A Cold War Epitaph
The true story of
Covert U S Government Experiments on Our Children
Preface of upcoming book about CIA programs Bluebird/Artichoke and MKULTRA
by Carol Rutz Copyright © 2000
This is the story of someone you know-your neighbor, your classmate, your brother or
sister, your mother or father. It is the secret we have been holding within our hearts
because we were afraid the American public could not believe our government would carry
out human experimentation on children, in direct defiance of the Nuremberg Code, which has
been official United States policy since 1946.
Some of the very same Nazi doctors who worked in mental institutions before W.W.II
deciding whether mentally deficient children should be sterilized or killed because of
their defective genes also carried out horrendous experiments in the death camps. Their
medical expertise, along with hundreds of Nazi scientists, was considered so vital to the
"Cold War" effort that they would be brought into the United States and Canada
to work side by side with some of the greatest but most perverse minds the 20th century
would ever see.
It is a story interwoven with incest and government mind control. It involves the use of
drugs, sensory deprivation, hypnosis, and electric shock to gain control of these
children's minds.
Impossible, you say. I wish it were. We live in such a sheltered little world. Its much
easier to believe that incest and violence and mind control belong to the few; but they
belong to the many. One in three girls faces some type of sexual abuse before they are
eighteen years old. The statistics on men is one in seven, but that is debatable since it
is so much more difficult for them to come forward.
Dr. Alan W. Scheflin, Professor of law at Santa Clara University Law School, and a
judicially recognized expert in mind and behavior control states in a letter dated March
9, 1995 that secret government mind control experimentation is ongoing and vastly more
expansive than the government authorities are willing to admit. He also is co-author of a
nonfiction book entitled The Mind Manipulators, which was published in a dozen countries.
He says that he has been studying these secret programs since 1975 and it is his
conclusion that there are at minimum hundreds, and most likely thousands of American
citizens who were used as guinea pigs against their will in government research projects.
What he does not say is that most of the children used in these experiments were sold by
one of their caretakers in the name of "National Security" and subjected to
untold horrors at the hands of their government.
In light of so many abuses of power coming before the public in recent years, many adult
survivors of these childhood experiments are stepping forward to be heard. Best remembered
are the atomic tests on 2584 military personnel in the Nevada desert in 1953. The
government has also admitted wrong doing in the Tuskegee Experiments, where poor black man
were allowed to go untreated for their syphilis so the effects could be studied. On May
16, 1997, President Clinton apologized to the survivors and families of hundreds of men
used in this research project. These men were mainly poor, African American sharecroppers
from Macon County, Alabama. In 1932, when they were offered free medical care by
physicians and researchers involved with the United States Public Health Service, they
believed they had found treatment for what they had been told was "bad blood."
Instead, they were enrolled in an observational research study, without their knowledge or
consent. Even though some rudimentary remedies for syphilis were available in the early
years of the study, they were not offered to these men, so that the study of the natural
history of the untreated disease would not be jeopardized. This study did not end until
1972, forty years after it had begun, and twenty years after penicillin had been
identified as an effective treatment for syphilis.
Less known were such experiments as the feeding of radioactive cereal in the 1940s and
1950s to young male science club members who were institutionalized at the Fernald School
in Massachusetts. The researchers had little experience with radio nuclides in humans;
consequently this approach to medical investigation gave them that opportunity. The
parents as well as the children were simply told they were being fed a diet rich in iron.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Saul Krugman of New York University conducted studies of
hepatitis at the Willowbrook State School, an institution for the severely mentally
retarded. To study the natural history, effects, and progression of the disease, Krugman
and his staff systematically infected newly arrived children with strains of the virus.
Retarded children at D.C. Children's Center in Laurel, in a section called The District
Training School, were used as human guinea pigs for both private industry and the
government. Among the experiments, was the testing of NeoBazine a diet pill commonly
referred to as "rainbow pills". They contained thyroxin which caused tremors,
nervousness, insomnia and tachycardia. It was tested for its safety and efficiency. In
October, 1964 the FDA found that the drug was not safe for use. In 1962 the children were
again used to test a drug for skin diseases, which doctors strongly suspected caused
serious side effects to the human liver. More than half the children tested suffered some
liver dysfunction. Eight were admitted to D.C. General Hospital for intensive care. That
same year 17 Laurel Center children were used to study thyroid hormone metabolism in
children. The children were injected with thyroxin mixed with a radioactive iodine to aid
doctors in tracing a body process. As you can see, there was a clear pattern of using
innocent children who had no way of protecting themselves.
