And he’s right. As is evidenced here hiatuses typically kill blogs. Even those that have two bloggers. Unfortunately as you may have noticed only one of us has shown up for duty lately and the other is swamped under work. The former is just treading water himself as his career has taken off in the last three months.

Good things and bad things.

The good news is The Armorer is not shutting down. Personally, given the mans occasional pontifications, I doubt he will be able to completely walk away. However given the disenchantment many of us whom I think I can say are relatively middle of the road I can see how politics, and the world in general would grind us to the point that we find our selves spitting at the wind. The spammers, and fickle nature of some commenter’s can play in to that as well.

Well, more he than I. I don’t think I could buy a regular commenter around here as of late.

That said, we aren’t going away. Neither is he. The doors remain open. Volunteers are always welcome to write here. He has his own staff.

As for myself, it seems like I’m watching another ship leave the harbor. Folks are moving on, as they did years ago when Calimus and I first started Techography.

The more things change. The more they stay the same.

However I can not allow him to close that door without saying thanks. The Armorer opened his home, and his armory to me on several occasions. He has put up with my incoherent rambling e-mails on several occasions, and even furnished cold frosty adult beverages. Insofar as blogging goes he and The Commissar (when he still blogged as such) both showed much kindness and politeness to a web writer who was trying to adapt to the changing format of the Internet.

The Internet has much discourse, but little in the way of civility. He may walk away, but he deserves to know that he furnished one of last bastions of reasonable discourse that I am aware of on line. And for that he deserves a salute.

Our supporting Naval Fire got us in….without that gunfire we positively could not have crossed the beaches…” Col S. B. Mason Chief of Staff, 1st Division

I mentioned before I owned a picture of that painting. (You can too But mine has more history as I got mine from the now dissolved Navy Aviation Ordnance School out of Oceania, VA.)

Water.

It surrounds the Landing craft, reminds you of that old poem

“Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink…”

The wind is cold, the spray is miserable. The clothes are soaked thru, and the landing craft is pitching and yawing like a kite in a windstorm. The boys vomit from the rollercoaster aaffects of the seas and smashing waves that jar your teeth out of your head.

The place, is Normandy, the beach is Fox Green.

Welcome to the Invasion

There are so many things about which some old man ought to tell one while one is little; for when one is grown one would know them as a matter of course. -Rainer Maria Rilke

The Army units (known as Force O) include but not limited too, the 16th Infantry Regimental Combat Team of Major General Clarence R. Huebner’s 1st Infantry Division ­ (The Big Red One) ­ which had already seen plenty of combat in North Africa and on Sicily.

Attached to the 1st for most of the first day of this operation, known as “Overlord,” was the 116th Infantry Regimental Combat Team of Major General Charles Gerhardt’s 29th Infantry Division ­ “Stonewall Brigade” a well-trained division which had not yet experienced combat.

Also Attached to A Company 16th Infantry was a Contingent (about 64 men) of 2nd Battalion US Army Rangers (Dog, Echo and Fox Companies, totalling 200 men).

The greatest use of life, is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
WIlliam James

The 16th, commanded by Colonel George A. Taylor, was scheduled to land on “Easy Red” and “Fox Green” beaches ­ two sections of a five-mile-long beachhead code-named “Omaha;” the 116th’s assigned sectors, just to the west of the 16th¹s, were designated Dog Green, Dog White, and Dog Red.

Some Naval units involved include, but not limited too, LST-266, 6th Naval Beach Battalion (NBB), and numerous Naval Combat Demolition Units (who were part of Operation: Neptune (In late December the commanders for the invasion of Europe are announced. US General Eisenhower will be Supreme Allied Commander with Air Marshal Tedder as deputy. In charge of all naval operations under the code name ‘Neptune’ is Adm Sir Bertram Ramsey) as well as the infamous USS Emmons (DD-457/DMS-22), the USS Texas (BB-35), the USS Samuel Chase (APA-26), the USS LCI(L)-490,the USS LCI(L)-496 , the USS Ancon (AGC-4), the USS LST-373, the PC-1225, the USS Arkansas, the USS Doyle, the USS Baldwin (DD-624), the USS Carmick (DD-493), the USS Frankford (DD-497),the )USS McCook (DD-496), the USS Thompson (DD-627), the USS Nevada ( BB-36) ((Ed.- The Nevada was also one of the sole surviviors of Pearl Harbor) the USS Augusta (CA-31), the USS Tide (AM-125) ( the Destroyers all being part of DESRON (Destroyer Squadron) 18)

