A Frightening Brave New World

by Joseph D. Douglass Jr.

In 1973, information began leaking out of the CIA. The subject was a sensitive mind-control project - MKULTRA - that had been initiated two decades earlier. The compromised information revealed experimental use of LSD on unsuspecting people and operations more apropos a college fraternity hazing than a professional intelligence operation, including a highly suspicious suicide by an undercover CIA biological warfare scientist, Frank Olson.

The Church, Pike, and Kennedy Congressional committees were quick to capitalize on the publicity and initiate hearings that further exposed the project and the childish behavior of numerous CIA operatives. Unfortunately, the hearings were mainly publicity stunts, used to discredit the project and the CIA. There were no evident efforts or interest in understanding what project MKULTRA was all about, what had been accomplished, and what was known about comparable Soviet intelligence projects.

CIA counters Soviet mind control efforts

MKULTRA had been approved in April, 1953, by CIA director Allan Dulles. It was not conceived as a fraternity prank but, rather, as an extremely serious effort to counter Soviet mind control efforts of major concern. 'Brain Warfare' is how Dulles described this emergent phase in the Cold War. He surfaced the problem in a talk a few weeks later and then allowed it to be published in U.S. News & World Report.

In this public report, Dulles explained that the Russians were 'now using brain-perversion techniques [...] so subtle and so abhorrent to our way of life that we have recoiled from facing up to them. [...] The minds of selected individuals who are subjected to such treatment [...] are deprived of the ability to state their own thoughts. [...] new techniques wash the brain clean [...] and new thoughts [are introduced] which the victim, parrot-like, repeats. [...] Individuals so conditioned can merely repeat the thoughts which have been implanted in their minds by suggestion from outside. In effect the brain [...] becomes a phonograph playing a disc put on the spindle by an outside genius over which it has no control.'

What had led the CIA to this conclusion was: 1) the 1949 trial of Cardinal Mindszenty who confessed to crimes he never would have committed, 2) similar trials and public confessions by scores of Communist leaders, 3) the unusual behavior of American POWs during the Korean War (the absence of POW leadership, low morale, the lack of escapes, and the presence of an extraordinary high percentage of POWs who actively collaborated with the enemy), and 4) sensitive human intelligence on increased Soviet intelligence (KGB) efforts in what would become known in the West as psychopharmacology, although not for several years. This was precisely the time when psychopharmacology was actually being born. Its initial indications were the discovery of the effects of lithium and chlorpromazine on diseases of the mind in 1949 and 1951 and growing experimentation with LSD following the publication of its technical composition in 1951.

CIA stops MKULTRA

CIA experts, who had been working to develop improved 'truth drugs' since the OSS was first formed at the beginning of WWII concluded - quite correctly - that the Soviets had a major mind-control development program. Quite naturally, they believed they would be remiss if they did not expand their own efforts to better understand this new threat and to be prepared to counter it. Thus, MKULTRA was born, only to be thoroughly trashed twenty years later (above) amid claims that nothing of significance had been accomplished by either the CIA or its Soviet counterpart, the KGB, else why would the CIA explain that they had stopped most work on the project in the mid-1960s because they did not see any potential worth pursuing. As will become evident, this should now be regarded as close to criminal in light of information from people inside the Soviet effort that surfaces the existence of a covert threat to leaders in finance, business, science, religion, politics, and governments of immense proportions.

Ken Alibek: Biohazard

Jumping ahead to 1999, the Western world was given its first authoritative insight into the massiveness of Russian efforts and accomplishments in biological warfare (BW), more specifically, sophisticated advanced technology BW. Seven years earlier, in 1992, Col. Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, the deputy chief of BIOPREPART, a large Soviet/Russian BW project, defected to the West. In 1999, Alibekov, having adopted a new name, Ken Alibek, published an account of his work at BIOPREPART and his experiences following his arrival in the United States in a new book Biohazard, which he wrote with the assistance of Stephen Handleman.

In his book he described in considerable detail the nature and size of the illegal Soviet BW development program. The size of the development program he described, along with their accomplishments, was immense. His project alone was over ten times larger than even the most pessimistic intelligence analyses had estimated to be the size of the total Soviet BW and CW efforts. For example, within BIOPREPART there were 30,000 technical personnel, dozens of very large facilities, underground complexes, and over a dozen containment labs for working on the most dangerous agents, each one over 100 times larger than the two U.S. P-4 containment labs. This was just the research and development effort.

