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         MindNet Journal - Vol. 1, No. 4
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         V E R I C O M M / MindNet         "Quid veritas est?"
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    Notes:

    The following is reproduced here with the express permission of
    the author.

    Permission is given to reproduce and redistribute, for
    non-commercial purposes only, provided this information and the
    copy, remain intact and unedited.

    The views, and opinions, expressed below are not necessarily the
    views and opinions of VERICOMM, MindNet, or the editor, unless
    otherwise noted.

    Editor: Mike Coyle

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    >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.

         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.

         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.

         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."

         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.

         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.

         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.

         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.

         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.

         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.

         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.

         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.

         In 1973, former MKULTRA researcher Louis Jolyon "Jolly"
    West, from the Department of Psychiatry at UCLA, convinced
    California and federal officials to sponsor a Violence Center.
    Governor Ronald Reagan mentioned the proposed Center in glowing
    terms in a speech on January 11, and the federal Law Enforcement
    Assistance Administration (LEAA) approved a $750,000 grant. By
    this time the federal government, through LEAA, the National
    Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Bureau of Prisons, and the
    CIA, was operating or funding numerous behavior modification
    programs in prisons, schools, and hospitals. In response to
    protests from UCLA students and faculty, the LEAA announced that
    it would ban the use of its funds for "psychosurgery, medical
    research, behavior modification -- including aversion therapy --
    and chemotherapy."

         A year later Louis West was still hoping to obtain funds
    from NIMH, but by then it was too late for his proposal. Until
    the 1970s it was not unusual for mental health professionals to
    propose programs that would screen children for the purpose of
    early diagnosis and treatment of the potentially violent. But by
    the 1970s the trend was in the other direction, as some states
    enacted laws that made it more difficult to confine someone
    involuntarily as a mental patient. By the 1990s the shoe is
    securely on the other foot.

         Twenty years ago it was fashionable for clinicians to blame
    urban unrest and similar phenomena on the behavior of
    individuals. Now, however, the individual can disclaim
    responsibility for his actions by blaming external agencies.
    Numerous persons have gone public with accusations of strange
    events during their childhood, suggesting that they were used as
    guinea pigs for mysterious men in white coats. Some of their
    evidence seems sufficiently solid to require further
    investigation, and more cases are emerging all the time.

         On 15 March 1995, two patients of New Orleans therapist
    Valerie Wolf testified before the Advisory Committee on Human
    Radiation Experiments. Although this was outside the purview of
    the Committee, they were permitted to testify because some of the
    names of CIA-connected researchers they mentioned were already
    familiar to the Committee. These two women remembered sessions
    when they were around eight years old that involved electric
    shocks, hypnosis, shots with needles, x-rays, sexual abuse, and
    even training in intelligence tradecraft. One case occurred from
    1972-1976 and the other in 1958. This testimony was not covered
    by the media.

         Although the recollections of the two women were spontaneous
    and did not involve regression therapy, there is also a cottage
    industry developing around memories of child abuse in general.
    For the most part these are not connected with government
    research, and perhaps many are the result of questionable
    techniques used by social workers, therapists, police and
    prosecutors to elicit testimony from children. Juries are
    becoming more skeptical of many of these cases. This issue has
    even assumed the dimensions of a religious crusade -- Christian
    fundamentalists worry about evil in the New Age movement, and are
    on the lookout for cases of "satanic ritual abuse" of children.
    Others believe the CIA has turned children into split-personality
    sex slaves for operational use.

         In 1992 the False Memory Syndrome Foundation began in
    Philadelphia. This organization criticizes the practice of
    regression therapy when it's used to bring out memories of
    traumatic childhood experiences. FMSF considers these repressed
    memories of incest and sexual abuse to be objectively false, and
    devastating to family life in general. There's a growing split
    over this issue among psychology professionals. To confuse the
    situation further, FMSF has some on their Board of Advisors who
    may want to cover up their own work. One is Louis West, another
    is Martin Orne, one of the key MKULTRA researchers in hypnosis,
    and a third is Michael Persinger, who did research on the effects
    of electromagnetic radiation on the brain for a Pentagon weapons
    project.

