Secret and Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History (6 page)

Dr. Adey is an accomplished scientist, which leads one to believe the significance of this experiment goes beyond mere reinforcement of the animal’s brain waves. Did the rhythms that he chose to apply have special significance with relation to information processing or conditioning? The 4.5 theta rhythm that he applied was the natural reoccurring frequency that he had measured in the hippocampus during a phase of avoidance learning. The hippocampus, as Adey wrote in an earlier paper, “… involves neural processes connected with consolidation of memory traces. It relates closely to the need for focusing attention, and the degree to which recapitulation of past experience is imposed.” One might add, to ensure survival.

Does it follow that an EEG modulated carrier frequency can be used to enhance human avoidance learning? You bet, provided the same careful procedures are followed with humans as were with animals, the same result would accrue. Recall again the goals of Pandora — to discover whether a carefully constructed electromagnetic signal could direct the mind.

The obvious question becomes, how many and with how much accuracy can behavioral states or “frames of mind” be intentionally imposed, that is, apart from the certain technological capability to promote disorganization and degradation of perception and performance through use of the fields. In fact, many components of learning or conditioning including affect (i.e., “feeling” or emotional states) can be imposed through use of the fields from a distance. e.g., behavioral arousal, orienting reflex, subliminal stress (alarm reaction without realization of the contextual significance), so-called levels of consciousness, inhibition of cerebral functions, which would render one more susceptible to suggestion or influence, and so on. All components necessary to produce behavioral conditioning, including ways to provide contextual significance, can be applied from a distance (i.e., without direct brain contact, as was necessary in older behavior modification experiments.)

Another indication that the government entertained notions of behavior control through use of fields and sound, is a 1974 research proposal by J.F. Schapitz. To test his theory, his plan was to record EEG correlates induced by various drugs, and then to modulate these biological frequencies on a microwave carrier. Could the same behavioral states be produced by imposing these brain wave frequencies on human subjects? His plan went further and included inducing hyptonic states and using words modulated on a microwave carrier frequency to attempt to covertly condition subjects to perform various acts. The plan as released (through the Freedom of Information Act) seems less part of a careful recipe for influence than Adey’s and other DOD scientists’ work, and may have been released to mislead by lending an “information beam” science fiction-like quality to the work.

The end of Project Pandora may have signified the end of research into the cause of effects of the varying frequencies registered at the American embassy in Moscow — some known to be due to CIA and National Security Agency equipment, but interest in microwave and biological frequency weapons did not wane. Indeed, there are indications of applications. As we have seen, research that began in response to a security concern, transformed almost overnight into a search for weapons applications, while cloaked in disinformation about the Soviets. What types of weapons?

(1) That microwaves, perhaps modulated with low biological frequencies, are used from a distance to cause performance decrements and disorganization by interfering with neuro-electric function; or by causing central nervous system effects, subjective feelings of ill health, or health syndrome associated with periodic exposures at intensities below 10,000 microwatts/cm
²
;

(2) That microwaves are used to create organ specific effects, e.g., tissues with less blood circulation, like the gall bladder, lens of the eye, etc., can compensate less to increased heating; heart disfunctions can be caused; lesions or necrosis of internal tissues can be induced without a subject necessarily feeling heat, and symptoms might manifest later, at certain frequencies, slight heating or “hot spots” can be created at the center of the head; there is an ongoing Navy contract to find parameters to disrupt human metabolic functions; or

(3) That they are used in an interdisciplinary approach to remote conditioning by creating information processing effects, as Dr. Adey’s work shows, or to induce “feeling” or “emotional” elements of cognition, such as excitatory reactions, subliminal stress, behavioral arousal, enhanced suggestibility by inhibition of higher functions, or various other EEG or behavioral effects. There are strong indications that microwaves have been used to cause the decrements. There is no question but that the U.S. military and the CIA know the behavioral or psychoactive significance of applied biological rhythms and other frequencies, as this was part of the thrust of their work during Pandora. Inducing emotion or feelings through use of electromagnetic fields, and then synchronizing the feelings with words (symbolic of ideas) would be an effective way to induce preferences or attitude change, because it would mirror natural thought processes. The question seems less whether conditioning through use of covert technology is possible, than whether there has been a policy choice to use it. If the results of their research are used as part of a system that can condition behavioral responses from a distance, it is a secret that they hold close like a baby.

Richard Helms wrote of such a system in the mid-1960s while he was CIA Plans Director. He spoke of “sophisticated approaches to the ‘coding’ of information for transmittal to population targets in the ‘battle for the minds of men’ …” and of “an approach integrating biological, social and physical-mathematical research in attempts … to control behavior.” He found particularly notable, “use of modern information theory, automata theory, and feedback concepts … for a technology for controlling behavior … using information inputs as causative agents.” Due to Project Pandora, it is now known that applied biological (and other) frequencies can also be used as direct “information inputs” (e.g., of feeling or emotion) and to reinforce brain rhythms associated with conditioning and information processing. One way to get such a signal into a human may be through use of a high frequency carrier frequency. Results of research into information processing, unconscious processes, decision making, memory processes and evoked brain potentials would likely be exploited or integrated in an interdisciplinary system.

