HaCKeRz Kr0nlcKLeZ 1/HaCKeRz Kr0nlcKLeZ.iso/drugs/review.test.tube.murders

Internet Message Format | 1996-05-06 | 15.5 KB

From: [e-mail] (Eusebius9)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs.culture
Subject: "All that I am, I owe to the CIA"
Date: 9 May 1995 11:58:28 -0400
Message-ID: <3oo3f4$[e-mail]>

This is a review/summary of a book that is unavailable in English.
<jf54>Der Fall Charles Manson, Mo@aurder aus der Retorte
(Test-Tube Murders, the Case of Charles Manson)<cm by
Carol Greene<cm Dr. Bo@auttiger Verlags-GmbH,
Wiesbaden-Nordenstadt, Germany, 1993<pa 236 pages,
paperbound, DM|16.80<cm

<jf20><$>On April 16, the {Pasadena Star-News,} of Pasadena,
California, prominently featured two articles based on an
AP wire, entitled ``LSD goes back to school,'' and ``LSD,
50 years old, enjoys a new youth movement.''  The articles
celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first LSD ``trip,''
taken by accident by chemist Albert Hoffmann in
Switzerland. Local experts are quoted, affirming that LSD
use among junior high school students is on the upswing. A
police sergeant states, ``It's cheap. A little bit of
nostalgia [is] involved there too, going back to the '60s
stuff.''
        No one who lived through the ``|'60s stuff'' can read
Carol Greene's book without shuddering. Greene examines
every familiar detail of the so-called
counterculture--which seemed so benign as it was being
mass-marketed to American youth via the media and the
education system--and inexorably builds a case that this
seemingly spontaneous phenomenon was not only the
exhaustively planned subversion of cultural and moral
values, but in fact a vast behavior-modification
experiment designed to awaken a {propensity for violent
criminal acts} in a targeted sector of the population.
She methodically analyzes such diverse tendencies as the
communal drug and sex movement (the hippies); the
behavioral psychologists who studied and directed their
``life-style''; the military, CIA, and Harvard University
researchers who developed and promoted LSD and other
``psychedelic'' drugs; the ``New Age'' gurus who fashioned
the ideological framework out of such ingredients as
science fiction, Nietzschean philosophy, ``Old Religions''
(paganism, Satanism) and ``New Religions'' (Scientology,
Gaia); Freudian psychology; and the ``grey eminence'' who
had the whole project pretty well mapped out from early
on, Aldous Huxley. This is more or less the same
confluence of actors and ideas that was so lavishly
praised in Marilyn Ferguson's book {The Aquarian
Conspiracy.} Greene then demonstrates how every one of
these factors specifically converges on the case of
Charles Manson and his communal ``family,'' which serves
as a kind of crucial experiment, a prototype for the
desired end-product.
        The grisly deeds of the Manson family have been
recounted in lurid detail before, and Greene does not
dwell on them more than is necessary. However, as her
story unfolds, the reader encounters characters far more
frightening than Manson himself. One of these is Dr. Wayne
O. Evans, who during the 1960s was director of the
Military Stress Laboratory of the U.S. Army Institute of
Environmental Medicine in Natick, Massachusetts. He
participated in something called the Study Group for the
Effects of Psychotropic Drugs on Normal Humans, which held
a conference in Puerto Rico in 1967, described by Evans in
a document, ``Psychotropic Drugs in the Year 2000'':
        ``In considering the present volume, it is our hope
that the reader will not believe this to be an exercise in
science fiction. It is well known that the world of 15
years hence presently exists in the research laboratory of
today.
        ``...|The American culture has been described by
Herman Kahn as moving toward a `sensate society.' By this
term, he means that a greater emphasis is being placed on
sensory experience and less upon rational or work-oriented
philosophies. Such a philosophic view, coupled with the
means to separate sexual behavior from reproduction or
disease, will undoubtedly enhance sexual freedom.
        ``We also can anticipate an outcry and vigorous
attacks against the marketing of aphrodisiacs from certain
groups. To combine the presumed evils inherent in the
words `drug' and `sex' in one product would be just too
provocative to overlook. However, the fascinating
field-day offered to advertising companies by chemical
aphrodisiacs should overcome the indignation of the few.
        ``The choice of such chemicals as to the result of
their use lies in the hands of those people who shape our
evolution as `role models.' What middle-aged people, such
as you and I, think or want to believe has little
importance in these developments. As we consider the
effects of these advances in pharmacology we must ask:
        ``(a) to whom do the youth listen?
        ``(b) what are their social and personal values?
        ``(c) in what kind of world will young people live?
        ``It seems to me to be obvious that the youth of
today are no longer afraid of either drugs or sex. Again,
the philosophers and spokesmen for the avante-garde
advocate the personal sensory experience as the raison
d'etre of the coming generation. Finally we are moving
into an age in which meaningful work will be possible only
for a minority: In such an age, chemical aphrodisiacs may
be accepted as a commonplace means to occupy one's time.
It will be interesting to see if the public morality of
the next 30 years will change as much as it has in the
last 30.
        ``If we accept the position that human mood,
motivation, and emotion are reflections of a neurochemical
state of the brain, then drugs can provide a simple, rapid
expedient means to produce any desired neurochemical state
that we wish.
        ``The sooner that we cease to confuse scientific and
moral statements about drug use, the sooner we can
rationally consider the types of neurochemical states that
we wish to provide for people. The old argument about the
`morality of naturalness' in the production of moods,
motivations or emotions seems somewhat of a lost cause in
our present, almost totally artificial environment. We may
expect, that in the year 2000, to make judgements based on
the `morality of naturalness' will be even less meaningful
than today. Therefore, I submit to you, that if we wished,
we could probably have an effective set of aphrodisiacs
within five years.''