Even more appalling was the lack of interest Alibek encountered, much to his surprise, within the U.S. intelligence community. The people who debriefed Alibek were almost disinterested in either the Russian biological weapons capabilities that had been achieved or the Russian work in genetic engineering to make even more devastating BW weapons. The 'Americans believed Russia's biological weaponry no longer constituted a significant threat' and had come to that conclusion without even knowing the nature of the threat or where it was headed!

No interest by US Secret Services

As he settled into his new life in the United States, Alibek continued to monitor Russian activities as best he could by reading the Russian technical and scientific journals. He was able to identify several developments with serious implications because of their relevance to R&D programs he had known about. He tried to find someone in the U.S. government who was interested in his findings. He could not find anyone. The advice he was given tells the story: 'I was cautioned by [U.S.] government officials against speaking out too bluntly against Russia. Even if I was right, they argued, there was no point in pushing Moscow further than it was willing or able to go [...] Perhaps there are questionable activities going on, but for the moment, diplomacy requires us to keep silent.' When he tried to explain the importance of monitoring certain activities, he was told that all work in Russia should be assumed to be peaceful in the absence of a compelling reason to suspect otherwise. Alibek could not believe his ears.

The attitude of US intelligence, policy, and defense officials since 1969 is well represented by this all too believable advice given to Alibek thirty years later. This US attitude has been characterized by suppression of intelligence, denials that the Soviets/Russians were deliberately violating arms control treaties or if so it was of little consequence since CBW was not strategically significant, and attempts to stop the truth from emerging. The effects of this attitude can be seen in the surprise posed by the dissemination of extremely sophisticated anthrax in October 2001 and by the use of immobilizing chemical warfare agents in the spetsnaz assault on the Moscow theater on October 16, 2002, and subsequent efforts to explain it away rather than recognize it as a tiny example of a massive unrecognized capability - unrecognized in nature, mission, and technology.

Alibek's book Biohazard was both frightening and alarming from cover to cover. In addition to the size and advanced technology nature of the BW work and accomplishments, and the lack of US interest in what he knew, there was another even more ominous activity that was so sensitive that Alibek, even from his position as head of BIOPREPARAT research and development, was unable to penetrate. His interest had been raised when he learned that one of his scientists, who was regarded as a pharmacological genius, was working full time in the activity but who would not explain his work to Alibek.

Try as he did, Alibek was unable to learn very much about the project because of its extreme secrecy. But, what he did learn was extremely important. It takes us all the way back to the KGB program that had Allan Dulles so worried thirty-five years earlier and which the CIA tried from 1973 on to get people to believe was no more productive than the farcical image of MKULTRA that was conveyed to the various Congressional committees in 1974-1977.

FLEYTA - mind control drug

Alibek was able to learn that his pharmacological genius was working on a project whose secret home was in the Ministry of Health. He also learned the name of the KGB project - FLEYTA - and that it was a large KGB program to develop psychotropic chemical and biological agents - mind-control drugs - that could alter mood and change human behavior. The drugs were designed for use by the KGB agents in 'special operations.' Secret projects were identified by special code words and 'words beginning with F [such as FLEYTA] [...] were assigned to chemical weapons and to psychotropic, or behavior-altering, biological and chemical agents.' He was able to identify numerous large facilities that led him to believe that the overall project was massive and had begun at about the same time that BIOPREPARAT began in the early 1970s. He also learned to be very careful about asking too many questions because 'Sometimes people disappear.'

What Alibek learned linked the present with detailed information on the KGB pharmacological mind-control efforts, accomplishments, and actual operations between 1946 and 1966 that have just recently come to light. The bottom line of this information is that the CIA fears in 1953 were well justified and that the accomplishments realized by 1968 were not of a farcical nature but of profound significance to the primary targets, which were people of power and influence around the globe.

