Re: Mind Control: It's Real I Tell You!

["Petem" <petem001@xxxxxxxxx>]

can I ask you to take your pills tomorrow?


<perryneheum@xxxxxxxxxxx> a écrit dans le message de news:
1168888890.584291.312150@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>I know a woman who' been stalked by the CIA for years.  She's been in
> and out of institutions and lost every job she's ever held.  I can't
> say where she is now, but she has a legal firm on her side and will
> soon being a lawsuit against the appropriate people.
>
> The following article lends some credence to the subject, I believe.
>
> ------------
> "Mind Games"
>
> New on the Internet: a community of people who believe the government
> is beaming voices into their minds. They may be crazy, but the Pentagon
> has pursued a weapon that can do just that.
>
> By Sharon Weinberger
> The Washington Post Magazine
> Sunday, January 14, 2007; W22
>
> IF HARLAN GIRARD IS CRAZY, HE DOESN'T ACT THE PART. He is standing just
> where he said he would be, below the Philadelphia train station's World
> War II memorial -- a soaring statue of a winged angel embracing a
> fallen combatant, as if lifting him to heaven. Girard is wearing
> pressed khaki pants, expensive-looking leather loafers and a crisp blue
> button-down. He looks like a local businessman dressed for a casual
> Friday -- a local businessman with a wickedly dark sense of humor,
> which had become apparent when he said to look for him beneath "the
> angel sodomizing a dead soldier." At 70, he appears robust and healthy
> -- not the slightest bit disheveled or unusual-looking. He is also
> carrying a bag.
>
> Girard's description of himself is matter-of-fact, until he explains
> what's in the bag: documents he believes prove that the government is
> attempting to control his mind. He carries that black, weathered bag
> everywhere he goes. "Every time I go out, I'm prepared to come home and
> find everything is stolen," he says.
>
> The bag aside, Girard appears intelligent and coherent. At a table in
> front of Dunkin' Donuts inside the train station, Girard opens the bag
> and pulls out a thick stack of documents, carefully labeled and sorted
> with yellow sticky notes bearing neat block print. The documents are an
> authentic-looking mix of news stories, articles culled from military
> journals and even some declassified national security documents that do
> seem to show that the U.S. government has attempted to develop weapons
> that send voices into people's heads.
>
> "It's undeniable that the technology exists," Girard says, "but if you
> go to the police and say, 'I'm hearing voices,' they're going to lock
> you up for psychiatric evaluation."
>
> The thing that's missing from his bag -- the lack of which makes it
> hard to prove he isn't crazy -- is even a single document that would
> buttress the implausible notion that the government is currently
> targeting a large group of American citizens with mind-control
> technology. The only direct evidence for that, Girard admits, lies with
> alleged victims such as himself.
>
> And of those, there are many.
>
> IT'S 9:01 P.M. WHEN THE FIRST PERSON SPEAKS during the Saturday
> conference call.
>
> Unsure whether anyone else is on the line yet, the female caller throws
> out the first question: "You got gang stalking or V2K?" she asks no one
> in particular.
>
> There's a short, uncomfortable pause.
>
> "V2K, really bad. 24-7," a man replies.
>
> "Gang stalking," another woman says.
>
> "Oh, yeah, join the club," yet another man replies.
>
> The members of this confessional "club" are not your usual victims.
> This isn't a group for alcoholics, drug addicts or survivors of
> childhood abuse; the people connecting on the call are self-described
> victims of mind control -- people who believe they have been targeted
> by a secret government program that tracks them around the clock, using
> technology to probe and control their minds.
>
> The callers frequently refer to themselves as TIs, which is short for
> Targeted Individuals, and talk about V2K -- the official military
> abbreviation stands for "voice to skull" and denotes weapons that beam
> voices or sounds into the head. In their esoteric lexicon, "gang
> stalking" refers to the belief that they are being followed and
> harassed: by neighbors, strangers or colleagues who are agents for the
> government.
>
> A few more "hellos" are exchanged, interrupted by beeps signaling late
> arrivals: Bill from Columbus, Barbara from Philadelphia, Jim from
> California and a dozen or so others.
>
> Derrick Robinson, the conference call moderator, calls order.
>
> "It's five after 9," says Robinson, with the sweetly reasonable
> intonation of a late-night radio host. "Maybe we should go ahead and
> start."
>
> THE IDEA OF A GROUP OF PEOPLE CONVINCED THEY ARE TARGETED BY WEAPONS
> that can invade their minds has become a cultural joke, shorthanded by
> the image of solitary lunatics wearing tinfoil hats to deflect
> invisible mind beams. "Tinfoil hat," says Wikipedia, has become "a
> popular stereotype and term of derision; the phrase serves as a byword
> for paranoia and is associated with conspiracy theorists."
>
> In 2005, a group of MIT students conducted a formal study using
> aluminum foil and radio signals. Their surprising finding: Tinfoil hats
> may actually amplify radio frequency signals. Of course, the tech
> students meant the study as a joke.
