From shkawamoto@hotmail.com Sat Nov 03 20:33:05 2001 Newsgroups: alt.bible.prophecy,bc.politics Subject: Mind control and the secret State From: "Stephen H. Kawamoto" Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2001 04:33:05 GMT Mind control is a popular pastime of itinerant preachers. Look what it has done for Pat Robertson and other televangelists. I'm sure the Voltarian would agree. Commentaries inline in quoted article as review of same, as per copyright. Quoted article is truncated, as per copyright. -- From NameBase NewsLine, No. 12, January-March 1996: Mind Control and the Secret State by Daniel Brandt Last September the CIA confirmed the existence of a 20-year, $20 million research program in "remote viewing," a subvariety of extrasensory perception. On October 29, a Jack Anderson column added more details, and Ted Koppel of ABC's Nightline weighed in with a program on November 28, by which time many newspapers and wire services had picked up the story. By December, a number of pundits began lamenting this additional evidence of the CIA's protean power to waste taxpayers' money. Curiously, "remote viewing" was an old story, first reported by Anderson himself on 23 April 1984. Other Anderson columns of U.S. and Soviet interest in psychic research date back to 1981. Anderson's October 29 update reported that this project, which for a time was contracted out to the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), had been scaled back and put under Pentagon sponsorship, but nevertheless continued. Although the results of these experiments were reportedly mixed, the project retains its defenders in Congress: Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-RI) and Rep. Charlie Rose (D-NC). By 1995, Anderson didn't have an opinion on the merits of this research, but his 1984 column was supportive. On Nightline, former CIA director Robert Gates implied that pressure from members of Congress drove the CIA's original involvement. Another of Ted Koppel's CIA guests, identified only as "Norm," was a technical advisor for CIA deputy director John McMahon and, until 1984, a coordinator for the SRI tests. "Norm" did mention the "eight-martini" results from some experiments; this was an in-house term for remote- viewing results so uncannily successful that observers needed eight martinis to recover. Still, the general impression from Koppel's show was dismissive. Only about "fifteen percent" of the experiments, panelists repeated, produced accurate results. Gates argued that such research, if undertaken at all, belongs in the academy. Not for the first time, however, there's more to this story than Ted Koppel acknowledges. Ingo Swann, who was involved in the SRI project from 1972-1988, is upset with the media's droll treatment of this revived story. Swann points out that the original motivation behind the "remote viewing" project was the fear that the Soviets were investing significant resources in applied psychic research, and might be making advances. At the time, at least, such a rationale would have been considered a plausible one to justify such a small expenditure of intelligence money. Nevertheless, almost all mention of this element of the story, which had figured prominently in the first wave of stories on "remote viewing," was dropped in 1995. (SHK: No doubt because there was no Soviet threat in 1995.) Furthermore, Swann claims, the "fifteen percent" figure, established early in the SRI project, represented the baseline accuracy for non-gifted and untrained persons. U.S. intelligence wanted sixty-five percent accuracy, and in the later stages of the project, Swann claims, "this accuracy level was achieved and often consistently exceeded." According to Swann, the key players in the project, and the documentation supporting the real story, remain under the strictest security constraints. However this may be, Anderson's October 29 story reminds us that ESP is very much alive as an object of intelligence-community interest. In addition to "remote viewing" (seeing people, places, and events at a distance in space and time), another area of interest is the supposed power of "micro psycho-kinesis" or "Micro-PK" -- the ability to affect small objects, such as electrical systems, by using the mind. Micro-PK is one step away from outright telekinesis, and its supposed power has obvious attractions for the CIA. Imagine being able to erase a computer tape from a block away, or interfere with the avionics of a jet fighter, or detonate a warhead. Based on the evidence that's on the public record, the dream of harnessing such power, or even of establishing its existence, may be somewhat optimistic. (SHK: According to http://noosphere.princeton.edu, such power is at best random and a response to threats not to an individual or specific organization but to a holistic "group-mind" i.e. the WTC/- Pentagon attack resulted in not only random number generators being affected, possibly due to buffers being full on the servers, but also meteorological effects. However, most of the evidence is anecdotal and may be relegated to books pertaining to the para-normal, affecting only a fringe group rather than the majority of educated people globally. This indicates that ESP only works in front of "true believers." Skeptics will rationalize away any circumstantial "evidence" just as they have done so with UFOs and "hollow earth" conspiracies.) But this fact hasn't stopped a strange band of specialists, many of whom have government connections, from staking out careers at the intersection of, so to speak, ESP, the Pentagon, and the CIA: where people interested in parapsychology work with those interested in weapons research and mind control. These would-be psi-spooks turn up occasionally on talk shows and at conferences on "nonlethal defense." Their ranks include companies