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         MindNet Journal - Vol. 1, No. 99
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         V E R I C O M M sm                 "Quid veritas est?"
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    The views and opinions expressed below are not necessarily the
    views and opinions of VERICOMM or the editors, unless otherwise
    noted.

    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 unaltered.

    Copy formatted in ASCII. Netscape mail reader format:
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    Editor's Note:

    The following is an excerpt from a work in progress.

    The author, Martin Cannon, a writer and artist, lives in
    the Los Angeles area.

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    THE PRE-HISTORY OF MKULTRA

    By Martin Cannon

    January 1997

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    The concept of mind control strikes most people as either
    futuristic or fabulous. In fact, human beings have employed
    effective thought-processing techniques ever since the first
    oligarches sought to exploit their underlings, ever since the
    first mystics sought communion with their deities, ever since
    man first sought to understand his inner self. Mind control,
    broadly defined, has been with us in one form or another since
    the beginning of civilization.

    The Mushroom Warriors

    Arguably, the Russians really were the first brainwashers, just
    as the propagandists of the 1950s alleged.

    4500 years ago, the Koyak and Wiros tribes of the central Russian
    steppes conducted what may be the first experiments in
    stimulating violence through the use of drugs. They derived from
    the Amanita muscaria mushroom a drug which reduced the warrior's
    anxiety and fear while increasing his strength, stamina, mental
    acuity, and ability to withstand pain. The shamans hit upon a
    noteworthy method of increasing the drug's potency: The mushroom
    was first fed to reindeer, and the soldiers would drink the
    animals' urine on the eve of battle. Viking warriors also
    depended on chemical stimulants derived from deer urine.
    (Today's soldiers should ponder this history before complaining
    about their MREs.) Combatants in India relied on similar drugs,
    as did Native American tribes of the Southwest. Incan warriors
    made use of the coca leaf. The tradition continues today: In
    Vietnam, soldiers sought relief in a veritable
    pharma-cornucopia, which offered everything from marijuana to
    heroin. The warring tribes of Somalia, Rwanda and Liberia all
    routinely partake of the locally-preferred narcotics.

    In all ancient cultures, the shaman prepared for healing work by
    retreating to a cave, or some other quiet, intensely dark
    environment -- a sensory deprivation chamber, if you will. Magic
    could occur only after prolonged sessions of drumming and
    chanting: rhythmic sound stimulation. The shaman would visualize
    descent into a lower world, just as a modern hypnotherapist
    might use "falling" imagery during trance induction. As William
    Sargant, a British psychiatrist, said of these ancient rituals:

    "Some persons can produce a state of trance and dissociation in
    themselves, or in others, with a decreasing need for strong and
    repeated emotional stresses, until it may become so much a
    conditioned pattern of brain activity that it occurs with only
    minor stresses and difficulties; for example, in the primitive
    religious context, at the renewed beat of a drum, or the
    screaming roar of the rhombos... If the trance is accompanied by
    a state of mental dissociation, the person experiencing it can
    be profoundly influenced in his subsequent thinking and
    behavior."

    Students of occult history maintain that the heirophants of the
    ancient Egyptian mystery schools practiced a strikingly-advanced
    form of hypnosis, in which initiates entered profound trances,
    triggering what we would today call an out-of-body-experience.
    Even modern-day, scientifically-oriented hypnotists recognize
    their debt to the Aesculapian priests of ancient Greece, who
    practiced a hypnosis-based form of medicine and behavior
    modification they called "dream healing." The oracles of ancient
    Greece, through the breathing of certain vapors and the imbibing
    of certain liquids, dwelt within an altered state, as did, to
    varying degrees, those who participated in the mysteries.
    Sargant does not hesitate to use the term "brainwashing" to
    describe the rites of the Oracle of Triphonius. During these
    mysteries, the initiate experienced sensory deprivation, sudden
    confusion techniques, selected auditory and visual stimuli,
    drugs -- and possibly even the proverbial whack on the skull.
    Unsurprisingly, vivid hallucinations often resulted. Western
    civilization, we are told, was founded on the Greek model -- but
    to what degree was Greek civilization itself founded on mind
    control? Mystery cults expanded throughout the ancient world,
    always centering (as Dr. Pierre Janet once noted) in the same
    types of pastoral locales favored by modern centers of Marian
    devotion. At Eleusis, as at Lourdes, the pilgrim entered
    craftily-designed alternate world, set amid grottoes, streams,
    caves and candlelight rites:

    "Initiation ceremonies of secret cults of the mystery-type
    invariably involve tests, sometimes most severe ones. The effect
    of certain experiences was a carefully worked program of mind
    training which is familiar in modern times as that employed by
    certain totalitarian states to 'condition' or reshape the
    thinking of the individual. This process produces a state in
    which the mind is pliant enough to have certain ideas implanted:
    ideas which resist a great deal of counter-influence."

    The Truth About "Magic"

    During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, alchemists filled many an
    obscure text with descriptions of techniques intended to focus
    the will and alter awareness. These auto-induced trance states
    probably account for many of the visionary experiences reported
    in occult lore. In a sense, magic works -- in spite of, not
    because of, the theory of the magician.

    Example: Ritualists once set great store by a device called "The
    Triangle of the Art." This was, essentially, a round glass
    (roughly a foot in diameter) painted black on the reverse and
    set into a triangular wooden frame, which was painted white and
    bedecked with esoteric symbols. The magician was to sit in a
    darkened room facing this glass, flanked on either side by lit
    candles placed just outside his direct vision. By studying the
    dark mirror, concentrating on the reflected light dancing on his
    face, the magician would slip into the spirit realms and commune
    with forces beyond. Undoubtedly, the device did its job, though
    the triangular frame and eldritch calligraphy contributed little
    aside from decoration. As the American military would
    re-discover in the 20th Century, flickering light can profoundly
    affect perception and awareness.

    The literature of occultism, stripped of its supernatural
    pretenses, records the long pre-history of Mesmerism. The demons
    called forth by Prelati and Gilles de Rais, the Colosseum of
    horrors witnessed by Buenvenuto Cellini, the spirits evoked by
    Edward Kelly and John Dee, the devils who possessed the sisters
    at Loudon: Mind manipulation may not explain all of these
    phenomena, but it explains much. The MKULTRA scientists merely
    mapped lands the alchemists had long ago discovered. As Richard
    Cavendish points out in his history of The Black Arts:

    "There is not much doubt that the procedures of ritual magic are
    likely to cause hallucinations. The magician prepares himself by
    abstinence and lack of sleep, or by drink, drugs and sex. He
    breathes in fumes which may affect his brain and senses. He
    performs mysterious rites which tug at the deepest, most
    emotional and unreasoning levels of his mind, and he is further
    intoxicated by the killing of an animal, the wounding of a human
    being and in some cases the approach to and the achievement of
    orgasm. Through all this he concentrates on a mental image of
    the being he hopes to see. It does not seem at all unlikely that
    at the high point of the ceremony he may actually see it."

    Religion

    Similar practices had similar results within the confines of
    mainstream faith. Teresa of Avila, the 16th century mystic, may
    be famous for her charming homily "God is to be found in the
    pots and pans" -- yet she did not receive her visions
    spontaneously, while going about her daily labors like other
    women. To the contrary: In order to experience the divine, she
    required of herself (and of her charges) penances, solitude,
    strict discipline, chants, and ongoing mental prayer. This
    continual hypnotic auto-induction resulted in the state of
    ecstasy -- the state of trance -- depicted in Bernini's famous
    statue. Her fellow Carmelites, having undergone the same
    preparation, would experience the same visions, interviewing
    celestial visitors alongside Teresa.

    History's other great mystics -- inspired seers, such as St. John
    of the Cross, Plotinus, and Meister Eckhart -- usually followed
    similar recipes for ecstasy.

    According to William Sargant, the methodologies of religious
    conversion "often approximate so closely to modern political
    techniques of brain-washing and thought control that each throws
    light on the mechanics of the other." Sargant pays particular
    attention to the great English revivalist of the mid-18th
    century, John Wesley. His technique ("used," according to
    Sargant, "not only in many other successful religions but in
    modern political warfare") involved an all-out assault on the
    emotions, primarily the emotion of fear. The preacher would hit
    this note at the loudest possible volume for the longest
    possible time, until many in the audience succumbed to
    hysterical collapse. This approach differs hardly at all from
    the ultra-emotional "conditioning" sessions conducted by such
    modern-day evangelists as Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker.