>
> But during the Saturday conference call, the subject of aluminum foil
> is deadly serious. The MIT study had prompted renewed debate; while a
> few TIs realized it was a joke at their expense, some saw the findings
> as an explanation for why tinfoil didn't seem to stop the voices.
> Others vouched for the material.
>
> "Tinfoil helps tremendously," reports one conference call participant,
> who describes wrapping it around her body underneath her clothing.
>
> "Where do you put the tinfoil?" a man asks.
>
> "Anywhere, everywhere," she replies. "I even put it in a hat."
>
> A TI in an online mind-control forum recommends a Web site called
> "Block EMF" (as in electromagnetic frequencies), which advertises a
> full line of clothing, including aluminum-lined boxer shorts described
> as a "sheer, comfortable undergarment you can wear over your regular
> one to shield yourself from power lines and computer electric fields,
> and microwave, radar, and TV radiation." Similarly, a tinfoil hat
> disguised as a regular baseball cap is "smart and subtle."
>
> For all the scorn, the ranks of victims -- or people who believe they
> are victims -- are speaking up. In the course of the evening, there are
> as many as 40 clicks from people joining the call, and much larger
> numbers participate in the online forum, which has 143 members. A note
> there mentioning interest from a journalist prompted more than 200
> e-mail responses.
>
> Until recently, people who believe the government is beaming voices
> into their heads would have added social isolation to their catalogue
> of woes. But now, many have discovered hundreds, possibly thousands, of
> others just like them all over the world. Web sites dedicated to
> electronic harassment and gang stalking have popped up in India, China,
> Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Russia and elsewhere.
>
> Victims have begun to host support meetings in major cities, including
> Washington. Favorite topics at the meetings include lessons on how to
> build shields (the proverbial tinfoil hats), media and PR training, and
> possible legal strategies for outlawing mind control.
>
> The biggest hurdle for TIs is getting people to take their concerns
> seriously. A proposal made in 2001 by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) to
> ban "psychotronic weapons" (another common term for mind-control
> technology) was hailed by TIs as a great step forward. But the bill was
> widely derided by bloggers and columnists and quickly dropped.
>
> Doug Gordon, Kucinich's spokesman, would not discuss mind control other
> than to say the proposal was part of broader legislation outlawing
> weapons in space. The bill was later reintroduced, minus the mind
> control. "It was not the concentration of the legislation, which is why
> it was tightened up and redrafted," was all Gordon would say.
>
> Unable to garner much support from their elected representatives, TIs
> have started their own PR campaign. And so, last spring, the Saturday
> conference calls centered on plans to hold a rally in Washington. A
> 2005 attempt at a rally drew a few dozen people and was ultimately
> rained out; the TIs were determined to make another go of it.
> Conversations focused around designing T-shirts, setting up
> congressional appointments, fundraising, creating a new Web site and
> formalizing a slogan. After some debate over whether to focus on gang
> stalking or mind control, the group came up with a compromise slogan
> that covered both: "Freedom From Covert Surveillance and Electronic
> Harassment."
>
> Conference call moderator Robinson, who says his gang stalking began
> when he worked at the National Security Agency in the 1980s, offers his
> assessment of the group's prospects: Maybe this rally wouldn't produce
> much press, but it's a first step. "I see this as a movement," he says.
> "We're picking up people all the time."
>
> HARLAN GIRARD SAYS HIS PROBLEMS BEGAN IN 1983, while he was a real
> estate developer in Los Angeles. The harassment was subtle at first:
> One day a woman pulled up in a car, wagged her finger at him, then sped
> away; he saw people running underneath his window at night; he noticed
> some of his neighbors seemed to be watching him; he heard someone
> moving in the crawl space under his apartment at night.
>
> Girard sought advice from this then-girlfriend, a practicing
> psychologist, whom he declines to identify. He says she told him,
> "Nobody can become psychotic in their late 40s." She said he didn't
> seem to manifest other symptoms of psychotic behavior -- he dressed
> well, paid his bills -- and, besides his claims of surveillance, which
> sounded paranoid, he behaved normally. "People who are psychotic are
> socially isolated," he recalls her saying.
>
> After a few months, Girard says, the harassment abruptly stopped. But
> the respite didn't last. In 1984, appropriately enough, things got
> seriously weird. He'd left his real estate career to return to school
> at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was studying for a master's
> degree in landscape architecture. He harbored dreams of designing parks
> and public spaces. Then, he says, he began to hear voices. Girard could
> distinguish several different male voices, which came complete with a
> mental image of how the voices were being generated: from a recording
> studio, with "four slops sitting around a card table drinking beer," he
> says.
>
> The voices were crass but also strangely courteous, addressing him as
> "Mr. Girard."
> They taunted him. They asked him if he thought he was normal; they
> suggested he was going crazy. They insulted his classmates: When an
> overweight student showed up for a field trip in a white raincoat, they
> said, "Hey, Mr. Girard, doesn't she look like a refrigerator?"
