BLUEBIRD

Deliberate Creation of
Multiple Personality
by Psychiatrists
Colin A. Ross, M.D.
Richardson, Texas: Manitou Communications, 2000

Overview
BLUEBIRD is the cryptonym for a CIA mind control program that ran from 1951 to
1953. Other mind control programs include ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, and
MKSEARCH. The purpose of the book BLUEBIRD is to prove that the military and
the CIA have been creating Manchurian Candidates for operational use since the
second world war. This fact is described repeatedly by G.H. Estabrooks and in CIA
documents on BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act.
By research at the medical school library, ordering out-of-print books, and requests
filed through the Freedom of Information Act, Dr. Ross has built up compelling
documentation of the fact that the CIA and military intelligence agencies have been
creating multiple personality experimentally, and using these subjects in courier and
infiltration operations.
The Appendices to BLUEBIRD provide full proof of the fact that the Manchurian
Candidate is real, and has been created by the CIA and military. The documented
mind control research includes putting brain electrodes in children as young as 11
years old and controlling their behavior from remote transmitters; giving 150 mcg of
LSD per day to children age 7-11 for weeks and months at a time; building safe
houses where CIA personnel watched prostitutes turn tricks with customers the
prostitutes gave their customers LSD without the customers knowledge; wiping out
memories with electric shock, and using animals with implanted brain electrodes as
delivery systems for chemical and biological weapons.
A complete listing of MKULTRA Subprojects, correspondence between Estabrooks
and J. Edgar Hoover and other documents are included in the Appendices to
BLUEBIRD.[Note:1]

Synopsis

In BLUEBIRD: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists, Dr.

Ross provides proof, based on 15,000 pages of documents obtained from the CIA
under the Freedom of Information Act, that the Manchurian Candidate is fact, not
fiction. He describes the experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia,
new identities, hypnotic access codes, and new memories in the minds of
experimental subjects.
The funding of the experiments by the CIA, Army, Navy, and Air Force is proven
from CIA documents and the doctors own publications. BLUEBIRD proves that
there was extensive political abuse of psychiatry in North America throughout the
second half of the twentieth century, perpetrated not by a few renegade doctors, but
by leading psychiatrists, psychologists, pharmacologists, neurosurgeons and medical
schools.[Note:2]

Chapter 4
BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE
BLUEBIRD was approved by Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Director of the CIA, on April
20, 1950. In August 1951, the Project was renamed ARTICHOKE. The Korean War
began in June, 1950. The CIA already had mind control programs in operation prior
to the Korean War, therefore such programs were not a defensive reaction to the
activities of the North Koreans, Russians, or Communist Chinese during the Korean
War, as claimed by CIA career officer Edward Hunter.136 BLUEBIRD and
ARTICHOKE included a great deal of work on the creation of amnesia, hypnotic
couriers and the Manchurian Candidate.66 184
The Manchurian Candidate is generally regarded as fiction. However,
ARTICHOKE documents prove that hypnotic couriers functioned effectively in
real-life simulations conducted by the CIA in the early 1950s. The degree to which
such individuals were used in actual operations is still classified. Physicians were an
integral part of the ARTICHOKE Team that conducted interrogations on U.S. soil.
These interrogations were in part designed to detect mind-controlled agents of other
Agencies and governments. The documents establish that Manchurian Candidaterelated methods were part of CIA counter-intelligence work in the 1950s.
The basic premise of the book The Manchurian Candidate66 is that a group
of American POWs in the Korean War is brainwashed while crossing through
Manchuria to freedom. They arrive back in the U.S. amnesic for the period of
brainwashing and one of them has been programmed to be an assassin. His target is
a candidate for President of the United States. His handlers at home control him
with a hypnotically implanted trigger, a particular playing card.
A MEMORANDUM dated 15 July 1953 from the Chief, Bio-Chemistry &

Pharmacology Branch, Medicine Division OSI [Office of Scientific Intelligence] to

the Chief, Technical Branch, SO [Special Operations] includes a paragraph
summarizing discussions about recently returned Korean War POWs who had been
brainwashed:
Following this [whited out] commented on the very interesting angle
that interrogations of the individuals who had come out of North Korea
across the Soviet Union to freedom recently had apparently had a blank
period or period of disorientation while passing through a special zone in
Manchuria. [Whited out] pointed out that this had occurred in all
individuals in the party after they had had their first full meal and their first
coffee on the way to freedom. [Whited out] pointed out that [whited out]
was attempting to secure further confirmatory facts in this matter since
drugging was indicated.
In another memo dated 17 September 1953 the Scientific Adviser, Scientific
Intelligence states that, Detailed and valuable information has been obtained by
[whited out] on Big Switch as a result of his interrogations of POWs on the
return voyage from Korea. Big Switch was the code name for a prisoner
exchange program during the Korean War; repatriated American prisoners of war
released in Big Switch were interviewed by American psychiatrists including Robert
Lifton,163 Lifton writes:
... I arrived in Hong Kong in late January, 1954. Just a few months
before, I had taken part in the psychiatric evaluation of repatriated
American prisoners of war during the exchange operations in Korea known
as Big Switch: I had then accompanied a group of these men on the
troopship back to the United States.
It appears that American psychiatrists including or known to Robert Lifton,
Louis Jolyon West and Margaret Singer must have been knowledgeable about the
Chinese Manchurian Candidate program by 1953.
According to my definition, the Manchurian Candidate is an experimentally
created dissociative identity disorder that meets the following four criteria:

Created deliberately

A new identity is implanted

Amnesia barriers are created

Used in simulated or actual operations

BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE were administered in a compartmented

fashion. The details of the Programs were kept secret even from other personnel
within the CIA. When asked why LSD research done under ARTICHOKE was
hidden from the CIA Committee in charge of ARTICHOKE, Sydney Gottlieb, 1977,
(page 410), Chief, Medical Staff, Technical Services Division, CIA responded, I

imagine the only reason would have been concern for broadening awareness of its
existence.
The creation of Manchurian Candidates by the CIA was probably not subject
to the usual chain of operational command. Such breaches in the chain of command
are an inherent structural risk of the compartmented nature of intelligence agencies.
For security reasons, CIA operations including internal counter-intelligence
investigations182 are routinely kept secret from other divisions of the CIA. Although
effective intelligence work could not be carried out without compartmentation, the
structure makes it easier for CIA officers in charge of mind control to contract with
unethical doctors.
Loss of central control occurred in the CIAs OPERATION CHAOS and
probably in BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE. OPERATION CHAOS was a CIA
program designed to collect information on foreign influence on student and civil
unrest in the United States. It was created by the Director of the CIA in 1967 and ran
until 1974. CHAOS developed files on 7,200 American citizens, and the files
included mention of a total of 300,000 named U.S. citizens and organizations, all of
which were entered into a computerized index (Rockefeller, 1975).
CHAOS intelligence generated 3,500 internal CIA memoranda, 3,000
memoranda for the FBI, and 37 for distribution to the White House and other top
levels of government. The maximum CHAOS staff was 52 persons in 1971.
Informants were recruited from student and dissident groups, and were instructed to
infiltrate such groups in the United States.
According to the Report to the President by the Commission on CIA
Activities (Rockefeller, 1975):
The isolation of Operation CHAOS within the CIA and its
independence from supervision by the regular chain of command within the
clandestine services made it possible for the activities of the Operation to
stray over the bounds of the Agencys authority without the knowledge of
senior officials. The absence of any regular review of these activities
prevented timely correction of such missteps as did occur:
In other instances, senior administrators within the CIA participated in
plausible denial and other disinformation and cover-up strategies concerning CIA
operations run on U.S. soil. Like the activities of the ARTICHOKE Team within the
United States, such operations had to be kept secret because the CIA was prohibited
by its Charter from carrying out operations in the United States.
In 1952, the CIA began to survey mail between the U.S. and the Soviet
Union at a New York postal facility. In 1953 it began to open and read mail
(Rockefeller, 1975). The Program was approved by the Director of the CIA and at
least three Postmasters General, Summerfield, Day, and Blount, as well as by
Attorney General Mitchell. From 1958 to 1973, the FBI received 57,000 pieces of
mail from the CIA in this Program. In the final year of the operation, out of
4,350,000 pieces of mail between the U.S. and Soviet Union, the CIA examined the
outside of 2,300,000 pieces, photographed 33,000 and opened 8,700.
Smaller mail intercept operations were run in San Francisco from 1969 to

