04-08-2012, 11:22 PM
This is a reprint of an Amazon review, but it's a particularly eye-opening one. On the Amazon page for the book THE CIA DOCTORS, by Colin A. Ross, there was a review posted by Cheri Montagu, and she seems to know her stuff. Her comments helped join the dots on a few things I hadn't quite pieced together. Everyone here should be aware of the likely contemporary uses for the procedures described below (some of which I'm sure are unrelated to the War on Terror, but which are closely linked to the need to bring about a more repressive police state in the US). Someone needs to cover this subject in detail without being squeamish about investigating the deeper conspiratorial activities of the US government and its intelligence agencies.
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HOW TO CREATE A TERRORIST
The stated aim of THE CIA DOCTORS by Colin Ross is an excellent and much-needed one: "to prove that the Manchurian candidate is fact, not fiction..." and that "the creation of controlled disassociation was a major goal of mind control research." (p. 10) As he says, he is not a conspiracy theorist and had no axe to grind against the CIA: his concern is that his fellow psychiatrists, including some of the most prestigious individuals and institutions in the country, have violated and are violating their Hippocratic oath by their participation in such experiments. There is however one major problem with the book. It was originally written in 2000, and although Dr. Ross revised it in 2006, he did not add any new material to speak of. Thus the connection between the experiments carried out by the CIA during the Cold War and the treatment of detainees in the so-called "War on Terror" is not made explicit, as it is in Alfred McCoy's A QUESTION OF TORTURE. Yet the similarity between the way that "Manchurian candidates" were created during the Cold War and the way that terrorist suspects are being treated today is alarming.
Take for example, Mohammed Al Qahtani, one of the "Guantánamo Six" on trial for his life under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Mr. Al Qahtani is one of the few terrorist suspects who have been permitted civilian lawyers, in this case from the progressive Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). A CCR information paper on Al Qahtani lists the abuses to which he has been subjected, in a manner which is at times confusing. For instance, he is described as being subjected to "forcible administration of numerous IVs during interrogation." Is it really possible that his captors thought that Al Qahtani would be severely affected by merely being poked repeatedly with hypodermic needles? Having myself been a victim of forced drugging and drug-induced torture, I could not help but wonder when I read this, "what was in those hypodermic needles?" One passage in THE CIA DOCTORS was invaluable in answering that question. It concerns "interrogations" (I shall put this word in quotes whenever the aim does not appear to be the acquisition of intelligence) of various individuals under the CIA program ARTICHOKE. During these so-called interrogations, subjects were given unspecified chemicals intravenously. Then, to quote a CIA document, "1. A false memory was introduced into the subject's mind without his concious control of the process, which took 15 to 20 minutes. 2 The procedure was repeated, this time taking 40 to 45 minutes. 3. The procedure was repeated again with interrogation added."
The possibility that Al Qahtani may have been subjected to the same regime is reinforced by the fact that both the ARTICHOKE victims and Al Qahtani were subjected to repeated strip searches, extreme solitary confinement, sleep and food deprivation, and exposure to severe cold. Abuses up to and including torture have a definite role to play in the creation of a new identity, whether that of a "Manchurian candidate" or a terrorist. That is to say, they are part of the process of DEPATTERNING. As Ross says, in the first phase of the creation of a new personality the subject is depatterned, which means reducing him to a vegetable state through a combination of massive amounts of electroconvulsive shocks, drug-induced sleep and sensory isolation and deprivation. When fully depatterned, patients are incontinent of urine and feces, unable to feed themselves, and unable to state their name, age, location, or the current date. (p. 124). As O'Brien says to Winston in the novel 1984, "We will empty you and fill you with ourselves." It is after this depatterning that the narco-hypnotic process begins, and the subject acquires a new identity and memory. The new identity could make subjects actually commit violent crimes which they had no inclination for, as well as confessing to crimes they did not commit. For instance, one woman subject of CIA experimentation who was afraid of firearms was induced to shoot another subject with a gun she believed was loaded. Others were able to set off time-bombs at the mere mention of a particular code-word. (pp. 46-47)
Of course, the fact that the subject has acquired a new identity has to be hidden from the subject himself or herself. One of the most puzzling thing to anyone who has done research on CIA abuses is why an agency ostensibly devoted to acquiring intelligence would be interested in procedures, such as electroconvulsive treatment (ECT), which are notorious for producing amnesia. Ross provide an explanation by quoting another CIA document: "Quite often amnesia occurs for events just prior to the convulsion, during the convulsion, and during the post-siezure period. It is possible that hypnosis or hypnotic activity induced during the post-siezure state may be lost in amnesia. This would be very valuable." Interrogation, including torture, was often conducted after the experiments, simply to determine if the amnesia surrounding the implanted memory could be breached. (p. 49) In other words, our government might be taking completely innocent individuals, reducing them to a vegetable state through torture, giving them a new identity as a terrorist by means of narco-hypnosis, and then torturing them again in order to see if they have sufficient belief in the new identity to confess, not just to their torturers but when they are trotted out before the public. Someone like Al Qahtani would have no recollection of the introduction of a false memory through chemicals and hypnosis any more than the subjects of ARTICHOKE did. Victims of ARTICHOKE methods believed that the memories implanted in their minds were true to the extent that they could pass a lie-detector test regarding them. (pp. 38-42).
As Alfred McCoy has stated, these CIA methods have "metastasized" to other segments of our government, for instance the military which controls Guantánamo. Given this fact, and the similarity of the treatment meted out to suspects in the "War on Terror" to those subjected to CIA experiments, it is easy to see why the Guantanamo Six are to be tried by military commissions which ignore all established rules of due process. If they were to be tried by a normal civilian court, their testimony would have to be dismissed, not simply because they have been tortured but because they have been subjected to what the CIA calls PSYWAR. Whereas traditional methods of interrogation, whether they use torture or not, aim at the discovery of truth, PSYWAR aims at the creation of falsehood-- false confessions, false personalities, false attribution of violent events (such as 9/11). To the inhumanity of torture it adds the supreme indignity of robbing the individual of his or her own free will. Men like Al Qahtani are victims of trauma beyond what most of us can imagine and unfit to stand trial before any court. They have been psychologically maimed to the extent that we will never know the truth. And these six have undoubtedly been chosen because they are the ones with whom PSYWAR has been the most successful. What indescribable horrors are being inflicted upon those who are still holding out against it?
.........................................
HOW TO CREATE A TERRORIST
The stated aim of THE CIA DOCTORS by Colin Ross is an excellent and much-needed one: "to prove that the Manchurian candidate is fact, not fiction..." and that "the creation of controlled disassociation was a major goal of mind control research." (p. 10) As he says, he is not a conspiracy theorist and had no axe to grind against the CIA: his concern is that his fellow psychiatrists, including some of the most prestigious individuals and institutions in the country, have violated and are violating their Hippocratic oath by their participation in such experiments. There is however one major problem with the book. It was originally written in 2000, and although Dr. Ross revised it in 2006, he did not add any new material to speak of. Thus the connection between the experiments carried out by the CIA during the Cold War and the treatment of detainees in the so-called "War on Terror" is not made explicit, as it is in Alfred McCoy's A QUESTION OF TORTURE. Yet the similarity between the way that "Manchurian candidates" were created during the Cold War and the way that terrorist suspects are being treated today is alarming.
Take for example, Mohammed Al Qahtani, one of the "Guantánamo Six" on trial for his life under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Mr. Al Qahtani is one of the few terrorist suspects who have been permitted civilian lawyers, in this case from the progressive Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). A CCR information paper on Al Qahtani lists the abuses to which he has been subjected, in a manner which is at times confusing. For instance, he is described as being subjected to "forcible administration of numerous IVs during interrogation." Is it really possible that his captors thought that Al Qahtani would be severely affected by merely being poked repeatedly with hypodermic needles? Having myself been a victim of forced drugging and drug-induced torture, I could not help but wonder when I read this, "what was in those hypodermic needles?" One passage in THE CIA DOCTORS was invaluable in answering that question. It concerns "interrogations" (I shall put this word in quotes whenever the aim does not appear to be the acquisition of intelligence) of various individuals under the CIA program ARTICHOKE. During these so-called interrogations, subjects were given unspecified chemicals intravenously. Then, to quote a CIA document, "1. A false memory was introduced into the subject's mind without his concious control of the process, which took 15 to 20 minutes. 2 The procedure was repeated, this time taking 40 to 45 minutes. 3. The procedure was repeated again with interrogation added."