>
> Six months after the voices began, they had another question for him:
> "Mr. Girard, Mr. Girard. Why aren't you dead yet?" At first, he
> recalls, the voices would speak just two or three times a day, but it
> escalated into a near-constant cacophony, often accompanied by severe
> pain all over his body -- which Girard now attributes to
> directed-energy weapons that can shoot invisible beams.
>
> The voices even suggested how he could figure out what was happening to
> him. He says they told him to go to the electrical engineering
> department to "tell them you're writing science fiction and you don't
> want to write anything inconsistent with physical reality. Then tell
> them exactly what has happened."
>
> Girard went and got some rudimentary explanations of how technology
> could explain some of the things he was describing.
>
> "Finally, I said: 'Look, I must come to the point, because I need
> answers. This is happening to me; it's not science fiction.'" They
> laughed.
>
> He got the same response from friends, he says. "They regarded me as
> crazy, which is a humiliating experience."
>
> When asked why he didn't consult a doctor about the voices and the
> pain, he says, "I don't dare start talking to people because of the
> potential stigma of it all. I don't want to be treated differently.
> Here I was in Philadelphia. Something was going on, I don't know any
> doctors . . . I know somebody's doing something to me."
>
> It was a struggle to graduate, he says, but he was determined, and he
> persevered. In 1988, the same year he finished his degree, his father
> died, leaving Girard an inheritance large enough that he did not have
> to work.
>
> So, instead of becoming a landscape architect, Girard began a full-time
> investigation of what was happening to him, often traveling to
> Washington in pursuit of government documents relating to mind control.
> He put an ad in a magazine seeking other victims. Only a few people
> responded.
>
> But over the years, as he met more and more people like himself, he
> grew convinced that he was part of what he calls an "electronic
> concentration camp."
>
> What he was finding on his research trips also buttressed his belief:
> Girard learned that in the 1950s, the CIA had drugged unwitting victims
> with LSD as part of a rogue mind-control experiment called MK-ULTRA. He
> came across references to the CIA seeking to influence the mind with
> electromagnetic fields. Then he found references in an academic
> research book to work that military researchers at Walter Reed Army
> Institute of Research had done in the 1970s with pulsed microwaves to
> transmit words that a subject would hear in his head. Elsewhere, he
> came across references to attempts to use electromagnetic energy, sound
> waves or microwave beams to cause non-lethal pain to the body. For
> every symptom he experienced, he believed he found references to a
> weapon that could cause it.
>
> How much of the research Girard cites checks out?
>
> Concerns about microwaves and mind control date to the 1960s, when the
> U.S. government discovered that its embassy in Moscow was being
> bombarded by low-level electromagnetic radiation. In 1965, according to
> declassified Defense Department documents, the Pentagon, at the behest
> of the White House, launched Project Pandora, top-secret research to
> explore the behavioral and biological effects of low-level microwaves.
> For approximately four years, the Pentagon conducted secret research:
> zapping monkeys; exposing unwitting sailors to microwave radiation; and
> conducting a host of other unusual experiments (a sub-project of
> Project Pandora was titled Project Bizarre). The results were mixed,
> and the program was plagued by disagreements and scientific squabbles.
> The "Moscow signal," as it was called, was eventually attributed to
> eavesdropping, not mind control, and Pandora ended in 1970. And with
> it, the military's research into so-called non-thermal microwave
> effects seemed to die out, at least in the unclassified realm.
>
> But there are hints of ongoing research: An academic paper written for
> the Air Force in the mid-1990s mentions the idea of a weapon that would
> use sound waves to send words into a person's head. "The signal can be
> a 'message from God' that can warn the enemy of impending doom, or
> encourage the enemy to surrender," the author concluded.
>
> In 2002, the Air Force Research Laboratory patented precisely such a
> technology: using microwaves to send words into someone's head. That
> work is frequently cited on mind-control Web sites. Rich Garcia, a
> spokesman for the research laboratory's directed energy directorate,
> declined to discuss that patent or current or related research in the
> field, citing the lab's policy not to comment on its microwave work.
>
> In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed for this
> article, the Air Force released unclassified documents surrounding that
> 2002 patent -- records that note that the patent was based on human
> experimentation in October 1994 at the Air Force lab, where scientists
> were able to transmit phrases into the heads of human subjects, albeit
> with marginal intelligibility. Research appeared to continue at least
> through 2002. Where this work has gone since is unclear -- the research
> laboratory, citing classification, refused to discuss it or release
> other materials.
>
> The official U.S. Air Force position is that there are no non-thermal
> effects of microwaves. Yet Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA's
> Langley Research Center, tagged microwave attacks against the human
> brain as part of future warfare in a 2001 presentation to the National
> Defense Industrial Association about "Future Strategic Issues."
>
> "That work is exceedingly sensitive" and unlikely to be reported in any
> unclassified documents, he says.
