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This week: MK-Ultra: The CIA's Mind-Control Program Edited by: Shannon  
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From the early 1950s through 1973, the U.S. Government conducted clandestine experiments on the American people, oftentimes without their knowledge or consent. "MK-Ultra used numerous methodologies to manipulate people's mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture. 1
MK-Ultra, Operation Northwoods, Project Monarch, Project Artichoke, Project Bluebird, Operation Paperclip (the incorporation of over 1,500 Nazi scientists into American society during and after WWII by U.S. Intelligence and military services. Many of these German doctors' participation was pivotal in MK-Ultra research). Google any of these terms and you'll be up all night. Each link leads to twenty more, and before you know it you'll have spent hours completely engrossed in the stories. They're terrifying, they're true, and they happened under the auspices of the CIA.
I've always been fascinated by real life stories that are nearly impossible to believe--their horror and/or inhumanity difficult to comprehend: the Holocaust, the kidnapping and 18-year imprisonment of Jaycee Lee Dugard, MK-Ultra, the Fritzl case, Medz Yeghern (the Armenian Genocide), the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Holodomor, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the Crusades, "The Girl in the Box" Colleen Stan, media and the medical community's overwhelming acceptance/embracement of transorbital or ice-pick lobotomies . These atrocities are so far removed from how my own mind works that I just can't wrap my head around them, and it was this morbid curiosity about the morally reprehensible that occasioned me to stumble upon the most disturbing book I've ever read: TRANCE Formation of America: The True Life Story of a CIA Mind Control Slave by Cathy O'Brien with Mark Phillips.
TRANCE was published in 1995, followed by ACCESS DENIED For Reasons of National Security in 2004. I discovered them in 2005 and recently reread TRANCE. These books are so unsettling that I don't even know where to begin, so I guess I'll start with Cathy's "rescue" in 1988.
Cathy claims that in 1988 "Mark Phillips rescued my daughter Kelly and I from our White House/Pentagon level MK-Ultra mind control victimization." 2 Phillips was a businessman who "rescued" Cathy and her daughter Kelly from Cathy's "handler" and then-husband, ventriloquist Alex Houston, secreting them away in the remote wilderness of Alaska. There Phillips singlehandedly "deprogrammed" Cathy using various methods, including journaling and hypnosis. While Phillips had (has) no psychiatric and/or medical degree of any kind, he claims that his experience working for "the Ampex Corporation and with the U.S. Department of Defense in a civilian capacity" 3 during the Vietnam War qualified him to orchestrate the deprogramming.
Cathy O'Brien makes some outlandish allegations, stating country music singers the Mandrell Sisters (Barbara and Louise) were also slaves ala the CIA's MK-Ultra Program (O'Brien 109), as was Seidina "Dina" Reed, daughter of actor/singer Jerry Reed (30), Marilyn Monroe (118), and Loretta Lynn (124). In addition, Cathy alleges to have been sexually assaulted by President Gerald Ford (85), Senator Robert Byrd (89), Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (90), Dick Cheney, who was Chief of Staff to President Ford at the time (99), Senator J. Bennett Johnston (105), country music singer Charlie Pride (113), Governor Dick Thornburgh (115), Representative Jim Traficant (115), singer/actor Kris Kristopherson (120), Congressman Gary Ackerman (124), President Ronald Reagan (126), King Fahd of Saudi Arabia (139), country singer Lee Greenwood (153), and Hillary Clinton (155), just to name a few.