1971, in Hawaii from 1954 to 1955, and in New Orleans in 1957. The CIAs strategy
for dealing with leaks about the Program is described in a February 1, 1962 memo
sent from the Deputy Chief of Counterintelligence to the Director of Security:
Unless the charge is supported by the presentation of interior items
from the project, it should be relatively easy to hush up the entire affair;
or to explain that it consists of legal mail cover activities conducted by the
Post Office at the request of authorized Federal Agencies. Under the most
unfavorable circumstances, including the support of charges with interior
items from the project it might become necessary, after the matter has cooled
off during an extended period of investigation, to find a scapegoat to blame
for unauthorized tampering with the mails.
The BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE documents available through the
Freedom or Information Act, like all such documents, are heavily redacted. A great
deal of text has been whited out, and other documents must still be entirely
classified. Nevertheless, the available documents prove that ARTICHOKE
operations involving physicians were carried out on U.S. soil at least until the mid1950s.
A memo to the Director of Security of the CIA is entitled a report of
ARTICHOKE Operations, 20 to 23 January, 1955 (see Appendix B). Paragraph
two of the memo states that these operations were the first ARTICHOKE
operations undertaken in the United States.
The operation described in the memo involved the interrogation of a foreign
national CIA agent who speaks and understands English quite well. The Subject
had previously provided high quality intelligence through penetration actions
carried out in an unspecified country. The purpose of the ARTICHOKE Teams
interrogation was to provide confirmation that the Subject was not a double agent.
The ARTICHOKE Team must have been under the command of James
Angleton, who was Chief of the CIA Counterintelligence Staff from December
1954, until 1974. Angleton was also involved in MKULTRA, as described in an
article in the February 18, 1979 Wilmington Sunday News Journal entitled UD prof
helps concoct mind control potions. The article focuses on MKULTRA
Subproject 51 contractor James Moore, a chemistry professor at the University of
Delaware, but mentions Angletons involvement in MKULTRA. Angletons name
appears in a list of all persons who have been briefed on Bluebird, in a 2 July
1951 MEMORANDUM; the list also identifies three future Directors of the CIA,
Allen Dulles, Richard Helms and William Webster.
The ARTICHOKE interrogation was conducted in a safe house in the remote
countryside staffed by security-cleared personnel. It was conducted under medical
cover of a routine physical and psychological assessment. The Subject was
transported to the safe house in a covert car which picked him up at a secure
location. At the safe house he was given a conventional interrogation and then some
whiskey. This was followed by two grams of phenobarbital, which put him to sleep.
The next day a lie detector test was given, and the Subject was given
intravenous chemicals. Following the chemically-assisted interrogation, according

to CIA terminology, the ARTICHOKE techniques were applied in three stages:

A false memory was introduced into the Subjects mind without his
conscious control of the process, which took 15 to 20 minutes. The
procedure was repeated, this time taking 40 to 45 minutes. The procedure
was repeated again with interrogation added.
The ARTICHOKE Team used medications including barbiturates,
amphetamines and scopolamine, hypnosis, interrogation, and the deliberate
introduction of false memories of the procedure. The Subject was told that part of
what he remembered was actually a dream. The ARTICHOKE Team concluded that
the procedure was successful; the subject, although not having specific amnesia for
the ARTICHOKE treatment, nevertheless was completely confused and memory
was vague and faulty.
CIA career officer Edward Hunter136 described the implantation of false
memories by Chinese intelligence agencies in his book Brain-Washing in Red
China. He wrote (page 11):
The Chinese masses were right in coining the phrases brain-washing
and brain-changing. There is a difference between the two. Brain-washing
is indoctrination, a comparatively simple procedure, but brain-changing is
immeasurably more sinister and complicated. Whereas you merely have to
undergo a brain-cleansing to rid yourself of imperialist poisons, in order
to have a brain changing you must empty your mind of old ideas and
recollections... in a brain-changing, a persons specific recollections of some
past period in his life are wiped away, as completely as if they never
happened. Then, to fill these gaps in memory, the ideas which the
authorities want this person to remember are put into his brain.
Hypnotism and drugs and cunning pressures that plague the body and do
not necessarily require marked physical violence are required for a brainchanging. China evidently was not so advanced as yet. She was using
brain-washing, and when that didnt work, resorted to the simpler purge
system. But in time she will use the brain-changing system too.
Since, according to Hunter, the Communist Chinese had not yet perfected
the methods used by the CIAs ARTICHOKE Team, it is evident that his knowledge
of these methods was derived from their use by American doctors.
An interrogation involving ARTICHOKE techniques and physicians was
conducted on Russian defector Yuriy Nosenko under James Angletons
administration.182 Angleton suspected Nosenko of being a triple agent. A triple agent
is someone who pretends to be a defector or double agent but is actually working for
his original, native country.
Nosenko was born in Nikolayev, Ukraine in 1927. He was trained by
Russian Naval Intelligence before being transferred to MVD, the precursor of the
KGB, in 1953. On June 5, 1962 Nosenko made secret contact with a U.S. State
Department official in Geneva, a meeting which resulted in his being recruited by

