Martin Cannon Part 5 "The Controllers"

For example, a sideshow of the famous Bentwaters UFO case involves the abduction of an airman named Larry Warren to an underground cavity beneath the military base. There, while in what he later described as "a bit of a drugged state," he saw aliens and human beings -- military figures - - working side-by-side[134].

I have spoken to another abductee, Nancy Wright, who was allegedly taken to an underground chamber ten miles north of Edwards AFB, California. As this was a multiple- witness event, and Ms. Wright has not attempted to capitalize on the story for financial gain, I tend to credit her story[135]. According to abduction researcher Miranda Parks, an elderly couple living in the vicinity was also abducted in an exactly similar fashion[136].

In 1979, Paul Bennewitz and Leo Sprinkle researched a particularly controversial abduction involving a young woman (name unrevealed) who was apparently taken to a facility where aliens processed fluids and body parts from a cattle mutilation. This investigation seems to have led to the government harassment of Bennewitz, in which some form of mind control (or, as I have previously referred to it, "electronic GASLIGHT") may have played a part[137].

How do we account for these tales of alleged alien skullduggery carried out in conjunction with the military? I, for one, cannot credit the generally unsubstantiated tales of "cosmic conspiracy" now promulgated by ex- intelligence agents such as John Lear and William Cooper. While I cannot assert insincerity on the part of these men, I often wonder if they have been used as conduits -- witting or unwitting -- in a sophisticated disinformation scheme.

A simpler, though no less chilling, explanation for the "base" abductions may be found in the story of Dr. Louis Jolyon West, now notorious for his participation in MKULTRA experiments with LSD[138]. Inspired by VIOLENCE AND THE BRAIN (a book by Drs. Frank Ervin and Vernon H. Mark which ascribed inner city turmoil to a "genetic defect" within rebellious blacks), West proposed, in 1973, a Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, where potentially violent individuals could be dealt with prophylactically. ["I was cured, all right." - A CLOCKWORK ORANGE -jpg]

And who were these individuals? According to West's proposal, the noteworthy factors indicating a violent predisposition were "sex (male), age (youthful), ethnicity (black) and urbanicity." How to deal with them? "...by implanting tiny electrodes deep within the brain, electrical activity can be followed in areas that cannot be measured from the surface of the scalp...it is even possible to record bioelectrical changes in the brains of freely-moving subjects, through the use of remote monitoring techniques..." By monitoring the subjects' EEGs remotely, potentially violent episodes could be identified.

For our purposes, the most significant aspect of this proposal had to do with location. In a secret communication to Dr. J.M. Stubblebine, director of the California State Department of Health (fortunately, this missive was "leaked" to the public), West disclosed that he intended to house his Center in an abandoned Nike missile base, whose location was accessible yet relatively remote. "The site is securely fenced," West wrote. "Comparative studies could be carried out there, in an isolated but convenient location, of experimental model programs, for the alteration of undesirable behavior."[139]

One thing is certain: A CIA "spy-chiatrist" favored secret behavior control experimentation in a remote military installation. Perhaps someone within the espionage establishment's mind-modification divisions still thinks highly of the idea. If so, the disposal problem would once again rear its ugly head, should "visitors" to these installations ever reappear in outside society. Again, a hypno-programmed cover story -- the less believable, the better -- would prove invaluable.

Many books have been written about abductees, yet few exist about the victims of mind control. I cannot understand this situation; the reality of UFOs is still controversial, yet the existence of mind control was verified in two (heavily compromised) congressional investigations and in thousands of FOIA documents. Nevertheless, the abductees find many a sympathetic ear, while those few who dare to proclaim themselves the victims of known government programs rarely find anyone to hear them out. Our prejudices on this score are regrettable, for if we listened to the "controllees" we would hear many details strikingly similar to those mentioned by UFO abductees.

Koski, a Finnish citizen, claims to have been a victim of mind control experimentation while visiting Canada. Shortly after his experience began, he attempted to broadcast his situation to the world and draw attention to his plight. Few listened. Many of his details were bizarre, and not being a native speaker of English, he could not express himself convincingly to those he approached for help. Yet many aspects of his story correspond closely to known details of MKULTRA and related programs.

