THE MIND MANIPULATORS
A factual account by Alan W. Scheflin, Edward M. Opton, Jr., and co-
author Rodney Plotnick, from 1978. Mr. Scheflin is a professor of Law
at the University of California, and Dr. Plotnick is professor at the
University of California Medical School.
The ultimate bastion of freedom is biological: each of our stubbornly
separate brains reside in their individual case of bony armor. Law,
religion, morality and conscience are all more or less ephemeral, but
Nature's marvelous fortress, the skull, has always stood as an
impenetrable barrier to those who would impose their wills totally
upon others. As long as a man's thoughts remain his private
possession, domination ends at the scalp.
History, to be sure, is largely the record of men's efforts - often
considerably successful - to impose their wills on one another. But
these attempts to expunge individuality and impose totalitarianism
have always carried within them the seeds of self-destruction.
Repression produces rebellion: tyranny generates revolution: when
autocracy strains to hold down the lid on individuality, it
necessarily exhausts its energies and halts the process of social
evolution which alone could ensure its long term survival.
But what if man could manipulate man directly? What if he could
eliminate the expense of prisons and police find substitutes for
censorship and propaganda. and put away the paralyzing instruments of
fear which have served as his main technologies for exercising
dominion over his fellows? What if men could enter one another's
brains to impose their will directly?
Mind-manipulation research has been conducted for decades by hundreds
of scientists in dozens of countries on thousands of people hundreds
of thousands of times. Behavior modification, a major school of
psychological thought, dominates many university psychology
departments; psychosurgery has been endorsed by a national commission
established to investigate its dangers; micro-miniature electronic
circuits are making control of the mind through direct brain
stimulation a real possibility.
Is an increase in mind-manipulation technology inevitable? There can
be little doubt that it has seemed so during the past two decades.
Perry London, in his seminal book Behavior Control, surveys these
developments with a heavy heart:..."The development of a refined
technology of behavior control in modern society is as inevitable as
the maintenance of all other technologies is certain" ..And the
nature of the refinements will make real what has hitherto been
mostly a fantasy of the ignorant control of the mind. As 1984 draws
near, it appears that George Orwell's...concepts of the technology by
which tyranny could impress its will on men's minds were much too
modest. By that time, the means at hand will be more sophisticated
and efficient than Orwell ever dreamed, and they will be in at least
modest use, as they have already begun to be, not by the will of
tyrants, but by the invitation of all of us, for we have been
schooled to readiness of their potential risk. The capacity for
control will continuously grow, evolving from benevolence."
The introduction of professional medical specialists into brain-
washing research produced a wide array of colourful terms to describe
the process: "menticide," "thought reform," "coercive
persuasion," "brain warfare," and the most pungent of all, "mental
douche." It was Edward Hunter, however, who best stated the political
significance:... "The war against men's minds has for its primary
objective the creation of what is euphemistically called this "new
Soviet man." The intent is to change a mind radically so that its
owner becomes a living puppet - a human robot - without the autrocity
being visible from the outside.
The aim is to create a mechanism in flesh and blood, with new beliefs
and new thought processes inserted into a captive body. What that
amounts to is the search for a slave race that, unlike the slaves of
olden times, can be trusted never to revolt, always to be amenable to
orders, like an insect to its instincts. The intent is to atomize
Humanity."
THE BEGINNING: BLUEBIRD
CIA interest in mind manipulation began with the Agency's formation
in 1947. A decade earlier the Moscow Show Trials had scared the
Western world into thinking that Soviet psychologists had developed a
subtle new interrogation technique capable of extracting complete and
detailed confessions from even the most innocent and recalcitrant
defendants. This new technique, which did not appear to depend upon
the more brutal, scar-producing forms of torture, had a further
advantage. It seemed to produce a reorientation of the victim's mind,
making him sound as if he really beleived - perhaps actually making
him believe - that he was guilty of the most heinous treason against
his native land.
The architects of BLUEBIRD were a corps of brash young men most of
whom had served in Colonel "Wild Bill" Donovan's flamboyant OSS
during the Second World War. These men - Richard Helms, James
Angleton, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, U. H. Marshall Chadwell. Colonel James
Drum and Frank Wisner-had learned from Donovan that one should demand
the impossible in order to attain the improbable. Donovan's operation
threw a network of spies all across the world, and their intervention
into the internal affairs of foreign nations helped manipulate an
Allied victory. The global reach of OSS covert activity had a solid
support base at home. Donovan had managed to attract to his fledgling
organization the cream of academia.
Their scholarship soon proved the value of including intellectuals in
the intelligence efforts. When BLUEBIRD's planners began drafting the
CIA's mind-manipulation program, they drew heavily on the lessons
they had learned from "Wild Bill". Why merely develop sophisticatcd
interrogation techniques, they reasoned, when there might be the
possibility of obtaining total control over a person?
ACCORDING TO BLUEBIRD:
(a) Can accurate information be obtained from willing or unwilling
individuals?
(b) Can agency personnel (or persons of interest to this agency) be
conditioned to prevent any unauthorized source of enemy from
obtaining information from them by any known means?
(c) Can we obtain control of the future activities (physical and
mental) of any individual, willing or unwilling. by application of SI
and H techniques. [We believe these abbreviations stand for
Subconscious Isolation and Hypnosis. but the documents give no
further indication of their meaning]
(d) Can we prevent any unauthorized source or enemy from gaining
control of the future activities (physical and mental) of agency
personnel (or persons of interest to this agency) by any known means?
On August 20, 1951, BLUERIRD officially became project ARTICHOKE and
a new phase of governmental assault on the mind had begun.
On January 25, 1952, the Chief of the Medical Staff of the CIA
received a memorandum on the scope of ARTICHOKE. In that document
the "mission of the project" was stated to be:
(1) The evaluation and development of any method by which we can get
information from a person against his will and without his knowledge.
(2) How can we counter the above measures if they are used against us?
(3) Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do
our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws
of nature such as selfpreservation?
The various mind-manipulation programs conducted by the CIA were the
subject of a review by the Inspector General in 1957. "Influencing
human behavior," the report began. "is a most complex subject because
very little of a positive nature is known about the extent to which
human behavior can be predicted, directed and controlled."
At this time, 1955. Georgetown University was planning to construct a
new hospital. The CIA channeled money through the Fund and acquired
onesixth of the hospital space for research involving covert
biological and chemical techniques of warfare.
ELECTRODES IN THE BRAIN: Doctor Robert Heath of Tulane University
told the New York Times that a CIA doctor had approached him in
November 1962 to talk about his working for the CIA. Heath had done
pioneering work with a technique of implanting electrodes deep within
the brain. According to Heath, the CIA physician, Dr. E. Manifield
Gunn, said that the CIA would provide funds for the study of
the "pain center" in the brain. Heath told the Times that he found
that idea "abhorrent." Heath said. "I took the stance that if I were
going to be a spy, I'd be a spy. I wanted to be a doctor and practice
medicine." When the Times contacted Dr. Gunn, they heard a slightly
different story. Gunn stated that he did not offer Heath any money
and that he was not interested in changing the direction of Heath's
research.