the CIA as a mole. Nosenko provided a rich fund of intelligence information to the
CIA until he defected in February, 1964.
Angleton thought that Nosenko had been feeding the CIA a little bit of real
information in order to cover up the fact that he was a triple agent. In late March,
1964 a decision was made to apply ARTICHOKE-like techniques to him. Whether
these were administered under ARTICHOKE or some other still-classified
cryptonym is unknown.
Nosenko was strip-searched, given a lie detector test and then placed in
solitary confinement in a 10 foot by 10 foot cell in a safe house in Washington for
sixteen months. One of his interrogators was Dr. John Gittinger, the lead
psychologist for MKULTRA, who describes taking LSD himself in a documentary
film.210 From April 4, 1964 to August 13, 1965, Nosenko was held at the safe house
and subjected to repeated interrogations.
From August 14, 1965 to October 28, 1967 Nosenko was held in solitary
confinement in a tiny, windowless concrete cell at the CIAs training facility at
Camp Peary, Virginia. He was subjected to sleep and food deprivation and there was
neither heat nor air conditioning in his cell. He was monitored by closed-circuit
television 24 hours a day.
In an interview with Tom Mangold177 on June 12, 1990, John Gittinger
described being asked by CIA personnel to administer LSD to Nosenko. Gittinger
claimed he did not do so. Nosenko, however, described being drugged on a number
of occasions at Camp Peary. Due to administrative changes inside the CIA, Nosenko
was released from confinement in 1967 and later became a U.S. citizen.
Whoever the Nosenko interrogators were, and whatever cryptonym they
worked under, it is clear that physicians and mind control specialists were directly
involved. It is also clear that the actions of these physicians were unethical and
inhumane. The BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE documents prove that the Nosenko
interrogation was not an isolated incident. If such an interrogation was conducted by
physicians in a third world country it would be decried as a human rights violation
and a political abuse of psychiatry. We have been lax as a medical profession in
applying the same standards at home.
The need for applying the ARTICHOKE technique to Nosenko can be
inferred from an undated document entitled, IMPLICATIONS OF SOVIET
SUPPLEMENTS TO STANDARD PSYCHIATRIC INTERROGATION, which
includes the statement that:
Hypnotism appears to have been used in some cases by the Soviets.
It has the possibilities of (a) lowering resistance against telling the truth and
(b) inducing specific action or behavior in the subject. In certain cases it
would be possible for a skilled Russian operator to bring about condition (a)
yet leave the subject with no specific recollection of having been
interrogated. Under condition (b) it would be possible to brief an American,
other prisoner or person, subsequently dispatch him on a mission, and
successfully debrief him upon return home without his recollection of the
briefing or debriefing.

Another undated document entitled, DEFENSE AGAINST SOVIET

MEDICAL INTERROGATION AND ESPIONAGE TECHNIQUES echoes this
point:
This proposed investigation appears to be more essential when
documentary evidence leads to the belief that Russia has been conducting
medical research on the subject, has actually used various techniques, and
has made provision for large scale production of uncommon special drugs
for their speech-producing effects on prisoners of war.
Adequate evidence is available to indicate that the Soviet has used
physical duress and/or a large number of different drugs in their attempts to
enhance results of standard psychiatric interrogation.
Evidence of subconscious isolation, amnesia, and destruction of
mental function have been noted in some of the victims of Soviet methods.
All of these methods were also employed in experiments conducted under
BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, MKSEARCH, MKNAOMI and other
Programs.
ARTICHOKE operations involved detailed, systematic creation of specific
amnesia barriers, new identities and hypnotically implanted codes and triggers. An
untitled ARTICHOKE document dated 7 January 1953 with a section heading
Outline of Special H Cases describes the experimental creation of multiple
personality in two nineteen-year old girls by the CIA, in an extended series of
hypnotic sessions beginning on January 9, 1952. H is used as shorthand for
hypnotic, hypnotized or hypnotism in these documents:
In all of these cases, these subjects have clearly demonstrated that
they can pass from a fully awake state to a deep H controlled state via the
telephone, via some very subtle signal that cannot be detected by other
persons in the room and without the other individual being able to note the
change. It has been clearly shown that physically individuals can be
induced into H by telephone, by receiving written matter, or by the use of
code, signal, or words and that control of those hypnotized can be passed
from one individual to another without great difficulty. It has also been
shown by experimentation with these girls that they can act as unwilling
couriers for information purposes and that they can be conditioned to a
point where they believe a change in identity on their part even on the
polygraph.
Another untitled ARTICHOKE document describes a series of cases of
which the following, called Analogous Case #3, is most compelling:
A CIA Security Office employee was hypnotized and given a false
identity. She defended it hotly, denying her true name and rationalizing with
conviction the possession of identity cards made out to her real self. Later,
having had the false identity erased by suggestion, she was asked if she had

ever heard of the name she had been defending as her own five minutes
before. She thought, shook her head and said, Thats a pseudo if I ever
heard one. Apparently she had a true amnesia for the entire episode.
The creation of new identities and the detection of foreign agents with
hypnotically programmed new identities is mentioned in various locations in the
BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE documents. As well, deconditioning of subjects is
addressed. For instance, one document entitled, CONDITIONING (&
Deconditioning) states:
Jones learns to respond to stimuli intended for a Smith, as though he
were that Smith. He has been conditioned to Smith, deconditioned to
Jones.
Such trainings are integrated on all levels, conscious and
subconscious. Hypnosis can assist in establishing the desired conditioned
responses.
A C.R. (condit. resp.) is meant to stick. It can be interfered with, or
abolished, by new training in another direction, or back to the earlier state.
Deconditioning can probably be expedited by hypnotizing
procedures. Also, a C.R. can be interfered with or abolished by violent
physical shocks (e.g., electric shocks to the brain) although this reporter has
not found a specific electric-shock procedure that would assuredly
decondition any particular kind or number of C.R.s.
Still problematic is the use of drugs for deconditioning.
Chlorpromazine ought theoretically to have some value, and some
deconditioning effect has been produced in laboratory animals. However,
hospitalized patients taking daily doses of this drug seem to have been
deconditioned only selectively; against certain psychotic behavior. It may
be that this property is exactly what we are looking for; perhaps it could
decondition an enemy agent out of his simulated personality and back to his
real one.
It is evident from this passage that the CIA was seeking to improve its
techniques for detecting and successfully penetrating the amnesia barriers of enemy
Manchurian Candidates over five years before the book The Manchurian
Candidate66 was written.
A MEMORANDUM dated 25 January 1952 describes another case in which
problems of reconditioning and the disposal of subjects arose:
On Friday, 25 January 1952, the writer was called to the office
[whited out] for the purpose of a conference with one [whited out]
concerning the instant case.
[Whited out] explained in substance the [whited out] case as
follows: [whited out] (whose real name is [whited out], is a 29-year old
[whited out] and was the head of a small political party based in [whited
out] and ostensively working for [whited out] independence. [Whited out]

was described by [whited out] as being young, ambitious, bright

(elementary college education), a sort of man-on-a-horse type but a
typical [whited out] politician. According to [whited out] our people
discovered that [whited out] Intelligence Service were attempting to bribe
[whited out] and make him a double agent and [whited out] was looking
with favor upon the [whited out] offers. Accordingly, a plot was rigged in
which [whited out] was told he was going to be assassinated and as a
protection, he was placed in custody of the [whited out] Police who threw
[whited out] into a [whited out] prison. [Whited out] was held in the
[whited out] prison for six months until the [whited out] authorities decided
that [whited out] was a nuisance and they told our people to take him back.
Since our people were unable to dispose of [whited out] they flew him to
[whited out] where, through arrangement, he was placed in a [whited out]
as a psychopathic patient. [Whited out] now has been in the [whited out]
hospital for several months and the hospital authorities now want to get him
out since he is causing a considerable trouble, bothering other patients, etc.
[Whited out] is not a psychopathic personality.
[Whited out] explained that they can dispose of [whited out] by the
simple process of sending him to a friend of his in [whited out], and as far
as they are concerned, that type of disposal is perfectly o.k. However,
because of his confinement in [whited out] prison and his stay in [whited
out] hospital, [whited out] has become very hostile toward the [whited out]
and our intelligence operations in particular. Hence [whited out]
considering an Artichoke approach to [whited out] to see if it would be
possible to reorient [whited out] favorably toward us. This operation, which
will necessarily involve the use of drugs is being considered by [whited out]
with a possibility that [whited out] will carry out the operation presumably
at the [whited out] hospital in [whited out] Also involved in this would be a
[whited out] interpreter who is a consultant to this Agency since neither
[whited out]
[Whited out] pointed out to [whited out] that this type of operation
could only be carried out with the authorization of Security and that, under
no circumstances whatsoever, could anyone but an authorized M.D.
administer drugs to any subject of this Agency of any type. [Whited out]
pointed out that there was a strong possibility that the military authorities
would not permit their hospital to be used for this type of work and also that
a re-conditioning operation of this type might take 30-60 days. [Whited out]
further pointed out that if such an operation were carried on, Security would
have to be cognizant of it, would have to be co-ordinated into the
organization and would possibly take over and run the operation themselves
since this type of work is one which Security handles.
It was agreed between [whited out] and the writer that a conference
would be laid on Monday afternoon when [whited out] representatives and
the [whited out] interpreter return from [whited out] and their talk with
[whited out] At which time, the angles would be explored and a dispatch
would be forwarded to our people in [whited out] directing them to find out

whether the [whited out] would permit such an operation and whether the
[whited out] would allow the Agency to have the use of the necessary rooms,
medical facilities, etc. as would be required for this type of operation. At
this time, it was also to be determined whether the disposal of [whited out]
could in fact be laid on.
Comment:
This particular operation was mentioned in general terms to the
writer by [whited out] approximately thirty days ago on an informal basis
but no significant details were given at this time.
While the technique that [whited out] are considering for use in this
case is not known to the writer, the writer believes the approach will be
made through the standard narco-hypnosis technique. Re-conditioning and
re-orienting an individual in such a matter, in the opinion of the writer,
cannot be accomplished easily and will require a great deal of time and the
fact that an interpreter is necessary in the case complicates it considerably
more. It is also believed that with our present knowledge, we would have no
absolute guarantee that the subject in this case would maintain a positive
friendly attitude toward us even though there is apparently a successful
response to the treatment. The writer did not suggest to [whited out] that
perhaps a total amnesia could be created by a series of electric shocks, but
merely indicated that amnesias under drug treatments were not certain.
A document entitled, Hypnotic Experimentation and Research, 10 February
1954 describes a simulation experiment of relevance to the creation of Manchurian
Candidate assassins:
Miss [whited out] was then instructed (having previously expressed a
fear of firearms in any fashion) that she would use every method at her
disposal to awaken Miss [whited out] (now in a deep hypnotic sleep) and
failing in this, she would pick up a pistol nearby and fire it at Miss [whited
out]. She was instructed that her rage would be so great that she would not
hesitate to kill [whited out] for failing to awaken. Miss [whited out]
carried out these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded
pneumatic pistol) gun at [whited out] and then proceeding to fall into a deep
sleep. After proper suggestions were made, both were awakened and
expressed complete amnesia for the entire sequence. Miss [whited out] was
again handed the gun, which she refused (in an awakened state) to pick up
or accept from the operator. She expressed absolute denial that the
foregoing sequence had happened.
In another experiment described in a document entitled SI and H
Experimentation (25 September 1951), two of the female subjects took part in an
exercise involving the planting of a bomb. SI means Special Interrogations. [Note:3]
Both Subjects performed perfectly and were fully amnesic for the exercise:

