The Last Circle, by Carol Marshall

[admin]

PART 1 OF 2

CHAPTER 15

I was never able to rectify the purpose behind the biological technology that Robert Booth Nichols was involved in developing with the Japanese. Why did his patents stress the "Method for Induction and Activation" of Cytotoxic TLymphocytes? It is noteworthy that Harold Okimoto, Nichols' godfather and a member of his Board of Directors, had allegedly been a high ranking intelligence officer during World War II.

While reading Dick Russell's book, "The Man Who Knew Too Much," I came across a chapter referencing Japanese biological experiments conducted during World War II. In one passage (pp. 125-126), Russell noted that, at the end of World War II, Charles Willoughby, General Douglas MacArthur's chief of intelligence, had seized Japanese lab records on germ warfare. When the Pentagon determined that the biological research might prove useful in the Cold War, the Japanese responsible for the experiments received immunity from prosecution in exchange for their cooperation.

At least three thousand people died as a result of those experiments, including an unknown number of captured U.S. military personnel. "Only in 1982 did this seamy story come to light, including the Pentagon's 1947 acknowledgement of Willoughby's `wholehearted cooperation' in arranging examination of the human pathological material which had been transferred to Japan from the biological warfare installations," wrote Russell.

Another publication, entitled "Unit 731" by Peter Williams and David Wallace, gave a detailed background on bacteriological warfare experiments conducted by all of the major combatants during World War II. When the United States government determined that the Axis Powers, including Russia, were evaluating this weapon, it became necessary to study the possibilities. This lead to the thought that if one prepared for offensive bacteriological warfare, then one must also prepare for defensive bacteriological warfare.

However, history shows that that reasoning broke down with the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States in Japan to finish the war in the East quickly. That action saved American lives if a land attack on the islands had been effected, but the principle is obvious. Would the U.S. do the same thing with viruses and bacteria?

In 1939 the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York studied the virulent, unmodified strain of yellow fever virus, ostensibly for the purpose of developing a cure for the disease. The laboratory at that time was under the direction of Dr. Wilbur Sawyer. It was in 1939 that a Japanese Army doctor, Dr. Ryoichi Naito, visited the laboratory with credentials from the Japanese military attache in Washington to obtain a sample of that strain of the Yellow Fever virus.

A report of that incident was subsequently sent to the Army Surgeon General and after evaluation of similar incidents, it was determined by Army Intelligence that Japan was interested in the yellow fever virus for bacteriological warfare purposes.

Based on that information, along with other corollary information, the decision was made to build Fort Detrick near Frederick, Maryland to provide a secret laboratory for the study and development of defensive and offensive capability to wage bacteriological warfare (BW).

The secrecy of the project was of the same magnitude as the nuclear work done within the Manhattan Project. From the writings and speeches given by the military men associated with this project, it is apparent that they were genuinely concerned for the security of the United States, but inside this organization and within the government at large, was a potential for ulterior motives. (More on that later).

By 1944, more than sufficient evidence had been gathered by American intelligence units to indicate that Japan was deeply involved in bacteriological warfare. Thirty thousand bombs, manufactured at the Osaka Chemical Research Institute in Japan, containing typhus, diptheria and bubonic plague were sent to the Chinese front.

By then, overwhelming evidence was coming in, particularly regarding research being conducted by Major General Shiro Ishii who was awarded a Technical Meritorious Medal with highest degrees. After the war, American intelligence learned that General Ishii, through an organization called "Unit 731," conducted his more serious research at a camp in northern Manchuria. It was here that General Ishii experimented on human beings.

The experiments conducted on those human beings made Japan the world's leading authority on offensive and defensive bacteriological warfare systems. No other country, Ishii reasoned, would have equivalent technical data on how epidemics spread and how to protect against them.

Japan's fascination with biological warfare dates as far back as 1932, when experimentation on prisoners already sentenced to death was conducted at Harbin, but later during the war with China, the Japanese used prisoners of war. White Russians, caught in the area of Japan's war with China were also used, according to an interrogated Japanese army officer.

Each prisoner was placed in a closely guarded cell where the experiments were conducted. After each prisoner died, they were cremated in an electric furnace to remove all evidence of what had occurred. Starting in 1935, motion pictures of the experiments were taken and these were shown to senior army officers. It was reported that 3,000 were sacrificed at a separate test site called Pingfan. Why was it required to use so many humans?

The Japanese had learned that epidemics occurred naturally but the method for inducing and activating them artificially was more difficult. In order to find the most efficient method of transmittal, many experiments were needed to find the lethal doses required to spread the agent. What would work with animals might not necessarily work with humans. Also, a method was needed for immunization and only humans could be used for that purpose.

General Ishii thought that the West's moral codes would not allow for such experimentation and that alone would put Japan on the leading edge of such technology. Healthy humans were needed, so extensive medical tests were even conducted on prospective prisoners. Diseases were forcibly injected or administered with a special stick shaped gun. Some prisoners were infected through food or drink. Cholera, anthrax, TB, typhoid, rickettsia and dysentery were but a few of the bacteria used in the tests.

Live human prisoners were also exposed to chemical warfare agents such as mustard gas, hydrogen cyanide, acetone cyanide and potassium cyanide. Hydrogen cyanide was given extensive study because of its potential for ease of delivery into water supplies. In some instances, live human victims were actually opened up to observe the progress of various diseases and chemicals.

At one point, American intelligence learned that Japan had developed techniques for efficient delivery of Botulinus, a germ that attacks the central nervous system followed by paralysis and rapid death. Vast quantities of Botulinus germs were developed at Fort Detrick and a vaccine was hurriedly injected into all military personnel involved in the invasion of Europe.

What the United States subsequently did with the technical data from the Japanese experiments, under the direction of General Charles Willoughby, was shocking. During the War Crimes Trials in Japan following World War II, "sweetheart deals" were arranged between the United States and Japan to secure that data. Colonel Murray Sanders was assigned to General Douglas MacArthur, along with General Charles Wiloughby (Chief of Intelligence) and Karl T. Compton (Chief of Scientific Intelligence). General MacArthur specifically assigned these men to investigate the Japanese bacteriological warfare experiments.