No avenue of experimentation was ignored and no population was ruled
out as being unfit to act as experimental guinea pigs, men, women,
children, prisoners, mental patients, criminal sexual-psychopaths,
schizophrenics, the elderly, and even terminally ill cancer patients
were all used to perfect for the CIA, the techniques of total control
of the mind.
MKSEARCH. This program was intended to "develop, test and evaluate
capabilities in the covert use of biological, chemical and
radioactive material systems and techniques for producing predictable
human behavioral and/or physiological changes, in support of highly
sensitive operational requirements." Does it seem likely that
unwitting testing ended? It does not seem likely to us that only one
project using behavioral drugs was conducted under MKSEARCH. When
closing down MKSEARCH in 1972, Sidney Gottlieb wrote that four
projects were still in progress.
The public record of mind manipulation in the 1950s made people
properly apprehensive that the sanctity of the mind might not survive
the decade. But the secret record of mind manipulation was even more
frightening. It is difficult now to imagine what impact the recent
CIA revelations would have had in the 1950s. The CIA chose to stay
clandestine. It withheld details of its mind-control programs from
most of its own personnel and from virtually all outsiders, including
the Congress.
The term brainwashing was first used by journalist Edward Hunter. In
1951 Hunter published Brain-washing in Red China: The Calculated
Destruction of Men's Minds, an account of the Chinese thought-reform
program. Hunter was stationed in Hong Kong in the late 1940s. While
there, he made contact with men and women who successfully fled the
Chinese mainland. They described a process of re-education and
indoctrination which Chinese citizens were forced to undergo after
the Communist takeover. The news appalled Hunter, and he researched
their stories. His book is a description of the fruits of this
investigation. Several years later (1956) Hunter published
Brainwashing, an immensely popular book about American POWs who
resisted Korean, brainwashing pressure, Through Hunter's literary
efforts, brainwashing became a household word.
Edward Hunter was a CIA employee when he wrote his book: He joined
the CIA at its inception. having formerly been a "propaganda
specialist" with the OSS. In adaption to his journalistic
accomplishments, Hunter has also served as a "psychological warfare
specialist in the Pentagon" and a consultant for various
Congressional committees. The facts surrounding Hunter's work
strongly suggest that his popularization of the brainwashing concept
was a part of his job.
Hunter may have substantially contributed to OPC's survival and
expansion, but his ultimate impact is much more significant. Hunter
brilliantly captured the essence of the Cold War Struggle in his
[parse? illegible], and policitians scrambled to make effective use
of it. We earlier quoted Allen Dulle's "Brain Warfare" speech as
evidence of the social impact of the concept of "brainwashing" on the
American public. The United States was once again at war, but in a
struggle unlike any ever seen before. The exigencies of Cold war
Diplomacy, Truman Doctrine foreign policy, and the proliferation of
domestic loyalty oath programs made brainwashing a natural ideal for
exploitation in Congress. On testimony in 1958, Hunter said it best:
Mr. Arens: Who are the antagonists in this total war?
Mr. Hunter: They are the Communists on the one side and all the other
peoples
of the world on the other.
Mr. Arens: When you say there is a total war, what do you mean? It is
obvious that there is very little shooting going on in the world
today. What are the devices of this total war?
Mr. Hunter: War has changed its form. The communists have discovered
that a man killed by a bullet is useless. He can dig no coal. They
have discovered that a demolished city is useless. Its mills produce
no cloth. The objective of communist warfare is to capture intact the
minds of the people and their possessions. so they can be put to use.
This is the modern conception of slavery, that puts all others in the
kindergarten age.
Mr. Arens: Is the United States part of this battlefield?
Mr. Hunter: The United States is the main battlefield in this Red
War. I mean specifically the people and the soil and the resource of
the United States.
According to Hunter, "brainwashing" was the linchpin of Communist
ideology. As he told the House of Un-American Activities Committee,
brainwashing was more than a technique. it "was a strategy for the
conquest of the world by Communism...the framework for the entire
activity of the Communist hierarchy." With the publication of his
book, Hunter told the Committee. "for the first time, our side now
has the pattern through which the international Communist movement
[has] made its advance throughout the world."
Hunter's fears were echoed throughout the executive branch of
government in the Cold War era. As Gary Wills has noted. 'It was not
enough to be American in citizenship and residence - one must be
American in one's thoughts." But how does the government know which
Americans are still pure in thought and which may have become "Un-
American" in their minds though not in their deeds? "How are we to
know what others think about the doctrines of Americanism unless we
investigate their thoughts, make them profess their loyalty, train
children up in the government orthodoxy?.. In the war of minds,
anyone not fully committed to the propositions of freedom is an
enemy." Here, then, is the political advantage to be gained from the
myth of brainwashing. It encourages investigation into the private
lives of individual citizens, even those men and women whose conduct
has crossed no legal or ethical boundary. Here too is to be found the
significance of the mind-control programs conducted by the CIA. If
America was fighting an ideological adversary, every person's mind
was a possible enemy. If those minds could be investigated, and
perhaps controlled, freedom could be assured.
President Harry Truman has written in his Memoirs that the CIA was
established to provide the President with a centralized intelligence
organization which could deliver coordinated information as needed.
Truman received dozens of intelligence estimates from the various
military intelligence agencies. He found it cumbersome to go through
multiple reports when they were duplicative, and
disturbing when they were contradictory. A central organization to
collect, and analyze intelligence information would provide an
efficient means of keeping the President informed. That was what
Truman wanted, but not exactly what he received.
Many years later he was asked whether it had been wise to establish
the CIA. His reply is worth quoting at length:
"Think it was a mistake. And if I'd known what was going to happen, I
never would have done it. I needed...the President needed at that
time a central organization that would bring all the various
intelligence reports we were getting in those days, and there must
have been a dozen of them, maybe more, bring them all into one
organization so that the President would get one report on what was
going on in various parts of the world...Now that made sense, and
that's why I went ahead and set up what they called the Central
Inteligence Agency...But it got out of hand. The fella...the one that
was in the White House after me, never paid any attention to it, and
it got out of hand. Why, they've got an organization over there in
Virginia now that is practically the equal of the Pentagon in many
ways and I think I've told you, one Pentagon is one too many."
"Now, as nearly as I can make out, those fellows in the CIA don't
just report on wars and the like, they go out and make their own, and
there's nobody to keep track of what they're up to. They spend
billions of dollars on stirring up trouble so they'll have something
to report on. They've become...it's become a government all of its
own and all secret. They don't have to account to anybody...That's a
very dangerous thing in a democratic society, and it's got to be put
a stop to. The people have got a right to know what those birds are
up to. And if I was back in the White House, people would know. You
see, the way a free government works, there's got be a housecleaning
every now and again, and I don't care what branch of the government
is involved. Somebody has to keep an eye on things...And when you
can't do any housecleaning because everything that goes on is a damn
secret, why, then we're on our way to something the Founding Fathers
didn't have in mind. Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't
mix."
It was during the Eisenhower years that the CIA first began toppling
governments and manipulating the affairs of nations on a worldwide
rather than limited scale. It was during the Kennedy administration
that the CIA added political assassination to its list of covert
activities.
