"No matter how paranoid you are, what they're actually doing

is worse than you can possibly imagine."

- RALPH J. GLEASON

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The capacity of the U.S. intelligence services to modify human perception and behaviour through chemical means is enormous, given their vast resources and intimate connections with drug trafficking (see DEALING IN DEATH: The CIA and the Drugs Trade). In fact it was the CIA who introduced LSD to the U.S. population in the late 1950s, while testing its potential as a "truth serum" in universities.

However, there are many other disquieting methods of thought control currently being explored by covert security agencies in the West.

Despite protestations by the CIA to the contrary, clandestine research into all areas of mind control and manipulation is one of their largest fields of development, and involves not only the CIA but various sinister organisations and research laboratories working on behalf of the intelligence services.

Much of what follows uses information that has only recently been declassified under Freedom of Information Act appeals filed three years previously....

THE CIA AND LSD

The work of various groups and individuals employed by the CIA to research mind control through the use of drugs, mirrors the notorious experiments by Nazi doctors at Dachau, who used mescaline as a means of eliminating their victims' will to resist interrogation. After World War II, a number of Nazi chemical warfare specialists went to work for the American secret services. These scientists included Karl Tauboeck, whose attempts to find a reliable "truth serum" for the CIA involved ruthless human experimentation. Karl Rarh and Hans Turit also continued their wartime experimentation with the nerve gases Tabun and Sarin (which are closely related to the Zyklon B gas used in the Nazi concentration camps) and other chemicals for the CIA.

In the early 1950s, the CIA embarked on a series of mind-control and drug experiments on unwitting American and Canadian victims. Project BLUEBIRD was established in 1950 to research mind control for the CIA. The Agency contacted academics and other experts who specialised in behaviour modification. Liaison was established with the research sections of police departments and criminology laboratories. Medical practitioners, professional hypnotists arid psychiatrists were brought In as paid consultants, and various branches of the military provided assistance. Often, these arrangements involved a cover to conceal the Agency's interest in the subject.

A memo, dated July 13th 1951, described BLUEBIRD's efforts as "broad and comprehensive, involving both domestic and overseas activities, and taking into consideration the programmes and objectives of other departments, principally the military services." BLUEBIRD's activities were "designed to create an exploitable alteration of personality in selected individuals". Specific targets included "potential agents, defectors, refugees, POWs" and a vague category of "others." The programme was re-christened ARTICHOKE in 1951.

When the CIA had difficulties finding the ideal truth drug, agents were sent out around the world to gather samples of rare herbs and botanicals. One cocaine derivative, procaine, was injected into the frontal lobes of the brain via trephine holes drilled through the skulls of mental patients. However, repeated failure of cocaine and its derivatives led the Agency to look into heroin as a possible mind control drug. According to a CIA document dated April 26th 1952, heroin was "frequently used by police and intelligence officers on a routine basis in interrogation." CIA operatives determined that heroin and other habit-forming substances "can be useful in reverse because of the stress produced when they are withdrawn from those who are addicted to their use."

The name of the programme was changed again in 1953 to MKULTRA, which primarily focused on the covert study of the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) for military or intelligence purposes as either a weapon or a tool for brainwashing.

The CIA funded many individuals in the private sector on LSD research. Dr Max Rinkel, Dr Paul Hoch, Dr Joylon West, Dr Harris Isbell and Dr Carl Pfeiffer worked as contract employees for the Agency in this sphere. Like the Nazi doctors at Dachau, the CIA victimised groups of people who were unable to resist: prisoners, mental patients, foreigners, the terminally ill and ethnic minorities.

One project took place at the Addiction Research Centre of the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. This was ostensibly a place where heroin addicts could go to kick their habits, but unknown to the patients, it was in fact one of fifteen penal and mental institutions used by the CIA in its drug development programme. To conceal its role, the Agency enlisted the aid of the Navy and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) which served as conduits for channelling CIA money to Dr Harris Isbell, a research scientist who remained on the Agency's payroll for over a decade. When the CIA came across a new drug (usually supplied by U.S. pharmaceutical firms) that needed testing, they sent it to Isbell at Lexington, where an ample supply of captive human guinea pigs was available. Over 800 compounds were tested by Isbell, including LSD and a variety of hallucinogens.

At the Georgetown University Hospital, Professor Charles Geschickter lent his name to a CIA research front foundation, the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research, and tested mind-control drugs on psychiatric and terminally ill cancer patients. LSD research for MKULTRA was also conducted at 44 colleges and universities in the United States in the mid-1950s.

Students from Harvard and other Boston area universities were among those who were given doses of LSD through the MKULTRA programme at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, now the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Another CIA-front organisation used for MKULTRA was the Human Ecology Fund at Madison.

"We have no answer to the moral issue."

CIA director RICHARD HELMS, on the Agency's MKULTRA programme of illegal experimentation with mind-controlling drugs on unwitting victims. Helms ordered the destruction of MKULTRA records to prevent disclosure by investigating committees.

On November 28th 1953, Frank Olson, one of the nation's top biological warfare experts, died after falling from the 13th floor of a Manhattan hotel, while CIA doctor Robert Lashbrook was "asleep" in the room. Olson was a victim of MKULTRA, murdered by the CIA because he was a security risk. Olson had told his wife that he had made a "terrible mistake" and wanted to quit his job. Congressional hearings in 1975 revealed that nine days before his death, a CIA scientist had given Olson an after-dinner drink of Cointreau that was laced with LSD. The normally cheerful researcher then sank into a deep paranoid depression and he was checked into the Statler Hilton under the supervision of Lashbrook.