    Interestingly, Wesley even recommended a form of
    electro-convulsive therapy involving Leyden jars. He considered
    the intentional electrification of human beings both harmless
    and beneficial, "a thousand medicines in one." John Wesley may
    thus be the first "programmer" to take a serious interest in the
    use of electricity to affect mind and body. All religious systems
    have incorporated practices designed to modify consciousness:
    the chanting of mantras, focusing of concentration, guided
    imagery, breathing exercises, group ritual, intense prayer, etc.
    Mind control, defined broadly, has affected history to the
    extent that religion has affected history. The wars of faith
    have rarely been more than the clashes of psychic autocracies.

    The Assassins

    Perhaps the most innovative thinker in the history of
    psychological manipulation was the legendary Persian warlord
    Hasan I Sabbah, otherwise known as "The Old Man of the
    Mountains." Reportedly a boyhood friend of the poet Omar Khyam,
    Hasan was the son of a governor. He was educated in the ways of
    the Ismailis, a semi-gnostic sect based in Cairo, which used
    subtle psychological techniques to instill initiates with a
    fanatic loyalty to the Egyptian caliph.

    When the ambitious and ruthless Hasan was exiled from Persia in
    1078, he vowed revenge -- and soon achieved it, by perfecting
    Ismaili mind-control methods. In the words of Marco Polo, Hasan
    "caused draughts of a soporific nature to be administered to ten
    or a dozen youths." He would then transport the drugged youths
    to a beautiful, but inescapable, valley adjacent to his hillside
    fortress near Kasvin. Every detail of this Persian garden
    corresponded with the descriptions of paradise found in the Koran
    -- including a connoisseur's collection of harem girls. "Upon
    awakening from this state of lethargy their senses were struck
    by all the delightful objects, and each perceiving himself
    surrounded by lovely damsels, singing, playing, and attracting
    his regards by the most fascinating caresses..." The recruits
    believed that they had literally died and gone to heaven. After
    a few weeks of beatific bliss, the young fighting men were (much
    to their disappointment) expelled from paradise and returned to
    the outside world. Hasan would them send them on missions of
    what we would now call "unconventional warfare." The promised
    reward for both success and martyrdom was a revisit to the
    garden of delights. Thus, Hasan managed to overcome the most
    serious obstacle to effective soldiering: the innate human will
    for self-preservation. The troops welcomed death, and maintained
    their ecstatic vision of the afterlife through the liberal use of
    hashish -- hence the term hashishim, from which we derive the
    word "assassin."

    Another "recruiting" technique was more direct: Hasan would
    purchase children from the poor, and raise them from infancy to
    become absolutely obedient warriors. So great was Hasan's
    control that he once impressed a visiting dignitary by ordering
    one of his men to leap off a cliff, an order fulfilled without a
    second's hesitation.

    The hashishim advanced Hasan's interests, established a network
    of strongholds, and either murdered or intimidated all rival
    rulers. By 1094 these elite troops, wearing the white tunics and
    red sashes characteristic of their sect, had made Hasan the most
    powerful warlord in the area now called the Middle East.
    Reportedly, King Richard the Lion-hearted once contracted Hasan
    to have a mind-controlled assassin perform a "hit" against a
    rival crusader.

    Such, at least, is the story. Alas, figures like The Old Man of
    the Mountains invite much myth, and never leave the sort of
    paper trail modern-day researchers would prefer. We know,
    however, that as the centuries progressed, the hashishim evolved
    into an extremely widespread cult, which had made its presence
    known in Russia, China, and even India -- where the ways of the
    assassins may have inspired the notorious Thugees. Hasan's sect
    survives to this day throughout the Middle East. In Gujurat
    state, India, and in Pakistan, they are now known as the Khojas,
    and owe their allegiance to the Aga Khan, leader of the
    modern-day Ismailis.