Informations from Gen. Maj. J. Sejna

This information emerged during a search for information on missing American POW/MIAs: what happened to them and why? The connection between missing POWs and project FLEYTA was the use of prisoners, including American POW/MIAs, as expendable guinea pigs in the 'F' project development and test efforts. The source of this information was Gen. Maj. Jan Sejna, who had defected from Czechoslovakia in 1968 and since that time had been a highly reliable US intelligence source of information on Communist political and intelligence operations of the highest sensitivity. His information was unique because of his high position within the decision-making Czech hierarchy, his prodigious memory, and his close associations with top Communist leaders from all the Communist countries. He held more than a dozen positions, each one of which was higher than any other Communist defector. To cite three examples, he was the first secretary of the Party at the Ministry of Defense, he was the chief of staff to the Minister of Defense, and he had set up and run the secretariat of the Defense Council, which is above the Politburo in matters of defense, intelligence, counterintelligence, foreign policy, and the economy.

Sejna carried in his head an enormous amount of priceless information. Because he would not lie to suit the interests of his CIA handlers and because he knew so much more than everyone else in the U.S. national security apparatus and was not about to be cowed by these amateurs, he was both feared and hated. US intelligence, or important controlling elements therein, did not like Sejna because they did not like what he had to say - for example, that the Soviet Union was the sponsor, organizer, trainer, and financier for international terrorism, that dŽtente and peaceful coexistence were strategic deceptions, and that Soviet nuclear strategy was designed to fight and win a nuclear war and did not subscribe to the US strategy of mutual assured destruction (MAD).

Sejna's knowledge of the Soviet mind-control efforts was especially detailed and expansive because Czechoslovakia was the most important satellite in the Soviet empire and had worked with the Soviets in mind-control drug development, test, and actual operations beginning in the late 1940s.

Drugs used to induce confessions of opponents

The Soviet program in mind control went back to the early days of the NKVD. They wanted to control people's minds and believed chemistry held many keys. The Soviet program leap-frogged ahead after WWII following their capture of German and Italian scientists who were also working on mind control. This is when the Russian capabilities took a giant step forward - as the OSS (CIA's predecessor) also recognized. Yes, Sejna explained, the Mindzenty confession was the effect of first generation drugs. These drugs were also what were used to induce the confessions of many Communist leaders - including well-known Czech Communists - and were used on American Korean War POWs. First generation 'friendship' drugs developed in the Czech Air Force Scientific Labs were the drugs used on American POWs that caused them to denounce America's democracy and praise North Korea's communism in front of cameras. These films found their way into news reels that were widely shown across the United States in the mid-1950s.

Support of Russian Foreign Policy

In 1957, under Khrushchev, the entire mind-control project was redirected. In the past, its focus had been counterintelligence and confessions. In the future, it would direct its efforts in support of the new Russian foreign policy. Progress was swift, so swift that in 1964, the head of the International Department, Boris Ponamarev, the departmental head in charge of foreign policy, would be made a co-director of the program. Over the next few years applications and development expanded to the point where, by 1966, the Soviets had concluded that chemical and biological warfare weapons (which was how the drugs, both mind-control and narcotic drugs, were classified) were viewed as the most important weapons of the future, not nuclear weapons.

It was at this juncture that a major 20-year development program was initiated. Its goal was to develop entirely new families of qualitatively different chemical and biological weapons. Coincident with this program, the mind-control portion was extracted out and put exclusively under the control of the KGB. The new chief of the KGB, Andropov, along with Suslov (head of ideology and who Sejna saw as one of the most evil of all the Communist leaders), orchestrated the transfer of total control of the mind-control programs (thus, eliminating Ponomarev's role in development and the previous approval authority of the various Central Committee Secretaries in operations that fell within their purview) to the KGB. It is entirely likely that mind-control drugs were used in propelling Andropov to the position of General Secretary in 1981 and are reflected in the immense growth of KGB power and influence through the transition in 1989-1995.

By 1968, the year Sejna defected to the United States, there were over a score of families of mind-control drugs that had been developed and most of which were in operational use. For the most part, these drugs were not simply pills that could magically change attitudes or behavior. That is not the way most of them work. Rather, they are used in conjunction with carefully staged psychological operations. The drugs are 'facilitators.' They are the oil that enables the wheel to turn. In some cases - drugs used to cause depression or lack of motivation - act pretty much on their own. But, in general, they are better viewed as just a tool - albeit an important tool - used to make an operation easier and with a greater likelihood of success.

