The CIA Doctors

by Colin A. Ross, M. D.

  This line of research has been pursued by cognitive psychologists funded by the Office of Naval Research, especially at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which was an MKULTRA and MKNAOMI institution. Andrew G. Knapp and James A. Anderson151 published a paper entitled “Theory of Categorization Based on Distributed Memory Storage” in which they acknowledge support through Office of Naval Research Contract N00014-81-K-0136. Dr. William Adey of UCLA (see Chapter 10) was active in MIT’s Neurosciences Research Program and received funding from the Office of Naval Research.

  In his book Society of Mind, MIT psychologist Marvin Minsky192 states that his work was funded by the Office of Naval Research over a period beginning with his graduate studies. The central thesis of Minsky’s book is that the mind is a society of subsystems, that is, a distributed parallel network. Dr. Daniel Schachter276 of Harvard published a book entitled Searching for Memory. The Brain, the Mind, and the Past which discusses the fact that memory is composed of subsystems; in the book, he acknowledges funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. This research is directly relevant to understanding the structure of a Manchurian Candidate’s mind, which is a society of subsystems or, in different language, an interconnected system of parallel processing units.

  On December 11, 1996 in a posting on the internet list WITCHNT@MITVMA.MIT.EDU, Dr. Peter Freyd, husband of the Executive Director of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, wrote:

  Since we all want to be open about any money we might have received from military-related sources, let me confess.

  I, too, must go on record. Starting in 1988, I’ve been getting a lot of money from the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

  In 1968 I received a lot of money from the Kingdom of Iran. There were some who thought the Kingdom was a CIA front. Actually, the evidence is that the money was flowing in the other direction: the CIA might have been something of a Savak front.

  Academics have been receiving research funding from military intelligence agencies into the twenty-first century. Much of the research is no doubt ethical and humane. Unfortunately, however, everyone in academia, and especially everyone in psychiatry and psychology with military funding is now under suspicion. This is the inevitable outcome of decades of deception, implausible denial, and looking the other way.

  Another funding agency woven into the mind control network is the Scottish Rite Foundation. In a 1958 paper175 Dr. William Malamud is identified as the Medical Research Director and Dr. Winfred Overholser as the Chairman of the Scottish Rite Research Committee. Another 1958 paper231 states that second author, Dr. Sidney L. Werkman, received his M.D. from Cornell in 1952, where he worked under Dr. Harold Wolff, MKULTRA contractor and Director of CIA cutout The Human Ecology Foundation. Dr. Overholser worked with Dr. Joel Elkes when Dr. Elkes was Director of Research at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, and prior to Dr. Elkes becoming Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins230.

  Dr. Winfred Overholser, Sr.229 gave his Presidential address to the American Psychiatric Association in Washington, D.C., in May, 1948. In a biographical sketch196 Dr. Overholser is described as having been born in Worcester, Massachusetts on April 21, 1892. He received his M.D. in 1916, and saw military service in World War I. In a diary written in a field hospital in France, Dr. Overholser stated, “We are using suggestion and hypnosis when it is possible.”

  Dr. Overholser became the superintendent of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington in 1937; over 5000 naval officers and enlisted men were treated as patients there during World War II. Psychiatric training was provided to 125 naval medical officers, nearly 100 nurses and about 800 hospital corpsmen during the War. Dr. Overholser is described in the biographical sketch as a 32nd degree Mason.

  Dr. Winfred Overholser, Jr. was born on April 29, 1930. He received his M.D. from New York Medical College in 1955, and did his psychiatry residency at New York State Psychiatric Institute from 1956 to 1959; it was at the Institute that Dr. Paul Hoch killed Harold Blauer with an injection of U.S. Army mescaline in 1953.

  Dr. Hudson Hoagland129 of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology (MKULTRA Subproject 8) wrote an obituary for Dr. Ewen Cameron (MKULTRA Subproject 68), was recommended to J. Edgar Hoover by G.H. Estabrooks, a 32nd degree Mason, and received money for LSD research from the Scottish Rite Committee, as did MKULTRA and MKSEARCH contractor, Dr. Carl Pfeiffer. A coauthor of Dr. Hoaglund’s252, Dr. Robert Hyde received TOP SECRET clearance as the contractor on MKULTRA Subprojects 8, 63, and 66.

  Another coauthor of Dr. Hoaglund’s, Dr. William Malamud175, 176 did lobotomy research when he was at the Worcester State Hospital263. These connections illustrate how the network of mind control doctors was structured. There was no central conspiracy; rather the network was maintained by diverse connections between individuals, institutions and agencies.

  In a chapter in a book on brainwashing, Chodoff and Mercer58 write:

  As for the issue of the deliberate, systematic misuse of psychiatry to suppress political and religious dissent, no strong case can be made that this is a problem in the United States. The case usually considered most relevant is that of the poet Ezra Pound. Arrested at the end of World War II for his treasonous broadcasts in Italy, Pound was never tried but was found incapable of assisting in his defense by reason of mental illness. Later he was confined, under relatively comfortable conditions, at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. This judgment, largely the work of Dr. Winfred Overholser, superintendent of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, was made in spite of what seems to have been a lack of substantial clinical evidence of psychosis and the fact that Pound had written a lucid and detailed defense of himself to the U.S. Attorney General.