Covert technological influence is not so foreign to the American way of life as one may think. It was reported in a 1984 U.S. House of Representatives hearing that high frequency audio transmissions are applied, for instance, in some department stores to prevent theft (one East Coast department store chain was reported to have saved $600,000 over a nine-month period), and in some grocery stores with the result that employee induced cash shortages significantly decreased and employees are better mannered. In other words, as Helms wrote of, verbal messages are delivered at frequencies above human hearing. Technology for commercial applications is relatively sophisticated (one studio uses a “layered” approach and 31 channels in preparing tapes; some employ a “dual coding” approach, integrating scientific knowledge of information processing modes of the two brain hemispheres, and others use techniques where a consumer is spoken to as a three year old child.) There is no U.S. law specifically regulating these types of transmission (over radio and TV a Federal Communication Commission “catch all” provision might apply). If industry uses indetectable audio transmissions to meet security concerns, it seems that the military and CIA would exploit the same technology and would have developed much more sophisticated technology for applications. The public’s conception of “subliminals” is naive compared to capabilities.

The military has studied and considered for usefulness in a warfare and psychological warfare context a wide range of biological or pharmacological substances. In the memo referred to above, Helms wrote that the U.S. is five years ahead of the Soviets in pharmacological agents producing behavioral effects. Some of these substances would increase susceptibility to influence if incorporated in the multidisciplinary approach he wrote of.

A side effect of lowered resistance to sub-threshold stimulus might be that some would become aware of illicit influence (even under normal circumstances there is a wide variation in sensitivity among individuals to sub-threshold stimulus; normal individuals whom psychology terms “reducers” are much more sensitive in this way; actually, most schizophrenics are extreme reducers, and therefore, much more aware of stimulus that others aren’t cognizant of). Convenient to the agencies involved in covert influence, is that among primary symptoms of schizophrenia or mental illness are ideas that one is being influenced by “transmissions” (e.g. radio frequencies), “voices” or even telepathy; unless complaints about covert psychological weapons are well organized, they would tend to be discounted as indicative of mental imbalance.

There are many ways to create temporary or permanent states that increase receptivity to suggestion and/or conditioning. It is interesting to note that scientific studies have correlated exposure to electromagnetic fields alone with mental hospital admissions and worsening of symptoms of mental patients, even as an etiological factor in the onset of mental illness. (A marker disease for exposure to microwaves is damage behind the lens of the eye; a disproportionate number of persons so damaged also suffer from mental disease or neurological impairment.)

Weapons against whom? Safe to say, in order to enlist the aid of scientists, the military and CIA would act true to form, that is, to motivate and overcome reluctance due to dictates of conscience, they would evoke a serious security risk during initial phases of development. In fact, on the “unclassified” face of it, a number of reports have openly suggested use of “microwaves” against “terrorists.”

Los Alamos National Laboratory, now under supervision of University of California, prepared a report for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) setting forth that use of microwave radiation on terrorists could kill them, stun them or at least modify their behavior by changing their “perceptions.” At this point the cloak is donned, and the report continues: “There are reports of Eurasian communist countries performing research with combined fields of signals from several different microwave frequencies to produce at least perceptual distortions in humans.”

Cable News Network recently aired a report on electromagnetic weapons and showed an official document that was a contingency plan to use electromagnetic weapons against terrorists. It wasn’t made clear who the terrorists were or what the contingency was. Prior to the news show, however, reports had surfaced, the source a DOD medical engineer, that in the content of conditioning, microwaves and other modalities had regularly been used against Palestinians.

When DOD develops a weapon it can be said with certainty that it will be tested and, if possible, where it would be useful to meet their goals. Women peace activists have kept an ongoing vigil at the periphery of the U.S. Air Force base at Greenham in England since 1981. They are protesting build-up of nuclear weapons. The U.S. Cruise missiles, which are nuclear warheads small enough to be mounted on the back of a truck called a launcher vehicle, arrived at the base in March, 1984. Since then the women in the encampment and members of the Cuisewatch network have ensured that when the launcher vehicle and its convoy are taken out into the British countryside, the “dispersal exercises” aren’t as secret as the military intended them to be. The women of the network, non-violent activists, have been subjected to intense harassment in an effort to be rid of their presence.

In the Fall of 1984, things changed dramatically; many, if not most of the women began suffering illness; and, simultaneously, the massive police and military presence at the base virtually disappeared, and new and different antenna were installed at the base. In a report prepared by Rosalie Bertell, commissioner for International Commission of Health Professionals for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, the unusual patterns of illness ranged from “severe headaches, drowsiness, menstrual bleeding at abnormal times or post-menopausal, to bouts of temporary paralysis, faulty speech coordination and in one case apparent circulatory failure requiring hospitalization.”

Other symptoms documented by peace activist Kim Bealy, who coordinates investigations into reports of illness at specific places around the base, included; vertigo, retinal bleeding, burnt face (even at night), nausea, sleep disturbances and palpitations. Psychological symptoms included lack of concentration, disorientation, loss of memory, irritability and a sense of panic in non-panic situations. The symptoms have virtually all been associated in medical literature with exposure to microwaves and most listed can be induced through low intensity or non-thermal exposures.
(Editor’s note: such devices were utilized as “psychological deterrents” during the siege of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco.)

Measurements were taken around the base by members of Electronics for Peace and by others. Strong signals, up to one hundred times the normal background level were detected on a number of occasions. In fact, signals ten times stronger than those felt to be emanating from normal base transmitting systems were found.