On November 16, 1961, President John Kennedy delivered a speech at
the University of Washington. He told his audience. "We cannot, as a
free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics oj terror,
assassination, false promises, counterfeit mobs, and crises." Kennedy
neglected to mention that six weeks earlier he had approved Operation
MONGOOSE, a CIA project to assassinate Fidel Castro. It was not the
first time that American intelligence agencies had attempted
political assassination. But it was the first time during peace.
When Lyndon Johnson assumed the Presidency, he led the CIA into an
entircly new field of operations. According to the legislation
creating the CIA and defining its authority, the CIA is forbidden to
engage in any domestic intelligence ativities unless they are
directly connected to the acquisition of foreign intelligence
information. Johnson feared a rising tide of disent over his Vietnam
policies. He authorized the CIA to engage in domestic surveillance,
contrary to its powers. According to William R. Corson,
Johnson's "hopes for peace and the Great Society had been dashed on
the rocks of Vietnam, leaving him an almost total captive of the
military hierachy and the intelligence community, whose complicity in
the illegal activities to curb dissent over the war insured his
silence and effectively proscribed his ability to accept the peace
proposals which had been worked out in Paris by Averell Harriman and
Cyrus Vance."
By the time Richard Nixon became President, the CIA had reached full
maturity. It had become virtually a separate branch of government,
conducting its own policies in foreign relations. By the late 1960s,
the CIA had become so independent that President Nixon felt
threatened by its power. His dilemma was how to make the intelligence
agencies answerable to his needs without depleting its vast resources
for world manipulation. Nixon turned to Henry Kissinger for advice.
Kissinger, according to William Corson, "believed it was necessary to
reorganize the intelligence community ostensibly to make it more
consistent with the changed world he and Nixon were orchestrating, in
reality to make the Nixon/Kissinger foreign policy a self-fulfilling
prophecy and one written by the intelligence community."
As the CIA broadened the horizons of its covert interventions, it was
natural that the human mind would be included in the list of arenas
ripe for manipulation. With each forward step, and there were none
that went backward, the CIA's clandestine operations kept growing, as
did the smaller mind-control program. Each started in modest
proportion, and they both continued to expand because there was no
reason not to.
One reason why expansion of CIA illegal activities went unchecked is
because in early 1954, the Justice Department entered into a secret
arrangement with the CIA. The Justice Department agreed to refrain
from prosecuting criminal acts conducted by CIA personnel if there
was, in the Agency's opinion, a possibility that secret or sensitive
information might be revealed in the course of a trial. This
arrangement was negotiated by Lawrence Houston, General Counsel of
the United States. It was in effect until January, 1975, thereby
giving the CIA a twenty-one year carte blanche to violate the law.
Another reason why the CIA was able to expand its covert potential,
including its mind -control program, is the lack of accountability of
the Agency before Congress. In 1956. Senator Leverett Saltonstall
expressed what has become the Congressional attitude toward the CIA.
The Lie is the means by which the CIA gets the goods on the
President. When the President first learns about CIA illegal
operations, or first orders that they be done, he has become a co-
conspirator and is equally culpable in their misdeeds. They know it
and he knows it. Because the President's hands are no longer clean,
the CIA has a special power over him, the power to disclose his
complicity. From that point on, the President is at their mercy.
The CIA's twenty-five-year crusade to unlock the secrets of the mind
could not have been undertaken without the parallel development of
covert operational authority. There would have been no justification
for it and no need to do it. But invasion of the mind was a natural
by-product of the clandestine mentality which received continual
support and attention with each successive administration in the
White House.
CIA covert operations were undertaken across the world. There was no
reason why the mind should remain sacrosanct. For the CIA warriors,
it was just another battlefield. Intervention into the mind followed
the pattern of intervention into the internal affairs of other
nations, Both were deemed necessary to protect U.S. national security
interests. With the brain as another covert battlefield, appropriate
weapons of war had to be fashioned. For twenty-five years, perhaps
even longer, CIA scientists labored to equip Agency soldiers with the
armaments they needed. As long as the issue of presidential
accountability goes unsettled, and with it the vital inquiry into the
legitimacy of covert warfare, the sanctity of the mind remains
threatened. As political analyst Richard J. Barnet has cogently
observed, "it has yet to be demonstrated what security interest the
United States has in manipulating the politics of other countries
other than the perfect security of world domination, the dream that
destroys great nations."
They were eager to see what they could learn about ESB (Electrical
Stimulation of Brain) and to explore what they could do with it. Most
were motivated by scientific curiosity, but some, at least, must have
been attracted by visions of practical applications. such as those
suggested by Arthur C. Clarke: "Perhaps the most sensational result
of this experimentation, which may be fraught with more social
consequences than the early work of nuclear physicists, is the
discovery of the socalled pleasure or rewarding centres in the
brain... The possibilities here, for good and evil, are so obvious
that there is no point in exaggerating or discounting them.
Electronic possession of human robots controlled from a central
broadcasting station is something that even George Orwell never
thought of, but it may be technically possible long before 1984."
The most controversial of Dr. Heath's experiments was his attempt to
straighten out a homosexual. In addition to objections from
homosexuals (and others) to the basic idea, there is disagreement as
to what happened. Heath and a collaborator, Charles E. Moan, reported
that the patient, 24 years old, had been exclusively homosexual since
he was twelve, and was an abuser of alcohol and drugs as well.
Electrodes implanted in his septal area made him relaxed, self-
confident, and euphoric. The stimulation also aroused him sexually,
and while in the excited state he responded positively by masturbating to
"stag" movies that his doctors provided.
A year later it was reported that "he has solved many of his personal
problems and is leading an actively and exclusively heterosexual
life."
Dr. Jose Delgado and many others have observed that ESB could
threaten human integrity. The individual cannot defend himself
against ESB. Delgado pointed out, because if electric stimulation is
sufficiently intense it always prevails over the will. "The
possibility of scientific annihilation of personal identity, or even
worse, its purposeful control, has sometimes been considered a threat
more awful than an atomic holocaust." For that reason, ESB research
has been subject to resistance on a number of grounds, theological,
moral, ethical, philosophical and political. Delgado regards all
these bases of opposition as "debatable," especially when deviant
behavior conflicts with society. "Habitual criminal conduct"
epitomizes the situation in which he feels that medical intervention
on the brain is justified.
Delgado's arguments for intervention will not persuade everyone, but
they would persuade many.
All modern tracking systems are miniature radio transmitters mounted
on individuals to report the person's whereabouts and sometimes his
or her activities.
In the simplest form, the transmitters are worn outside the body,
like the wristwatchradios that Ralph Schwitzgebel persuaded juvenile
delinquents in Cambridge, Massachusetts to wear. Schwitzgebel's
devices transmitted pulse rates and the boy's locations to a modified
missile-tracking device.
In more advanced versions, the sensor could be placed in the body of
the brain to report information on sexual, digestive, cardiac,
respiratory, or other functions. For general-purpose systems, radio
pickups could be mounted on utility poles, from which information
would be sent to a centrally located computer. Less expensive,
special-purpose systems could monitor "clients" only within a
locality, sending the information to a local checkpoint. Schools, for
example, could monitor the presence of children in the halls; prisons
could check the location of inmates in or out of their cells;
bartenders might be alerted to the entrance of persons known as
alcoholics; banks could be warned of the approach of parolled bank
robbers.