On the night of Olson's death, Lashbrook called neither an ambulance nor police. Instead he dialled a number on Long Island. According to the testimony of the night manager Armand Pastore, who listened in on the conversation, Lashbrook said, "Well, he's gone." The other man replied, "That's too bad," and both hung up.

In July 1994, Professor of Law and Forensic Science James Starrs examined Olson's body and found evidence that he described as "sinister." There were "so many fractures in the skull that it is not possible that he received this type of injury simply from falling out of a window.... it would not be possible unless he was on a trampoline." Starrs also found no evidence of glass cuts from smashing though the window which were reported in the original autopsy.

Frank Olson had worked closely with the U.S. Army's Chemical Corps' Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick in Maryland and the surviving records show that U.S. Army Intelligence continued to carry out LSD tests on unsuspecting victims after his death. Tests were run simulating diplomatic cocktail parties where 30 to 35 volunteers were served drinks containing LSD. Trained interrogators then tried to extract classified information about the volunteers' special duties. During the course of the "parties" the interrogators, without the knowledge of their subjects, administered additional doses of LSD. None of the volunteers gave their informed consent prior to receiving the drug and there was a deliberate attempt to deny them any information that would have permitted them to evaluate the dangers involved. According to the testimony of one of the volunteers, Charles Shirley Jr, in August 1975, the brief given to them was that if they declined to participate in the tests it would put them in immediate disfavour with their superiors.

After the first phase of experiments in November 1958, a letter from the Chief of Clinical Division at Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories (EARL) in Maryland to Commanding General Army Intelligence Centre stated that all the initial work was completed with rewarding results andrecommended that "actual application of the material [LSD] be utilised in real situations." It is hard to believe that such a recommendation could be given on a drug with such unpredictable and potentially dangerous results after tests on only 35 volunteers.

On April 9th 1959, the Chemical Warfare Laboratory and the Intelligence Centre proposed the use of LSD overseas on "non-volunteer foreign nationals" to test its use as an aid to interrogation. This continuation of the research in foreign countries was specifically in order to do things that were forbidden by U.S. law. The U.S. Surgeon General concurred in the plan and offered "no medical objections." Thus began Operation Third Chance in Europe, the surreptitious administration of LSD to the drinks of unwitting subjects in social environments. This operation paved the way for similar experiments in the U.S. Army Pacific and elsewhere. A favourite plan of the CIA involved slipping P-1 (the codename for LSD when used operationally) to socialist or left-leaning politicians so that they would "babble incoherently and discredit themselves in public."

Despite another report in 1963 recommending the termination of testing LSD on unwitting subjects, the CIA's Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Helms, continued to advocate covert testing of the drug. On the subject of moral issues in connection with these illicit human experiments, Helms commented: "We have no answer to the moral issue."

Almost twenty years after the introduction of LSD, and dozens of psychological casualties later, a study by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs reported that LSD's early use by the American public began "among small groups of intellectuals at large eastern and western coast universities. It spread to undergraduate students, then to other campuses. Most often, users have been introduced to the drug by persons of higher status. Teachers have influenced students; upperclassmen have influenced lowerclassmen." Ironically, the CIA, during its MKULTRA experimentation, initiated the 1960s' psychedelic explosion.

This may have been unwitting but it may also have been a deliberate effort to undermine the anti-establishment protest culture of the time. In the late 1960s and early 70s, New York biochemist Ronald Stark was one of the world's leading suppliers of LSD (which he produced at his illicit laboratories in Europe); Stark was widely suspected (as he himself claimed) of being attached to the CIA project later to be revealed as MKULTRA.

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a hippie religious organisation based in Laguna Beach, California, supplied ample quantities of LSD to the local hippies and eventually acquired a sophisticated network of smuggling hashish and LSD to the whole United States.

Billy Hitchcock served as banker for the Brotherhood, maintaining an account with Castle Bank, which had been set up by the CIA as a front for covert narcotics and money laundering operations (see DEALING IN DEATH: The CIA and the Drugs Trade). Hitchcock also poured the sum of $5 million into "litter stocks" which were associated with Mary Carter Paint Company (known later as Resorts International), which was suspected of having links to organised crime. When the company constructed a casino in the Bahamas, the star guest on opening day was none other than Richard Nixon, who was about to run for president. Strange bedfellows indeed for influential figures involved in the psychedelic movement. (In 1970 Resorts International formed a private intelligence corporation called Intertel, which was staffed largely by ex-CIA, NSA, Interpol and Justice Department officials. Intertel rented its services to a wide range of corporate clients, including ITT, McDonald's and Howard Hughes' Summa Corporation).

Ronald Stark later took over Hitchcock's position of banker for the Brotherhood of Etemal Love and was involved in overseeing their LSD operation. For someone who was just known as a person helping the hippie movement, Stark kept a mysterious profile. He travelled to all the drug factories and hippie communes across the U.S., and stayed in rich hotels and private clubs, mingling with the rich and famous. He also operated a cocaine ring in the Bay Area. Since Stark took over the running of the Brotherhood, it became the single most productive manufacturer of LSD in the United States. 50 million doses (20 kilos) of the drug were mostly sold in the U.S.

Stark was imprisoned in Italy from 1975 to 1979, following his involvement with a gang of drug-dealing fascist terrorists. While in jail in Bologna, he received a vast number of visitors from the British and American consulates. According to the judge who released him from prison in April 1979, "an impressive series of scrupulously enumerated proofs" showed that "from 1960 onwards, Stark belonged to the American secret services."

