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A GENERAL SURVEY OF DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER PATIENTS
By Pamela Monday, PhD
I am a psychotherapist who has worked, since 1988, with over 60 individuals diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.), formerly termed "multiple personality disorder." Dissociative Identity Disorder is a disorder whereby the mind is split into parts that are "dissociated" or disconnected from the conscious mind. D.I.D. is a result of chronic, extreme abuse.
Of these 60 patients, 51 reported perpetrators connected with military bases and with other governmental activities. Most were women; three were men, and 11 were children ranging in age from 3 to 17. The oldest was a man in his 50's, which would mean that his childhood training occurred in the 40's. Most of the women were between 30 and 45. All training began when they were children, most from birth.
All 60 of these patients reported multi-generational incest. All had memories of satanic-type, ritualized abuse whereby occult practices, such as invoking the names of demons, drinking blood, sacrificing animals and humans, all types of ritualized sexual ceremonies, and "specialized" rituals such as the “marriage to satan” ceremony were involved. In some cases, these practices seemed to be the central reason for the abuse (that is, "religious" worship of satan and his demons); whereas in others, the purpose seemed to be mainly to traumatize the child.
The trauma serves two purposes: 1) it terrifies the children into believing the perpetrators’ threats, such as “if you tell, we will kill you like this” ( or kill your mother, your brother, or other loved one ), and 2) it causes the mind to dissociate into parts so that mind control programming can take place, training the part that is “split off” by the trauma for whatever purpose the group wishes.
In some cases, the memories of satanic abuse included "smoke and mirrors" magic whereby it only appeared that a child was killed (often a child would be drugged, appear to be stabbed, and lowered in the ground in a coffin, only to be brought up later before suffocating; the children watching this were of course terrified and whether they retain the conscious memory or their dissociated parts remember the experience, the end result is that the children were convinced that the child had died).
Doubters have stated that this "incorrect memory" of someone being killed when they really weren't challenges the credibility of victims' recollections. But it is the incredible detail when the memory is recalled that stands out. For example, patients have drawn pictures of the various types of knives used for different types of rituals. The one used to skin victims looks very different from the one used to eviscerate them. Each instrument, whether used for torture or killing, often has markings on it that have shown up time and again in different patients' drawings.
Children in particular are able to give remarkable details that, unless they have directly experienced it, they would not likely know. For example, a five year old told me "you know when you have to stab the baby in the chest, you have to move the knife around to the side a little and stick it in because there's the hard thing in the way that keeps it from going straight in." (This statement was told to me from a dissociated part, or “alter” within the child who had a name and a function; the function was solely to be the one who did the stabbing. The “everyday” child had no conscious memory of this, and could not remember after the therapy session telling me about this event – he was amnesic not only for the memory, but during the time part of his mind was relaying this information to me ).
These kinds of detailed statements leave little doubt that these people have been through something horribly traumatic. I maintain that whether someone was actually killed or not, a ceremony designed to make people think someone was killed is meant to, and does, traumatize and terrify.
Most of the 60 patients had received several diagnoses over the course of years before they had been diagnosed with D.I.D. Typical diagnoses were Schizophrenia, Manic Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, Major Depression with Psychotic Features, Schizoaffective disorder, and others. Most of these patients had been in therapy on and off for several years. Most of them did not know they were D.I.D. until they found a therapist who knew how to assess for the disorder. . The majority of these patients had been diagnosed with D.I.D. before I began working with them.
Persons with D.I.D. experience periods of "lost time" whereby they can not remember what they have been doing for the last several hours or days. They will find themselves wearing clothes or having possessions they don't remember buying; they will have people say hello to them they don't remember having met; they will find notes written in handwriting they don't recognize. All of these things are diagnostic of D.I.D. but if a therapist doesn't know to inquire about these things, it is impossible to accurately diagnose.
All patients reported being filmed while engaging in sexual acts as children.
The children and adults who reported being abused on military bases provided extremely detailed information about sophisticated equipment used in the programming. The equipment mentioned included virtual reality equipment; split video screen technology (used to program right and left hemispheres of the brain); headphones used in altering brain wave states; video games with violent themes used for training; flashing colored lights; strobe lights; stun guns; electroshock boxes (used primarily to create amnesia for the events preceding the shocking); spinning chairs and tables (used to disorient and confuse); shock grids; electrodes and wires attached to all areas of the body; sensory deprivation and isolation tactics; drugging; and an endless variety of instruments of torture. Younger patients, especially children, mentioned virtual reality, and videogames. These of course are more recent technology.
Some form of electroshock was the most commonly mentioned instrument, along with the use of drugs. The torture is used to traumatize the person so that the mind will dissociate into parts that are buried in the subconscious mind and thus the person does not have conscious knowledge about the dissociated parts.
Once dissociated, torture can be used to cement the training or programming. For example, a dissociated personality can be trained to self-abuse by having needles inserted under the fingernails and told that the pain will stop when she slices her arm with a knife. The relief of the first pain is the reinforcement for the cutting. With practice, whenever this personality begins to feel any kind of emotional pain, she will dissociate from that pain by cutting on her arm, and experiencing relief, just as she did during the training.
With the rapid increase in technology, children currently being programmed through government experimentation are reporting sophisticated technology whereby the mind can be trained to dissociate into altered states of awareness without the use of trauma. Similarly, technology currently allows the manipulation of human emotions through microwave and other electromagnetic energy methods which do not require physical contact with the victim. When patients report the use of these methods, most of them are not able to call them by their appropriate names, such as "microwave harassment". Instead they report what happens to them physically; they draw pictures of the equipment; and they describe the things they are required to do when hooked up to these devices.
The patients have reported technology used in these experiments many years before that technology was available in the private sector, such as virtual reality, non-lethal weapons, and embedded microchips for tracking and identifying. Several of these patients reported being used to program others, and were able to relate involved and detailed programming techniques that utilize psychological techniques known to be effective in shaping and controlling behavior. The use of sensory deprivation, isolation and drugging are common to assist in breaking down defenses, and making the mind more susceptible to manipulation.