>
> Meanwhile, the military's use of weapons that employ electromagnetic
> radiation to create pain is well-known, as are some of the limitations
> of such weapons. In 2001, the Pentagon declassified one element of this
> research: the Active Denial System, a weapon that uses electromagnetic
> radiation to heat skin and create an intense burning sensation. So,
> yes, there is technology designed to beam painful invisible rays at
> humans, but the weapon seems to fall far short of what could account
> for many of the TIs' symptoms. While its exact range is classified,
> Doug Beason, an expert in directed-energy weapons, puts it at about 700
> meters, and the beam cannot penetrate a number of materials, such as
> aluminum. Considering the size of the full-scale weapon, which
> resembles a satellite dish, and its operational limitations, the
> ability of the government or anyone else to shoot beams at hundreds of
> people -- on city streets, into their homes and while they travel in
> cars and planes -- is beyond improbable.
>
> But, given the history of America's clandestine research, it's
> reasonable to assume that if the defense establishment could develop
> mind-control or long-distance ray weapons, it almost certainly would.
> And, once developed, the possibility that they might be tested on
> innocent civilians could not be categorically dismissed.
>
> Girard, for his part, believes these weapons were not only developed
> but were also tested on him more than 20 years ago.
>
> What would the government gain by torturing him? Again, Girard found
> what he believed to be an explanation, or at least a precedent: During
> the Cold War, the government conducted radiation experiments on scores
> of unwitting victims, essentially using them as human guinea pigs.
> Girard came to believe that he, too, was a walking experiment.
>
> Not that Girard thinks his selection was totally random: He believes he
> was targeted because of a disparaging remark he made to a Republican
> fundraiser about George H.W. Bush in the early 1980s. Later, Girard
> says, the voices confirmed his suspicion.
>
> "One night I was going to bed; the usual drivel was going on," he says.
> "The constant stream of drivel. I was just about to go to bed, and a
> voice says: 'Mr. Girard, do you know who was in our studio with us?
> That was George Bush, vice president of the United States.'"
>
> GIRARD'S STORY, HOWEVER STRANGE, reflects what TIs around the world
> report: a chance encounter with a government agency or official,
> followed by surveillance and gang stalking, and then, in many cases,
> voices, and pain similar to electric shocks. Some in the community have
> taken it upon themselves to document as many cases as possible. One TI
> from California conducted about 50 interviews, narrowing the symptoms
> down to several major areas: "ringing in the ears," "manipulation of
> body parts," "hearing voices," "piercing sensation on skin," "sinus
> problems" and "sexual attacks." In fact, the TI continued, "many report
> the sensation of having their genitalia manipulated."
>
> Both male and female TIs report a variety of "attacks" to their sexual
> organs. "My testicles became so sore I could barely walk," Girard says
> of his early experiences. Others, however, report the attacks in the
> form of sexual stimulation, including one TI who claims he dropped out
> of the seminary after constant sexual stimulation by directed-energy
> weapons. Susan Sayler, a TI in San Diego, says many women among the TIs
> suffer from attacks to their sexual organs but are often embarrassed to
> talk about it with outsiders.
>
> "It's sporadic, you just never know when it will happen," she says. "A
> lot of the women say it's as soon as you lay down in bed -- that's when
> you would get hit the worst. It happened to me as I was driving, at odd
> times."
>
> What made her think it was an electronic attack and not just in her
> head? "There was no sexual attraction to a man when it would happen.
> That's what was wrong. It did not feel like a muscle spasm or
> whatever," she says. "It's so . . . electronic."
>
> Gloria Naylor, a renowned African American writer, seems to defy many
> of the stereotypes of someone who believes in mind control. A winner of
> the National Book Award, Naylor is best known for her acclaimed novel,
> The Women of Brewster Place, which described a group of women living in
> a poor urban neighborhood and was later made into a miniseries by Oprah
> Winfrey.
>
> But in 2005, she published a lesser-known work, 1996, a
> semi-autobiographical book describing her experience as a TI. "I didn't
> want to tell this story. It's going to take courage. Perhaps more
> courage than I possess, but they've left me no alternatives," Naylor
> writes at the beginning of her book. "I am in a battle for my mind. If
> I stop now, they'll have won, and I will lose myself." The book is
> coherent, if hard to believe. It's also marked by disturbing passages
> describing how Jewish American agents were responsible for Naylor's
> surveillance. "Of the many cars that kept coming and going down my
> road, most were driven by Jews," she writes in the book. When asked
> about that passage in a recent interview, she defended her logic: Being
> from New York, she claimed, she can recognize Jews.
>
> Naylor lives on a quiet street in Brooklyn in a majestic brownstone
> with an interior featuring intricate woodwork and tasteful decorations
> that attest to a successful literary career. She speaks about her
> situation calmly, occasionally laughing at her own predicament and her
> struggle with what she originally thought was mental illness. "I would
> observe myself," she explains. "I would lie in bed while the
> conversations were going on, and I'd ask: Maybe it is schizophrenia?"