Technically, MKULTRA was closed in 1964 but some of its programmes remained active under the name of Project MKSEARCH well into the I 970s. In 1973, tipped off about forthcoming investigations, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of all MKULTRA records. Three years later, in testimony to the Church Committee, Helms confessed that the CIA had destroyed the files "so that anybody who assisted us in the past would not be subject to follow-up questions, embarrassment if you will."

The key researcher for the CIA-Army LSD tests was Dr Albert Kligman from the University of Pennsylvania. In the mid-1960s, Kligman founded the Ivy Research Laboratories (IRL), the conduit for EARL to perform experiments on humans which were not possible even under the dubious ethics of EARL's programmes. Records show that in 1971, the CIA provided Kligman with $37,000 to test a classified potentially incapacitating psycho-chemical compound known only as EA3167. Kligman tested this on human subjects, including prisoners from Holmesburg Prison in Pennsylvania.

Similarly, Dr Robert Heath carried out work for the CIA at the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Tulane University in New Orleans, one of several U.S. Army research centres at which 3,000 doses of LSD were given to about 1,500 subjects in secret studies.

Dr. Robert Heath, testing his "deep brain electrodes" at Tulane University, 1966.

So what were the implications of LSD? The CIA sought the perfect truth serum; unsuccessful in this, the Agency then used LSD on the basis of how it could affect social and political awareness. One of the MKULTRA manuals that was destroyed at the behest of Richard Helms was entitled "Some Unpsychadelic Effects!" No-one can be sure what the CIA meant by this, but the fact remains that the new left movement that was growing in America in the 1960s was drastically disrupted by the widespread use of LSD, with millions of peace-loving youths becoming somewhat less conscious about the world around them.

OTHER MKULTRA PROJECTS

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by John Marks in 1977, additional MKULTRA records were discovered in financial files held by the Office of Technical Services which had not been indexed under the name MKULTRA. These documents, dating back to 1963, revealed that MKULTRA was "concerned with research and development ofchemical, biological and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behaviour," and that "radiation was one of the additional avenues to control human behaviour." In an undated Memorandum for the Record in MKULTRA Sub-project 86, Dr Wallace Chan proposed "radio-isotopes with predetermined half-lives, selectively implanted and/or injected; and radiologically opaque foreign bodies selectively implanted and/or injected into predetermined sites in the human body."

The Canadian MKULTRA programme took place at the Allan Memorial Institute (AMI), the psychiatric wing of Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. AMI's director from 1943 to 1964 was Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron, who called his experimental techniques "depatterning" and "psychic driving." Cameron subjected his patients to heavy doses of drugs combined with electric shock treatment, technically known as Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT), but not as Cameron practised it. In standard professional ECT, the patient is given a single dose of 110 volts lasting afraction of a second.

Cameron used a dosage twenty to forty times more intense, two to three times a day, with the power turned up to 150V. The frequent screams of patients that echoed through the hospital did not deter Cameron and his associates in their attempts to "de-pattern" their subjects completely. Sometimes Cameron would combine this treatment with up to 35 days of prolonged sensory deprivation in a sealed environment. This constituted the "depatterning" phase of the treatment, at the end of which the patient's mind would be "more or less in a childlike and unconcerned state."

Cameron would then attempt to reprogram his victims with his "psychic driving" techniques, which consisted of messages played on tape recorders, repeated thousands of times through headphones. Usually ten days of "negative signals," stressing the patient's presumed inadequacies, would be followed by ten days of "positive" messages, encouraging the desired behaviour. Psychic driving would take place for continuous periods of up to 16 hours per day.

The CIA invited Cameron to apply for funding from the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, a CIA front. From 1957 to 1962, the Agency supported Cameron's work with grants totally $84,820. The "psychic driving" research was code-named MKULTRA Sub-project 38.

Cameron, the architect of these inhuman experiments which amounted to little more than torture, was elected chairman of the American Psychiatric Association in 1952 and later became the founding chairman of the World Psychiatric Association. In 1966, he was awarded the Canadian Mental Health Award for his services to the profession. Such honours would hardly have met with the approval of the Canadian victims of the MKULTRA experiments, some of whom recently sued the CIA for irreparable mental damage.

Dr. Ewen Cameron (left) receiving the Canadian Mental Health Award, 1966.

A series of mind-altering drug tests and electric-shock experiments were also carried out on inmates of the Californian prisons of Vacaville and Atascadero during the 1960s. Some of these were particularly directed against gay inmates, attempting to "convert" them to heterosexuality. Blanche Wiesen Cooke, a New York history professor, has raised the question of whether AIDS may have developed as a result of such experiments.

Mind control research was transferred from MKULTRA to the Office of Research and Development (ORD) in 1963, and the U.S. Army officially terminated their LSD experiments at that time. However it has recently been revealed that their British counterparts, the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment (CBDE) at Porton Down took over and continued these experiments. In 1993, Graham Pearson, the Director of CBDE, disclosed that they carried out LSD tests on 72 service volunteers, on behalf of the Ministry of Defence, between 1961 and 1972. This was the first official admission that the British government had carried out secret mind-control tests on human guinea pigs.

In the early 1970s, one of MKULTRA's payrolled scientists, Dr Joylon West, was involved in planning a secret camp in California for "comparative studies.... of experimental or model programs for the alteration of undesirable behaviour" and the "study and reduction of violence." Proposed by then Governor Ronald Reagan, this centre would "predict the probability of occurrences of violence" according to ethnic population grouping. When asked how the subjects would be obtained for the experiments, Edwin Meese, Reagan's executive secretary at the time (later to become U.S. Attorney General), replied: "We'll kidnap them!" (H.W. Bowart suggests that the many cases of "alien abductions" reported [and apparently sincerely believed] by American citizens may be evidence of psychological programming experiments by the security services).

