The Twisted nightmare unravels
Psychiatric behavior modification programs were thought to be all but dead by the end of the 1970s in the wake of intelligence community scandals. Certainly for many within the U.S. military and intelligence agency rank and file this was the reality, but current research shows that the architects of forceful psychiatric “mind-control” methods were busily keeping the beast alive.The recent remake of the film, “The Manchurian Candidate,” based on Richard Condon’s 1959 novel, focuses on such techniques, used by both sides during the Cold War. Indeed, the coercive means exploited by 21st century terror doctors can be traced to psychiatric behavior modification programs that flourished through the 1950s and 1960s under the aegis of intelligence agencies.
Freedom sheds new light on a prime source of psycho-intelligence methods, British psychiatrist William Sargant, whose work set much of the pattern for today’s psychiatric warfare. Of note, translations of one of Sargant’s books on manipulative techniques have reportedly turned up in al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. (See “The Terror Doctors”.)
Based on his longtime personal association with Sargant and their numerous discussions, the author was privy to many details of Sargant’s activities, but it was only after the psychiatrist’s passing that the missing pieces revealed the full story. Sargant’s horrors—a world of murder and mayhem into which no other journalist had ventured—constitute a story only Gordon Thomas can tell.