  The Pound case appears to constitute a political subversion of psychiatry. But it should be noted that the action was taken in the primary interest of the accused person rather than that of the state, as is the case in the Soviet Union. Most important, it was an isolated example, and very few similar ones have taken place in the United States.

  Dr. Winfred Overholser, Sr. funded LSD research through the Scottish Rite Committee and was at the center of the mind control network beginning with his work for the OSS during World War II184.

  Only some papers from the extensive LSD literature acknowledge direct funding from the military. An example is a paper entitled, “Cognitive Test Performance Under LSD-25, Placebo and Isolation”106 which acknowledges support through Air Force Contract No. AF33(616)-6013. The research was monitored by the Aero Medical Laboratory, Directorate of Research, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

  Hallucinogen research would have flowed across the desk of Dr. Bruce Dill, who worked at the Aeromedical Laboratory research unit at Wright Field from 1941 to 1943. He was the Director of Medical Research at the U.S. Army Chemical Research and Development Laboratory, Edgeware Arsenal from 1947 to 1961. This is the time frame of both MKULTRA and MKNAOMI.

  One of the most unexpected members of the mind control network was Carl Rogers, Ph.D. Dr. Rogers received TOP SECRET clearance for his work on MKULTRA Subproject 74. The paper based on Subproject 74, entitled “A Study of Psychotherapeutic Change in Schizophrenics and Normals: The Design and Instrumentation”254 acknowledges funding from the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology. The 1961 Annual Report of the Society lists Dr. Rogers as a Director.

  The analysis of other doctors in the mind control network presented in this chapter is illustrative, and far from exhaustive. Contractors on CIA and military mind control research included leading psychiatrists and psychologists, Past Presidents and Awardees of the American Psychiatric Association, editors and associate editors of leading professional journals, Chairmen of academic Departments of Psychiatry, and their colleagues and coauthors. Many other doctors published similar research funded by other agencies such as the U.S. Public Health Service and the Scottish Rite Research Committee.

  III. G.H. ESTABROOKS

  G.H. Estabrooks requires a separate section of h
is own because he is the only mind control doctor who has publicly acknowledged the creation of Manchurian Candidates. The purpose of this chapter is to establish that Dr. Estabrooks was very well connected academically, and had professional relationships with documented CIA mind control contractors such as Dr. Martin Orne. Additionally, the documentation proves that Dr. Estabrooks conducted extensive training of military intelligence personnel and was a contractor of the War Department during World War II. G.H. Estabrooks was at the hub of the Manchurian Candidate programs. Because of the compartmented nature of the intelligence community, it is unlikely that there was only one centrally controlled Manchurian Candidate program.

  15

  G.H. ESTABROOKS

  George Holben Estabrooks was born in St. John, New Brunwick, Canada on December 16, 1895. He moved to Colgate College in Hamilton, New York in 1927, and lived there till he died on December 30, 1973. Dr. Estabrooks did his B.A. at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia in 1920 and his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard in 1926. From 1921 to 1924 he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and Exeter.

  At age 19, Estabrooks became the youngest commissioned officer in the First Canadian Division. He was in the German gas attack at Ypres. While participating in a gas attack drill behind lines, he was exposed to mustard gas because of a tear in his mask. This almost killed him and eventually resulted in his being sent back to Canada. He developed tuberculosis and spent time in two TB sanitaria, one of them in Switzerland; there he met his future wife, the daughter of a Swiss watchmaker, whom he married in Rome twelve years later on July 20, 1933. She died in 1975, leaving behind their only daughter. Estabrooks led a stable, quiet personal life. Among other things, he was a 32nd degree Knight Templar Mason. His father, Leander Estabrooks, was a steamboat captain on the St. John River but was never known to drink or swear. Like his father, George Estabrooks was a teetotaller.

  Dr. Estabrooks wrote many articles and books including Man - The Mechanical Misfit83, Hypnotism84, Spiritism85 and The Future of the Human Mind88. He studied multiple personality very carefully. In his book Spiritism85, Dr. Estabrooks describes experiments done to create multiple personality by a U.S. military psychiatrist, Dr. P.L. Harriman111-113. Dr. Harriman did not claim that any of his experimental multiple personality subjects were used in actual operations.

