*PSYCHOPOLITICS: The art and science of asserting and maintaining dominion over the thoughts and loyalties of individuals,
officers, bureaus and masses, and the effecting of the conquest of enemy nations through “mental healing.”
Psycho-Warfare’s Vile Legacy
From LSD to Manchurian Candidates, sinister intel programs of decades past introduced psychiatric warfare. Today,
hidden hands continue to wield these deadly tools.
When it comes to psychopolitical mind games, no matter the ideology served, their results amount to degradation and
butchery.
Yet, amid the furor over recent incidents of human rights abuse and terror, mind manipulators of all stripes have
escaped unchallenged. In this exclusive Freedom essay, Colin A. Ross, author of Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple
Personality by Psychiatrists, zeroes in on psychiatrists whose coercive methods have brought damage and death in
the name of thought control.
By Collin A. Ross, M.D.
Psychopolitics* in
its variant forms—from the Phoenix program of the Vietnam War, to Jovan Raskovic’s introduction of ethnic cleansing
in Croatia and Bosnia, to Ayman al-Zawahiri’s transformation of Osama bin Laden from mujahideen supporter to global
terror lord—all bear the stamp of psychiatric programs. The information in the public domain is only a hint of what
truly exists.
Modern terrorist recruitment and training bear the footprint of notorious mind-control programs in recent annals of history—each
with an eerie code name implying their depth in the scheme of intelligence operations: MK ULTRA, MK SEARCH, Artichoke and
Bluebird. These programs ran from 1950 through 1972. The names and content of intelligence and military mind-control programs
running from 1972 to the present are classified, but evidence of their continuing existence is incontrovertible.
Why do I make this claim and what is my foundation for making it?
I attended medical school in Edmonton from 1977 to 1981. I completed my psychiatry residency in Winnipeg from 1981 to
1985, then worked as a full-time academic psychiatrist in Winnipeg until 1991, when I moved to Dallas, Texas.
A doctor with whom I worked during my residency had, in 1956, referred a woman, Val Orlikow, to psychiatrist Ewen Cameron
in Montreal. Val Orlikow was one of the surviving plaintiffs who settled with the U.S. government for damages caused by Cameron’s
mind-control experiments. (See “Inside the Sleep Room.”)
Despite the fact that I was thus rather familiar with these experiments, from 1981 until 1991 I never heard a word about
them. Likewise, I never heard about intel and military mind-control contracting by physicians and medical schools. I had no
awareness of the subject when I arrived in Dallas in November 1991. It was as if, as far as mainstream psychiatry was concerned,
the subject did not exist.
I had heard vague comments on political abuse by psychiatrists in the Soviet Union. I was aware that the Soviet Union
had been kicked out of the World Psychiatric Association in 1983 because Russian psychiatrists were helping the KGB and the
Communist Party control political dissidents by admitting them to psychiatric hospitals. The expulsion of the Soviet Union
from the World Psychiatric Association was spearheaded by American psychiatrists.
“Everyone knew” that the Communists were bad and “everyone knew” that nothing like that happened
in North America. Here, we have freedom and democracy, and psychiatrists do not work for the state. Here, psychiatrists are
ethical professionals who put the best interests of their patients first, or so the propaganda went.
When I arrived in Dallas, I had no idea that the propaganda was a lie. I just bought it like everyone else did. No one
questioned it—why should I?
A Longtime Search
If someone had told me in 1991 that extensive, systematic political abuse by psychiatrists occurred at the leading medical
schools in North America throughout the second half of the 20th century, I would have considered that person a conspiracy
nut. If I were told that many of the grandfathers of late 20th and early 21st century psychiatry and psychology were, in fact,
intelligence agency doctors with Top Secret clearances, I would have dismissed the claim as science fiction.
When I arrived in Dallas in late 1991, I had never seen the movie “The Manchurian Candidate.” My education
on psychiatric/intelligence agency mind-control experimentation, including the post-World War II Manchurian Candidate programs,
began in early 1992. It continues today as I read about the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and observe the release of the remake
of “Candidate,” which stars Denzel Washington and is set in the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War and its aftermath.
It was in Texas that patients began to tell me stories about being victims of mind-control experiments as children. They
described experiments in hospitals or laboratories, often on military bases. The experiments involved hypnosis, drugs, systematic
physical and sexual abuse, and other techniques designed to create “alter personalities.”
I had no evidence that any of the stories were true. However, in response to claims by my patients, I decided to study
psychiatric mind-control experimentation, something that has little or nothing to do with treatment methods utilized in my
practice.
