### MindNet is no longer active.

#### Back to MindNet Index

    ================================================================
         MindNet Journal - Vol. 1, No. 29b * [Part 2 of 2 parts]
    ================================================================
         V E R I C O M M / MindNet         "Quid veritas est?"
    ================================================================

    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 editors unless
    otherwise noted.

    Editor: Mike Coyle

    Associate Editors: Walter Bowart
                       Alex Constantine
                       Martin Cannon

    Assistant Editor: Rick Lawler

    Research: Darrell Bross

    ================================================================
    [Continued from part 1]

    "We considered it too early to make any kind of definitive
    determination about the nature or extent of the poisonings," Dr.
    Gould says, "and had in no way thought to publicize our concerns
    at this time." She was still collecting medical reports when the
    Times came a-calling.
            A cursory treatment of the story was written up by staff
    reporter Aaron Curtiss and appeared on December 1, 1992. It was
    founded solely on allegations, not hard evidence. Curtiss
    promised the group a follow-up story based on the medical data
    they'd collected. Gould agreed to turn over the blood test
    results.
            But the Times pulled a switch. Curtiss phoned Gould to
    say he'd been pulled off the story. It was instead assigned to
    John Johnson, the author of an earlier biased pooh-poohing of
    ritual abuse that appeared in the Times on April 23, 1992.17 Dr.
    Gould was still aching with resentment at the paper for printing
    Johnson's condescending denial of underground cult activity in
    Los Angeles. Gould told Curtiss that she saw no purpose in
    working with Johnson. Curtiss passed on Gould's concerns to his
    editor.
            The next day Curtiss called to say that his editor had
    agreed that Gould could give the medical reports to the Times and
    expect fair treatment. He assured her that the information would
    be accurately reflected in the story written by Johnson. Thus
    assuaged, she turned over the medical reports.
            Quite suddenly, without explanation, Curtiss went
    incommunicado. Gould phoned the Times repeatedly over the next
    ten days - Curtiss refused to either take or return her calls.
    Gould had a cold sensation in the pit of her stomach that the
    paper would debunk the poisonings.
            "I was appalled," Gould later wrote to editors of the
    Times, "when the article appeared on the front page of the
    'Metro' section with none of the available data in it. The
    article represents a breach of ethics on the part of John Johnson
    and the Los Angeles Times, and a breach of promise made by a
    staff member."
            The Times story that appeared on December 13, 1992
    glossed over the medical evidence entirely, depicting the task
    force as a collection of paranoiacs who "claimed they are slowly
    being poisoned by those who want to silence them." The paper
    noted that there were "43 reported victims of the alleged
    poisoning," but "so far, there is no proof that anyone was
    poisoned and skeptics abound." Johnson cited as example Dr. Paul
    J. Papanek, chief of the county's toxins epidemiological program
    and the most reviled public official in L.A. County - the very
    "authority" who has repeatedly sanctioned malathion spraying in
    Southern California despite overwhelming medical data, a
    multitude of case histories and strident city hall testimony
    indicating that the pesticide is harmful to humans.
            Dr. Papanek "attended a recent task force meeting and
    branded as 'outrageous' the poisoning claims." He sharply faulted
    the commission for not attending to "common sense rules of
    evidence." On the heels of this "controversy," nameless
    authorities had "begun an investigation into the activities of
    therapists and an acupuncturist linked to the poisoning claims by
    task force members."
            Other "skeptics" were "turning up the heat for answers.,"
    Johnson reported, among them Tom O'Connor, executive director of
    the Board of Psychology. "Are they diagnosing diazinon
    poisoning?" O'Connor asked. "That's beyond the scope of their
    license. This sounds like some sort of mass hysteria."
            Another categorical denial came from Stephanie Sheppard,
    who "said she checked out the claims of pesticide poisoning and
    found no facts to back up the allegations."
            The Times had only to cite the medical reports supplied
    by Catherine Gould to silence these critics of the task force.
    The spurning of the blood tests reduced the story to a
    transparent smear, probably to discredit Gould and other
    therapists treating victims of ritual abuse. The deliberate
    distortions of most news reports on cult conditioning of children
    blurs public perception of the issue, and contributes to the
    continued vulnerability of children to a most heinous form of
    abuse.
            If anything is more ludicrous than the atrocities
    described by victims, it is the confabulistic tales advanced by
    false memory advocates in the press.