Upon reading TRANCE, regardless of whether or not you believe Cathy's story, one thing becomes abundantly clear: Mark Phillips, "rescuer" and author of Part I, and Cathy O'Brien, "rescued White House/Pentagon level MK-Ultra mind control victim" and author of Part II, are highly intelligent people, as evidenced by the following paragraph:
"[Robert] Byrd explained to me that New World Order 'powers were strengthened' by allowing the mental health community only partial and/or deliberate misinformation through their organization lobby, The American Psychiatric Association (APA), concerning treatment modalities for severe dissociative disorders being created through mind control. Perpetrators believed that withholding knowledge and the proliferation of deliberate misinformation allowed them control over their secrets, and subsequently over humanity. They may be correct if no one can or will react to the information presented in this book." ~ Part II by Cathy O'Brien, page 198
I am and have always been skeptical of "memories" retrieved via hypnosis. Having been a teenager and adult during the 80s and 90s, I remember well when Satanic ritual abuse "remembered" during hypnosis 4 was on every talk show on television and wasn't at all surprised to see it mentioned in O'Brien's book. It's a sign of the times. There are a few things that do surprise me, though: 1. Cathy names names. If her allegations are false, why hasn't she been sued for libel by every single person she accuses of these atrocities? 2. On multiple occasions, Phillips and O'Brien refer to physical scars Cathy received and still bears all over her body as a reminder of the horrors she endured at the hands of the CIA's MK-Ultra "handlers" and other program participants, yet there isn't one picture or photographic evidence of any kind to support her allegations of physical abuse. Why? 3. Despite the fact that there are 40 pages of photocopied pictures of alleged participants, business cards, documents, and articles (pages 33-73) which look impressive at first glance, when you look deeper and actually read them you realize they tell you exactly nothing. Zilch. They do diddly to prove/corroborate/substantiate/support her story. 4. While O'Brien and Phillips would have us believe hypnosis uncovered these blocked memories from Cathy's past, how do we know they weren't planted or "false memories" put there by an unqualified, unlicensed amateur--Phillips himself? 5. The fact that the authors admit to "falling in love" after Cathy's "rescue" and "deprogramming" is an automatic red flag, in my humble opinion.
MK-Ultra happened, that much we know. The program was disassembled in 1973 and the then CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all the files destroyed. Some records survived, however, and when the remaining documents were declassified in 2001, six years after O'Brien's first book was published, they seemed to corroborate some of the crazy things Cathy O'Brien alleges in her books.
Either the United States Government perpetrated sickening, evil, stupefyingly horrendous experiments on this poor woman and her daughter or Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips are deeply disturbed, mentally ill individuals in dire need of immediate and extensive psychiatric care.
Either way, the whole thing makes for one helluva story.
Have you written a story about a Manchurian Candidate? Has your character been the victim of government-sponsored trauma-based mind control? Does she experience "lost time" or wake up somewhere other than where she fell asleep? Does he have unexplained scars or skills he doesn't remembering acquiring? Has this newsletter given you an idea for a story? Send me your comments, thoughts, and/or a link to your existing work and I'll include them in next month's newsletter.
Thank you for reading.
Here's Cathy's website if you're interested, and if you'd like to hear Cathy tell her story (adults only, please) in her own words, watch the video (filmed at The Granada Forum, October 31, 1996) below and make up your own mind.
Notes:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
2. http://www.trance-formation.com/about_trance.htm
3. O'Brien, Cathy, and Mark Phillips. TRANCE Formation of America: The True Story of a CIA Mind Control Slave. Las Vegas, NV: Reality Marketing, 1995. Print.
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse |
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The following is in response to "Dead and Buried" :
Angus  writes, "Excellent Newsletter, Shannon! Thank you for those knowledgable facts, as well as those movies! Now I gotta rush to the video store and get all of them!" Yay! I'm glad you liked it, and thank you for your kind words.  Were you able to find the films? What did you think?
QPdoll  writes, "Excellent newsletter, Shannon . I must have taphophobia because my chest hurt after reading about the documented incidents. I guess I was holding my breath the whole time I read. It brought to mind The Vanishing. It's very frightening to even think about it happening to someone else, let alone yourself!" Yes, isn't it? I don't consider myself claustrophobic or believe I'm afflicted with taphophobia, but the idea of being buried alive is truly terrifying. Thank you for reading and commenting, QPdoll! 
remusmdh  writes, "Scary thing here? Exhuming someone today is legally hell, so lots of luck if you go comatose and get an incompetent doctor with political ties. But I try to not think about these things, as I've already had ENOUGH horrid things done to me by authority figures, many with deep PTSD roots. IE, there are things even I will not allow my mind to consider." PTSD is very real and much more terrifying than anything I could ever imagine. I'm so sorry bad things happened to you. I hope you're surrounded by love and support. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and comments. 
Quick-Quill  writes, "I'd seen the story in Pikeville on Mysteries at the Museum. Great ideas for a book." Yes!  |
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Short Stories: December 30, 2015 Issue [#7389]
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