Nexus - 0223 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

Funding for West's violence research centre was raised by the The lease on the Jonestown site ran for five years, running out just Californian Health and Welfare Agency's (HEW) sccretary, Dr one month after the massacre.) Earl Brian. He garnered considerable support from the US Law The original concept for violence research centres was the Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), an organisation brainchild of William Hermann, a counter-insurgency expert for that, as has been revealed during congressional civil rights investi- | Systems Development Corporation, and an adviser to Governor gations, had funded 537 research projects dealing with medical Reagan who was working out a "pacification plan" for California. procedures such as psychosurgery, non-surgical behaviour-modifi- _ Hermann told The Los Angeles Times that a good computer intelli- cation techniques, and drugs for the control of delinquency. HEW _ gence system “would separate out the activist bent on destroying also funded a large number of furthcr behaviour-modification pro- _ the system" and then develop a master plan “to win the hearts and grams both directly and through its subagency, the National _ minds of the people".™ Institutes of Mental Health.” Hermann had also worked with the Rand Corporation, the Stand It has also been revealed in declassified documents that the _ Research Institute and the Hoover Center on Violence. He has LEAA acted as a front for CIA behaviour-modification experi- been named as a CIA agent, is currently serving an eight-year sen- ments conducted during the MKULTRA program. During MKUL- tence in an English prison for his role in a CIA counterfeiting TRA, tests were conducted on unwitting and poorly informed citi- operation, and is directly linked to the Iran-Contra Affair accord- zens, prison inmates and servicemen, using psycho-active drugs, ing to government records and his own testimony. The London hypnosis, sensory deprivation, electroconvulsive therapy, elec- | Sunday Telegraph confirmed Hermann's CIA connections, tracing troshock treatment (ECT), psychosurgery, deep sleep therapy, bio- them from 1976 to 1986. This information was also revealed at logical agents (i.e., chemical weapons), "harassment substances", his London trial. The San Francisco Bay Guardian has identified brain concussion, stress, electronic brain stimulation (ESB), elec- him as an arms dealer working in Iran during the 1980s, and has tronic brain implants, electromagnetic radio-frequency cnergy, and _ also linked him to the October Surprise.* Hermann’s relationship many other techniques." They were applicd to subjects in any _ with Earl Brian allegedly extends from the early "70s through to combination that showed promise for = his current imprisonment, and to all influencing or controlling human the scandals that Brian and the behaviour. No stone was left Reagan-Bush administrations have untumed, been associated with in between. Not coincidentally, it was during (Brian was himself named by for- Operation Phoenix provided the the period of Reagan's tenure as CIA with an endless supply of mer Israeli intelligence operative Governor of California that the Vietcon POWs on which to test Ari Ben-Menashe as having been LEAA pushed for the development of ‘ : : present during the payment of a National Population Surveillance surgically implanted radio US$40 million to the Iranians to Computer System within the USA. °. . stall the release of the American R&D programs for computer soft- transceivers that had the capacity hostages during the October ware to run such a surveillance sys- to transmit data to remotely Surprise operation, and he has also tem were funded by the LEAA from at least as early as 1970. One such been named by other sources as a CIA agent.) In 1970, Hermann worked as CIA contro! officer to Colston located computers for electronic progpaa sri sell Sie Metasrie tracking purposes, and receive anagement Infonnation System, or * . ge . PROMIS. Around that time, anti- signals for behaviour-modification Westbrook, a former CIA psycho- Vietnam War protesters were particu- purposes. logical warfare expert who had served in Vietnam and also advised the Korean Central Intelligence larly active and ‘alternative’ religious organisations were multiplying rapid- ly, particularly in California. Agency and the Lon Nol regime in Before serving in Reagan's cabinet, Cambodia. Between 1966 and Earl Brian had been a combat physician involved in Operation 1969 he was an adviser to the Viemamese Police Special Branch Phoenix, the CIA's controversial Viemam War assassination pro- under the cover of working as an employee of Pacific Architects gram”, during which some of the agency's most bizarre behaviour- and Engineers, the firm contracted to construct the forty-four modification field experiments were conducted. Operation _ interrogation/torture centres, known as Provincial Interrogation Phoenix provided the CIA with an endless supply of Vietcong Centers, that were erected in Vietnam as part of the CIA's Phoenix POWs on which to test surgically implanted radio transceivers that program. Westbrook at the time was in the process of forming the had the capacity to transmit data to remotely located computers for Black Cultural Association at Vacaville Medical Facility, a state electronic tracking purposes, and receive signals for behaviour- _ prison in California. (The Vacaville State Medical Facility is also modification purposes. No doubt it was here that Brian became notorious for its long history of behaviour-control experimenta- versed in the art of psychological warfare and aware of the poten- _ tion. As recently as July 1991, The Napa Sentinel reported that tial of widespread computer surveillance to control a target popu- _ three inmates had died as a result of being forced to take behav- lation. iour-modification drugs, so little has changed.) Not surprisingly then, in 1974 Brian was adamant that The "black" organiser of the Black Cultural Association, which California needed the draconian violence rescarch centres. When _—was a cover for a pilot behaviour-modification project”, was the public and political uproar generated by concerned individuals | Donald De Freeze, who between 1967 and 1969 had worked for finally caused the cancellation of the project, Brian's final public the Los Angeles Police Department's Public Disorder Unit. He statement on the matter was that the decision to cut off funding would later become known to the public as the infamous leader of represented "a callous disregard for public safety". (It is interest- the Symbionese Liberation Army. It was CIA psychological war- ing to note that the first People's Temple party left California for fare expert Colston Westbrook who gave DeFreeze the name the Jonestown camp in Guyana in early 1974, the very same year. “Cinque Mtume", which meant "fifth prophet", and who designed purposes. 30 * NEXUS DECEMBER 1994 - JANUARY 1995