The missing Family Jewel

I probably should not write this post. The following text will invite trouble from the one group of conspiracy buffs I consider more annoying than the 9/11 "trannies."

But I feel obligated to say something about the "Family Jewels" documents released by CIA Director Michael Hayden to the invaluable National Security Archives. If you follow the link, you will find a large compendium of internal Agency documents -- material which, according to CIA Office of Security Director Howard Osborne, had "flap potential." This document dump was compiled by Osborne in 1973, when outside investigations of the Agency began.

By "outside," I don't necessarily mean Congress. I mean Richard Nixon. More on that later.

So far, I've not read any commentary on this material by well-educated CIA critics who have specialized in the events of this era. Journalistic response to this release has so far been superficial, even from savvy writers like Robert Parry.

The first thing you should understand is that this compendium does not represent the ultimate treasure trove of covert activities. The dossier is filled with fluff and filler material, which should come as no surprise. Whenever a congressional committee looked into Company activities back in the '70s, those under scrutiny would insist on stuffing the record with documents that were innocuous or unimportant.

The reader should keep the surrounding circumstances in mind. This compilation was put together in 1973, not 2007. The "client" was the young, recently-installed DCI James Schlesinger, who was so mistrusted by Agency personnel that he placed a security camera outside his office to make sure that his files were not vandalized. Nixon gave the job to Schlesinger after firing Richard Helms, with whom the President had an epic (and still rather mysterious) falling out. According to lore, Schlesinger marked his first day on the job by announcing: "I'm here to make sure you don't screw over Richard Nixon."

Instead of allowing Schlesinger to discover the Agency's worst secrets on his own, Osborne decided to show him some damaging information in carefully measured doses. Osborne knew that Schlesinger worked for Richard Nixon, and Nixon had come to mistrust the CIA.

All right, let's get down to business: Family Jewel #1.

It's missing.

You can read about it, or about its absence, here and here and here. The 1973 compendium has a brief introductory page, which is here (thanks to Ed Haslam). You'll see that even in this summary, Jewel #1 is a blank space.

I'm surprised that bright guys like Ed Haslam and Gary Buell have not offered a guess as to what Jewel #1 might be. To me, the answer is obvious.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

A number of books published in the late 1970s and 1980s identified one CIA program as the most frightening skeleton in the Agency's closet -- or, if you prefer another metaphor, the Hope Diamond of the Family Jewels. I refer, of course, to MKULTRA, the mind control program which ran from 1953 to 1963. Indeed, in some of the less carefully written histories of the Agency, the phrases "Family Jewels" and MKULTRA are treated as near-synonyms.

Last night, I went through the entire compendium of newly-released material at lightning speed. Some favorite old spy stories cropped up. (One of these days, I really must discuss the Dan Rowan tale.) But I did not see a single unredacted reference to MKULTRA.

Nor did I see any reference to the predecessor programs BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE. I certainly saw no hint of the post-1963 projects, whose existence is known but whose cryptonyms have never been revealed. (A small number of MKULTRA subprojects did continue under the MKSEARCH nomenclature.)

I've heard a rumor as to what one post-1963 cryptonym might be, although I've received no verification. For reasons that will soon be made clear, I won't repeat that rumor in public. (Or in private. So don't ask.)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, MKULTRA was shut down in 1963 when a Kennedy-appointed Inspector General got a whiff of one of the more "fragrant" subsidiary programs, Operation MIDNIGHT CLIMAX, so named because it involved prostitutes. In 1963, as in 1973, there were attempts to keep the full scope of these activities hidden from the DCIs themselves.

I'm not sure why Hayden redacted all MKULTRA-related material from the current release. Thousands of pages of relevant documentation are available to anyone who visits the National Security Archives in Washington D.C., the same body which has recently placed the "Family Jewels" compendium online. This is a private archive, not to be confused with the National Archives or the National Security Agency. (When I visited, they were located in the Brookings Institute building, not far from the famed Phillips Collection.)

The Archive houses the "Marks donation." This phrase refers to the material collated by John Marks when he wrote his classic The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate." That book, Alan Scheflin's The Mind Manipulators, and a little-known paperback by Armen Victorian are the only volumes on the subject written to any sort of scholarly standard.

Many people think they know about MKULTRA. Unfortunately, this is an area where legend has eclipsed fact. A surprisingly large subculture is filled with troubled individuals who have become emotionally wedded to the growing body of MKULTRA folklore.

This Democratic Underground forum uncritically cites an irresponsible piece written by one Robert Lusetich in the Australian. Lusetich did find one passing reference on page 425 to the mind control program. The redactor's pen missed that one paragraph, probably because it does not mention the MKULTRA cryptonym directly. It's not a terribly important passage -- just a brief reference to Inspector General John Earman's report from 1963. But from that small paragraph, Lusetich concocts the following fantasia:

The nature of the experiments, gathered from government documents and testimony in numerous lawsuits brought against the CIA, is shocking, from testing LSD on children to implanting electrodes in victims' brains to deliberately poisoning people with uranium.