             - Rats and `behavioral sinks' -
        Another study group member, Dr. William Turner,
described studies done by American psychologist John
Calhoun, in which Norway rats, under conditions of
overcrowding, formed what were termed ``behavioral
sinks.'' Here a pattern of extreme behavior changes
emerged, such as cannibalism and rape, reminiscent of
human psychopathology. This behavior emerged among 5% of
the rat population. He indicated that similar effects
might be expected of humans under crowded urban
conditions.
        Strikingly similar views were held by Dr. David E.
Smith, and his colleague Roger Smith (no relation), both
of whom were associated with the famous Haight-Ashbury
Clinic in San Francisco. They shared an interest in the
concept of ``behavioral sinks''; believed that rats, in
response to overcrowding, were naturally inclined to
violence, criminality, and mass murder; and believed that
the percentage of rats who would engage in such behavior
could be increased by the influence of drugs. Dr. David
Smith repeated the Calhoun experiments himself, and added
a new dimension by injecting the rats with amphetamines.
Author Greene presents and defends the thesis that for
both Smiths, Haight-Ashbury represented an opportunity to
test these theories {on humans}. David Smith referred to
Haight-Ashbury as the national center for habitual drug
abuse, and the first slum for teen-agers in America. Both
Smiths were personally acquainted with Manson, and Roger
Smith was {Manson's parole officer} when Manson first came
to Haight-Ashbury, direct from prison.
        If someone wanted to transform a human subject into a
``killer rat,'' Manson was a promising candidate. The
product of a broken home, he had spent the better part of
his life in prisons. He was a thoroughly alienated
individual, but a clever one, with an interest in certain
kinds of ideas. In prison he had made himself well
acquainted with psychiatry, hypnosis, Scientology, and the
occult. He was apparently in pursuit of a system of belief
that was compatible with his criminal bent, and was
synthesizing a variety of techniques with which to
manipulate others. All this came to fruition as he
assembled his communal ``family.'' Manson was also
fascinated by Robert Heinlein's ``New Age'' science
fiction novel {Stranger in a Strange Land,} and used it as
a sort of paradigm for his ``family,'' going so far as to
name his illegitimate son after the book's protagonist.

