Mind control update Writing about something you don’t really understand, it’s easy to make bad early decisions. It’s like being self-taught on an instrument and acquiring bad habits. In this case I began by naming this subject ‘ELF’, extremely low frequency, which was about all I picked up from my initial reading of the torrent of documents which descended on me from Harlan Girard. Me being a scientific moron, you understand. Three years later, no less ignorant of basic science, it is now clear that there are at least four discrete issues involved here.
Murderous furniture?
The first is the question of the largely unexamined consequences of electromagnetic and microwave radiation, such as the accidental by-products of electricity pylons, electric blankets, VDU’s and other sources of electro-magnetic radiation. In this country we’re still at ‘Oh gee, do pylons do things to folks?’ stage. (1) The commercial pressures against the notion that routine electrical products might be making us ill can be imagined.
ELF
The second story is about the use of ELF and microwaves as weapons and mind control devices, carriers and enforcers of behavioural programmes. ‘Beam weapons’ conjours up images of those Star Wars animated films showing what U.S. laser beams, mounted on platforms in space, would do to the in-coming Soviet ICBM fleet. That was all a hi-tech scam of course, and never likely to work. The real ‘beam weapons’ being developed are anti-personnel and mind control devices. (2)
In the new, post Cold War climate, some curious alliances are being formed. The U.S. magazine Defense News, of January 11-17 1993, reported that Russian mind-control techniques — so-called acoustic psycho-correction — were being examined by U.S. personnel. ‘In an effort to restrict potential misuse (sic) of this capability, Russian senior research scientists, diplomats, military officers and officials of the Russian Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology Policy are beginning to provide limited demonstrations for their U.S. counterparts.’
The core technique is said to consist of ‘transmission of specific commands via static or white noise bands into the human subconscious without upsetting other intellectual functions.’ And with that entirely unconscious irony only the Americans seem capable of, the U.S. company presently evaluating these technologies is called Healthline Corp.
The McKinney Report
In that Defense News article there is not enough information about the Russian system to tell if ‘acoustic psycho-correction’ is simply their name for the kind of devices whose results are described in a 20-page report, Microwave Harassment and Mind-Control Experimentation by Julianne McKinney, published under the auspices of the Association of National Security Alumni. McKinney has compiled a digest of some of the known scientific research, some of the known military research, and a selection of the many allegations currently being made by ‘wavies’ — alleged victims of these techniques — in the United States.
The claims of ‘wavies’ are very difficult to deal with. Mostly they look impossible to verify; some are very hard to believe. McKinney writes in the introduction to her report that ‘Four months ago, when this Project commenced, we approached these complaints of government harassment and experimentation with an admitted “high degree of caution”. We are no longer skeptical. The growing numbers of independent complaints and the similarities between these complaints cannot be ignored.’
‘We are no longer sceptical.’ About what? I’m not sceptical in the general sense: anti-personnel and psychotronic devices are being used by state forces in the U.S. and the former USSR for sure; and probably also in Sweden and the U.K.. But I try to be sceptical with individual claims. This isn’t easy. What are the criteria involved here? McKinney is in danger of solving the problem of ‘Who do we believe?’ by declaring, in effect, ‘Everybody’. But as she pointed out in a letter to me, her report is ‘not meant to be a scholarly, definitive study. It is an alarum, intended to warn citizens of this country, as a minimum, of patterns of activity which point to resurgent mind-control experimentation and civil rights abuses.’
The first mind control disclaimer?
The U.S. Air Force is proposing to construct at the University of Pennsylvania an ‘Institute for Advanced Science and Technology’. In a ‘Draft Environmental Impact Statement’ the USAF issued about this — a kind of prospectus — dated February 1992, one paragraph begins ‘Sources of electromagnetic radiation……’, and concludes that ‘No Research would involve the impact of directed energy or radiation upon thought processes.’
This, as Harlan Girard points out, is the first mind control disclaimer!
And implants too
The third story is the issue of devices allegedly implanted in the human body, usually the head: ‘Man claims to have radio receiver in brain.’ Until recently I had seen no research which suggested this was either technically feasible or had been considered. But this research is now available. A Freedom of Information request by Jane Affleck produced a 1970 NASA report, Implantable Biotelemetry Systems, which describes the development of precisely the kind of devices claimed by the victims of this technology. In 1970 NASA were producing receivers the size of small coins: there are photographs of these things in this report. This means that we now cannot just dismiss out of hand people who claim to have had electronic devices implanted in their heads. Yes, I’m afraid so: the implants story is also going to turn out to be true.
It is getting very weird out there.
Non-lethality
On the other hand, all of the above could be considered as merely dimensions of the wider conception of so-called non-lethal weapons, the latest train to Pork Barrel County, now pulling out of Washington’s main station. This is discussed below by Armen Victorian.
Notes
- See, for example, ‘Scandanavian studies fuel cancer link fears’ in the Independent, 1 April 1993, for a recent example.
- In 1986/7 I was friendly with a laser researcher at Hull University. People in that field all knew the ‘Star Wars’ thing was bullshit but didn’t care because they were getting research money from the programme.