    Mesmerism

    All sciences of today owe something to the pseudosciences of
    older times. As we have seen, hypnotism's debt is particularly
    large. Many history books credit Franz Anton Mesmer (1733-1815)
    as the founder of the science of hypnotism, yet we should
    properly classify Mesmer as an occultist, not a scientist, for
    he never represented the Age of Reason. He reflected older
    traditions.

    Specifically, Mesmer adopted and expanded upon the ideas first
    proposed by that impressive and irascible 16th Century
    alchemist, Paracelsus. This fascinating healer, one-quarter
    empiricist and three-quarters quack (at a time when most medical
    men approached the 100% mark for charlatanism), made many
    enemies in his day. His personality may be gauged by the fact
    that his real name -- Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohoenheim --
    gave rise to our word "bombast." Paracelsus held that life flows
    through an invisible and intangible liquid he called "mumia."
    Alchemists generally refer to this substance as a fluid,
    although we perhaps ought to think of it as something akin to
    the aura, or Wilhelm Reich's orgone energy. Supposedly, bodily
    fluids (including blood, sweat and urine) maintain this life
    essence for a brief period. Paracelsus favored applying these
    substances to a diseased body, arguing that healthy mumia could
    attract diseased mumia, much as a magnet attracts iron. This
    practice apparently led Paracelsus to use actual magnets on his
    patients. He cured hysterical disorders in women by placing the
    positive pole of a magnet on the head and the negative pole of
    another magnet below. Again, the magic worked, in spite of the
    theory of the magician.

    During the Age of Reason, a few lonely voices continued to
    propound the notion of animal magnetism, particularly an English
    doctor named Richard Mead and the Jesuit Professor Maximilian
    Hehle, of Vienna. In 1774, Hehle used magnets to cure a woman's
    stomach cramps. After the patient recovered, Hehle happened to
    mention his success to a fellow Viennese -- the aforementioned
    Franz Anton Mesmer.

    Mesmer was hooked. He felt that Hehle's experiment confirmed his
    own ideas of an "etheric fluid" which pervades all space and
    controls human health -- a concept cribbed, obviously, from
    Paracelsus' idea of the mumia. During the next year, Mesmer used
    magnets, and eventually his hands, to manipulate this imagined
    ether. Initial successes with hypochondriacs and hysterics
    quickly established Mesmer's reputation. It became tarnished just
    as rapidly, when he attempted to use animal magnetism to cure an
    attractive young pianist of her blindness. She and a number of
    pretty female "patients" came to live with Mesmer, creating
    something of a scandal: The Viennese sensed that "magnetic"
    treatment could allow the unscrupulous to take advantage of the
    fairer sex. (This remains a concern in hypnotic practice.)

    Mesmer found it expedient to remove himself to Paris. There, he
    established a fantastically successful salon catering to the
    aristocracy. Mesmer initiated a form of "group therapy":
    Patients would enter a large tub filled with water, magnets, and
    iron filings. They formed a circle, alternating male and female,
    pressing thighs together (the healing sessions contained an
    undeniable sexual element), and used their hands to manipulate
    each other's "ether." Mesmer presided over these ceremonies in
    flowing robes of light violet, waving a long magnet-wand over
    his patients and any other object he cared to "magnetize."

    Obviously, all this was buncombe. Yet many declared themselves
    cured, or at least profoundly affected. Mesmer's treatment sent
    his charges into violent convulsions -- a complete physical
    collapse known as "the crisis." Some experienced hallucinations,
    as when certain patients reported seeing flames shooting out of
    Mesmer's magnets. These fascinating, yet disturbing, reports
    prompted King Louis XVI to commission an independent study by a
    respected team of scientists, which included that esteemed
    visitor from America, Dr. Benjamin Franklin.

    They examined Mesmer's claims, most of which did not stand up
    under close scrutiny. The commissioners observed numerous
    patients touch a "magnetized" tree to regain health; many
    mistakenly touched the wrong tree, yet experienced the crisis
    nonetheless. Franklin and his fellow experts determined that
    "imagination without magnetism produces convulsions, and that
    the magnetism without the imagination produces nothing." So much
    for Mesmer's theory of the all-encompassing etheric fluid. The
    report concluded "...that the existence of the fluid is
    absolutely destitute of proof, and that the fluid, having no
    existence, can consequently have no use."

