US: Torture Without Borders

By Janet Phelan

An attorney with the State of California reports being gassed inside her home and taken to a hospital Emergency Room, following repeated incidents of electromagnetic attacks. The attacks take place during an extended court battle over her mother’s guardianship.

An anti-police corruption activist in Medford Oregon reports an aerosol attack on her dwelling which causes her to lose consciousness.

An award-winning author pens a memoir concerning how the NSA tried to hack into her mind.

A former intelligence officer lines her apartment with boom boxes in order to drown out chatter of electronic voice weapons. She reports that her mission was successful and the voices have stopped.

Are these women crazy or is the US government now testing its weapons on selected civilians?

Bruised by the Iraq war, the revelations that the US government was involved in torturing detainees hit fast and hard. What were initially some horrific photos leaked from Abu Ghraib soon become a virtual flood of accusations. Prisoners, it appeared, were being tortured by simulated drowning; their genitals electroshocked and the uncooperative were put into tiny spaces and deprived of sensory input.

In his campaign promises of ’08, President Obama assured us that torture would cease and that Guantanamo would be closed. However, it is nearly eight years since Obama took office, and the prison at Guantanamo has not closed, nor have renditions to countries agreeable to torture ceased. In 2015, Al Jazeera reported that “More positively for his legacy, the NDAA imposes further restrictions on abusive interrogations and helps fulfill his (President Obama’s) original campaign promise to stop torture.”

A number of individuals with intelligence backgrounds would disagree. In fact, it appears that, as far as torture goes, some are now asserting that the intelligence agencies are using US citizens for target practice.

Electromagnetic Weapons

In former intelligence officer Julianne McKinney’s seminal 1992 report, entitled “Microwave Harassment and Mind Control,” she revealed for the first time a disturbing blip on the intel radar. Citing contacts with people across the US, McKinney details what amounts to covert programs to torture people through use of electronic weapons. And to do so in the targets’ (TIs) own homes and wherever they may travel.

McKinney’s groundbreaking report cited about 25 individuals who claimed that they were being electronically harassed. It is now twenty-five years later and this number has ballooned to hundreds of thousands, worldwide.

According to Wikipedia, “Electronic harassment, or psychotronic torture, or electromagnetic torture is a conspiracy theory.” Wikipedia goes on to determine that “These experiences are hallucinations or the result of delusional disorders or psychosis.”

Certainly some of the claims of TIs sound odd … voices being planted in their heads, being stalked by a multiplicity of strangers and, sometimes, even worse.

However, a review of what is declassified in terms of covert projects reveals a number of operations involving attempts to control or direct human thought, and by consequence therefore to mold behavior. Project Artichoke was one of the subjects of scrutiny in the Church and Pike Committee hearings, which took place in the US Senate and the House of Representatives, respectively, during the seventies. A declassified 1952 memo indicates the aim and scope of Artichoke. The memo states:

Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?

The Church and Pike hearings uncovered a multiplicity of “black” projects aimed at accessing the human mind. The surviving records concerning Project Artichoke detail forced drugging, including forced morphine addiction and dosing subjects with LSD, in order to determine vulnerabilities to direction and control under the influence. According to released documents, Artichoke was renamed MKULTRA in 1953.

The US Supreme Court has stated that MKULTRA was concerned with “the research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.”

The Church Committee’s investigation was hampered by an order from CIA Director Richard Helms to destroy the records relating to MKULTRA. As a result of the Church and Pike Committee hearings, MKULTRA and related projects were reportedly terminated.

It is the contention of Julianne McKinney – who was an intelligence case officer with the US Army – and scores of others that the projects only went underground, in order to escape further detection and oversight.

Preston Bailey, PhD has noted the following patents for neurological weapons which could produce the sorts of effects claimed by TIs:

THE NEUROPHONE: US Patent # 3,393,279. July 16th, 1968 – a device which converts sound to electrical impulses.

