-Caveat Lector-
Hi !
Below find information about possible connections between FMSF and the CIA.
Sincerely, Neil Brick
All accusations are alleged
http://www.towardfreedom.com/may98/messing.htm
Messing with Our Minds
With links to CIA mind control experts and accused child abusers, the false
memory movement turns "blaming the victim" into a science
HUSAYN AL-KURDI
A quiet but brutal war is being waged on the victims of child abuse,
including sexual and even ritual abuse. The battlefields include academia,
the courts, professional groups, and society in general. In some cases, the
aggressors are the same people accused of perpetuating the violence. They've
banded together, forming networks and support groups, most notably the False
Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF), which discounts recollections of abuse
recovered in later years, making survivors look like complainers and trauma
therapists sound like quacks.
Unfortunately, the Foundation has many psychotherapists on the run. Several
lawsuits have already ended with judgments in favor of alleged perpetrators,
and the resulting chilling effect has dampened the willingness of some mental
health professionals to treat victims, especially those claiming ritual
abuse....
Despite such scrutiny and the seriousness of the problem, however, advocates
for false memory (also known as repressed memory) syndrome dominate
cyberspace and have received far more favorable coverage in the mainstream
media.
Ironically, it turns out that the Foundation itself has extensive connections
to another group that has indulged in extensive experimentation on human
beings - the Central Intelligence Agency. Although better known for overseas
operations that serve the interests of corporate and financial elites -
euphemistically described as protecting "national security" - the Agency also
has a sordid history of domestic mind control experimentation. Its interest
in this field runs parallel with elite concern about how to control the
thinking of US citizens. The fear among policymakers that we might take
control of our own destinies is almost as deep as their terror that, without
US intervention, people in other parts of the world might go their own way.
It should come as no surprise, then, that long-time CIA and "intelligence
complex" operatives turn up on the FMSF Advisory Board. Perhaps the most
public member has been Dr. Louis Joylon "Jolly" West, a legendary figure in
CIA mind control circles operating out of UCLA. Another is Dr. Martin Orne,
an authority on torture who currently works at the University of
Pennsylvania's Experimental Psychiatry Lab. While studying the effects of
over 16 biochemical warfare agents until the early 1970s, Orne considered the
effectiveness of choking, blistering, and vomiting agents, toxins, poison
gas, and various incapacitating chemicals. During the same period, he also
worked with the Cornell University-based Human Ecology Fund, sharing his
findings with Dr. Even Cameron, who was then based at the McGill University
Allen Institute in Montreal. At Human Ecology, electroshock, lobotomies,
drugs, incapacitants, hypnosis, sleep deprivation, and radio control of the
brain were all specialties of the house.
Still another false memory luminary is Margaret Singer, professor emeritus in
psychology at the University of California-Berkeley. Long in the research
loop of the "military-industrial-intelligence complex," Singer's involvement
dates back to her experiments on returning Korean War veterans. Scrutinizing
the behavior patterns of what were described as "collaborators,"
"non-collaborators," and "active resisters," she noted that the
"collaborators showed more typical and humanly responsive reactions" than the
other groups, whose members "tended to be more apathetic and emotionally
barren and withdrawn."
The latest concoction of this brain trust is false memory syndrome, a highly
ideological theory embraced by the Christian Right and other groups that
favor male supremacy, not to mention those accused of abusing and/or sexually
molesting women and children. Pedophiles and self-righteous "Christians"
often turn up in FMS circles.
The movement's official literature describes its so-called "syndrome" as a
"condition in which a person's identity and interpersonal relationships are
centered around a memory of traumatic experience which is objectively false
but in which the person strangely believes." It goes on to explain that, when
in the grip of a "false memory," a person "may become so focused on the
memory that he or she may be effectively distracted from coping with the real
problems in his or her life." Certainly, the movement's leaders should know,
since in the realm of memory manipulation they're the experts.
Inducing memory loss has long been a CIA obsession. The initial objectives
included closing the minds of agents - in case they were captured - and
making sure enemies who were interrogated wouldn't remember they'd been
questioned. While receiving CIA funds as part of the notorious MK-ULTRA
project, West, an expert in brainwashing, learned how to manipulate memories
in various subjects - inducing everything from total amnesia to
obsessive-compulsive fixations.
West's most notorious experiment, conducted while at the University of
Oklahoma, involved killing an elephant with LSD and tranquilizers. But he
also ran a secret CIA mind control lab and "treated" Jack Ruby after his
murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. Subsequently, he attempted to launch a Center
for the Study and Reduction of Violence in California, hoping to incorporate
treatments such as chemical castration, psychosurgery, and the use of
experimental drugs. But the Center was derailed once its methods became
public.