Some patients trained as programmers wrote endless pages of programming that looked like the most sophisticated of computer programs,with logic strings and feedback loops, and all manner of computer terminology.
Patients reported a variety of Organized Perpetrator Groups involved in the abuse. In addition to military bases involving military personnel, patients reported abuse settings involving the following: Masons, Shriners, a wide variety of church denominations, day care settings, funeral homes, and numerous occult organizations, schools, hospitals, universities, homes of celebrities, judges, and politicians, ranches, and the woods, to name a few. Patients have reported different groups meeting together at times and have given detailed information about how these groups use each other and each other's resources to network. Programmers would often travel from group to group to teach each group how to do more sophisticated and efficient programming as new technology was developed.
Two clients (military programmed) mentioned the CIA; the mafia itself was not mentioned but leaders of Mafia groups were named at times. A few clients mentioned "Janus", which refers to the "mother" computer that supposedly has all the information about all the programmed people, such as the names of all of their parts inside, what each part is programmed to do, who their handlers are, and what their triggers are. "Trigger" refers to the name, object, phrase, song, date, sound, or other thing that is programmed into the internal "system". These triggers start off the programming string, calling out an alter, getting an alter to do what that part 's job is to do, or just reinforcing the programming inside. An example would be programming that says "whenever you hear the words 'take care of yourself' (the trigger) you will attempt suicide within the next 3 hours."
All patients had alters inside who have the names of their perpetrators. The purpose of this is to allow the perpetrators to continue to control through an established alter inside who does what the perpetrator has directed to the other alters and so the programming is reinforced.
National and international child pornography rings, arms and drug smuggling operations, prostitution rings, child slavery organizations, blackmailing of politicians (both domestic and foreign officials, at all levels of government), assassinations, gathering secrets from other governments, and other types of organized crime are connected with the proliferation of this form of abuse. It is all about money and power.
Imagine having an unpaid labor force to use for whatever purposes you wished. Programmed to believe that they can "run but not hide", and can never escape, generations of abused people will be available to be used for evil purposes.
Mind control experimentation goals include: creating spies who, upon capture, will not break under torture (because the mind is divided and unavailable for conscious recall--the "Manchurian candidate"); providing labor for the money-making illegal activities mentioned above; testing any number of products, medicine, toxic material, spread of disease, capacity of human knowledge, skill, strength, etc. without the subjects' knowledge or consent, or having to worry about such things as ethical standards of scientific experimentation.
Scientists tell us that we use about 10% of our brain's abilities. The victims of mind control have been very carefully trained to use much more than 10%. The various projects that were exposed in the 70's detailed the use of Extra Sensory Perception, remote viewing, photographic memory training, and all manner of mind-over-matter experimentation, such as biofeedback to shut down the kidneys or other life systems. All of my patients have incredible artistic ability; perhaps that is a skill that is universal for all -- if given the right training? Most of my patients have alters inside who either speak in a foreign accent or actually know a foreign language (or even several languages) that they don't remember learning.
Research has demonstrated that people with D.I.D. are highly intelligent, and that has been my experience with mind control victims.
People abusing people is as old as mankind. What is frightening is the organized abuse whereby perpetrators are funded by and protected at the highest levels by the wealthy and powerful. Proving the existence of these groups is as difficult as exposing any powerful crime organization. But proof lies in the increasing numbers of people with D.I.D. who are coming out of the woodwork and revealing what has been going on for decades. The proof is in the diagnosis.
D.I.D. is the incredibly efficient way the mind protects itself from chronic, extreme trauma. The broken lives of these patients as they wrestle every day with simply trying to stay alive, much less unlearning all the dysfunctional things they have been taught, through programming, (such as "whenever you begin to have memories of what happened here today, you will immediately set yourself on fire"), are proof indeed of the horrible abuse they have endured.
The first step in exposing abuse is believing that it has happened.
Pamela J. Monday, Ph.D.
Licensed Professional Counselor
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
And as you read this, please keep in mind that our government is systematically kidnapping, sexually abusing, torturing, enslaving and often killing our children!
This horrific program must stop and the only way it will is if more and more people learn about it and speak up!
Take a look, please.
For your information
But when you have a report on FIFTY ONE victims and they are saying the same things over and over, then you begin to have to believe.
If I canvassed the mental hospitals and out-patient clinics, I could come up with FIFTY-ONE people who ALL claim to be Napolean; does that mean they all are? Does it mean ANY of them are?
This is not a "report". It is a series of conclusions based on facts not in evidence.
I'm not saying it never happens; but the writer is apparently unable to distinguish between observation and conclusion.
Any Thoughts?
Thanks for the heads up!
Here is an alternate view, from a non-hysterical Christian perspective: http://www.answers.org/Satan/Sra.html
Any comments?
What are your thoughts?
I was just wondering. Gore said he exhibited symptoms of a similar sounding trauma - "psychic numbing". Do you think he might be an unwitting victim of such tactics, from his stay in Vietnam? (Don't mention it to him, he'll probably use it in the campaign.)
"Any Thoughts?"
This is obviously Algore's problem (Clinton's is satyriasis).
Govt mind-control experiments have been going on since at least WWII. The Soviets and Nazis pursued this as well. There is much evidenced known now about the CIA's MKULTRA experiments of the 50s. There is absolutely no reason to believe that these experiments have (or ever would have) stopped. Here's a link
It is interesting to note that the supposed assassins of political figures in the 60's had long psychiatric histories. Such people make good fall guys.
BUMP!
Pamela J. Monday, PhD is completely nuts herself! This is nonsense - no basis in fact. There is no science and no physical evidence to support the trendy claims for MPD, DID, or whatever they want to call it.