         Regression therapy could be a threat to the techniques the
    CIA may have secretly developed involving the use of hypnosis.
    Shortly after Pearl Harbor, George Estabrooks, chairman of the
    Department of Psychology at Colgate University, was called to
    Washington by the War Department. As one of the leading
    authorities on hypnosis, Estabrooks was asked to evaluate how it
    might be used by the enemy. In 1943 he wrote a book, expanded in
    a second edition fourteen years later, that included a discussion
    of the use of hypnotism in warfare. In his opinion, one in five
    adult humans are capable of being placed in a trance so deep that
    they will have no memory of it. They could be hypnotized secretly
    by using a disguised technique, and given a post-hypnotic
    suggestion. Estabrooks suggested that a dual personality could be
    constructed with hypnosis, thereby creating the perfect double
    agent with an unshakable cover.

         Estabrooks' theories regarding hypnosis are disputed by many
    experts today. Frequently the entire topic is dismissed with the
    notion, promoted by Martin Orne and others, that a hypnotist
    cannot induce a person to perform an act that this person would
    otherwise find objectionable. But this in itself appears to be a
    cover story; if the trance is deep enough, an imaginary social
    environment can be constructed through which an otherwise
    objectionable act becomes necessary and heroic. Murdering Hitler
    during wartime would not be considered criminal, for example. It
    may even be easier than this: in 1951 in Denmark, Palle Hardrup
    robbed a bank and killed a guard, and then claimed that hypnotist
    Bjorn Nielsen told him to do it. Nielsen eventually confessed
    that Hardrup was a test of his hypnotic techniques, which
    included telling Hardrup that the money from the robbery was a
    means to a noble end. Hardrup had become Nielsen's robot, and
    Nielsen was convicted.

         In 1976 a book by Donald Bain titled "The Control of Candy
    Jones" was published by Playboy Press. This one-of-a-kind book is
    the story Candy Jones, who was America's leading cover girl
    during the forties and fifties. In 1960 Jones fell on hard times
    and agreed to act as a courier for the CIA. An excellent subject
    for hypnosis, Jones became the plaything of a CIA psychiatrist
    who used her to exhibit his mastery of mind-control techniques.
    This psychiatrist used hypnosis and drugs to develop a second
    personality within Jones over a period of 12 years. This second
    personality took the form of a courier who could be triggered by
    telephone with particular sounds, and after the mission was
    completed and the normal personality resumed, did not remember
    anything.

         These missions were elaborate, and frequently involved world
    travel to deliver messages. According to the book, Jones and
    other victims were once even subjected to torture at a seminar at
    CIA headquarters, as a means of demonstrating this psychiatrist's
    control over his subjects.

         Jones married New York radio talk-show host Long John Nebel
    in 1972. An amateur hypnotist, Nebel stumbled onto her secret
    personality, and began unravelling the story over many subsequent
    sessions. Author Donald Bain, a family friend, was invited to
    reconstruct the story from more than 200 hours of taped sessions
    between Jones and Nebel. Various researchers have confirmed some
    pieces of the story, but Bain did not name the major CIA
    psychiatrist involved, nor did he name a second psychiatrist who
    played a more marginal role. Researcher Martin Cannon recently
    identified this second psychiatrist as the late William Kroger,
    who was an associate of Louis West, Martin Orne, and another
    MKULTRA veteran, H.J. Eysenck. Whatever the truth is behind Candy
    Jones -- and it's difficult to see the book as an elaborate hoax
    -- there's no question that hypnotist George Estabrooks raised
    issues that the CIA took seriously in secret research for at
    least 25 years.

         The MKULTRA implementing documents specified that
    "additional avenues to the control of human behavior" were to
    include "radiation, electroshock, various fields of psychology,
    sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment substances,
    and paramilitary devices and materials." The word "radiation"
    gave the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments a
    reason to request a search of records on human experimentation
    from the CIA. Their final report, released last October,
    expressed dissatisfaction with the CIA's response, and
    recommended that the CIA get their act together so that
    legitimate requests can be accommodated better in the future.

