textfiles/stories/mindwar

                             Mind War
                                by
                       William S. Burroughs

  Earlier I have suggested that the CIA, the Russians, and the 
Chinese have all set up top secret centers to study and apply 
psychic techniques to political ends.  Those of you who have read 
Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain will infer that the 
Russians are ahead of us.
  Now anyone who has lived for any time in countries like Morocco 
where magic is widely practiced has probably seen a curse work.  I 
have.  However, curses tend to be hit or miss, depending on the 
skill and power of the operator and the susceptibility of a 
victim.  And that isn't good enough for the CIA or any similar 
organization: `Bring us the ones that work not sometimes but every 
time.'  So what is the logical forward step?  To devise machines 
that can concentrate and direct psychic force with predictable 
effects.  I suggest that what the CIA is, or was working on, at 
their top secret Nevada installation may be described as 
computerized black magic.  If Curse A doesn't make it, Curse 
Program B automatically goes into operation -- and so on.
  I recommend to your attention a book called The Mind Masters by 
John Rossmann.  This is ostensibly a fanastic science fiction 
novel, interesting more for its content than its style, that may 
well contain some real inside information.  The story concerns a 
researcher who has been disillusioned by his work on Project 
Pandora, an American psychic training center run by a Colonel 
Pickett, who is stronly reminiscent of the mad General Ripper in 
Doctor Strangelove, right down to the cigar.  Only he is unloosing 
psychic warfare rather than nuclear more effective and more easily 
controlled for elitiest objectives.  The disillusioned researcher, 
one Britt St. Vincent, is contacted by Mero, a private institute 
dedicated to opposing these black magic centers.  (It should be 
obvious that only black magic has `military applications.')
  After he has been taken to Mero's secret hearquarters, Britt is 
briefed by Dr Webster on the purposes of Mero.  Dr. Webster cites 
an early report by columnist Jack Anderson that the reason the 
Johnson-Kosygin summit conference in 1967 at Glassboro, New 
Jersey, was held in such a remote spot was that this was the 
world's first summit conference on psychic warfare.  He recalls 
for Britt how the CIA, while making an electronic sweep of the 
U.S. Embassy in Moscow for listening devices, discovered some very 
unusual electromagnetic emanations pulsing through the building.  
(Later it came out that the Soviets had stepped up the power to a 
point where Embassy officials and their families were in danger 
from the high-voltage microwave radiation, which can cause 
confusion, migraines, and even death.)  Not long after, the CIA 
confirmed that this was in fact part of a much larger psychic 
attack on the Embassy.  When the Defense Department launched its 
top-secret psychic counter attack, according to columnist 
Anderson, it was code-named Project Pandora.
  Dr. Webster goes on to tell Britt: `Glassboro wasn't the end of 
it, Britt ... obviously.  By easily diverting funds within their 
mammoth defense budgets, small groups of supermilitarists here and 
in Russia covertly continued psychic programs...
  The violent student rioting of the late Sixties was largely 
instigated by electronic mood-control devices that were derived 
from the psychic discoveries of Project Pandora.  The riots, it is 
now evident, were the first phase of a massive plot.  The students 
were used by U.S. military extremists for two purposes.  First, 
the riots tended to discredit the student causes.  Secondly, the 
civil disturbances conveniently provided the plotters with the 
necessary reasons to reinstate some of their psychic weapons 
programs under the guise of `crowd control' research.  Britt 
learns that similar secret psychic research is still advancing 
rapidly in China, France, Israel, Egypt, South Africa, and Chile, 
in addition to the United States and Russia.
  `Although these scattered groups are currently working to beat 
each other to the secret of powers that will give them world 
control, there is a good possibility that they could even now join 
forces and make a combined psychic bid for world control - of 
succeeding if they joined forces.'
  And what would the future look like if such groups actually 
exist and if they do combine and take over?  An elitist world 
state very much along the lines laid down by the Nazis.  At the 
top wold be a theocracy trained in psychic control techniques 
implemented by computerized electronic devices that would render 
oppostion psychologically impossible.  Entry to this privileged 
class would be permitted only to those whose dedication to the 
world state was absolute and unquestioning.  In short, you don't 
get in by merit or ability but by being an all around one hundred 
percent shit.  Under this ruling, elite of power addicts would 
consist of an anonymous service collective of functionaries, 
managers, and bureaucrats.  And below them the slave workers.
  The troublesome artist would be eliminated or absorbed.  The 
elite lives happily ever after, at the top of a control state that 
makes 1984 seem cozy and nostalgic.