"The CIA bought my services from my grandfather in 1952 starting at the tender age of four," wrote Carol Rutz of her experiences.

Lusetich conveys the impression that Rutz is mentioned by the newly released documents. That is not the case.

Rutz is a claimed survivor of Satanic Ritual Abuse who tells her story at length here. She claims that her story has been "confirmed" by CIA documents released under FOIA requests. I feel certain that these are the same documents made available to Marks, Scheflin and Victorian.

Wait a minute, I can you asking. How the hell did Satanism enter this story...?

Many of you will recall the Satanic Ritual Abuse "craze" of the 1980s and 1990s, which ran concurrently with other fads in "recovered memory." These tales struck most people as less than credible, to put the matter charitably.

Most people do not know that, during this same time period, there was another "recovered memory" theme that achieved some popularity in fringe circles. Some people started to "recall" alleged abuse by the CIA's MKULTRA researchers.

The two motifs quickly merged, as hard-core conspiracy buffs conflated Satan-worship and the CIA. Although this conflation may strike most people as absurd, true paranoia junkies make such leaps as a matter of routine.

As the 1990s progressed, the "Montauk" and "Monarch" rumors entered the growing MKULTRA mythos. If you aren't familiar with those terms, I can only refer you to Google; this short essay does not provide sufficient space to recount such complex legends.

As noted above, I've studied the Marks donation in detail and had even photocopied some of it. Alas, I lost my personal files, as well as my library, over a year ago. But I recall the material well. Moreover, any one of you can go to the National Security Archives and confirm what I'm about to say:

Those documents do not refer to Satanism or to experimentation on children.

Not one word in that documentation verifies the "Monarch" and "Montauk" fables.

Let us now return to Carol Rutz. Here are her own words:

From that point on the SRA memories began to surface. I didn't understand them at all as I didn't know such things existed. The people I saw in hooded white robes reminded me of the KKK but what they did was beyond anything I ever heard the KKK was responsible for. My grandfather was the "Big Kahuna" of our intergenerational cult. I have traced the word "Big Kahuna," back to a Polynesian belief system. Oral history tells of a race of beings from another solar system who came to earth and brought with them psychic abilities and huna beliefs. Members of kahuna orders have kept this knowledge alive since that time. The Illuminati family that I was given over to operated with Luciferian beliefs.

The Illuminati is, of course, a myth. I think I need say no more about this woman's credibility.

If your powers of rationalization are so formidable that you feel able to accept this wild and unverified testimony, then no words of mine will ever persuade you. I can only plead with you to transfer your attentions to some other blog.

As for those "numerous lawsuits" mentioned by Lusetich: He neglects to note that most of these suits are so goofy -- usually filed by people who literally wear tin foil hats -- that they are routinely tossed out with prejudice. These same sad individuals will often distribute photocopies of the summary judgments against them as proof that their tales are true.

That said, there have been a few real court cases to arise out of MKULTRA; these are documented in the literature. One example would be the case of Val Orlikov, wife of a Canadian Member of Parliament, who was a victim of the notorious Ewen Cameron. Her horrifying story concerned extremely unethical LSD testing combined with sensory deprivation; it had nothing to do with Satanism, child abuse, the Illuminati or any such silliness. The Orlikov story is confirmed by the released MKULTRA documents, and is universally accepted as credible.

The same cannot be said of the later claimants.

Now, I'm sure that Robert Lusetich means well. So why would he endorse someone like Carol Rutz?

I believe that he has fallen prey to a common problem.

Quite often, anyone attempting to research a sensational story involving covert activity will find his efforts upended by a rather bizarre phenomenon -- a psychological pas-de-deux that I've seen occur many times, in many different contexts. I refer to this phenomenon as "Galahad and the Damsel."

The Damsel is usually a woman "of a certain age" who has read widely in one or more areas of conspiracy literature. She will claim never to have read any of this literature. She will claim that her information comes from recollected personal experience, not from "book learning." Believe me: A Damsel knows how to use the internet -- and before there was an internet, she knew how to use interlibrary loan and the BBS services.

The Damsel wants attention by any means necessary. This is the first and foremost thing you must know about her.

The Damsel also desperately wants to believe in her own victimhood. She has an overpowering psychic need to blame her perceived failings in life on some dark outside agency. She cannot or will not distinguish between that which she has seen on the printed page and that which she "remembers."

A fantasy ensues.

