83 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
83 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
From: anonymous@freezone.remailer
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Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
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Subject: Human Guinea Pigs Are as American as Apple Pie (fwd)
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Date: 19 Mar 1995 23:07:29 -0000
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Organization: Bull Worldwide Information Systems.
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Lines: 73
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Sender: daemon@cass.ma02.bull.com
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Message-ID: <199503192306.AA15262@bolero.rahul.net>
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Human Guinea Pigs Are as American as Apple Pie
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By Samuel Chavkin
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Author of "The Mind Stealers" (Boston, 1978)
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Subjecting people to experiments, in most instances without knowledge of the
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risks involved and without their consent, has been a continuing practice by
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government agencies. A Jan. 5 news article discusses the difficulty the
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Central Intelligence Agency is having finding records of the experiments.
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However, at a Senate hearing on Aug. 3, 1977, Adm. Stansfield Turner, former
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CIA director, disclosed that the agency had been conducting brainwashing
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experiments on countless Americans - prisoners, mentally ill patients, cancer
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patients, and even unwitting patrons at bars in New York, San Francisco and
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other cities. Some were drugged with LSD and other psychotropic agents.
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This was the cold war period, when the focus was on spying and counter-spying.
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Thus, the main objective of this mammoth CIA effort, which cost the taxpayers
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at least $25 million, was to program the experimental subject to do the
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programmer's bidding, even if it would lead to the subject's destruction.
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As you reported Aug. 2, 1977, a CIA memorandum of Jan. 25, 1952, asked "whether
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it was possible to get control of an individual to the point where he will do
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our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature
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as self-preservation."
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Mind control and behavior modification experiments in this period also became
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the underpinnings for a "medical" approach to stem the rise of social disquiet
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following the murder of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Hundreds of
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thousands of Dr. King's followers were out in the streets throughout the
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United States demanding that their civil rights be recognized and that Dr.
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King's assassins be brought to justice. Many protests led to violent
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confrontations with the police.
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Two physicians from Harvard, Dr. Frank E. Ervin, a neuropsychiatrist, and Dr.
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Vernon H. Mark, a neurosurgeon, in a letter to the Journal of the American
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Medical Association, proposed a surgical strategy to resolve such conflicts.
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In their view, protesters who resisted police control were suffering from
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"brain dysfunction," a condition, they said, that could be remedied by
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psychosurgery.
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They proposed implantation of very thin electrodes in the amygdala region of
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the brain where "bad" brain cells, presumed to be associated with violent
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behavior, would be burned out with an electrical charge.
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Despite an angry outcry from many physicians who charged that this was in
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effect a return to the discredited lobotomy operations used on shell-shocked
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soldiers following World War II, law enforcement authorities welcomed the
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approach. Especially impressed with psychosurgery was Ronald Reagan, then
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Governor of California, who was ready to allocate $1 Million to set up a
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"violence-reduction" center.
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Without much further ado, psychosurgery got underway in the Vacaville
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penitentiary in California: at Atmoree State Prison in Birmingham, Ala., where
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50 such operations were performed, and in other prisons. The Veterans
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Administration used psychosurgery in its hospitals in Durham, N.C.; Long
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Beach, Calif., Minneapolis and Syracuse. As a result, many prisoner guinea
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pigs entered into a semi-vegetable state of mine.
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Psychosurgeries were finally halted when civil libertarians and the
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Congressional Black Caucus denounced them as racist, since most of the prison
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population was made up of Afro-Americans and other minorities.
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- from a Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, Jan. 11, 1994
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From the Omega Report -- July/August 1994
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Published by the Phoenix Foundation
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A non-profit Research Institute
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P.O. Box 92008
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Nashville, TN 37209
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