During the war, Lt. Col. Sanders, a medical doctor, had been responsible for investigating and analyzing the capabilities of the Japanese in bacteriological warfare. He had also overseen the Fort Detrick experiments. When the Legal Section of the U.S. government tried to obtain the Japanese lab records on human experimentation from General MacArthur's staff, they were stonewalled. MacArthur's staff reasoned that if the U.S. Army's investigative evidence was given to the Legal Section in Washington D.C., the Russians would have access to the records. This sounds logical on the surface, but the resulting memorandums tell another story.

The State War Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC) responsible for coordinating and overseeing the war crimes trials in Japan, made an extraordinary statement which conclusively supported the intelligence community's stance on the matter. One excerpt read as follows:

"Data already obtained from Ishii and his colleagues has proven to be of great value in confirming, supplementing and complementing several phases of U.S. research in BW, and may suggest new fields for future research. This Japanese information is the only known source of data from scientifically controlled experiments showing direct effect of BW [bacteriological warfare] agents on man. In the past it has been necessary to evaluate effects of BW agents on man from data through animal experimentation. Such evaluation is inconclusive and far less complete than results obtained from certain types of human experimentation.

"It is felt that the use of this information as a basis for war crimes evidence would be a grave detriment to Japanese cooperation with the United States occupation forces in Japan. For all practical purposes an agreement with Ishii and his associates that information given by them on the Japanese BW program will be retained in intelligence channels is equivalent to an agreement that this Government will not prosecute any of those involved in BW activities in which war crimes were committed. Such an understanding would be of great value to the security of the American people because of the information which Ishii and his associates have already furnished and will continue to furnish."

The astounding conclusion went as follows: "The value to the U.S. of Japanese BW data is of such importance to national security as to far outweigh the value accruing from `war crimes' prosecution. In the interests of national security it would not be advisable to make this information available to other nations as would be the case in the event of a `war crimes' trial of Japanese BW experts. The BW information obtained from Japanese sources should be retained in intelligence channels and should not be employed as `war crimes' evidence."

Communications between Washington D.C. and General MacArthur's headquarters in Japan were very revealing. One excerpt read as follows:

" ... The feeling of several staff groups in Washington, including G2, is that this problem is more or less a family affair in the Far Eastern Command."

No mention was ever made during the war crimes trials in Japan about bacteriological warfare or chemical warfare experiments being conducted on human test specimens. No indictments were ever handed down against those who had perpetrated these crimes. Colonel Sanders was ordered back to the United States to brief scientists at Fort Detrick but shortly thereafter became ill with tuberculosis and spent the next two years in bed. Oddly, the expert who was sent to replace Colonel Sanders, Arvo Thompson, committed suicide following his work for the Far Eastern Command and the scientists at Fort Detrick.

What happened to all of the Japanese officers and scientists who worked in the Manchurian labs during World War II? The military officers were retired on sizable pensions and the civilian scientists continued their work with some of the largest chemical and medical companies in Japan. Some became presidents and professors at leading universities, others became a part of the industrial complex which so successfully competed with the West for international trade.

(NOTE: Insert names of Japanese scientists and officers and their relationship to the Japanese scientist's names on MIL [Nichols' corporation] agreements for development of biological technology with Japanese. )

Numerous board directors of F.I.D.C.O., of which Nichols was also a director, had been closely associated with General Douglas MacArthur. In fact, Clint Murchison, Sr. had helped finance MacArthur's presidential campaign.

******

The Vanity Fair article by Ron Rosenbaum had noted on page 98 that not long before his death, Danny Casolaro had reportedly approached a nurse he knew and asked her closely about the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and brain diseases.

Rosenbaum had asked himself what had been going on in Danny's head as he was being whipsawed between the shadowy Riconosciuto and Nichols and their death warnings? In Danny's notes, Rosenbaum had found references to germ warfare and slow-acting brain viruses like Mad Cow Disease which could be used against targeted individuals. Had Danny thought HE'D been targeted?

A subsequent conversation with Michael Riconosciuto confirmed Rosenbaum's suspicions. According to Riconosciuto, Danny had not only been concerned, but had an obsession with the story because he suspected he'd been "hit by these people." A source had allegedly told Danny that he, among others, had been targeted with a slow acting virus. Riconosciuto had advised him to go to a doctor and get tests. The tests had been inconclusive. "Now, what he probably had was the genesis of a naturally occurring ailment," said Riconosciuto to Rosenbaum.

Rosenbaum had described the entire Inslaw/Casolaro affair as "Kafkaesque weirdness." Indeed, after Nichols had handed me the book, "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate" at his Sherman Oaks apartment, I had obtained a copy and recalled the author, John Marks, referring to the CIA MKUltra (Manchurian Candidate) interrogation methods as Kafkaesque in nature. Though Danny's notes mentioned nothing about "mind-control," and Bill Hamilton later noted that Danny had spoken mainly about the biologicals, I found it difficult to believe that he was not subjected to some form of mind control either subliminally or otherwise by someone in the field.

******

"The Search for the Manchurian Candidate" gave significant background on the history of biological warfare and mind control research by the CIA. The author, John Marks, obtained much of his material from seven boxes of heavily censored MKUltra financial records and another three or so Artichoke (CIA behavor control program), documents supplemented by interviews.

As early as 1943, the CIA, or actually its predecessor, the OSS, initiated "humanistic psychology," or studies of what the brain can do, during World War II when a "truth drug" committee headed by Dr. Winfred Overholser conducted experiments with marijuana and mescaline to find a way to induce prisoners to confess. A parallel OSS group had also investigated the use of "quietus medications" lethal poisons for possible use against Adolf Hitler.

The original program was headed by General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, a burly, vigorous Republican millionaire who had started as White House intelligence advisor even before Pearl Harbor. A former Columbia College and Columbia Law Graduate, Donovan early on recruited Richard Helms, a young newspaper executive who had gained fame for interviewing Adolf Hilter in 1936 while working for United Press. He would subsequently become the most important sponsor of mind control research within the CIA, nurturing and promoting it throughout his steady climb to the top of the Agency.

