Officers of the Society of Biological Psychiatry in 1964-65 included MKULTRA contractor, Dr. Ewen Cameron; Dr. Lauretta Bender, who gave LSD and psilocybin to children; and Dr. Hudson Hoaglund of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology (MKULTRA Subproject 8). The volume of Recent Advances in Biological Psychiatry in which Dr. Marrazzi’s Presidential Address is published includes four other papers on LSD.
Other subjects of military LSD research also testified at the 1975 Senate Hearings, including William F. Chaffin and his wife. Chaffin participated in an Air Force mind control experiment in July, 1958. He learned that the substance he took was LSD only in 1975, after a story about LSD testing at Edgeware Arsenal was published. Mrs. Chaffin testified that she thought a miscarriage she suffered might have been due to the LSD causing a deformed fetus. The couple testified (Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1975, pp. 127):
Senator KENNEDY. Mrs. Chaffin, do you have a gun in your house?
Mrs. Chaffin. Yes, sir, we do.
Mr. CHAFFIN. Yes, sir, we do.
Senator KENNEDY. Could you tell us, Mrs. Chaffin; I understand you had a rather frightening experience one time.
Mrs. CHAFFIN. Yes, sir. He did take the gun and start out with it and I asked him where he was going. It was about ten o’clock, after dark. I knew he had no reason to carry a gun. He said, “I don’t know. I’ll be back.” He had been rather moody all day, and I just asked him why he was taking the gun. He said he was going to shoot himself, and that is when I told him that if he left the house with the gun, I would call the police and have them track him down. But he seemed to have no memory of it at all.
Senator KENNEDY. Mr. Chaffin, as I understand, you have no memory of this incident, is that right?
Mr. CHAFFIN. Yes, sir, that is right. I have no memory of this specific instance at all.
Senator KENNEDY. Or any incidents involving this?
Mr. CHAFFIN. I have had other instances of extreme depression, actually blank memories up to a certain point; as I say, extreme depression, virtually indescribable, as far as contemplating taking my own life.
Senator KENNEDY. Did you ever have these prior to the time you took the drug?
Mr. CHAFFIN. No, sir. I can honestly say I had no such experiences as this.
The amnesia William Chaffin describes is unlikely to be due to a single dose of LSD or to a major depressive disorder. It is likely that other drugs, such as scopolamine, were administered along with the LSD, or alternatively Mr. Chaffin may have experienced other brainwashing techniques for which he is amnesic. At any rate, the outcome of the experiments on Mr. Chaffin included recurrent amnesia for behavior that was out of character, and neither the behavior nor the amnesia occurred prior to the experimentation. These symptoms are elements of the Manchurian Candidate. I am not saying that William Chafin was a Manchurian Candidate himself – he was a subject in studies that were relevant to the Manchurian Candidate Program.
Bits and pieces of the procedure for creating Manchurian Candidates were studied one at a time and in numerous different combinations, spread out across many different intelligence agencies, and under many different overlapping cryptonyms.
Another LSD subject who testified to Senator Kennedy in 1975 was Colonel William R. Jordan. He was one of 34 men who received LSD at Fort Benning, Georgia in 1960. He described the effects of the drug as including “nausea, vertigo, and then facial disorientation and complete disintegration of everything around us…. We had periods of lucidity and almost total awareness that we were being experimented on, but yet following that there were enormous gaps, complete periods of blanks, where we did not know what was going on, and we were only told after the fact what we had done.”
The long term side effects experienced by Colonel Jordan included “periods of transitory confusion, vertigo” and beginning in December, 1961, epileptic seizures. Medical investigation of the seizures was done at Valley Forge Hospital and Walter Reed Hospital. The Senate hearing documents include 38 pieces of correspondence generated while Colonel Jordan attempted to get a response from the U.S. Army concerning his seizures. In response to Colonel Jordan’s initiative, the Army attempted to do the first follow-up on the subjects in 1972.
The results of these efforts are summarized in a memorandum by Kenneth R. Dirks, M.D., Brigadier General, MC, Assistant Surgeon General for Research and Development, dated July 15, 1975; of the 34 men, 19 were examined at Walter Reed Hospital, 7 declined examination, 7 did not respond or were still being sought, and one had been killed in Vietnam. Dr. Dirk estimated that about 1,500 Army subjects took part in LSD experiments at Edgeware Arsenal, Fort Benning, and other locations. Other estimates put the figure at 4000 subjects.
Mary Ray, William Chaffin, and William Jordan had acute reactions and long term side effects that suggest they were given higher doses of LSD than reported, or that the LSD was combined with other drugs such as scopolamine. The degree of amnesia, nausea and vertigo created by the LSD seems more typical of anticholinergic medications or other compounds.
Mary Ray is the only LSD subject for whom Senate testimony is corroborated by medical records. She is also the only subject whose mind control doctor is identified by name. The fact that Dr. Marrazzi administered LSD to subjects on contract to the Air Force is documented in his own publications, which makes Mrs. Ray’s testimony uniquely corroborated. Thousands of other LSD subjects might have similar stories to tell, and those subjects represent only a small subset of the mind control drug experiments, since the Army alone lists over 130 mind control drugs it tested in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s.
