***, Drugs, Mind Control, and Gitmo
It just gets darker every day.
According to an article in the New Yorker (one of the only major
publications still gutsy enough to publish critical, investigative
journalism), the ghosts of Gottlieb, Cameron, and the other architects
of MKULTRA and BLUEBIRD are alive and well and continuing their
devastating psychological abuse and experimentation. A new generation
of psychologists and physicians are turning the Hippocratic Oath on its
head in their attempts to shape and modify behavior -- much of it under
the guise of "extracting information" from "terrorists" (some of whom
are innocents caught up in the post-9/11 dragnet). It doesn't take much
reading between-the-lines to see what is actually happening behind the
scenes at Guantanamo -- and what is taking place is ugly and deeply
disturbing, and all too familiar to students of the more sinister
threads of history.
Many of the revelations in the New Yorker article ("The Experiment," by
Jane Mayer, July 11 & 18, 2005 -- not yet available online) are
familiar, but there are hints of techniques that mirror the most
horrific (and mostly ignored) abuses at Abu Ghraib and the historical
accounts of government-sponsored mind control. Baher Azmy, a professor
at Seton Hall Law School who is representing one detainee states in the
article, "The whole place appears to be one giant human experiment."
(p. 62)
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The people behind these psychological abuses and experiments are known
as Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, or BSCTs (commonly called
"biscuits"). Originally, BSCTs served as therapists and dispensed
psychotropic drugs to soldiers, and evaluated their combat readiness.
Post 9/11, however, their mission was altered -- instead of helping
soldiers, their talents were turned to interrogation and psychological
torture under the umbrella of military intelligence.
Mayer also unearths the role of the military's highly classified
"Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape" (SERE) program, originally
developed by the Air Force at the end of the Korean War (not
coincidentally at the same time as the birth of U.S. mind control
programs in response to the return of "brainwashed" POWs). The SERE
program subjects soldiers to high-stress simulations of stressful
detention and torture, in order to prepare them for the possibility of
capture. In a familiar post-9/11, rabbit hole inversion, however, SERE
was "reverse-engineered" to facilitate the psychological torture of
GITMO prisoners. All of the data designed to aid U.S. soldiers was
turned on its head and put to use -- by scientists and medical
professionals -- to break open the minds of U.S. detainees. One classic
example is the mistreatment of holy books. Indeed, according to Mayer,
the Koran desecration incidents are a classic SERE tactic. Christian
U.S. troops undergoing SERE training were forced
to witness the shredding of a Bible -- a tactic long before the Rovian
disinfo blitz that sent Newsweek cowering like a beaten dog for daring
to comment on the practice.
Yet that tactic pales when compared to some of the other, more
suggestive, techniques alleged in the article, such as:
A prisoner is shown a picture of a telephone. A psychologist asks him
what it is. When he answers that it's a telephone, the psychiatrist
angrily responds: "It's not a telephone -- it's a bomb!" What kind of
exercise is this, and what is the purpose of it? The prisoners lawyer
claims it has only one goal: to make the prisoner believe he is insane.
(p. 63) Induction of cognitive dissonance is a trademark technique of
mind control.
Detainees are subjected to "noise stress," including tape loops of
babies crying, loud music, cats meowing, and even a Yoko Ono album. (p.
65) One detainee was allegedly wrapped in an Israeli flag while
subjected to loud music and a strobe light. Add some psychotropic drugs
into the mix (courtesy of the BSCTs pharmaceutical arsenal) and you've
created a masterful trip into hell.
Clearly the purpose of these treatments is not to gain information.
Most of the detainees are low-level members or conscripts of Al Qaeda,
and many are innocents. The military has admitted that only a quarter
of the detainees had any valuable information. Is Guantanamo the 21st
Century version of Allan Memorial Hospital -- an experimental torture
chamber for testing new mind-altering and controlling technologies?
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