Despite harsh condemnation at the Nuremberg trials after World War II of Nazi scientific experiments, U.S. investigators found the research records from the Dachau prison camp to be "an important complement to existing U.S. knowledge." Doctors connected to the S.S. and Gestapo had conducted experiments that led to the testing of mescaline on prisoners at Dachau. Their goal had been to "eliminate the will of the person examined."

The Japanese, for their part, had stockpiled chemical and biological warfare substances during World War II and even went so far as to drop deadly anthrax germs on China during the early stages of the war. OSS responded by individualizing CBW (Chemical and Biological Warfare) and creating methods of secretly disorienting, incapacitating, injuring or killing an enemy at Fort Detrick.

The CIA's post World War II mind control program was headed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who presided over investigations that ranged from advanced research in amnesia caused by electroshock to dragnet searches through the jungles of Latin America for toxic leaves and barks. Gottlieb's office not only found ways to make Fidel Castro's beard fall out, but he personally provided operators with deadly poisons to assassinate foreign leaders like the Congo's Patrice Lumumba.

Other areas of CIA sponsored research included explorations of personalities. Henry Murray, a former Donovan protege, devised a battery of tests which could size up the personality of potential CIA recruits as well as predict future behavioral patterns. "Spying is attractive to loonies," wrote Murray. "Psychopaths, who are people who spend their lives making up stories, revel in the field." The program's prime objective, according to Murray, was to weed out the crazies, as well as the "sloths, irritants, bad actors, and freetalkers."

Murray's assessment system subsequently became a fixture in the CIA and some of his assistants went on to establish CIA like systems at large corporations, starting with AT & T.

It is important to remember that at the beginning, the OSS (precurser to the CIA) researchers from Security and Scientific Intelligence shared jointly the literature and secret reports seized from the Germans and the Japanese after World War II. They had theorized that in order to build an effective defense against mind control and CBW, it was necessary to understand the "offensive" possibilities. But as the years went on, the line between offense and defense if it ever existed soon became so blurred as to be meaningless.

In 1947 when the National Security Act created not only the CIA, but also the National Security Council, in sum, the command structure of the Cold War, a warlike posture was developed against the new perceived enemy, the Soviet Union. The men in the CIA took this job seriously. "We felt we were the first line of defense in the anticommunist crusade," recalled Harry Rositzke, an early head of the Agency's Soviet Division. "There was a clear and heady sense of mission, a sense of what a huge job this was."

A contingent of the CIA behavior control program, code named "Artichoke," developed a program whereby guinea pigs for mind-control experiments were obtained from the flotsam and jetsam of the international spy trade: " ... individuals of dubious loyalty, suspected agents or plants, subjects having known reason for deception, etc," as one agency documents described them. Artichoke officials looked upon these people as unique research "material" from whom meaningful secrets might be extracted while the experiments went on.

As one CIA psychologist who worked in the mind-control program put it, "One did not put a high premium on the civil rights of a person who was treasonable to his own country ..." Thus the Artichoke teams were given mostly the dregs of the clandestine underworld to work on.

In one experiment in the early 1950's, an alleged Russian double agent was brought to a safe house and plied for information with a mixture of drugs and hypnosis under the cover of a "psychiatric medical exam." A professional hypnotist had accompanied the team, giving his commands to an interpreter through an elaborate intercom system, who, in turn, was able to put the Russian into a hypnotic trance.

Afterward, the team reported to the CIA's director that the Russian had revealed extremely valuable information and he had been made to forget his interrogation through hypnotically induced amnesia. The Russian was also used in a subsequent experiment where he was given Seconal, Dexedrine and Marijuana in combination in a beer delivered during the cocktail hour. There were little, if any, positive results.

Nevertheless, the CIA was still consistently on the cutting edge of specialized behavioral research, sponsoring the lions share of the most harrowing experiments. One CIA psychiatric consultant provided a small personal glimpse of how it felt to be a soldier in the mind control campaign. The psychiatrist, who insisted on anonymity, estimated that he made between 125 and 150 trips overseas on Agency operations between 1952 through his retirement in 1966. "To be a psychiatrist chasing off to Europe instead of just seeing the same patients year after year, that was extraordinary," he said.

CHAPTER 15, Part 2

Later, due to bureaucratic squabbling, the CIA transferred its behavior work to a (CIA) outfit with Ph.D.'s called the Technical Services Staff (TSS). Under TSS's Chemical Division, research was conducted on the use of chemicals and germs against specific people. LSD had been used extensively between 1951 and 1956 by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, a native of the Bronx with a Ph.D. in chemistry from Cal Tech; Gottlieb continued to oversee most of TSS's behavorial programs up to and including 1973.

At the top of the Clandestine Services (officially called the Directorate of Operations but popularly known as the "dirty tricks department"), Sid Gottlieb had a champion who appreciated his qualities, Richard Helms. For two decades, Gottlieb moved into progressively higher positions in the wake of Helms' climb to the highest position in the Agency.

Under the TSS leadership of Gottlieb and Helms, research on the covert use of biological and chemical materials progressed under the code name of "MKUltra." The operational arm of MKUltra was labeled MKDelta, the purpose of which was to "investigate whether and how it was possible to modify an individual's behavior by covert means." Hashish had been around for millennia, but LSD was roughly a million times stronger by weight. A two-suiter suitcase could hold enough LSD to turn on every man, woman, and child in the United States.

But the CIA was concentrating on individuals. TSS understood that LSD distorted a person's sense of reality and they felt compelled to learn if it could alter a person's basic loyalties. Could the CIA make spies out of tripping Russians or visa versa?

Suddenly there was a huge new market for grants in academia, as Sid Gottlieb and his aides began to fund LSD projects at prestigious institutions. Author John Marks ("The Search for the Manchurian Candidate") identified the Agency's LSD pathfinders as: Bob Hyde's group at Boston Psychopathic, Harold Abramson at Mt. Sinai Hospital and Columbia University in New York, Harris Isbell of the NIMH sponsored Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Kentucky, Louis Jolyon West at the University of Oklahoma, and Harold Hodge's group at the University of Rochester.

The Agency disguised its involvement by passing the money through two conduits: The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation and the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research, a Washington D.C. family foundation, whose head, Dr. Charles Geschickter, provided the Agency with a variety of services for more than a decade.

