remote.
“The site is securely fenced,” West wrote. “Comparative studies could be carried out there, in an isolated but convenient location, of experimental model programs, for the alteration of undesirable behavior.”[139]
Public outcry stopped these plans. But was this scheme truly eliminated? Or was it merely modified, stripped (temporarily) of its overtly racial overtones and relocated to some less-accessible spot?
One thing is certain: A CIA “spy-chiatrist” favored secret behavior control experimentation in a remote military installation. Perhaps someone within the espionage establishment’s mind-modification divisions still thinks highly of the idea. If so, the disposal problem would once again rear its ugly head, should “visitors” to these installations ever reappear in outside society.
Again, a hypno-programmed cover story – the less believable, the better – would prove invaluable.