A drug or combination of drugs can be a pill slipped into a drink, a powder simply brushed off a sleeve into the air, or an aerosol released upwind. They might be coded into an organism that is then used as a delivery mechanism, or encapsulated and printed on paper or mixed in with a prescription drug or salt or sugar. Actually, delivery had become the crucial problem and the major focus of development by 1968, which itself was also the time when very advanced techniques, such as the use of neuropeptides and low molecular weight proteins and genetic manipulation of organisms were becoming the focus of research and development efforts.

Drugs designed to cause leadership to 'self-destruct'

The variety of capabilities already achieved by 1968 can be seen in the various colloquial names that were used in informal discussions among appropriately cleared officials. As stated before, there were drugs that were used to get people to confess crimes. In a slightly different direction, there was a family of drugs that would 'loosen the tongue.' These were used to enable people to talk freely on subjects they would never otherwise have openly discussed. Certain drugs were used to induce friendship and cooperation. These, as in most cases, were used in conjunction with proper prompting by psychology intelligence specialists. One of their earliest uses was to to turn enemies and 'doubting Thomases' into friends and to facilitate cooperation in negotiations.

In a different vein, there are several families of drugs that worked by themselves and that were designed to cause leadership to 'self-destruct.' Examples include drugs to cause people to become very aggressive, ones that induce confusion, ones that inhibit the decision-making process, and ones that cause people to state what is on their mind without thinking about the consequences, a sure-fire recipe for enabling a politician to self-destruct.

There were also drugs designed to be used against collections or groups of people. One example is a drug to be dispersed up wind and that would destabilize people and promote chaotic behavior. People would change, first exhibiting the characteristics of people who had consumed too much alcohol, then becoming boisterous drunks, and then just going crazy. This may seem outlandish, until you consider actual examples of such a situation, such as that experienced in Pont-Saint-Esprit, a small French village on the Rhone River, in 1951 when hundreds of respectable citizens started going berserk one evening.

Another family of drugs disrupted one's ability to think rationally and logically and still another demoralized people and gave them a defeatist attitude or sense of hopelessness. The list is impressive, frightening, and disturbingly long.

Examples of operational drug use

These are not just wish lists or development priorities. These drugs were all in operational use by the time of Sejna's defection. The aggressive drug was given to a Czech Air Force general that the Soviets wanted to eliminate. It was administered at lunch. Following lunch, he ignored the bad weather, and jumped in his plane to fly to a meeting in Prague. He crashed en route. End of problem.

A loosen-the-tongue drug was given to a British banker by Bulgarian intelligence. This was how the head of Bulgaria, Tudor Zivkov, learned in advance about the British decision to devalue the pound. As Zivkov explained to Sejna over lunch when asked about the source of the information, 'We are very conservative. I do not have to recruit a bank president. It is enough for him to have dinner with me. I just sit back and let him tell me about the British plans.'

Loosen-the-tongue drugs became a often-used tool in scientific espionage. The Czech and Soviet scientists would tell intelligence what they needed to know and who in the West would be good sources of information. Intelligence specialists would analyze the situation, identify the best target, and find a convenient conference to which the American or European target scientist would be invited. They would also identify an East European scientist who spoke the right language and could understand what was being said. Intelligence operators would accompany the East European scientist to the same meeting, manipulate the Western scientist into joining them in an informal dinner, and then slip the appropriate pill to the target scientist. The conversation would proceed during dinner and the information would flow. The best thing about this pill is that the target would not remember what was said the next day.

Drugs - source of blackmail and political intelligence

These drugs were also a good source of blackmail and political intelligence. They were, for example, used on Congressional staff and political and labor delegations visiting Czechoslovakia. Under the influence of the drugs, the visitors would talk freely about the problems in their parties and predilections of their bosses. The interesting aspect of some of these drugs was that they could be administered to a whole group - three or four in a delegation - and everyone would become more talkative. The skeletons just came tumbling out of the closet as everyone tried to outdo his colleague.

Cooperation and friendship drugs were used to control various organizations, such as the World Peace Council and the Fifteen Nation Disarmament Group. They were often used against their allies in negotiations. Sejna related several operations against the North Vietnamese who were often in Prague seeking increased military assistance. The North Vietnamese were always very closed mouth about their plans, until fed the right drugs, then the information the Czechs wanted flowed freely. Sejna recalled with a laugh how the Vietnamese would cave in during troublesome negotiations after the doses were increased and agree to the Czech position. They would then return to Hanoi and catch hell from their superiors for being such poor negotiators.