The possibility that Al Qahtani may have been subjected to the same regime is reinforced by the fact that both the ARTICHOKE victims and Al Qahtani were subjected to repeated strip searches, extreme solitary confinement, sleep and food deprivation, and exposure to severe cold. Abuses up to and including torture have a definite role to play in the creation of a new identity, whether that of a "Manchurian candidate" or a terrorist. That is to say, they are part of the process of DEPATTERNING. As Ross says, in the first phase of the creation of a new personality the subject is depatterned, which means reducing him to a vegetable state through a combination of massive amounts of electroconvulsive shocks, drug-induced sleep and sensory isolation and deprivation. When fully depatterned, patients are incontinent of urine and feces, unable to feed themselves, and unable to state their name, age, location, or the current date. (p. 124). As O'Brien says to Winston in the novel 1984, "We will empty you and fill you with ourselves." It is after this depatterning that the narco-hypnotic process begins, and the subject acquires a new identity and memory. The new identity could make subjects actually commit violent crimes which they had no inclination for, as well as confessing to crimes they did not commit. For instance, one woman subject of CIA experimentation who was afraid of firearms was induced to shoot another subject with a gun she believed was loaded. Others were able to set off time-bombs at the mere mention of a particular code-word. (pp. 46-47)
Of course, the fact that the subject has acquired a new identity has to be hidden from the subject himself or herself. One of the most puzzling thing to anyone who has done research on CIA abuses is why an agency ostensibly devoted to acquiring intelligence would be interested in procedures, such as electroconvulsive treatment (ECT), which are notorious for producing amnesia. Ross provide an explanation by quoting another CIA document: "Quite often amnesia occurs for events just prior to the convulsion, during the convulsion, and during the post-siezure period. It is possible that hypnosis or hypnotic activity induced during the post-siezure state may be lost in amnesia. This would be very valuable." Interrogation, including torture, was often conducted after the experiments, simply to determine if the amnesia surrounding the implanted memory could be breached. (p. 49) In other words, our government might be taking completely innocent individuals, reducing them to a vegetable state through torture, giving them a new identity as a terrorist by means of narco-hypnosis, and then torturing them again in order to see if they have sufficient belief in the new identity to confess, not just to their torturers but when they are trotted out before the public. Someone like Al Qahtani would have no recollection of the introduction of a false memory through chemicals and hypnosis any more than the subjects of ARTICHOKE did. Victims of ARTICHOKE methods believed that the memories implanted in their minds were true to the extent that they could pass a lie-detector test regarding them. (pp. 38-42).
As Alfred McCoy has stated, these CIA methods have "metastasized" to other segments of our government, for instance the military which controls Guantánamo. Given this fact, and the similarity of the treatment meted out to suspects in the "War on Terror" to those subjected to CIA experiments, it is easy to see why the Guantanamo Six are to be tried by military commissions which ignore all established rules of due process. If they were to be tried by a normal civilian court, their testimony would have to be dismissed, not simply because they have been tortured but because they have been subjected to what the CIA calls PSYWAR. Whereas traditional methods of interrogation, whether they use torture or not, aim at the discovery of truth, PSYWAR aims at the creation of falsehood-- false confessions, false personalities, false attribution of violent events (such as 9/11). To the inhumanity of torture it adds the supreme indignity of robbing the individual of his or her own free will. Men like Al Qahtani are victims of trauma beyond what most of us can imagine and unfit to stand trial before any court. They have been psychologically maimed to the extent that we will never know the truth. And these six have undoubtedly been chosen because they are the ones with whom PSYWAR has been the most successful. What indescribable horrors are being inflicted upon those who are still holding out against it?
