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Interview with an Assassin with Assassin Interview ind control is not needed to motivate assassins; it is, however, most useful to protect assassins and their employers from their own incriminating memo- ries. In the course of researching this book, I talked with a number of retired intelligence personnel (from various government agencies) who had either committed assassination or admitted having héard tales of assassins in their work. Few had heard of an assassin being mind-controlled. One man I consulted, however, took a special interest in the stories of David and Castillo. A chemist who had worked for one of the intelligence research labs, he developed new ways for killing quickly and quietly. And he had met several of the killers who were to use his formulas. Over a three-year period I talked with this chemist on a number of occasions. He came to trust that I would reveal no names and endanger no lives in telling the story of mind control. After hearing details of my research, he offered to introduce me to a man he had met while working at the lab. This man had been a high-ranking officer in the military, retired after thirty years of service. He had served as an officer in World War II and Korea. During the Vietnam conflict, because of his special knowledge of ‘black science’ he was induced to sign on after he retired from military service as a private contractor for the cryptocracy. During the next eighteen years, he accepted several simple assassination jobs. He told the chemist about some of his friends having come back from similar mis- sions with “holes in their memories". The chemist had arranged a meeting in a noisy public restaurant in a small New Mexico town. Having promised to take no notes, I had secreted in my pocket the smallest tape recorder made, which allowed me to record three hours of the assassin's talk, amid clank- ing glasses and the general restaurant noise. When I finally sat across from him, my heart raced. The retired assassin was a sixty- year-old man, grey-haired but as strong as a man twenty-five years his junior. He had a .357 magnum revolver strapped to his side, as did the man he introduced as his body- guard. As a cover for the guns, he and the bodyguard both wore National Rifle Association patches sewn prominently to the pockets of their crisply pressed khaki clothes. © The chemist had already informed his friend about the book I was researching. As we sat down and were introduced by first names only, I told the assassin I was especially interested in finding out why men had been returned to civilian life with amnesia. I mentioned the ad I had placed and the number of men who had responded. I men- tioned also that the majority of those who responded, and who had reason to believe their minds had been tampered with, had been enlisted men. Career officers, he explained, were legally bound by security oaths and economically dependent upon pensions and the privileges of rank, but enlisted men, while perhaps bound by an oath, were likely to separate from the service knowing more than they need- ed to know. Somebody had to man the high-technology instruments of war, and those who were merely computer fodder had to be protected against their knowledge—they could not be trusted. Patriotism, especially during the Vietnam era, was a waning motiva- tion. Their memories had to be erased. But, he explained, mind control was not needed to make a killer. Professionals didn’t usually need to be motivated. Most members of search-and-destroy or "executive action" teams were already willing to kill men, women or children if their superiors ordered it. I concluded that he meant a career killer didn't need to be debriefed by mind control. When I said that, he contradicted me. "You want to bet?" he said. "They'd all kill, but they might not be able to keep the secret. It would depend entirely upon what activities they were involved in, whether the assignment was combat, mop-up, search-and-destroy, political assassination, or whatever..." For decades, even centuries, mind control techniques have been intrinsic to covert intelligence operations. A former CIA assassin reveals his view of it all. Reprinted with permission from: Operation Mind Control © 1978, by Walter Bowart Published by Dell Publishing Co, Inc. (USA) and Fontana/Collins (UK), 1978. Operation Mind Control © 1978, by Walter Bowart APRIL - MAY 1995 NEXUS ¢ 39 Reprinted with permission from: