RFK Must Die by O'Sullivan the film

[Jan Klimkowski]

My own long held hypothesis is that Sirhan Sirhan was a Manchurian Patsy.

The hypnotic programming work of Prof George Estabrooks serves as a model for this hypothesis.

Sirhan was highly hypnotisable, and thus a perfect subject for the use of MK-ULTRA techniques. The Rosicrucians may have been involved as a cutout.

Sirhan's Palestinian background made him ideal patsy material.

Here's an excerpt from Jim DiEugenio's review of "Who Killed Bobby?", by Shane O'Sullivan", at CTKA, outlining some of what we know about Sirhan and hypnosis.

For instance, in Chapter Four, (Shane O'Sullivan) he does a good job in tracing a biography of Sirhan from his childhood until just a few days before the shooting of RFK. The main sources he uses here are the relatively unused book by Godfrey Jansen, Why Robert Kennedy Was Killed, the work of Robert Blair Kaiser, the LAPD Summary Report, and statements from Sirhan's trial. This allows him to fill in the tragic background of Sirhan's family: his older brother was run over and killed by a British army tank in 1946, and his beloved sister Ayda died in February of 1965. He also clarifies that although technically Sirhan was a Jordanian, he referred to himself as a Palestinian Arab. Yet, he was not a Moslem. He attended a Greek Orthodox Church. (p. 86)

His interest in horses and racing seemed to peak after his sister died. And it is at his job as an exercise boy, where he met a man named Tom Rathke. Rathke is a character who, I believe, no one has done enough work on, including O'Sullivan. The reason he is important in the saga of Sirhan is that he is the guy who interests him in what Sirhan called AMORC. This is an acronym for Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross, or simply the Rosicrucians. This is a rather odd religious cult that has a strong mystical strain to it. And this is where Sirhan first began to delve into the area of the occult and mind control exercises. (In the first, and much better, edition of RFK Must Die!, Kaiser described some interesting aspects of the relationship between Sirhan and Rathke.) After his serious accident on horseback in September of 1966, his interest in AMORC heightened and he seemed to undergo a personality change. His activities from December of 1966 to September of 1967 are rather sketchy. But it appears that at this time period, late 1966, he was hypnotized by a stage hypnotist named Richard St. Charles at a Pasadena nightclub near his house. He got on his mailing list. St. Charles wrote notes on some of his subjects. He noted that Sirhan was an excellent subject for hypnosis. But even more intriguingly, he wrote that he had definitely been hypnotized previously. (p. 382) By Rathke perhaps? This whole episode, and time periodfirst described by authors Bill Turner and Jonn Christian in their classic book on the caseliterally cries out for more investigation. The late Larry Teeter felt that this may have been how Bryan first discovered Sirhan.

The other interest that heightened in Sirhan at this time was the cause of Palestine. (p. 92) And the author notes that both Dr. Simson Kallas and Dr. Herbert Spiegel both believe that Bryan, or whoever hypnotized Sirhan, probably used the Arab-Israeli conflict as part of the process. (pgs 385,390) As most hypnotists or psychiatrists in the field will tell you, to get someone like Sirhanwho had no criminal or violent pastto do what he did, there had to be an intermediate (and false) step undertaken in the induction process. That is, Sirhan had to be made to believe something to motivate his uncharacteristic violent behavior. This programming technique was well revealed in the famous and well-chronicled Danish case of Palle Hardrup and Bjorn Nielson. Kaiser introduced this forensically documented incident into the literature at the end of the first edition of RFK Must Die! And Turner and Christian filled it out more in their 1978 book. Nielson hypnotized his mild mannered friend Hardrup into performing violent bank robberies by telling him that the money would be used for a higher political goal, namely uniting all of Scandinavia under one government. After Hardrup was apprehended during a robbery, the psychiatrist assigned the case looked into his past and could not reconcile his character with the violent, criminal acts: Hardrup had actually shot two people. After extensive interviews, he found out about Hardrup's false friend Nielson and his hobby of hypnosis. He then put Hardrup under and essentially deprogrammed him. In the process he discovered how Nielson had used him against his will. At Hardrup's trial, this evidence was entered into the record. Hardrup was exonerated. Nielson was convicted. Many people who study the RFK case believe that the visual pattern used to trigger Sirhan' trance was the girl's Polka Dot Dress. The visual trigger device Nielson used was the letter "x". (See RFK Must Die!, 1970 edition, pgs 288-289. ) As I said, none of this is new, but O'Sullivan does a nice and complete job with all of the above.

