[mind games] mk-ultra and the development of mind control
On 28 November 1953, a delusional and depressed Dr Frank Olson threw himself out of the tenth floor window of his New York hotel. Olson was a long-serving scientist for the US Army's secretive Chemical Corps Special Operations Division, whose problems began at a meeting nine days earlier. The meeting had been orchestrated by Sidney Gottlieb, Head of the CIA's Technical Services Staff.
Unknown to those present at the meeting, Gottlieb had acquired a quantity of LSD and secretly wanted to test it. Spiking Olson's drink with the LSD, he passed the bottle around and sat back waiting for results. Olson, an outgoing personality who loved practical jokes, soon began to suffer jarring side effects. One of those present at the meeting, Ben Wilson, later recalled that Olson 'was psychotic'.
Gottlieb and his boss, the Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, initiated a 20-year cover-up of the circumstances surrounding Olson's death. At stake was the CIA's project, MK-ULTRA. The project had grown out of an earlier programme, known as Bluebird, that was officially formed to counter Soviet advances in brainwashing.
In reality the CIA had other objectives. An earlier aim was to study methods 'through which control of an individual may be attained'. The emphasis of experimentation was 'narco-hypnosis', the blending of mind altering drugs with careful hypnotic programming. Ever evolving, project Bluebird was later renamed Project Artichoke, after a vegetable that Dulles was particularly fond of. Artichoke was an 'offensive' programme of mind control that gathered together the intelligence divisions of the Army, Navy, Air Force and FBI.
The scope of the project was outlined in a memorandum dated January 1952 that ominously asked: "Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation?"
A CIA team was formed that could travel anywhere in the world. Their task was to test the new interrogation techniques, and ensure that victims would not remember being interrogated and programmed. Despite poor initial results, CIA-sponsored mind control programmes flourished. On 13 April 1953, the project MK-ULTRA was born.
Official CIA documents describe MK-ULTRA as an 'umbrella project' with 149 'sub-projects'. Many of these sub-projects dealt with testing illegal drugs for potential field use. Others dealt with electronics. One explored the possibility of activating 'the human organism by remote control'. Throughout, it remained a major goal to brainwash individuals to become couriers and spies without their knowledge.
When it was formed in 1947, the CIA was forbidden to have any domestic police or internal security powers. In short, it was authorized only to operate 'overseas'. From the very start MK-ULTRA staff broke this Congressional stipulation and began testing on unwitting US citizens. CIA Projects included, over the years: Artichoke, Bluebird, Pandora, Mk-Delta, Mk-Naomi, Mk-Action, Mk-Search and Mk-Ultra.
Precisely how extensive illegal testing became will never be known. Richard Helms, CIA Director and chief architect of the programme, ordered the destruction of all MK-ULTRA records shortly before leaving office in 1973. Despite these precautions, some documents were misfiled and came to light in the late 1970's. They laid bare the spy agency's cynicism.
One particularly project was run by Dr Harris Isabel, Director of the Public Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky - a facility specializing in drug abuse. Asked by the CIA to discover a range of 'synthetic' drugs, Isabel began experimenting on captive black inmates. He daily fed his guinea pigs large doses of LSD, mescaline, marijuana, scopolamine and other substances.
In exchange for participating in the experiments, the inmates received injections of high quality morphine, sometimes getting 'shot-up' three times a day, depending on their co-operation. Brought before the Senate subcommittees in 1975, Isabel saw no contradiction in providing hard drugs to the very addicts he was employed to cure.
Following public outrage, the CIA announced it had ceased its mind manipulation programmes. Victor Marchetti, a CIA veteran of 14 years who turned 'whistle-blower', exposed this to be untrue. In 1977, Marchetti said the CIA claims to have ceased were a cover story. Under scrutiny, the agency were quick to downplay the success of MK-ULTRA - claiming no real advances were achieved.
Miles Copeland, another long-serving CIA officer disputed this. Speaking to a reporter, Copeland revealed that 'the congressional subcommittee which went into this sort of thing only got the barest glimpse'. Another source within the intelligence community says that after 1963, CIA efforts increasingly focused on psychoelectronics. Narcohypnosis had been drained dry.
Dr Jose Delgado, a neurophysiologist at Yale University School, was especially interested in Electronic Stimulation of the Brain. By implanting a small probe into the brain, Delgado discovered that he could wield enormous power over his subject. Using a device he called the 'stimoceiver', which operated by FM radio waves, he was able to electrically orchestrate a wide range of human emotions. These included rage, lust and fatigue.
During 1966, Delgado announced that his findings supported 'the distasteful conclusion that motion, emotion and behaviour can be directed by electrical forces'. He added that 'humans can be controlled like robots by push buttons'. Funded by the Office of Naval Research, Delgado looked forward to a future when society could be 'psychocivilised'.