It invades the privacy not only of behavior but of thoughts; if it is
less offensive than tracking, it is only because the polygraphs are
episodic rather than continous. The catalog of a psychiatric
equipment manufacturer includes a device for voice monitoring of
patients in nearby rooms. The therapist can talk to the person under
surveillance by means of a "Bug-In-Ear." Alternatively, he can
deliver messages that the patient is sure to remember by means of the
Whistle Stop Wireless Stimulator, a device that delivers an 800-volt
shock. Either or both of these devices can be used in conjunction
with the Barlow Male
Arousal Sensor or the Geer Female Arousal Sensor, transducers that
fit around the penis and inside the vagina to inform the therapist of
the patient's reaction to "erotic films, sexual fantacies and
masturbatory activity." Although these devices are intended for use
with individuals, they could readily be adapted to groups. The slight
controversy that has attended the past ten years of their use
suggests that group applications are not at all out of the question.
In a National Institute of Mental Health publication, it has been
suggested that "linkage of..transducers...would not be difficult and
could, when included within an electronic locator system, provide the
capability of precisely monitoring sex offenders within the
community."
Already, the same review reports, "in the treatment of alcoholics, a
distant observer has used a walkie-talkie type transmitter to deliver
electric shocks to patients at appropriate moments in the treatment
procedure. Tone signals have also been transmitted to persons over a
location monitoring system... to reduce crime-related behaviors using
this system, a person with a problem of aggression following drinking
was conditioned to experience nausea when he was served alcohol
following the presentation of a particular tone signal. Later, this
tone signal was transmitted to him in bar rooms to reduce his
drinking behavior."
Schools are not the only social institutions that would like to keep
track of people. Supervision is a major cost of private business, and
much of it consists of noting where employees are, not what they are
doing - for example, working or snoozing. Automation of this
supervision could be immensely profitable. Recently, businessmen have
observed employees by means as intrusive as polygraphs, psychological
tests, monitoring of their telephones at work and at home, and secret
observation. It would not be surprising to see widespread use of a
method that is potentially more intrusive and at the same time less
expensive.
Tracking could also be combined with ESB by broadcasting to and from,
the brain. Placement of a device inside the skull or in another part
of the body is technically more difficult than strapping it to the
wrist, but once placed, the device is more secure and can transmit
more detailed information. But at least one type of
important "internal" mental-physiological process could be monitored
from the outside: Devices have been developed for measuring penile
erection...The linkage of these transducers to a portable
transmitter...would not be difficult and could. when included within
an electronic locator system, provide the capability of precisely
monitoring sex offenders within the community.
If these ideas seem to imply a cheerless future in which large
numbers of us wilI be under the surveillance of electronic Big
Brothers, the problem, some people say, lies in our attitude toward
Big Brother. According to sociologist Gerald W. Smith, people will
just have to overcome their 1984 fear that big brother is watching.
The Los Angeles Times has suggested, tongue in cheek, that the fear
of Big Brother can be overcome by implanting a tracking device in
every infant at birth. "By the time the potential little crook grew
up, he would regard his built-in transistor with affection -
something akin to his security blanket."
The Los Angeles Times was kidding, but Professor Smith was not. He
and a colleague. Barton L. Ingraham, Professor of Criminology and Law
at the University of Maryland, have published a detailed exposition
of their ideas in a scholarly article entitled "The Use of
Electronics in the Observation and Control of Human Behavior and Its
Possible Use in Rehabilitation and Parole." Twenty-four-hour-a-day
electronic surveillance, and therefore control, is now a possibility,
they assure us.
Smith and Ingraham are particularly excited by the possibility of
crime control through a combination of ESB, external monitors,
tracking and computer technology. The computer would retaliate
against the possible criminal on the basis of probabilities,
eliminating the delay and difficulty of proving guilt to a jury
beyond a reasonable doubt...Ingraham and Smith echo Schwitzgebel's
rationale, but they add some sophisticated or sophistic-arguments of
their own. They distinguish between "objective" freedom, the freedom
actually to do as one wishes, and "subjective" freedom, the feeling
that one is free. Objective freedom, they conclude, is incompatible
with modern society, but subjective freedom can be enhanced
electronically:
"Subjective freedom is totally dependent on awareness, [it] is easily
realizable within the context of an ordered society, whereas radical
objective freedom is not. Since society cannot allow men too much
objective freedom, the least it can do (and the wise thing to do) is
to so order its affairs that men are not aware or concerned about any
lack of it. The technique of telemetric control of human beings
offers the possibility of regulating behavior with precision on a
subconscious level, and avoiding the cruelty of depriving man of his
subjective sense of freedom."
Furthermore. they assert. electronic control of deviance will give
such an advantage to the nations that adopt it that any nation
rejecting the technique may not survive. We might as well be among
the survivors, even if that means radical changes in our central
values: "Whether we like it or not, changes in technology require
changes in political and social life and in values most adaptable to
those changes". Finally, Ingraham and Smith argue, man would be
better off without certain of his traits, such as aggression. It is
a "resonable proposal," they say, for man to hasten evolution by
modifying himself "into something better than what he has been for
the last 100.000 years." They thus join Delgado in arguing
a government-science alliance to reshape the nature of man.
There have been many allegations that Manchurian Candidates exist.
Within the last two decades the idea has been seriously presented as
the explanation for political assassinations in the United States and
elsewhere. Hypno-programmed agents, unconscious automatons blindly
acting out other's instructions, have been popular subjects of
speculation...Dr. Eduard Simson-Kallas is a psychologist who
interviewed convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan twenty times after
Sirhan was sentenced to San Quentin's death row in 1969. He told the
San Francisco Examiner that Sirhan was hypnotically programmed.
Sirhan could not be trusted to kill Robert Kennedy because he had
always been a loser. "He failed at Pasadena City College. He played
the horses and lost. He wanted to become a jockey and he fell off a
horse." But, according to Simson-Kallas, he was the perfect choice as
a programmed scapegoat. "I see him as an excellent follower willing
to risk his life for an idea, not afraid of death. Basically, he is a
very moral person."
Simson-Kallas became suspicious when he noticed that Sirhan could not
explain his crime in vivid language. He seemed to be "reciting from a
book," said Simson-Kallas. "The curious thing was that he didn't have
any details. A psychologist always looks for details. If a person is
involved in a real situation, there are details." As Sirhan began to
trust Simson-Kallas, he asked to be hypnotized. "I don't really know
what happened," Sirhan said. "I know I was there. They tell me I
killed Kennedy," Sirhan continued. "I don't remember what exactly I
did but I know I wasn't myself. I remember there was a girl who
wanted coffee...So I gave her my cup and poured one for myself.
That's the last I can remember until I was choked and manhandled by
the crowd."
Freedom and dignity are special qualities; without them people are no
longer human. If people imagine themselves as no more than objects in
a mechanistic universe, they will be nothing more. And so each of us
must examine his or her own life and reject those who urge us not to.
We must be wary of those who promise us security and ask in return
for our freedom. We must recognize that part of the price for freedom
may well be insecurity, but that the price for complete security is
inhumanity.
Man can control his future by regaining control over the present. Now
is the time for public dialogue on mind manipulation and behavior
control - while all of us, as free people, still have the chance to
speak our own minds.