    Mesmer was proven a fraud -- but a fraud who, disconcertingly
    enough, had obtained impressive results. For the discerning eye,
    the spectacle of magnetic healing still provided much to marvel
    at. If "imagination" alone could produce profound physical
    effects, then the human mind possessed previously unguessed-at
    capabilities. Moreover, Mesmer eventually discovered the
    somnambulistic (as opposed to the convulsive) hypnotic state.
    This is the form of hypnosis used therapeutically by later, more
    scientific practitioners. His magic had worked despite his
    theory; it was up to his followers to straighten out the theory.

    That process, alas, took the better part of the next hundred
    years. Arguably, the process continues today.

    Hypnotism

    Mesmer's pupil, the Comte de Puysegur, used what he termed
    magnetic somnabulism to cure a shepherd boy. The experiment's
    results largely accorded with those achieved by modern hypnotic
    practitioners; the subject even experienced amnesia covering the
    trance episode. De Puysegur also used hypnosis (which had not
    yet attained that label) to conduct experiments -- reportedly
    successful -- in telepathy.

    Two surgeons, Dr. John Elliotson of London and Dr. James Esdaile,
    who worked in India, performed operations using "mesmeric
    anaesthesia." The technique even allowed Esdaile to perform
    painless amputations. Yet the British medical establishment was
    incensed by Elliotson's dabblings in what they considered the
    occult; his hospital banned the use of mesmerism in medical
    practice. Perhaps no other episode better exemplifies the
    limitations of what we might label the "CSICOP" mentality: The
    arch-skeptics of Elliotson's day condemned thousands of patients
    to agonies hypnosis could have averted. Yet scientific
    skittishness was understandable: Many experimenters were
    uncredentialed, and many used Mesmer's techniques to explore
    ESP, always a dangerous topic.

    Interestingly, a number of practitioners -- such as Alexandre
    Bertrand, Dr. J.H.D. Petetin, and Dr. L. Rostan -- reported very
    positive results in this field. "Magnetized" patients seemed to
    develop telepathy and other paranormal abilities. An American
    doctor, Lyman B. Larkin, used animal magnetism to cure a servant
    girl. When entranced, the girl developed a secondary personality
    in marked contrast to her natural character. She also reportedly
    established paranormal powers, and communicated with a "fairy"
    who appeared to her during magnetized sessions. This case -- with
    its bizarre combination of hypnosis, multiple personality
    disorder, ESP experimentation and visual hallucination -- could
    almost be considered a dry run for MKULTRA.

    Scottish physician James Braid invented the term "neuro-hypnosis"
    in the mid-19th century. He proposed a purely physical
    explanation of the process. This theory, though totally
    erroneous, was carefully couched in medical terms and thus did
    much to carry hypnosis into respectability. (If we compare
    Elliotson and Braid, we might conclude that respect accrues not
    to he who produces results, but to he who masters the jargon.)
    Like his predecessors, Braid found that he could use hypnosis to
    perform relatively painless surgeries. Many of the most
    intriguing hypnotic phenomena -- catalepsy, amnesia, analgesia,
    loss of sight or hearing, release of inhibition -- now received,
    for the first time, attention from the scientific establishment.

    Braid's theories attracted Professor Jean Martin Charcot, the
    famed Parisian neurologist. He conducted experiments with
    hypnotism at the Salpetriere Hospital, eventually aided by a
    trio of soon-to-be-stellar associates: Sigmund Freud, Pierre
    Janet, and Alfred Binet.

    Alas, Charcot founded his work upon flawed assumptions. Like
    Braid, he considered hypnosis a purely mechanical process; like
    Mesmer, he felt magnets and metals could set the process into
    motion. Because he operated primarily on women suffering from
    hysteria, he concluded that hypnosis could only work on
    hysterical females. To Charcot, the hypnotic state resulted from
    a disease of the nervous system; if a patient "went under"
    easily, that patient was obviously physically ill.