Despite the miniaturization of implants, the next major advance forward was microwaves. By placing a volunteer in an electromagnetic field, Dr Ross Adey of the University of California, made a startling discovery. Using specific radio waves, Adey was able to influence his subjects' brainwaves.
Another scientist, Allen Frey, took this research a step further. Frey found he could remotely induce sleep in his subjects by subjecting them to electromagnetic waves. He also learned he could produce acoustic noises - booming, buzzing and hissing, directly inside a volunteer's head.
Continuing on from Frey's earlier work, Joseph Sharp, a doctor at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, was able to transmit spoken words via pulsed microwaves. Sitting inside an electromagnetic field, Sharp clearly heard and understood words transmitted to him by a colleague. For the medical profession this was a major breakthrough, and would be of immense benefit to the deaf.
The US military and intelligence community were quick to capitalize on these new discoveries. Secret research programmes on electromagnetics have never been made available under the Freedom of Information Act.
In 1974, J. F. Scapitz, a scientist funded by the Department of Defense, had a vision. He sought to combine earlier MK-ULTRA hypnosis studies with emerging microwave technologies. In an outline to the DoD, Scapitz said "It will be shown the spoken word of the hypnotist may be conveyed by modulated electromagnetic energy directly into the subconscious parts of the brain". He claimed this could be achieved without emplanting any technical devices for 'receiving or transcoding messages'.
For the first time, US agents had the ability to remotely tamper with an individual's mind. Scapitz went even further, claiming that this could be achieved without the target even becoming aware of what was happening.
Since then, little public information has been revealed in scientific literature, following the imposition of the strict security classification. Despite this, significant pieces of information - more usually from non-US sources - continue to be published. What is available paints a bleak picture.
Evidence exists that mind-control and behaviour modification technology is presently concealed behind Non Lethal Defense (NLD) initiatives. In an announcement in 1995 that non-lethal weapons - including high powered microwaves and radio frequency devices - are to be 'transited' to the law enforcement sector was met with dismay in some quarters.
This joint programme, known as 'Operations Other Than War', opens the way for the military to move into the civilian domain - a move precluded by the American constitution. The stated aim is to more effectively tackle narcotics trafficking, terrorism and other criminal activity.
Article by Richard G. Gall, Scotland
[My note: interpret the last paragraph in terms of our current FEMA, ID card scenario and it makes sense. Interpret it in terms of pre 911 and you would have called it flights of fancy.]
Unknown to those present at the meeting, Gottlieb had acquired a quantity of LSD and secretly wanted to test it. Spiking Olson's drink with the LSD, he passed the bottle around and sat back waiting for results. Olson, an outgoing personality who loved practical jokes, soon began to suffer jarring side effects. One of those present at the meeting, Ben Wilson, later recalled that Olson 'was psychotic'.
Gottlieb and his boss, the Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, initiated a 20-year cover-up of the circumstances surrounding Olson's death. At stake was the CIA's project, MK-ULTRA. The project had grown out of an earlier programme, known as Bluebird, that was officially formed to counter Soviet advances in brainwashing.
In reality the CIA had other objectives. An earlier aim was to study methods 'through which control of an individual may be attained'. The emphasis of experimentation was 'narco-hypnosis', the blending of mind altering drugs with careful hypnotic programming. Ever evolving, project Bluebird was later renamed Project Artichoke, after a vegetable that Dulles was particularly fond of. Artichoke was an 'offensive' programme of mind control that gathered together the intelligence divisions of the Army, Navy, Air Force and FBI.
The scope of the project was outlined in a memorandum dated January 1952 that ominously asked: "Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation?"
A CIA team was formed that could travel anywhere in the world. Their task was to test the new interrogation techniques, and ensure that victims would not remember being interrogated and programmed. Despite poor initial results, CIA-sponsored mind control programmes flourished. On 13 April 1953, the project MK-ULTRA was born.
Official CIA documents describe MK-ULTRA as an 'umbrella project' with 149 'sub-projects'. Many of these sub-projects dealt with testing illegal drugs for potential field use. Others dealt with electronics. One explored the possibility of activating 'the human organism by remote control'. Throughout, it remained a major goal to brainwash individuals to become couriers and spies without their knowledge.
When it was formed in 1947, the CIA was forbidden to have any domestic police or internal security powers. In short, it was authorized only to operate 'overseas'. From the very start MK-ULTRA staff broke this Congressional stipulation and began testing on unwitting US citizens. CIA Projects included, over the years: Artichoke, Bluebird, Pandora, Mk-Delta, Mk-Naomi, Mk-Action, Mk-Search and Mk-Ultra.
