MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS

There have been many times on Ground Zero that I have addressed the issue of mind control and the CIA’s MK-Ultra Program. For many years, there have been stories that have been spun in the conspiracy fringe about the topic and while a limited amount of information has been released through the Freedom of Information Act and other “fringe” TV shows, it appears that MK-Ultra and other programs that have been linked to it are being recognized by mainstream movie makers and documentary film makers.

The new TV series, Wormwood, will be airing on Netflix and this six part series will focus on the history of the program and how it is more than just the grand dad of all conspiracies – it also exposes truly criminal activity being carried out by the CIA.

On April 10, 1953, Allen Dulles, the newly appointed director of the CIA, delivered a speech at Princeton University about the battle for men’s minds and the war of ideologies; namely, the battle against communism and what the CIA’s future role will be in determining loyalty and commitment to the goals of the United States.

The event was mundane, but Dulles felt that it was important to stress how vulnerable national security was and how at the time global tensions were running high. The Korean War was coming to an end, and at that particular moment, The New York Times had published a startling story asserting that American POWs returning from the country may have been “converted” by “Communist brain-washers.”

Some GI’s were confessing to war crimes, like carrying out germ warfare against the Communists – this was a sore subject because the charges were categorically denied by the United States.

Others were reportedly so brainwashed they had refused to return to the United States at all. As if that weren’t enough, the U.S. was weeks away from secretly sponsoring the overthrow of a democratically elected leader in Iran.

Dulles had just become the first civilian director of an agency growing more powerful by the day, and the speech provided an early glimpse into his priorities for the CIA.

Dulles proceeded to describe the “Soviet brain perversion techniques” as effective, but “abhorrent” and “nefarious.” He expressed fears and uncertainty – were they using chemical agents? Hypnosis? Something else entirely?

Dulles has said that these techniques in mind perversion were immoral and these sort of non-consensual experiments, even on one’s enemies, was antithetical to American values, as well as antithetical to what should be human values.

Fear of brainwashing and a new breed of “brain warfare” terrified and fascinated the American public throughout the 1950s, spurred both by the words of the CIA and the stories of “brainwashed” G.I.’s returning from China, Korea, and the Soviet Union.

Newspaper headlines like “New Evils Seen in Brainwashing” and “Brainwashing vs. Western Psychiatry” offered sensational accounts of new mind-control techniques and technologies that no man could fully resist. The paranoia began to drift into American culture, with books like The Manchurian Candidate and The Naked Lunch playing on themes of unhinged scientists and vast political conspiracies.

The idea of brainwashing also provided many Americans with a compelling, almost comforting, explanation for communism’s swift rise that Soviets used the tools of brainwashing; not just on enemy combatants, but on their own people. Americans were actually thinking to themselves why else would so many countries be embracing such an obviously backward ideology? The Russians must be proficient in brainwashing the entire world.

Three days after his speech decrying Soviet tactics, Dulles approved the beginning of MK-Ultra, a top-secret CIA program for “covert use of biological and chemical materials on subjects that resulted in mind control and physical harm.

MK-Ultra’s “mind control” experiments generally centered around behavior modification via electro-shock therapy, hypnosis, polygraphs, radiation, and a variety of drugs, toxins, and chemicals. These experiments relied on a range of test subjects: some who freely volunteered, some who volunteered under coercion, and some who had absolutely no idea they were involved in a sweeping defense research program.

According to information provided by the Freedom of Information Act:

It began “in the fall of 1947 focusing on the identification and testing of drugs (LSD and others) in interrogations and the recruitment of agents. The research included laboratory experiments on both animal and human subjects. The program ended shortly after the Korean War in 1953.” It was run under the direction of Dr. Charles Savage of the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, MD from 1947 – 1953, after which CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence continued it under the name Project Bluebird, its first mind control program to:

• learn how to condition subjects to withstand information from being extracted from them by known means;
• develop interrogation methods to exert control;
• develop memory enhancement techniques; and
• establish ways to prevent hostile control of Agency personnel.

In 1951, it was renamed Project Artichoke, then MK-ULTRA under Deputy CIA Director Richard Helms in 1953. It aimed to control human behavior through psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs, electroshock, radiation, graphology, paramilitary techniques, and psychological/ sociological/ anthropological methods, among others – a vast open-field of mind experimentation trying anything that might work, legal or otherwise on willing and unwitting subjects.

Ongoing at different times were 149 sub-projects in 80 US and Canadian universities, medical centers and three prisons, involving 185 researchers, 15 foundations and numerous drug companies. Everything was top secret, and most records later destroyed, yet FOIA suits salvaged thousands of pages with documented evidence of the horrific experiments and their effects on human subjects.

From mentally-impaired boys at a state school, to American soldiers, to “sexual psychopaths” at a state hospital, MK-Ultra’s programs often preyed on the most vulnerable members of society. The CIA considered prisoners especially good subjects, as they were willing to give consent in exchange for extra recreation time or commuted sentences.

With the advent of MK-Ultra, the government’s interest in LSD shifted from a defensive to an offensive orientation. Agency officials noted that LSD could be potentially useful in “[gaining] control of bodies whether they were willing or not.”

The CIA envisioned applications that ranged from removing people from Europe in the case of a Soviet attack to enabling assassinations of enemy leaders. On November 18, 1953, a group of ten scientists met at a cabin located deep in the forests of Maryland.

After extended discussions, the participants agreed that to truly understand the value of the drug, “an unwitting experiment would be desirable.”