>
> Like Girard, Naylor describes what she calls "street theater" --
> incidents that might be dismissed by others as coincidental, but which
> Naylor believes were set up. She noticed suspicious cars driving by her
> isolated vacation home. On an airplane, fellow passengers mimicked her
> every movement -- like mimes on a street.
>
> Voices similar to those in Girard's case followed -- taunting voices
> cursing her, telling her she was stupid, that she couldn't write.
> Expletive-laced language filled her head. Naylor sought help from a
> psychiatrist and received a prescription for an antipsychotic drug. But
> the medication failed to stop the voices, she says, which only added to
> her conviction that the harassment was real.
>
> For almost four years, Naylor says, the voices prevented her from
> writing. In 2000, she says, around the time she discovered the
> mind-control forums, the voices stopped and the surveillance tapered
> off. It was then that she began writing 1996 as a "catharsis."
>
> Colleagues urged Naylor not to publish the book, saying she would
> destroy her reputation. But she did publish, albeit with a small
> publishing house. The book was generally ignored by critics but
> embraced by TIs.
>
> Naylor is not the first writer to describe such a personal descent.
> Evelyn Waugh, one of the great novelists of the 20th century, details
> similar experiences in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. Waugh's book,
> published in 1957, has eerie similarities to Naylor's.
>
> Embarking on a recuperative cruise, Pinfold begins to hear voices on
> the ship that he believes are part of a wireless system capable of
> broadcasting into his head; he believes the instigator recruited fellow
> passengers to act as operatives; and he describes "performances" put on
> by passengers directed at him yet meant to look innocuous to others.
>
> Waugh wrote his book several years after recovering from a similar
> episode and realizing that the voices and paranoia were the result of
> drug-induced hallucinations.
>
> Naylor, who hasn't written a book since 1996, is now back at work on an
> historical novel she hopes will return her to the literary mainstream.
> She remains convinced that she was targeted by mind control. The many
> echoes of her ordeal she sees on the mind-control forums reassure her
> she's not crazy, she says.
>
> Of course, some of the things she sees on the forum do strike her as
> crazy. "But who I am to say?" she says. "Maybe I sound crazy to
> somebody else."
>
> SOME TIS, SUCH AS ED MOORE, A YOUNG MEDICAL DOCTOR, take a slightly
> more skeptical approach. He criticizes what he calls the "wacky claims"
> of TIs who blame various government agencies or groups of people
> without any proof. "I have yet to see a claim of who is behind this
> that has any data to support it," he writes.
>
> Nonetheless, Moore still believes the voices in his head are the result
> of mind control and that the U.S. government is the most likely
> culprit. Moore started hearing voices in 2003, just as he completed his
> medical residency in anesthesiology; he was pulling an all-nighter
> studying for board exams when he heard voices coming from a nearby
> house commenting on him, on his abilities as a doctor, on his sanity.
> At first, he thought he was simply overhearing conversations through
> walls (much as Waugh's fictional alter ego first thought), but when no
> one else could hear the voices, he realized they were in his head.
> Moore went through a traumatic two years, including hospitalization for
> depression with auditory hallucinations.
>
> "One tries to convince friends and family that you are being
> electronically harassed with voices that only you can hear," he writes
> in an e-mail. "You learn to stop doing that. They don't believe you,
> and they become sad and concerned, and it amplifies your own depression
> when you have voices screaming at you and your friends and family
> looking at you as a helpless, sick, mentally unbalanced wreck."
>
> He says he grew frustrated with anti-psychotic medications meant to
> stop the voices, both because the treatments didn't work and because
> psychiatrists showed no interest in what the voices were telling him.
> He began to look for some other way to cope.
>
> "In March of 2005, I started looking up support groups on the
> Internet," he wrote. "My wife would cry when she would see these sites,
> knowing I still heard voices, but I did not know what else to do." In
> 2006, he says, his wife, who had stood by him for three years, filed
> for divorce.
>
> Moore, like other TIs, is cautious about sharing details of his life.
> He worries about looking foolish to friends and colleagues -- but he
> says that risk is ultimately worthwhile if he can bring attention to
> the issue.
>
> With his father's financial help, Moore is now studying for an
> electrical engineering degree at the University of Texas at San
> Antonio, hoping to prove that V2K, the technology to send voices into
> people's heads, is real. Being in school, around other people, helps
> him cope, he writes, but the voices continue to taunt him.
>
> Recently, he says, they told him: "We'll never stop [messing] with
> you."
>
> A WEEK BEFORE THE TIS RALLY ON THE NATIONAL MALL, John Alexander, one
> of the people whom Harlan Girard holds personally responsible for the
> voices in his head, is at a Chili's restaurant in Crystal City
> explaining over a Philly cheese steak and fries why the United States
> needs mind-control weapons.