    The abysmal ethics of the Times in its handling of the task
    force poisonings extended to the paper's reports on a related
    story, the logic-defying "Mystery Fumes" case in Riverside,
    California. The half-dozen accounts of the case published by
    the newspaper were the exclusive domain of staff writer Tom
    Gorman.
            In February, 1994 six emergency room attendants at
    Riverside Hospital fainted after inhaling an "ammonia-like" odor
    discharged by the blood of Gloria Ramirez after drawing a sample
    with a syringe. "In the ensuing confusion," Gorman reported, "two
    people unaffected by the fumes tended to her as she went into
    full cardiac arrest. Within minutes, the 31-year-old woman -
    suffering from cervical cancer and weakened by nausea - died."
    State health officials and toxic specialists had no idea what
    prompted the incident, and Gorman reported that the Riverside
    Fire Department's hazardous materials squad found nothing
    peculiar in air samples taken from the emergency room.18 (Five
    months later, however, Gorman reversed himself and reported that
    a chemical compound derived from ammonia had been found in the
    air samples.19)
            Dr. Huberto Ochoa, director of the emergency room staff,
    noticed white crystal spikes in the syringe used to draw blood
    from the dying Gloria Ramirez. "I'd never seen anything like it,"
    he said. OSHA technicians detected an unidentified derivative of
    ammonia in Ramirez's body bag.20 Nevertheless, one state
    hygienist blamed "stress" or "anxiety." This explanation,
    however, failed to account for the profound memory loss of
    Maureen Welch, a respiratory therapist. The strain of overwork
    seemed a lame explanation for the gangrenous knees of nurse Julie
    Gorchynski after her blood had been contaminated, killing the
    supply of oxygen to her bones. She also suffered from breathing
    difficulties, muscle spasms and other symptoms reported two years
    earlier by members of the task force. In fact, the New York Times
    noted, medical professionals held that 'the toxic substance that
    felled the emergency room workers may have been an
    organophosphate, a chemical used in pesticides and military nerve
    gas."21 (On the West Coast, the heirs of General Otis Chandler
    never once raised the possibility that Gloria Ramirez may have
    been exposed to organophosphates, quite possibly to avoid linking
    Dr. Gould's task force with the mystery fumes case in the minds
    of readers.)
            "I had chemical burns in my throat and nose," Gorchynski
    told reporters, "lungs working at half capacity, biopsies showing
    dead knees, a drop of enzyme levels and crystals in my blood as
    well. It's all medically documented."22 But the Los Angeles Times
    - which had ignored medical data in its reporting on the
    poisonings of ritual abuse task force members - also neglected to
    discuss Julie Gorchynski's medical examinations. The hospital's
    own blood tests detected organophosphates, but the local press
    refused to report this critical fact for many months.
            The Times wasn't the only local news outlet to spin a
    cloud of disinformation around the mystery fumes case. Dean
    Adell, a local talk show doctor for KFI, an AM radio station in
    Los Angeles, dismissed the incident as "mass hysteria."23
            This diagnosis outraged Dr. Ross Kussman, Gorchynski's
    physician, who called the radio station to explain that the
    hospital personnel displayed symptoms of toxicity.
            "It doesn't fit the grounds for mass hysteria," Kussman
    said. "Julie became very ill from the toxin, developed
    pancreatitis and hepatitis, which are known to kill bone tissue."
    Dr. Adell scoffed, as though this diagnosis was the most
    preposterous abuse of medical science he'd ever heard. What
    poison could possibly account for Gorchynski's litany of
    symptoms? he asked.
            "Organophosphates are well known to cause pancreatitis,"
    Dr. Kussman offered. He explained that pancreatitis, in turn, is
    a known precursor of bone necrosis, the condition afflicting Dr.
    Gorchynski's knees. Adell asked why health authorities hadn't
    arrived at the same conclusion.
            "Because," Kussman returned, "the County was
    uncooperative in helping us find out where it came from."
    (Gorchynski also claimed that county authorities were
    "stonewalling" her.)
            "Trust me," Dr. Adell, an optometrist, snorted with
    psychic confidence, "there ain't no fumes!"
            This appeared to be the official position of the Times as