Beginning in 1952, TSS had an agreement with the Special Operations Division (SOD) of the Army's biological research center at Fort Detrick, Maryland, whereby SOD would produce germ weapons for the CIA's use with the program called MKNaomi. Under MKNaomi, the SOD men developed a whole arsenal of toxic substances for CIA use.

Wrote Marks: "If Agency operators needed to kill someone in a few seconds with say, a suicide pill, SOD provided super deadly shellfish toxins." Agency operators later supplied pills laced with this lethal food poison to its Mafia allies for inclusion into Fidel Castro's milkshake.

In other instances, "If CIA officials wanted an assassination to look like a death from natural causes, they could choose from a long list of deadly diseases that normally occurred in particular countries," wrote Marks. When CIA operators merely wanted to be rid of someone temporarily, SOD stockpiled for them about a dozen diseases and toxins of varying strengths. "At the relatively benign end of the SOD list stood `Staph enterotoxin,' a mild form of food poisoning, mild compared to botulinum," noted Marks.

Even more virulent in the SOD arsenal was "Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis" virus which usually immobilized a person for 2 to 5 days and kept him in a weakened state for several more weeks. If the Agency wanted to incapacitate someone for a period of months, SOD provided two different kinds of "brucellosis." This incapacitating agent was allegedly placed on the monogrammed handkerchief of an Iraqi colonel in 1060 who was said to be promoting Soviet bloc political interests, but the colonel was shot by a firing squad before the handkerchief arrived."

SOD was forever developing more virulent strains," wrote Marks. Perhaps the most important question was whether a germ could be covertly delivered to infect the right person. One branch of SOD specialized in building "delivery systems," the most notorious of which was a dart gun fashioned out of a .45 pistol which ex-CIA Director William Colby once displayed at a 1975 Senate hearing.

The Agency had long been after SOD to develop a "nondiscernible microbioinoculator" which could deliver deadly shots that, according to a CIA document, could not be "easily detected upon a detailed autopsy." One high Detrick official noted that the best way to infect people was through the respiratory system. SOD rigged up aerosol sprays that could be fired by remote control, including a fluorescent starter that was activated by turning on the light.

A former newspaper journalist turned narcotics agent, George White, was recruited by MKUltra chief Sid Gottlieb to test drugs on unsuspecting subjects at a San Francisco "safe house" on Telegraph Hill. The apartment was bugged with four DD4 microphones disguised as electrical wall outlets hooked up to two F301 tape recorders which agents monitored in an adjacent "listening post."

The San Francisco safe house specialized in prostitutes who brought unwitting victims back for study. In addition to LSD, TSS officials gave White even more exotic experimental drugs to test. One TSS source noted, "If we were scared enough of a drug not to try it out on ourselves, we sent it to San Francisco."

According to a 1963 report by CIA Inspector General John Earman, in a number of instances, the test subject became ill for hours or days and, in one case, hospitalization was needed. Wrote Marks, "The Inspector General was only somewhat reassured by the fact that George White maintained close working relations with local police authorities which could be utilized to protect the activity in critical situations."

At another safehouse located in Marin County, TSS scientists tested such MKUltra specialties and delivery systems as glass ampules that could be stepped on to release itching or sneezing powders, a fine hypodermic needle to inject drugs through the cork in a wine bottle, and a drug coated swizzle stick.

At one point, an attempt was made to spray LSD from an aerosol spray can at a house party, but the heat of the summer caused all the windows and doors to be open. "Years later," wrote John Marks, "George White wrote an epitaph [in a personal letter to Sid Gottlieb] for his role with the CIA: `I was a very minor missionary, actually a heretic, but I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All Highest?'"

Not every scientist cooperated with the CIA. While conducting experimental studies on monkeys at the National Institute of Health, Dr. John Lilly discovered a method of inserting electrodes into the brain to stimulate precise centers of pleasure, pain, fear, anxiety and anger. As Lilly refined his brain "maps," officials of the CIA and other agencies descended upon him with requests for briefings.

Lilly insisted that all briefings remain unclassified, completely open to outsiders. Other scientists ordinarily had their work officially classified, which meant that access to the information required a security clearance. But Lilly's imagination had conjured up pictures of CIA agents on deadly missions with remote controlled electrodes strategically implanted in their brains, and so he withdrew from that field of research. By 1958 he had finally concluded that it would be impossible for him to continue working at the National Institute of Health without compromising his principles, so he resigned.

MKUltra officials were clearly interested in using grants to build contracts and associations with prestigious academics. The CIA-funded Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, later known as the "Human Ecology Fund," (HEF) supported such publications as the "Research in Mental Health Newsletter" published jointly at McGill University by the sociology and psychiatric departments.

Similarly, HEF gave grants of $26,000 to the well-known University of London psychologist, H.J. Eysenck, for his work on motivation. Marks noted that the MKUltra documents acknowledged that this research had "no immediate relevance for Agency needs, but it would lend prestige to the Human Ecology Fund."

A whole category of HEF funding, called "cover grants," served no other purpose than to build the organization's false front. A TSS source explained that grants like these "bought legitimacy" for the organization. Nevertheless, one small grant to a psychologist from the University of Pennsylvania provided valuable information on "confidence men." The CIA was intrigued with the ability of con men to manipulate human behavior. As one CIA official put it, the psychologist unwittingly gave them "a better understanding of the techniques people use to establish phony relationships" a subject of interest to the CIA.

Marks wrote that at one point, the CIA took the "Svengali" legend to heart. In 1954, Morse Allen, the CIA's first behavioral research czar, simulated the ultimate experiment in hypnosis: the creation of a "Manchurian Candidate," or programmed assassin. Allen's "victim" was a secretary whom he put into a deep trance and told to keep sleeping until he ordered otherwise.

He then hypnotized a second secretary and told her that if she could not wake up her friend, "her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to kill." An unloaded pistol was placed nearby. Even though the second secretary had expressed a fear of firearms of any kind, she picked up the gun and "shot" her sleeping friend. After Allen brought the "killer" out of her trance, she had no recollection of the event, denying she would ever shoot anyone.