         One problem is the compartmentation of the CIA's
    record-keeping systems. Another is that the CIA immediately
    decided that the Committee's purview was restricted only to
    ionizing radiation -- the type of radiation of interest in
    nuclear testing, as opposed to the electromagnetic and sound
    waves that might be used for mind control. Finally, those
    documents that the CIA did release were heavily redacted. The
    Committee noted that they had "received numerous queries about
    MKULTRA and the other related programs from scholars,
    journalists, and citizens who have been unable to review the
    complete record." In fact, most of the MKULTRA records were
    destroyed in 1973 by the order of Richard Helms, who waived an
    internal CIA regulation to do so. It was also the practice of
    MKULTRA to maintain as few records as possible.

         If ESP, waves, implants, satanic ritual abuse and
    post-hypnotic robots aren't sufficient, recently the subject of
    mind control has been intertwined with UFOs. Seemingly jealous of
    the credibility enjoyed by victims of alien abduction, researcher
    Julianne McKinney promotes the view that the entire UFO
    phenomenon was created by the secret state. A more thorough
    researcher, Martin Cannon, also promotes this view. In a long
    monograph titled "The Controllers," he explains the UFO
    phenomenon as a "screen memory" cover story induced by U.S.
    intelligence to protect their own mind-control experiments.

         On the other hand, the implicit assumption behind McKinney
    and Cannon that it must be either/or -- either aliens from outer
    space or spooks with a bag of secret tricks -- seems arbitrary.
    If the ethically-challenged U.S. intelligence community has
    proven anything during the last half- century, it's that they
    would not find it objectionable to work on behalf of aliens from
    outer space, and against the interests of humankind.

         Another possible scenario is that aliens are real, U.S.
    intelligence knows more than they are telling, and they send out
    disinformation agents to keep the issue at merely a low simmer.
    By muddying the waters with kook-biz, they keep it from becoming
    officially-credible spook-biz, at which point it might boil over
    into eschatology, mass hysteria, and vigilantism.

         UFO researchers have recently become interested in the
    Aviary, a group of former and current U.S. spooks, along with
    some defense- contracting scientists, who may or may not have
    official status. Apparently the mission of this group is to
    discredit any serious research into UFOs. Its members include
    Col. John B. Alexander, Harold Puthoff from the remote viewing
    project, and Jack Vorona of the Defense Intelligence Agency
    (formerly the boss of Michael Persinger). The names of others are
    floating around the Internet as well.

         Some Aviarians claim to be UFOlogists themselves, or are
    friendly and good-natured with other UFOlogists, and some genuine
    UFO researchers are quick to squabble with other researchers.
    This makes it nearly impossible to sort out who is disinforming
    whom, and difficult to distinguish the white hats from the black
    hats. Since he began looking into the Aviary, British researcher
    Armen Victorian has been burgled eight times, his car broken into
    three times, his telephone tapped, and a bug was discovered in
    his home. All this happened courtesy of British intelligence and
    police, reportedly as a favor for the CIA.

         Something is going on here, and chances are excellent that
    it's not happening merely for our general amusement. Whoever the
    men in black turn out to be, it's not the casually-titillated
    viewer of "The X Files" that worries them. Instead, it's the
    relentless researchers who track their careers and publicize
    their deeds, hoping that one day the state will have no secrets,
    and that those who live off of its impoverished taxpayers will,
    in the end, be held accountable.

         Those involved in parapsychology, mind control, and UFOlogy
    who have government connections make up a small community; the
    same names reappear constantly. Ranged against them are the
    independent researchers -- also a small community. Leaving aside
    Laurance Rockefeller, who is funding some activity in this area,
    presumably out of personal interest, there don't appear to be
    mysterious sums of money floating around. That means the field is
    open for dedicated researchers with modest resources. And that's
    the good news, because we need to be watching every move the
    psi-spooks make.

    Sidebar from NameBase NewsLine, No. 12, January-March 1996:

                       Mind Control and the Internet

                                by Tom Porter

         The Internet is a prodigious source of information, but
    using it has been compared to "trying to sip from a firehose."
    Access to this flood of data comes at a price: Net researchers
    spend much of their time sifting the valuable from the dubious
    from the insane. Never has this been more true than in dealing
    with Net resources on the topic of mind control.