One of the friendship drugs often used to turn Russian enemies into allies worked as follows. The Czechs would invite the problem individual to a one- or two-week conference in Czechoslovakia, which was not considered the 'enemy.' The requisite friendship drug would be administered to the individual, usually at breakfast, for two days. Over the next several days, drugs would be administered and intelligence specialists unknown to the target individual would be constantly in his presence, pushing ideas and concepts all designed to lead the individual away from the problems he had with the Russians and to insert exactly the opposite perspective. Within four or five days the individual would no longer be harboring hostile views of the Russians. He was the perfect 'new man,' tolerant and usually quite accepting.

As one might expect, there were problems from time to time. Occasionally, a drug would backfire and could give rise to embarrassing situations. This is why there was considerable attention placed to develop drugs that could serve as a type of antidote and other operational devices, such as the use of alcohol to mask a bad reaction to a mind-control drug. Additionally, in important operations, there was usually a skilled medical intelligence operator present to attend to such problems.

By the late sixties, the accomplishments in the Russian program, of which the preceding examples are a small sample, may be somewhat difficult to accept, especially to those not skilled in the devices of modern day neuropharmacology. Technically, however, they are all very realistic, especially when the conditions of the development program in the Soviet Union are described. These conditions included 1) the availability of world-class scientists, 2) first call on medical facilities, 3) ready access to skilled pharmacologists, including those in Western Europe, and of great importance 4) an unlimited supply of human guinea pigs, including American POWs, with no restrictions respecting their use.

None of these developments were out of the range of what was believed possible as early as 1961 in the West. It was in 1961 that related concerns were the subject of a 'Control of the Mind' symposium hosted by the University of California Medical School at San Francisco. It was so well attended that the overflow was accommodated in schools across the bay and connected with television links.

In his opening remarks, Provost Dr. John Saunders set the stage. He recognized the vast potential of pharmacological mind control and acknowledged that this had generated serious concerns about its possible misuse. There now existed, he stated, 'a vast array of drugs influencing the specific activity of the brain [...] which can be used in the majority of its activities.' Then he got to the heart of the matter. 'There is - especially among thoughtful physicians - a deep sense of disquiet [...] Here at our disposal, to be used wisely or unwisely, are an increasing array of agents that manipulate human beings [...] It is now possible to act directly on the individual to modify his behavior instead of, as in the past, indirectly through modification of the environment.'

Infusing Islamic religious leaders with their irrational hatred?

Frightening? You bet, which was well recognized by Dulles in 1953 when he said he expressed his concern over developments 'so subtle and so abhorrent to our way of life that we have recoiled from facing up to them.' That this is still the case is easily seen today.

How does one explain the irrational hatred of so many Islamic leaders? How does one explain the unbelievably high success rate of suicide bombers? As it turns out, the Soviets had a program dating back to the 1920s to penetrate all the major religions and especially their teaching centers, which was the main road taken to turn their doctrines or ideologies in ways that would serve to support Soviet foreign policy. This program was immensely successful and its results can be seen in several major Western religions. Sejna further explained that the Soviets had been especially effective in penetrating the Islamic religion, recruiting their leaders, and in organizing terrorist movements, of which the PLO is one of the best examples. Mind-control drugs were widely used in these efforts. It is almost inconceivable that they did not play a role in infusing Islamic religious leaders with their irrational hatred of the United States, which was also a major characteristic of the Soviet doctrine, and in forging the most reliable stable of suicide bombers. Bear in mind that this is not a 'first.' The Japanese used mind-control drugs on their suicide bombers and a variety of drugs were used to promote tremendous aggressive behavior in the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.

There is no limit to the possibilities that come to mind when one thinks seriously about the implications of the foregoing. This is a difficult challenge for all the reasons so succinctly expressed by Allan Dulles and because of later efforts to hide both the nature of the CIA and Russian mind-control programs and accomplishments. Nevertheless, the foregoing and its implications are worth carefully thinking through. The implications are frighteningly serious, or might well be, to key people around the world in business, finance, politics, government, religion, and, yes, even to intelligence and national policy officials. Forewarned is forearmed.

The above material is taken from the new book, Betrayed: America's Missing POWs by Joseph D. Douglass Jr. Ph.D., and available through 1stbooks Library at 1-888 280 7715.