The new television series, Wormwood, on Netflix focuses on one of the first well-known deaths that happened during the experiments – the death of military biochemist Frank Olson.

Frank Olson died in November 1953, after having jumped out of a 13th story window, a week after having been given a dose of LSD without his knowledge by members of the CIA. The official version of the story given in 1973 is that Dr. Olson suffered a mental breakdown over the event, but no reason was ever given as to why he had ever been drugged in the first place. Investigations continued well into the 1970’s as to the events leading up to Olson’s death.

Dr. Frank Olson worked for the US Army’s Chemical Corps Special Operations Division. His job was to do all kinds of suspicious experiments for the CIA. Many of these experiments dealt with the disruption of brain function in order to create a sleeper-zombie assassin or what is now called a Manchurian Candidate.

The scope of the experimentation was outlined in a memorandum dated January 1952 that asked: “Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation?”

Olson worked on methods of spreading anthrax and other toxins by aerosol; which was sprayed on unsuspecting Americans by airplane.

Some of his colleagues were involved in mind control drugs and torture techniques. At the time, the CIA was testing “truth serums” and other torture drugs on people they felt were expendable.

On November 28, 1953, an early morning smash of glass was heard and Armand Pastore, who was the night manager at the Statler Hotel at the time, rushed out the front door.

There sprawled out on the sidewalk of Seventh Avenue was Olson in his undershirt and shorts. His broken body was bent at a terrible angle and his legs were crushed. Olson had fallen from the 10th floor after crashing through a closed window.

He was still alive and in great pain. Olson tried to mumble something and Pastore couldn’t make out what he was saying. By the time an ambulance could arrive, Olson was dead.

Pastore ran up to Olson’s room on the 10th floor.

In the room was a man named Robert Lashbrook. He was in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet with his head in his hands. For many years the death of Olson was to remain classified. His death was determined to be a suicide.

After decades of a cover-up, investigations and an exhumation of Olson’s remains showed that he was murdered. Olson suffered a blow to the head and was pushed out of the 10th floor window. In the investigation it has to be noted that two familiar names showed up on memos from President Gerald Ford’s offices.

The memos were from none other than Dick Cheney, who was a White House assistant at the time, and to Donald Rumsfeld, the chief of staff. The memo detailed that any lawsuit served by the Olson family for damages might make it necessary to disclose highly-classified national security information.

While many people question the motives of government officials and speculate on their agendas, it needs to be pointed out that both Rumsfeld and Cheney have this uncanny ability to cover up murders carried out by secret intelligence cabals.

These groups are carrying out intelligence programs whose objectives are murdering those deemed collateral damage. We should pay attention to the stories of the past and notice the methods of the experimentation on human guinea pigs.

The experimentation included the use of drugs, and aerosol spraying of biological weapons. These experiments also dealt with the effects of electromagnetic fields on the human brain.

While it is believed that many of these programs have been shut down officially, unofficially we are now hearing about cases that are like ghostly reminders that the brain can be cracked open and controllers can climb inside and play around leaving those who have been attacked maimed for life or even dead.

Physicians, FBI investigators and U.S. intelligence agencies have spent months trying to piece together the puzzle in Havana, where the U.S. says 24 U.S. government officials and spouses fell ill starting last year in homes and later in some hotels.

Every piece of the “Cuban Embassy” puzzle that ends up being revealed appears to part of an ugly experiment that seems to be linked to a more advanced weapon that can be used for mind control.

Doctors treating the U.S. embassy victims of suspected attacks in Cuba have discovered brain abnormalities as they search for clues to explain hearing, vision, balance and memory damage.

Loud, mysterious sounds followed by hearing loss and ear-ringing had led investigators to suspect “sonic attacks.” But officials are now carefully avoiding that term. The sounds may have been the byproduct of something else that caused damage, said three U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. They weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly and demanded anonymity.

The case has plunged the U.S. medical community into uncharted territory. Physicians are treating the symptoms like a new, never-seen-before illness. After extensive testing and trial therapies, they’re developing the first protocols to screen cases and identify the best treatments — even as the FBI investigation struggles to identify a culprit, method and motive.

The victims are suffering from “white matter” damage to their brains.

Medical testing has revealed the embassy workers developed changes to the white matter tracts that let different parts of the brain communicate—there appears to be many disconnects in the Promotor cortex of the brain.

Earlier this year, the U.S. said doctors found patients had suffered concussions, known as mild traumatic brain injury, but were uncertain beyond that what had happened in their brains. Concussions are often diagnosed based solely on symptoms.

Studies have found both concussions and white matter damage in Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who survived explosions yet had no other physical damage. But those injuries were attributed mostly to shock waves from explosions. No Havana patients reported explosions or blows to the head.

Investigators have now determined:

— The most frequently reported sound patients heard was a high-pitched chirp or grating metal. Fewer recalled a low-pitched noise, like a hum.

— Some were asleep and awakened by the sound, even as others sleeping in the same bed or room heard nothing.

— Vibrations sometimes accompanied the sound. Victims told investigators these felt similar to the rapid flutter of air when windows of a car are partially rolled down.

— Those worst off knew right away something was affecting their bodies. Some developed visual symptoms within 24 hours, including trouble focusing on a computer screen.

Whoever did this used something that our medical community has never seen. With the new series on Netflix about the ugliness of MK-Ultra, it appears that ghosts of these experiments are showing up with the same severity.

Written by Ron Patton