Ruminations on Littleton, Mind Control, and JFK

Ruminations on Littleton, Mind Control, and JFK
By Dave McGowan 
September 2000
"Other MKULTRA subprojects dealt with ways to maximize stress on whole societies."
John Marks  The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, Times Books, 1979
It has been argued by some researchers that the two alleged shooters at the Columbine High School tragedy in Littleton, Colorado - Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold - were acting under the influence of mind control. Amidst a sea of disinformation, however, this theory appears to be mostly speculative at this point, though not entirely groundless.
        What is not speculative is the fact that at least one of the boys was under the influence of the rapidly proliferating new breed of behavior modification drugs - Prozac, Luvox, Elavil, and a host of others being among them. In fact, a close reading of the news reveals that nearly all of the spree killers in recent years have been acting under the influence of one or more of these drugs.
        This has been one of the common threads that has woven its way through these high-profile events, though this fact has been grossly underreported in the mainstream press. A convincing argument could be made that the appalling over-prescribing of these drugs is in itself a not-so-subtle form of mass mind control, as should be glaringly apparent to any rational-minded person.
        This alone does not account for the actions of the modern-day school/workplace shooters, however. The millions of Americans who are dependent upon behavior modification drugs may be comfortably numb, after all, but they are not all mindless killing machines. So the question to be asked is: was there a more direct form of mind control employed in the Littleton shootings? Were the boys subjected to trauma-based, hypnotic mind control techniques? And if so, were they mind controlled killers, or mind controlled patsies? This, alas, is where it becomes largely a matter of speculation.
        An interesting book on the topic of mind control - or as it was then termed, brainwashing - gives us some clues as to what the two boys might have endured if they had been subjected to mind control. The book - Brainwashing and the Cults: An Expose on Capturing the Human Mind - is a rather obscure title published in 1977 by Paul A. Verdier, Ph.D., a psychiatrist/hypnotist and the director of the rather Orwellian sounding ‘Institute of Behavioral Conditioning.’
        Verdier was, it can be safely deduced, what many mind control researchers refer to as an agency ‘spychiatrist.’ This is readily apparent in the rabid anti-communism that permeates the book, as well as the calls for greatly expanded use of mind control techniques in the future, albeit for ‘benevolent’ purposes. These are themes that are echoed in other agency contributions to this field of literature.
        This particular spychiatrist veers dangerously close to revealing some truths about mind control operations however, all the while blaming everything on those damn Communists. He does though acknowledge that: "It must be accepted that brainwashing, once exclusively Russian and Chinese, is now being used here by devious persons with personal gain in mind."
        It should first be noted that the notion that brainwashing was ever exclusively a tool of ‘Communist’ countries is blatantly disinformational. No less an authority on the subject than Richard Helms - who for many years was the primary overseer of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program - testified in 1964 that: "Soviet research has consistently lagged five years behind Western research."
        It is no doubt true though that mind control techniques are being used by "devious persons," or as Verdier later states: "brainwashing … is even more gruesomely practiced by an American criminal element." He even identifies some of the components of this ‘criminal element,’ including the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Manson Family, and "quasi-religious" organizations - especially Reverend Moon’s Unification Church.
        Verdier also acknowledges that the alleged assassins of the Kennedy brothers - Sirhan Sirhan and Lee Harvey Oswald - both showed signs of being under the influence of mind control. If so, he assures us, it was the work of those bastard Russians. Verdier points accusingly at Oswald’s well publicized ‘defection’ to the Soviet Union and repeats the lie that: "Russia’s work in this subject is considerably advanced over ours."
        What the doctor doesn’t mention is that all of the groups and individuals that he singles out as examples of the ‘criminal element’ have documented ties to U.S. intelligence services. The so-called Symbionese Liberation Army, for example, was the result of a CIA mind control project conducted at Vacaville Medical Facility under cover of the Black Cultural Association. The project was overseen by CIA asset Colton Westbrook, who from 1966 to 1969 was in Vietnam building interrogation/torture centers where Phoenix Program operatives could hammer wooden dowels into the brains of suspected Communists.
