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AFA 5–7: Operation Mind Control

AFA 5: Oper­a­tion Mind Con­trol, Pt. 1
Part 1a 43:31 | Part 1b 43:47 | Part 1c 29:26
(Recorded Sep­tem­ber 25, 1984)

The first broad­cast of a three-part series, this pro­gram cov­ers the suc­cess­ful attempts by U.S. intel­li­gence to develop tech­niques for manip­u­lat­ing indi­vid­ual behav­ior in a man­ner that sub­verts human will and con­scious­ness. The dis­cus­sion focuses on meth­ods of caus­ing peo­ple to com­mit assas­si­na­tions against their will and with­out their con­scious knowledge.

Pro­gram high­lights include: dis­cus­sion of a for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tive who had mind-control devices surgically-implanted in his head and was unable to get them removed; the role of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence in financ­ing the research of Jose Del­gado, a pio­neer in the con­trol of behav­ior through sur­gi­cal implan­ta­tion of elec­trodes in the brain; early mind-control exper­i­ments demon­strat­ing that hyp­no­tized sub­jects can be made to com­mit acts nor­mally repug­nant to them; an insid­i­ous mind-control method­ol­ogy called “RHIC-EDOM” (“radio-hypnotic, intrac­ere­bral con­trol — elec­tronic dis­so­lu­tion of mem­ory”), in which the lev­els of a key neuro-transmitter called acetyl­choline are manip­u­lated in such a man­ner as to cause the “sub­ject” to act with­out con­scious knowl­edge or sub­se­quent rec­ol­lec­tion of acts com­mit­ted while affected by the process; the story of appar­ent for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tive Angel Castillo, pro­grammed with mul­ti­ple per­son­al­i­ties (some of them devel­oped for assas­si­na­tion oper­a­tions) and allegedly recruited as a back-up shooter for the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy; a U.S. Navy project involv­ing the use of audio-visual desen­si­ti­za­tion to con­di­tion “passive-aggressive” per­son­al­i­ties as assas­sins; an inter­view with a for­mer U.S. gov­ern­ment assas­sin, who dis­cusses suc­cess­ful use of mind con­trol in assas­si­na­tion oper­a­tions and main­tains that the United States has been taken over by the national secu­rity estab­lish­ment; advanced mind-control research directed toward read­ing the human mind.

AFA 6: Oper­a­tion Mind Con­trol, Pt. 2
Part 2a 46:11 | Part 2b 46:56 | Part 2c 44:10 | Part 2d 46:05 | Part 2e 36:24
(Recorded Novem­ber 29, 1884)

Con­tin­u­ing from the point at which AFA-5 left off, this broad­cast begins with analy­sis of the appar­ent role of mind con­trol in this country’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions. Wrongly con­victed as the assas­sin of Robert Kennedy, Sirhan Sirhan appears to have been the vic­tim of mind con­trol. The broad­cast presents a num­ber of pos­si­ble “pro­gram­mers,” notably Dr. William J. Bryan, trained hyp­no­tist, self-described CIA employee and an indi­vid­ual who may have been involved with pro­gram­ming Arthur Bre­mer (the accused shooter of Gov­er­nor George Wal­lace.) A num­ber of clues point to Bryan as Sirhan’s programmer.

The pro­gram casts asper­sions on the role of Dr. Bernard Diamond’s diag­no­sis of Sirhan as a “para­noid schiz­o­phrenic.” The dis­cus­sion also high­lights the curi­ous “sui­cide” of Oswald han­dler George de Mohren­schildt, shortly before his sched­uled inter­view with staff mem­bers of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions. Many (includ­ing fam­ily mem­bers) believe de Mohren­schildt had been hypno-programmed to com­mit sui­cide. (One of the focal points of the CIA’s MK/Ultra mind-control research was devel­op­ing the capac­ity to pro­gram sub­jects to com­mit sui­cide after per­form­ing an assassination.)