Precisely how extensive illegal testing became will never be known. Richard Helms, CIA Director and chief architect of the programme, ordered the destruction of all MK-ULTRA records shortly before leaving office in 1973. Despite these precautions, some documents were misfiled and came to light in the late 1970's. They laid bare the spy agency's cynicism.
One particularly project was run by Dr Harris Isabel, Director of the Public Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky - a facility specializing in drug abuse. Asked by the CIA to discover a range of 'synthetic' drugs, Isabel began experimenting on captive black inmates. He daily fed his guinea pigs large doses of LSD, mescaline, marijuana, scopolamine and other substances.
In exchange for participating in the experiments, the inmates received injections of high quality morphine, sometimes getting 'shot-up' three times a day, depending on their co-operation. Brought before the Senate subcommittees in 1975, Isabel saw no contradiction in providing hard drugs to the very addicts he was employed to cure.
Following public outrage, the CIA announced it had ceased its mind manipulation programmes. Victor Marchetti, a CIA veteran of 14 years who turned 'whistle-blower', exposed this to be untrue. In 1977, Marchetti said the CIA claims to have ceased were a cover story. Under scrutiny, the agency were quick to downplay the success of MK-ULTRA - claiming no real advances were achieved.
Miles Copeland, another long-serving CIA officer disputed this. Speaking to a reporter, Copeland revealed that 'the congressional subcommittee which went into this sort of thing only got the barest glimpse'. Another source within the intelligence community says that after 1963, CIA efforts increasingly focused on psychoelectronics. Narcohypnosis had been drained dry.
Dr Jose Delgado, a neurophysiologist at Yale University School, was especially interested in Electronic Stimulation of the Brain. By implanting a small probe into the brain, Delgado discovered that he could wield enormous power over his subject. Using a device he called the 'stimoceiver', which operated by FM radio waves, he was able to electrically orchestrate a wide range of human emotions. These included rage, lust and fatigue.
During 1966, Delgado announced that his findings supported 'the distasteful conclusion that motion, emotion and behaviour can be directed by electrical forces'. He added that 'humans can be controlled like robots by push buttons'. Funded by the Office of Naval Research, Delgado looked forward to a future when society could be 'psychocivilised'.
Despite the miniaturization of implants, the next major advance forward was microwaves. By placing a volunteer in an electromagnetic field, Dr Ross Adey of the University of California, made a startling discovery. Using specific radio waves, Adey was able to influence his subjects' brainwaves.
Another scientist, Allen Frey, took this research a step further. Frey found he could remotely induce sleep in his subjects by subjecting them to electromagnetic waves. He also learned he could produce acoustic noises - booming, buzzing and hissing, directly inside a volunteer's head.
Continuing on from Frey's earlier work, Joseph Sharp, a doctor at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, was able to transmit spoken words via pulsed microwaves. Sitting inside an electromagnetic field, Sharp clearly heard and understood words transmitted to him by a colleague. For the medical profession this was a major breakthrough, and would be of immense benefit to the deaf.
The US military and intelligence community were quick to capitalize on these new discoveries. Secret research programmes on electromagnetics have never been made available under the Freedom of Information Act.
In 1974, J. F. Scapitz, a scientist funded by the Department of Defense, had a vision. He sought to combine earlier MK-ULTRA hypnosis studies with emerging microwave technologies. In an outline to the DoD, Scapitz said "It will be shown the spoken word of the hypnotist may be conveyed by modulated electromagnetic energy directly into the subconscious parts of the brain". He claimed this could be achieved without emplanting any technical devices for 'receiving or transcoding messages'.
For the first time, US agents had the ability to remotely tamper with an individual's mind. Scapitz went even further, claiming that this could be achieved without the target even becoming aware of what was happening.
Since then, little public information has been revealed in scientific literature, following the imposition of the strict security classification. Despite this, significant pieces of information - more usually from non-US sources - continue to be published. What is available paints a bleak picture.
Evidence exists that mind-control and behaviour modification technology is presently concealed behind Non Lethal Defense (NLD) initiatives. In an announcement in 1995 that non-lethal weapons - including high powered microwaves and radio frequency devices - are to be 'transited' to the law enforcement sector was met with dismay in some quarters.
This joint programme, known as 'Operations Other Than War', opens the way for the military to move into the civilian domain - a move precluded by the American constitution. The stated aim is to more effectively tackle narcotics trafficking, terrorism and other criminal activity.
Article by Richard G. Gall, Scotland
[My note: interpret the last paragraph in terms of our current FEMA, ID card scenario and it makes sense. Interpret it in terms of pre 911 and you would have called it flights of fancy.]
posted by James Higham @ 14:14
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