The Coast Guard was represented as well with the LCI(L)-91 and 92 Landing crafts as seen below

Landing Craft

The assault was brutal, vicious, with more hellfire, brimstone, metal and explosions than the men had ever seen, including their time in Italy and Africa.

“Those things which are precious are saved only by sacrifice.”
David Kenyon Webster

A Journal of the 3rd Battalion, 26th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division gives you a brief idea and insight:

June 6th. – At daylight no land can be observed. 0720 hours was to be “H” hour for the invasion of Europa Festung (The Fortress of Europe). We are to land on Omaha Fox Green beach. The 16th Infantry is the assault force coupled with the 116 Infantry of the 29th Division. The 18th Infantry follows the 16th Infantry and the 26th Inf. is scheduled to land, as reserve, at “H” plus 12 or approximately 1930 hrs. At 1000 hrs. we first observed land on our right flank (starboard bow). We were first able to discern the beach at 1500 hrs. It seems to be littered with equipment. Enemy fire falling length and breadth of the whole beach. It must be really tough ashore.

Co. Corley and the Bn. hit Omaha Easy Red Beach between 1800 and 1900 hrs. after vainly trying to get in on Fox Green. “I”,”K”, and “M” Companies landed during this period and moved inland under control of Col. Corley. “L” Co. moved in on Fox Green as intended under Capt. Billings control. They joined with the 16th Inf. in the vicinity of Colleville Sur Mer and went into action.

Col. Corley’s command reports the beach an utter shambles. Equipment scattered everywhere. Beach under observed artillery fire. Derelict sea-craft hung up on the beach–a few on fire. The colonel led the Bn. through the one gap they were able to traverse. Moved toward assembly area and ran into the Reg. CP in an over-ran gun emplacement. Received orders to hold the Bn. in place for a possible change of orders. Order came and Bn. moved to draw north of St. Laurent Sur Mer. Capt. Moultrap injured. Lieut. Cornwell placed in command of “K” Co.

Major Carvey with second command group left LST 494 at 2145 hrs. and landed on Omaha Easy Red Beach. Major Carvey, Capt. Ford, Lieuts, Willis, Huff, Egge and 31 EM were in one LCVP that struck a mine and sank. Capt. Hughes took charge and let the group to a point some 1700 yards off the beach where he contacted the rest of the Bn. At this point Hq. Co., I, K, & M Co’s. formed the complete Bn. At 2300 hrs. German Dive Bombers bombed the beach area.

At 2300 hrs the Bn. moved out in column of files because of mine fields. Held up almost at once while Col. Corley reports to regiment again. During this time check on Hq. Co. finds only 27 men present. Lieut. Brown placed in temporary charge of the company.

Col. Corley received orders that 116th and 115th are attacking St. Laurent Sur Mer and that 3rd Bn. is to by-pass the town and seize the high ground on the south of town. Bn. moved out at 1230 hrs. with “K” Co. leading.

The objectives of the 1st Division were ambitious. First it was to capture the villages of Vierville, Saint-Laurent, and Colleville; then it was to push through and cut the Bayeux-Isigny road; and then it was to attack south toward Trévières and west toward the Pointe du Hoc. Elements of the 16th Regiment were to link up at Port-en-Bessin with British units from Gold Beach to the east.

From the beginning everything went wrong at Omaha. Special “DD” tanks (amphibious Sherman tanks fitted with flotation screens) that were supposed to support the 116th Regiment sank in the choppy waters of the Channel. Only 2 of the 29 launched made it to the beach. With the exception of Company A, no unit of the 116th landed where it was planned. Strong winds and tidal currents carried the landing craft from right to left.