Sadly, like many Americans this so called diagnosis has been pronounced on folks I know.
That the top "mental illnesses" is split personalities caused be satanic cults, does not pass the giggle test!
Thanks for this post, dawnal. I fully believe this is going on.
Quite a few celebrities have been named as victims of this programming. Certainly none on this forum would argue against the fact that Barbra Streisand is beyond reason in a lot of her comments. She has been named as a victim.
Wonder why nothing ever gets done in Congress? They use these mind control victims to compromise elected officials (the Franklin Coverup) to keep them malleable.
Related story from a month or so ago:
Man gets 24 years for satanic-ritual rape of 10-year-old girl
By Lisa Roose Church / Staff Writer
MURFREESBORO -- A man who told authorities he raped a 10-year-old girl during satanic rituals has received a 24-year prison sentence.
Alonzo South, 31, of Rutherford County, pleaded guilty Wednesday to three counts of aggravated sexual battery. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison, of which he will be required to serve 100%.
South was also fined $3,000. In addition, when South is eventually released, he will be placed on "community supervision" for life and be required to register on the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's sexual offenders list.
Assistant District Attorney General Paul Holcombe, who prosecuted the case, declined to comment.
According to the plea agreement, South admitted that on at least three occasions over the last two years he participated in satanic rituals in which a nude girl under the age of 10 was touched in the vagina. Court records say the child, who was the daughter of a woman involved in the satanic group, was raped in a home, the nearby woods, a shed, a pickup truck and a car. The girl came forward after South was arrested on an unrelated charge.
The Tennessean does not identify victims of sexual assault without their consent.
http://www.tennessean.com/sii/00/09/30/rurape30.shtml
I have close personal knowledge of a woman with DID. She was NEVER in the care or keeping of any government group. She was born and raised in a small town and my husband knew both her parents before she was born. Mental problems ran in the family for many generations. Her aunt lived most of her life in a state hospital. She says she was sexually abused by an older brother but satanic ritual torture was certainly not involved. She was involved in so many group therapies with other sick people it was my impression that they played off each others real or imagained experiences. She is doing better now with medication, but what is real and what is not is often hard to tell. She is a sick lady.
Straight to you from Wenatchee, Washington....Where does this "psychologist" practice? Some holler in Kentucky? This is just a big pile on nonsense.
I think that you can distinguish between counting patients who think they are Napoleon and a summary of a professional who has treated DID patients over many years. Pam Monday has been in the trenches with these patients and has heard the basically the same reports over and over. This supports my own conclusion as a lay person who has been in contact with a few dozen victims that they are real and tell what happened to them truthfully.
I consider a report to be a written document that contains information. Pam Monday has a lot of information to impart. She has been treating a large number of patients suffering from DID for many years. She is a properly trained,properly educated and well-experienced professional. She has no axe to grind but has responded to my request that someone with her standing be willing to provide a broad view of mind control
It is possible that Mr Gore has encountered mind control in his history but I have only heard rumors that are unsubstantiated.
The giggle test isn't useful for purposes of assessing the mind control program in this country. What is required is to look into it yourself in order to come to your own conclusion about the program. There is a considerable amount of information about it, but you will have to dig it out yourself. The media is NOT going to give you any help on this subject. As a start, try going to http://www.ritualabuse.net/MCF/ckln-hm.htm. You will find there a collection of transcripts of lengthy radio interviews of victims, therapists, and others who have extensive knowledge about the issue.
Please don't rely on your intuition on this issue. You have been conditioned to not believe but a little effort will give you enough facts to make a proper judgment.
Certainly there are DID patients who are not connected to the government program. In Dr Monday's patient base, there are 9 who do not have a connection to the government.
"...whereby the mind is split into parts that are "dissociated" or disconnected from the conscious mind..."
Seems to describe the undecided voter!
For related research/reporting on ritual murder, check out "The Ultimate Evil," by Maury Terry. (ISBN 0-533-27601-8) (1987, first printing)
From the back cover:
"THE SON OF SAM SLAYINGS... THE CHARLES MANSON MURDERS... THE BIZARRE RITUAL KILLING OF ARLIS PERRY...
Now an award-winning investigative reporter shows how ONE cult was responsible for MASS MURDER
In this chilling expose, journalist Maury Terry reveals startling new evidence which shows that David Berkowitz, the self-confessed "Son of Sam," did not kill alone but was in fact a triggerman for the Process, a satanic cult whose deadly influence reaches across America, from New York City to Beverly Hills and countless other towns in between.
The arrest of Berkowitz officially closed the "Son of Sam" case. But Terry saw too many discrepancies to let it rest. Here, for the first time, he presents the shocking results of his extensive investigation, including substantial proof that the Tate-La Bianca and Arlis Perry murders, as well as a slew of other unsolved deaths, can be traced to the brutal practices of the Process.
It's a story so powerful that it convinced the Queens District Attorney John J. Santucci to reopen the "Son of Sam" case. It's a story of evil so pervasive it is almost too terrifying to comtemplate. For today the Process is very much alive...and still killing."
thx. true.
heads up.
Cool!
Bookmarked for later reading. Thanks for the flag, Senor.
Realizing how strongly the government wants its mind control program to remain covert, one has to struggle with the concept of "implanted memories" in that context. The recent research seems to fully support the victims having real memories, not implanted ones.
Bookmarked for future reading. Thanks, dawnal.
Wow, 51 cases! Gee whiz, if 51 cases are presented it has to be true. The McMartin's in California were accused of molesting over 200 children. They had tunnels under the pre-school, they took kids miles away, etc., etc., etc. This satanic abuse stuff is a big hoax.
Sorry, this has never held up. Many, many, claims yet no corroborative evidence of any kind. A lot of this sprung up several years ago in what we called the mental illness of the month. A lot of LEO bought into it and even started teaching classes about the satanic cults and murders.