A factual account by Alan W. Scheflin, Edward M. Opton, Jr., and co-
author Rodney Plotnick, from 1978. Mr. Scheflin is a professor of Law
at the University of California, and Dr. Plotnick is professor at the
University of California Medical School.
The ultimate bastion of freedom is biological: each of our stubbornly
separate brains reside in their individual case of bony armor. Law,
religion, morality and conscience are all more or less ephemeral, but
Nature's marvelous fortress, the skull, has always stood as an
impenetrable barrier to those who would impose their wills totally
upon others. As long as a man's thoughts remain his private
possession, domination ends at the scalp.
History, to be sure, is largely the record of men's efforts - often
considerably successful - to impose their wills on one another. But
these attempts to expunge individuality and impose totalitarianism
have always carried within them the seeds of self-destruction.
Repression produces rebellion: tyranny generates revolution: when
autocracy strains to hold down the lid on individuality, it
necessarily exhausts its energies and halts the process of social
evolution which alone could ensure its long term survival.
But what if man could manipulate man directly? What if he could
eliminate the expense of prisons and police find substitutes for
censorship and propaganda. and put away the paralyzing instruments of
fear which have served as his main technologies for exercising
dominion over his fellows? What if men could enter one another's
brains to impose their will directly?
Mind-manipulation research has been conducted for decades by hundreds
of scientists in dozens of countries on thousands of people hundreds
of thousands of times. Behavior modification, a major school of
psychological thought, dominates many university psychology
departments; psychosurgery has been endorsed by a national commission
established to investigate its dangers; micro-miniature electronic
circuits are making control of the mind through direct brain
stimulation a real possibility.
Is an increase in mind-manipulation technology inevitable? There can
be little doubt that it has seemed so during the past two decades.
Perry London, in his seminal book Behavior Control, surveys these
developments with a heavy heart:..."The development of a refined
technology of behavior control in modern society is as inevitable as
the maintenance of all other technologies is certain" ..And the
nature of the refinements will make real what has hitherto been
mostly a fantasy of the ignorant control of the mind. As 1984 draws
near, it appears that George Orwell's...concepts of the technology by
which tyranny could impress its will on men's minds were much too
modest. By that time, the means at hand will be more sophisticated
and efficient than Orwell ever dreamed, and they will be in at least
modest use, as they have already begun to be, not by the will of
tyrants, but by the invitation of all of us, for we have been
schooled to readiness of their potential risk. The capacity for
control will continuously grow, evolving from benevolence."
The introduction of professional medical specialists into brain-
washing research produced a wide array of colourful terms to describe
the process: "menticide," "thought reform," "coercive
persuasion," "brain warfare," and the most pungent of all, "mental
douche." It was Edward Hunter, however, who best stated the political
significance:... "The war against men's minds has for its primary
objective the creation of what is euphemistically called this "new
Soviet man." The intent is to change a mind radically so that its
owner becomes a living puppet - a human robot - without the autrocity
being visible from the outside.
The aim is to create a mechanism in flesh and blood, with new beliefs
and new thought processes inserted into a captive body. What that
amounts to is the search for a slave race that, unlike the slaves of
olden times, can be trusted never to revolt, always to be amenable to
orders, like an insect to its instincts. The intent is to atomize
Humanity."
THE BEGINNING: BLUEBIRD
CIA interest in mind manipulation began with the Agency's formation
in 1947. A decade earlier the Moscow Show Trials had scared the
Western world into thinking that Soviet psychologists had developed a
subtle new interrogation technique capable of extracting complete and
detailed confessions from even the most innocent and recalcitrant
defendants. This new technique, which did not appear to depend upon
the more brutal, scar-producing forms of torture, had a further
advantage. It seemed to produce a reorientation of the victim's mind,
making him sound as if he really beleived - perhaps actually making
him believe - that he was guilty of the most heinous treason against
his native land.
The architects of BLUEBIRD were a corps of brash young men most of
whom had served in Colonel "Wild Bill" Donovan's flamboyant OSS
during the Second World War. These men - Richard Helms, James
Angleton, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, U. H. Marshall Chadwell. Colonel James
Drum and Frank Wisner-had learned from Donovan that one should demand
the impossible in order to attain the improbable. Donovan's operation
threw a network of spies all across the world, and their intervention
into the internal affairs of foreign nations helped manipulate an
Allied victory. The global reach of OSS covert activity had a solid
support base at home. Donovan had managed to attract to his fledgling
organization the cream of academia.
Their scholarship soon proved the value of including intellectuals in
the intelligence efforts. When BLUEBIRD's planners began drafting the
CIA's mind-manipulation program, they drew heavily on the lessons
they had learned from "Wild Bill". Why merely develop sophisticatcd
interrogation techniques, they reasoned, when there might be the
possibility of obtaining total control over a person?
ACCORDING TO BLUEBIRD:
(a) Can accurate information be obtained from willing or unwilling
individuals?
(b) Can agency personnel (or persons of interest to this agency) be
conditioned to prevent any unauthorized source of enemy from
obtaining information from them by any known means?
(c) Can we obtain control of the future activities (physical and
mental) of any individual, willing or unwilling. by application of SI
and H techniques. [We believe these abbreviations stand for
Subconscious Isolation and Hypnosis. but the documents give no
further indication of their meaning]
(d) Can we prevent any unauthorized source or enemy from gaining
control of the future activities (physical and mental) of agency
personnel (or persons of interest to this agency) by any known means?
On August 20, 1951, BLUERIRD officially became project ARTICHOKE and
a new phase of governmental assault on the mind had begun.
On January 25, 1952, the Chief of the Medical Staff of the CIA
received a memorandum on the scope of ARTICHOKE. In that document
the "mission of the project" was stated to be:
(1) The evaluation and development of any method by which we can get
information from a person against his will and without his knowledge.
(2) How can we counter the above measures if they are used against us?
(3) Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do
our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws
of nature such as selfpreservation?
The various mind-manipulation programs conducted by the CIA were the
subject of a review by the Inspector General in 1957. "Influencing
human behavior," the report began. "is a most complex subject because
very little of a positive nature is known about the extent to which
human behavior can be predicted, directed and controlled."
At this time, 1955. Georgetown University was planning to construct a
new hospital. The CIA channeled money through the Fund and acquired
onesixth of the hospital space for research involving covert
biological and chemical techniques of warfare.
ELECTRODES IN THE BRAIN: Doctor Robert Heath of Tulane University
told the New York Times that a CIA doctor had approached him in
November 1962 to talk about his working for the CIA. Heath had done
pioneering work with a technique of implanting electrodes deep within
the brain. According to Heath, the CIA physician, Dr. E. Manifield
Gunn, said that the CIA would provide funds for the study of
the "pain center" in the brain. Heath told the Times that he found
that idea "abhorrent." Heath said. "I took the stance that if I were
going to be a spy, I'd be a spy. I wanted to be a doctor and practice
medicine." When the Times contacted Dr. Gunn, they heard a slightly
different story. Gunn stated that he did not offer Heath any money
and that he was not interested in changing the direction of Heath's
research.