    well. Gorman parroted the statements of state health officials
    when, two weeks later, they too attributed the swooning at
    Riverside Hospital to "mass hysteria" (failing to point out that
    this is formally considered to be a "diagnosis-by-exclusion" -
    meaning that if no other cause is detectable, mass hysterics
    could account for a spread of physical symptoms.24)
            At any rate, this explanation didn't wash well in the
    public print. But before the sighs died down, another diagnosis
    was offered by Riverside County Coroner Scotty Hill. The coroner
    released a report from Lawrence Livermore labs - a few days
    before ballots were cast in Hill's run for re-election -
    concluding that the noxious fumes discharged by Gloria Ramirez
    were created internally from the bodily absorption of the pain
    remedy DMSO chemically transformed by her unique biochemistry
    into dimethyl sulfate, a lethal chemical warfare agent.25
            But the DMSO theory had as many gaping holes in it as
    "mass hysteria."
            "DMSO is commonly used," Dr. Kussman says, "and they're
    saying now that everyone who uses it emits a nerve gas?"
            The Ramirez family fervently denied that the patient had
    ever used DMSO. Besides, said Ron Schwartz, an attorney in the
    case, "the coroner's office is still saying that she died of
    cervical cancer, but now they're saying she created a chemical
    warfare agent that didn't hurt her. That doesn't make sense to
    me."
            The Los Angeles Times neglected to report a second
    outbreak of mystery fumes that further decimated the DMSO
    hypothesis. After initial treatment at Riverside Hospital, two of
    the poisoned hospital employees were transferred to Parkview
    Hospital, according to a local television news report.26 "What
    few people know," an excited reporter announced from Parkview,
    "is that four of the workers who treated them here were ill
    themselves. A poison expert examined the four new patients - he
    said the same symptoms at two different hospitals argues against
    a DMSO reaction, and points to an entirely different poison."
            Lawrence Livermore chemists may have also overlooked an
    outbreak of mystery fumes in Bakersfield a week after the
    Riverside poisonings. The emergency room at Mercy Hospital was
    evacuated after doctors inserted a breathing tube in the trachea
    of a 44-year-old woman struggling with shortness of breath. As at
    Riverside, emergency room personnel noticed a gaseous cloud
    rising from the patient. They complained that a potent chemical
    odor originating with the patient's blood left them with burning
    eyes, nausea and headaches.27
            The growing list of tenuous explanations contributed to
    suspicions of a cover-up. These were augmented by the
    announcement that the syringe used to draw blood from Gloria
    Ramirez had been thrown away.28 And in the course of lawsuits
    filed by the Ramirez family, Dr. Gorchynski, nurse Sally Balderas
    and attorneys for Riverside County filed a court motion to
    destroy all of the evidence gathered from the contaminated
    emergency room.
            As it was, entire barrels of evidence had been kept
    secret from the Ramirez family. They and others filing suit had
    no chance to have the contents of the barrels examined by
    toxicologists.
            An attorney for Sally Balderas complained that he had not
    been notified that the county wanted to destroy the evidence, or
    even that a hearing had been scheduled. Judge Richard Van Frank
    refused to give the county its way, ruling that interested
    parties work out a plan for the evidence before the hearing
    continue.29
            Coverage of the mystery fumes case by the Los Angeles
    Times did not extend to the evidentiary hearing. The residents of
    L.A. were not told that the very "stonewalling" officials charged
    with investigating a case of mass poisoning wanted to burn every
    scrap of evidence to minimize "storage costs."
            By suppressing significant details (medical evidence
    documenting a toxic assault on the ritual abuse task force, or
    symptoms of organophosphate poisoning in the mystery fumes case)
    the Times plays an insidious game. The newspaper has clearly
    distorted the chemo-terrorism of cults in the southern California
    with a disinformation gambit that shields the culprits and
    defames victims (Gloria Ramirez?) for breaking out, talking to
    reporters, striking back or otherwise interfering with domestic
    intelligence cult operations.