It's all been debunked.
Yeah, the military is using virtually reality machines to perform Satanic rituals on children. Right. I'll bet the Trilateral Commision is paying for it.
There is a self-proclaimed D.I.D. who claims that she was used as a sex slave by US Gov politicos, and that George H. W. Bush is a "reptile" extraterrestrial.
If my other self could remember her name, I'd buy her book.
I think that you can distinguish between counting patients who think they are Napoleon and a summary of a professional who has treated DID patients over many years.
How?
Both are identical. In BOTH cases, all you have is the testimony of the individual that they a)were subjected to satanic ritual abuse/mind control experiments or b)are Napolean.
The PhD that wrote this article is NOT a medical doctor. She isn't psychiatrist. Her patients, by her own admission, have multiple severe psychiatric problems. She has NO physical evidence. In short, my lay opinion is that Ms. Monday is nuts, and she is preying on severly screwed-up people to further her own wacked-out agenda, whatever it may be. If it were the 1600's, she'd be leading the charge to burn witches in Salem, Massachusetts.
They had tunnels under the pre-school, they took kids miles away, etc., etc., etc.
This was Ted Gunderson's claim.
Gunderson was an FBI agent who now runs a PI service i California. I'm not certain of the proper title, but he was in charge of investigations in southern Connecticut, then in lower California.
So, I wonder, what's up with him? Did he go nuts? Just seeking publicity? Was his shortwave radio show for self-agrandizement?
Not to burst your bubble or anything, but..... here's what a REAL doctor has to say about this "condition":
The rules discovered by Babinski and Charcot, now embedded in psychiatric textbooks and confirmed by decades of research in social psychology, are being overlooked in the midst of a nationwide epidemic of alleged MPD that is wreaking havoc on both patients and therapists. MPD is an iatrogenic behavioral syndrome, promoted by suggestion, social consequences, and group loyalties. It rests on ideas about the self that obscure reality, and it responds to standard treatments. To begin with the first point: MPD, like hystero-epilepsy, is created by therapists. This formerly rare and disputed diagnosis became popular after the appearance of several best-selling books and movies. It is often based on the crudest form of suggestion. Here, for example, is some advice on how to elicit alternative personalities (alters, as they have come to be called), from an introduction to MPD by Stephen E. Buie, M.D., who is director of the Dissociative Disorders Treatment Program at a North Carolina hospital: "It may happen that an alter personality will reveal itself to you during this [assessment] process, but more likely it will not. So you may have to elicit an alter... You can begin by indirect [sic] questioning such as, 'Have you ever felt like another part of you does things that you can't control?' If she gives positive or ambiguous responses ask for specific examples. You are trying to develop a picture of what the alter personality is like...At this point you may ask the host personality, "Does this set of feelings have a name?"...Often the host personality will not know. You can then focus upon a particular event or set of behaviors. 'Can I talk to the part of you that is taking those long drives in the country?'" Once patients have permitted a psychiatrist to "talk to the part...that is taking these long drives," they are committed to the idea that they have MPD and must act in ways consistent with this self-image. The patient may be placed on a hospital service (often called the dissociative service) with others who have given the same compliant responses. The emergence of the first alter breaches the barrier of reality, and fantasy is allowed free rein. The patient and staff now begin a search for further alters surrounding the so called host personality. The original two or three personalities proliferate into 90 or 100. A lore evolves. At least one alter must be of the opposite sex (Patricia may have Penny but also must have Patrick). Sometimes it is even suggested that one alter is an animal. A dog, cat, or cow must be found and made to speak! Individual alters are followed in special notes for the hospital record. Every time an alter emerges, the hospital staff shows great interest. The search for fresh symptoms sustains the original commitment while cultivating and embellishing the suggestion. It becomes harder and harder for a patient to say to the psychiatrist or to anyone else, "Oh, let's stop this. It's just me taking those long drives in the country." The cause of MPD is supposed to be childhood sexual trauma so horrible that it has to be split off (dissociated) from the host consciousness and lodged in the alters. Patient and therapist begin a search for alters who remember the trauma and can identify the abusers. Thus commitment to the diagnosis of MPD is enhanced by the sense that a crime is being exposed and justice is being done. The patient now has such a powerful vested interest in sustaining the MPD enterprise that it almost becomes an end in itself. Certainly these patients, like Charcot's, have many emotional conflicts and have often suffered traumatic experiences. But everyone is distracted from the patient's main problems by a preoccupation with dramatic symptoms, and perhaps by a commitment to a single kind of psychological trauma. Furthermore, given that treatment may become interminable when therapists concentrate on fascinating symptoms, it is no wonder that MPD is regarded as a chronic disorder that often requires long stretches of time on dissociative units. Charcot removed his patients from the special wards when he realised what he had been inventing. We can do the same. These patients should be treated by the same methods Charcot used--isolation and countersuggestion. Close the dissociation services and disperse the patients to general psychiatric units. Ignore the alters. Stop talking to them, taking notes on them, and discussing them in staff conferences. Pay attention to real present problems and conflicts rather than fantasy. If these simple, familiar rules are followed, multiple personalities will soon wither away and psychotherapy can begin.
The last I heard and this was several years ago, Ted Gunderson was making his living traveling the countryside to police departments giving his seminar on Satanic cults and ritual abuse.
I'm surprised you don't know her. I figured she must have done some work in the Wenatchee day care trial, uncovering the repressed memories of all the children.
She may have a point though with her #22. If ever there was a cse of warped and abused personality, it sounds like Gore was it.
Pure ballderdash! The entire *article* sounds liek a stream of consciousness proposal for a screen play or TV series. Where's Mulder? Skully, where's Mulder? Or, that guy who smokes the Marlboro Reds?