Why, then, did I spend eight years reading and researching intelligence agency and military mind-control experimentation?
Why did I write the book, Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists? (Bluebird was the name of
a CIA mind-control program signed into existence by the agency’s director in April 1950, three months before the start
of the Korean War.)
I believe the truth must be known.
And part of the truth is that there is no chance that psychiatry in its current form will ever become a real branch of
medicine.
Psychiatry is lost in a search for genetic and internal biological causes of mental illness. Biological psychiatry in
its current form is profitable, however, because it is highly subsidized by drug companies. Mental illness as brain disease
is part of a package that includes “chemical imbalances” and treatment with drugs.
The marriage of psychiatry and the drug companies began in the early 1950s and was financed through government mind-control
experimentation. There were numerous such programs in the U.S., including the aformentioned Bluebird, Artichoke, MK ULTRA
and MK SEARCH, as well as MK NAOMI, MK DELTA and Project Often.
North America’s First LSD Manufacturer and Distributor
LSD was discovered in 1943 by Albert Hoffman, a chemist at the Sandoz pharmaceutical company in Switzerland. In the early
1950s, according to documents I obtained from the CIA through the Freedom of Information Act, the agency was concerned that
the Russians were trying to buy the entire world’s supply of LSD. Both sides used the drug for mind-control and interrogation
purposes.
To ensure a domestic supply of LSD, the CIA in 1953 signed a $400,000 contract with an American drug company to manufacture
and supply the drug. This was done under Subproject 18 of the MK ULTRA program.
The first North American acidheads were psychiatrists, intelligence officers and military personnel themselves. Psychiatrists
then turned America on to LSD. They distributed it to subjects in experiments and then used it in “treatment.”
The psychiatrists also took the drug themselves and recommended it to their colleagues, beginning in the late 1940s.
Joel Elkes, for instance, who became the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, described taking LSD himself
in 1948.
LSD experimentation on soldiers by the U.S. Army continued at least until the late 1970s, according to U.S. Senate testimony
by Army medical personnel. Other drugs introduced into American culture by intelligence-linked psychiatrists include psilocybin
and PCP or “angel dust.”
Psychiatry also introduced LSD and mescaline to children—in massive doses. In the 1960s, Lauretta Bender, a child
psychiatrist, administered street-level hallucinogenic doses of LSD and mescaline to children 5 to 10 years old. Some children
received doses daily for weeks, months or even years at a time. This experimentation took place at Creedmore State Hospital
in New York.
How do I know about this? These experiments were published in mainstream psychiatry journals and presented at their widely
promoted conferences.
Some LSD conferences were funded directly by the military/intelligence community. Many of the LSD papers from the 1950s
and 1960s acknowledge sponsorship by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research and the Department
of the Army. When the federal government made LSD illegal in 1967, the psychiatric industry condemned the action at meetings
and in their published writings. They regarded LSD as a boon to therapy.
By the time I started my psychiatry training in 1981, however, the official position of psychiatry had changed. LSD was
a substance of abuse and the psychiatric manual (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) now included a diagnostic
category classifying its use as a psychiatric disorder.
In 30 years (1950 to 1980), LSD went from a recreational drug used by leading academic psychiatrists as a method of treatment
to a dangerous street drug. Yet, none of these positions were supported by any real science.
Manchurian Candidate Experiments
The Manchurian Candidate is fact, not fiction. G.H. Estabrooks, a psychologist at Colgate College in upstate New York,
described creating Manchurian Candidates while on contract to the U.S. military. Estabrooks’ revelations are available
in his 1943 book, Hypnotism, and in other writings published as late as 1971. I obtained copies of numerous documents from
the Estabrooks archives at Colgate College.
These documents include correspondence between Estabrooks and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from the 1930s through the
1970s. FBI personnel attended Estabrooks’ workshops on military uses of hypnosis, as did MK ULTRA contractor psychiatrist
Martin Orne, who received Top Secret government clearance. Estabrooks delivered seminars on Army bases and at Colgate College
on military uses of hypnosis.
From the CIA, I obtained Bluebird documents in which Estabrooks proposed the creation of Manchurian Candidates for the
agency. From Colgate College, I obtained Estabrooks’ World War II contract with the War Department and his correspondence
with intelligence agencies and personnel.
Estabrooks described the use of hypnosis to implant new identities in military subjects and to wipe out memories regarding
it. The “alter personalities” created could be exploited for courier, assassination or other missions.
One Marine brainwashed by Estabrooks, for example, had a code signal implanted. He was summoned to Washington, D.C.,
and given documents to take to Tokyo.