Naeslund, a Swedish citizen, tells a similar story. Moreover, his claims were backed by special evidence: X-rays revealed an implant in his brain. Naeslund actually went to the extreme of having his implant tested by electronic technicians employed by Hewlett-Packard. A Greek surgeon performed the necessary trepanation to remove the device.

Many aspects of the Koski and Naeslund stories correspond to my hypothesis. Koski, for example, was at one point told that the doctors afflicting him were actually "aliens from Sirius." At another point, he was led to believe that he was under direction of "the Lord." (As I previously indicated, manipulation of religious imagery could help induce anti-social behavior; the subject's super- ego can be nullified if he believes that he follows commands from on high. Such manipulation may explain the more bizarre aspects of Betty Andreasson Luca's abduction[140].)

This detail will be instantly familiar to anyone who has studied abductions; I have encountered it in my own conversations with abductees. For an excellent example in the UFO literature, I refer the reader to the case of Susan Ransted, as detailed in Kevin D. Randle's THE UFO CASEBOOK[141]; the background of alleged contactee Diane Tessman is also noteworthy in this regard[142]. Intriguingly, I have located a reference in the open literature to the use, in animal study, of nasally-implanted electrodes for the measurement of electro-magnetic radiation effects[143].

There are other claimed mind control victims bearing evidence of implants; note, especially, the fascinating case of James Petit, a CIA-connected pilot and alleged brainwashing alumnus; X-rays of his cranium have revealed abductee-style implants -- fitting, perhaps, since his body bears abductee-style scars. [144] Conversely, certain abductees will, if allowed a thorough and sympathetic hearing, deliver testimony strongly agreeing with Koski's narrative.

The bizarre story of Rex Niles and his sister (not named in news accounts) may shed interesting light on a variety of abductee cases, particularly that of Betty and Barney Hill[145]. Niles, the high-rolling owner of a Woodland Hills defense subcontracting firm (Rex Rep) was fingered by authorities investigating defense industry kickbacks. He became an extraordinarily cooperative witness in the investigation -- until he was targeted by his enemies, who allegedly used psychoelectronics as harassment.

He [Niles] produced testimony from his sister, a Simi Valley woman who swears that helicopters have repeatedly circled her home. An engineer measured 250 watts of microwaves in the atmosphere outside Niles' house and found a RADIOACTIVE DISK UNDERNEATH THE DASH OF HIS CAR [my italics].

No aliens in this story -- yet how similar it is to tales of alien abduction! The low-flying helicopters, of course, are frequently reported by abduction victims -- the Betty Andreasson Luca case provides the best-known example[146]. The haywire electronics equipment is also frequently encountered in putative abduction cases; I have spoken (independently) to three women who claimed to have been able to disturb or shut off televisions and stereos simply by walking past the devices; one woman even claimed she had switched off her TV simply by pointing at it.

But the radioactive disc is especially intriguing. As former FBI agent Ted Gunderson recently explained to my associate Alexander Constantine, magnetic radioactive discs have long been used by the clandestine services as cancer- inducing "silent killers" -- i.e., as tools of assassination. Not only that. The disc calls to mind one little-remembered detail of the Hill case -- the dozen-or- so circular "shiny spots," each the size of a silver dollar, found on the trunk of her car directly after the abduction. A compass needle reacted wildly when placed near these spots. Could they have marked the location where an electromagnetic or radioactive device, similar to that found by Niles, was placed on the car? (Such a device might have been held to the spot magnetically, hence the circular impressions.) If so, then the disorienting EMR could have helped induce the Hills' "UFO sighting."

Some time ago, I attended hypnotic regression sessions in which the subject -- a claimed UFO abductee -- recalled undergoing a mysterious "brain operation" at a veteran's hospital in California. The operation was performed by human beings, not aliens. Interestingly, this same hospital was mentioned in two other cases I encountered. These other claims were not made by abductees, but by people alleged to have been victims of mind control experimentation.

One of these claimants, a former Navy SEAL who undertook numerous dangerous missions in Vietnam, favorably impressed me with the wealth of detail in his story[147]. This individual -- I've taken to calling him "the trained SEAL"-- had received specialized combat training at a military base in California; he claims that at one point during this training he was drugged, hypnotized, possibly placed under some form of electronic control, and subjected to the extremes of pain/pleasure operant conditioning. One peculiar detail of his story concerns the "reward" aspect of the conditioning: When properly acquiescent, he was given unlimited sexual access to a woman who, the SEAL avers, was herself the victim of brainwashing.