                                            - Alex Constantine

    Notes:

            1 Teresa Watanabe and Carol J. Williams, "Japan Sect Uses
    Pain to Impel Faith," Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1995, p.
    A-1-D.

            2 Jonathan Annells, "Temple of Doom," London Times, March
    26, 1995, p. 1.

            3 B. Boskovitch and R. Kusic, abstract to "Long-Term
    Effect of Acute Exposure to Nerve Gases Upon Human Health," in
    Mass Mind Control of the American People, compiled and edited by
    Elizabeth Russell-Manning, published by Russell-Manning, San
    Francisco, 1992, p. 90.

            4 There have been scores of military gassing incidents.
    In 1969, for instance, the accidental release of nerve gas in
    Okinawa hospitalized 25 Americans (see Sterling Seagrave. Yellow
    Rain, M. Evans, New York, 1981, p. 260-61). Non-military
    accidents are not all that uncommon either: In 1976, the
    explosion of a factory owned by a subsidiary of Hoffman-LaRoche
    discharged a cloud of fumes that sickened and disfigured children
    of Seveso, Italy for life (see John G. Fuller, The Poison that
    Fell from the Sky, Random House, New York, 1977).

            5 Annells.

            6 Ben Hills, "Police, Scientists Still Baffled by Japan
    Nerve Gas Deaths," The Age (Australia), August 20, 1994.

            7 John Johnson, "County Panel Scrutinized for Satanic
    Claims," Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1992, p. B-1.
            8 Catherine Gould, letter with medical verification to
    the Los Angeles Times, December 17, 1992. Copies are available
    from the L.A. County Commission for Women's Ritual Abuse Task
    Force office.

            9 Randy Noblitt, "Multiple Choice: Which of the Following
    is Most False: (A) The Memory, (B) The Syndrome, (C) The
    Foundation?" Newsletter of the Society for the Investiga-tion,
    Treatment and Prevention of Ritual and Cult Abuse, vol. 1, no. 3,
    Fall/Winter 1993-94, pp. 3-5. The percentage of psychologists who
    believe recovered memory therapy to be effective is about 88%.
    The proportion is the same in Great Britain, according to one
    survey released last year. On January 1, 1995, the Sunday London
    Times reported that "the first expert investigation into
    'recovered memory syndrome' in Britain reveals that nine out of
    ten psychologists believe the technique of searching for buried
    sexual trauma can produce accurate memories."

            10 Jonathan Vankin, in Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes
    (1992), cites a lecture by Joe Holsinger, an aide to late
    Congressman Leo Ryan, at a psychology conference in Berkeley,
    noting: "the possibility is that Jonestown was a mass mind
    control experiment by the CIA." Holsinger offered as evidence
    "The Penal Colony," an essay written by a U.C. Berkeley
    psychologist. "The Berkeley author of the article ... believes
    that rather than terminating MKULTRA (the Agency's mind control
    program), the CIA shifted its programs from public institutions
    to private cult groups, including the Peoples' Temple" (p. 176).

            11 Shirley Briggs, Chemical Classes of Pesticides,
    Hemisphere Publishing Co., 1972, Washington, D.C., p. 213.
    Immediate effects of organophosphate poisoning include behavioral
    disturbances, muscle twitching, headaches, nausea, dizziness,
    anxiety, memory loss, weakness, tremor, abdominal cramps, blurred
    vision, slowed heartbeat and incontinence.