18
PALLE HARDRUP
Palle Hardrup, a Danish man, was 31 years old when he was found guilty of murder and bank robbery on July 17, 1954. The robbery and murder of two bank employees had taken place on March 29, 1951. Hardrup also robbed a bank on August 23, 1950, but no one was killed during that holdup. Palle Hardup was subjected to the classical methods of mind control studied in BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE, and is the best documented and studied example of a real Manchurian Candidate. His story proves that Manchurian Candidates can in fact be created, be programmed to commit crimes, and be amnesic for those crimes. The 1958 book describing the case, Antisocial or Criminal Acts and Hypnosis: A Case Study could be used as a training manual for Manchurian Candidate programs.
Using different vocabulary consistent with Danish terminology at the time, the jury found that Palle Hardrup had multiple personality, and concluded that the multiple personality had been created deliberately by his programmer and handler, Bjorn Neilsen. The verdict was appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld it in a decision rendered on November 18, 1955. The case also went to the Special Court of Appeal, where the initial jury decision was upheld on June 29, 1957. Over 50 witnesses were called at the original trial, numerous experts testified, and the Danish Medico Legal Council reviewed the case.
In their report of February 17, 1954, the Medico Legal Council, also called the Board of Forensic Medicine, wrote that, “even though the actual symptoms of the mental disorder now seem to have disappeared Hardrup cannot be regarded as cured. The profound split in his personality, which has been established, will certainly only slowly be straightened out.” This analysis was reconfirmed by the Medico Legal Council in its final report of May 3, 1957.
The jury found Hardrup guilty on all charges but not responsible for his actions on account of insanity. The man who transformed Palle Hardrup into an amnesic bank robber, Bjorn Neilsen, was found guilty of robbery, attempted robbery and manslaughter, even though he was not physically present at any of the crimes. The jury found that Neilsen had planned and instigated the crimes and had compelled Hardrup to carry them out through various forms of influence including hypnosis. Neilsen was sentenced to life imprisonment. Neilsen’s verdict went through the Danish appeal process and was not changed. On February 2, 1956 Hardrup was transferred to the State Institution for Psychopathic Delinquents - what became of him in the end, and wheth
er he is still alive, is unknown. He would now be 82 years old.
How did Neilsen turn Hardrup into a Manchurian Candidate? The explanation begins with Palle’s childhood. Contrary to expectation, Hardrup’s childhood was stable, normal and non-traumatic. His identical twin brother never got into any kind of legal trouble, his father worked regularly, there was no alcoholism or violence in the home, and Palle never had behavior problems, school problems or trouble with delinquency. He is described as having been a pleasant, truthful, idealistic adolescent. Dr. Reiter interviewed the family repeatedly and established that there was no family history of substance abuse, mental illness, seizures, suicide or criminal behavior. Both parents and sons agreed that the marriage of Palle’s parents had been happy and harmonious.
The family was solid and middle-class. They owned a piano and both sons were musical. Palle’s brother had many interests including gliding, mechanics, travel and popular science. Palle is said by Dr. Reiter to have been lively, practical, economical and to have had a good memory, powers of concentration and judgment. Both boys were physically healthy, and Palle never had any serious illnesses or head injuries.
This normal background is important because it proves that Neilsen did not exploit a pre-existing criminal personality in Palle Hardrup, or pre-existing mental illness. This finding is consistent with the fact that destructive cults recruit primarily psychiatrically normal individuals, using many of the classical techniques of mind control employed by Bjorn Neilsen102, 289. It also matches the normal pre-abduction psychiatric profile of Patty Hearst (see Chapter 19).
Palle Hardrup’s sexual life was normal. He was heterosexual. He had satisfying sexual intercourse a number of times with different women prior to his marriage, but no pattern of unusual promiscuity. One of these women got pregnant by him and he voluntarily paid her child support although he never knew the child.
In 1939, Palle became an apprentice to a toolmaker and subsequent to that he worked as a journeyman. His life started to go wrong after the Germans occupied Denmark on April 9, 1940. Palle was seventeen at the time. An anticommunist and a Danish nationalist, he was unhappy with what he saw as Danish apathy and defeatism, which he saw as partly responsible for the German occupation. He joined a rifle corps and from there was recruited to the Nazi Party. How this recruitment took place and why Hardrup agreed to it is not made entirely clear by Dr. Reiter.
In September, 1944 Hardrup was called up by the Danish army to take part in the civil defense of Denmark. The recruiter rejected him on the grounds that he was serving in a Nazi volunteer brigade, the Schalburg Corps. The German police commandeered Hardrup as an interpreter, but he didn’t like this work and tried to escape it by shooting himself in the leg with a pistol. He was released from duty by the Nazis and went home for several months to recuperate. Once healed, he returned to the Schalburg Corps but was not required to work as an interpreter.
On February 1, 1945 Hardrup joined the Nazi Hipokorps, an organization that had persecuted Danish Jews in 1943. At the end of the war he tried to leave Denmark with some German troops, but he was arrested by the Danish police on May 8, 1945. On September 9, 1946 Hardrup was sentenced to fourteen years in prison, less the sixteen months he had served. On October 27, 1949 his sentence was reduced to ten years by royal decree and he was released on probation at that time.