Some of the CIA's experiments wandered so far across ethical borders of experimental psychiatry that Agency officials ultimately conducted much of the work outside the United States. The CIA's Human Ecology Fund provided financing to foreign researchers and American professors to collect information abroad. The MKUltra men realized that ninety percent of their experiments would fail to be of any use to the Agency, but the "behaviorists" continued to search for the elusive answer to human control.

Unbound by the rules of academia, the CIA took stabs at cracking the human genetic code with computers and finding out whether animals could be controlled through electrodes placed in their brains.

Within the Agency itself, the one significant question remained to be answered: Will a technique work? CIA officials zealously tracked every lead, sparing no expense to check each angle many times over, yet no foolproof way was found to brainwash another person. Specific methods worked "fantastically" on certain people, but not on others. It wasn't predictable enough, noted one official."

[admin]

PART 2 OF 2

In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy reportedly vowed to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces," wrote John Marks. In the end, he settled for firing Allen Dulles and his top deputies. Until that point, the TSS (Technical Services Staff) had been the Agency's largest scientific component. Under the new head of CIA, John McCone, TSS was stripped of its main research functions including the behavioral one and Seymour Russell, a tough covert operator, was brought in as the new chief. But the highest deputyship at TSS went to Sid Gottlieb, who became number-two man under Russell.

In his new job, Gottlieb kept control of MKUltra. His emphasis switched back to chemical and biological substances "not because he thought these could be used to turn men into robots," wrote Marks, "but because he valued them for their `predictable' ability to disorient, discredit, injure, or kill people." A $150,000 a year contract was signed with a Baltimore biological laboratory which provided TSS a private place for "large-scale production of microorganisms" for biological weapons without the Army's germ warriors knowing about it.

Dr. James Hamilton, the San Francisco psychiatrist who worked with George White in the original OSS marijuana days, was brought back to MKUltra by Gottlieb to conduct "clinical testing of behavioral control materials" on prisoners at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville. Hamilton worked through a nonprofit research institute connected to the facility to conduct his research. Marks estimated that he experimented on between 400 to 1,000 inmates between 1967 and 1968.

In July 1977, after receiving notification that the CIA had located 7 boxes of MKUltra financial records, author John Marks held a press conference in which he criticized then CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner (later a Wackenhut Board member) for several distortions in describing the MKUltra program. Turner had described MKUltra as only a program of drug experimentation and not one aimed at behavior control to President Carter and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Marks responded by releasing a score of CIA documents to reporters that indicated the flavor of the CIA behavioral efforts. The documents set off a media bandwagon that had the story reported on all three network television news shows as well as others. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Senator Edward Kennedy's Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research soon announced they would hold public hearings on the subject. The CBW program at Ft. Detrick was subsequently shut down.

In 1979, Marks concluded that he could not be positive that the CIA never found a technique to control people. CIA officials actively experimented with behavior control methods for another decade AFTER Sid Gottlieb and company lost the research action. The Office of Research and Development (ORD) picked up the ball by creating its own latter-day version of the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology.

Located outside Boston, it was called the Scientific Engineering Institute and had originally been used by the CIA as a proprietary company to conduct radar research. In the early 1960's, ORD officials built a new wing to the Institute's modernistic building for "life sciences" or human behavior research.

According to Marks, one scientist from the institute recalled a colleague joking, "If you could find the natural radio frequency of a person's sphincter, you could make him run out of the room real fast."

"Just as the MKUltra program had been years ahead of the scientific community, ORD activities were similarly advanced," wrote Marks. One researcher noted that MKUltra looked at the manipulation of genes and gene splintering as early as 1965, eleven years before the rest of the world even thought about it. Added the scientist, "Everybody was afraid of building the super soldier who would take orders without questioning, like the kamikaze pilot. Creating a subservient society was not out of sight."

******

The above research was conducted thirty years ago! What had been developed along those same lines by 1994? Even the most rampant imagination could not conceive of what might be underway in CIA laboratories today.

With today's cutting and splicing techniques, scientists can attach any genes they choose to certain carrier genes. These linked genes, called "recombinant DNA," are then conveyed inside a host cell, which virtually adopts the new gene as one of its own. The object of most current experiments is to transplant genes from the host to bacteria. These tractable, microscopic cells proliferate faster than rabbits. On a simple cheap diet a single bacterium makes a few billion copies of itself overnight. Its DNA, including that of the transplanted gene, is reproduced at the same rate.

Biochemists at Stanford University have found a technique for combining DNA from "two different sources" and putting it into a common bacterium. The bacterium they chose was "E.coli bacteria," commonly found in the intestine of every living person. Modified E.coli, containing certain cancer genes, could become a biological bomb. The bacterium carrying its little package of cancer genes, could then be passed as easily as the common cold from one human to another.

The U.S. is not the only country to have this technology. A classified report prepared for the National Security Council (U.S.) and obtained by the Washington Times claimed "the Soviet Union was using genetic engineering to create virulent new biological weapons that could be deployed as early as 1989 - if in fact some had not already been deployed." Robert H. Kupperman, a chemical warfare expert at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Times that "it's like making designer drugs."

A report was prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency which outlined extensive violations by the Soviets of two anti-biological warfare treaties. The report noted "the Soviets were using recent advances in biotechnology, such as genetic engineering, to develop a new class of CBW [chemical, biological warfare] agents that can be rapidly produced for deployment."

Recent scientific findings on the Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) indicate genetic material common to Gulf War-era veterans could provide a clue as to why so many became sick after serving in the 1991 war. In a study presented to Gulf War veterans at a conference in Tampa, Florida, microbiologist Dr. Howard Urnovitz said the genetic marker could point to the existence of a "virus." The virus, in turn, could make veterans exposed to chemical agents or other toxins more susceptible to illness, he added.

Beginning on Veterans Day, November 11, 1996 and continuing through November 17th, KREM T.V. out of Spokane, Washington (509) 838-7350), an affiliate of Northwest News in Seattle, telecast a series on Gulf War Syndrome (GWS). Reporter Tom Grant interviewed numerous doctors, one of which was Dr. Garth Nicholson, a microbiologist, who maintained that GWS contains "altered genetic structures" similar to AIDS. He suggested GWS is a genetically engineered biological warfare organism, and it's contagious.