In October 1995 the President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments reported
that secret radiation experiments on indigent patients and mentally retarded children were
not only done, but that these people were deceived about the nature of their treatments.
Dr. William Silverman asserted that performing non therapeutic experiments on children
without authorization from parents was part of a broader "ethos of the time" in
which "everyone was a draftee" in a national war on disease.
Then there is the case of the 12 human "guinea pigs" who were secretly injected
with radioactive Plutonium 239 and uranium in government experiments in the 1940s.
Energy Secretary Hazel Oleary in announcing the settlement of $4.8 million to be paid to
their families said the government was "grateful" to the victims for "the
tough lessons they have taught us about trust, responsibility, and accountability between
the government and the people."
In a Congressional subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC on September 28, 1994 it was
revealed that up to 500,000 Americans were endangered by secret defense related tests
between 1940 and 1974 -- including covert experiments with radioactive materials, mustard
gas, LSD, and biological agents. The General Accounting Office testified that between 1949
and 1969, the Army released radioactive compounds in 239 cities to study the effects.
In a decision dated April 16, 1985 Chief Justice Burger of the United States Court of
Appeals delivered the opinion of the Court in the case of CIA v. SIMS, 471 U.S. 159. This
case focused around the publics right under the Freedom of Information Act, to have
declassified the grant proposals and contracts, and the names of the institutions and
individuals who had performed research under the CIA financed research project, code named
MKULTRA.
MKULTRA was established to counter soviet and Chinese advances in brainwashing and
interrogation techniques and consisted of 149 subprojects contracted out to at least 80
institutions. In 1977 Director of Intelligence, Stansfield Turner described in an
affidavit that the program was initiated because the Agency was confronted with
"learning the state of the art of behavioral modification at a time when the U.S.
Government was concerned about inexplicable behavior of persons behind the iron
curtain and American prisoners of war who had been subjected to so called
brainwashing".
It began with a proposal from Richard Helms, then the Agency's assistant Deputy Director
for Plans. Helms outlined a special funding mechanism for highly sensitive Agency research
and development projects that would study the use of biological and chemical materials in
altering human behavior. MKULTRA was approved by Allen Dulles, Director of Central
Intelligence on April 13, 1953. Twenty years after the conception of the MKULTRA project,
all known files pertaining to it were ordered destroyed by Richard Helms before he
retired.
In 1977 through a Freedom of Information Act request by John Marks, 16,000 pages of
documents were found; held as part of the Agency's financial history. Further attempts at
declassification resulted in the decision rendered by Chief Justice Burger that the
"intelligence sources" who were guaranteed confidentiality at the time of these
CIA funded research projects would continue to remain protected and classified.
To those of us who have survived these experiments, this decision means that our stories
will continue to lie in the government vaults of classified materials. Most of the
important details were conveniently destroyed under orders of Richard Helms. Think what
would have happened if the records of the Holocaust would have met the same fate. The
disappearance of 6 million people could have remained a question mark in history.
As a survivor of CIA programs Bluebird/Artichoke and MKULTRA, I began my intense search to
document some of the mind control experiments that I was made part of starting at the
tender age of four. Through a series of FOIAs to various departments of the
government, I have amassed an incredible amount of material that validates my personal
experiences. The CIA bought my services from my grandfather in 1952. Over the next twelve
years, I was tested, trained and used in various ways. Electroshock, drugs, hypnosis and
other types of trauma were used to make me compliant and split my personality.