[Whited out] was instructed that upon awakening, she would

proceed to [whited out] room where she would wait at the desk for a
telephone call. Upon receiving the call, a person known as Jim would
engage her in normal conversation. During the course of the conversation,
this individual would mention a code word to [whited out]. When she heard
this code word she would pass into a SI trance state, but would not close her
eyes and remain perfectly normal and continue the telephone conversation.
She was told that thereafter upon conclusion of the telephone conversation,
she would then carry out the following instructions:
[Whited out] being in a complete SI state at this time, was then told
to open her eyes and was shown an electric timing device. She was
informed that this timing device was an incendiary bomb and was then
instructed how to attach and set the device. After [whited out] had indicated
that she had learned how to set and attach the device, she was told to return
to a sleep state and further instructed that upon concluding of the
aforementioned conversation, she would take the timing device which was in
a briefcase and proceed to the ladies room. In the ladies room. she would be
met by a girl whom she had never seen who would identify herself by the
code word New York. After identifying herself, [whited out] was then to
show this individual how to attach and set the timing device and further
instructions would be given the individual by [whited out] that the timing
device was to be carried in the briefcase to [whited out] room, placed in the
nearest empty electric-light plug and concealed in the bottom, left-hand
drawer of [whited out] desk, with the device set for 82 seconds and turned
on. [Whited out] was further instructed to tell this other girl that as soon as
the device had been set and turned on, she was to take the briefcase, leave
[whited out] room, go to the operations room and go to the sofa and enter a
deep sleep state. [Whited out] was further instructed that after completion
of instructing the other girl and the transferring to the other girl of the
incendiary bomb, she was to return at once to the operations room, sit on
the sofa, and go into a deep sleep state.
Hypnosis was not the mind control doctors only method for creation of
controlled amnesia, however. Drugs, magnetic fields, sound waves, sleep
deprivation, solitary confinement and many other methods were studied under
BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE. The amnesia was often tested through
memorization tasks of various kinds, and experiments were conducted to amplify
subjects memory for information hidden behind amnesia barriers. As well as being
potential couriers and infiltration agents, the subjects could function in effect as
hypnotically controlled cameras. They could enter a room or building, memorize
materials quickly, leave the building, and then be amnesic for the entire episode.
The memorized material could then be retrieved by a handler using a previously
implanted code or signal, without the amnesia being disturbed. The research and its
applications were both offensive and defensive, as evidenced by the following
untitled and undated passage from the documents:

For instance, Metrozal, which has been very useful in shock therapy,
is no longer popular because, for one thing it produces feelings of
overwhelming terror and doom prior to the convulsion.
But terror, anxiety, worry would be valuable for many purposes from
our point of view. We have some information (not in detail and not
confirmed) that the Soviets and their satellites have used drugs which work
along these lines. Therefore, this should be studied both from our use
offensively and defensively and to find antidotes or counteracting agents.
The many different physical means for assisting interrogators were often
combined with or amplified by hypnosis:
Quite often amnesia occurs for events just prior to the convulsion,
during the convulsion and during the post seizure state. It is possible that
hypnosis or hypnotic activity induced during the post-seizure state might be
lost in amnesia. This would be very valuable.
The fact that complex Manchurian Candidate experiments were conducted
can be inferred from an untitled February 6, 1957 document in which the writer
states that:
Since the international situation is in its present state, I feel the need
for positive action in the military application of hypnosis is imperative. In a
field such as this you need an individual, such as myself, who has lived with
the problems of hypnotism and its military applications for many years...
Please look over the enclosed proposal and give me your reaction.
The hypnotic messenger technique is relatively uncomplicated. There are
several other projects which I could submit to you for consideration which
are, in my opinion, even more important than this but involve much more
complicated techniques.
Similarly, a MEMORANDUM from the Chief, Security Research Staff to
the Chief, Technical Branch dated 15 July 1954 states that:
The idea of a courier that has been hypnotized is not new and I am
absolutely certain that [whited out] did not invent this idea. We ourselves
have carried out much more complex problems than this and in a general
sense I will agree that it is feasible...
[Whited out] proposal about using hypnotized individuals as
counteragents is also not new and we, of course, have discussed this many
times. Whether in fact it can be demonstrated we are not sure and it is hoped
that the field tests we are working on may help us along these lines.
Yet another document entitled STUDIES IN THE MILITARY
APPLICATION OF HYPNOTISM: I. The Hypnotic Messenger is a proposal for a
grant of $10,000.00 to create hypnotic messengers out of twenty selected highly

