1966

The Ramparts Affair – The radical magazine Ramparts begins a series of unprecedented anti-CIA articles. Among their scoops: the CIA has paid the University of Michigan $25 million dollars to hire “professors” to train South Vietnamese students in covert police methods. MIT and other universities have received similar payments. Ramparts also reveal that the National Students’ Association is a CIA front. Students are sometimes recruited through blackmail and bribery, including draft deferments.

CIA initiates Project MKOFTEN, a program to test the toxicological effects of certain drugs on humans and animals.

U.S. Army dispenses Bacillus subtilis variant niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians are exposed when army scientists drop lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates.

Cleve Backster is a polygraph specialist who helped develop interrogation techniques for the CIA. As of 1986, he ran a polygraph instruction school and the Backster Research Foundaion in San Diego.

In February, 1966, Backster recorded what he believes to be emotional reactions in plants with a polygraph machine. Called the Backster Effect, the validity of this phenomena is still debated.

During the 1930’s, Nazi Germany’s rise to totalitarian power was well under way. Warning signs of the terror to come was being felt by increasing numbers of people. Among them was a young woman of great courage and insight. Charlotte Beradt recorded and collected people’s dreams about the Nazi government’s domination of their lives; dreams that tell of the painful political realities of the emerging Nazi State. In his essay at the conclusion of the volume, published in 1966, Bruno Bettelheim remarked that it was a shocking experience reading this book of dreams and seeing how effectively the Nazis murdered sleep, “forcing its enemies to dream dreams that showed that resistance was impossible and that safety lay only in compliance.”

I find it very interesting that this book was published in 1966… It is difficult not to notice the comparison to the “abduction scenario” which we theorize was introduced into people’s minds via Secret Government Mind Control Projects. It is a certainty that the abduction “experience,” is literally a “forcing of the people to dream dreams that show that resistance is impossible…and that safety lies in compliance. And an entire “New Age” religion has been built around it, supporting it, promoting it, and then compensating for it with the idea of “Ascension” by “turning within for a place of safety.” We say HUMBUG!

Rockefeller Foundation helps establish a center for population research at the Univer-sity of North Carolina. Similar support follows for Harvard, Columbia, University of Michigan, and others.

Allen Hynek: “Despite the seeming inanity of the subject, I felt that I would be derelict in my scientific responsibility to the Air Force if I did not point out that the whole UFO phenomenon might have aspects to it worthy of scientific attention.” From Hearings on Unidentified Flying Objects, Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, Eighty-ninth Congress, Second Session, 1966.Dr. Hynek was Chairman of the Department of Astronomy at Northwestern University and scientific consultant for Air Force investigations of UFOs from 1948 until 1969 (Projects Sign, Grudge and Blue Book). Over his long career, he made numerous comments about the scientific implications of the UFO phenomenon.

“I have begun to feel that there is a tendency in 20th Century science to forget that there will be a 21st Century science, and indeed a 30th Century science, from which vantage points our knowledge of the universe may appear quite different than it does to us. We suffer, perhaps, from temporal provincialism, a form of arrogance that has always irritated posterity.” Hynek, J. Allen, letter to Science magazine, August 1, 1966.

Robert J. Low: “The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but, to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of non-believers trying their best to be objective, but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer.” Low, project coordinator of the Colorado University UFO Project (a.k.a. The Condon Committee), in a memorandum of instruction from August 9, 1966. This telling quote gives an impression as to what may have been the goal of the Project: to either get the thing out of the way without hurting any of the scientists’ credibility, or to comply with a rumored Air Force directive to produce a report showing UFOs to be unworthy of scientific consideration.

Gerald Ford: “No doubt, you have noted the recent flurry of newspaper stories about unidentified flying objects. I have taken special interest in these accounts because many of the latest reported sightings have been in my home state of Michigan… Because I think there may be substance to some of these reports and because I believe the American people are entitled to a more thorough explanation than has been given them by the Air Force to date, I am proposing that either the Science and Astronautics Committee or the Armed Services Committee of the House schedule hearings on the subject of UFOs and invite testimony from both the executive branch of the Government and some of the persons who claim to have seen UFOs… In the firm belief that the American public deserves a better explanation than that thus far given by the Air Force, I strongly recommend that there be a committee investigation of the UFO phenomena. I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFOs and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment on this subject.” From a letter he sent as a Congressman to L. Mendel Rivers, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, on March 28, 1966.

The Freedom of Information Act passed congress, but remained toothless until 1974.

MK-Search reactivates previously abandoned projects under Richard Helms, new Director of Central Intelligence. One such project was Spellbinder. Its goal was to create a “sleeper killer,” someone who could be turned loose after receiving a key word planted in his mind under hypnosis. According to Gordon Thomas, the project was a failure.

The American media contributed toward maintaining a rigid status quo, almost obsequious in its compliance to the national security community. Senator William Fullbright commented about this on August 13, 1966, during Senate hearings on government and media. He said it was very interesting that so many prominent newspapers did not contest or even raise questions about government policy.