A Company, who landed for the most part correctly was gunned down as it exited the crafts. Men coming off LCVPs were torn to bits; others, leaping over the gunwales of their landing craft, were pulled under water by the weight of their packs and equipment and drowned.

Every officer in A Company, and most of the NCOs, became casualties.

A small, 64-man company of Rangers, following A Company, was similarly decimated.

They lost half their men; A Company lost two-thirds. And they had yet to fire a shot.

Farther west, Rangers (also attached to the 1st Division) were attempting to climb the sheer cliffs to get at the casemated battery of 155mm guns at Point du Hoc and were taking heavy casualties in the process; the Rangers would soon discover that the guns had been moved and posed no danger to the fleet. They successfully completed its mission of scaling the 100-foot cliffs by the use of grappling hooks and ropes and destroying five 155 coastal guns by 8:30 a.m. The guns were found in their alternate positions about a mile from where they were supposed to be as previously indicated by Army Intelligence

American forces fought all day for this stretch of Omaha beachhead. Its benign green bluffs and valley entrance were a maze of crossfire from enfilading (positioned to fire down the length of the beach) German guns. These included 88’s (a high-velocity 88mm anti-aircraft artillery piece which was used with devastating effect on Allied armored vehicles), mortars (small shell-launchers which fired at a high angle to clear hills and other obstacles), and machineguns. All of these, plus infantry rifle fire, raked the beaches and pinned the infantry to a small area before the expertly designed and deadly minefields.

By mid-afternoon disabled landing craft were clogging the few gaps in the beach obstacles, while under a rain of short and long-range artillery fire, support waves circled and jockeyed for an opening. Destroyers moved toward the beach into dangerous shoal waters to pump salvos of five-inch shells into stubborn German emplacements and mobile targets of opportunity.

Dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.
J M Barrie

The house in the valley and the spire of Colleville-Sur-Mer on the Hill were landmarks of Fox Green Beach. Germans used the spire for an artillery control tower, with spotters able to see the full panorama of the American forces and direct artillery fire at opportune targets. The church’s lovely renaissance architecture crumbled into sad rubble when a U.S. fire-control party on the beach called on the destroyer U.S.S. Emmons to demolish it. The artist of my picture/painting (Dwight C Shepler) was serving as an identification officer aboard that ship. This was the beach which Hemingway described in his article “Voyage to Victory.”

One of the spectacular actions of D-Day was the duel between the twisting snarling USS Emmons, and mobile 88 mm German guns on the Normandy cliffs near Port-en-Bessin. While searching out artillery which had been raking the support waves on the beach, she poured out 250 rounds of five-inch shells in the gun emplacements.

They never fail who die in a great cause.

Lord Byron

And oh how they were going to have to fight.

Frank Whitlock in his Article “The Battle For Easy Red/Fox Green” describes what lie in wait ashore for those poor boys in the landing crafts

The entire coastline was a gigantic steel-and-concrete nightmare for the attackers.

Virtually every foot of ground was covered by direct- and indrect-fire weapons ­ rifles, machineguns, 105mm guns, and the dreaded 88s.

Likely invasion beaches were studded with underwater and beach obstacles designed to rip the belly out of landing craft or blow them to bits with mines.

Mines, too, were profligate under the beach sands, and backed by thickets of barbed wire.

Beyond the wire were concrete foxholes, elaborate trench systems and concrete bunkers and gun emplacements sited to scythe down any invaders with enfilading crossfire…..

…..And, all that was before the tall bluffs that rose above the beachhead and had their own interconnected series of defensive positions and strong points. The entire enterprise was under one of Germany’s most able commanders, Generalfeldmarschal Erwin Rommel.

Rommel had been working the troops to exhaustion for five months to improve on Hitler¹s Atlantic Wall ­- including the installation of over 4 million mines between Cherbourg and Calais.

Throughout the landing, German gunners poured deadly fire into the ranks of the invading Americans. Bodies lay on the beach or floated in the water. Men sought refuge behind beach obstacles, pondering the deadly sprint across the beach to the seawall, which offered some safety at the base of the cliff. Destroyed craft and vehicles littered the water’s edge and beach, and at 0830 hours all landing ceased at Omaha. The troops on the beach were left on their own and realized that the exits were not the way off. Slowly, and in small groups, they scaled the cliffs. Meanwhile, The Navy Destroyers of DESRON 18 steamed in and, scraping their bottoms in the shallow water, blasted the German fortifications at point-blank range with their 5 inch guns.