        During that same timeframe, a man named Donald DeFreeze was working for the intelligence division of the Los Angeles Police Department, infiltrating and monitoring black militant groups. A couple years later, DeFreeze found himself in Vacaville where he became Westbrook’s most notorious research subject. He would emerge with the new moniker ‘Cinque,’ a name given him by Westbrook - who also coined the name and designed the seven-headed cobra logo for the group.
        Manson had tantalizing connections to the CIA as well, including to a man named Ronald Stark who for a number of years was perhaps the world’s foremost trafficker in LSD, in both the U.S. and Europe. Many of the occult-based groups with which Manson was closely associated, including the Process Church, appear to be agency fronts as well, as discussed in There’s Something About Henry, Part III.
        Both the SLA and the Manson Family, one assuming the form of a radical underground movement (a la the Weathermen), and the other taking on the appearance of a hippie commune, were by all appearances agency creations that were intended, among other things, to discredit those very movements that they were designed to mimic.
        Decades earlier, preeminent CIA psychiatrist/hypnotist George Estabrooks had forecast such operations. In his seminal work - Hypnotism - he wrote: "we locate a number of good hypnotic subjects among the criminal class. We then isolate and train these subjects ... If allowed a free hand, the authorities could proceed to plant such prepared subjects from the criminal class where it would do the most good..."
        As for the other perpetrators named by Verdier, the Unification Church has well-documented ties to South Korea’s intelligence network, which is by any honest appraisal a fully owned appendage of our own CIA. And of course Sirhan had been ‘treated’ by agency hypnotist William Jennings Bryan, while Oswald had CIA connections far too numerous to even begin to list here.
        Verdier though wants to attribute the use of brainwashing in all these cases to either Communist influence or the actions of mysterious ‘devious persons.’ In the case of the Moonies, for instance, Verdier notes that: "Although Reverend Moon professes to be anti-communistic, he evidently does not hate Communists enough to hesitate in borrowing Mao’s tactics."
        Moon is, of course, virulently anti-Communist, which is pretty much the required mind-set for all Western intelligence assets. And his tactics are, contrary to Verdier’s assertions, borrowed from the CIA and its various subsidiaries. But that doesn’t stop Verdier from finishing up his analysis of Moon with the following ridiculously disinformational and inflammatory passage: "Aliens are using the guise of Christian evangelism to garner zealots … There are many writings that propose that the next great invasion will be from the Orient … Our American culture must learn to resist this alien form of influence if it is to survive."
        Apparently Verdier was reading a little too much Nostradamus at the time. Be that as it may, the author next proceeds to explain in general clinical terms how mind control works. He explains that human consciousness exists in the cerebral cortex, and that to brainwash someone, "an individual’s voluntary conscious self-control must be bypassed or short-circuited."
        The goal is to access those areas of the brain that are outside of the conscious control of the individual by circumventing the normal inhibiting response of the cerebral cortex. To disable the brain’s "cortical block," Verdier recommends alcohol, euphoric drugs, isolation and solitary confinement, and - "the most dramatic and unique item in the brainwashing arsenal" - hypnosis.
        To truly achieve lasting brainwashing, though, requires the creation of "profound and deep emotional states." Fear, shock and anxiety, for instance, have "an intense disinhibitive effect on the human brain." Better yet is pain. Verdier notes that this is because: "according to the eminent neurologist, Dr. Wilder Penfield, sensations of pain from the muscular sensory system enter the sub-cortical brain regions directly."
        Given that Penfield - another CIA asset deeply involved in the MK-ULTRA program - was an associate of medical torture expert Dr. David Cameron in Toronto, one can only shudder when pondering the research that enabled him to reach that conclusion. Nevertheless, Verdier makes clear that pain and fear are among the most effective tools in the MK-ULTRA toolbox.
        He writes that: "Russian political scientists do support the belief that given enough punishment, all the people in any time or place are susceptible to hypnotic control," closely echoing the words of the aforementioned George Estabrooks - who wrote that: "everyone could be thrown into the deepest state of hypnotism by the use of what [I] termed the Russian method - no holds barred, deliberate disintegration of the personality by psychic torture."