>
> A former Green Beret who served in Vietnam, Alexander went on to a
> number of national security jobs, and rubbed shoulders with prominent
> military and political leaders. Long known for taking an interest in
> exotic weapons, his 1980 article, "The New Mental Battlefield,"
> published in the Army journal Military Review, is cited by
> self-described victims as proof of his complicity in mind control. Now
> retired from the government and living in Las Vegas, Alexander
> continues to advise the military. He is in the Washington area that day
> for an official meeting.
>
> Beneath a shock of white hair is the mind of a self-styled military
> thinker. Alexander belongs to a particular set of Pentagon advisers who
> consider themselves defense intellectuals, focusing on big-picture
> issues, future threats and new capabilities. Alexander's career led him
> from work on sticky foam that would stop an enemy in his or her tracks
> to dalliances in paranormal studies and psychics, which he still
> defends as operationally useful.
>
> In an earlier phone conversation, Alexander said that in the 1990s,
> when he took part in briefings at the CIA, there was never any talk of
> "mind control, or mind-altering drugs or technologies, or anything like
> that."
>
> According to Alexander, the military and intelligence agencies were
> still scared by the excesses of MK-ULTRA, the infamous CIA program that
> involved, in part, slipping LSD to unsuspecting victims. "Until
> recently, anything that smacked of [mind control] was extremely
> dangerous" because Congress would simply take the money away, he said.
>
> Alexander acknowledged that "there were some abuses that took place,"
> but added that, on the whole, "I would argue we threw the baby out with
> the bath water."
>
> But September 11, 2001, changed the mood in Washington, and some in the
> national security community are again expressing interest in mind
> control, particularly a younger generation of officials who weren't
> around for MK-ULTRA. "It's interesting, that it's coming back,"
> Alexander observed.
>
> While Alexander scoffs at the notion that he is somehow part of an
> elaborate plot to control people's minds, he acknowledges support for
> learning how to tap into a potential enemy's brain. He gives as an
> example the possible use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, or
> fMRI, for lie detection. "Brain mapping" with fMRI theoretically could
> allow interrogators to know when someone is lying by watching for
> activity in particular parts of the brain. For interrogating
> terrorists, fMRI could come in handy, Alexander suggests. But any
> conceivable use of the technique would fall far short of the kind of
> mind-reading TIs complain about.
>
> Alexander also is intrigued by the possibility of using electronic
> means to modify behavior. The dilemma of the war on terrorism, he
> notes, is that it never ends. So what do you do with enemies, such as
> those at Guantanamo: keep them there forever? That's impractical.
> Behavior modification could be an alternative, he says.
>
> "Maybe I can fix you, or electronically neuter you, so it's safe to
> release you into society, so you won't come back and kill me,"
> Alexander says. It's only a matter of time before technology allows
> that scenario to come true, he continues. "We're now getting to where
> we can do that." He pauses for a moment to take a bite of his sandwich.
> "Where does that fall in the ethics spectrum? That's a really tough
> question."
>
> When Alexander encounters a query he doesn't want to answer, such as
> one about the ethics of mind control, he smiles and raises his hands
> level to his chest, as if balancing two imaginary weights. In one hand
> is mind control and the sanctity of free thought -- and in the other
> hand, a tad higher -- is the war on terrorism.
>
> But none of this has anything to do with the TIs, he says. "Just
> because things are secret, people tend to extrapolate. Common sense
> does not prevail, and even when you point out huge leaps in logic that
> just cannot be true, they are not dissuaded."
>
> WHAT IS IT THAT BRINGS SOMEONE, EVEN AN INTELLIGENT PERSON, to ascribe
> the experience of hearing disembodied voices to government weapons?
>
> In her book, Abducted, Harvard psychologist Susan Clancy examines a
> group that has striking parallels to the TIs: people who believe
> they've been kidnapped by aliens. The similarities are often uncanny:
> Would-be abductees describe strange pains, and feelings of being
> watched or targeted. And although the alleged abductees don't generally
> have auditory hallucinations, they do sometimes believe that their
> thoughts are controlled by aliens, or that they've been implanted with
> advanced technology.
>
> (On the online forum, some TIs posted vociferous objections to the
> parallel, concerned that the public finds UFOs even weirder than mind
> control. "It will keep us all marginalized and discredited," one
> griped.)
>
> Clancy argues that the main reason people believe they've been abducted
> by aliens is that it provides them with a compelling narrative to
> explain their perception that strange things have happened to them,
> such as marks on their bodies (marks others would simply dismiss as
> bruises), stimulation to their sexual organs (as the TIs describe) or
> feelings of paranoia. "It's not just an explanation for your problems;
> it's a source of meaning for your life," Clancy says.
>
> In the case of TIs, mind-control weapons are an explanation for the
> voices they hear in their head. Socrates heard a voice and thought it
> was a demon; Joan of Arc heard voices from God. As one TI noted in an
> e-mail: "Each person undergoing this harassment is looking for the
> solution to the problem. Each person analyzes it through his or her own
> particular spectrum of beliefs. If you are a scientific-minded person,
> then you will probably analyze the situation from that perspective and
> conclude it must be done with some kind of electronic devices. If you
> are a religious person, you will see it as a struggle between the
> elements of whatever religion you believe in. If you are maybe, perhaps
> more eccentric, you may think that it is alien in nature."
