Published by the Church of Scientology International

Manchurian Candidate Experiments

The Manchurian Candidate is fact, not fiction. G.H. Estabrooks, a psychologist at Colgate College in upstate New York, described creating Manchurian Candidates while on contract to the U.S. military. Estabrooks’ revelations are available in his 1943 book, Hypnotism, and in other writings published as late as 1971. I obtained copies of numerous documents from the Estabrooks archives at Colgate College.

These documents include correspondence between Estabrooks and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from the 1930s through the 1970s. FBI personnel attended Estabrooks’ workshops on military uses of hypnosis, as did MK ULTRA contractor psychiatrist Martin Orne, who received Top Secret government clearance. Estabrooks delivered seminars on Army bases and at Colgate College on military uses of hypnosis.

From the CIA, I obtained Bluebird documents in which Estabrooks proposed the creation of Manchurian Candidates for the agency. From Colgate College, I obtained Estabrooks’ World War II contract with the War Department and his correspondence with intelligence agencies and personnel.

Estabrooks described the use of hypnosis to implant new identities in military subjects and to wipe out memories regarding it. The “alter personalities” created could be exploited for courier, assassination or other missions.

One Marine brainwashed by Estabrooks, for example, had a code signal implanted. He was summoned to Washington, D.C., and given documents to take to Tokyo.

His handler in Washington then said, “The moon is clear.” This signal switched the Marine to his new identity. The new identity received a classified message from his handler. The Marine was switched back to his regular self.

He then traveled to Tokyo and handed over the documents. His Tokyo handler said, “The moon is clear,” and the artificially created identity emerged. The classified information installed by his Washington handler was given to the Tokyo handler. A response was then inserted, and the Marine was switched back to his usual self, completely amnesic regarding any of the classified information. As far as the Marine knew, he had only transported documents.

The Bluebird papers also describe efforts to develop interrogation techniques that could detect Manchurian Candidate spies working for foreign intelligence agencies. They describe operations on U.S. soil to wipe out memories and to implant false memories in captured agents.

All such activities required the participation of medical doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists. The techniques of memory alteration included drugs, hypnosis, interrogation and sensory deprivation and isolation.

The MK ULTRA contractors included the leading medical schools in North America, such as McGill, Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Yale, and many of the leading academic psychiatrists and psychologists. Carl Rogers, Ph.D., revered for his humanism and client-centered therapy, was an MK ULTRA contractor under Subproject 97 in the mid-1950s. He had Top Secret clearance and sat on the board of a front organization which funneled MK ULTRA money to other contractors.

Although I have no documentation about the current status of the Manchurian Candidate programs, there is ample evidence that the attendant psychiatric methodologies of mind-control are still in use by all the major intelligence agencies and by the very terrorist organizations which now threaten the United States.

False Claims

Apologists for mind-control experiments may claim that they were conducted during the Cold War, an era with different ethical and scientific standards. This is not true. The mind-control experiments violated the Hippocratic Oath, the Nuremberg Code, the Helsinki declarations, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among other codes and statements. The rules and procedures of scientific experimentation on human subjects were well established by 1950.

Likewise, basic ethical requirements for research on humans were well established. The mind-control experiments violated all of them. The purpose of the experiments had nothing to do with medicine or treatment. The purpose was to improve methods of brainwashing, interrogation and control of behavior and memory by military and intelligence communities. There was no possibility of medical benefit to the subjects or future patients.

There was no informed consent, no real independent review and no follow-up to assess damage. No attempt was made to provide treatment to repair damage. All of these ethical violations also occurred in biological and chemical weapons experiments and in radiation experiments conducted by doctors. Many of the radiation, chemical and biological weapons, and mind-control experiments were conducted on unwitting civilians, a form of medical malpractice for which there is no defense.

Under MK ULTRA, for example, psychiatrist James Hamilton, who later worked as a CIA contractor as part of MK SEARCH, participated in infamous LSD/prostitute experiments. The laboratories were set up by CIA officer George White, who in 1955 constructed safe houses in New York and San Francisco that were decorated like brothels. White and other agency officers watched through one-way mirrors while prostitutes hired by the CIA had sex with men they picked up at bars. The prostitutes gave the johns LSD without their knowledge. The purpose of the experiments was to determine the effects of LSD on unwitting subjects in a “natural” setting.

Mind-control experimentation is political abuse by psychiatry. Under the guise and pose of medicine, human beings have been subjected to unethical experiments for the benefit of the state. This abuse by psychiatry has occurred at virtually all major medical schools in North America. It has been pervasive and extensive. Many of the leading figures in psychiatry have either participated directly or looked the other way while friends and colleagues received grants and promotions.

If the profession of psychiatry and individual psychiatrists were honest and apologetic about mind-control experimentation, that would be one thing. Instead, the record is one of denial and disinformation. This compounds and perpetuates the original evil.

In the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (Volume 30, Number 1, pages 95–147, 2002), for example, a number of psychiatrists wrote condemnations and critiques of the political abuse by psychiatry in China and Russia. As always, none mentioned their own disgraceful performance.

Psychiatry deserves condemnation for its seminal role in the proliferation of mind- control. The National Security Oath should not displace or override the Hippocratic Oath, no matter how urgent the security problem.

It is obvious that Japanese kamikaze pilots in World War II, the 9/11 hijackers and today’s suicide bombers have been subjects of sophisticated mind-controllers. It is also obvious that when we, as doctors, forget the Hippocratic Oath, we become as evil as any enemy we condemn.

Psychiatric warfare programs have routinely violated human rights. These programs could not function without psychiatrists and psychologists, who are in violation of the Hippocratic Oath, the Nuremberg Code, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all other ethical guidelines of the last two millennia.

Creating an LSD Culture Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary (center), shown here with activists Abbie Hoffman (left) and Jerry Rubin, experimented with and promoted LSD and other drugs. Albert Hoffman After Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman discovered LSD, psychiatrists and psychologists sowed the seeds for its abuse by popularizing it as both a street and “therapeutic” drug. George White Mind-control programs conducted by psychiatrists, focusing on LSD and other hallucinogens, resulted in a generation of acidheads and destroyed lives. One unwitting recipient of LSD, scientist Frank Olson, was terminated by CIA operative George White. It was feared by psychiatrist William Sargant and scientist Sidney Gottlieb that Olson would expose their ruthless experiments.