The Manchurian Men’s Convention

From Jeff Stein at CQ:

My friend said his patients described training with drugs and other mind-control techniques to perform the mission — then forget them, like the Manchurian Candidate. But now they were remembering fragments, they told him, giving them terrifying nightmares about things they could not quite believe they had done.

They thought they were losing their minds. So did any loved ones who they dared tell their looney-sounding tunes to. But this being America, of course, they — and other self-described victims of CIA mind control experiments — formed self-help groups. And for several years, it turns out, they have been holding yearly conferences, like one just outside Hartford, Conn., next month…

We have extensive documentation of the CIA’s Manchurian Candidate experiments, but when the Manchurian Candidate himself walks up to tell his story, most people shake their heads or laugh. Brick admits that “some people” attending his past conferences “have psychiatric issues,” but he says he believes “the majority are survivors of MKULTRA.”

For years, of course, the CIA laughed off rumors of drug experiments. Today, the agency and the Pentagon stoutly deny they have used hallucinogenic and other mind-altering drugs on prisoners at Guantanamo and secret sites elsewhere.

Just as in the 1970s, however, as I wrote in April, evidence to the contrary is mounting. The Washington Post’s Joby Warrick also tracked down former prisoners at Guantanamo who said their minds were destabilized by repeated drug injections.