On December 17, 1999 I turned 52 years old and received 3 CDROMs from the CIA, in
response to my FOIA request. Forty-eight years after I was first experimented on, I found
solid proof of my memories. Proof that was in the government vaults of the nearly 18,000
pages of declassified documents from the Bluebird/Artichoke and MKULTRA programs. One of
the documents specifically stated that experimental studies of the postulated abilities of
a few specially gifted subjects would be conducted. The document states "that in
working with individual subjects, special attention will be given to disassociative
states, which tend to accompany spontaneous ESPexperiences. Such states can be induced and
controlled to some extent with hypnosis and drugs . . . The data used in the study will be
obtained from special groups such as psychotics, children and mediums. . ."
The document continues, "Learning studies will be instituted in which the subject
will be rewarded or punished for his overall performance and reinforced in various ways -
by being told whether he was right, by being told what the target was, with electric shock
etc." The proposal then goes on to say, "In other cases drugs and psychological
tricks will be used to modify his attitudes. The experimenters will be particularly
interested in disassociative states, from the abaissement de niveau mental to multiple
personality in so-called mediums, and an attempt will be made to induce a number of states
of this kind, using hypnosis." The government had finally handed me the validation I
had been searching for. To say my heart stopped that day, is almost true.
For sceptics, no proof will be enough. For others, like myself, unraveling the bizarre
nature of my memories has allowed me to regain control of my life. My greatest gift of
healing has been to no longer operate out of fear, but from a rational, logical based
reality. Choices to live, to love and to create that were taken from me through the
fragmentation of my mind, can now be explored.
My goal in writing this book is to expose the misuse of power that took place in this
country during the Cold War due to fear. Thousands of innocent children, who have now
grown into adults are silently suffering from the effects of the experiments that were
done to them by their own government. Many have been diagnosed incorrectly and
institutionalized. Some died because they knew too much. Others, like myself, were able to
obtain competent medical help, and are struggling to heal from the physical and mental
ravages upon our beings.
Some people have asked, why now do you chose to speak out? I prefer to let an
Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor of the Mengele Twins experiments speak for me. When asked how
she felt while she was being used as a guinea pig she said, "My answer is that
emotional scars are so deep that only now, more than 40 years later, are we attempting to
face our past and come to terms with it."
Now, I ask those same people, how can we envision the future without visiting the past? As
Joel put it in 1:2-3
"Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever
happened in your days or in the days of your forefathers? Tell it to your children, and
let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next
generation."
Will we let this story lay in the shadows forever, or do we have the courage to address
these wrongs and give survivors back their voices? You be the judge.
FOR K A R E N #01182 who died fighting 4/23/99.
ADVOCACY COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION SURVIVORS-MIND CONTROL ACHES-MC was formed in
1996 to assist and advocate on behalf of survivors of nonconsensual federally funded mind
control experimentation as children or adults.
casey@dmci.net, publication date unknown, work still in progress
PET Machine which is the newer version of the Positron Emitter detector uses the results
of theoretical physics, quantum physics, electronic engineering, computing, manufacturing
and medicine to produce a machine that can map the brains that designed it. The PET scan
is a diagnostic procedure that produces images of how living brain cells work collectively
to retrieve memories and form words-in short, the physics of thinking. In a PET scan,
glucose and oxygen, the fuels of brain cells, are tagged with positron emitting
radioactive isotopes and administered to the patient. Detectable energy flashes are
collected by a computer, which processes them into images. In my particular case, I am
being spoken to through the earphones and different personas that the CIA created for its
MKULTRA Program are being identified by area of the brain.
Because the brain contains no pain receptors, patients received only a local anesthetic
and remained fully conscious during surgery. Electrical stimulation of the cortical
surface sometimes induced images, which patients described as coherent perceptions or
experiences. . . . In Penfields view, the experiences that were elicited by
stimulation reproduced the stream of consciousness from previous episode of past life: The
stimulating electrode drew the reproduction from its place of storage, much as if a tape
recorder were switched on at some arbitrary position. . . . Penfield divided the
experiential responses produced by electrode stimulation into four categories:
auditory(voices, music, or a meaningful sound), visual(people, a scene, or a recognizable
object), combined visual-auditory(scenes with appropriate sounds), or unclassified
experiential responses(a thought, a memory, or a flashback). Dr. Penfield is known to have
done research projects for the Defense Research Board between 1950 and 1962.