This is not just drivel. It is evil, dangerous drivel. From Massachusetts to Washington State, hundreds of innocent people have been persecuted by credulous or malicious psychiatrists, therapists, social workers and similar parasites with false accusations of "satanic ritual abuse" and similar. There is an entire industry feeding off these fantasies, and it is destroying lives.
There is one organisation actively fighting for reason, sanity, and the presumption of innocence. It is the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, who can be found here. They deserve your support. Their web pages are also an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to learn more about this issue or has become snared in the webs of fabrication and false accusation these people weave.
For the record: there is no such disease as multiple personality disorder; it is a iatrogenic condition created by suggestions implanted by incompetent "therapists". There is no national network of crazed, mind-controlling Satanic cults. It is the Salem witch mania all over again.
You sound like another insensitive Republican. The soccor moms would never vote for you.
Cults, Anti-Cultists, and the Cult of Intelligence by Daniel Brandt From NameBase NewsLine, No. 5,
April-June 1994
The Davidians moved to Waco, Texas in 1935, and since then have minded their own business. James Wood, a professor of religion at Baylor University and resident of Waco since 1955, said that before February he hadn't heard of them referred to as a "cult." The librarian at the Waco Tribune-Herald confirmed that until their seven-part series on the Branch Davidians -- the first installment of which began one day before the initial assault on February 28, 1993 -- the Tribune-Herald referred to them as a "religious group," not a "cult."
The reporters for the series relied on "experts" from the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). A year earlier there had been allegations of child abuse, and the child protective services went to the compound, knocked on the door, walked in, and interviewed the children. They found no evidence of abuse and left.[1] But that was before CAN began playing the media like a fiddle. Rick Ross, who was convicted of jewel theft in 1975 and boasts of more than 200 "deprogrammings," has been praised by CAN executive director Cynthia Kisser as being "among the half-dozen best deprogrammers in the country." In 1992 Ross, Adeline Bova, and CAN national spokesperson Priscilla Coates worked their magic on David Block, a group member for five years. He told them about the guns in the compound, and Ross tipped off the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF). The affidavits supporting the search warrant used the word "cult," and BATF even adopted some of CAN's media savvy: they alerted television stations before the February 28 raid so that cameras could catch the action. It was expected to go as smoothly as those drug raids on cop shows, and might prove helpful to next year's budget.
To serve the search warrant, 100 BATF agents approached the compound on February 28. But the Branch Davidians had been tipped off and were in an apocalyptic mood, so four agents and six group members were killed by gunfire. This began a siege that lasted 51 days. CAN "experts" such as Priscilla Coates alleged child abuse, and others consulted further with authorities. CAN president Patricia Ryan recommended the use of lethal force.[2] Janet Reno and Bill Clinton picked up on the allegations of child abuse, and decided to put an end to it. This was finally achieved on April 19, when federal stormtroopers attacked again and over 80 men, women, and children perished in a fire. During the 51-day siege, David Koresh allowed 13 adults and 21 children to leave the compound. After a nine-week study of these children, the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services concluded that there were no indications of abuse. Even while Reno and Clinton were speaking of abuse, FBI director William Sessions said that his agency had no such evidence. Coates' response was, "I know how these types of groups work and children are always abused." Within a week the press dropped the child abuse angle as effortlessly as they had hyped it. It seemed like a good story at the time.[3]
Before the trial of eleven Branch Davidians began in San Antonio, one defense attorney asked that prosecutors and their witnesses be barred from using the word "cult" during the trial because it has "negative and dangerous" connotations. The judge denied this motion, but did allow the jury to consider self-defense in their deliberations. The verdict was a mixed bag. During the trial, BATF agent Dan Curtis defined a "cult" for the court as "a group of people who live together differently than the rest of society."[4]
Meanwhile, a diverse group of activists, ranging from the ACLU to the National Rifle Association, recommended increased oversight of federal law officers, and less reliance on uncorroborated, paid informants as a basis for obtaining search warrants. NRA legislative counsel Richard Gardiner pointed out that federal agents ignored an offer by David Koresh that would have allowed them to inspect all firearms in the compound.[5] Even Soldier of Fortune magazine, which had never met a well-armed, patriotic assault team they didn't like, referred to the BATF as a "gun gestapo."[6]
But the message appears to have been lost. BATF director Stephen Higgins was replaced by John W. Magaw in September 1993, and two months later the new acting director was still determined to keep an eye on other cults: "They're out there. They don't yet have the weaponry that we saw in Waco ... but they will develop if society allows them to." Magaw said the BATF was currently keeping tabs on cults in "three or four places around the country," but declined to be more specific.[7] The problem with the word "cult" is not that cults don't exist, nor that they should be left alone. The problem with the term, and with others like "brainwashing" and "mind control," is that they are too easy to use. Larger issues get lost when convenient labels are attached to complex phenomena, and sometimes the larger issue is more important than what the label attempts to describe. CAN, BATF, and the media all used the word "cult," and thereby obscured the fact that these were men, women, and children with civil rights. By the time everyone could see that this issue was more important than whatever weapons they were said to have possessed, it was already too late.
There is no legal or scientific basis for the use of such terms, only a broad and vague recognition that certain techniques (hypnosis, food and sleep deprivation, confinement, degradation, fear of punishment, threats of death, repetitious propaganda, peer pressure, and other forms of abuse) can be effective with certain persons as a means of lowering their resistance to stimuli. In other words, they foster authoritarian social structures in which individuals are content to follow orders. But with other persons, the same techniques may provoke opposite reactions.