        Verdier also echoes Estabrook’s belief that children are prime candidates for mind control operations. He states - seemingly with approval - that: "Brainwashing can be slow, insidious and sure when applied to children early in life," while adding that: "It is likely that there is a short period of time following corporal punishment when the child is in a state of decortication - hypnosis, so to speak. This is the ideal time to plant the positive instructions for better behavior in the future."
        What the doctor considers ‘corporal punishment’ is left to the reader’s imagination. He does include a rather chilling passage, however, that is eerily reminiscent of the stories told around the country by survivors of ritual abuse, whose abusers, by the way, were not likely Communists:
        "One of the most pronounced emotional experiences that a human being can undergo is having his or her life threatened. Threats of death are used as a basic tool by brainwashing Communists. Even among them, however, this threat is used sparingly, for they know that humans quickly adapt to this type of threat, especially if it is repeatedly given but never carried out. In order to avoid this routinization of stressful emotional situations, they have been known to casually execute prisoners for the apparent effect it has on others."
         In the final chapter of the book, which Verdier has cheerfully entitled "Benevolent Brainwashing in the Future," Verdier sees a bright future for mind control, echoing the writings of yet another CIA asset, Dr. Jose Delgado. Verdier writes: "In the future, a change of purpose could modify the brainwashing process in order to make it a benevolent, rather than a malevolent, force for changing the human personality."
        Verdier claims that many of America’s most pressing social problems could be solved by the judicious use of brainwashing: "The present human derelict will change from a social pariah to a socially contributive being … Education in the future could benefit tremendously from concentration conditioning. Accelerated learning could be assured through programmed instructions while the student is in a semi-hypnotic state of concentration … Besides greater efficiency in the areas of education, work, sports and social interaction, the most fruitful possibility will be the therapeutic conditioning for improved emotions or moods."
        In other words, nearly every aspect of our life can be improved with a little bit of state-sponsored mind control programming. It’s a brave new fucking world out there. But what, you may well be asking, does all of this have to do with the shootings at Columbine High School? Maybe nothing, and maybe everything.
        It will be recalled that the FBI agent who headed up the Littleton investigation was a man by the name of G. Dwayne Fuselier. It will also be recalled that Fuselier is, by vocation, a psychologist for the national security state. And finally, it will be recalled that Fuselier has two sons who were very close to the two alleged shooters, and who in fact assisted in the creation of a videotaped 'pre-enactment' of the crime.
        All of this is very compelling in light of the fact that the man who wrote the Introduction to Verdier’s CIA-approved brainwashing exposé, and who claimed therein to have extensive knowledge of the techniques of mind control, was none other than an attorney by the name of R. Richard Fuselier. Now there’s a name you don’t run into every day. Is there a connection? Perhaps not, but it is certainly conceivable that the art of mind control is something of a Fuselier family tradition.
        In any event, Verdier’s book sheds some much needed light on the decidedly controversial subject of mind control. This is a subject that has for too long been relegated to the sphere of ‘conspiracy theory’ literature. Respectable political researchers have steered well clear of the field, and the majority of Americans likely consider ‘mind control’ to be a preposterous notion.
        This is certainly due at least in part to the fact that many of those in the ‘conspiracy’ field who have written on the subject tend to discredit their own work by introducing into the narrative such elements as UFO’s, parapsychological phenomena, and alien/human hybrids occupying underground military bases.
        This is, alas, a common form of agency disinformation. The idea is to take a few elements of legitimate political conspiracies, toss them in the pot with all manner of nonsensical gibberish, and then stir the whole reeking concoction and serve it up to confused readers, thereby tainting everything in the mix. In other words, the conspiracy field is loaded with spooks posing as researchers/journalists, perhaps more so than any other field of political reporting.