The camp would "test chemical castration, psychosurgery and experimental drugs" on involuntary incarcerated people. A law would also be passed in California that would put into effect a computer filing system on "pre-delinquent children." The children would then be "treated by the camp before they could harm society." This Orwellian nightmare was stopped after the plans for the scheme leaked to the news media.

MIND CONTROL AND BRAIN IMPLANTS

When news of the existence of MKULTRA was disclosed to the public during the major investigations of the CIA in the 1970s, it was discovered that in addition to mind control through the use of drugs, other areas researched by the CIA included hypnosis, sensory deprivation, psycho-surgery, brain implants and ESP. Mystery still surrounds the area which seems to have most interested MKULTRA'S successor, the Office of Research and Development (ORD) -"psychoelectronics".

In the late 1950s, a neuroscientist named Jose Delgado developed a "stimoceiver", a miniature depth electrode which can receive and transmit electronic signals over FM radio waves. By stimulating a correctly positioned stimoceiver within an individual's cranium, an outside operator could wield a surprising degree of control over the subject's responses. The most famous example of Delgado's work occurred in a Madrid bull ring. Delgado "wired" a bull before stepping into the ring entirely unprotected. The bull charged towards the doctor, then stopped just before reaching him. Delgado had halted the animal simply by pushing a button in a black box held in his hand.

Delgado's human experiments demonstrated that emotions and behaviour such as rage, lust, relaxation, fear, fatigue, hallucinations etc., can be easily induced using radio stimulation by an outside operator of different points in the amygdala and hippocampus regions of the brain. The techniques could also be used to modify "unwanted" social behaviour.

Speaking in 1966, Delgado asserted that his experiments "support the distasteful conclusion that motion, emotion and behaviour can be directed by electrical forces and that humans can be controlled like robots by push buttons." He even professed a day when brain control could be turned over to non-human operators by establishing two-way radio communication between the implanted brain and a computer. Work by the brothers Ralph and Robert Schwitzgebel for tracking individuals over long ranges led to the proposal of a scheme whereby miniature radio receivers are mounted on utility poles throughout a given city, thereby providing a 24-hour monitoring capability.

One of the most disturbing suggestions in this area came in 1994 from Joseph Meyer of the National Security Agency, who proposed implanting roughly half of all Americans arrested (but not necessarily convicted of any crime). These "subscribers" (his term) could then be monitored continually by computer. Meyer carefully worked out the economics of his mass-implantation system and asserted that taxpayer liability should be reduced by forcing subscribers to "rent" the implant from the state. Meyer argued that implants are cheaper and more efficient than police.

REMOTE MIND CONTROL AND ELECTROMAGNETIC WARFARE

As far back as 1953, the scientist John C. Lilly was asked by the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (a regular CIA funding conduit) to brief the CIA, FBI, NSA and military intelligence on his work using electrodes to stimulate the pleasure and pain centres of the brain. Lilly refused, stating in his reply: "Dr Antoine Redmond, using our techniques in Paris, has demonstrated that this method of stimulation of the brain can be applied to the human without the help of the neurosurgeon; he is doing it in his office in Paris without neurosurgical supervision. This means that anybody with the proper apparatus can carry this out on a person covertly, with no external signs that electrodes have been used on that person. I feel that if this technique got into the hands of a secret agency, they would have total control over a human being and be able to change his beliefs extremely quickly, leaving little evidence of what they had done."

Unfortunately the Freedom of Information Act can only pry loose scant information on electronic mind control and most of MKULTRA's work in this area remains secret. The earliest reference to remotely-applied electronic stimulation of the brain (ESB) is a 1959 document pertaining to MKULTRA Sub-project 94 and shows that a great deal of research was carried out in this area. A 350-page CIA manual dating from 1963 asserted that the Agency had mastered a technology called RHIC-EDOM (Radio Hypnotic Intracerebral Control and Electronic Dissolution of Memory). Together, these techniques can allegedly remotely induce hypnotic trance, deliver suggestions to the subject and erase all memory for both instruction period and the act which the subject is asked to perform.

During 1977 Senate hearings on CIA drug testing, Dr Sidney Gottlieb, an important MKULTRA administrator, admitted the possibility of the existence of Agency research involving hypnosis using radio beams and the use of microwaves to erase memory, alter brain functions and disrupt behaviour patterns.

Early work by microwave scientist Allan H. Frey provided evidence that the perception of sound can be induced in normal and clinically deaf humans by irradiation of the head with low-density, pulse-modulated ultra-high frequency (UHF) electromagnetic radiation - a type of radio wave. It had previously been shown that UHF wavelengths smaller than 10cm could produce a heating of the skin and even cause severe burning. Since then, work by Frey and others has shown that this same microwave energy is capable of producing selective tachycardia (a speeding-up of the heart beat) and brachycardia (slowing down of the heart beat). A U.S. State Department report by G.W. Biles in 1976 suggests that it is quite possible to induce a heart attack in a person from a distance with radar, since radar uses the same pulse-modulated UHF energy that Frey had used in some of his early experiments.

In 1961, Frey showed that the effect and range of auditory response to radio frequency (RF) energy could reach thousands of feet. Using a pulse-modulated transmitter, all types of biological effects could be induced on the targeted subject, including dizziness, nausea and vomiting. Even words could be sent to the brain, independent of the tympanic membrane of the ear. A new form of communications, with immense implications for the military and security services, was discovered: direct communication to the brain by radio waves. An intelligence asset, programmed by remote hypnosis, could be activated by RF means to carry out orders bypassing his or her consciousness. The hypnotic command that the target obeyed would be considered their own idea.