SILENT SUBLIMINAL PRESENTATION SYSTEM: US Patent #5,159,703. October 27th, 1992 — A silent communications system in which nonaural carriers, in the very low or very high audio frequency range or in the adjacent ultrasonic frequency spectrum, are amplitude or frequency modulated with the desired intelligence and propagated acoustically or vibrationally, for inducement into the brain.

HEARING SYSTEM: U.S. patent #4,877,027, 31/10/89 — “Sound is induced in the head of a person by radiating the head with microwaves in the range of 100 megahertz to 10,000 megahertz that are modulated with a particular waveform.”

HEARING DEVICE: U.S patent #4,858,612, 22/8/89 — “A method and apparatus for simulation of hearing in mammals by introduction of a plurality of microwaves into the region of the auditory cortex is shown and described.”

A further review of the literature uncovers dozens more such patents, including the following:

A HYPNOTIC INDUCER US3014477 (“The primary object of the present invention resides in the provision of physical means of inducing a state of hypnosis”); AN AUDITORY SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE SYSTEM AND METHOD (US4395600); APPARATUS AND METHOD OF BROADCASTING AUDIBLE SOUND USING ULTRASONIC SOUND AS A CARRIER (US6052336); METHOD OF INDUCING AND MAINTAINING STAGES OF SLEEP IN HUMAN BEINGS (microwaves) (US3884218); and METHOD AND ASSOCIATED APPARATUS FOR REMOTELY DETERMINING INFORMATION AS TO A PERSON’S EMOTIONAL STATE (US3884218).

Non-Consensual Chemical Weapons Testing

Not all the current torture allegations involve electromagnetic weapons, however. The Edgewood Test Vets lawsuit charged that the US Army tested a variety of chemical and biological weapons on soldiers, without gaining their informed consent, from the 1950s on into “at least 1976.”

According to the plaintiffs, “In this class action, the Plaintiff class seeks declaratory and injunctive relief only – no monetary damages – and redress for several decades of the U.S. Government’s use of them as human test subjects in chemical and biological agent testing experiments, followed by decades of neglect, including:

• the use of troops to test nerve gas, psychochemicals, and hundreds of other toxic chemical or biological substances;
• the failure to satisfy their legal obligations to locate the participants of experiments and to provide them with notice of what they were exposed to and what the possible health effects may be;
• the failure to follow their legal obligations to provide medical care to test subjects for health problems related to the experiments;
• the failure to release the test subjects from oaths of secrecy.”

According to multiple claims, such non-consensual experimentation is now regularly carried out on citizens. Some of the individuals claiming “torture without borders” have intelligence backgrounds. Geral Sosbee is a former FBI agent whose career with the agency apparently went sour when he objected to an arrest. He subsequently resigned from the FBI and went on to work as an attorney in El Paso, Texas and as a part-time judge. He also taught at the University level. However, Sosbee states that the Agency’s vendetta against him became relentless.

Writes Sosbee:

….no attention is focused on psychological operations against a targeted person even though a growing number of persons worldwide now testify that they are targeted by ruthless and painful campaigns. No law exists that may stop the type of violent activities in which the FBI and the CIA engage regularly against their Targets, foreign and domestic.

Sosbee has diligently and quite publicly documented his ordeal. A 2009 entry on his website. In the introduction to his report, Sosbee has detailed an extensive list of methods to torture a target, including not only electromagnetics but also other unconventional weapons. He cites repeated instances of poisonings, some apparently life threatening.

Intelligence agencies have long been known to use poisons against foreign spies. What is of note is that poisons are now apparently being used against domestic US targets.

Sosbee is not alone in his claims of chemical targeting.

Carol Warner is the daughter of former CIA General Counsel, John Warner, who was also pivotal in creating the CIA out of OSS back in the forties. Carol received a Masters Degree in Clinical Social Work from Smith College. She was working as a therapist when a woman walked into her office claiming that she had been groomed by the US government as a “presidential model” sex slave. This contact launched an avalanche in Warner’s life. In a book pending publication, Warner writes: “Sometime after I started training and working more intensively with dissociative identity disorder, I began to be aware I was under intense surveillance.” (Return to the Self, p. 135)

During the Church Committee hearings in the seventies, her father, John Warner, initially became aware of some of the CIA “black ops” programs involving mind control. In her book, Carol Warner recounts some of the discussions she had with her father at that time and comments on the impact of the destruction of MKULTRA records by Director Richard Helms. She writes:

As such, it was abundantly clear to my father and myself back then that the programs would not stop, because Congress never knew about most of them.