Dr. Larry Goss, in Walters, Oklahoma, not only confirmed Nicholson's findings, but said on public T.V. that he and his wife "caught" GWS while treating Gulf War veterans. Dr. William Baumzweiger, a neurologist/psychiatrist at the V.A. hospital in Los Angeles found brain-stem damage in GWS vets, and noted the virus turns the immune system against itself.

GWS veterans were warned NOT to have unprotected sex or have any more children. The vets themselves were interviewed along with their families. Tragically, their wives and children were now suffering from the same GWS symptoms. Pictures were shown of the children, providing indisputable proof of the infectiousness of the disease.

Doctors warned the public that GWS could soon enter the general populace, and it could be terminal. However, on November 17th, Dr. Nicholson noted that treatment was available through antibiotics.

******

Scientists have long suspected the existence of a "lab-created" virus which attacks the immune system. In January 1986, the French-born and trained biologists Professor Jakob and Dr. Lilli Segal, published a pamphlet entitled, "AIDS: USA-Home Made Evil; Not Imported from Africa." The two scientists, a biophysicist and a biologist affiliated with the Humboldt University in Berlin, pointed out that examination of the genes making up the HIV retrovirus revealed it "could not have come about by a natural way known to biologists." They called the virus a "chimera," originally created in 1977 at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The Segals were not the only researchers to suggest that "genetic engineering" was involved with AIDS. John Seale, M.D., a London venereologist, also stated that the molecular structure of HIV suggested "manipulation of viruses" rather than a natural mutation from known retroviruses. And Dr. Robert Strecker, M.D., a Los Angeles internist, has made the same assertion.

These advocates of the artificial HIV theory all note the structural similarities of HIV to visna virus, a pathogen found in sheep with similarities to AIDS. The scientists argue that the visna virus was artificially combined with the HTLV-I virus, another retrovirus which causes human lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells.

CHAPTER 15, Part 3-END.

Today designer viruses are limited only by the imagination of the scientist creating them. Thus, bio-labs in both the U.S. and abroad are in a race to find vaccines which build the human immune system - or search out and destroy killer T - Cells.

A new study, recently released by Dr. Jeffrey Leiden, director of a research team at the University of Chicago, showed that genes can be injected directly into "muscle tissue" to cause production of proteins needed to correct some blood disorders, such as anemia. Genes in the injection are taken into the nucleus of cells in the muscle tissue and become, in effect, a pharmaceutical factory, increasing red blood cell levels as high as 64%. In the past, gene therapy involved using "viruses" to transfer genes into the body, a technique that was "poorly controlled," according to Dr. Leiden.

And another finding by Arthur Vandenbark, of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Portland, Oregon noted the discovery of a new vaccine which enables the human immune system to churn out more T - Cells, thus preventing multiple sclerosis patients from becoming sicker.

The ultimate irony of the 21st century could be the development of vaccines, in response to the threat of biological warfare, which boost the human immune system to such a degree that people become completely disease resistant. The question is, with overpopulation looming on the horizon, would the U.S. government release such a vaccine to the general populace -- if not, who would have access to it? The Chosen Ones?

Interestingly, Robert Booth Nichols' manuscript, entitled "Acceptable Casualty," copyrighted at the Library of Congress in May 1987, outlined an identical scenario.

******

Within Michael Riconosciuto's secret files in the Mojave Desert, I had found a box marked "Ted Gunderson," which I had dragged home along with the rest of the material.

This particular box had contained records of most of Gunderson's investigations, but one report particularly caught my attention. It was titled, "From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory" by Colonel Paul E. Vallely with Major Michael A. Aquino.

The 12 page Army report was undated but it outlined the use of "Psychotronics," intelligence and operational weapons systems employing the use of mind control, commonly known as Psychological Operations (PSYOP).

Wrote Aquino, "In 1967 and 1968 alone, a total of 29,276 armed Viet Cong/NVA (the equivalent of 95 enemy infantry battalions) surrendered to ARVN or MACV forces under the Chieu Hoi amnesty program the major PSYOP effort of the Vietnam War. At the time MACV estimated that the elimination of that same number of enemy troops in combat would have cost us 6,000 dead."

Aquino argued that the U.S. lost the war in Vietnam "not because we were outfought, but because we were out PSYOPed. Our national will to victory was attacked more effectively than we attacked that of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, and perception of this fact encouraged the enemy to hang on until the United States finally broke and ran for home."

The lesson, according to Aquino, was not to ignore U.S. PSYOP capability, but rather to change it and strengthen it "so that it can do precisely that kind of thing to our enemy in the next war." To begin, there would be a name change from Psychological Operations to "MindWar." Noted Aquino, "We must reach the people BEFORE they resolve to support their armies, and we must reach those armies BEFORE our combat troops ever see them on battlefields."

Aquino went on to compare his proposal with the definition of Psychological Warfare first introduced by General William Donovan of the OSS in his World War II era "Basic Estimate of Psychological Warfare" in which Donovan discussed the need to destroy the will of the enemy. But an attendant 1947 letter stressed the need for a "synonym which could be used in peacetime that would not shock the sensibilities of a citizen of democracy."

Aquino indicated contempt for the U.S. Army's inability to accept PSYOP in its "most effective configuration," adding that "the reluctance with which the Army had accepted even an `antiseptic' PSYOP component" was well documented.

Having read about General Donovan's "behavioral control" program in the MKUltra book, I didn't perceive it to be exactly "antiseptic." Aquino's report, obviously written after the Vietnam war, suggested that future MindWars should be fought through "skillful use of communications media."

"MindWar," noted Aquino, "states a whole truth that, if it does not now exist, will be forced into existence by the will of the United States ... A MindWar message does not have to fit conditions of abstract credibility as do PSYOP themes; its source makes it credible."

Aquino continued, " ... The MindWar operative must KNOW that he speaks the truth, and he must be PERSONALLY COMMITTED to it. What he says is only a part of MindWar; the rest and the test of its effectiveness lies in the conviction he projects to his audience, in the rapport he establishes with it."