Meanwhile At approximately 0345 hours, the 2nd Bn and 3rd Bn debarked from the USS Henrico and the HMS Empire Anvil, respectively, to assault Beach OMAHA, north of Colleville sur Mer, Normandie, France, at 0630 hours. Heavy seas, numerous underwater obstacles, and intense enemy fire destroyed many craft and caused high casualties even before the assault battalions reached shore. Most supporting weapons, including DD tanks, were swamped. The 2nd Bn., landing from one hundred to one thousand yards from its scheduled points, were pinned down on the beach by extremely heavy fire from concrete fortifications, machine gun emplacements, and sniper nests, which remained intact through severe naval and air bombardment. Casualties were extremely high.

The 3rd Bn. landed on the left of Beach OMAHA in the vicinity of Beach Exit and despite heavy fire, fought inland up the draw and destroyed many enemy beach fortifications in its sector.

The 1st Bn. landed on the same beach on which troops of the 2nd Bn. and supporting organizations were pinned down, as the reserve battalion, at approximately 0730 hours.

This caused severe intermingling and confusion on the already crowded beach. Reorganization was accomplished under continued heavy fire. Much equipment was lost and casualties mounted. One group had blown a gap in the wire and started moving inland through the minefields to take the ridge line overlooking the beach.

The 1st and 2nd Bns. cleared Colleville sur Mer and by 1100 hours, a general movement inland was underway, meeting stubborn resistance.

By night, the 1st and 2nd Bns. had reached positions about 1500 yards to the West and North of Colleville sur Mer, where they dug in and repulsed enemy counter attacks during the evening and night.

The 3rd Bn. seized le Grand Hamel and moved eastward along the ridges toward Port en Bessin, digging in during the night and consolidating their position.

One of the only pictures of the USS Texas, in color

At about 0440 on the morning of the 6th, the USS Texas battleship closed the Normandy coast to a point some 12,000 yards offshore near Pointe du Hoc. At 0550, Texas began churning up the coastal landscape with her 14-inch salvoes. Meanwhile, her secondary battery went to work on another target on the western end of “Omaha” beach, a ravine laced with strong points to defend an exit road. Later, under control of airborne spotters, she moved her major-caliber fire inland to interdict enemy reinforcement activities and to destroy batteries and other strong points farther inland.

By noon, she closed the beach to about a range of 3,000 yards to fire upon snipers and machinegun nests hidden in a defile just off the beach. At the conclusion of that mission, the warship took an enemy antiaircraft battery located west of Vierville under fire.

Mean while the USS Nevada went in action from 6 to 17 June, and again 25 June, her mighty guns pounded not only permanent shore defenses on the Cherbourg Peninsula, but ranged as far as 17 miles inland, breaking up German concentrations and counterattacks. Shore batteries straddled her 27 times, but failed to diminish her accurate fire

By nightfall the 1st and 29th divisions held positions around Vierville, Saint-Laurent, and Colleville—nowhere near the planned objectives, but they had a toehold. The Americans suffered 2,400 casualties at Omaha on June 6, but by the end of the day they had landed 34,000 troops. The German 352nd Division lost 20 percent of its strength, with 1,200 casualties, but it had no reserves coming to continue the fight.

The blood was not minimal, it was not a fairy tale or a movie. It was bad. We took a pounding.
The landings at Omaha Beach had incurred significant casualties and in fact, the enemy defenses were stronger than expected. Very little progress had been made in the push to the interior and this caused significant backups on the beach. Of the 2,400 tons that were planned to arrive on the beach on D-Day, only 100 tons were delivered. Operations on the 7th and 8th of June would be spent deepening the bridgehead.

Landing Craft inbound to Omaha Beach

Understandingly, casualties were high among those first units, which landed on Omaha Beach. Casualties for V Corps that day were about 3,000 (killed, wounded, and missing) with the 16th and 116th sustaining about 1,000 casualties each.