The mere fact that orders are followed may also reflect a reasonable decision to subordinate one's individual interests to a higher ideal. And to complicate matters further, the techniques used by so-called "cults" are frequently more subtle. It's a tough call in all but the most flagrant situations. As Judge T.S. Ellis III admonished deprogrammer Galen Kelly, "One man's cult is another man's community, no matter how wacky you or I might think that is."[8]
"Deprogrammers" are guilty of the sort of thinking that forestalls adverse judgments by locating such judgments in a category that they themselves establish. If you object to my deprogramming, then you must still be brainwashed. CAN was originally called the Citizens Freedom Foundation, established in 1974 by Ted Patrick. According to Gerald Arenberg, writing in The Chief of Police magazine, Patrick in 1974 already had a "career of kidnapping young adults from young and little-understood churches in exchange for handsome fees from distraught or overbearing parents."[9] Patrick attempted to deprogram Catholics and Episcopalians, and also deprogrammed four Mormons. "The Mormon Church," said Patrick, "is one of the biggest cults in the nation."[10] According to Dr. Lowell Streiker of Burlingame, California, a deprogrammer named Cliff Daniels once said that "he used the 'sex thing' to see whether the girl was completely out of the cult. If she consented, then he knew that she was completely out. If she did not consent, then he knew that he had more work to do."[11]
At the very least, "deprogrammers" should be more accurately called "reprogrammers." For legal reasons, CAN's referrals to these reprogrammers are done informally, and for the record they now disavow some who have ended up defending themselves against kidnapping charges. The reprogrammers themselves are careful to involve the families in the process. That's where their money comes from, and besides, courts usually give the family the benefit of the doubt if the effort backfires. CAN claims that its informal network was involved in more than 1800 "deprogrammings" in 1992.[12]
Apart from the fact that the techniques of "cult leaders" and "deprogrammers" are distressingly similar, another philosophical problem is the extent to which majority culture itself exhibits characteristics of the cult. Personality cults are common in all hierarchical organizations, while religious and ethnic intolerance is pervasive everywhere. Marxism may be finished, but this doesn't mean Marx was wrong about the alienation of everyday life. And there are still critiques such as Guy Debord's "Society of the Spectacle" (1967), with "its treatment of the erosion of life as lived experience and its replacement by representation, life experienced as the received effects and images of commodity culture -- as spectacle."[13]
Social power, or the ability to manipulate others, is the central issue in the narrow debate over cults. CAN objects to the power of the cult, and tries to transfer this power to the family, the government, or to themselves using cult-like techniques. More sensitive social critics are aware that power and manipulation are found everywhere in society. The winners are those who can harness military potential, or provide bread, or lacking these, can manipulate the masses with circuses. In this view, some of the best examples of imposed duress and manipulation are sponsored by governments and the elites who run them.
One of the documents uncovered by the anti-draft movement in the late 1960s was titled "Channeling." Distributed by the Selective Service System in 1965, it was intended as a rationale for issuing draft deferments in the national interest. The tone was not only blunt, but was actually boastful of the government's capacity for manipulation:
The psychology of granting wide choice under pressure to take action is the American or indirect way of achieving what is done by direction in foreign countries where choice is not permitted.... From the individual's viewpoint, he is standing in a room which has been made uncomfortably warm. Several doors are open, but they all lead to various forms of recognized, patriotic service to the Nation. Some accept the alternatives gladly -- some with reluctance. The consequence is approximately the same.[14]
Covert warfare strategists also thrive on mass manipulation. Another document surfaced in the late 1970s, a top secret Supplement B to U.S. Army Field Manual FM 30-31. The manual itself is unclassified and discusses techniques for intelligence support and liaison with "host countries" (HC) where U.S. troops are stationed. Supplement B, which is dated 18 March 1970 and signed by General Westmoreland, describes special operations that may be required "when HC governments show passivity or indecision in face of Communist or Communist-inspired subversion, and react with inadequate vigor to intelligence estimates transmitted by U.S. agencies." In such situations, "U.S. Army intelligence should seek to penetrate the insurgency by means of agents on special assignment, with the task of forming special action groups among the more radical elements of the insurgency." These groups under U.S. Army control "should be used to launch violent or nonviolent actions according to the nature of the case." The section concluded, "In cases where the infiltration of such agents into the insurgent leadership has not been effectively implemented, it may help toward the achievement of the above ends to utilize ultra-leftist organizations."[15]
This "strategy of tension" accounts for much of the recent history of Italy, along with other factors such as corruption and organized crime. Since the 1970s, electoral politics there has been perverted by coup attempts and nominally left-wing terrorism -- both of which, experts now believe, were covertly sponsored by the Italian secret services and the notorious "Propaganda Due" lodge run by Licio Gelli. Arms and explosives apparently came from the buried caches of NATO's Operation Gladio, and of course there were the inevitable CIA connections. Gelli himself was linked to U.S. presidents; he attended the inaugural ceremonies of Ford, Carter, and Reagan, and called himself a friend of George Bush. In July 1981, Gelli's daughter was stopped at the Rome airport and documents were confiscated from a false bottom in her suitcase. One of these was a photocopy of Supplement B. The "strategy of tension" used some of the same techniques on the entire Italian electorate that cult leaders use to manipulate their followers.[16]
Modern secret services not only mimic the cult leader's cynicism, but intelligence professionals themselves are locked into a self-perpetuating mind-set. Former CIA director William Colby describes the phenomenon:
Socially as well as professionally they cliqued together, forming a sealed fraternity. They ate together at their own special favorite restaurants; they partied almost only among themselves; their families drifted to each other, so their defenses did not always have to be up. In this way they increasingly separated themselves from the ordinary world and developed a rather skewed view of that world. Their own dedicated double life became the proper norm, and they looked down on the life of the rest of the citizenry. And out of this grew what was later named -- and condemned -- as the "cult" of intelligence, an inbred, distorted, elitist view of intelligence that held it to be above the normal processes of society, with its own rationale and justification, beyond the restraints of the Constitution, which applied to everything and everyone else.[17]
The CIA began its fascination with mind control in 1950, when the term "brainwashing" was coined by CIA propagandist Edward Hunter to explain the experience of civilians in China and later, American POWs in Korea.[18] Most of the CIA's records on this were destroyed in the late 1970s, at time when Congress and the media were focusing on CIA misdeeds. The documents that were declassified concerned the CIA's research program called MK-ULTRA, in which they experimented with drugs that were thought to have mind-control potential.