Carol Warner’s soon-to-be-published book, Return to the Self, covers a wide range of issues, including ritual abuse, dreams, spirituality and a discussion of government involvement in mind-altering programs. In disclosing her decision to go public about her own situation, Warner tells us that,

I was not going to write about this and the many illegal and unconstitutional activities perpetrated against me since 2008, but circumstances have forced me to revise my decision. Unfortunately, as this near-fatal incident (which I will describe later) dramatically proved to me, there is no safety for me in keeping the knowledge I have gained to myself. I have been told by wise counsel that my only safety is in getting the information out. Unfortunately, it has become radically clear the powers that be do not want the information in this book out. (Return to the Self, p. 134)

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She then reveals a number of incidents in Virginia in which her house was illegally entered, one in which her alarm wiring was altered and also where she was followed and stalked. She also describes a number of murder attempts. An avid outdoorswoman, Warner reveals how she was hiking when she became aware she had been followed into a secluded area. Attempting to elude her stalker, she writes:

I kept walking, headed there with my sole focus on finding a good temporary hiding place. Then, out of nowhere, I felt a sting in my right butt cheek. To my utter dismay, I felt myself starting to lose consciousness. Whatever it was that had stung me was powerful and was quickly overtaking me. There was no doubt in my mind that I had been drugged. (CIA development of tranquilizer dart guns became public knowledge with the Church Committee investigation in the 1970s). In a flash I assessed my predicament. Succumbing to the drug was not an option—it would mean certain death.

Warner was able to marshal her strength to survive this incident; however, the efforts against her did not stop. Other stalking incidents reveal that her movements were being monitored, as her stalkers chose to advance against her in various locations with potentially life-threatening results.

Warner also reports the use of chemical agents. She details the following event, while eating out:

The soup tasted off, and I didn’t eat but a few bites of it. I started feeling horrible immediately, with gastrointestinal symptoms. I felt dizzy and fought to keep consciousness… …I didn’t make it but a few steps. When I came to, I was lying on the restaurant floor, surrounded by paramedics.

The doctor’s verdict was chemical — not food — poisoning.

Why Torture People at All?

Torture is not a reliable method to gain confessions. Truth serum drugs obviate the necessity for using torture to gain information. In this perspective, the repeated claims by governments that torture is necessary for reasons of intelligence gathering are inadequate to explain torture as an interrogatory tool.

However, torture does desensitize and condition the perpetrator. According to McKinney, somewhere in the ball park of 15-20% of US citizens may be involved — at some level — in using others as target practice. The degradation of society and morality implicit here should not go unnoticed.

In a recent interview, McKinney stated that targets are chosen somewhat at random, although she also believes that these torture techniques are being deployed against specific individuals for retaliation. In her 1992 paper, McKinney stated that,

…harassment is beginning to surface as a form of retaliation against persons who try to assist electronic ‘harassees.’ Retaliation suggests loss of control. Under the circumstances, we are not entirely confident that ‘whistleblowers’ will continue to be exempted from this type of harassment in the long term.

McKinney now believes that these techniques have resulted in deaths. In response to the question why — why would intelligence agencies use these “torture without borders” technologies on US citizens, McKinney stated that she believes that these are training exercises to prepare the perpetrators for a coming holocaust-level event. Rather than controlling the minds of the subjects, which is a common misconception, McKinney stated that the perpetrators are being desensitized and prepared for participation in a more widespread and devastating scenario.

Her conclusions may be echoed by Carol Warner, who wrote that,

If people don’t understand the surveillance state is turned on the American citizen, I hope and pray my words will help the reader reconsider. The goal is total full-spectrum control of the populace.

Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.