Convicted RFK assassin says girl manipulated him

[Jan Klimkowski]

Jan, I've seen it said that West had contact with Sirhan quite a few times over my years, but I've yet to find any actual documentation of it. Can you point me in the right direction?

Kyle - it's a fair question. Louis Jolyon West's visits to Sirhan Sirhan are frequently cited, so I've just reread Walter Bowart's intriguing chapter on the matter in the samizdat second edition of his Operation Mind Control. Bowart doesn't mention West as one of the shrinks there, but does give a much fuller account of the hypnosis sessions conducted by Dr Bernard L Diamond, also of UCLA.

West's prison visits to Jack Ruby and Patty "Tanya" Hearst are much better documented than any interactions with Sirhan Sirhan. If anyone can find a source - eg a contemporaneous newspaper account - that would be a valuable find.

There are claims on the internet that Diamond was also MK-ULTRA. Although his hypnotic sessions with Sirhan are provocative, I've yet to see any MK-ULTRA documentation naming Diamond.

That West was an MK-ULTRA mechanic is clear and demonstrated. I've posted excerpts from MK-ULTRA sub-project work by West elsewhere on DPF.

Eg from here:

For instance, Dr Louis Jolyon West was the Top Secret Contractor for MK-ULTRA Sub-project 43: "Studies of dissociated states" (1956).

The first page is stamped: "WARNING NOTICE: SENSITIVE INTELLIGENCE SOURCES AND METHODS INVOLVED". The first page includes the following words written by West:

"The literature concerning clinical entities ordinarily considered to constitute the dissociative reactions is fairly well limited to case-studies of patients with fugues, amnesia, somnambulisms, and multiple personalities.

"Unpublished studies by the writer have led him to a greatly expanded concept of dissociation. Dissociative phenomena are found in everyday life. Such manifestations include "highway hypnosis", states of "fascination" in flyers, hypnagogic and phantasy hallucinations, transient anaesthesias, and many other examples. These reactions have many features in common with a variety of clinical disorders including "sleep paralysis", trance states, Gilles de la Tourette's disease, latah, "Arctic hysteria", and a number of other disturbances in addition to the well-known dissociative reactions of the text-books.

"There is considerable experimental evidence pointing to the significant role played by dissociative mechanisms in the production of the various phenomena of hypnosis. In fact, hypnosis may be considered a pure-culture, laboratory controlled dissociative reaction. Of the entire phenomenology of the various states described above, there is not one single manifestation which cannot be produced experimentally in the hypnotic subject. Thus, through the use of hypnosis as a laboratory device, the dissociative mechanisms can be studied with a high degree of objectivity."

(quoted on p107, Ross, "The CIA Doctors")

One can guess at what MK-ULTRA doctor, West, is referring to by his "unpublished studies". It is also revealing that West states emphatically, in 1956, that "of the entire phenomenology of the various states described above, there is not one single manifestation which cannot be produced experimentally in the hypnotic subject".