The Quandary
We have amply demonstrated, then, that as far back as the 1960s — and possibly earlier still — scientists have had the capability to create implants similar to those now purportedly visible in abductee MRI scans. Indeed, we have no notion just how advanced this technology has become, since the popular press stopped reporting on brain implantation in the 1970s. The research has no doubt continued, albeit in a less public fashion. In fact, scientists such as Delgado have cast their eye far beyond the implants; ESB effects can now be elicited with microwaves and other forms of electromagnetic radiation, used with and without electrodes.
So why — if we take UFO abduction accounts at face value — are the “advanced aliens” using an old technology, an Earth technology, a technology which may soon be rendered obsolescent, if it hasn’t been so rendered already? I am reminded of the charming anachronisms in the old Flash Gordon serials, where swords and spaceships clashed continually.
Do they also watch black-and-white television on Zeta Reticuli?
Remote Hypnosis
Hypnosis provides the (highly controversial) key which opens the door to many abduction accounts.[51] And obviously, if my thesis is correct, hypnosis plays a large part in the abduction itself. One thing we know with certainty: Since the earliest days of project BLUEBIRD, the CIA’s spy-chiatrists spent enormous sums mastering Mesmer’s art.
I cannot here give even a brief summary of hypnosis, nor even of the CIA’s studies in this area. (Fortunately, FOIA requests were rather more successful in shaking loose information on this topic than in the area of psychoelectronics.) Here, we will concentrate on a particularly intriguing allegation — one heard faintly, but persistently, for the past twenty years by those who would investigate the shadow side of politics.
If this allegation proves true, hypnosis is not necessarily a person-to-person affair.
The abductee — or the mind control victim — need not have physical contact with a hypnotist for hypnotic suggestion to take effect; trance could be induced, and suggestions made, via the intracerebral transmitters described above. The concept sounds like something out of Huxley’s or Orwell’s most masochistic fantasies. Yet remote hypnosis was first reported — using allegedly parapsychological means — in the early 1930s, by L.L. Vasiliev, Professor of Physiology in the University of Leningrad.[52] Later, other scientists attempted to accomplish the same goal, using less mystic means.
Over the years, certain journalists have asserted that the CIA has mastered a technology call RHIC-EDOM. RHIC means “Radio Hypnotic Intracerebral Control.” EDOM stands for “Electronic Dissolution of Memory.” Together, these techniques can — allegedly — remotely induce hypnotic trance, deliver suggestions to the subject, and erase all memory for both the instruction period and the act which the subject is asked to perform.
RHIC uses the stimoceiver, or a microminiaturized offspring of that technology to induce a hypnotic state. Interestingly, this technique is also reputed to involve the use of intramuscular implants, a detail strikingly reminiscent of the “scars” mentioned in Budd Hopkin’s Missing Time. Apparently, these implants are stimulated to induce a post-hypnotic suggestion.
EDOM is nothing more than “missing time” itself — the erasure of memory from consciousness through the blockage of synaptic transmission in certain areas of the brain. By jamming the brain’s synapses through a surfeit of acetylcholine, neural transmission along selected pathways can be effectively stilled. According to the proponents of RHIC-EDOM, acetylcholine production can be affected by electromagnetic means. (Modern research in the psycho-physiological effects of microwaves confirm this proposition.)
Does RHIC-EDOM exist? In our discussion of Delgado’s work, I have already cited a strange little book (published in 1969) titled Were We Controlled?, written by one Lincoln Lawrence, a former FBI agent turned journalist. (The name is a pseudonym; I know his real identity.) This work deals at length with RHIC-EDOM; a careful comparison of Lawrence’s work with MKULTRA files declassified ten years later indicates a strong possibility that the writer did indeed have “inside” sources.
Here is how Lawrence describes RHIC in action:
It is the ultra-sophisticated application of post-hypnotic suggestion triggered at will [italics in original] by radio transmission. It is a recurring hypnotic state, re-induced automatically at intervals by the same radio control. An individual is brought under hypnosis. This can be done either with his knowledge — or without it by use of narco-hypnosis, which can be brought into play under many guises. He is then programmed to perform certain actions and maintain certain attitudes upon radio signal.[53]
Other authors have mentioned this technique — specifically Walter Bowart (in his book Operation Mind Control) and journalist James Moore, who, in a 1975 issue of a periodical called Modern People, claimed to have secured a 350-page manual, prepared in 1963, on RHIC-EDOM.[54] He received the manual from CIA sources, although — interestingly — the technique is said to have originated in the military.
