The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control by John Marks [Excerpts] By the 1950s, most "Americans knew something about the famous trial of the Hungarian Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, at which the Cardinal appeared zombielike, as though drugged or hypnotized. Other defendants at Soviet 'show trials' had displayed similar symptoms as they recited unbelievable confessions in dull, cliche-ridden monotones. Americans were familiar with the idea that the communists had ways to control hapless people, and [the term 'brainwashing'] helped pull together the unsettling evidence into one sharp fear." Many Americans "saw the confessions as proof that the communists now had techniques 'to put a man's mind in a fog so that he will mistake what is true for what is untrue, what is right for what is wrong, and come to believe what did not happen actually had happened, until he ultimately becomes a robot.'" "Given the incontrovertible evidence that the Russians and the Chinese could, in a very short time and often under difficult circumstances, alter the basic belief and behavior patterns of both domestic and foreign captives, [it was argued that] there must be a technique involved that would yield its secrets under objective investigation." Harold Wolff and Lawrence Hinkle "became the chief brainwashing studiers for the U.S. government... Their secret report to [CIA chief] Allen Dulles, later published in a declassified version, was considered the definitive U.S. Government work on the subject." "The CIA built up its own elaborate brainwashing program [which]... took its own special twist from our national character. It was a tiny replica of the Manhattan Project, grounded in the conviction that the keys to brainwashing lay in technology. Agency officials hoped to use old-fashioned American know-how to produce shortcuts and scientific breakthroughs... The Agency's brainwashing experts gravitated to people more in the mold of the brilliant -- and sometimes mad -- scientist." CIA officials began to look for scientists and guinea pigs. "Some of their experiments would wander so far across the ethical borders of experimental psychiatry (which are hazy in their own right) that Agency officials thought it prudent to have much of the work done outside the United States." Montreal hospital. One of Cameron's projects was an attempt to "depattern" experimental subjects. "Cameron defined 'depatterning' as breaking up existing patterns of behavior... by means of particularly intensive electroshocks, usually combined with prolonged, drug-induced sleep... Cameron claimed he could generate 'differential amnesia.' Creating such a state in which a man who knew too much could be made to forget had long been a prime objective [of CIA] programs." Cameron's depatterning "normally started with 15 to 30 days of 'sleep therapy.' As the name implies, the patient slept almost the whole day and night. According to a doctor at the hospital who used to administer what he calls the 'sleep cocktail,' a staff member woke up the patient three times a day for medication that consisted of a combination of 100 mg. Thorazine, 100 mg. Nembutal, 100 mg. Seconal, 150 mg. Veronal, and 10 mg. Phenergan. Another staff doctor would also awaken the patient two or sometimes three times daily for electroshock treatments... In standard, professional electroshock, doctors gave the subject a single dose of 110 volts, lasting a fraction of a second, once a day or every other day. By contrast, Cameron used a form 20 to 40 times more intense, two or three times daily, with the power turned up to 150 volts." "The frequent screams of patients that echoed through the hospital did not deter Cameron or most of his associates in their attempts to 'depattern' their subjects completely. Other hospital patients report beinng petrified by the 'sleep rooms,' where the treatment took place, and they would usually creep down the opposite side of the hall." "The Agency sent the psychiatrist research money to take the treatment *beyond this point*. Agency officials wanted to know if, once Cameron had produced a blank mind, he could then program in new patterns of behavior, as he claimed he could. As early as 1953 -- the year he headed the American Psychiatric Association -- Cameron conceived a technique he called 'psychic driving,' by which he would bombard the subject with repeated verbal messages." The CIA continued to fund Cameron's research. Then, in 1964, he retired abruptly. "His successor, Dr. Robert Cleghorn, made a virtually unprecedented move in the academic world of mutual back-scratching and praise. He commissioned a psychiatrist and a psychologist, unconnected to Cameron, to study his electroshock work." "The study-team members couched their report in densely academic jargon, but one of them speaks more clearly now. He talks bitterly of one of Cameron's former patients who needs to keep a list of her simplest household chores to remember how to do them... He continues, 'I probably shouldn't talk about this, but Cameron -- for him to do what he did -- he was a very schizophrenic guy, who totally detached himself from the human implications of his work... God, we talk about concentration camps. I don't want to make this comparison, but God, you talk about ''we didn't know it was happening,'' and it was -- right in our back yard.'" "It cannot be said how many -- if any -- other Agency Details are scarce, since many of the principal witnesses have died, will not talk about what went on, or lie about it. In what ways the CIA applied work like Cameron's is not known. What is known, however, is that the intelligence community, including the CIA, changed the face of the scientific community during the 1950s and early 1960s by its interest in such experiments." -!