like PSI-TECH in Albuquerque, founded by Maj. Edward A. Dames, and figures such as Col. John B. Alexander of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who was featured in the February 1995 issue of Wired magazine. Dames and Alexander and a dozen more blend in with spookier types who shun publicity but who show up at UFO and New Age gatherings. One is ex-Naval Intelligence officer C.B. Scott Jones, a former aide to Sen. Claiborne Pell. (SHK: Spooks from US Army Intelligence are looking for recruits/potential victims to lure into "research" whch may result in "cult" leaders going "rogue". Obviously, they discount the Psychopath personality tests and rarely profile cult leaders they set up and finance, only to declare them rogue when it turns out that they've only awakened psychopathic "monsters" by giving them too much control over a select group of willing victims who are all too willing to give up control over their unexamined lives. This also explains why a few faithful right-wing Christian fundamentalists have faith in Reagan and the Bushes, despite their ability to run up the national debt "to fight the evils of communism". What is conveniently condoned are the evils of fundamentalism, when it ignores the original moral codes of its religious forefathers.) Once again, it's likely that Ted Koppel doesn't have the whole story. It's also likely that he wouldn't be cleared to report it if he did. Still, the piddling pool of dollars so far devoted to this research strongly implies that, if the figure is accurate, intelligence-funded parapsychological research has been a bust. The uncounted millions the CIA has spent on mind control suggest just the opposite. As with "remote viewing," the attraction of a successful mind control program to the CIA is obvious, and has long been explicitly acknowledged as such. The "Manchurian Candidate" scenario -- in which a programmed zombie-assassin responds to a post-hypnotic trigger, performs the act, and does not remember it later -- is one ideal type of successful mind control. A reliable truth serum, long the object of a CIA quest, would be another. Both of these are operational uses of mind control, its so-called "second front." (SHK: Mind control is a lie. Most "victims" of mind control do decide to go along with the farce, and suspend all disbelief in the process. "Brainwashing" doesn't really exist. What actually happens is people subject to pressure from control freaks will submit to the propaganda if they have established emotional rapport with the controller. It's an easy way out of having to confront lies and risk a possible conflict, especially if a veiled threat is made by the controller. This is why "fire and brimstone" became a favorite "key phrase" in 19th century revivalist preaching in mid-West Amerikka.) This term comes from former CIA director Allen Dulles. In 1953, Dulles, speaking before a national meeting of Princeton alumni, distinguished two fronts in the then-current "battle for men's minds": a "first front" of mass indoctrination through censorship and propaganda, and a "second front" of individual "brainwashing" and "brain changing." Before an audience of fellow Ivy Leaguers, Dulles skipped the usual pieties about democracy. The same year, Dulles approved the CIA's notorious MKULTRA project, and exempted it from normal CIA financial controls. (SHK: Dulles used alot of investment bankers' money to fund covert operations. Alot of investors' money went to black ops while the investment funds shell companies went bust, and investors ended up broke. Of course, the front men evaded justice and got handsomely paid by their spook handlers. No doubt those pyramid schemes in Albania ended up in Swiss and Cayman Island accounts...) The distinction between Dulles's "two fronts" eventually becomes difficult to sustain, like the distinction between, say, sociology and psychology. Still, this distinction can be useful in roughing out a spectrum of known mind-control techniques. For example, one powerful tool for inducing ideological and behavioral change is social pressure in a controlled environment. The "brainwashing" employed during the Korean War did not involve the use drugs or hypnosis. The Chinese merely used the same techniques that they employed on the population at large, but with more intensity, greater control, and additional rewards and punishments such as food and sleep deprivation. Yet this frighteningly simple program was enough to crank up the brainwashing scare in the U.S. Some researchers now suspect that this hysterical episode had its origins in CIA-generated propaganda, designed to give the CIA the political space needed to research more sophisticated mind-control techniques. (SHK: The television is an effective brainwashing tool. There is a correlation between hours viewed and violence amongst children exposed to TV violence. There is also evidence of a link between violence committed by mentally ill teens and TV viewing, but most links between TV violence and psychopaths are categorically denied by the psychopaths, who are also inept but convincing liars anyway, like this deceased scam artist cum born-again preacher who stole money from his parish and expired in a retirement community with his umpteenth victim...) Many undergraduates learn about the experiments conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s, which demonstrated that expressed opinions can be easily manipulated by social pressure, even in obvious cases, such as whether Line A is longer than Line B on a particular card. And Stanley Milgram showed that many unwitting research subjects would administer a series of escalating electric shocks to another, even to the point of an apparent heart attack, simply because a white-coated lab assistant asked them to continue. Milgram's research suggests that a "Manchurian