Unbelievable as this last claim may seem, I found it oddly resonant when I later interviewed a prominent abductee in the Southern California area, who bravely offered me details on a puzzling, albeit quite delicate, incident in her past. Still an attractive woman, she recalled for me -- indeed, seemed strangely compelled to describe -- an early love affair with a young soldier training at a military base near her home. She cannot recall the soldier's name. All she remembers is that one day he started LIVING AT HER FAMILY'S HOUSE; she has no memory of how the arrangement began, and her parents have never felt comfortable discussing the matter. Although unattracted to this soldier, she felt compelled to become intimate with him, adopting a pliant, obeisant attitude that was quite out of character for her. Later, the soldier went on to covert missions in Vietnam.

Of course, a young person's psycho-sexual development is never smooth, and the incident related above may merely have represented one peculiarly upsetting bump in that notoriously rough road. Still, some of the details of this story -- particularly the parents' attitude, the woman's personality shift, and her subsequent memory lapses -- are striking, and I treat with respect the abductee's intuition that this minor enigma in her personal history could, if properly understood, shed light on her later "missing time" experiences.

Could the "trained SEAL" have been right? Was there, IS there, a coterie of hypno-programmed soldiers conducting particularly hazardous missions? And do the programmers have at their disposal a "ladies' auxiliary," so to speak, of hypnotized camp followers?

If the SEAL's story stood alone, skeptics could easily dismiss it (provided they did not sit, as I did, face-to- face with the story's teller, listening to all the grisly and unsettling details). But other veterans have added their voices to this grim tale. Daniel Sheehan, of the Christic Institute, claims that his organization has spoken to half-a-dozen individuals with narratives similar to my SEAL informant. All had received "processing," so to speak, within the context of standard military training; after programming and specialized combat instruction by mercenaries, the recruits were placed "on hold," to be used as situations arose -- and some of those situations occurred within the United States[148].

Walter Bowart began his own researches into mind control by placing an ad in SOLDIER-OF-FORTUNE-style publications, asking for correspondence from veterans who experienced inexplicable lapses in memory or strange behavior modification techniques while serving in Vietnam; he received over 100 replies. Bowart devoted an entire chapter to one of these respondents -- an Air Force veteran named David, who ended his four-year tour of duty recalling only that he had spent the time "having fun, skin diving, laying on the beach, collecting shells...It never dawned on me until later that I must have DONE something while I was in the service." (An obvious example of screen memory.) He was also "assigned" a girlfriend whose name he cannot now recall, despite the length and deep intimacy of the affair[149]. The parallels to the SEAL's story and the abductee's account should be obvious.

We even have a confession, of sorts, from a scientist who specialized in one aspect of this sort of training. Lt. Commander Thomas Narut, of the U.S. Naval Hospital at the NATO headquarters in Naples, Florida, admitted during a lecture in Oslo that recruits in Naples underwent CLOCKWORK- ORANGE-style behavior modification sessions. Trainees would be strapped into chairs with their eyelids clamped open while watching films of industrial accidents and African circumcision ceremonies -- films frequently used by psychologists as a means of inducing stress in experimental situations. Unlike the protagonist in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, who learned revulsion at the sight of violence, Narut's soldiers were taught to accept and enjoy bloodshed, to view it with equanimity. Similar techniques were used to dehumanize potential enemies. Graduates of this program became, in Narut's words, "hit men and assassins," to be placed in American embassies throughout the world.

When questioned by reporters about these claims, the American government denied the story; Narut -- after a long incommunicado period and apparent coercion -- later explained to journalists that he had merely spoken theoretically. If so, why did he originally describe the behavior modification procedure as an ongoing program?[150]

And while it may seem frivolous to return to the subject of abductions after examining such grim data, I should remind the reader of the many abduction accounts in which abductees recall being forced to watch certain stress- inducing motion pictures. The aliens, it seems, have learned a few lessons from Dr. Narut.

Narut, of course, concentrated on selective programming of individual American soldiers; on the other side of the mind control spectrum, Defense Department specialists have also concentrated on methods to render entire enemy battalions "combat ineffective." Electromagnetic weaponry, intended to wipe out the aggression of the enemy, is the province of DARPA, under the direction of Dr. Jack Verona. These projects remain fairly mysterious; we do know, however, that one operation, SLEEPING BEAUTY, employed the services of Dr. Michael Persinger, a scientist who has expressed interesting views regarding UFOs.

Persinger discovered a method of using ELF waves to induce the brain's MAST cells to release histamine; should a battlefield commander wish to subject his enemy to mass bouts of vomiting, Persinger's trick could do the job even faster than a Tobe Hooper movie. The method works on animals. "The question," writes mind control researcher Larry Collins, "is how to get from point A to point B without violating one of the most rigorous commandments of Government ethics -- thou shalt not conduct experiments like that on human beings."[151]

Ethical factors involved in most research would preclude having positive results. Those ethical factors don't always hold with government research. THE RESEARCH WHICH HAS GIVEN REALLY POSITIVE RESULTS HAS NOT BEEN LIMITED BY ETHICAL CONSTRAINTS[152]. [my italics]

Hypnosis hard-liners of the Orne school would almost certainly dismiss the foregoing veterans' accounts of the use of hypnosis, drugs and behavioral conditioning on American fighting men. Why, the skeptics would ask, would anyone attempt to create a "Manchurian Candidate" when the military services, using entirely conventional means, can create a "Rambo"? There have always been recruits for even the most hazardous duties; what need of hypnosis?

The modern battlefield has little place for the traditional soldier. Advanced weaponry requires an increasing level of technical sophistication, which in turn requires a cool-headed operator. But the all-too-human combatant -- though capable of extraordinary acts of courage under the most stressful conditions imaginable -- does not possess inexhaustible reserves of SANG-FROID. Eventually, breakdowns will occur. Per-capita psychiatric casualties have increased dramatically in each successive American conflict. As Richard Gabriel, the excellent historian of the role of psychiatry in warfare, writes:

Modern warfare has become so lethal and so intense that only the already insane can endure it...Modern war requiring continuous combat will increase the degree of fatigue on the soldier to heretofore unknown levels. Physical fatigue -- especially the lack of sleep -- will increase the rate of psychiatric casualties enormously. Other factors -- high rates of indirect fire, night fighting, lack of food, constant stress, large numbers of casualties -- will ensure that the number of psychiatric casualties will reach disastrous proportions. And the number of casualties will overburden the medical structure to the point of collapse.

On the battlefields of the future we will witness a true clash of ignorant armies, armies ignorant of their own emotions and even of the reasons for which they fight. Soldiers on all sides will be reduced to fearless chemical automatons who fight simply because they can do nothing else...Once the chemical genie is out of the bottle, the full range of human mental and physical actions become targets for chemical control...Today it is already possible by chemical or electrical stimulation to increase the aggression levels of the human being by stimulating the amygdala, a section of the brain known to control aggression and rage. Such "human potential engineering" is already a partial reality and the necessary technical knowledge increases every day[154].

Gabriel writes primarily of large-scale battle scenarios, but based on his information, we can fairly deduce that the mind-controlled soldier will also play a role in the surgical strike, the covert operation, the infiltration behind enemy lines by units of the Special Forces. On such missions, United States personnel have increasingly relied on torture as a means of interrogation and intimidation[155], and as such barbarism becomes standard procedure the American fighting man of the future will need to find within himself unprecedented reserves of brutality. Will the average recruit, culled from the nation's suburbs and reared on traditional ideals, possess such reserves?

Vietnam proved that the soldier, despite a barrage of propaganda intended to cloud his discernment, will sense the difference between fighting for legitimate defense interests and fighting to protect political hegemony. To forestall this realization, or to render it irrelevant, military planners must withdraw the human combatant and replace him with a new species of warrior. The soldier of the future will not discern; he will merely do. He will not be a butcher; he will be the butcher's KNIFE -- a tool among tools, thoughtless and effective.

One primary goal of this program must include expanding the human capacity for stress and violence. Subjects enrolled in such experimental procedures will experience pain, and will learn to accept the pain. Eventually, they will learn to inflict it, without remorse or even remembrance. The nation who first creates this new soldier will possess a decisive advantage on the "conventional" battlefield -- as will the nation which first develops a means of using mass mind control techniques to disable entire enemy platoons. [And to placate whole civilian populations, both those of the enemy and those at home. - jpg] This paramount military necessity is the reason why I will never believe any unconvincing reassurances that our nation's clandestine scientists have foregone or will forego research into behavior modification. This research will never be mere history. What's past is present, and today's covert experimentation will become tomorrow's basic training.

A prototype of the future warrior may already be with us. The Navy SEAL I interviewed spoke in horrifying detail of dismemberment without emotion, of rape as routine, of killing without affect. And then FORGETTING THAT HE HAD KILLED. Even years later, he could not recall the stories behind many of the wounds on his own body. He claims that whenever he would need the services of the veteran's hospital, doctors would re-hypnotize him shortly after his admission, while a physician specifically cleared for such work would examine his medical history, which was highly classified and kept under lock and key.

Press and public now regard abductees as tony curiosities, yet science, for the most part, still banishes their tales to the domain of the damned, as Charles Fort defined damnation. So too with claimed victims of mind control. The Voice of Authority tells us that MKULTRA belongs to history; like Hasdrubal and Hitler, it threatened once, but no more. Anyone insisting otherwise must be silenced by glib rationalization and selective inattention.

Yet these two topics -- UFO abductions and mind control -- have more in common than their mutual ostracization. The data overlap. If we could chart these phenomena on a Venn diagram, we would see a surprisingly large intersection between the two circles of information. It is this overlap I seek to address.

Note, however, that I can NOT address all the other interesting and important issues raised by the UFO abduction experience. For example, I have written, admittedly rather vaguely, of nasal implants reported by abductees -- the sort of detail which might place an account in the "high strangeness" category, and of course, a detail central to my thesis. But what percentage of the percipients speak of such implants? A truly scientific analysis would provide a figure. Unfortunately, I haven't the resources to compile a sufficiently large abductee sample from which one could draw statistics. Nor can I make an over-arching qualitative analysis, measuring the value of "high strangeness" reports against other abductee claims. All I can do is note the available literature, and leave the reader to wonder, as I do, whether the compilers of that literature concentrated on exceptional cases or were biased in favor of the less fantastic abductee accounts. I have supplemented readings of the abduction literature with my own interviews with percipients -- which, since abductees tend to know other abductees, can give a surprisingly wide view of the phenomenon. This view has been broadened still further by my talks and correspondence with other members of the UFO community.

Of course, we must recognize the difference between testimony and proof. No one can state definitively that abduction reports have a basis in objective reality (however misperceived). Ultimately, all we have are stories. Some of these stories may be of questionable veracity; others may be contaminated by investigator bias; many are insufficiently detailed. No one research paper can resolve all abduction controversies, and many necessary battles must be fought on other fields.

Still, the testimony won't go away -- and we certainly have enough to allow for comparisons. I maintain that an unprejudiced overview of abduction reports in the popular press and the less-familiar material on mind control will demonstrate a striking correlation. Once other abduction researchers have been educated Yin the ways of MKULTRA (and this paper is intended as an introductory text) they may note a similar pattern. If so, we can then begin to write a revisionist history of the phenomenon.

The abduction enigma contains within it sub-mysteries that slide into the mind control scenario with surprising ease, even elegance -- mysteries which fit the E.T. hypothesis as uncomfortably as a size 10 foot fits into a size 8 shoe. As we have seen, the MKULTRA thesis explains the reports of abductee intracerebral implants (particularly reports involving nosebleeds), unusual scars, "telepathic" communication (i.e., externally induced intracerebral voices) concurrent with or following the abduction encounter, allegations that some abductees hear unusual sound effects (similar to those created by the hemi-synch and cognate devices), haywire electronic devices in abductee homes, personality shifts, "training films," manipulation of religious imagery, and missing time. Needless to say, the thesis of clandestine government experimentation readily accounts for abductee claims of human beings "working" with the aliens, and for the government harassment that plays so prominent a role in certain abductee reports.