In 1971, Rhodes Scholar and MK-ULTRA doctor George Estabrooks talked about his creation and operational use of hypnotic couriers in WW2.

These techniques are similar to those used in the notorious case of Candy Jones.

Estabrooks is essentially preparing his subject by placing them in deep hypnosis and programming a task - eg you must travel to location X. He then implants a hypnotic trigger, a simple means of inducing hypnosis in the subject. When the trigger is used, the subject immediately attempts to complete the task with no rational or conscious knowledge of why he is attempting to travel to location X.

It is absolutely the case that the hypnotic trigger could be a pattern, such as polka dots.

"HYPNOSIS COMES OF AGE" by G. H. Estabrooks, PH.D.

Science Digest April, 1971, pp. 44 - 50

Abstract:
This psychologist reminisces about his long career as a hypnotist: how he "programmed" American spies with hypnosis: how he helped businessmen and students with his skills.

Dr. Estabrooks is a Rhodes Scholar. He took his Doctorate at Harvard ('26), and has authored many articles and books on clinical hypnosis and human behavior.
This excerpt details Dr. Estabrooks work with Military intelligence during and after WWII.

....One of the most fascinating but dangerous applications of hypnosis is its use in military intelligence. This is a field with which I am familiar though formulating guide lines for the techniques used by the United States in two world wars.

Communication in war is always a headache. Codes can be broken. A professional spy may or may not stay bought. Your own man may have unquestionable loyalty, but his judgment is always open to question.

The "hypnotic courier," on the other hand, provides a unique solution. I was involved in preparing many subjects for this work during World War II. One successful case involved an Army Service Corps Captain whom we''l call George Smith.

Captain Smith had undergone months of training. He was an excellent subject but did not realize it. I had removed from him, by post-hypnotic suggestion, all recollection of ever having been hypnotized.

First I had the Service Corps call the captain to Washington and tell him they needed a report of the mechanical equipment of Division X headquartered in Tokyo. Smith was ordered to leave by jet next morning, pick up the report and return at once. Consciously, that was all he knew, and it was the story he gave to his wife and friends.

Then I put him under deep hypnosis, and gave him -- orally -- a vital message to be delivered directly on his arrival in Japan to a certain colonel -- let's say his name was Brown -- of military intelligence. Outside of myself, Colonel Brown was the only person who could hypnotize Captain Smith. This is "locking." I performed it by saying to the hypnotized Captain: "Until further orders from me, only Colonel Brown and I can hypnotize you. We will use a signal phrase 'the moon is clear.' Whenever you hear this phrase from Brown or myself you will pass instantly into deep hypnosis." When Captain Smith re-awakened, he had no conscious memory or what happened in trance. All that he was aware of was that he must head for Tokyo to pick up a division report.

On arrival there, Smith reported to Brown, who hypnotized him with the signal phrase. Under hypnosis, Smith delivered my message and received one to bring back. Awakened, he was given the division report and returned home by jet. There I hypnotized him once more with the signal phrase, and he spieled off Brown's answer that had been dutifully tucked away in his unconscious mind.

The system is virtually foolproof. As exemplified by this case, the information was "locked" in Smith's unconscious for retrieval by the only two people who knew the combination. The subject had no conscious memory of what happened, so could not spill the beans. No one else could hypnotize him even iv they might know the signal phrase.

Not all applications of hypnotism to military intelligence are a tidy as that. Perhaps you have read _The Three Faces of Eve.__ The book was based on a case reported in 1905 by Dr. Morton Prince of Massachusetts general Hospital and Harvard. he startled everyone in the field by announcing that he had cured a woman named Beauchamp of a split personality problem. Using post-hypnotic suggestion to submerge an incompatible, childlike facet of the patient, he'd been able to make two other sides of Mrs. Beauchamp compatible, and lump them together in a single cohesive personality. Clinical hypnotists throughout the world jumped on the multiple personality bandwagon as a fascinating frontier. By the 1920's, not only had they learned to apply post-hypnotic suggestion to deal with this weird problem, but also had learned how to split certain complex individuals into multiple personalities like Jeckyl-Hydes.