>
> Or, if you happen to live in the United States in the early 21st
> century, you may fear the growing power of the NSA, CIA and FBI.
>
> Being a victim of government surveillance is also, arguably, better
> than being insane. In Waugh's novella based on his own painful
> experience, when Pinfold concludes that hidden technology is being used
> to infiltrate his brain, he "felt nothing but gratitude in his
> discovery." Why? "He might be unpopular; he might be ridiculous; but he
> was not mad."
>
> Ralph Hoffman, a professor of psychiatry at Yale who has studied
> auditory hallucinations, regularly sees people who believe the voices
> are a part of government harassment (others believe they are God, dead
> relatives or even ex-girlfriends). Not all people who hear voices are
> schizophrenic, he says, noting that people can hear voices episodically
> in highly emotional states. What exactly causes these voices is still
> unknown, but one thing is certain: People who think the voices are
> caused by some external force are rarely dissuaded from their
> delusional belief, he says. "These are highly emotional and gripping
> experiences that are so compelling for them that ordinary reality seems
> bland."
>
> Perhaps because the experience is so vivid, he says, even some of those
> who improve through treatment merely decide the medical regimen somehow
> helped protect their brain from government weapons.
>
> Scott Temple, a professor of psychiatry at Penn State University who
> has been involved in two recent studies of auditory hallucinations,
> notes that those who suffer such hallucinations frequently lack insight
> into their illness. Even among those who do understand they are sick,
> "that awareness comes and goes," he says. "People feel overwhelmed, and
> the delusional interpretations return."
>
> BACK AT THE PHILADELPHIA TRAIN STATION, Girard seems more agitated. In
> a meeting the week before, his "handlers" had spoken to him only
> briefly -- they weren't in the right position to attack him, Girard
> surmises, based on the lack of voices.
>
> Today, his conversation jumps more rapidly from one subject to the
> next: victims of radiation experiments, his hatred of George H.W. Bush,
> MK-ULTRA, his personal experiences.
>
> Asked about his studies at Penn, he replies by talking about his
> problems with reading: "I told you, everything I write they dictate to
> me," he says, referring again to the voices. "When I read, they're
> reading to me. My eyes go across; they're moving my eyes down the line.
> They're reading it to me. When I close the book, I can't remember a
> thing I read. That's why they do it."
>
> The week before, Girard had pointed to only one person who appeared
> suspicious to him -- a young African American man reading a book; this
> time, however, he hears more voices, which leads him to believe the
> station is crawling with agents.
>
> "Let's change our location," Girard says after a while. "I'm sure they
> have 40 or 50 people in here today. I escaped their surveillance last
> time -- they won't let that happen again."
>
> Asked to explain the connection between mind control and the University
> of Pennsylvania, which Girard alleges is involved in the conspiracy, he
> begins to talk about defense contractors located near the Philadelphia
> campus: "General Electric was right next to the parking garage; General
> Electric Space Systems occupies a huge building right over there. From
> that building, you could see into the studio where I was doing my work
> most of the time. I asked somebody what they were doing there. You
> know, it had to do with computers. GE Space Systems. They were supposed
> to be tracking missile debris from this location . . . pardon me. What
> was your question again?"
>
> Yet many parts of Girard's life seem to reflect that of any affluent
> 70-year-old bachelor. He travels frequently to France for extended
> vacations and takes part in French cultural activities in Philadelphia.
> He has set up a travel scholarship at the Cleveland Institute of Art in
> the name of his late mother, who attended school there (he changed his
> last name 27 years ago for "personal reasons"), and he travels to meet
> the students who benefit from the fund. And while the bulk of his time
> is spent on his research and writing about mind control, he has other
> interests. He follows politics and describes outings with friends and
> family members with whom he doesn't talk about mind control, knowing
> they would view it skeptically.
>
> Girard acknowledges that some of his experiences mirror symptoms of
> schizophrenia, but asked if he ever worried that the voices might in
> fact be caused by mental illness, he answers sharply with one word:
> "No."
>
> How, then, does he know the voices are real?
>
> "How do you know you know anything?" Girard replies. "How do you know I
> exist? How do you know this isn't a dream you're having, from which
> you'll wake up in a few minutes? I suppose that analogy is the closest
> thing: You know when you have a dream. Sometimes it could be perfectly
> lucid, but you know it's a dream."
>
> The very "realness" of the voices is the issue -- how do you disbelieve
> something you perceive as real? That's precisely what Hoffman, the Yale
> psychiatrist, points out: So lucid are the voices that the sufferers --
> regardless of their educational level or self-awareness -- are unable
> to see them as anything but real. "One thing I can assure you," Hoffman
> says, "is that for them, it feels real."
>
> IT LOOKS ALMOST LIKE ANY OTHER SMALL POLITICAL RALLY IN WASHINGTON.