The pro­gram also touches on James Earl Ray’s inter­est in and involve­ment with, hyp­no­sis (Ray was the appar­ent patsy in the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King.)

Other pro­gram high­lights include: the CIA’s hypno-programming of famed fash­ion model Candy Jones; the mind-control indoc­tri­na­tion of vir­u­lently racist and anti-semitic atti­tudes into the previously-liberal Candy; attempts to induce Candy to kill her­self when her hus­band (famed talk-show host “Long John” Nebel) began to de-program her; a talk by Joe Holsinger (for­mer leg­isla­tive assis­tant to the late Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Leo Ryan), in which Holsinger cites indi­ca­tions that People’s Tem­ple may have been an exten­sion of the intel­li­gence community’s mind con­trol pro­grams; the role of alleged CIA offi­cer George Phillip Blakey in estab­lish­ing the Jon­estown com­pound; the fact that most of the Jon­estown vic­tims had been mur­dered (they were not sui­cides, as gen­er­ally reported); the pres­ence of large amounts of psy­chi­atric drugs at the Jon­estown site; Tem­ple stal­wart Lawrence Lay­ton, Senior’s activ­i­ties on behalf of the National Secu­rity estab­lish­ment; the pres­ence at Jon­estown of CIA’s Guyanese Sta­tion Chief Richard Dwyer shortly before the mas­sacre began; struc­tural sim­i­lar­i­ties between the People’s Tem­ple and fea­tures of the MK/Ultra program.

AFA 7: Oper­a­tion Mind Con­trol, Pt. 3
Part 3a 47:19 | Part 3b 47:17 | Part 3c 44:56 | Part 3d 46:50 | Part 3e 38:14
(Recorded Jan­u­ary, 1985)

Resum­ing the dis­cus­sion from the end of AFA-6, the pro­gram explores the intel­li­gence establishment’s use of mind-control cults. After indi­ca­tions that the People’s Tem­ple may have been an intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, the pro­gram presents infor­ma­tion about the Rajneesh cult sug­ges­tive of sim­i­lar pos­si­bil­i­ties. Much of the analy­sis focuses on Rev­erend Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.

Mr. Emory hypoth­e­sizes that Moon’s orga­ni­za­tion is an exten­sion of the Japan­ese Patri­otic and Ultra-Nationalist Soci­eties, which paved the way for fascism’s rise in Japan through a pro­gram of polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, intim­i­da­tion, bribery and pro­pa­ganda. Super­fi­cially Korean, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion drew heav­ily on cap­i­tal and man­power from the fas­cist infra­struc­ture of Impe­r­ial Japan. In the United States, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is very well-connected to ele­ments of the Amer­i­can intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment and the right wing.

The pro­gram con­cludes with an exam­i­na­tion of the Ananda Marga orga­ni­za­tion, a fiercely anti-communist cult, pur­port­ing to derive from Indian spir­i­tual traditions.

Pro­gram high­lights include: the Nazi antecedents of the Philip fam­ily (involved with Jon­estown); an order to cease iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the dead at Jon­estown given by National Secu­rity Advi­sor Robert Pas­tor to the mil­i­tary com­man­der of the U.S. forces a the mas­sacre site; the piv­otal role of Japan­ese war crim­i­nals Yoshio Kodama and Royichi Sasakawa in the devel­op­ment of the Moon orga­ni­za­tion; Moon aide Bo Hi Pak’s back­ground in the Impe­r­ial Japan­ese Army; the anti-Christian, anti-American ide­ol­ogy of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church; con­nec­tions of the Moon group to Water­gate Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor Leon Jaworski and con­ser­v­a­tive orga­nizer Richard Viguerie; the sus­pi­cious death of Robert Boettcher, a key aide inves­ti­gat­ing the Moon orga­ni­za­tion in con­nec­tion with the Kore­a­gate scan­dal; dis­cus­sion of the Japan­ese Patri­otic soci­eties; the activ­i­ties of Axis spy Subas Chan­dra Bose (the founder of Ananda Marga was a room­mate of his); alle­ga­tions of ter­ror­ism lodged against the Ananda Marga group in India.

