Secret and Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History (7 page)

The strongest signals generally appeared in the areas where the women said that they suffered ill effects. For instance, they were found to cover the women’s encampment near the “green gate” (gates to the base are designated by color), but stopped abruptly at the edge of the road leading to the gate. The strength of the signals were also found to reflect the activity of the women: e.g., they increased rapidly when the women started a demonstration. Visitors to the encampment, both men and women, reported experiencing the same types of symptoms and the same pattern of variation as the Greenham women.

In a review prepared by National Bureau of Standards, Law Enforcement Standards Laboratory, for Nuclear Defense Agency, Intelligence and Security Directorate, use of low intensity microwaves was considered for application as a “psychological deterrent.” The report stated, “…microwave radiation has frequently been cited as being responsible for non-thermal effects in integrated central nervous system activity. The behavioral consequences most frequently reported have been disability, listlessness and increased irritability.” The report fails to mention just as frequently cited low intensity microwave health effects as chromosome damage; congenital birth defects; autonomic nervous system disregulation, including disruption of bio-cycles; impaired immune function; brain damage and other neurological abnormalities, including leaks in the blood brain barrier and depletion of some neurotransmitters; among a host of other health impairments. As activist Kim Bealy put it, “It would now appear that we are protecting the missiles by killing people slowly.”

It is not necessary that the transmission take place from equipment in the vicinity of a target (although the Greenham women seemed to be suffering from transmissions made from within the base.) Propagation of microwaves has been very well studied and is very sophisticated, e.g., a two inch beam can be sent from a satellite, point to point, to a receiving dish on earth; and, it was reported in 1978, that the CIA had a program called Operation Pique, which included bouncing radio signals or microwaves off of the ionosphere to affect the mental functions of people in selected areas, including Eastern European nuclear installations.

In the U.S. at this time, there is no legally enforceable microwave standard. There never has been an enforceable standard for the public or the workplace. Microwaves at intensities within the suggested “guideline” have finally been shown, even by U.S. research, to cause health damage.

Adey, W. Ross, “Neurophysiologic Effects of Radiofrequency and Microwave Radiation,”
Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine,
V.55, #11, December, 1979; “The Influences of Impressed Electrical Fields at EEG Frequencies on Brain and Behavior,” in
Behavior and Brain Electrical Activity,
Burch, N. and Altshuler, H.I., eds., Plenum Press, 1975; “Effects of Modulated Very High Frequency Fields on Specific Brain Rhythms in Cats,”
Brain Research,
V.58., 1973; “Spectral Analysis of Low Frequency Components in the Electrical Activity of the Hippocampus During Learning,”
Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology,
V.23, 1967.

Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, V. 247, February, 1975.

Bealy, Kim, “Electromagnetic Pollution: A Little Known Health Hazard, A New Means of Control?,” Preliminary Report, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Inlands House, Southbourne, Emsworth, Hants, P0108JH.

Becker, Robert O.,
The Body Electric,
William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1985.

Bowart, Walter,
Operation Mind Control,
Dell Publishing, 1978.

Brodeur, Paul,
The Zapping of America,
W.W. Norton and Co, 1977.

Frey, Allan, “Behavioral Biophysics,”
Psychological Bulletin,
V.65, #5, 1965; “Human Auditory System Response in Modulated Electromagnetic Energy,”
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V.247, February, 1975; “Exposure to RF Electromagnetic Energy Decreases Aggressive Behavior,”
Biolectromagnetics,
V.12, 1986.

Harvey, J., Ickes, W., Kidd, R.,
New Directions in Attribution Research,
V.2, John Wiley and Sons, 1978.

ISN News, “Reproductive Hazards From Video Display Terminals,” Planetary Association for Clear Energy, 1985.

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Bridging the Gap, in Nonlinear Electrodynamics in Biological Systems,
Adey, W.R. and Lawrence, A.F., eds., Plenum Press, 1983.

Kramer, J. and Maguire, P., Psychological Deterrents in Nuclear Theft, National Bureau of Standards for Intelligence and Security Directorate, Defense Nuclear Agency, NBSIR 76-1007, March, 1976.

Lapinsky, G. and Goodman, C.,
Psychological Deterrents to Nuclear Theft: An Updated Literature Review and Bibliography,
Center for Consumer Technology, National Bureau of Standards for Surety and Operations Directorate, Defense Nuclear Agency, NBSIR 80-2038, June, 1980.

McAuliffe, Kathleen, “The Mind Fields,”
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magazine, February, 1985

MacGregor, R.J., “A Brief Survey of Literature Relating to Influence of Low Intensity Microwaves on Nervous Function,” Rand Report, R-4397, 1970; “A Direct Mechanism for the Influence of Microwave Radiation on Neuroelectric Potentials,” Rand Corporation, P-4398,1970.

Marha, Karel, Microwave Radiation Standards in Eastern Europe, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, V.MTT-19, #2, February, 1971.

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Rosenfeld, Sam and Anne, “The Roots of Individuality: Brain Waves and Perception,” Mental Health Studies and Reports Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, October, 1975.

