Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln,
Dan Brown,
Elaine Pagels,
MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
What do Robert F. Kennedy, John Lennon, Martin Luther King and Israeli Premier Yitschak Rabin have in common? All four are alleged to have been assassinated by remote-controlled, hypnotized killers or “Manchurian candidates”.
The expression “Manchurian candidate” comes from Richard Condon’s 1959 bestselling novel of that name, which features a brainwashed killer under the control of Chinese and Soviet intelligence located in Manchuria during the Korean War. The assassin is an American POW repatriated to the US, where he is programmed to kill the president.
Condon did not pluck the scenario out of thin air. During the Korean War, the Communists were understood to have achieved conspicuous success in brainwashing US POWs into confessing to war crimes they could not possibly have committed. Although a 1953 investigation by Drs Harold Wolff and Lawrence Hinkle of Cornell Medical College found that the Chinese had not used hypnosis or drugs to “re-educate” POWs (relying rather on violence to produce “confessions”), this did not stop the Agency heading pell-mell into a secret project to create a programmed assassin using hypnosis and drugs. Set up by CIA head Allen Dulles in 1953, Project MK-ULTRA experimented with LSD, electronic brain implants, mescaline, psilocybin, radiation, barbiturates, amphetamines and sensory deprivation on hapless subjects as it sought the Holy Grail of mind control. Probably the most grotesque of the MK-ULTRA experiments was subcontracted to Montreal psychiatrist D. Ewen Cameron, which involved the “breaking down of ongoing pattern of the patient’s behaviour by means of particularly intensive electroshocks” while LSD was simultaneously applied. Some of Cameron’s subjects received electro-convulsive therapy at thirty to forty times the normal rate, this followed by weeks of LSD-induced coma in which they were played an endless loop of noise or speech.
At one stage, MK-ULTRA consumed 6 per cent of the CIA’s entire budget. Whether the CIA succeeded in programming a Manchurian candidate is unknown. The Agency has always claimed that its attempt to produce a real life Raymond Shaw—Condon’s assassin character—was fruitless, and this was also the conclusion of a Senate Committee headed by Ted Kennedy when the MK-ULTRA programme was finally dragged out into the light by the
The cynics are legion, however. By 1974, CIA director Richard Helms had destroyed the bulk of the MK- ULTRA files because of a “burgeoning paper problem”. Suspicious? Almost as suspicious as the 1953 defenestration suicide of Dr Frank Olsen, a CIA researcher, who had voiced opposition to the MK-ULTRA project. On later exhumation Olsen’s body was found to have marks on the skull consistent with a repeated attack. Suspicious? Almost as suspicious as the accidental death by drowning of ex-CIA director William Colby in 1993 days after being subpoenaed to testify about Olsen.
Cults like the Scientologists are widely held to achieve brainwashing. Is it really plausible that the CIA with millions of dollars and legions of scientists failed where L. Ron Hubbard succeeded?
Then there is the assassination of Robert Kennedy in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on 4 June 1968. Dozens of witnesses saw “lone nut” Sirhan Sirhan pull the trigger on Kennedy. But Sirhan himself could never recall the shooting, and to this day protests his innocence. William Turner and John Christian in
The CIA had a plausible motive to kill RFK: if RFK had succeeded to the White House he might have uncovered evidence of the CIA’s complicity in the killing of his brother. The CIA also had the immoral appetite to kill an American politician: a 1954 CIA memo specifically proposed using a hypno-programmed killer to assassinate “a prominent [deleted] politician or, if necessary, against an American official”.
The official version remains that Sirhan alone killed RFK. Few believe it.
John Marks,
Philip H. Melanson,
Gordon Thomas,
William Turner and John G. Christian,
DOCUMENT: DECLASSIFIED MKULTRA MEMOS
I)
DRAFT/
18 April 1958
MEMORANDUM FOR: THE RECORD
SUBJECT: MKULTRA, Subproject No. 83
1. The purpose of Subproject No. 83 will be to support the editorial and technical survey activities of [deleted] assigned to the [deleted] and is covered as an employee of the [deleted]. During the past six months, his activities have been to make technical surveys of social and behavioral science matters of interest to TSS/CD/Branch III. During this period he has been carried on the budget of the [deletion]. However, it was originally proposed that as soon as he demonstrated his ability, he would be established as an independent project and his activities widened.
2. [Deleted] has completed a detailed survey of handwriting analysis. He has prepared a review of current attitudes towards handwriting analyses as reflected by scientific researchers in the technique; fringe or pseudo- scientific developments in the field; general attitudes of psychiatrists, psychologists and other behavioral scientists to the techniques; and attitudes of document analysts and law enforcement agencies to the method. He has isolated the various “schools” of handwriting analysis, both American and European, and has prepared a readable, accurate and informative document that can be made available to potential consumers of handwriting analyses. More important, however, he has assembled data making it possible to design relevant and meaningful research into the usefulness and applicability of handwriting analyses to intelligence activities.
3. On the basis of the many contacts developed by [deleted] it is now possible to undertake systematic research. During the next year, [deleted] will be responsible for the development of a research project on handwriting analysis. The recommendations for the design of this project, as developed by [deleted] are included as