    During this period -- which some call the Golden Age of hypnosis
    -- rivalry developed between the specialists at the Saltpetriere
    and a somewhat more advanced school of hypnosis at the Nancy
    Medical Society, led by Drs. Ambrose Liebeault and Hippolyte
    Bernheim. They saw hypnosis not as a symptom of physiological
    disorder, but as a psychological process, helpful in healing
    common neuroses. Bernheim and Liebeault asserted that suggestion
    alone caused hypnosis. Normal people could be hypnotized,
    although differing individuals had different levels of hypnotic
    susceptibility.

    Even though Janet and Freud first established themselves at the
    Saltpetriere, the work done at Nancy intrigued both men. Janet
    conducted the first serious work into the subject of multiple
    personality disorder. Secondary personalities, he felt, could be
    artificially induced by the hypnotist -- an important point, long
    the subject of dispute. Janet improved upon Charcot's theories
    considerably when he investigated hypnosis as a process of
    dissociation -- the separation of one segment of the mind from
    another. Neurotic patients often had repressed memories of
    traumatic events in their past; Janet discovered that once the
    patient re-awakened the memories, the symptoms of neurotic
    disorder often abated. Hypnotic age regression provided a key
    that could unlock the past. In 1889, Freud became Bernheim's
    pupil, after witnessing a demonstration which made a deep
    impression:

    "A man was placed in a condition of somnambulism, and then made
    to go through all sorts of hallucinatory experiences. On being
    wakened, he seemed at first to know nothing at all of what had
    taken place during his hypnotic sleep. Bernheim then asked him
    in so many words to tell him what had happened while he was
    under hypnosis. The man declared that he could not remember
    anything. Bernheim, however, insisted upon it, pressed him, and
    assured him that he did know and that he must remember, and lo
    and behold, the man wavered, began to reflect, and remembered in
    a shadowy fashion first one of the occurrences that had been
    suggested to him, then something else, his recollection growing
    increasingly clear..."

    Freud drew a lasting lesson from this experiment: The mind could
    know something -- yet not KNOW what it knew. The unconscious
    stored information at differing levels. Note, too, that
    Bernheim's patient eventually recalled not what actually
    occurred during the experiment, but the hallucinatory
    pseudo-memories that Dr. Bernheim had suggested.

    After making the intellectual segue between the Saltpetriere and
    Nancy, Freud eventually became frustrated with hypnosis. The
    results, he felt, were capricious and impermanent, and not
    everyone who needed help proved susceptible to trance induction.
    Freud turned to free association as "the royal road to the
    unconscious." Thus was born psychoanalysis -- the long,
    sometimes painful process which exposed the patient's resistances
    and repressions. Freud saw resistance as a signpost directing
    the analyst to the root of his patient's problems; hypnosis, by
    contrast, concealed these resistances. "The hypnotic therapy
    endeavors to cover up and as it were to whitewash something
    going on in the mind, the analytic to lay bare and remove
    something. The first works cosmetically, the second surgically."

    Into the Twentieth Century

    Freud's discoveries fascinated healers of the mind, and many
    followed his lead in abandoning hypnotherapy for analysis. For
    a while, hypnosis settled into the background of intellectual
    thought -- until military psychologists brought the technique
    back into action during World War I, along with that unsettling
    new development, electroshock. Doctors in many armies used both
    electricity and trance to treat "combat shock" and other
    dissociative disorders arising from the strain of battle.
    According to the respected historian John Toland, one such
    patient may have been a German corporal named Adolf Hitler.

    In 1918, Hitler lay in a Pasewalk military hospital, stricken
    with a psychosomatic blindness. There, Toland tells us, the
    future fuehrer was attended by Dr. Edmund Forster, an important
    hypnosis researcher from Berlin University. Hysterical blindness
    is precisely the sort of symptom that would have interested a
    clinician like Forster. He may have opened the corporal's eyes
    in more ways than one. During this stay at Pasewalk, Hitler
    experienced a "vision" -- perhaps induced hypnotically -- in
    which he heard voices entreating him to become the savior of
    Germany (or so Hitler later claimed).

    Toland obliquely suggests a truly remarkable scenario: Adolf
    Hitler as the first Manchurian Candidate. An unsettling notion,
    to be sure. Perhaps we should be grateful to Hitler
    "psychohistorian" Robert G.L. Waite, who has argued persuasively
    that Forster never treated Hitler.

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