Steneck, Nicholas,
The Microwave Debate,
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Subliminal Communication Technology, House of Representatives, Committee on Science and Technology, Subcommittee on Transportation, Aviation and Materials, 1984.

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In the spring of 1959 I was stationed at an annex of El Toro Marine Base in California. Another Marine in that unit was Lee Harvey Oswald. We became acquainted.

Then in June of that year I shipped out for a tour of duty at the Naval Air Station in Atsugi, Japan, where Oswald served previous to our time together at El Toro.

My ambition all along was to become a novelist, and I had decided to write a book based upon my overseas experience in the military. That autumn I read in the newspaper that Lee Oswald had, upon being discharged, gone to Moscow and applied for Soviet citizenship. By then I’d decided to call my novel about peace-time Marines in the Far East
The Idle Warriors,
and Oswald’s dramatic act inspired me to center the plot around a character based on him.

Convinced that I understood his reasons for becoming disillusioned with the United States and turning to Marxism, feeling they were similar to my own, I at first intended to write “a poor man’s Ugly American” sharply critical of U.S. imperialism characterized by the bungling of the Eisenhower era.

Unfortunately for the clarity of my novel’s political theme, my own ideology shifted — as a result of reading Ayn Rand’s polemical novel,
Atlas Shrugged
— aboard ship on my way back to the States. Discharged from the Marines immediately thereafter, I entered civilian life convinced of the efficacy of laissez-faire capitalism.

My young friend, Greg Hill, and I then traveled from our home town of Whittier, California, to the New Orleans French Quarter, where I continued work on the first draft of
The Idle Warriors.
There I met a man I am belatedly but firmly persuaded played a central role in organizing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, for which I am equally certain Lee Harvey Oswald was framed.

During most of my life I have been inclined to reject conspiracy theories of history. Notwithstanding my willingness to admit that conspiracies exist, I felt that a grasp of political events depended upon an understanding of the power of ideas. In my view, conspiracies were insignificant. My tendency was to challenge the motives of conspiracy buffs when I did not, as was more often the case, question their mental health.

Balancing my occasional doubts was a fear of becoming paranoid. When Oswald was accused of assassinating Kennedy, my first hunch was that he was innocent and had been blamed in a misunderstanding that would soon be cleared up. When the media continued to insist there was ample evidence that Oswald, and Oswald alone, shot the President I quickly changed my mind.

Two years later, when a Warren Report critic confronted me with the many discrepancies between the conclusions of the Warren Commission and the testimony and exhibits contained in the Twenty-six Volumes, I could no longer hide from myself the probability that either Lee Oswald was innocent or he had not acted alone. Yet even then I did not want to think an elaborate conspiracy was involved. Maybe Lyndon Johnson or some of his Texas friends had arranged to kill Kennedy and perhaps it had not occurred to the Warren Commission to probe that possibility. A more complicated theory would seem paranoid. Above all else, I did not want to seem paranoid.

One year elapsed between the time I began doubting the lone-assassin theory and the beginning of tribulations in my own life suffered at the hands of a man most journalists insisted was a paranoid. First, District Attorney Jim Garrison made a bizarre attempt to recruit me as a witness for the prosecution in his probe of a New Orleans-based conspiracy to assassinate John Kennedy. When I expressed my unwillingness to cooperate, he accused me of working for the CIA and summoned me to appear before the grand jury.

After asking me what seemed like a lot of irrelevant questions, he charged me with perjury for denying, truthfully, that I had met with Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans during the months previous to the assassination. I had not seen Oswald in person, nor had I communicated with him in any other way, since June of 1959 — at the latest.

Yet Garrison struck me as sincere. Moreover, his assistants showered me with any number of disturbing coincidences linking me to his assassination theory. I was at a loss to explain them, except in light of the notion that Jim Garrison’s conspiracy theory was an elaborate paranoid construction.

This experience forced me to examine the evidence surrounding the events in Dallas more carefully than ever before. As a result, I became convinced not only that Lee Harvey Oswald had not acted alone but, moreover, that he was not even on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository when the shots that killed Kennedy were fired. Yet, because I also had to cope with Jim Garrison’s wild and irresponsible charges, I also became more certain than ever that paranoia was by far more dangerous than any actual conspiracy that might, from time to time, sabotage the normal functioning of history.

In other words, if conspiracies were significantly dangerous, it was because they tended to spawn paranoia. When Jim Garrison ultimately neglected to bring me to trial, I took it as a tacit admission he had at last perceived the error of his ways.

Meanwhile, in the realm of public affairs I busied myself with other concerns. Of all newsworthy events, the John Kennedy murder seemed to me the most boring. For reasons I could not clearly identify at the time, I was to find the murder of Hollywood actress Sharon Tate far more disturbing. When I read
The Family
by Ed Sanders (E.P. Dutton, 1971) my uneasiness increased. Charles Manson was not typical of the hip counter-culture I had gradually come to consider my own, after the appeal of Ayn Rand’s philosophy diminished in my eyes. Nevertheless, something about him and his followers seemed far more menacing and important than I could justify in terms of a few sensationally gory killings. As if warned in a forgotten nightmare, I felt that I had expected someone like Manson to appear on the scene. All that I read about him confirmed this eerie, elusive anxiety.