hypnotizable military personnel. The subjects would be sent to foreign countries to

deliver their messages and then would be interrogated to determine if the amnesia
barriers could be breached. Interrogation methods were to include use of his wife,
girl friend, alcohol, amytal or even physical duress.
Another prospective mind control doctor wrote a handwritten note to the
CIA on a ruled notepad that has been labeled A/B 5, 264/1 by hand by someone
responsible for filing the document. A/B stands for ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD.
The document reads:
I have developed a technic which is safe and secure (free from
international censorship). It has to do with the conditioning of our own
people. I can accomplish this as a one man job.
The method is the production of hypnosis by means of simple oral
medication. Then (with no further medication) the hypnosis is re-enforced
daily during the following three or four days.
Each individual is conditioned against revealing any information to
an enemy, even though subjected to hypnosis or drugging. If preferable, he
may be conditioned to give false information rather than no information.
This should be repeated every six months in each case, in order to be
sure that the suggestions established have not worn off.
I would be glad to go anywhere in the world (including Korea) to
accomplish this for you. I think that the greatest security would be in my
travelling as a naval flight surgeon doing research in aviation medicine,
especially with the project of motion sickness in mind.
Of course I would be willing to undertake more hazardous
investigative methods if you should deem them advisable.
Another problem addressed repeatedly in the documents is called The
Problem of Disposal of Subjects. Several personnel recommended the use of
lobotomies for this purpose, but according to the documents this was rejected as too
unethical and too high a negative publicity risk for the CIA. Another document
describes an alternative strategy for disposing of ARTICHOKE subjects:
Among the important security problems, which will be discussed in
detail later and which are mentioned only briefly now for a matter of record,
were the problems of disposal of subjects after Artichoke treatment and the
important questions as to whether or not amnesias had been obtained. In
connection with Case #1, in the professional opinion of [whited out] and as
far as the writer is able to determine, a total amnesia was produced.
Disposal of Case #1 (which was not a problem of the Artichoke team) was
apparently handled as follows: Since the Artichoke technique had shown
that, from an operational point of view the subject had no further value to
the Agency, the subject was to be returned to [whited out] and after a period
of time, removed from solitary and gradually permitted to mingle with larger
and larger prison groups. Ultimately, and after a considerable lapse of time
(perhaps as much as two years), the subject would be released. The

Artichoke Team recommended some observation in this case with a later

recheck on the amnesia, if possible.
In Case #2 on the first test, an almost total amnesia was reached
with the exception of the last ten or twelve minutes of interrogation under
the hypnotic technique. In the opinion of [whited out] and as far as the
writer was able to determine, a total amnesia was produced at the end of the
test on the second day after the Artichoke treatment of sodium pentothal and
Desoxyn (full medication without hypnosis).
Again in so far as disposal of Case #2 was concerned (which was not
a problem of the Artichoke Team), disposition was apparently to be made as
follows: it had been decided that the subject would be moved as a prisoner
to some place in [whited out] and held there until any possible usefulness to
anyone had completely disappeared.
As noted above, both of the subjects were [whited out] speaking only
and neither subject had any working knowledge of the English language.
This, of course, involved the use of an interpreter and, in both cases, [whited
out] the case officer involved in Case #1, acted as a general interpreter and
[whited out] acted as a specific interpreter in the application of the hypnotic
technique (under the direct guidance of [whited out] in hypnotic matters)
and also acted as general interpreter in both cases.
Physicians including psychiatrists were directly involved in all of the
ARTICHOKE team operations. Documents refer to psychiatrists of considerable
note who were professors at prominent medical schools, who had TOP SECRET
CIA clearance and who were involved as consultants on the development of the
ARTICHOKE techniques. In summarizing the role of physicians in providing cover
for ARTICHOKE interrogations, a writer stated that:
At the present time, the use of a carefully laid on medical cover to
obtain either a narco-interrogation or narco-hypnotic interrogation appears
to be the best weapon presently available. It is not necessary to go into
detail as to how this is done but experience indicates it is our best technique.
The use of electric shock to the brain for creation of amnesia, and
amplification of the amnesia with hypnosis were discussed by the author of an
ARTICHOKE document dated 3 December 1951:
Immediately after the conference on Friday, 30 November 1951,
[whited out] succeeded in finding [whited out] and [whited out], and the
writer discussed electric-shock devices and certain related matters from
about 3:30 to 4:45 with [whited out].
[Whited out] is reported to be an authority on electric shock. He is a
professor at the Medical School of the [whited out] and, in addition, is a
psychiatrist of considerable note. Pro-[whited out] is, in addition, a fully
cleared Agency consultant.
[Whited out] explained that he felt that electric shock might be of