According to false memory proponents like West, the "syndrome" - an
iatrogenic (medically induced) malady - is reaching epidemic proportions. But
in reality, what has actually assumed such dimensions is the problem the FMS
movement seeks to discredit - sexual abuse of women and children. According
to recent research, more than one out of four women have been raped.
Statistics for incest are similar.
FMS activists crow about inducing those who recall abuse in therapy to recant
their "objectively false" recollections. Movement literature perversely
claims: "Many describe a sense of relief and comfort with their decision that
their memories were false and a sense of well-being that they missed while
entrenched in the memory recovery process." Thus, memories of abuse are
defined as invalid. But somehow retracted memories aren't.
According to the false memory movement, many victims are actually
"borderline" deviants, the sources of whatever "false" problems they may have
conjured up. And how could anyone disagree? After all, as FMSF spokesperson
Pamela Freyd explains, "We are a good-looking bunch of people: graying hair,
well-dressed, healthy, smiling ... about every person who has attended [an
FMSF meeting] is a person you would likely find interesting and want to count
as a friend."
Yet, Freyd and her husband Peter founded the movement after their daughter,
Jennifer, a Ph.D. psychologist, recalled a range of childhood sexual abuses.
Among other memories she recovered was one that involved Peter forcing his
little girls to dance around naked with Playboy bunny tails for the amusement
of his friends.
Ralph Underwager, an early member of the group's professional advisory board,
let the pedophile agenda slip when he told British reporters that, according
to so-called "scientific evidence," 60 percent of all women who were molested
as children believed the experience was "good for them." Both he and another
advisory board member, Holida Wakefield, have publicly described pedophilia
as a positive lifestyle choice. Another movement activist, Dr. Richard
Gardner, blames the syndrome on "zealots" who want to "destroy every man in
sight."
Supporters such as Gary Cooper, who promotes the Foundation via the Internet,
claim that "modern therapy is creating phony victims of child abuse and
destroying thousands of families." He describes most memories of abuse as
fantasies provoked by greedy therapists, who encourage their patients "to
break relationship with the family and work on these phony issues."
Thus far, the Foundation claims to have won 14 court cases, largely through
the efforts of movement ideologue Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist and FMSF
advisory board member who garners large fees for testifying as an "expert
witness." Loftus has appeared on behalf of over 150 clients, most of them
accused pedophiles and murderers such as serial killer Ted Bundy. In that
case, a key aspect of her testimony was the inaccuracies in eyewitness
identification, similar to her criticism of the recollections of abuse
victims. But such inaccuracies don't necessarily mean that abuse didn't
happen.
In December 1995, two women filed an ethics complaint with the American
Psychological Association (APA) against Loftus, protesting her published
statements about two cases involving delayed memories of sexual abuse.
Although the APA declined to investigate, Loftus resigned from the
association a month later. One of the women who filed the complaint, Jennifer
Hoult, was awarded $500,000 for the suffering caused by her father's
incestuous abuse. During the case, her father joined the FMSF.
The movement has been defeated in court more often and more significantly
than it cares to admit. Despite its efforts to discredit therapists and blame
victims, many people have won civil cases against their parents and other
family members on the basis of memories recovered in therapy. In addition,
Doctor Charles Whitfield has successfully fought a civil suit brought by the
Freyds, who were stung by his commentary on their theories and activities.
Research has proven that people who suffer severe abuse often "forget" it. In
a "fight or flight" mode, the body produces high levels of neurochemicals
that can obliterate conscious memory. While at the Allen Institute, Ewen
Cameron looked into "psychic driving" as another way to accomplish the same
thing.
Under high stress, the hippocampus becomes inactive and misses its chance to
place a memory in the person's timeline or "memory bank." Instead, it's
recorded elsewhere or "dissociated." According to Dr. Lenore Terr of the
University of California's Medical School in San Francisco, "Survivors -
especially those who were repeatedly hurt by people they love - frequently
repress the agonizing memories until they are grown up and safely away from
home."
In a very real sense, domestic survivors of CIA experimental abuse have much
in common with the millions who have suffered what no child or other human
being should have to endure. And this is exactly what worries the false
memory movement. Fearing imminent exposure, the CIA was forced to abandon the
MK-ULTRA project in the 60s. But the effort to manipulate minds and blame the
victims didn't end; it simply moved from public institutions to cults and
private foundations, facades less open to public scrutiny. As a result, the
Human Ecology Fund has been replaced by groups such as the Human Potential
Foundation in Falls Church, Virginia, founded by Sen. Claiborne Pell and
lavishly funded by Laurence Rockefeller. In short, the patriarchal old boys
network remains intact, just one more aspect of the backlash against women
and children.
To be continued.
Husayn Al-Kurdi is a TF contributing writer and President of News
International. Part two of this series will examine the connections between
the CIA and various "unsafe sects."
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