During the early part of his inprisonment, Palle Hardrup was depressed, disillusioned and directionless. He realized that the ideals which led him into the Nazi Party were mistaken. During this period Palle was examined twice by a psychiatrist, Dr. Max Schmidt, as part of a series of routine examinations of war criminals. Dr. Schmidt found no signs of mental illness (Hardrup was unhappy and despondent but not clinically depressed). Dr. Schmidt wrote in his report of the second examination, conducted on September 16, 1947 (pp. 75):
The subject is of normal intelligence. He seems somewhat boyish in his political idealism, but is not otherwise immature. He has earlier been under the influence of his Nazi comrades in the Copenhagen Rifle Club, and at the age of seventeen he joined the N.S.U. [Nazi Party]. He took part in the work of the party and became an enthusiast Nazi and anticommunist. His political crimes must be regarded as a result of these beliefs. It seems likely that he belongs to the idealistic type of subject.
The criminal prognosis must be regarded as good.
Dr. Schmidt concluded that Hardrup became a Nazi out of political idealism, not because of a criminal character. He thought that the risk of future criminal activity was low. Prison reports from 1946 and 1947 described Hardrup as, “Polite and well behaved. Young idealist. Works well,” and, “Quiet, steady prisoner.”
The picture of Hardrup at the time he first met Bjorn Neilsen is similar to a freshman college student being recruited by a destructive cult. Alone, away from home, idealistic, subject to influence by others, directionless and unhappy, he was vulnerable to control and manipulation. Although not fundamentally criminal, Hardrup did have an antisocial streak in him. He had joined the Nazi Party. He did not commit any human rights violations himself while in the Schalburg Corps and the Hipokorps, but the Nazis, for whom he worked, certainly did. The seeds of the future Manchurian Candidate bank robber and murderer were already there when Bjorn Neilsen began his mind control experimentation.
Neilsen was a repeat offender. In 1933 he was found guilty of theft, and in 1938 of attempted robbery. In January, 1947 Neilsen was sentenced to twelve years in prison for being a member of the Nazi Frikorps Danmark. While a member he supplied the Nazis with information about Danish resistance fighters. Under cover of the resistance movement he blackmailed two Danish businessmen. Like Hardrup, he was released from Hortens State Prison in 1949.
Hardrup and Neilsen got to know each other in the spring of 1947 while working in the same workshop. While in the workshop they discussed their mutual interests in the philosophy of religion, yoga, spiritualism, hypnosis and politics. Neilsen told Hardrup that he had participated in hypnosis experiments at the Society for Psychical Research - he suggested to Hardrup that they share the same cell so that they could conduct hypnotic experiments together. Hardrup asked and received permission to share a cell with Neilsen. For eighteen months he was continuously either alone in his cell with Neilsen, or working beside him in the workshop.
Neilsen began his mind control experiment immediately, working along by instinct. There is no evidence that he had prior training in mind control. Right away we see the degree of control and influence required to create a durable, operational Manchurian Candidate.
Palle Hardrup was an excellent hypnotic subject. Neilsen began an intensive program of hypnotic conditioning involving hours per day of trance exercises. These usually occurred in the evening. Often Hardrup would go to sleep without having come out of trance. Neilsen characterized these sessions as mainly yoga training. He gave Hardrup suggestions about emptying his mind, transcending, experiencing peace and relaxation, and establishing direct contact with a deity. He also instructed Hardrup to begin isolating himself from his fellow prisoners. Hardrup’s world was narrowed down to a hypnotic focus on Neilsen.
After some time, Neilsen introduced the guardian spirit, “X.” X was a guiding spirit who spoke through Neilsen - Neilsen was but the vehicle for the divine counsel of X. X told Hardrup that his misfortunes to date were all tests to strengthen him for future tasks, and to prepare him for his destiny. X took complete control of all subsequent yoga training.
Gradually, Neilsen conditioned Palle Hardrup so that it was no longer necessary to induce hypnosis. Hardrup experienced Neilsen as X incarnate speaking directly to him even without hypnosis. Whenever Neilsen spoke, it was X speaking. X taught Palle about Samadhi and how yogis attain that transcendent state through denial of their bodily needs. X was there to guide Hardrup to Samadhi and enlightenment.
As a test of Hardrup’s progress, obedience, spiritual earnesty and allegiance to X, X began to assign him certain tasks. One was to have another worker removed f
rom the workshop. Hardrup succeeded in doing so through his manipulation of the other worker. X also instructed Hardrup over and over never to speak to anyone about the secret relationship between Hardrup and X. Disobedience would mean that Palle would never attain Samadhi.
Although Hardrup was destined to transcend to a higher plane, X said, there was a reason he was born in Denmark at that time. Palle Hardrup was to create the Danish National Communist Party. Through this Party, Hardrup would realize his destiny of uniting all of Scandanavia under one government. The Party would also set in place an organization to ferry all the leading intellectuals out of Denmark should the Russians invade. The divine nature of this mission was emphasized over and over again by X.
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