No avenue of experimentation was ignored and no population was ruled
out as being unfit to act as experimental guinea pigs, men, women,
children, prisoners, mental patients, criminal sexual-psychopaths,
schizophrenics, the elderly, and even terminally ill cancer patients
were all used to perfect for the CIA, the techniques of total control
of the mind.
MKSEARCH. This program was intended to "develop, test and evaluate
capabilities in the covert use of biological, chemical and
radioactive material systems and techniques for producing predictable
human behavioral and/or physiological changes, in support of highly
sensitive operational requirements." Does it seem likely that
unwitting testing ended? It does not seem likely to us that only one
project using behavioral drugs was conducted under MKSEARCH. When
closing down MKSEARCH in 1972, Sidney Gottlieb wrote that four
projects were still in progress.
The public record of mind manipulation in the 1950s made people
properly apprehensive that the sanctity of the mind might not survive
the decade. But the secret record of mind manipulation was even more
frightening. It is difficult now to imagine what impact the recent
CIA revelations would have had in the 1950s. The CIA chose to stay
clandestine. It withheld details of its mind-control programs from
most of its own personnel and from virtually all outsiders, including
the Congress.
The term brainwashing was first used by journalist Edward Hunter. In
1951 Hunter published Brain-washing in Red China: The Calculated
Destruction of Men's Minds, an account of the Chinese thought-reform
program. Hunter was stationed in Hong Kong in the late 1940s. While
there, he made contact with men and women who successfully fled the
Chinese mainland. They described a process of re-education and
indoctrination which Chinese citizens were forced to undergo after
the Communist takeover. The news appalled Hunter, and he researched
their stories. His book is a description of the fruits of this
investigation. Several years later (1956) Hunter published
Brainwashing, an immensely popular book about American POWs who
resisted Korean, brainwashing pressure, Through Hunter's literary
efforts, brainwashing became a household word.
Edward Hunter was a CIA employee when he wrote his book: He joined
the CIA at its inception. having formerly been a "propaganda
specialist" with the OSS. In adaption to his journalistic
accomplishments, Hunter has also served as a "psychological warfare
specialist in the Pentagon" and a consultant for various
Congressional committees. The facts surrounding Hunter's work
strongly suggest that his popularization of the brainwashing concept
was a part of his job.
Hunter may have substantially contributed to OPC's survival and
expansion, but his ultimate impact is much more significant. Hunter
brilliantly captured the essence of the Cold War Struggle in his
[parse? illegible], and policitians scrambled to make effective use
of it. We earlier quoted Allen Dulle's "Brain Warfare" speech as
evidence of the social impact of the concept of "brainwashing" on the
American public. The United States was once again at war, but in a
struggle unlike any ever seen before. The exigencies of Cold war
Diplomacy, Truman Doctrine foreign policy, and the proliferation of
domestic loyalty oath programs made brainwashing a natural ideal for
exploitation in Congress. On testimony in 1958, Hunter said it best:
Mr. Arens: Who are the antagonists in this total war?
Mr. Hunter: They are the Communists on the one side and all the other
peoples
of the world on the other.
Mr. Arens: When you say there is a total war, what do you mean? It is
obvious that there is very little shooting going on in the world
today. What are the devices of this total war?
Mr. Hunter: War has changed its form. The communists have discovered
that a man killed by a bullet is useless. He can dig no coal. They
have discovered that a demolished city is useless. Its mills produce
no cloth. The objective of communist warfare is to capture intact the
minds of the people and their possessions. so they can be put to use.
This is the modern conception of slavery, that puts all others in the
kindergarten age.
Mr. Arens: Is the United States part of this battlefield?
Mr. Hunter: The United States is the main battlefield in this Red
War. I mean specifically the people and the soil and the resource of
the United States.
According to Hunter, "brainwashing" was the linchpin of Communist
ideology. As he told the House of Un-American Activities Committee,
brainwashing was more than a technique. it "was a strategy for the
conquest of the world by Communism...the framework for the entire
activity of the Communist hierarchy." With the publication of his
book, Hunter told the Committee. "for the first time, our side now
has the pattern through which the international Communist movement
[has] made its advance throughout the world."
Hunter's fears were echoed throughout the executive branch of
government in the Cold War era. As Gary Wills has noted. 'It was not
enough to be American in citizenship and residence - one must be
American in one's thoughts." But how does the government know which
Americans are still pure in thought and which may have become "Un-
American" in their minds though not in their deeds? "How are we to
know what others think about the doctrines of Americanism unless we
investigate their thoughts, make them profess their loyalty, train
children up in the government orthodoxy?.. In the war of minds,
anyone not fully committed to the propositions of freedom is an
enemy." Here, then, is the political advantage to be gained from the
myth of brainwashing. It encourages investigation into the private
lives of individual citizens, even those men and women whose conduct
has crossed no legal or ethical boundary. Here too is to be found the
significance of the mind-control programs conducted by the CIA. If
America was fighting an ideological adversary, every person's mind
was a possible enemy. If those minds could be investigated, and
perhaps controlled, freedom could be assured.
President Harry Truman has written in his Memoirs that the CIA was
established to provide the President with a centralized intelligence
organization which could deliver coordinated information as needed.
Truman received dozens of intelligence estimates from the various
military intelligence agencies. He found it cumbersome to go through
multiple reports when they were duplicative, and
disturbing when they were contradictory. A central organization to
collect, and analyze intelligence information would provide an
efficient means of keeping the President informed. That was what
Truman wanted, but not exactly what he received.
Many years later he was asked whether it had been wise to establish
the CIA. His reply is worth quoting at length:
"Think it was a mistake. And if I'd known what was going to happen, I
never would have done it. I needed...the President needed at that
time a central organization that would bring all the various
intelligence reports we were getting in those days, and there must
have been a dozen of them, maybe more, bring them all into one
organization so that the President would get one report on what was
going on in various parts of the world...Now that made sense, and
that's why I went ahead and set up what they called the Central
Inteligence Agency...But it got out of hand. The fella...the one that
was in the White House after me, never paid any attention to it, and
it got out of hand. Why, they've got an organization over there in
Virginia now that is practically the equal of the Pentagon in many
ways and I think I've told you, one Pentagon is one too many."
"Now, as nearly as I can make out, those fellows in the CIA don't
just report on wars and the like, they go out and make their own, and
there's nobody to keep track of what they're up to. They spend
billions of dollars on stirring up trouble so they'll have something
to report on. They've become...it's become a government all of its
own and all secret. They don't have to account to anybody...That's a
very dangerous thing in a democratic society, and it's got to be put
a stop to. The people have got a right to know what those birds are
up to. And if I was back in the White House, people would know. You
see, the way a free government works, there's got be a housecleaning
every now and again, and I don't care what branch of the government
is involved. Somebody has to keep an eye on things...And when you
can't do any housecleaning because everything that goes on is a damn
secret, why, then we're on our way to something the Founding Fathers
didn't have in mind. Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't
mix."
It was during the Eisenhower years that the CIA first began toppling
governments and manipulating the affairs of nations on a worldwide
rather than limited scale. It was during the Kennedy administration
that the CIA added political assassination to its list of covert
activities.