Candidate" already exists in many of us, and that all that's required to bring him out may be a bit of propaganda. The historical evidence for blind human obedience that could be cited here is very familiar, and very depressing. (SHK: In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy, most of the media is devoted to propaganda to bring out the Manchurian candidate. The problem is, they are terrorizing innocent Arab-Americans and South Asian-American rather than signing up for post-Millennial MKULTRA programs to turn them into the ultimate assassination machine ala La Femme Nikita on self-manufactured enkaphalins and endorphins. However, psychopaths make the worst Manchurian candidates because they'll sell out when they're found out.) Still, there's evidence that Pentagon planners are uneasy about potential unruliness among the mass populations Dulles identified as mind control's "first front." Princeton alumni may perhaps follow and accept arguments that U.S. interests are at stake in Bosnia, but their sons are unlikely to be on the scene defending those supposed interests. The urban or Appalachian infantryman, and the family he comes from, may have other ideas. (SHK: anti-government Christian fanatics will basically turn on their handlers, as the Finders escapade have proven.) Elite unease on this point may lie behind Pentagon enthusiasm for the new wrinkle in military force that goes by the name "nonlethal" or "less-than-lethal." Its very claim to embody a "humanitarian" form of warfare is a weapon in Dulles's "battle for men's minds." Nonlethal technology becomes important in a discussion of mind control, as it involves something very close to it, in a form which might be used to control large populations. The propaganda aspect of "humanitarian warfare" is merely a sideshow; it's the technology itself that enlists the enthusiasm of Pentagon planners and law enforcement officials. Much of this "friendly force" technology involves electromagnetic fields and directed-energy radiation, and ultrasound or infrasound weapons -- the same technology that's currently of interest in brain-stimulation and mind-control research. (SHK: Non-lethal is still mind control and thus a cause of alot of suffering, which is contrary to Christian ethics, even when in the name of community altruism a.k.a. humanitarian efforts. Community egoism, though, demands that the Ten Commandments will not be subverted by secular humanist interests.) A partial list of aggressive promoters of this new technology includes Oak Ridge National Lab, Sandia National Laboratories, Science Applications International Corporation, MITRE Corporation, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. In the 1996 defense authorization bill, Congress earmarked $37.2 million to investigate nonlethal technologies. And this money looks like a mere ante in the game. U.S. interest in this "less-than-lethal" technology dates back to the early 1960s, when the State Department became aware of low-energy microwave radiation directed at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Under the name "Project Pandora," secret research into the Moscow radiation continued for ten years -- before embassy employees were informed that they were on the receiving end. Researchers initially assumed that the microwaves were designed to activate bugging devices. But when a large number of illnesses were reported at the embassy, a review of Soviet scientific journals revealed that the Soviets believed microwaves affected cell membranes and increased the excitability of nerve cells. (SHK: the kooks believe their brains are being cooked by spooks to control their minds. I say, the kooks should stop deciding unconsciously to play along with the spooks. The kooks will counter that *that* is the sign that my brain hasn't been shielded from microwaves, but I refuse to wear an aluminium skullcap grounded to earth!) Officially, the incidence of illness at the embassy was ultimately blamed on the U.S. shortwave transmitting antenna on the embassy roof, which leaked energy and contributed to the unhealthy environment. Still, the secrecy surrounding Project Pandora encouraged further speculation within the U.S. intelligence community and elsewhere. For instance, researchers knew that a low-energy microwave beam could be modulated with an "audiogram," and actually convey a recognizable message into an irradiated brain. This led some U.S. spooks to suspect that the Soviets had been attempting to practice mind control on the embassy staff. Such history brings us back to the situation of the restless public in our own jittery, pre-millennial U.S. Today, there seems to be a dramatic increase in the number of "wavies," those who feel they are being harassed by non-ionizing radiation such as radio or sound waves. Nevertheless, there is little evidence to support their belief that the secret state, despite its obvious interest in nonlethal technology, is supporting applied research on unsuspecting average citizens. Several alternative explanations suggest themselves. First of all, the treatment of mental illness over the past few decades has changed dramatically -- from an institutional approach, to an out-patient, community-based system that relies on prescription drugs to control symptoms and behavior. Greater numbers of sufferers of paranoia, freed from institutions, are also free to exercise their First Amendment rights. Furthermore, the power to express oneself has been enhanced by technology -- everything from personal photocopying machines and desktop publishing, to fax machines and now the Internet. And on the Internet, almost everyone can find soulmates. (SHK: "wavies" are actually excusing themselves from responsibility for their "weirdness." It's easier to be paranoid about spooks frrying your brain with radio waves than to take