Such operations could be carried out on the basis of a "timed hypnotic command" - using RF means, certain information could be made to appear in the target's mind at a given time in the future. A similar effect could be produced when the hypnotic suggestion is designed to be triggered by a word, a picture or other signal. "There are also means of blocking the target's access to retrieve information; by inducing amnesia it is possible to disrupt, inhibit and reconnect his or her conscious (mental) linkages at will, and thus produce contrasting effects which are of the highest value for later hypnotic commands".

Similar research by Dr W. Ross Adey at the University of Southern California has shown that simply by placing subjects in an electromagnetic field, their behaviour can be altered. By directing a carrier frequency to stimulate the brain and using amplitude modulation to "shape" the wave into a mimicry of a desired EEG frequency, the mind can be externally conditioned into aversive or docile states, for example. Ideas including names can be synchronised with the feelings that the fields induce. Such devices could also have a role in covert operations designed to drive a target crazy with "imaginary voices" or to deliver undetectable instructions to a programmed assassin. Adey compiled an entire library of frequencies and pulsation rates which could be used to affect the mind and nervous systems.

In a rare and astonishing admission in 1963 by Dr George Estabrooks (the man who first proposed to U.S. military intelligence the potential uses of hypnosis in warfare back in the 1 940s), Estabrooks revealed that he had conducted extensive hypnosis work on behalf of the CIA, FBI and military intelligence and stated that "the key to creating an effective spy or assassin rests in... creating a multiple personality with the aid of hypnosis," a process which the doctor described as "child's play." That same year (the year of President Kennedy's assassination) Estabrooks even offered the suggestion that Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby "could very well have been performing through hypnosis."

Albert Einstein conferring with naval officers in his study, Princetown, New Jersey, July 24th 1943. Einstein was involved with secret U.S. government experiments known as the 'Rainbow Project' in which the use of a very powerful electromagnetic field around an object was used to divert radar waves around it, making it radar invisible. This culminated in the test known as the 'Philadelphia Experiment' on August 12th 1943, in which the warship USS Eldridge reportedly achieved not only radar but also physical invisibility. The same research team was later involved in using electromagnetic waves for mind control experiments at Montauk Point, Long Island. Sensing the dangers of the experiments, Congress refused further approval for the work in 1967 and the project was abandoned.

Some months before his death, Einstein was reported to have burned papers relating to his Unified Field Theory and its possible practical applications on the grounds that the world wasn't ready for such things and would be better off without them.

In 1967 the U.S. Air Force base at Montauk Point in New York's Long Island was used for top secret experiments using a giant Sage radar that was capable of transmitting electromagnetic waves at frequencies of 425 to 450 Megahertz, the level at which it is possible to alter human thought. Some of the military technicians at the base had used the Sage radar in the 1960s and noticed how it had been possible to change the mood of the personnel on the base by changing the frequency and pulse duration of the radar. Thus, mood altering experiments were begun in earnest. One of the Montauk Project leaders, Al Bielek, later revealed that, "with no military or defence purposes to begin with, the project was only designed for controlling the minds of the population, in spite of Congress forbidding the project." At first, the focus of the experiments was a person sitting inside a shielded room. The radar reflector was angled down so that it focused on the room. The researchers observed that certain changes in frequencies and pulses "made a person sleep, cry, laugh, be agitated and so on."

The experiments were then expanded to include the base personnel, then on to the townspeople in Montauk, Long Island, New Jersey, upstate New York and then Connecticut "just to see how far it could go." A special chair was designed using technology that could display what a person was thinking. It would collect the electromagnetic impulses from that person, then translate them into a understandable form. Coils, which acted as sensors, were placed around the chair, along with three receivers, six channels and a computer which would display the person's thoughts digitally on a screen. Bielek claims that the research at Montauk is still ongoing.

In 1974, J. F. Schapitz filed a plan to study the effect of inducing hypnotic suggestions through radio frequencies. In his experiment, subjects were implanted with the subconscious suggestion to leave the lab and buy a particular item, the action triggered by a certain "cue" word or action. Schapitz' work was funded by the Department of Defence. Despite Freedom of Information requests, the results have never been revealed.

A 1976 U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) report entitled "Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Radiation" notes that "the potential for the development of a number of antipersonnel applications is suggested by the research published in the USSR, East Europe and the West. Sounds and possibly even words which appear to be originating intra-cranially can be induced by signal modulation at very low power densities."

Russian scientists recently reported the following (quote): 'With the help of computer-processed frequency-modulated pulses, coding texts are being introduced into human consciousness. Programming is usually being carried out during night-time by three synchronised frequency generators situated in a city's suburbs in the course of a week. After this, the "patient" receives a coded message. This can be some specific sound but more usually it is a phone call. The call is usually made past midnight (between 12.00 p.m. and 1.00 a.m.) when human energy defences are at their lowest point, being in restoration phase. After receiving such a message, a person - against his/her will and even without conscious awareness - can take a self-destructive course of action.... In 1979, a modified generator emitter called 'Genotron' was created. The device, the size of a small saucer, is fixed on the breast of an assassin. A left wire is connected through the shirt sleeve with a feeder (the energy pumping cycle lasts seven seconds) and a right wire is connected with a control system of a 20 KWT electron ray emitter, powered by a 9V source. When a "clean elimination" of an "inconvenient" person is required, the killer walks behind the target and with the help of the ultrasound aiming device zeroes in on the victim's heart and "shoots." The result is heart defibrillation and multiple ruptures of the heart tissue.