As I read the document it was difficult not to recall Oliver North's diary in which he called his associates, "The True Believers." (More on that in another chapter). Aquino noted that the recipient of the statement by the MindWar operative would judge such messages not only by his conscious understanding of them, but also by the mental conditions under which he perceived them. "For the mind to believe its own decisions," wrote Aquino, "it must feel that it made those decisions without coercion. Coercive measures used by the MindWar operative, consequently, must not be detectable by ordinary means ..."

Aquino's basis for his report came from various publications which were listed at the back of the document. "More effective configurations" of MindWar as noted by Aquino may well have included the following (taken from the back of the document):

"ELF (extremely low frequency) waves (up to 100 Hz) ... are naturally occurring, but they can also be produced artificially ... ELF waves are not normally noticed by the unaided senses, yet their resonant effect upon the human body has been connected to both physiological disorders and emotional distortion. Infrasound vibration (up to 20 Hz) can subliminally influence brain activity to align itself to delta, theta, alpha, or beta wave patterns, inclining an audience toward everything from alertness to passivity. Infrasound could be used tactically, as ELF waves endure for great distances; and it could be used in conjunction with media broadcasts as well."

So, the human brain can be aligned to infrasound through media broadcasts. Was that technology used on Manuel Noriega when he was forced to surrender in Panama under blaring radio broadcasts? And hadn't the Branch Davidians been subjected to loud music and chants for extended periods of time?

Another section of the Aquino report noted that "ionization of the air" could be used to control an individual's emotions. "An abundance of negative condensation nucleii (air ions) in ingested air enhances alertness and exhilaration, while an excess of positive ions enhances drowsiness and depression. Calculation of a target audience's atmospheric environment will be correspondingly useful."

After his retirement from the Army, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Aquino, an ex-Green Beret, was later written up in the San Francisco Chronicle as the head of the Temple of Set, a satanic, devil-worshipping church. The November 1987 headlines read as follows: "Army Says Constitution Lets Satanist Hold Top-Secret Job," by reporters John Whittinger and Bill Wallace. The story went on to say that "the high priest of a San Francisco based satanic church is able to keep his top-secret security clearance because his activities are constitutionally protected, Army officials said yesterday. "Lieutenant Colonel Michael A. Aquino, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, is the founder and president of Temple of Set, a satanic church headquartered in Aquino's Russian Hill home ...

"Aquino, a psychological warfare officer who has worked in military intelligence, holds a top secret security clearance that allows him to handle information whose release would gravely damage U.S. security, according to Defense Department regulations.

"He maintains the clearance even though he has performed Nazi occult rites and has described himself as the `Anti-Christ' in literature published by the Temple of Set ..."

Temple of Set literature described a coming apocalypse in which only followers of Satan would be saved. Readers were encouraged to read such works as "Mein Kampf," "Hitler: The Occult Messiah," and "The Occult Roots of Nazism."

Aquino conducted occult rituals patterned on ceremonies performed by Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler in a German castle once used by the Nazi SS for black magic ceremonies during the Third Reich. Nazis considered the black arts and satanic worship part of an ancient Germanic tradition.

Aquino, in his book, "Crystal Tablet of Set," wrote that he performed the rituals to recreate an order of Knighthood for followers of Satan. He even encouraged his followers to study the beliefs of the Nazi terrorist group, the Vehm, the Thule Gesselschaft, and the Ahnenerbe, two fanatic rightwing Aryan groups that existed before and during Hitler's reign.

When the two reporters from the Chronicle inquired about Aquino's security clearances, Major Rixon declared that "to the best of his knowledge, there was no part of the liturgy of his church that caused any (security) problem." Aquino admitted to being involved in devil worship for 22 years.

Ted Gunderson's box contained reams of literature written by Aquino along with other documents pertaining to identical subject matter. It was no secret that Gunderson lectured on the subject of Satanism, as I learned from a July 1993 Colonel Bo Gritz newsletter which advertised Gunderson as a featured speaker on one of Gritz's national radio broadcasts.

But it was not the Satanic aspect of Aquino's writings that caused me to scrutinize his earlier writings for the Army. Shortly after the Waco incident in Texas, a secret "classified conference" was held at the Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico. Through a friend in Maine, I was able to obtain an official copy of the speaking agenda for the November 1993 conference and, oddly, the subject matter under discussion correlated with not only the original Aquino Army report, but also with the MKUltra behavior research underway during the 1950's and 1960's.

The title of the conference was "Non-Lethal Defense" and just a few of the speakers included such dignitaries as the Honorable U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno; Dr. Edward Teller who had helped develop the nuclear bomb; Dr. Milt Finger from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Mr. Andy Andrews, Non-Lethal Project Leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory; LTG William H. Forster from Army Research, Development and Acquisition; Dr. Clay Easterly from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Dr. Henry Brisker from U.S. Army Research Laboratories; Ms. Astrid Lewis from the U.S. Army Chemical Research & Development Command; Lt. General Richard G. Trefry, former Military Advisor to President George Bush; and many more.

The most noteworthy "non-lethal" technology presentations included the following: "High Power Microwave Technology" "Application of Extremely Low Frequency Electromagnetic Fields to Non-Lethal Weapons" "Voice Synthesis" "Incremental Aggression: Requirements for the Future" "Chemical/Biological Anti-Terrorism" "Biological Challenges" "Non-Lethal Research: Fracture & Dynamic Behavior, Biotechnology & Structural Ceramics, and many more.

Interestingly, the opening address was given by General E.C. Meyer (Ret.), former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army the very same General Meyer who had set up the Department of Defense conference in which Michael Riconosciuto had been the principal speaker from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. to a group of senior level national security research and development officials.

The objective and scope of the 1993 Los Alamos conference included exploring a non-lethal approach to apply force against not only wartime enemies (the Soviet Union had already fallen) but against "terrorists" and "international drug traffickers" as well. The introduction noted that the purpose of the conference was to bring together "industry, government, and academia to explore the potential of non-lethal defense and identify requirements so that the defense community can work together in leveraging the non-lethal concept."