Discussion

One comment for “AFA 5–7: Operation Mind Control”

  1. Com­ment: The story below posits that James Holmes, the Aurora Col­orado “Dark Knight Shooter”, may have “hyp­no­tized him­self” ... Fur­ther details in the story sug­gest an obvi­ous handler.

    http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-strangest-thing-youll-read-all-day.html

    Sun­day, July 22, 2012

    The strangest thing you’ll read all day about the Bat­man killer (Updated)

    Arguably, the post you are about to read is irre­spon­si­ble. Nev­er­the­less, I’ve been think­ing about the pos­si­bil­ity that accused “Bat­man” killer James Holmes has warped his mind by dab­bling in hypnosis.

    I keep mulling over the ABC News report of a video [link: http://abcnews.go.com/US/james-holmes-video-colorado-shooting-suspect-abc-news/story?id=16830653#.UAyJy6ODpw8 fea­tur­ing James, then 18, as he dis­cusses his inter­est in science:

    In the video, he is stand­ing among his peers at a sci­ence camp held at Mira­mar Col­lege in San Diego talk­ing about “tem­po­ral illusions.”

    “Over the course of the sum­mer I’ve been work­ing with a tem­po­ral illu­sion. It’s an illu­sion that allows you to change the past,” Holmes said in the video.
    This is how he was explain­ing his mentor’s shared inter­est in fan­tasy ver­sus real­ity in the video: “He also stud­ies sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence, which is what takes places inside the mind as opposed to the exter­nal world. I’ve car­ried on his work in deal­ing with sub­jec­tive experience.”

    The ABC New report is badly writ­ten. It does not iden­tify this “mentor.”

    (Update: The men­tor has now been iden­ti­fied. See below.)

    Who­ever he is, his rec­om­men­da­tion must have had some pull — because this bizarre inter­est in chang­ing the past earned Holmes a major fed­eral grant to study neu­ro­science at a highly com­pet­i­tive insti­tu­tion. I’ve heard that fewer than ten stu­dents each year get such a grant.

    To the best of my knowl­edge, the only sci­en­tist who ever tried to do what Holmes pro­posed to do was a famous hyp­no­sis researcher named Mil­ton Erickson.

    * * *

    Many years ago, while wan­der­ing with­out aim through a col­lege library, I ran across a fas­ci­nat­ing book by Erick­son called The Feb­ru­ary Man. In short and in sum, that book dis­cusses a tech­nique of using hyp­no­sis to cre­ate the illu­sion of a past that never actu­ally occurred.

    Although copies of the book are now rare and expen­sive, a sum­mary may be found here [link: http://www.chuckholton.com/synopsis_feb_man.html. I’m afraid that the pre­cis does not do the book justice.

    Basi­cally, Erick­son was deal­ing with a young woman who needed to change her self-destructive behav­ior. As the say­ing goes, “the child is father to man.” Thus, the hyp­nother­a­pist rea­soned that chang­ing the subject’s past — through hyp­notic regres­sion — could change her present.

    [Quote from the book]:

    “In the third inter­view Erick­son spends five hours train­ing her in hyp­notic respon­sive­ness. He regresses her to var­i­ous ages and neu­tral mem­o­ries, includ­ing their first inter­view, into which he “inter­po­lates” a brief hyp­notic episode that did not occur in the actual interview...

    “When Erick­son has estab­lished var­i­ous regres­sions as a “gen­eral back­ground for new, inter­po­lated behav­ioral expe­ri­ences” he rouses her “som­nam­bu­lis­ti­cally in this regressed state.” Erick­son defines som­nam­bu­lis­tic trance as “a form of hyp­notic behav­ior always sig­nif­i­cant of a deep trance state. In this con­di­tion sub­jects behave and respond as if they were wide awake and may even deceive observers with their seem­ing wake­ful­ness.” In her wide-awake four-year-old state, he begins to talk to her and iden­ti­fies him­self as a friend of her daddy’s. After each episode of meet­ing Erick­son while regressed, she is instructed to sleep hyp­not­i­cally, then roused with the wrist cue for another meet­ing with him at a dif­fer­ent age. Finally, she receives “exten­sive posthyp­notic instruc­tions to ensure a com­pre­hen­sive amne­sia for all trance expe­ri­ences” and the ses­sion ends...