There has also been produced a car-based variety of the generator emitter which is used on the road when it is necessary to cause an auto accident. The hypnotic emitter blocks the functioning of the left brain, where the centres of rational control are situated. As a result, the driver of the tracked car loses the feeling of reality and in the euphoric state there appears a wish to increase speed beyond any limits. The result is a crash."

The use of mind control weapons to cause car accidents brings to mind various incidents of people whose deaths were remarkably convenient for the powers that be. Karen Silkwood was the young American woman who died in most suspicious circumstances while she was en route to going public with the lack of safety standards at the plutonium plant at which she worked. The attempted breakout of five IRA prisoners from Whitemoor Maximum Security Prison in September 1994 led to speculation that the security services had set up the escape. The vital footage from the video recordings of the prison fences (which would have shown the prisoners receiving outside help) were mysteriously "missing." One of the prison officers who had been in the prison control room during the break-out, Marcia Whitehurst, died when her car plunged into a river near Wisbech. She was driving to court to give evidence at the trial of the prisoners and was due to be cross-examined about her entries in a log book. The police described her death as a "tragic accident." Another Whitemoor prison officer who was present in the control room, Peter Curran, disappeared when he left home to play golf. His car has never been found. His wife stated that "he was very concerned about something before he disappeared."

There are also the curious events in Britain surrounding Mark Purdey, the diary farmer who opposed the British agro-chemical industry, claiming to have compelling evidence that BSE, the "mad-cow disease," was the result of organo-phosphate pesticide poisoning. Purdey's experiments, conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry in south London, confirmed that Phosmet, which contains a chemical component of the notoriousdrug Thalidomide, can affect the "prion protein" believed to trigger the devastating BSE brain disease. The only other countries to use Phosmet in a similar way to Britain - pouring it along the cow's spine - were France, Switzerland and Ireland, which were the other countries that had BSE. Two of the people who took Purdey's side of the argument died in mysterious circumstances. One was a solicitor, Peter Ward, who helped Purdey In a case against the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The second was a vet, Christopher Budge. Both died when their cars inexplicably left the road and crashed, Ward hitting a stone wall and Budge swerving into the path of an on-coming lorry.

(Organo-phosphates, which are chemically related to nerve gas, were widely used by allied forces during the Gulf War. Their use has been linked to the debilitating Gulf War syndrome suffered by the allied troops. In March 1997 the armed forces minister Nicholas Soames admitted misleading Parliament by denying the use and known effects of organo-phosphates.)

Microwave weapons have been in development for decades. A report for the U.S. Army entitled 'Analysis of Microwaves for Barrier Warfare' released under a Freedom of Information request shows that even in the early 1970s, the military were developing electromagnetic weapons: "When the beam is turned on, the person will probably fall down in pain and die in 35 seconds, If somehow he proceeds towards the friendly forces, the intensity will continue to rise and he will die before he reaches the 300m front of the barrier." Microwave and laser weapons exist that can cause "exploding eyeballs" or turn people into fireballs. A weapon that can temporarily blind or render an enemy unconscious, can with a turn of the power dial, cut them in two or "cook their internal organs." These so-called "Non Lethal Weapons," which include High Powered Microwave (HPM), infrasound, "plasma bullet guns," Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and radio frequency devices, provide "a new spectrum of options" as the Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) puts it. The weapons are so horrific that there was even debate in the Department of Defence about whether they violate treaties governing humanity in war.

The CIA had a programme called Operation Pique in 1978 which included bouncing radio or microwave signals off the ionosphere to affect the mental functions of people in selected areas, including Eastern European nuclear installations. A 1985 experiment at the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City showed that pinpoint accuracy could be achieved with behaviour-altering microwave beams, such that an individual in a room might be affected by an outside beam while another person elsewhere in the room is unaffected.

The Christic Institute, a public interest law firm in the U.S., has many files from state, Senate and Congressional representatives who claim to be victims of clandestine bombardment with non-ionising radiation or microwaves.

These people (nicknamed "wavies") report sudden changes in psychological states, alteration of sleep patterns, intra-cerebral voices and other sounds, and other unusual physiological effects. The number and scope of the individuals reporting such claims makes it difficult to dismiss them all out of hand as being mentally ill. The matter has been taken up in the U.S. by the Association of National Security Alumni (ANSC), after investigating the known Department of Defence and CIA interests in this field. In a briefing issued on August 19th 1992, ANSO commented on "the increasing number of persons contacting us for assistance in ending what they believe to be electronic harassment by elements of U.S. intelligence."

Julianne McKinney, author of a 20-page report for ANSC, "Microwave Harassment and Mind Control Experimentation", wrote: "Four months ago, when this project commenced, we approached these complaints of government harassment and experimentation with a high degree of caution. We are no longer sceptical. The growing numbers of independent complaints and the similarities between these complaints cannot be ignored."

There is now a victims group in the U.S. called Victims of Electronic Assault. In the ex-Soviet Union, political dissenters are emerging claiming to be "wavies" with the same reports as their counterparts in the U.S.

In the summer of 1984, the women peace protesters camped around the U.S. air base at Greenham Common were surprised to find that the military and police personnel who had been regularly facing them across the wire disappeared at a particular time. This coincided with the appearance of new aerials on the base buildings and in the months that followed, the women began to suffer a wide variety of illnesses, with symptoms including disruption of their menstrual cycles, panic, swollen tongues, bleeding gums, headaches, voices in the head, vertigo and burns - even at night. Similar phenomena have more recently plagued the women's peace camp at Seneca in the United States. The British woman who is co-ordinating the research into this for the Greenham women has had both her car and her house shot at. In his book The Geller Effect, Uri Geller also noted the strange use of the back focus of a radar dish being used to affect the Greenham Common protesters.