"Industry [law enforcement], particularly, will benefit from a more precise understanding of requirements and operational constraints regarding non-lethal defense technologies," noted the conference's sponsors, The American Defense Preparedness Association.

Additionally, non-lethal defense was described as "an emerging technological option being developed conceptually with a sea of technical opportunity."

Based upon the technical presentations listed in the brochure, it didn't appear to me that such technology as acoustical, high power microwave, laser, ELF/RF weapons and "psychotronic" systems were particularly NEW in the field of military or intelligence applications. Obviously, what was occurring at this conference was the presentation of these formidable weapons to law enforcement for domestic (U.S.) applications.

In late November 1993, a letter came to my attention which discussed the abovementioned conference. The letter had been written to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno by a former CIA employee, Julianne McKinney, on letterhead stationary originating from the "Association of National Security Alumni, Electronic Surveillance Project, P.O. Box 13625, Silver Spring, Maryland 209113625."

Portions of the letter read as follows: " ... In December 1992, when `Microwave Harassment and Mind Control Experimentation' was published, U.S. Government representatives routinely took the position that directed energy technologies were nothing more than mere figments of physicists' imaginations, still on the drawing boards. Shortly following publication of this report, information concerning these technologies began to appear in such noteworthy organs as The Wall Street Journal, Defense News, Aviation Week & Space Technology, Tactical Technology, Defense Electronics and, most recently, The Washington Post.

"In a flurry of activity these past 10 months, directed energy based surveillance and antipersonnel systems have suddenly leaped off of physicists' drawing boards into the world of reality, thus obviating the criticism, it would appear, that the attached publication [Los Alamos conference brochure] concerns nonexistent technologies.

"Indeed, directed energy technologies appear to have evolved at such a rapid rate that they are now being promoted as the `Final Solution' to crime preliminarily, at a classified conference sponsored by the Los Alamos National Laboratory ..."

McKinney's concern focused primarily on future law enforcement application of "psychotronic" tools, or directed energy weapons technologies. "What, so far, has prevented this government and its contractors from testing these technologies on U.S. citizens under involuntary circumstances?," she asked.

The letter went on to outline various instances in which people had complained to her organization of alleged symptoms of directed energy technologies in such areas as the United States, England, Canada and Australia.

******

After reading "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate," I couldn't help wondering if Danny Casolaro had been subjected to some form of hypnosis.

Any such far-reaching scenarios were outside the boundaries of normal human experience, indeed no mainstream journalist would pursue such a theory. But, then Robert Booth Nichols, Michael Riconosciuto and the CIA were not within normal human experience. And, who would have believed, ten years ago, that the CIA would be investigated by Congress in 1996 for drug trafficking in Los Angeles?

At one point in time Danny had signed an agreement with Nichols in which Nichols was to give Danny a $25,000 loan against his home in Fairfax, Virginia. Nichols had offered to take Danny overseas to find the answers to his questions and Danny had needed the money to make the trip. Where had they planned to go? What possible motive could Nichols have had for enticing Danny to go overseas for several months?

During one of my conversations with Bobby Riconosciuto, she had mentioned a private installation at Alice Springs, Australia which Michael had visited with Nichols. The tour of the installation had upset Riconosciuto to such a degree that he had become ill and cut the trip short. Nichols later confirmed the trip, and recalled that Michael had indeed become anxious and ill, but would not discuss the purpose of the trip.

When I subsequently questioned Michael about the Australian installation, he first asked where I had learned of it? When I noted the information came from Bobby, he explained that the underground facility had been built during World War II to be used as a bomb shelter. It was capable of housing thousands of people and was completely self-contained.

I asked Riconosciuto if he had been inside the facility? He said he had, it was owned by a private corporation; inside was a city of sorts, containing sophisticated communications equipment, laboratory equipment and other items which he would not define. He chose not to discuss it further, but concurred that what he saw made him realize that it was time to terminate his relationship with Robert Booth Nichols.

Both men had confirmed to me that the Australian trip marked the end of their 20-year association. I later contacted a journalist in Alice Springs to gain more knowledge of the mysterious "installation." I was able to confirm that the installation existed, that it was leased by a private corporation, and that it was heavily guarded, but no one seemed to know what it was being used for.

******

On November 22, 1992, I received a call from Michael Riconosciuto. It was the first time I had spoken with him in nine months. The first thing he asked me was, "Did Bob Nichols threaten you?"

I explained to him that I had nothing to fear from Nichols as long as I didn't reveal the contents of the meeting. Michael pressed further.

"Did he attempt to destroy my credibility, or did the meeting pertain to HIS activities?"

"Well, essentially, I asked him questions specifically about what he was doing with his corporation in Japan and overseas ..."

Mike knew I was referring to the genetic engineering project. Michael interjected, "That is so heavy. I've got a full paperwork trail on that."

I answered, "I have the paperwork trail on it."

Michael: "He didn't like that, did he?"

CM: "No, but after he knew I had information on it, he came right out and talked about it."

Michael: "Did he tell you what it was for?"

CM: "I think he did."

Michael: "Isn't that a `Dr. Strangelove tale'?"

CM: "Yes, I need to ask you some things ..."

Michael cut in. "Let's not talk about that over this phone."

Once again, Michael became evasive when confronted with the biological technology Nichols was involved in. This seemed to be one of the few subjects he refused to discuss over the phone.

His next question caused me some alarm. "Where did you send the metal cannister you found in my files in the desert?"

I replied, "I sent it out to have it analyzed. I haven't received the results yet ..."

Michael: "Oh, Jesus. Where ... If they don't know how to handle it ..."

I stammered, "... I haven't heard from them yet ..."

Michael took a deep breath. "Oh, God." Then silence.

I was alarmed. "What is it? Tell me the truth."

Michael seemed shaken. "It's a military concept where you can genetically engineer these biological agents ... you see, a specific penetration group can be immunized, and everybody else dies. Now, whoever you sent that to, if they're not set up ... if they're not a class4 facility, they better call someone who can handle it and get rid of it ..." Mike stopped abruptly. "Has anyone opened or touched the cannister?"

I responded that it had not been opened. He drew another deep breath and seemed to relax somewhat. "Alright, it's not your problem anymore. As long as it's off your property."

END.