CIA Brainwashing and Mind Control
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) engaged in extensive research and experimentation concerning methods of brainwashing and mind control, particularly during the Cold War era.
This pursuit was driven by a deep-seated fear that the Soviet Union had already mastered techniques to manipulate human memory and behaviour, potentially enabling them to program individuals as automatons or undetectable agents.
The prevailing scientific view of the human brain as a computer during the 1950s provided a theoretical framework for these ambitions, suggesting that memory was information that could be altered or erased.
Early Foundations: Memory and Brain Stimulation
Early in the 20th century, scientific exploration into the nature of memory laid some groundwork for these later experiments. In 1938, in Montreal, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield began conducting operations on epileptic patients. During these procedures, patients remained conscious under local anaesthetic while Penfield stimulated the surface of their brains with electrodes.
This stimulation was found to elicit vivid, long-forgotten memories, described as being akin to a "time stripper film" that could be played back at will. Penfield's observations led him to believe that memories were stored as patterns in neurons, similar to electrical circuits, which could be activated by touching specific points.
Ewen Cameron and the Allen Memorial Institute
Penfield's work fascinated psychiatrist Ewen Cameron, who later joined him in Montreal. Cameron, described as both a pragmatist and a dreamer, believed that if memories could be altered, it would be possible to create more rational human beings.
His experience as an adviser at the Nuremberg Trials convinced him that Nationalism, perceived as a distorted historical memory, was a root cause of war and could be eradicated through memory alteration. He posited that mankind was not inherently evil and that by reshaping memories, a world free of conflict could be achieved.
Cameron founded the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal, serving as both a psychiatric clinic and a research centre. His explicit aim was to find ways of changing memories in mentally ill patients, with the goal of replacing "sick memories" with "healthy" ones, thereby achieving therapeutic success even with neurotic patients. The experiments conducted at the Allen Memorial Institute were viewed as an attempt to erase an individual's past to enable the recording of new ways of behaviour.
CIA Involvement and the Cold War Context
The Cold War greatly intensified the interest in memory manipulation, transforming memory into a weapon in the confrontation between Russia and America. American intelligence agents scrutinised Soviet defectors, relying on human memory as a critical source of intelligence in the absence of documentary information.
However, the CIA became increasingly concerned by reports of Soviet show trials in the 1930s and, more alarmingly, the behaviour of American prisoners during the Korean War. A significant number of these prisoners, 70%, made elaborate confessions or signed petitions against the war, and an alarming number adhered to these confessions even after release. This led to widespread anxiety within the CIA that the Soviets had perfected a mysterious and irresistible technique for manipulating human behaviour, possibly through drugs or hypnosis.
This fear propelled the CIA to fund Cameron's experiments. CIA psychologists travelled to Montreal, disguising themselves as representatives of a scientific institution known as the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology to provide covert funding. The CIA was convinced the Russians already possessed the ability to control human beings by reprogramming memories and feared that Soviet agents with false memories could infiltrate American society, rising to high positions while secretly serving foreign powers, immune to lie detectors or truth serum.
Cameron's Methods: Psychic Driving and Depatterning
Cameron's research into brainwashing, which he termed "brainwashing Canadian style," was largely inspired by the Doro phone, a popular sleep-learning gadget of 1953. His primary method, called psychic driving, involved the repetitive playback of persuasive messages on tape to patients, sometimes while they were asleep, sometimes awake, and even through earphones integrated into helmets worn continuously. Examples of these messages included affirmations like "people like me I'm popular people like to be with me and enjoy my company". The aim was to obliterate unwanted memories.
A more extreme method was depatterning, which involved keeping patients asleep for 20 out of 24 hours through massive doses of drugs, including LSD, and hundreds of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) treatments. This process was designed to make the person descend further and further back into their memory, ideally to a point before they became ill, effectively reducing them to a "very primitive vegetable state" where only essential bodily functions remained. Once the brain was rendered "empty" in this way, Cameron would then attempt to "feed material into these individuals, positive material," to reprogramme the individual in a positive way, hoping they would "wake up another person".
Consequences and Outcomes of the Experiments
The human cost of these experiments was significant. Patients like Linda McDonald, diagnosed with schizophrenia, were subjected to depatterning and later reported having no memory of their lives prior to treatment, including their children or spouses. They felt like "aliens from another world," struggling to fit into society, understand social cues, or experience emotions tied to memories. The treatments succeeded brilliantly in wiping existing memories and emotions, but Cameron largely failed to replace them with new, desired memories or behaviours. This resulted in individuals freed from their past, yet adrift in a world where they lacked the social script, plot, or actors to engage meaningfully.