Given the CIA's resources, it is reasonable to expect that a commensurate interest in the cult phenomenon has secretly persisted through the years. The early brainwashing scare, it should be noted, concerned the use of non-drug techniques. The Branch Davidians apparently have no intelligence connections, but with some other groups it's a different story. A CIA interest in cults is far more ominous than the phenomenon of cults by themselves, because intelligence elites have the resources and mind-set to manipulate large populations. The Cult Awareness Network itself has no interest in the intelligence angle. This is one glaring example of those larger issues that they and their media hacks ignore.
The first example of such links is the Unification Church (UC) of Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Today it is too well-established to be considered a cult; the list of their front groups and businesses in NameBase runs to 28 pages with 667 names.[19] The UC no longer recruits on U.S. campuses the way they used to -- they don't need the money that Moonies would earn from selling flowers at airports, and they don't need this sort of publicity. Instead they buy universities: in 1992 the UC plunked down over $50 million for the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, and one of the UC's new trustees there is Jack E. Thomas, who was assistant chief of staff for U.S. air force intelligence for six years, and then special assistant to the CIA director for nine years.[20] Rev. Moon is also a force in Washington today. In 1992 he admitted that over its ten-year history, the Washington Times had cost him "close to one billion dollars."[21] The influence and respectability this provides is presumably worth more than that.
Before the Unification Church was incorporated in the U.S. in 1963 by Bo Hi Pak, Moon had the support of the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). The expansion of the cult into the U.S. was conceived as a means of influencing U.S. politics. Four of Moon's early followers were young army officers close to Kim Jong Pil, the founding director of the KCIA and chief strategist for the Park regime. Bo Hi Pak was the KCIA liaison to U.S. intelligence at the time, stationed in the Korean Embassy in Washington. Today he is one of Moon's top aides and president of the Washington Times. In 1962 Kim made a two-week official visit to the U.S., and Lt.Col. Bo Hi Pak arranged meetings with CIA director John McCone, defense secretary Robert McNamara, and Defense Intelligence Agency director Gen. Joseph Carroll. On his way home, Kim met with some of Moon's followers in San Francisco. Pak's other duties at the Korean Embassy included frequent liaison trips to the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland.[22]
Today the Moon empire is similar to a transnational corporation with various subsidiaries. Cult-like aspects remain visible among Moon's entourage, but from the perspective of most employees, many Moon enterprises are just like other corporations. Rev. Moon still considers himself a Messiah, and his far-flung investments are the means he's using to save the world. His politics are essentially reactionary and anti-Communist, and he has received political and financial support from Yoshio Kodama, Ryoichi Sasakawa, and other powerful Japanese right-wing figures. In 1970 the Japanese contingent of Moon's organization sponsored the annual conference of the World Anti-Communist League.
The next example is the Church of Scientology, and the curious habits and connections of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986). Hubbard was secretive and sometimes dishonest about his background, and reliable information is difficult to find. His father was a U.S. naval officer, so as as a young man Hubbard traveled to China, the Philippines, and Guam. He may have been introduced to the Office of Naval Intelligence before World War II, which apart from the FBI and certain cells of army intelligence, was the closest thing this country had to a CIA. During the war he was almost certainly in naval intelligence, as Lt. (JG) Lafayette R. Hubbard.
After the war Hubbard was a science fiction writer, and in 1949 he wrote a best-seller, "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health." In 1953 he founded Scientology, and in 1955 he secretly authored the "Brainwashing Manual," in which he identified virtually all of the techniques of mind control now recognized by most psychologists. The Church of Scientology made its money by selling franchises and Hubbard's books to middle-class enthusiasts, and laundering this money through a Panamanian corporation. Low-level franchise Scientologists enjoyed some independence, but to reach higher levels one had to pay for expensive "auditing" and perhaps allow oneself to be abused by the Commodore himself.
Hubbard made many enemies over the years: the American Medical Association in the 1950s, the Food and Drug Administration and the Australian government in the 1960s, the British government beginning in 1967, and Interpol and the French governments in the 1970s, along with an assortment of Mediterranean and North African governments. Hubbard amused himself by doing battle with all of them. From rows of telexes on the Apollo, a virtual slave ship with a crew of over 300, the Commodore ran covert ops by sending coded orders to his minions around the world. His luck ran out when his operatives were caught stealing documents from a locked government office. This led to simultaneous FBI raids on Church property in 1977, which produced documentary evidence of the Church's infiltration of the IRS, and even of the FBI itself. Eventually eleven of his top aides were sent to prison, while Hubbard himself couldn't be found.[23]
Toward the end of his career, Hubbard was certainly a renegade, far beyond anyone's capacity to control him. But in the 1950s and early 1960s, it's probable that he had support from U.S. intelligence. His early expertise in mind control is curious, as well as his lifetime interest in intelligence tradecraft. Former CIA officer Miles Copeland claims that his CIA colleague Bob Mandelstam made "arrangements" with Scientology and Moral Re-Armament about this time.[24] (Moral Re-Armament is another cult-like organization; Copeland's information on MRA is confirmed by the late Jim Wilcott, an accountant with the CIA in Japan in the early 1960s, who wrote that MRA "was covertly supported and used by the CIA."[25]) Another well-placed source reports that in the early 1960s a high-level award was given to Hubbard by the prestigious American Ordnance Association. Hubbard, this source says, was "on a friendly basis with top generals and admirals and their military-industrial associates."