The potential for military intelligence has been nightmarish. During World War II, I worked this technique with a vulnerable Marine lieutenant I'll call Jones. Under the watchful eye of Marine Intelligence I spilt his personality into Jones A and Jones B. Jones A, once a "normal" working Marine, became entirely different. He talked communist doctrine and meant it. He was welcomed enthusiastically by communist cells, was deliberately given a dishonorable discharge by the Corps (which was in on the plot) and became a car-carrying party member.

The joker was Jones B, the second personality, formerly apparent in the conscious Marine. Under hypnosis, this Jones had been carefully coached by suggestion. Jones B was the deeper personality, knew all the thoughts of Jones A, was a loyal American, and was "imprinted" to say nothing during conscious phases.

All I had to do was hypnotize the whole man, get in touch with Jones B, the loyal American, and I had a pipeline straight into the Communist camp. It worked beautifully for months with this subject, but the technique backfired. While there was no way for an enemy to expose Jones' dual personality, they suspected it and played the same trick on us later.

The use of "waking hypnosis" in counter intelligence during World War II occasionally became so involved that it taxed even my credulity. Among the most complicated ploys used was the practice of sending perfectly normal, wide awake agent into enemy camp, after he'd been carefully coached in waking hypnosis to _act_ the part of a potential hypnotism subject. Trained in auto-suggestion, or self-hypnosis, such a subject can pass every test used to spot a hypnotized person. Using it, he can control the rate of his heartbeat, anesthetize himself to a degree against pain of electric shock or torture.

In the case of an officer we'll call Cox, this carefully prepared counterspy was given a title to indicate he had access to top priority information. He was planted in an international cafe in a border country where it was certain there would be enemy agents. He talked too much, drank a lot, made friends with local girls, and pretended a childish interest in hypnotism. The hope was that he would blunder into a situation where enemy agents would kidnap him and try to hypnotize him, in order to extract information from him.

Cox worked so well that they fell for the trick. he never allowed himself to be hypnotized during seances. While pretending to be a hypnotized subject of the foe, he was gathering and feeding back information.

Eventually, Cox did get caught, when he was followed to an information "drop." And this international group plays rough. The enemy offered him a "ride" at gunpoint. There were four men in the vehicle. Cox watched for a chance, and found it when the car skirted a ravine. he leaped for the wheel, twisted it, and over the edge they went. Two of his guards were killed in the crash. In the ensuing scramble, he got hold of another man's gun, liquidated the remaining two, then hobbled across the border with nothing worse than a broken leg.

Then there's the research into dissociative states from fellow MK-ULTRA doctor, Louis Jolyon West.

The issue with the False Memory Syndrome Foundation is not whether some memories are "false". Of course some memories do not represent a true, or entirely accurate, account of past events.

The issue is rather that the FMSF was set up in 1992, precisely when many victims of covert "mind control" programmes such as MK-ULTRA were remembering horrible experiments that had been perpetrated on them - often as children.

The scientists involved in these covert "mind control" programmes knew the principles of creating dissociative states and false memories through narco-hypnosis. They also had access to the raw materials - chemical and human - needed.

It's important to state, on the historical record, that much of the focus of Bluebird/Artichoke/MK-ULTRA research was directed towards the creation of dissociative states in order to be able to manipulate them (for whatever precise purposes an operation demanded).

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".

And the author of this TOP SECRET memo about MK-ULTRA research that he has conducted on humans is the very same Louis Jolyon West who became a key member of the board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in 1992.

So, in 1956, Jolly West is saying that he can reproduce all these hypnotic and dissociative states in MK-ULTRA test subjects.

As most DPF members know, West is the ubiquitous "medical expert" involved in cases such as Jack Ruby, Patty Hearst, Timothy McVeigh, and allegedly Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan.

In my considered judgement, the MK-ULTRA shrinks did not create Manchurian Assassins.

The actual killshot was left to professional killers.

The MK-ULTRA doctors created Manchurian Patsies, manufactured to be in the right place at the right time and take the rap, whilst the real assassins fled the scene, and the true sponsors rubbed their hands in glee.