291 landing craft had been lost on D-Day, and numerous destroyers, LCTs, LCIs, and DUKWs had been sunk, cruisers hit, and aircraft downed.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once
more, Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As
modest stillness and humility; But when the blast
of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action
of the tiger: Stiffen the sinews, summon up the
blood.

- William Shakespeare
King Henry V , Act 3 Scene 1

Within the 1st Infantry Division, it is estimated that 18 officers and 168 enlisted men had been killed or died of wounds on D-Day; seven officers and 351 went missing; and 45 officers and 575 men were wounded in action.

The 29th Infantry Division, attached to the 1st, also suffered grievously, with 328 men killed or died of wounds; 281 wounded; and 134 listed as missing in action.

Senior U.S. officers watching operations from the bridge of USS Augusta (CA-31), off Normandy, 8 June 1944. They are (from left to right): Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk, USN, Commander Western Naval Task Force; Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, U.S. Army, Commanding General, U.S. First Army; Rear Admiral Arthur D. Struble, USN, (with binoculars) Chief of Staff for RAdm. Kirk; and Major General Hugh Keen, U.S. Army.

So many years have past now. The guns are silent, and their emplacements are slowly taken over by the sand and sea. A fitting end if not poetic, for they could neither hold back the assualt, nor can they now hold by the sea from taking them away.

The beaches are no longer red, it is clean after the years have passed.

Omaha Beach, Present Day

One day they will all be gone. And all we shall have are these pictures, these stories and memories. Legends.

But the sacrifice can not be forgotten.
Ever.
We must always keep close what these men and women did. Regardless of race, color, creed, sexual preference, branch of service or who they called god.

They died, for and as, Americans.

And they attest to an axiom which I swear by. That no one, desires peace, more than a solider.

Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Normandy Cemetery Memorial. Normandy France

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.
The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling
which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight,
 nothing which is more important than his own personal safety,
is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free
unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.



 --John Stuart Mill

Chin Music by Diesel Boy

A soldier boy and his violin

Uneasy wartime ballet

Omaha Beach

Normandy on D-Day

As his fellow man lay dying

And crimson tide colored the shore

Sons cried for their mothers

Bitter pill of war

He strikes the strings

His heart is on parade

Knows one day he’ll be gone

But his melody will stay

A teenage boy in his attic

Finds a case tattered and torn

His father’s violin

Companion through the war

He dusts off the fiddle

And raises up to his chin

What the old leave behind

And what the young begin

From the early 1950’s until the late 1960’s the Central Intelligence Agency in two countries (The US and Canada) conducted a long running series of experiments under auspicious heading Project MKULTRA. Due the clandestine nature of the project, much of the research material has been lost or destroyed; although over 20,000 pages of material were recovered in 1975.

Some 2 years ago, the Senate Health Subcommittee heard chilling testimony about the human experimentation activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over 30 universities and institutions were involved in an ‘extensive testing and experimentation’ program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens ‘at all social levels, [high and low], native Americans and foreign.’ Several of these [tests involved] the administration of LSD to ‘unwitting subjects in [social] situations.’ … The Central Intelligence Agency drugged American citizens without their knowledge or consent. It used university facilities and personnel without their knowledge.” – Senator Edward Kennedy, 1977

Numerous leading scientists and world leaders were part of the program, including former Canadian World Psychiatric Association chairperson Dr. Donald Cameron as well as CIA Director Richard Helms. The basis of the program was to use human experimentation with a variety of illicit drugs to identify everything from a perfected truth serum, to brainwashing and the ability to sway the decision-making process in a foreign leader.

The results were anything but what they wanted.

On April 13, 1953 then CIA Director Allen Dulles approved the program now known as Project MKULTRA (Zetter, 2010). Following the Korean War, the Central Intelligence Agency looked to close what they called the “brainwash gap”, a form of torture and interrogation that prisoners of war in Korea had been subjected to. The combination of hypnosis, shock therapy, and drugs such LSD and ketamine, made this seem a possibility (Discovery, 2011). To do this they launched an over decade long program that used unknowing human experimentation. College kids, military soldiers, and unwitting United States citizens made up the testing groups. More than 86 universities, 15 research foundations or chemical or pharmaceutical companies 12 hospitals or clinics (in addition to those associated with universities), and 3 penal institutions participated in the CIA-funded research, though not all were aware the spy agency was their benefactor, because funding was sometimes laundered through shell organizations.