  In his book Hypnotism, Dr Estabrooks84 states that the creation of experimental multiple personality for operational use in military subjects, whom he refers to as super spies, is ethical because of the demands of war. He comments, in a chapter entitled “Hypnotism in Warfare” that:

  The British are paying a terrible price for refusing to look reality in the face. We might easily do the same if we became over squeamish in our determination to protect ourselves ethically. We may rest assured that certain world powers will not hesitate one moment to use hypnotism directly they are convinced of its value. Then it will be incumbent on us to beat them at their own game, but under these circumstances the hand of the military must not be tied by any silly prejudices in the minds of the general public. War is the end of all law. When we speak of keeping within the rules of the game we are childish, because it is not a game and the rules never hold. In the last analysis any device is justifiable which enables us to protect ourselves from defeat.

  In a May 13, 1968 article in the Providence Evening Bulletin31, Estabrooks is described as a former consultant for the FBI and CIA, and is quoted as saying that, “the key to creating an effective spy or assassin rests in splitting a man’s personality, or creating multipersonality, with the aid of hypnotism…. This is not science fiction. This has and is being done. I have done it.”

  In an obituary in the January 6, 1974 Syracuse Herald American56, the writer states:

  But he knew the power of what he called “my curious little research hobby.” Once I felt he was ready to tell me about his experiences in the war, how hypnotism might have been used in early “Manchurian Candidate” fashion, as a weapon of psychological warfare, but then he drew back to the style of conversation that stops just short of major revelation. You were left imagining all the cats struggling to be released from that bag of his.

  The “curious little research hobby” was the experimental creation of multiple personality for operational use by the military. The ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD documents contain a copy of Dr. Estabrooks’ proposal to the CIA dated June 22, 1954. Although all names are whited out in the document, it is definitely written by Dr. Estabrooks for the following reasons: the writing style is characteristic; the vocabulary is characteristic; the content is characteristic; the time frame is correct; and the whited out name occupies the correct number of spaces to spell “Estabrooks.”

  Dr. Estabrooks’ proposal and commentary from the CIA read as follows, with spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors uncorrected:

  THE MILITARY APPLICATION OF HYPNOTISM

  To: [Whited out]

  From: [Whited out]

  I choose two practical applications from many with which to illustrate my proposition:

  1. The safeguarding of the messages entrusted to couriers. In deep hypnosis the subject, military or civilian, can be given a message to be delivered to say Colonel X in Berlin. The subject may then be sent to Berlin on any perfectly routine assignment. The message will be perfectly safe and will be delivered to the proper person because

  a. the subject will have no memory whatsoever in the waking state as to the nature and contents of the message.

  b. it can be arranged that the subject will have no knowledge of ever having been hypnotized.

  c. It can be arranged that no one beside Colonel X in Berlin can hypnotize the subject and recover the message.

  This hypnotic messenger, if I may use the phrase has in my opinion at least two very definite advantages over the ordinary courier. First he will never under any circumstance by a slip of the tongue divulge the true nature of his mission for the very simple reason that he has no conscious knowledge of what that mission may be. He is merely going on a routine replacement in say the Adjutant General’s Office. This will be his story and the story which he believes.

  Secondly, if by any chance, he is picked up through leakage if information from any other sources the message is safe. No amount of third degree tactics can pry it loose, for he simply does not have it in his conscious mind. Even if the enemy suspects the use of hypnotism the message is still safe for no one can hypnotize him except this Colonel X in Berlin.

  May I point out that this technique is one which can be demonstrated under experimental conditions where you wish and when you wish allowing a certain amount of time to train the subjects in question.

  2. A specific counterintelligence technique to be used against enemy agents. This particular use of hypnotism would be more complicated and more difficult than the rather simple case which I outlined in the preceding paragraphs, but is, I assure you, quite practical. I will take a number of men and will establish in them through the use of hypnotism the condition of split personality. Consciously they will be ardent Communists, phanatical adherence to the party line, ready and eager to submit to any discipline which the party may prescribe. Unconsciously they will be loyal Americans just as grimley determined to thwart the Communists at every turn in the road.

  These men will again have no knowledge of anything that occurs in the hypnotic state - will have no knowledge of ever having been hypnotized and can only be hypnotized by such persons as the original operator may choose. Consciously they will associate with the Communists and learn all the plans of the organization. Once every month or at such time is advisable they will be contacted by a member of our intelligence department, hypnotized, and as loyal Americans will tell what they know. This sounds unbelievable, but I assure, you, it will work.

  Once again the advantages. Your hypothetical counter spy will be placed in a very difficult situation - amounting at best to social ostracism, at worst criminal prosecution. He will not disclose his true role for the very simple reas
on that he can not. Consciously he is a Communist and will not in a moment of weakness admit to his relatives or to his friends that he is anything but a Communist. Again, if through some leakage, he is suspected of being an informer his true role is safely guarded, locked in the unconscious and impervious to all assaults from the outside.

  [Whited out] I consider myself an authority on the theoretical applications of hypnotism to warfare and would point out that it is a highly specialized subject. The average psychologist or even psychiatrist is as much at a loss here as would be the average chemist or physicist if called to supervise a very specialized project for which he had no particular training. I claim that I can demonstrate all my particular contentions to the satisfaction of the government agencies and request the opportunity to do so.