In addition to these cases, more and more people are turning up claiming to have had brain implants while they have been incarcerated for various reasons. A Freedom of Information request produced a 1970 NASAreport on implantable biotelemetry systems, which describes the development of precisely these kinds of devices. "…. it is therefore possible that the biological application of radar could be used as a weapon on an individual basis for sociological or political purposes....."

The involvement of NASA in the CIA's mind control experiments has sinister implications….

The CIA's research in "evoked brain potentials" (potential is used in the electrical sense, meaning voltage) had the goal of finding methods to replace both polygraphs and voice stress analysis, which are notoriously unreliable lie detectors. Evoked potential studies measure and analyse brain wave responses that result from different stimuli. Using computers, the CIA's aim was to develop these techniques into methods of mind reading and eventually, mind programming or reprogramming.

By 1974 Lawrence Pinneo, a neurophysiologist and electronic engineer at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) had developed a computer system capable of reading a person's mind. It correlated brain waves on an electroencephalograph with specific commands. Twenty years ago, the computer responded with a dot on a TV screen. Today, it can be the input to an EBB stimulator that uses radio frequencies. The concept of mind-reading computers is no longer science fiction.

According to Ken Lawrence's testimony before Congress in 1985 on the issue of CIA campus activity, a revival of the MKULTRA programme exists at the University of Florida, where CIA-funded researchers have been carrying out "truth detector" experiments using a computer to read brain waves. Major Edward Dames of Psi-Tech said in April 1995 on NBC's 'The Other Side' programme: "The U.S. government has an electronic device which could implant thoughts in people." Dames would not comment any further.

The cooking ability of microwaves is a well-known fact of everyday life. At power levels which have no heating effect, microwave radiation affects biological cells in other ways. Both American and British military security is built on a complex global system of communications links involving the widespread use of RF microwaves, including missile tracking radar and surveillance radar. These are found at American bases around the world, including the UK. The military are well aware of the adverse health effects of this and have sought to cover up deaths resulting from microwave exposure. In 1977, two army researchers published a paper showing that power levels of microwaves thousands of times below safety limits damaged the brain. This research and the debate it stimulated was stopped by the Department of Defence. Dr. Koslov at John Hopkins University attempted to restart work into this in 1986, but was unable to get funding. In 1981, U.S. Army pathologist Dr. Friedman published some preliminary findings of a study into the large number of radar operators referred to him with a rare blood disease. The army refused to publish his full report.

The British ultra-secure communications network is completely independent from the British Telecom network. It ensures that the government can control the country in the event of the collapse of its authority by war or mass strike action and is based on the use of microwave communication links dotted around the country, with a higher concentration in built-up areas. The centre of research for developing this system is the Defence Research Agency's Malvern branch (formerly the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment). Since the mid-70s, eight scientists working there have died from brain tumours. Recent cases in Britain of various illnesses amongst people living near overhead power lines have added to the evidence that electromagnetic radiation is more harmful to humans than previously thought.

During the Gulf War in 1991, Cruise missiles with Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) warheads were used against the Iraqis. This information was released via the American military trade publication Defence News in April 1992. The same year, the UK Ministry of Defence confirmed the development of a British microwave bomb. The EMP bomb works by "emitting a massive pulse of radio energy which would render humans unconscious by scrambling neural paths in the brain but would not cause lasting injury." In fact, evidence from research scientists exposed to EMP has shown that it can cause cancers such as myclogenous leukaemia, a fatal bone marrow disease.

In 1993, residents in the Crossmaglen area of South Armagh in Northern Ireland voiced their concerns that British army surveillance equipment was linked to observed clusters and increases in cancer cases in the area. Following the deaths in 1997 of three members of the E4A undercover surveillance unit of the Special Branch (all three died of cancer of the colon), the RUC consulted the National Radiological Protection Board over concerns that their deaths might be linked to the wearing of concealed microwave equipment which is strapped to the skin beneath clothing. The RUC press office claimed that the NRPB's review was not just linked to the deaths but covered the use of all microwave equipment.

SOUND WARFARE

William Arkin, a US consultant on the humanitarian impact of weapons and warfare, revealed in the Journal Medicine in 1998 that the United States army and airforce were developing a new generation of acoustic weapons that rupture organs, inflict burns and create cavities in human tissues. The research was so far advanced that deployment of the weapons was imminent.

Such weapons can radiate a directed energy beam with an intensity varying from a 90-120 decibel low-frequency soundwave "to provide extreme levels of annoyance and distraction" through 140-150 decibels for "strong physical bodily trauma and damage to tissues", up to "shockwave" levels of over 170 decibels, producing "instantaneous blastwave-type trauma" which could be lethal.

Abstracts from a US Department of Defense programme on the military's acquisition of mind control technology described the use of "a system for altering the states of human consciousness" involving "the simultaneous application of multiple stimuli, preferably sounds, having different frequencies and wave forms…. Researchers have devised a variety of systems for stimulating the brain to exhibit specific brain wave rhythms and thereby alter the state of consciousness of an individual subject."

Dr. Oliver Lowry, who has carried out several classified projects for the U.S. Government on what is termed by the military and intelligence services Silent Sound Spread Spectrum (SSSS), sometimes called SQUAD, developed and patented a system which he described as "a silent communications system in which non-aural carriers, in the very high audio frequency range or in the adjacent ultrasonic frequency spectrum, are amplified or frequency modulated with the desired intelligence and propagated acoustically or vibrationally, for inducement into the brain. The modulated carriers may be transmitted directly in real time or may be recorded and stored on mechanical, magnetic or optical media for delayed or repeated transmission to the listener."