A "Galahad" is a male researcher or writer who accepts the fantasy at face value, and who rationalizes away any problems with the story, such as the lack of confirmatory evidence. The Galahad will champion the Damsel's tale in public, despite the risk of personal ridicule. The tendency to defend a "victimized" female is hard-wired into the psyche of most males.

(That said, there are a few male "Damsels" out there, as well as a few female "Galahads.")

If ever you decide to research MKULTRA -- or any aspect of what we may call "parapolitics" -- you will encounter the "Galahad and Damsel" scenario repeatedly. I've run into many Damsels. And yes, I've been known to play the Galahad role. Years ago.

Those days are over.

Long-time readers will recall our discussions of Leola McConnell, the sex worker who claims to have witnessed George Bush in a gay tryst; she is a particularly aggressive Damsel. So, I suspect, is Judyth Vary Baker, the alleged eyewitness who has "confirmed" Ed Haslam's research into one aspect of the JFK assassination, and who has appeared on the History Channel.

(I have never communicated with Haslam, who has written extensively on Mary Sherman and David Ferrie, but I've enjoyed listening to his radio interviews. Judy may have drawn her "memories" from the same interviews, which have long been available online. However, she does have another witness, and I'm willing to reconsider my skeptical appraisal as I learn more.)

In the 1990s, I came to know a broadcaster on KPFA who nearly ruined his marriage playing "Galahad" to a particularly conscience-free Damsel named Wendy. Boy, was she a beaut! Alas, that bizarre tale is far too lengthy to tell here...

There have been quite a few false claimants who have attached themselves to the MKULTRA mythos. Those who have carefully researched the real program will know how to spot the fakes.

One of the surest giveaways is this: The fantasists often "recall" that their abusers freely used the MKULTRA cryptonym in the presence of their alleged victims. In real life, most of the scientists employed by the CIA did not use the term MKULTRA and probably were not even made witting of that nomenclature. (Some were not even aware of CIA sponsorship.) "Project" names were used as part of the filing system at headquarters; those working out in the field referred to "operations," which are altogether different.

When Damsels make public statements, they tend to refer to MKULTRA -- even though many of them were born after that program ended. The Damsels never "recall" the unreleased cryptonyms used between 1963 and 1973, because the published literature does not mention those names.

(And now you know why I won't discuss the rumors I've heard about the post-1963 cryptonyms.)

One Damsel "recalled" meeting a CIA-affiliated psychiatrist who, in reality, had died some years before. The Damsels never recall the names of individuals unmentioned in published works whose involvement can be demonstrated through other means.

There are other "tells" which identify a fantasist, most of which I need not discuss here. The most telling of these tells is this: Many Damsels will conflate the hard facts of MKULTRA with goofy lore culled from the farthest corners of conspiracy-land.

We thus come back to Carol Rutz and her blatherings about the Illuminati and alien Kahunas and Satanic conspirators and god-knows-what-else. An unlikely story, to say the least -- and yet, I am sorry to say, it is now on the front page of Democratic Underground.

When a Damsel festoons her MKULTRA narrative with unbelievable and embarrassing material, her "Galahad" defender will usually mutter something about false memories being implanted into the mind of the poor, beleaguered mind control victim. Of course, any such rationalization renders the Damsel's tale non-falsifiable -- and once we have exited the realm of falsifiability, we have exited the realm of science.

In 1996, a presidential advisory commission looked into the possibility of searching for further documentation into MKULTRA. Unfortunately, the commission unwisely took testimony from several Damsels, including one notorious fantasist who brought those ever-present Satanists into the stew. (I've spoken to this woman's shrink; though female, she was a typical Galahad.) The commission members rolled their eyes at this unbelievable account and quickly turned their attention to other areas. Professor Alan Scheflin, who attended the hearing, described it to me privately as a "disaster."

And so it goes. There will never be a proper investigation of MULTRA, for the same reason that there will never be a genuine 9/11 truth movement: Every time someone attempts to address the topic in a serious fashion, the nutcases come out en masse, and they commandeer the conversation. Worse, any researcher who does not say what the Damsels and the Galahads want to hear is damned as an "agent" working for the bad guys.

We live in an age when fear and fantasy will always trump science and rational inquiry.

Since this whole area is one which has caused me heartache, don't be surprised if I refuse to publish any reader commentary. I have had it up to here with accusations of bad faith. I don't want to hear any more incoherent bleatings from weepy Damsels. And I certainly don't want to hear the Galahads offer the usual special pleadings. To be frank, I doubt very much that anyone reading these words can come up with anything to say that I have not heard a zillion times before.

In fact, I don't want to debate the issue at all.

You can believe whatever you like. If you want to accept the Montauk or Monarch fantasies at face value, if you want to believe in dark tales about the Illuminati and wicked Luciferians and similar nonsense, go ahead. I have now said my piece on MKULTRA and would prefer not to deal with this subject ever again.