        The fact remains though that over the years, bits and pieces of the truth have managed to surface above the slime, though no one much likes to talk about them and these works are infrequently referenced by ‘researchers.’ Paul Verdier’s book is one example of this, along with George Estabrooks’ Hypnotism.
        Estabrooks’ seminal work, published before the CIA even existed, demonstrates that U.S. intelligence services were aware of the effectiveness of mind control techniques before the frequently misrepresented and misunderstood MK-ULTRA program was ever instituted. The truth is that the program was not about unlocking the secrets of mind control; those were already known.
        What the program was really about was refining and perfecting the techniques, and the study of how to extend these principles to achieve control on a society-wide basis. The extent to which these wide-ranging studies affect our daily lives cannot possibly be overstated: from the advertising that permeates our culture to the propaganda that passes for popular entertainment, from the sound and light technology that creates the distinctive movie-going experience to the killing simulation technology marketed to our kids as games, and from the mass drugging of America to the recurring tragedies that we suffer as a nation, MK-ULTRA is literally all around us.
        The assassination of President Kennedy was, in the final analysis, a nationwide MK-ULTRA project, designed to inflict massive trauma on the entire country and to thereby affect a significant change in the collective consciousness of the American people. And as public opinion polls taken before and after the assassination clearly showed, the experiment was a successful one.
        Some of the most revered names on the political left have steadfastly claimed that there was no conspiracy behind the death of Kennedy. This has been based on the notion that the reasons given for the assassination in the conspiracy literature do not hold up to investigation. Simply stated, Kennedy was no hero of the progressive crowd.
        These writers have argued that Kennedy in fact had no intention of disengaging from the Vietnam war, or of disbanding the CIA, or of normalizing relations with Cuba and the Eastern block, or of waging a serious war on organized crime - motives frequently given by assassination researchers. And there is little doubt that this was in fact the case.
        However, to deduce from this that Oswald therefore acted alone as per the Warren Report is, to put it rather bluntly, ludicrous. The truth is that anyone who has made a serious study of the Warren Report - and the vast amount of evidence refuting it - and who claims that the report is a fine piece of investigative reporting, is either a liar or a fool. The Warren Report was without a doubt one of the most shameful frauds ever foisted upon the American people.
        This fact should be obvious to any reasonably well-informed person simply by the make-up of the committee that fashioned the report, a group that was permeated with spooks and Nazi collaborators of the most vile nature, including Allen Dulles - whose efforts on behalf of Nazi Germany could easily fill an entire book and then some, not to mention the central role he played in numerous assassination and coup plots - and John J. McCloy, who sat in Adolf Hitler’s private box seats at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games at the personal invitation of Rudolf Hess and Hermann Goering, and who also served for a year as an ‘adviser’ to the Mussolini regime in Italy on behalf of his Wall Street law firm.
        In 1951, while serving as the U.S. Military Governor and High Commissioner of Germany, McCloy granted early release to the majority of the Nazi war criminals who had been sentenced at Nuremberg, after they had served but a few years of their sentences for committing some of the most abominable crimes of the twentieth century. Are these really men we should trust to tell us the truth about the assassination of the president?
        What then are we to make of the Kennedy assassination? If Kennedy was not killed for the reasons generally given, but was indeed the victim of a conspiracy, what then was the motive? The answer may well lie in the fact that Kennedy was a wildly popular President, beloved by a wide swath of American society. As such, his assassination elicited a visceral reaction from the populace, a feeling for many of not just losing a president, but of losing innocence, trust and hope.
        Despite the fact that Kennedy was certainly an insider (his father was, after all, an active Nazi collaborator during World War II as America's ambassador to the UK), he may well have been sacrificed precisely because he was so popular. And the truth may well be that the assassination was not really an attack on Kennedy at all, but was in fact an attack against the American people as a whole.
        That is precisely why the assassination was conducted in the most public way possible, to insure that the event had the maximum impact on the American psyche. Largely the same can be said of the shootings in Littleton, which brings us back to where we began - at Columbine High. The point here is that the slaughter there was itself an MK-ULTRA project, regardless of whether the individual actors who conducted it were themselves victims of mind control.