His handler in Washington then said, “The moon is clear.” This signal switched the Marine to his new identity.
The new identity received a classified message from his handler. The Marine was switched back to his regular self.
He then traveled to Tokyo and handed over the documents. His Tokyo handler said, “The moon is clear,” and
the artificially created identity emerged. The classified information installed by his Washington handler was given to the
Tokyo handler. A response was then inserted, and the Marine was switched back to his usual self, completely amnesic regarding
any of the classified information. As far as the Marine knew, he had only transported documents.
The Bluebird papers also describe efforts to develop interrogation techniques that could detect Manchurian Candidate
spies working for foreign intelligence agencies. They describe operations on U.S. soil to wipe out memories and to implant
false memories in captured agents.
All such activities required the participation of medical doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists. The techniques of
memory alteration included drugs, hypnosis, interrogation and sensory deprivation and isolation.
The MK ULTRA contractors included the leading medical schools in North America, such as McGill, Harvard, Johns Hopkins
and Yale, and many of the leading academic psychiatrists and psychologists. Carl Rogers, Ph.D., revered for his humanism and
client-centered therapy, was an MK ULTRA contractor under Subproject 97 in the mid-1950s. He had Top Secret clearance and
sat on the board of a front organization which funneled MK ULTRA money to other contractors.
Although I have no documentation about the current status of the Manchurian Candidate programs, there is ample evidence
that the attendant psychiatric methodologies of mind-control are still in use by all the major intelligence agencies and by
the very terrorist organizations which now threaten the United States.
False Claims
Apologists for mind-control experiments may claim that they were conducted during the Cold War, an era with different
ethical and scientific standards. This is not true. The mind-control experiments violated the Hippocratic Oath, the Nuremberg
Code, the Helsinki declarations, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among other codes and statements. The rules
and procedures of scientific experimentation on human subjects were well established by 1950.
Likewise, basic ethical requirements for research on humans were well established. The mind-control experiments violated
all of them. The purpose of the experiments had nothing to do with medicine or treatment. The purpose was to improve methods
of brainwashing, interrogation and control of behavior and memory by military and intelligence communities. There was no possibility
of medical benefit to the subjects or future patients.
There was no informed consent, no real independent review and no follow-up to assess damage. No attempt was made to provide
treatment to repair damage. All of these ethical violations also occurred in biological and chemical weapons experiments and
in radiation experiments conducted by doctors. Many of the radiation, chemical and biological weapons, and mind-control experiments
were conducted on unwitting civilians, a form of medical malpractice for which there is no defense.
Under MK ULTRA, for example, psychiatrist James Hamilton, who later worked as a CIA contractor as part of MK SEARCH,
participated in infamous LSD/prostitute experiments. The laboratories were set up by CIA officer George White, who in 1955
constructed safe houses in New York and San Francisco that were decorated like brothels. White and other agency officers watched
through one-way mirrors while prostitutes hired by the CIA had sex with men they picked up at bars. The prostitutes gave the
johns LSD without their knowledge. The purpose of the experiments was to determine the effects of LSD on unwitting subjects
in a “natural” setting.
Mind-control experimentation is political abuse by psychiatry. Under the guise and pose of medicine, human beings have
been subjected to unethical experiments for the benefit of the state. This abuse by psychiatry has occurred at virtually all
major medical schools in North America. It has been pervasive and extensive. Many of the leading figures in psychiatry have
either participated directly or looked the other way while friends and colleagues received grants and promotions.
Hypocrisy among Psychiatrists
If the profession of psychiatry and individual psychiatrists were honest and apologetic about mind-control experimentation,
that would be one thing. Instead, the record is one of denial and disinformation. This compounds and perpetuates the original
evil.
In the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (Volume 30, Number 1, pages 95–147, 2002), for
example, a number of psychiatrists wrote condemnations and critiques of the political abuse by psychiatry in China and Russia.
As always, none mentioned their own disgraceful performance.
Psychiatry deserves condemnation for its seminal role in the proliferation of mind- control. The National Security Oath
should not displace or override the Hippocratic Oath, no matter how urgent the security problem.
It is obvious that Japanese kamikaze pilots in World War II, the 9/11 hijackers and today’s suicide bombers have
been subjects of sophisticated mind-controllers. It is also obvious that when we, as doctors, forget the Hippocratic Oath,
we become as evil as any enemy we condemn.
Psychiatric warfare programs have routinely violated human rights. These programs could not function without psychiatrists
and psychologists, who are in violation of the Hippocratic Oath, the Nuremberg Code, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and all other ethical guidelines of the last two millennia.