On November 16, 1961, President John Kennedy delivered a speech at
the University of Washington. He told his audience. "We cannot, as a
free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics oj terror,
assassination, false promises, counterfeit mobs, and crises." Kennedy
neglected to mention that six weeks earlier he had approved Operation
MONGOOSE, a CIA project to assassinate Fidel Castro. It was not the
first time that American intelligence agencies had attempted
political assassination. But it was the first time during peace.
When Lyndon Johnson assumed the Presidency, he led the CIA into an
entircly new field of operations. According to the legislation
creating the CIA and defining its authority, the CIA is forbidden to
engage in any domestic intelligence ativities unless they are
directly connected to the acquisition of foreign intelligence
information. Johnson feared a rising tide of disent over his Vietnam
policies. He authorized the CIA to engage in domestic surveillance,
contrary to its powers. According to William R. Corson,
Johnson's "hopes for peace and the Great Society had been dashed on
the rocks of Vietnam, leaving him an almost total captive of the
military hierachy and the intelligence community, whose complicity in
the illegal activities to curb dissent over the war insured his
silence and effectively proscribed his ability to accept the peace
proposals which had been worked out in Paris by Averell Harriman and
Cyrus Vance."
By the time Richard Nixon became President, the CIA had reached full
maturity. It had become virtually a separate branch of government,
conducting its own policies in foreign relations. By the late 1960s,
the CIA had become so independent that President Nixon felt
threatened by its power. His dilemma was how to make the intelligence
agencies answerable to his needs without depleting its vast resources
for world manipulation. Nixon turned to Henry Kissinger for advice.
Kissinger, according to William Corson, "believed it was necessary to
reorganize the intelligence community ostensibly to make it more
consistent with the changed world he and Nixon were orchestrating, in
reality to make the Nixon/Kissinger foreign policy a self-fulfilling
prophecy and one written by the intelligence community."
As the CIA broadened the horizons of its covert interventions, it was
natural that the human mind would be included in the list of arenas
ripe for manipulation. With each forward step, and there were none
that went backward, the CIA's clandestine operations kept growing, as
did the smaller mind-control program. Each started in modest
proportion, and they both continued to expand because there was no
reason not to.
One reason why expansion of CIA illegal activities went unchecked is
because in early 1954, the Justice Department entered into a secret
arrangement with the CIA. The Justice Department agreed to refrain
from prosecuting criminal acts conducted by CIA personnel if there
was, in the Agency's opinion, a possibility that secret or sensitive
information might be revealed in the course of a trial. This
arrangement was negotiated by Lawrence Houston, General Counsel of
the United States. It was in effect until January, 1975, thereby
giving the CIA a twenty-one year carte blanche to violate the law.
Another reason why the CIA was able to expand its covert potential,
including its mind -control program, is the lack of accountability of
the Agency before Congress. In 1956. Senator Leverett Saltonstall
expressed what has become the Congressional attitude toward the CIA.
The Lie is the means by which the CIA gets the goods on the
President. When the President first learns about CIA illegal
operations, or first orders that they be done, he has become a co-
conspirator and is equally culpable in their misdeeds. They know it
and he knows it. Because the President's hands are no longer clean,
the CIA has a special power over him, the power to disclose his
complicity. From that point on, the President is at their mercy.
The CIA's twenty-five-year crusade to unlock the secrets of the mind
could not have been undertaken without the parallel development of
covert operational authority. There would have been no justification
for it and no need to do it. But invasion of the mind was a natural
by-product of the clandestine mentality which received continual
support and attention with each successive administration in the
White House.
CIA covert operations were undertaken across the world. There was no
reason why the mind should remain sacrosanct. For the CIA warriors,
it was just another battlefield. Intervention into the mind followed
the pattern of intervention into the internal affairs of other
nations, Both were deemed necessary to protect U.S. national security
interests. With the brain as another covert battlefield, appropriate
weapons of war had to be fashioned. For twenty-five years, perhaps
even longer, CIA scientists labored to equip Agency soldiers with the
armaments they needed. As long as the issue of presidential
accountability goes unsettled, and with it the vital inquiry into the
legitimacy of covert warfare, the sanctity of the mind remains
threatened. As political analyst Richard J. Barnet has cogently
observed, "it has yet to be demonstrated what security interest the
United States has in manipulating the politics of other countries
other than the perfect security of world domination, the dream that
destroys great nations."
They were eager to see what they could learn about ESB (Electrical
Stimulation of Brain) and to explore what they could do with it. Most
were motivated by scientific curiosity, but some, at least, must have
been attracted by visions of practical applications. such as those
suggested by Arthur C. Clarke: "Perhaps the most sensational result
of this experimentation, which may be fraught with more social
consequences than the early work of nuclear physicists, is the
discovery of the socalled pleasure or rewarding centres in the
brain... The possibilities here, for good and evil, are so obvious
that there is no point in exaggerating or discounting them.
Electronic possession of human robots controlled from a central
broadcasting station is something that even George Orwell never
thought of, but it may be technically possible long before 1984."
The most controversial of Dr. Heath's experiments was his attempt to
straighten out a homosexual. In addition to objections from
homosexuals (and others) to the basic idea, there is disagreement as
to what happened. Heath and a collaborator, Charles E. Moan, reported
that the patient, 24 years old, had been exclusively homosexual since
he was twelve, and was an abuser of alcohol and drugs as well.
Electrodes implanted in his septal area made him relaxed, self-
confident, and euphoric. The stimulation also aroused him sexually,
and while in the excited state he responded positively by masturbating to
"stag" movies that his doctors provided.
A year later it was reported that "he has solved many of his personal
problems and is leading an actively and exclusively heterosexual
life."
Dr. Jose Delgado and many others have observed that ESB could
threaten human integrity. The individual cannot defend himself
against ESB. Delgado pointed out, because if electric stimulation is
sufficiently intense it always prevails over the will. "The
possibility of scientific annihilation of personal identity, or even
worse, its purposeful control, has sometimes been considered a threat
more awful than an atomic holocaust." For that reason, ESB research
has been subject to resistance on a number of grounds, theological,
moral, ethical, philosophical and political. Delgado regards all
these bases of opposition as "debatable," especially when deviant
behavior conflicts with society. "Habitual criminal conduct"
epitomizes the situation in which he feels that medical intervention
on the brain is justified.
Delgado's arguments for intervention will not persuade everyone, but
they would persuade many.
All modern tracking systems are miniature radio transmitters mounted
on individuals to report the person's whereabouts and sometimes his
or her activities.
In the simplest form, the transmitters are worn outside the body,
like the wristwatchradios that Ralph Schwitzgebel persuaded juvenile
delinquents in Cambridge, Massachusetts to wear. Schwitzgebel's
devices transmitted pulse rates and the boy's locations to a modified
missile-tracking device.
In more advanced versions, the sensor could be placed in the body of
the brain to report information on sexual, digestive, cardiac,
respiratory, or other functions. For general-purpose systems, radio
pickups could be mounted on utility poles, from which information
would be sent to a centrally located computer. Less expensive,
special-purpose systems could monitor "clients" only within a
locality, sending the information to a local checkpoint. Schools, for
example, could monitor the presence of children in the halls; prisons
could check the location of inmates in or out of their cells;
bartenders might be alerted to the entrance of persons known as
alcoholics; banks could be warned of the approach of parolled bank
robbers.