Heading MKULTRA was a CIA chemist named Sidney Gottlieb. In congressional testimony, Gottlieb, who died in 1999, acknowledged that the agency had administered LSD to as many as 40 unwitting subjects, including prison inmates and patrons of brothels set up and run by the agency. At least one participant died when he jumped out of a 10th-floor window in a hotel; others claimed to have suffered serious psychological damage.

The goals of MK-ULTRA included investigating the following:

• Materials which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness
• Substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so-called “brain-washing”.
• Materials and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use.
• Physical methods of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use.
• A knockout pill which could surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis.

One of the basic misconceptions of Project MKULTRA is that it was one operation. The Rockefeller Commision and Church Committee discovered otherwise in 1977, identifying over 149 programs that went under the title MKULTRA.

First, there are 149 MKULTRA subprojects, many of which appear to have some connection with research into behavioral modification, drug acquisition and testing or administering drugs surreptitiously. -Prepared Statement of Admiral Stansfield Turner, Director of Central Intelligence to the Rockfeller Commision, August 3rd, 1977

For approximately the first five years of the program was the use of the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide, more commonly known as LSD. Other dependent variables included ketamine, scopolamine, and other drugs. The independent variables were the test subjects themselves: college students, military personnel, unknowing civilians, and volunteers (Discovery, 2011). The vast majority of subjects were tested under what the CIA deemed “normal life settings” (CIA, Unknown). In other words, they were involuntarily given a treatment, typically LSD, or ketamine, and were observed during the course of their days.
The sampling was unique; primarily due to the classified nature of the project, it must be assumed.

College students were taken as volunteers, such as Ken Kesey. The now renowned author volunteered for the experiment at the Veterans Administrations hospital in Menlo Park while he attended school at nearby Stanford University (Lehmann-Haupt, 2001). Military soldiers were given the drugs as part of a in-house experimentation, but were not told what the drugs were (United States v. Stanley, 1987). SSG James Stanley had volunteered for what he was told was a chemical warfare test, in which later discovered he was subjected to testing with LSD. James “Whitey” Bulger, a convicted mobster whom was serving time in prison, volunteered for the program while serving part of his sentence at Leavenworth, KS Federal Penitentiary. Unknowing civilian participants were tested via two separate brothels that were set up by the CIA (Marks, 1979). As unsuspecting customers entered the brothel, they were given LSD, and the events that transpired videotaped, recorded and observed via two-way mirror.

Other notable test subjects were Robert Hunter is an singer-songwriter, best known for his association with with the Grateful Dead. Hunter was an early volunteer MKULTRA test subject at Stanford University.

One of the most remarkable cases of mind control involves a famous model of the late 40′s and 50′s named Candy Jones. In the book, “The Control of Candy Jones” the author reviewed hours of tapes made by Candy Jones and her husband which revealed a systematic program to create and manipulate alter personalities as the foundation for programmed couriers resistant to torture, where the primary personality would not even be aware of the secret information being carried. The information could be summoned forth via a post-hypnotic command or response to a pre-programmed cue.

However the most damning accusation comes with the death of one Frank Olson, a 43-year-old civilian germ-, former Army Captain and warfare researcher for the U.S. Army at Ft Detrick who was also a CIA employee and an unwitting recipient of CIA acid.

During a 1953 meeting at a mountain retreat with MK-ULTRA head Dr. Sidney Gottlieb and other CIA employees, Olson and four other scientists drank a glass of Cointreau that had been secretly spiked with LSD.

They were told about the drug about 20 minutes after ingesting it. Olson apparently had a severe reaction and left the retreat in an agitated state and later threatened to resign.