The first known military use of the system was against Iraq during the Gulf War. Although completely silent to the human ear, the negative voice messages programmed by PsyOps psychologists were clearly perceived by the subconscious minds of Iraqi soldiers: "The silent sounds completely demoralised them and instilled a perpetual feeling of fear and hopelessness in their minds."

PSYCHIC WARFARE

In the course of the MKULTRA projects, the CIA allocated some of the project's budget to study the use of mediums and called for a scientific study of the use of psychics for intelligence work. This work was set up at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Melano Park, California, whose studies in parapsychology were supported by the CIA, the Navy and the DIA. Dealing in secret high-tech defence projects, SRI was America's second largest think-tank, with over $70 million in government funding annually. The CIA's main contact in funding SRI's work was Harold Chipman, who had served in Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, Laos and Vietnam.

Stanford Research Institute, the base for the CIA's psychic warfare programme.

In 1952, Dr Andrija Puharich presented a paper, 'An Evaluation of the Possible Uses of Extrasensory Perception (ESP) in Psychological Warfare' to a secret Pentagon gathering. Puharich's psychic research findings were in line with the CIA's current mind control work and in 1956 Puharich brought in the Israeli psychic Uri Geller to SRI. Mossad had provided SRI with an intelligence report on Geller's abilities. Geller underwent several weeks of exhaustive scientific tests at SRI, under two of the institute's chief scientists, physicists Harold Puthof and Russell Targ.

The psychic Uri Geller was employed by the CIA for over twenty years. Here, Geller demonstrates his ability to erase computer tapes while specialists look on.

In the early 1960s, the U.S. Air Force commissioned the American Institute for Research (AIR) to conduct a feasibility study on the development and use of psychological phenomena for warfare. AIR published their findings under the title of 'Psychological Phenomena Applicable to the Development of Psychological Weapons'.

Spurred on by heavy involvement of the Soviet Union in psychic research (on which the Soviets were spending about 60 million roubles per year in 1971, increased to 300 million roubles - $450 million - in 1975), the CIA embarked on intense psychic research. SRI's Harold Puthof focused on ESP as the area most likely to give results that could be used operationally. The phenomenon was seen as a low-cost radar system; people possessing suitable extra-sensory powers could be the perfect spies.

The CIA adopted a twin-track approach towards this new area of interest. Publicly, through disinformation campaigns, they endeavoured to dismiss and discredit psychic research. Secretly, they funded a series of projects on which they spent over $20 million over the next 16 years. The Soviets, aware of the U.S. policy,reacted similarly. They too publicly denied the credibility of any psychic research, imprisoned a number of researchers (particularly those involved in information exchange with their Western counterparts) and appeared to close down several research institutes.

A series of 'Anomalous Mental Phenomena' programmes were carried out at SRI from 1973 to 1989 and were continued at the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) from 1992 to 1994. A technique known as 'Sleep-Wake Hypnosis' was developed, in which a hypnotist transferred hypnotic commands telepathically to a subject, whether they were a few feet or even a thousand miles away. Psychics were trained to influence foreign leaders as they spoke to the public on the TV or radio. Some of the experiments had highly negative effects on subjects, including sickness, nervous breakdowns and even insanity. The 'Sleep-Wake Hypnosis' technique was recently demonstrated on Paul McKenna's World of the Paranormal television programme, when an Eastern European hypnotist telepathically raised and lowered the heartbeat of a subject in another room.

Stanford Research Institute - now named SRI International - termed their telepathy work Remote Viewing (RV), which involved a sender transmitting messages telepathically to a receiver. Two of SRI's most important projects were Grill Flame, a multi-million dollar psychic research and development programme, started by the CIA in 1972 and now primarily run by the DIA; and SCANATE (SCANning by coordinATE), which started on May 29th 1973 and was completed in 1975. Grill Flame produced telepathic information, later confirmed by satellite, about a very sensitive nuclear test site at Semipalatinsk in Soviet Kazakhstan and which led to the location of a crashed Soviet Tu-95 'Backfire' bomber in Africa. Little else is known at present about the project.

Harold Puthof, head of the CIA's Remote Viewing programme at Stanford Research Institute.

In his first attempt at remote viewing a site, having been given only the geographical co-ordinates, latitude and longitude, the psychic Ingo Swann described in considerable detail what was officially described as a meteorological research installation (in fact a Soviet missile-tracking base) on the remote Pacific island of Kerguelen. Swann's descriptions included the layout of buildings and a map of the island. It was later confirmed that these were correct in every detail.

Ingo Swann, psychic and Remote Viewer at SRI, 1972 - 1989.

One of the most intriguing of SCANATE's experiments was Number 46, dated April 27th 1973. The purpose of the experiment was "to try to ascertain if long distance remote sensing could extend to a very far distance to record the time it took before impressions began to be given, and to compare the impressions with published scientific feedback." The target chosen was the planet Jupiter. NASA's Pioneer Ten satellite was already en route to the planet but too far away to send data back to the Earth laboratories. The viewers were Ingo Swann in California and Harold Sherman in Arkansas. With these two viewers 2,000 miles apart, the idea was to see whether their independent data would correspond with each other - which they did. In the course of this attempt, a ring around Jupiter was discovered by the viewers. Swann described: "Very high in the atmosphere there are crystals, they glitter. Maybe the stripes are like bands of crystals... Very close within the atmosphere. I bet you they'll reflect radio waves. Is that possible, if you had a cloud of crystals that were assaulted by different radio waves?"

The existence of the ring was confirmed in early 1979, six years after this experiment.