The following quote by Moore on RHIC should prove especially intriguing to abduction researchers who have confronted odd “personality shifts” in abductees:
Medically, these radio signals are directed to certain parts of the brain. When a part of your brain receives a tiny electrical impulse from outside sources, such as vision, hearing, etc., an emotion is produced — anger at the sight of a gang of boys beating an old woman, for example. The same emotion of anger can be created by artificial radio signals sent to your brain by a controller. You could instantly feel the same white-hot anger without any apparent reason.[55]
Lawrence’s sources imparted an even more tantalizing — and frightening — revelation:
…there is already in use a small EDOM generator-transmitter which can be concealed on the body of the person. Contact with this person — a casual handshake or even just a touch — transmits a tiny electronic charge plus an ultra-sonic signal tone which for a short while will disturb the time orientation of the person affected.[56]
If RHIC-EDOM exists, it goes a long way toward providing an earthbound rationale for alien abductions — or, at least, certain aspects of them. The phenomenon of “missing time” is no longer mysterious. Abductee implants, both intracerebral and otherwise, are explained. And note the reference to a “recurring hypnotic state, re-induced automatically by the same radio command.” This situation may account for “repeater” abductees who, after their initial encounter, have regular sessions of “missing time” and abduction — even while a bed-mate sleeps undisturbed.
At present, I cannot claim conclusively that RHIC-EDOM is real. To my knowledge, the only official questioning of a CIA representative concerning these techniques occurred in 1977, during Senate hearings on CIA drug testing. Senator Richard Schweicker had the following interchange with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, an important MKULTRA administrator:
Schweicker: Some of the projects under MKULTRA involved hypnosis, is that correct?
Gottlieb: Yes.
Schweicker: Did any of these projects involve something called radio hypnotic intracerebral control, which is a combination, as I understand it, in layman’s terms, of radio transmissions and hypnosis.
Gottlieb: My answer is “No.”
Schweicker: None whatsoever?
Gottlieb: Well, I am trying to be responsive to the terms that you used. As I remember it, there was a current interest, running interest, all the time in what affects people’s standing in the field of radio energy have, and it could easily have been that somewhere in many projects, someone was trying to see if you could hypnotize someone easier if he was standing in a radio beam. That would seem like a reasonable piece of research to do.
Schweicker went on to mention that he had heard testimony that radar (i.e., microwaves) had been used to wipe out memory in animals; Gottlieb responded, “I can believe that, Senator.”[57]
Gottlieb’s blandishments do not comfort much. For one thing, the good doctor did not always provide thoroughly candid testimony. (During the same hearing he averred that 99 percent on the CIA’s research had been openly published; if so, why are so many MKULTRA subprojects still “dark,” and why does the Agency still go to great lengths to protect the identities of its scientists?[58]) We should also recognize that the CIA’s operations are compartmentalized on a “need-to-know” basis; Gottlieb may not have had access to the information requested by Schweicker. Note that the MKULTRA rubric circumscribed Gottlieb’s statement: RHIC-EDOM might have been the focus of another program. (There were several others: MKNAOMI, MKACTION, MKSEARCH, etc.) Also keep in mind the revelation by “Deep Trance” that the CIA concentrated on psychoelectronics after the termination of MKULTRA in 1963. Most significantly: RHIC-EDOM is described by both Lawrence and Moore as a product of military research; Gottlieb spoke only of matters pertaining to CIA. He may thus have spoken truthfully — at least in a strictly technical sense — while still misleading the Congressional interlocutors.
Personally, I believe that the RHIC-EDOM story deserves a great deal of further research. I find it significant that when Dr. Petter Lindstrom examined X-rays of Robert Naesland, a Swedish victim of brain-implantation, the doctor authoritatively cited Were We Controlled? in his letter of response.[59]] This is the same Dr. Lindstrom noted for his pioneering use of ultrasonics in neurosurgery.[60] Lincoln Lawrence’s book has received a strong endorsement indeed.
Bowart’s Operation Mind Control contains a significant interview with an intelligence agent knowledgeable in these areas. Granted, the reader has every right to adopt a skeptical attitude toward information culled from anonymous sources; still, one should note that this operative’s statements confirm, in pertinent part, Lincoln Lawrence’s thesis.[61]
Most importantly: The open literature on brain-wave entrainment and the behavioral effects of electromagnetic radiation substantiates much of the RHIC-EDOM story — as we shall see.