The CIA claimed he suffered a sudden bout of extreme paranoia and depression and sent him to a psychiatrist in New York for consultation. He died in a “fall” from the 10th floor of his New York hotel room. A CIA employee who had accompanied him to New York reported that he awoke at 1:30 a.m. to see Olson hurl himself through the closed window. President Gerald Ford apologized, granted a $750,000 settlement. However, years later his son cited for a exhumation of the body and discovered that Olson had actually died of a massive traumatic blow to the head, prior to the fall.

Another subject, Linda McDonald, was more severely traumatized. Dr. Cameron used a three part program that included drug dis-inhibition, prolonged sleep, and prolonged psychological isolation. These were combined with ECT [Electro Convulsive Therapy] treatments. The amount of electricity introduced into Linda’s brain was later noted to have exceeded by 76.5 times the maximum amount recommended in the ECT Guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Cameron’s program resulted in permanent and complete amnesia. To this day, Linda MacDonald is unable to remember anything from her birth to 1963. As recorded by nurses in her chart, Linda was completely disoriented. She didn’t know her name, age or where she was. She didn’t recognize her children. She couldn’t read, drive, cook, or use a toilet. Not only did she not know her husband, she didn’t even know what a husband was. (Tyner, 2000)

Stanley Glickman was an unwitting subject of hallucinogenic drugs and electroshock treatment. He became traumatized, couldn’t work, barely ate, suffered a psychological breakdown and never fully recovered. After learning about the CIA’s LSD experiments, he sued in 1983. The trial was delayed 16 years, he died, but his sister Gloria Kronisch pursued the case.

A declassified CIA document “Hypnotic Experimentation and Research, 10 February 1954″ describes a simulation of relevance to the creation of unsuspecting assassins:

“Miss [deleted] was instructed (having previously expressed a fear of firearms in any fashion) that she would use every method at her disposal to awaken Miss [deleted] (now in a deep hypnotic sleep) and failing this, she would pick up a pistol nearby and fire it at Miss [deleted]. She was instructed that her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to “kill” [deleted] for failing to awaken. Miss [deleted] carried out these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded) gun at [deleted] and then proceeding to fall into a deep sleep. Both were awakened and expressed complete amnesia for the entire sequence. Miss [deleted] was again handed the gun, which she refused (in an awakened state) to pick up or accept from the operator. She expressed absolute denial that the foregoing sequence had happened.”

One particularly odious project was run by Dr Harris Isabel, Director of the Public Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky – a facility specializing in drug abuse. Working on a range of ‘synthetic’ drugs, Isabel began experimenting on captive inmates. He administered a daily routine large doses of LSD, mescaline, marijuana, scopolamine and other substances. In addition, in exchange for participating in the experiments, the inmates received injections of high quality morphine, sometimes getting ‘shot-up’ three times a day, depending on their co-operation levels.

Dr. Jose Delgado’s development of the Stimoceiver in the 1950s brought intelligence agencies’ ultimate dream of controlling human behavior one step closer to reality. The Stimoceiver—a miniature electrode capable of receiving and transmitting electronic signals—could be placed within an individual’s cranium. Once in place, an outside operator could manipulate the subject’s responses.

Dr. Delgado, a neurosurgeon and professor at Yale, received funding for brain electrode research on children and adults. He did research in monkeys and cats, and in one paper describes the cats as “mechanical toys.” He was able to control the movements of his animal and human subjects by pushing buttons on a remote transmitter box. In 1966, Delgado asserted that his experiments “support the distasteful conclusion that motion, emotion and behavior can be directed by electrical forces. Humans can be controlled like robots by push buttons.” (Delgado, 1955; Delgado, 1971)

The House of cards began to fall when in 1963 a CIA internal Inspector General JS Earman & John K Vance stumbled upon the project and sent a scathing memo stating “The concepts involved in manipulating human behavior are found by many people both within and outside the agency to be distasteful and unethical.” The memo prompted the investigations shortly, thereafter. This was followed not long after by a reporter. On December 22, 1974, Seymour Hersh exposed MK-ULTRA in a New York Times article. Headlined, “Huge CIA Operation Reported in US Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years,” it documented illegal activities, including secret experiments on US citizens during the 1960s and earlier.