        And since we’re now back on the subject of mind control, it should be stated that Dr. Estabrooks was hardly breaking new ground in 1943 when he wrote of the existence of the practice. Decades before, another published account told a remarkably similar story, albeit in a very different context. This account told of a wondrous new development in the field of obstetric medicine, though the principles could easily be applied for other purposes:
        "Now, it is claimed that just such a method has been perfected in Germany, which country we are assured, stands at the very head of obstetric science. This method produces that peculiar modification of consciousness known as ‘Twilight Sleep’ … Scopolamine is the name of the drug relied on to produce the sleep … At least one alienist (Hoche) finds it useful in quieting excited patients, as it seems to have hypnotic influence."
        Those familiar with the literature will recognize that scopolamine was one of first drugs to be extensively tested under the rubric of the MK-ULTRA program. The account continues: "Its modern use in obstetrics was initiated by Dr. Von Steinbuchel of Frieburg in 1903 … More than fifty years before that date, Sir James Simpson had shown that chloroform given in minute quantities and repeated doses produced a state of consciousness on the border line between painful consciousness on the one hand and complete narcosis on the other … Dr. Von Steinbuchel simply replaced chloroform by scopolamine in his experiments, using morphine as a preliminary narcotic."
         A description is then given as to how the procedure works, a description that closely parallels that given by Verdier some seven decades later: "in some way, the higher centers of consciousness in the cerebrum are ‘cut-off,’ so that though the lower centers in the cerebellum are awake and attending to all the animal activities of life, yet when the sleep passes away, the patient awakes, and the higher centers resume their rule, but with no recollection of what has passed … [the patient] will be amenable to suggestions. When the doctor tells her to work harder - push harder - she obeys. But all this time, the higher centers are ‘cut-off’."
        The book gives a glowing recommendation to the technique: "The Frieburg doctors, under the lead of Gauss have worked out the many details of what they consider the proper method to follow in securing Twilight Sleep. All these steps are collectively known as the technique … physicians by the score hurried to Frieburg to learn at first hand its technique, and many hospitals, not only in Germany, but in this country as well, concluded to resume experiments … Consequently we conclude that twilight sleep is not a passing fad but is a practical means of race betterment; consequently this method will be developed and improved…"
        These words were written nearly a century ago in a book entitled, appropriately enough I suppose, Eugenics: The Science of Human Life. And don’t even get me started on the subject of Eugenics, or this article may never wrap up. The truth about mind control though is that the concept has been around for literally hundreds of years.
        When Marco Polo returned from his explorations of Asia in 1298, he told stories of a cult-like group of controlled assassins based in a fortified valley in Persia. Led by a man named Allahudin, the feared group was known as the Ashishin. They were said to be controlled by, among other things, the use of drugs. It is from the name of this group that we get - appropriately enough - the word hashish. And it is also from this cult that we get - even more appropriately - the word assassin. For the very word 'assassin,' as it turns out, originally referred to a mind-controlled killer, over 700 years ago.
Sources:
1. Bain, Donald  The Control of Candy Jones, Playboy Press, 1976
2. Black, David  Acid: The Secret History of LSD, Vision, 1998
3. Bowart, Walter Operation Mind Control, Dell Publishing, 1978
4. Delgado, Jose M.R. Physical Control of the Mind, Harper Colophon, 1969
5. Estabrooks, George  Hypnotism, Dutton, 1943
6. Lee, Martin and Bruce Shlain Acid Dreams, Grove Press, 1985
7. Martin, Harry V. and David Caul "Mind Control," Napa Sentinel, August-November 1991
8. Sanders, Ed  The Family, E.P. Dutton, 1971
9. Verdier, Paul A.  Brainwashing and the Cults, Wilshire Book Company, 1977
10. Zepezauer, Mark  The CIA's Greatest Hits, Common Courage Press, 1994
11. Various Authors  Eugenics: The Science of Human Life, The S.A. Mullikin Company, 1911
12. Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://web.archive.org/web/20010206033106/http://www.britannica.com/