Frank Olson Murder

[Jan Klimkowski]

I did a little research and I suspect the drug was something to induce eidetic memory. My father was an electrical engineer and inventor. He had a very high IQ, about 190. But as far as I know he did not have the native eidetic memory. The goal would be to give the drug to a specialist then send him in to spy and he would not have to photograph or steal documents. He would remember every detail on the page and walk out empty handed.
I found reverences to other drugs also, but they never told him what the drug was. It could have been LSD, but I think he was there for a different test than Olson was.

"Eidetic" or "photographic" memory was most definitely an objective of covert "psychological" research.

Indeed, I'll go further. Interviews with a handful of veterans conducted both by a researcher I entirely trust, and myself, strongly suggest that a means of temporarily triggering eidetic memory in certain selected individuals has been operational for at least three decades.

In nature, eidetic memory is probably a consequence of a particular, unusual, wiring of synapses.

Like synaesthesia, eidetic memory occurs entirely naturally. Anecdotally, if intriguingly, the ratio of synaesthetes with eidetic memory is far higher than amongst the general, non-synaesthetic, population.

The broader point is that true eidetic memory is a "gift", not a learned skill.

The aim of the covert "mind control" programmes was to create (or trigger) a state of eidetic memory in their subject (asset) when it would be operationally useful.

If the deep black doctors succeeded, my speculative judgement is that they achieved their end through a manipulation of dissociative states via a combination of hypnosis and drugs. Having created the desired state (temporary eidetic memory) in the subject in "laboratory" conditions, they then implanted a post-hypnotic trigger which would enable the subject to be transported temporarily to a state of eidetic memory as and when required.

NB this would have been very hit and miss. I am near 100% certain that any creation of eidetic memory under "MK-ULTRA" type experiments did not involve synaptic manipulation.

In other words, we are not talking about highly advanced neurosurgery. Rather we are looking at a combination of the use of hypnosis, drugs and possibly trauma to transport the experimental subject to a particular mental state, and then the attempt to "capture" that state and make it repeatable. Ie triggerable.

For instance, one of our interviewees was a Special Forces veteran who, many years after the events, has "fuzzy" memories of missions deep behind enemy lines where he and his team would infiltrate an enemy command post. His distinct memories always stop when he enters the HQ "office" with records and files. His next memory is commonly of waking back at base, in a bed, with a shrink thanking him and telling him to take some R and R.

Following is some context for such testimony which I've posted elsewhere:

Hypnosis was extensively used, in combination with other methods, by the umbrella programmes known loosely as "MK-ULTRA".

Prof & Dr Louis "Jolyon" West, long time Director of the Neuropsychiatry Institute at UCLA and deep black shrink, said the following about his own human research into dissociative states.

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

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."

The available evidence strongly suggests that MK-ULTRA techniques frequently included the creation of post-hypnotic triggers. The precise way to trigger the behaviour originally implanted under hypnosis (and often trauma and/or narcosis), and the precise way to end the behaviour and trigger the subject out of their programmed behaviour and back to "normal" consciousness, would only be known to the programmer and their associates.

Anthony - I'm certain that eidetic memory research was conducted by intelligence agencies and their "sub-contractors" around the world. The CIA, NSA, DIA, ONI, miltary intelligence et al may even have had their own programmes.

If, as is commonly believed, Paisley was involved in the interrogation of high profile Soviet defectors Golitsyn, Nosenko and Penkovsky, then he would also probably have had knowledge of classified and top secret "truth serums".

LSD was originally considered by some psychologists as a direct route into the human subconscious. Individuals with malign intent were, and are, able to use LSD to disorient and traumatize people. However, despite its effect of apparentlly boosting one's perceptions and experiences, of opening the notorious doors of perception, LSD doesn't immediately strike me as the most promising candidate for a drug to induce temporary eidetic memory.