> Posters adorn the gate on the southwest side of the Capitol Reflecting
> Pool, as attendees set up a table with press materials, while
> volunteers test a loudspeaker and set out coolers filled with bottled
> water. The sun is out, the weather is perfect, and an eclectic
> collection of people from across the country has gathered to protest
> mind control.
>
> There is not a tinfoil hat to be seen. Only the posters and
> paraphernalia hint at the unusual. "Stop USA electronic harassment,"
> urges one poster. "Directed Energy Assaults," reads another. Smaller
> signs in the shape of tombstones say, "RIP MKULTRA." The main display,
> set in front of the speaker's lectern has a more extended message:
> "HELP STOP HI-TECH ASSAULT PSYCHOTRONIC TORTURE."
>
> About 35 TIs show up for the June rally, in addition to a few friends
> and family members. Speakers alternate between giving personal
> testimonials and descriptions of research into mind-control technology.
> Most of the gawkers at the rally are foreign tourists. A few hecklers
> snicker at the signs, but mostly people are either confused or
> indifferent. The articles on mind control at the table -- from
> mainstream news magazines -- go untouched.
>
> "How can you expect people to get worked up over this if they don't
> care about eavesdropping or eminent domain?" one man challenges after
> stopping to flip through the literature. Mary Ann Stratton, who is
> manning the table, merely shrugs and smiles sadly. There is no answer:
> Everyone at the rally acknowledges it is an uphill battle.
>
> In general, the outlook for TIs is not good; many lose their jobs,
> houses and family. Depression is common. But for many at the rally,
> experiencing the community of mind-control victims seems to help. One
> TI, a man who had been a rescue swimmer in the Coast Guard before
> voices in his head sent him on a downward spiral, expressed the solace
> he found among fellow TIs in a long e-mail to another TI: "I think that
> the only people that can help are people going through the same thing.
> Everyone else will not believe you, or they are possibly involved."
>
> In the end, though, nothing could help him enough. In August 2006, he
> would commit
> suicide.
>
> But at least for the day, the rally is boosting TI spirits. Girard, in
> what for him is an ebullient mood, takes the microphone. A small crowd
> of tourists gathers at the sidelines, listening with casual interest.
> With the Capitol looming behind him, he reaches the crescendo of his
> speech, rallying the attendees to remember an important thing: They are
> part of a single community.
>
> "I've heard it said, 'We can't get anywhere because everyone's story is
> different.' We are all the same," Girard booms. "You knew someone with
> the power to commit you to the electronic concentration camp system."
>
> Several weeks after the rally, Girard shows up for a meeting with a
> reporter at the stately Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where he has
> stayed frequently over the two decades he has traveled to the capital
> to battle mind control. He walks in with a lit cigarette, which he
> apologetically puts out after a hotel employee tells him smoking isn't
> allowed anymore. He is half an hour late -- delayed, he says, by a
> meeting on Capitol Hill. Wearing a monogrammed dress shirt and tie, he
> looks, as always, serious and professional.
>
> Girard declines to mention whom on Capitol Hill he'd met with, other
> than to say it was a congressional staffer. Embarrassment is likely a
> factor: Girard readily acknowledges that most people he meets with,
> ranging from scholars to politicians, ignore his entreaties or dismiss
> him as a lunatic.
>
> Lately, his focus is on his Web site, which he sees as the culmination
> of nearly a quarter-century of research. When completed, it will
> contain more than 300 pages of documents. What next? Maybe he'll move
> to France (there are victims there, too), or maybe the U.S. government
> will finally just kill him, he says.
>
> Meanwhile, he is always searching for absolute proof that the
> government has decoded the brain. His latest interest is LifeLog, a
> project once funded by the Pentagon that he read about in Wired News.
> The article described it this way: "The embryonic LifeLog program would
> dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail
> sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every
> phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read. All of
> this -- and more -- would combine with information gleaned from a
> variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person
> went, audiovisual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and
> biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health."
>
> Girard suggests that the government, using similar technology, has
> "catalogued" his life over the past two years -- every sight and sound
> (Evelyn Waugh, in his mind-control book, writes about his character's
> similar fear that his harassers were creating a file of his entire
> life).
>
> Girard thinks the government can control his movements, inject thoughts
> into his head, cause him pain day and night. He believes that he will
> die a victim of mind control.
>
> Is there any reason for optimism?
>
> Girard hesitates, then asks a rhetorical question.
>
> "Why, despite all this, why am I the same person? Why am I Harlan
> Girard?"
>
> For all his anguish, be it the result of mental illness or, as Girard
> contends,
> government mind control, the voices haven't managed to conquer the
> thing that makes him who he is: Call it his consciousness, his
> intellect or, perhaps, his soul.
>
> "That's what they don't yet have," he says. After 22 years, "I'm still
> me."
>
>
> Sharon Weinberger is a Washington writer and author of Imaginary
> Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld.
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011001399.html
>