your meds and work for your recovery.) And "wavies" can make the case that they deserve the benefit of a doubt. Revelations about the Cold War secret state, from the CIA documents released in the 1970s to last year's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (which investigated ionizing radiation only), have produced a social environment in which it can seem difficult to rule out anyone's claim, no matter how paranoid-sounding. Finally, there is the modern problem of "pollution" in the broadest sense: from electromagnetic and chemical, and including simple noise. Human reactions to this pollution, which is a new phenomenon in the history of our species, apparently vary by orders of magnitude. Those who are ultra-sensitive may feel harassed, even if no one is intentionally targeting them. To a disinterested observer, the claims of the "wavies" are perhaps no more bizarre than the claims of those who have experienced profound religious conversions. The point is not to belittle anyone's beliefs, but rather to establish that social factors often determine what we consider to be credible. For thousands of years societies have found it useful to allow sufficient space for religion. Only recently has social space opened up for the claims of "wavies." The increase in their numbers is thus predictable, irrespective of whether the secret state is behind their problems or not. (It isn't, in my opinion.) This brings us to the "second front" mentioned by Allen Dulles in 1953: the technology of mind control applied on an individual level. Whereas non-ionizing radiation can be "broadcast" to large populations, techniques such as psychosurgery, implants, and electronic stimulation of the brain (ESB) are administered on a case-by-case basis. More exotic techniques, whose scientific status and potential effectiveness remain uncertain, include radio hypnotic intra-cerebral control and hypnotic dissolution of memory (RHIC-EDOM), and the use of induced "screen memory" and multiple personality disorder (MPD) for cover purposes. The closest parallel to the "wavies" within this second front include those who feel that implants were forced on them, sometimes during childhood. Such beliefs obviously tap deep fears in the popular psyche. The season premier of "The X Files" showed FBI agent Scully discovering that someone had planted a microchip near the base of her skull. And accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh apparently claims that an implant was inserted under his skin, for tracking purposes, during the Gulf War. Identification implants, which are passive devices that respond to an energy source and return an identification number, are similar to the bar codes at the checkout counter in a grocery store. Today's pet owners can have these devices implanted in their pets. But anyone who confuses this simple technology with a chip that tells them what to do is already in trouble. Such a person should consider turning off the television, logging off the Internet, and checking out a few books from the local library. ID technology is ominous for those concerned with surveillance and privacy, but it has little to do with mind control. Granted, there are experimental "stimoceiver" implants that can stimulate the brain through electrodes. Mind-control enthusiast Jose Delgado became briefly famous when he stopped a charging bull in its tracks with such a device in 1964. Even allowing for electronic miniaturization since then, or for the fact that finely-tuned microwaves can achieve the same results as implanted electrodes, ESB would still seem to be impractical as a mind-control device. At best it appears to stimulate various emotions, and might be used for behavioral conditioning in a controlled environment. This is still quite crude as a control device. It would be simpler and more reliable to arrange a fatal accident. The combination of surveillance technology and implanted aversion therapy conjures up the vision of a society of victim-robots, with monitors on every utility pole and computers administering the conditioning. But the necessary infrastructure would be frightfully expensive. And no doubt unnecessary. Sufficient control over the flow of information in society can yield results very similar to those that could be achieved by mind-control implants installed in every individual. Thus the flaw in the reasoning of many researchers: the mind-control techniques that have them so worried are usually the most difficult techniques one can possibly imagine. For those who would seek total control, plain, old-fashioned information control -- leavened with a few fascist techniques -- will do nicely, thank you. ... What is a researcher on this topic to do? Valuable though the Net and its e-mail community are, the Net's greatest value remains that of a pointer to other sources: potential interviews; journals; and, yes, even books. 1. Ed Light runs the Freedom of Thought Foundation home page at: http://members.gnn.com/fivestring Glen Nichols' and Alan Yu's stories can be found there as well. 2. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation is at: http://iquest.com/%7Efitz/fmsf/ Hopeful Hands, a religiously-oriented satanic ritual abuse page is at: http://www.mother.com/%7Eclburger/hopeful/homepage.htm 3. The Controllers is available at: http://www.lablinks.com/sumeria/cosmo/control.html Thomas Porter, from Winston-Salem NC, is a software engineer by necessity and a researcher by desire. He is the author of a Web site titled "Government Research into ESP and Mind Control" at: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/T_Porter NameBase NewsLine "More Information for More People" Steve Badrich, Editor -- Overgrow the State! White hat hackers: keeping the worldwide web secure... PGP key fingerprint: 7F49 566F DB34 DC11 5BEA 0BC3 C47A A982 8C65 6D0E