Nexus - 0206 - New Times Magazine-pages

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CIA MIND CONTROL RESEARCH intelligence. Due to the obviously sensitive nature of any research in this area, special precautions were taken to isolate operations financially from other projects and the Agency. tune-tellers, palm readers, psychics and clairvoyants. The agents would introduce themselves as researchers from the Scientific Engineering Institute. They worked with their new found subjects searching for ways to use the paranormal in spying and counterintelligence. By May 1971, Operation Often had three astrologers on its payroll whose specific task was to predict the future. They would sit for hours in soundproof booths scouring magazines and newspapers looking for items that would alert them psychically. They then taped whatever thoughts came into their minds about how the particular situation may develop. By 1972 two Chinese-American palmists has been employed to probe how hand reading could be developed for intelligence work. Palmists had already been consulted after the Agency went to con- siderable lengths to obtain Fidel Castro’s palm prints. A medium was used to scout the United Nations headquarters for “evil types” and an approach was even made to the minister in charge of exor- cisms for the Catholic archdiocese of New York. Whatever the Subproject 142 was “ a small biological program of electrical brain stimulation involving some new approaches to the subject. “ The project would “engage in some very practical experiments at some point in the work that would present security problems if this effort were to be handled in the usual way. Some of the work pro- posed for these animals would involve possible delivery systems for direct executive type action operations as distinguished from the eaves dropping application.” The term “executive action” was the CIA’s euphemism for assassination. Subproject 94 was similar, its purpose “to provide for a continu- ation of investigations on the remote directional control of activi- ties in selected species of animals. Miniaturized stimulating elec- trode implants in specific brain center areas will be used.” These projects were initially conducted on animals. Dogs, cats and monkeys were tested as guided microphones and bombs. By 1960, “the feasibility of remote control of several species “ had been demonstrated. By April 1961, Sidney Gottlieb’s team had “ a ‘production’ capability.” After successful testing of electrode implants in animals brains, it was only a matter of time before human subjects were to be used. In July 1968 an Agency team flew into Saigon to experiment on three Vietcong prisoners at Bien Hoa Hospital. Working in an enclosed compound, the team’s neurosurgeon and neurologist inserted tiny electrodes into their brains. Behaviorists then experi- mented on the men, arming them with knives and trying to induce violent behaviour in them using the direct electrical stimulation. After a week of experimentation which failed to incite the men to attack each other, they were shot dead and their bodies were burned. One cannot even begin to guess at the number of people who have been subjected to brain implants since these early exper- offer, it was firmly rejected. Research was conducted into black magic, complete with an analysis on the covens operating in the United States. The Scientific Engineering Institute funded a course in sorcery at the University of South Carolina. The CIA’s scientists carefully studied the results of the classes devoted to fertility rites and raising the dead. Simultaneously, research into brain implant wea 3 After consultation with the DCI, Richard Helmes, Dr. Gottlieb hired the former director of the Agency’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, Dr. Stephen Aldrich , and set him up in a safe house where a KGB defector had recently been interrogated and tortured continuously for almost three years, so that he could experiment with a device known as the Schwitzgebel Machine. This was a “Behavioural Transmitter-Reinforcer’ (BT-R) fitted to a body belt that received signals from , and transmitted signals to, a radio mod- ule. The machine was “linked toa missile- vtracking device which iments. graphs the wearer’s location and displays it on a screen.” It was developed by Ralph K. Schwitzgebel in the Laboratory of Community Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. His brother, Robert, subsequently modified the prototype into a more refined final product. The machine drew enthusiastic praise from criminol- ogists who were supportive of ORD’s concepts for the intelligence techniques of the new world order. On December 10th, 1972, Helmes cancelled Operation Often.The memo sent to Dr. Gottlieb to notify him was marked READ - DESTROY. Dr. Gottlieb resigned from the Agency in January 1973. Before he left he was ordered by Helmes to shred all records from MKUItra - MKSearch. By 1969 TSS had been replaced by the Office of research and Development (ORD) as the Agencies “department of the unorthodox.” The most innovative and daring doctors were transferred to ORD and a number of bizarre and far-reaching experiments were put into action. The roots of the new research could be traced back to the earlier work Dr. Cameron had approved which tried to establish links between eye colouring and mental illness. The ORD chemical and biological team started off trying to cre- ate a deadly virus by exposing a range of already deadly bacteria to ultraviolet light. While they continued with that line of research, the psychiatrists and behaviorists on the ORD team set off to explore an even stranger possibility. The world of the supernatural and black magic. Agents spread out across the country in search of for- 130 boxes would later be discovered in the Langley archives that, inexplicably, Dr. Gottlieb had failed to destroy. It was thought that the records had been misfiled and would have been to destroyed if ra VA aad ean NEXUS - 29 CIA MIND CONTROL RESEARCH MKULTRA SUBPROVECT 142 AND SUBPROJECT 94 technology was stepped up. THE SCHWITZGEBEL MACHINE OPERATION OFTEN Helmes and Gottlieb had been aware of them. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1992 - YEAR BOOK