Jonestown, which ended in the suicide/murders of over 900 followers in 1978, has long been suspected of intelligence links because of circumstantial evidence. The camp in Guyana was a prison for all but an armed cadre that had special privileges and functioned as guards. All of the classic mind control techniques were utilized. While conditions were miserable, there was nevertheless a modern medical facility, and massive quantities of behavior modification drugs were recovered by the authorities. Jones was on good terms with Richard Dwyer, who was working with the CIA through his position as deputy chief at the U.S. embassy in Georgetown. Other evidence confirms close links between the U.S. embassy and the Jonestown leadership. After Congressman Leo Ryan was assassinated at the airport and Dwyer escaped with some survivors into the jungle, he apparently returned to Jonestown. A tape of Jim Jones' last moments has him saying, "Get Dwyer out of here. Get Dwyer out of here." (Dwyer retired from the foreign service in 1984 and died in 1991. He denied that he was present during the final event.)
Joe Holsinger, an aide to Leo Ryan, became interested in the CIA connections in 1980 and presented his case in public forums. A White House official told him a few hours after the airstrip murders that "we have a CIA report from the scene." A top Jones aide, George Philip Blakey, reportedly recruited mercenaries for the CIA in Angola in 1975. He's the one who arranged the lease for Jonestown with the government of Guyana in 1974. Blakey was the son-in-law of Dr. Lawrence Layton, a former biochemical warfare specialist for the U.S. army. These and other circumstances caused Holsinger to speculate that Jonestown was part of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program.[26]
Other curiosities have been noted by researchers. In the early 1960s Jim Jones spent eleven months in Brazil, where he was in frequent contact with the U.S. embassy. His boyhood friend Dan Mitrione, a U.S. intelligence operative and police advisor, was in Brazil at the same time.[27] Jones returned with enough money to start People's Temple in Ukiah, California.
The early reports from the scene of the Jonestown tragedy are conflicting, suggesting an attempt at cover-up. Robert Pastor, an aide to Carter's national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, ordered that the U.S. military strip "all politically sensitive papers and forms of identification" from the bodies.[28] (Early photographs show that many bodies had ID tags, which may have been connected to the Jonestown hospital's drug administration program.) No autopsies were possible after the military took a week to bring the bodies back, and many remained unidentified. Press estimates of Jonestown's wealth ranged from $26 million to $2 billion, scattered in banks, foreign investments, and real estate. Much of this money disappeared after it was listed in the press.[29]
Another fun fact is that the Cult Awareness Network itself has a CIA connection. Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA's School of Medicine, is currently on the advisory board of CAN and a similar group called the American Family Foundation. For fifteen years he has been a keynote speaker at CAN conferences. In the 1950s and 1960s, West did contract research for MK-ULTRA and was personally acquainted with MK-ULTRA director Sidney Gottlieb. Under the terms of his CIA-funded contract, West ran a program at the University of Oklahoma that experimented with LSD. (At one point he gave an elephant a huge dosage at the Oklahoma City Zoo, which resulted in its death.) After the Watts riots in 1965, West promoted the view that violence was caused by genetic factors, and offenders could be treated by psychosurgery and chemical castration.[30]
Some speculate that the CIA is working both sides of the street on the cultism issue. This is the approach that any good intelligence agency would prefer; it provides an opportunity to shape the terms of the public debate, and allows maneuverability to protect and promote their interests. Unfortunately our media work only on the anti-cult side of the street, and seem thoroughly uninterested in the larger issues. One problem is that if you need a soundbite or two, it's much less expensive to use a CAN "expert" as opposed to digging out your own facts. And with the intelligence angle especially, layers of deniability must be penetrated. After pursuing this angle, the only thing that a journalist might discover is the fact that his editor or publisher is nervous and unhappy, and wants to pull the plug.
Just as decaying Imperial Rome was rife with cults, today many feel that our majority culture has played out its string, leaving us tied in knots. The systems needed to transmit values from one generation to the next are in serious disrepair. Intentional communities, like it or not, will become attractive in coming decades for both social and economic reasons, if only because we all share a penchant for survival. This makes the problem as vital as it is difficult. It seems reasonable to ask that those who use words like "mind control," "cult," and "brainwashing" be ready to explain themselves on the basis of larger issues, with some measure of logical, philosophical, and scientific coherence, and with a bit more compassion.
1. "Texas Talk Show Host Tells What Really Happened in Waco," Spotlight, 31 May 1993, pp. 12-13. Interview with Ron Engleman of KGBS radio in Dallas.
2. L. Keeton and J. Pinkerton, "Infiltrating Cult Will End Standoff, Expert Suggests," Houston Chronicle, 8 April 1993.
3. Some details in the preceding paragraphs are from a 26-page report by Ross & Green, "What Is the Cult Awareness Network and What Role Did It Play in Waco?," July 1993. This report by a public relations firm (Ross & Green, 1010 Vermont Avenue NW, Suite 811, Washington DC 20005) was prepared in conjunction with the New Alliance Party. NAP is labeled a "political cult" by its enemies, and is concerned that such labeling may affect their civil rights. Their FBI file shows that this label is picked up from media allegations and disseminated to FBI field offices without any substantiating evidence. A different political party, the LaRouche organization, is also concerned with this issue. They were raided, their records seized, and some of their leaders imprisoned after being convicted on dubious financial fraud charges in the late 1980s. LaRouche himself was released on parole in early 1994.
Do you have any info on the Finders, which is reputed to be a CIA agency which programs children in Mexico?
It wouldn't seem to be a hoax when several states have specific laws against it. Why pass a law if it is a hoax? As Doctor Monday states, SRA shows up consistently among mind control victims. She has her patient base as her source. I have been in contact with several dozen victims myself and SRA is a constant among them as well. The accounts by victims that I have read also consistently report SRA experiences.
I understand that it isn't pleasant and that you might not want to believe it, but the evidence is compelling.
Actually, more and more evidence is emerging that supports the thrust of Dr. Monday's report. For instance, Channel 13 in Los Angeles aired a report on mind control just last week. In spite of the government's desire to keep this horrendous program covert, word is getting out.