    “In sub­se­quent ses­sions, “usu­ally of sev­eral hours’ dura­tion,” Erick­son care­fully inter­po­lates him­self into her regressed mem­o­ries, offer­ing per­spec­tive and “friend­ship, sym­pa­thy, inter­est, and objec­tiv­ity, thereby giv­ing him the oppor­tu­nity to raise ques­tions con­cern­ing how she might later eval­u­ate a given expe­ri­ence.” “The con­sis­tent and con­tin­ual rejec­tion she expe­ri­enced from her mother pre­sented many oppor­tu­ni­ties to reor­ga­nize her emo­tions and under­stand­ing.” He offers ther­a­peu­tic reframes of trau­matic events (she will be able to remem­ber her child­hood grief over a bro­ken china doll when she her­self is a mother, and will be able to under­stand when her own daugh­ter is sad), per­spec­tive (a teenage humil­i­a­tion will one day be looked on as amus­ing), and weaves real happy mem­o­ries in with the Feb­ru­ary Man episodes to insure integration.”

    * * *

    Erick­son called him­self “the Feb­ru­ary Man” because he vis­ited the sub­ject dur­ing every Feb­ru­ary of her life.

    The basic idea here is that all we retain of our past is our mem­ory of it. By using hyp­no­sis to alter those mem­o­ries, we can recre­ate who we are today. By chang­ing the past, we can change our identity.

    Was Holmes propos­ing to carry on Erickson’s work? I don’t know — but at the moment, that’s the only sen­si­ble inter­pre­ta­tion I can offer for Holmes’ words in that video. Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, a stu­dent isn’t likely to get any major grants if he blath­ers on about “tem­po­ral illu­sions.” Even the SyFy chan­nel wouldn’t con­sider that kind of thing to be sci­en­tific. The money will come only if the stu­dent can cite respected pre­vi­ous work.

    Within the field of hyp­nother­apy, Erick­son was a giant; his name still car­ries great weight. Thus, I won­der if this mys­te­ri­ous “men­tor” had intro­duced the bright young­ster to the work of Mil­ton Erick­son, or per­haps to the work of a hyp­nother­a­pist who did sim­i­lar research. If so — and if Holmes decided to carry out his own stud­ies — he prob­a­bly would have used him­self as a subject.

    It is com­mon for a hyp­nother­a­pist to use imagery drawn from pop­u­lar culture.

    Update: A friend to this blog informs me that the men­tor has been iden­ti­fied. From her comment:

    “This is inter­est­ing: {link:http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-movie-shooting-james-holmes-20120722,0,2746583.story. The guy that’s listed as Holmes’ men­tor in that “tem­po­ral illu­sions” video, John Jacob­son, repu­di­ates the idea that Holmes was “bril­liant” and says that he all but fired him from the research intern­ship pro­gram. He also talks about assign­ing Holmes the task of writ­ing com­puter code for a rock-paper-scissors game–no men­tion of “tem­po­ral illu­sions” at all.

    “... How­ever, in 2002, Jacob­son was sec­ond author of a paper enti­tled “Per­ceived Lumi­nance Depends on Tem­po­ral Con­text” [PDF link: http://papers.cnl.salk.edu/PDFs/Perceived%20Luminance%20Depends%20on%20Temporal%20Context%202004–3355.pdf...”

    Although Jacob­son may have con­sid­ered Holmes a medi­oc­rity, you can’t bull­shit your way into Phi Beta Kappa. The kid must have had some­thing going for him.

    Posted by R. Wilson | July 23, 2012, 6:54 pm

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