considerable interest to the Artichoke type of work. He stated that the

standard electric-shock machine (Reiter) could be used in two ways. One
setting of this machine produced the normal electric-shock treatment
(including convulsion) with amnesia after a number of treatments. He stated
that using this machine as an electro-shock device with the convulsive
treatment, he felt that he could guarantee amnesia for certain periods of
time and particularly he could guarantee amnesia for any knowledge of use
of the convulsive shock.
[Whited out] stated that the other or lower setting of the machine
produced a different type of shock. He said that he could not explain it, but
knew that when this lower current type of shock was applied without
convulsion. it had the effect of making a man talk. He said, however, that
the use of this type of shock was prohibited because it produced in the
individual excruciating pain and he stated that there would be no question in
his mind that the individual would be quite willing to give information if
threatened with the use of this machine. He stated that this was a thirddegree method but, undoubtedly, would be effective. [Whited out] stated
that he had never had the device applied to himself, but he had talked with
people who had been shocked in this manner and stated that they
complained that their whole head was on fire and it was much too painful a
treatment for any medical practice. He stated that the only way it was ever
used was in connection with sedatives and even then it was extremely
painful. The writer asked [whited out] whether or not in the groggy
condition following the convulsion by the electro-shock machine anyone had
attempted to obtain hypnotic control over the patient, since it occurred to the
writer that it would be a good time to attempt to obtain hypnotic control.
[Whited out] stated that, to his knowledge, it had never been done, but he
could make this attempt in the near future at the [whited out] and he would
see whether or not this could be done.
[Whited out] and [whited out], as well as all others present,
discussed the use of electro-shock at considerable length and it was [whited
out] opinion that an individual could gradually be reduced through the use
of electro-shock treatment to the vegetable level. He stated that, whereas
amnesia could be guaranteed relative [to] the actual use of the shock and
the time element surrounding it, he said it would obtain perfect amnesia for
periods further back. He stated several instances in which people who had
been given the electro-shock treatment remembered some details of certain
things and complete blanks in other ways.
[Whited out] said that a [whited out], who is practicing in [whited
out] has perfected a battery-driven machine which, according to [whited
out] is portable. [Whited out] said that the standard electro-shock machine
is a very common machine in medical offices and in the major cities there
must be several hundred of them in use at all times.
The use of electro-shock to produce amnesia was subsequently successfully
demonstrated in a series of cases by Dr. Ewen Cameron at McGill, who received

CIA money through MKULTRA Subproject 68 in 1957. Many of the discussions,

literature reviews and experiments conducted under BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE
were followed up on in MKULTRA and MKSEARCH.
The involvement of physicians including psychiatrists in BLUEBIRD and
ARTICHOKE was extensive, systematic and fundamental to the Programs. The
involvement included consultation, literature reviews, experimentation and direct
participation in field operations. The full extent of this involvement is unknown
because the names of the mind control doctors who built Manchurian Candidates are
redacted from documents provided under the Freedom of Information Act, and
because there are undoubtedly other documents which are still classified.

Overview from Colin A. Ross Institute, 2001.

[Note:2] Synopsis from BLUEBIRD: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by
Psychiatrists, Colin A. Ross, M.D., Richardson, Texas: Manitou Communications,
2000.
136 Hunter, E. Brain-Washing in Red China. The Calculated Destruction of Mens
Minds. New York: Vanguard Press, 1951.
66 Condon, R. The Manchurian Candidate. New York: Jove Books, 1959/1988.
184 Marks, J. The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. New York: W.W. Norton,
1988. [New York: Times Books, 1979.]
66 Condon, op. cit.
163 Lifton, R.J. Thought Reform of Chinese Intellectuals: A Psychiatric Evaluation.
Journal of Social Issues, 3, 5-20, 1957.
182 Mangold, T. Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton: The CIAs Master Spy Hunter.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.
136 Hunter, op. cit.
182 Mangold, op. cit.
210 Naylor, D. Mind Control. Los Angeles: ZM Productions, 1998.
177 Malitz, S. The Role of Mescaline and DO Lysergic Acid in Psychiatric
Treatment. Diseases of the Nervous System, 27, 39-42, 1966.
66 Condon, op. cit.
[Note:3] CIA files confirm that SI is Subconscious Isolation or a dissociative state.
See, e.g., CIA MORI ID 144823, pp. 1-5, circa 1951. SI involves procedures that
create dissociation or a split personality to interrogate and control individuals
outside their normal consciousness.
[Note:1]