It invades the privacy not only of behavior but of thoughts; if it is
less offensive than tracking, it is only because the polygraphs are
episodic rather than continous. The catalog of a psychiatric
equipment manufacturer includes a device for voice monitoring of
patients in nearby rooms. The therapist can talk to the person under
surveillance by means of a "Bug-In-Ear." Alternatively, he can
deliver messages that the patient is sure to remember by means of the
Whistle Stop Wireless Stimulator, a device that delivers an 800-volt
shock. Either or both of these devices can be used in conjunction
with the Barlow Male
Arousal Sensor or the Geer Female Arousal Sensor, transducers that
fit around the penis and inside the vagina to inform the therapist of
the patient's reaction to "erotic films, sexual fantacies and
masturbatory activity." Although these devices are intended for use
with individuals, they could readily be adapted to groups. The slight
controversy that has attended the past ten years of their use
suggests that group applications are not at all out of the question.
In a National Institute of Mental Health publication, it has been
suggested that "linkage of..transducers...would not be difficult and
could, when included within an electronic locator system, provide the
capability of precisely monitoring sex offenders within the
community."
Already, the same review reports, "in the treatment of alcoholics, a
distant observer has used a walkie-talkie type transmitter to deliver
electric shocks to patients at appropriate moments in the treatment
procedure. Tone signals have also been transmitted to persons over a
location monitoring system... to reduce crime-related behaviors using
this system, a person with a problem of aggression following drinking
was conditioned to experience nausea when he was served alcohol
following the presentation of a particular tone signal. Later, this
tone signal was transmitted to him in bar rooms to reduce his
drinking behavior."
Schools are not the only social institutions that would like to keep
track of people. Supervision is a major cost of private business, and
much of it consists of noting where employees are, not what they are
doing - for example, working or snoozing. Automation of this
supervision could be immensely profitable. Recently, businessmen have
observed employees by means as intrusive as polygraphs, psychological
tests, monitoring of their telephones at work and at home, and secret
observation. It would not be surprising to see widespread use of a
method that is potentially more intrusive and at the same time less
expensive.
Tracking could also be combined with ESB by broadcasting to and from,
the brain. Placement of a device inside the skull or in another part
of the body is technically more difficult than strapping it to the
wrist, but once placed, the device is more secure and can transmit
more detailed information. But at least one type of
important "internal" mental-physiological process could be monitored
from the outside: Devices have been developed for measuring penile
erection...The linkage of these transducers to a portable
transmitter...would not be difficult and could. when included within
an electronic locator system, provide the capability of precisely
monitoring sex offenders within the community.
If these ideas seem to imply a cheerless future in which large
numbers of us wilI be under the surveillance of electronic Big
Brothers, the problem, some people say, lies in our attitude toward
Big Brother. According to sociologist Gerald W. Smith, people will
just have to overcome their 1984 fear that big brother is watching.
The Los Angeles Times has suggested, tongue in cheek, that the fear
of Big Brother can be overcome by implanting a tracking device in
every infant at birth. "By the time the potential little crook grew
up, he would regard his built-in transistor with affection -
something akin to his security blanket."
The Los Angeles Times was kidding, but Professor Smith was not. He
and a colleague. Barton L. Ingraham, Professor of Criminology and Law
at the University of Maryland, have published a detailed exposition
of their ideas in a scholarly article entitled "The Use of
Electronics in the Observation and Control of Human Behavior and Its
Possible Use in Rehabilitation and Parole." Twenty-four-hour-a-day
electronic surveillance, and therefore control, is now a possibility,
they assure us.
Smith and Ingraham are particularly excited by the possibility of
crime control through a combination of ESB, external monitors,
tracking and computer technology. The computer would retaliate
against the possible criminal on the basis of probabilities,
eliminating the delay and difficulty of proving guilt to a jury
beyond a reasonable doubt...Ingraham and Smith echo Schwitzgebel's
rationale, but they add some sophisticated or sophistic-arguments of
their own. They distinguish between "objective" freedom, the freedom
actually to do as one wishes, and "subjective" freedom, the feeling
that one is free. Objective freedom, they conclude, is incompatible
with modern society, but subjective freedom can be enhanced
electronically:
"Subjective freedom is totally dependent on awareness, [it] is easily
realizable within the context of an ordered society, whereas radical
objective freedom is not. Since society cannot allow men too much
objective freedom, the least it can do (and the wise thing to do) is
to so order its affairs that men are not aware or concerned about any
lack of it. The technique of telemetric control of human beings
offers the possibility of regulating behavior with precision on a
subconscious level, and avoiding the cruelty of depriving man of his
subjective sense of freedom."
Furthermore. they assert. electronic control of deviance will give
such an advantage to the nations that adopt it that any nation
rejecting the technique may not survive. We might as well be among
the survivors, even if that means radical changes in our central
values: "Whether we like it or not, changes in technology require
changes in political and social life and in values most adaptable to
those changes". Finally, Ingraham and Smith argue, man would be
better off without certain of his traits, such as aggression. It is
a "resonable proposal," they say, for man to hasten evolution by
modifying himself "into something better than what he has been for
the last 100.000 years." They thus join Delgado in arguing
a government-science alliance to reshape the nature of man.
There have been many allegations that Manchurian Candidates exist.
Within the last two decades the idea has been seriously presented as
the explanation for political assassinations in the United States and
elsewhere. Hypno-programmed agents, unconscious automatons blindly
acting out other's instructions, have been popular subjects of
speculation...Dr. Eduard Simson-Kallas is a psychologist who
interviewed convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan twenty times after
Sirhan was sentenced to San Quentin's death row in 1969. He told the
San Francisco Examiner that Sirhan was hypnotically programmed.
Sirhan could not be trusted to kill Robert Kennedy because he had
always been a loser. "He failed at Pasadena City College. He played
the horses and lost. He wanted to become a jockey and he fell off a
horse." But, according to Simson-Kallas, he was the perfect choice as
a programmed scapegoat. "I see him as an excellent follower willing
to risk his life for an idea, not afraid of death. Basically, he is a
very moral person."
Simson-Kallas became suspicious when he noticed that Sirhan could not
explain his crime in vivid language. He seemed to be "reciting from a
book," said Simson-Kallas. "The curious thing was that he didn't have
any details. A psychologist always looks for details. If a person is
involved in a real situation, there are details." As Sirhan began to
trust Simson-Kallas, he asked to be hypnotized. "I don't really know
what happened," Sirhan said. "I know I was there. They tell me I
killed Kennedy," Sirhan continued. "I don't remember what exactly I
did but I know I wasn't myself. I remember there was a girl who
wanted coffee...So I gave her my cup and poured one for myself.
That's the last I can remember until I was choked and manhandled by
the crowd."
Freedom and dignity are special qualities; without them people are no
longer human. If people imagine themselves as no more than objects in
a mechanistic universe, they will be nothing more. And so each of us
must examine his or her own life and reject those who urge us not to.
We must be wary of those who promise us security and ask in return
for our freedom. We must recognize that part of the price for freedom
may well be insecurity, but that the price for complete security is
inhumanity.
Man can control his future by regaining control over the present. Now
is the time for public dialogue on mind manipulation and behavior
control - while all of us, as free people, still have the chance to
speak our own minds.