         To begin with, there is the problem of definition. "Mind
    control" has been taken to mean many different things, and all
    these definitions have their advocates on the Net. Some of the
    discussion on the Internet involves the purported harassment of
    individuals for the purpose of disorienting them, or decreasing
    their ability to discuss issues of importance. This includes the
    use of less-than-lethal technologies such as microwave or ELF
    irradiation, sonics, and other techniques. Ed Light and Julianne
    McKinney argue that such harassment is real.

         Other research and commentary on the Net concerns individual
    mind control by means of what I call "structured abuse," and what
    L. Ron Hubbard once identified as "drug/pain/hypnosis"
    conditioning. Discussions on this topic can be found on many
    pages related to satanic ritual abuse, alien abductions, and the
    "false memory syndrome" debate. This area is where my research
    efforts are concentrated.

         Exploring mind control on the Net is complicated by the fact
    that many of the most active participants claim they are also
    victims. Their intensity is understandable; if I had been
    subjected to the abuses claimed by these authors, I would
    certainly want to publicize them. Ed Light hosts the Freedom of
    Thought Foundation home page and tells his story there. Alan Yu
    has contributed extensively to the alt.mindcontrol Usenet
    newsgroup on this subject. Another self-identified victim who has
    posted extensively is Glen Nichols.[1]

         Many of the claims that such people make may seem
    incredible. Still, we know that in the past intelligence agencies
    have committed crimes they called "research." The Rockefeller
    Commission and the Church Committee in the 1970s exposed some of
    the horrors of the CIA's MKULTRA programs, and it remains
    extremely likely that much more remains hidden.

         Having spoken to several purported survivors of trauma-based
    mind control who had significant although not conclusive
    corroborating evidence, I am inclined to give these people the
    benefit of the doubt. Many survivors of conventional abuse endure
    additional suffering because of their difficulty in revealing
    what happened to them, and in persuading others of the reality of
    their abuse. I try to achieve a balance between acceptance of and
    skepticism toward survivors' stories, and then try to seek
    independent corroboration.

         The Net is a particularly fertile field for anyone
    investigating possible links between satanic ritual abuse and
    mind control. There's a Net site that supports every imaginable
    position, from False Memory Syndrome Foundation's iron-clad
    skepticism to fundamentalist pages proclaiming tens of thousands
    of abuse victims per year.[2] My own opinion is that the
    application of "structured abuse" to young children, combined
    with classical conditioning techniques, could create alternate
    personalities that could be easily controlled and manipulated.
    This would not require complex technology, only secrecy and
    ruthlessness.

         Any group capable of such techniques would see "benefits" in
    the existence of such slaves. Some claim that purported "satanic
    ritual abuse" can be a cover for experiments by intelligence
    agencies. My own opinion is that this claim ought not to be
    rejected out of hand. The CIA has a record of distancing itself
    from morally-indefensible operations by using fronts and cutouts.
    A similar case has been made for "alien abductions." Perhaps the
    best-known discussion of possible links between mind control and
    alien abductions is Martin Cannon's monograph "The Controllers,"
    available in several forms from many sites.[3] Cannon claims that
    some alien abductions are cover for mind-control efforts, and
    represent an attempt to deal with victims' memories of such
    procedures. Variations of Cannon's view can be found in Usenet
    discussions of "alien abductions" as cover for the implantation
    of microchips to track and/or control individuals. Again, even
    these claims seem to me to deserve airing. The CIA has a history
    of attempting to manipulate the existence of cults and other
    mass- psychological phenomena to advance its objectives.

          And the same could be true of the Internet. On the Net,
    information flows rapidly, and is often impossible to verify.
    Anonymous rumors can easily be inserted into the data-stream.
    Paranoia about poisoned sources can easily overtake a researcher.
    As a topic for serious discussion on the Net, "UFOlogy" already
    seems to have self-destructed, and "mind control" may be next.
    The welcome freewheeling quality of Net discourse is offset by
    the possibility that important subjects can be trivialized, and
    then disappear.

         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 Mind Control Fourm home page at:
         http://www.mindcontrolforums.com
         this is the old site.
         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/~fitz/fmsf/
         Hopeful Hands, a religiously-oriented satanic ritual abuse
         page is at:
         http://www.mother.com/~clburger/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

    The NameBase home page is at:
    http://ursula.blythe.org/NameBase/bookindx.html

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