Despite the lack of clear success in reprogramming, the CIA continued to fund Cameron's work. The focus shifted from creating healthy human beings to programming a "perfect undetectable assassin" for a single, simple task, with the fewer memories and emotions involved, the better. Such an agent was envisioned as "amoral," capable of using firearms indiscriminately or employing brutal procedures for information extraction without hesitation or concern.
The Wilderness of Mirrors: Oswald and Nosenko
The assassination of President John F Kennedy exposed internal rifts and paranoia within the CIA. Some suspected Lee Harvey Oswald had been trained by the Soviet Union, while others feared it was a catastrophic failure of their own assassination programmes. Oswald's behaviour during interrogation—his self-control and apparent anticipation of questions—led some to believe he had been rehearsed or programmed.
Four years prior to the assassination, Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union, leading many to conclude he was a Soviet agent. However, after Kennedy's death, KGB agent Yuri Nosenko defected to America, claiming his job had been to watch Oswald in Russia and that Oswald had never been trained by the KGB. This ignited extreme paranoia within the CIA. Many senior officers refused to believe Nosenko, convinced he was a Soviet plant sent to mislead them, possibly implanted with false memories by the KGB.
The CIA subjected Nosenko to intensive interrogation and isolation for three years, employing techniques learned from Cameron's work to "break into his memory" and discern true memories from false ones. Despite these extreme methods, Nosenko consistently maintained his story. The case deeply divided the CIA, with those who believed Nosenko themselves accused of being under Soviet control, highlighting a period where "no one could be trusted". This demonstrated the difficulty of detecting and overriding false memories, a process that carried "great risks," including disorientation, confusion, and mental illness.
The Shift to Artificial Intelligence
As the psychological experiments proved less effective than anticipated, and the KGB, it was later understood, did not rely on such psychological methods, the CIA ceased funding this line of research. However, the underlying belief that the mind was identical to a computer persisted and evolved into a new scientific endeavour: Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The Cold War's escalation, particularly the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) through nuclear weapons, created a pressing need for intelligent machines. The fear was that human error could trigger all-out war. Intelligent machines were seen as highly attractive for defence, as their memories would be "completely controllable" and, unlike humans, they would not make mistakes.
The Department of Defence, through its Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), heavily funded the new discipline of artificial intelligence, often without explicitly detailing the military applications to the scientists involved. This funding was designed to transition AI technology into the military-industrial complex, leading researchers in directions useful for military purposes, such as "TV image processing" applicable to imagery for military use.
This research directly led to the development of intelligent weapons, such as the cruise missile in the 1970s, which stored a picture of its target in its memory. These weapons fundamentally altered the balance of power. The Gulf War served as a crucial testing ground for DARPA's AI systems, demonstrating a "war without personal painful memories," fought largely by machines. Deaths and destruction were witnessed primarily by machines and a few soldiers, whose memories of the conflict often diverged sharply from public perception, which resembled a "clean, very precise video game war". The detailed records of these conflicts were stored in "giant computer" built by ARPA, a "composite memory" that, unlike human memory, would not change or be subject to embellishment.
The Enduring Legacy
The era of direct manipulation of human memory, as conceived by Cameron and pursued by the CIA, officially ended as the Cold War structure began to collapse and old rivalries re-emerged across Europe. However, the underlying ideas have continued to evolve. Cognitive science, born in the 1950s, continues to view the brain through computer analogies, describing processes like "cognitive load" in terms of "RAM capacity" and "data storage".
Concerns persist that modern military-backed technologies, such as smartphones, personal assistants, and social media platforms, subtly alter human thought and behaviour through gamified addiction techniques. The concept of "AI" and "transhumanism" is seen by some as a direct continuation of the 1950s thinking, merely updated with advanced technology. Prominent figures in contemporary technology are sometimes viewed not as independent innovators but as operating within the continuing influence of state intelligence apparatuses, particularly given the perceived lack of accountability and oversight of agencies like the CIA.
The legacy of these mind control experiments and their subsequent evolution into artificial intelligence highlights a historical pursuit of control over human memory and behaviour, shifting from direct intervention on individuals to the development of intelligent machines and the pervasive influence of technology on collective consciousness. This history underscores a fundamental tension between the desire to free humanity from the "ghosts of the past" and the potential for new forms of manipulation and control.