            - Manson's anti-Christian roots -
        As part of her search for Manson's ``roots,'' Greene
traces the genesis of science fiction, examining in
particular the cases of Aldous Huxley and H.G. Wells.
Huxley, in addition to being a renowned enthusiast for
``mind-expanding'' drugs, was a confirmed malthusian and
an anti-Christian in the tradition of Friedrich Nietzsche.
He wrote to Harvard's Dr. Timothy Leary that for the kind
of ``evolution'' that they were both trying to promote,
the Bible was the only resistance. Huxley also had an
interest in ``killer rats.''  In a work entitled ``Do What
You Will,'' Huxley refers approvingly to a theory of his
friend, the psychologist Dr. William Sheldon:
        ``There exists, as Sheldon makes clear, a certain
percentage of people--he calls them somatotonics--who are
constitutionally aggressive, who love risk and adventure
for their own sake; who lust for power and dominance; who
are psychologically callous and have no squeamishness
about killing, who are insensitive to pain and tirelessly
energetic. How can these people be prevented from wrecking
the world: Christianity tried to keep them down by means
of a `cerebrotonic' system of ethical restraints. But
there has been a revolt against cerebrotonic religion and
ethics during the last 25 years and the somatotonics are
in the saddle, not only physically but intellectually and
philosophically.''
        Greene quotes H.G. Wells in a similar vein:
        ``The men of the New Republic will not be squeamish
either in facing or inflicting death.... They will have
ideals that will make killing worthwhile.... They will
hold that a certain portion of the population exists only
on sufferance out of pity and patience, and on the
understanding, that they do not propagate; and I do not
foresee any reason to suppose that they will hesitate to
kill when that sufferance is abused.''
        She then asks: Couldn't Charles Manson have made the
same declaration? Greene hastens to add that the
difference is, that the men of the ``New Republic'' kill
for clear ideas and goals, while people like Manson follow
seemingly arbitrary impulses. The real issue is the
motivation of the scientists who were experimenting on
people like Manson.
        Greene elaborates in some depth on the intertwining
histories of the following ideas: malthusianism; eugenics;
``sexual freedom''; drugs that are ``consciousness
expanding''; and Satanism. In the process, she makes two
very interesting observations: First, the Freudians and
the Frankfurt School promised that by stripping away
bourgeois morality and unleashing the sexual revolution,
they could dramatically reduce tendencies toward
criminality and xenophobic prejudice; what they have
delivered is quite the opposite. Second, the dissemination
of satanic ideologies and satanically influenced manners of
thinking is more dangerous than the organized, cultish
form, a warning which one hopes will be heeded by some
fundamentalist groups that develop a voyeuristic
fascination with satanic ritual acts, and fail to act
against the pervasive influence of satanic concepts in the
culture around them.
        The author includes an extensive survey
of what is known about the CIA drug research and
dissemination projects, ``Artichoke,'' ``Bluebird,'' and
the more famous ``MK-Ultra.'' She quotes former CIA
director Richard Helms, saying in response to a question
about what he thinks of LSD, ``Dynamite.'' She quotes
Harvard researcher and later darling of the hippie
movement, Timothy Leary, giving full credit for all his
accomplishments to the CIA. As an indication of just how
fully witting Leary was and is, the following may be
recounted: In the early 1980s,  this reviewer was
approached by Dr. Leary, who
said in all seriousness: ``Do you have a copy of {Dope,
Inc.}? I loaned my copy to a British oligarch who was
staying at my house, and he never returned it.''
        In the wealth of investigative leads amassed in this
book, there are a few rather provocative loose ends
which the author might have pursued further. One is the
issue of the degradation of language. Greene mentions a
certain Count Alfred Korzybski, a Polish semanticist who
published his key work in 1948, who attracted the interest
of leading Scientologists and was lauded by Marilyn
Ferguson in {The Aquarian Conspiracy.} The point Korzybski
apparently wished to make is that European languages have
been imprinted with Judeo-Christian culture, and that to
overcome this pernicious influence, it were necessary to
transform language from the ground up (Manson was fond of
using the word ``grok,'' coined by Heinlein in {Stranger
in a Strange Land}). However, this issue immediately
brings to mind the broader issue of the present-day
``political correctness'' movement, and its ``language
police.'' Greene might also wish to consider the
activities of another British spook-cum-science fiction
novelist, Anthony Burgess, who was practicing a form of
deconstructionism decades ago with his treatment of
language in {A Clockwork Orange. }

           - Indictment of the New Age Nazis -
        But it was not Carol Greene's intention to write an
expose@aa. She has written a bill of indictment. The
establishment scientists and social engineers of MK-Ultra
a.k.a. the Aquarian Conspiracy a.k.a. the counterculture,
stand accused of using sex, drugs, and synthetic belief
systems to unleash Charles Manson and his ``family'' as
irrational, sadistic and unrepentant killers. Prosecutor
Greene has established opportunity and intent, but that
leaves unresolved the question of motive. It is that
question she addresses in the final and most jarring
chapter.
        It is Greene's contention that the actions of one or
more key individuals were believed to trigger that 5% of
the population that the rat scientists had found capable
of murderous psychopathology. Thus the actions of Manson
have unleashed a wave of ``copy-cat'' serial killings and
related behavior in the subsequent years, among a
population that has received the same kind of preparation
that Manson had, i.e., sex, drugs, and the New Age. During
this time the FBI has assembled a massive databank of all
those individuals who have perpetrated or shown a
propensity for sociopathic violence. Greene describes this
as a ``Who's Who'' of the potential fascist scene in
America. She believes that if the establishment continues
to insist on its present economic course, they may find it
necessary to deploy some form of fascism, without the
``democratic face.'' She says in closing:
        ``This book was written because we believe that in
the United States, as in Germany during the Third Reich,
the majority of the population is against such a
development. This majority must now wake up and act. What
came to pass under the Nazi regime was believed by most of
those who helped bring them to power, in a desperate
economic and social situation, to be simply not possible.
And yet it was possible, and it is today again possible.''

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The title quote was from Timothy Leary