            12 Anonymous attachment, Dr. Gould's letter to the L.A.
    Times.

            13 Letter to Myra Riddel of the L.A. County Commission
    for Women's Ritual Abuse Task Force, December 15, 1992. On file
    in the task force archives.

            14 Dr. David W. Neswald, letter to Dr. Myra Riddell, task
    force chairwoman, December 10, 1992. Neswald found Ms. Sheppard's
    behavior "rather suspect."

            15 N.R. in a letter to the task force, November 30, 1992.

            16 Piers Brendon, The Life and Death of the Press Barons,
    Atheneum, New York, 1983, p. 232.

            17 John Johnson, "Satanism: Skeptics Abound," Los Angeles
    Times, April 23, 1992, P. A-1.

            18 Tom Gorman, "Family Claims Woman was Victim, Not
    Cause, of Fumes," Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1994, p. A-3.

            19 Tom Gorman, "6-Month Probe Fails to Solve Mystery of
    Hospital Fumes," Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1994, p. A-21.

            20 Tom Gorman, "Victims of Fumes Still Ill, and Still
    Seeking Answers," Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1994, p. A-1.

            21 B. Drummond Ayres Jr., "Elaborate Precautions Taken
    for Autopsy in Mystery Fumes Case," New York Times, February 25,
    1994, p. A-17.

            22 Tom Gorman, "'Mystery Fumes' Doctor to File $6-Million
    Claim," Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1994, p. A-1.

            23 Dean Adell program, KFI-AM (Los Angeles), August 8,
    1994.

            24 Kussman.

            25 Tom Gorman, "Lab Suggests Mystery Fumes Answer," Los
    Angeles Times, November 4, 1994, p. A-1.

            26 Mystery fumes update, late evening news broadcast,
    KNBC-TV, Los Angeles, November 26, 1994.

            27 "Fumes Again Sicken People," Los Angeles Times,
    February 28, 1994, p. A-3.

            28 Tom Gorman, "Syringe Used in Fumes Case Lost," Los
    Angeles Times, April 22, 1994, p. A-3.

            29 Pat Murkland, "Bid to Destroy Fumes Evidence Lost,"
    Corona (Calif.) Press-Enterprise, January 12, 1995, p. B-1.

    [END]
    ----------------------------------------------------------------
    MindNet Journal Archive Filename: [mn129b.txt]
    ================================================================

    To subscribe to the MindNet Journal:

    Send message: [subscribe mindnet] to: .

    To unsubscribe:

    Send message: [unsubscribe mindnet] to: .

    Back issues of the MindNet Journal are available at our
    FTP Archive site:

     [/pub/users/vericomm/mindnet/]

    MindNet Journal Publication Index: [mnindex.txt]

    Submission of articles for publication within the MindNet
    Journal on the subjects of mind control, directed-energy
    weapons, non-lethal weapons, ritual abuse, UFO abductions,
    bioelectromagnetics, hypnosis, and other related topics
    will be accepted with the author's statement of permission
    to publish. The editor reserves the right to accept or
    reject for publication. Send articles for submission to:

    , or VERICOMM BBS 510.891.0303, or VERICOMM,
    POB 32314, Oakland, CA 94604-2314 USA.

    The MindNet mailing list is owned and maintained by Mike Coyle,
    , VERICOMM / MindNet, POB 32314 Oakland, CA
    94604-2314 USA.

    The MindNet Journal is published by VERICOMM / MindNet in
    cooperation with the Freedom Of Thought Foundation, POB 35072,
    Tucson, AZ 85740-5072 USA.

    Please visit the Freedom Of Thought Foundation home-page at:

    .

    ================================================================

        ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
        ||  ||||  |      |       |  |      |      |   |   |   |   ||
        |||  ||  ||  |||||  |||  |  |  |||||  ||  |  | |  |  | |  ||
        ||||    |||  ,,,,|      ||  |  |||||  ||  |  |||  |  |||  ||
        |||||  ||||      |  |||  |  |      |      |  |||  |  |||  SM
        ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
        ||  VERICOMM BBS 510.891.0303 / MindNet : MindNet@c2.org  ||
        ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||