The project was a failure and the fallout cataclysmic. In 1973 then CIA Director Richard Helms, supposedly on a tip that the program was to be investigated, ordered all of the documentation regarding Project MKULTRA to be destroyed (CIA, 2007) but that was a effort in vain for damage control. While most of the CIA documents regarding the project were destroyed, making a full investigation of MKULTRA impossible, a cache of some 20,000 documents survived Helms’ purge, as they had been incorrectly stored in a financial record building and were discovered following a FOIA request in 1977.

In the summer of 1975, congressional Church Committee reports and the presidential Rockefeller Commission, in conjunction with investigations on government abuses stemming from Watergate, issued a report revealed to the public for the first time that the CIA and the Department of Defense had conducted experiments on both unwitting and cognizant human subjects as part of an extensive program to influence and control human behavior through the use of psychoactive drugs such as LSD and mescaline and other chemical, biological, and psychological means. They also revealed that at least one subject had died after administration of LSD. Much of what the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission learned about MKULTRA was contained in a report, prepared by the Inspector General’s office in 1963, that had survived the destruction of records ordered in 1973.

Not to be out done, the US Army also launched a investigation. In 1975 the Secretary of the Army instructed the Army Inspector General to conduct an investigation. Among the findings of the Inspector General was the existence of a 1953 memorandum penned by then Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson. Documents show that the CIA participated in at least two Department of Defense committees during 1952. These committee findings led to the issuance of the “Wilson Memo,” which mandated—in accord with Nuremberg Code protocols—that only volunteers be used for experimental operations conducted in the U.S. armed forces. In response to the Inspector General’s investigation, the Wilson Memo was declassified in August 1975.

The Army Inspector General found that “the evidence clearly reflected that every possible medical consideration was observed by the professional investigators at the Medical Research Laboratories.” However the Inspector General also found that the mandated requirements of Wilson’s 1953 memorandum had been only partially adhered to; he concluded that the “volunteers were not fully informed, as required, prior to their participation; and the methods of procuring their services, in many cases, appeared not to have been in accord with the intent of Department of the Army policies governing use of volunteers in research.”

Other branches of the U.S. armed forces were found not to have adhered to Wilson Memo stipulations regarding voluntary drug testing.

The hearings revelations were astounding. The breakdown of Project MKUKLTRA per Admiral Stansfield Turner came as follows:
1. Research into the effects of behavioral drugs and/or alcohol:

• 17 subprojects probably not involving human testing;
• 14 subprojects definitely involving tests on human volunteers;
• 19 subprojects probably including tests on human volunteers. While not known, some of these subprojects may have included tests on unwitting subjects as well;
• 6 subprojects involving tests on unwitting subjects.

2. Research on hypnosis: 8 subprojects, including 2 involving hypnosis and drugs in combination.

3. Acquisition of chemicals or drugs: 7 subprojects.

4. Aspects of magicians’ art useful in covert operations: e.g., surreptitious delivery of drug-related materials:

• 4 subprojects.

5. Studies of human behavior, sleep research, and behavioral changes during psychotherapy:

• 9 subprojects.

6. Library searches and attendance at seminars and international conferences on behavioral modification:

• 6 subprojects.

7. Motivational studies, studies of defectors, assessment, and training techniques:

• 23 subprojects.

8. Polygraph research:

• 3 subprojects.

9. Funding mechanisms for MKULTRA external research activities:

• 3 subprojects.

10. Research on drugs, toxins, and biologicals in human tissue; provision of exotic pathogens and the capability to incorporate them in effective delivery systems:

• 6 subprojects.

11. Activities whose objectives cannot be determined from available documentation:

• 3 subprojects.

12. Subprojects involving funding support for unspecified activities connected with the Army’s Special Operations Division at Fr. Detrick, Md. …. Under CIA’s Project MKNAOMI, the Army Assisted CIA in developing, testing, and maintaining biological agents and delivery systems for use against humans as well as against animals and crops. The objectives of these subprojects cannot be identified from the recovered material beyond the fact that the money was to be used where normal funding channels would require more written or oral justification than appeared desirable for security reasons or where operational considerations dictated short lead times for purchases. About $11,000 was involved during this period 1953-1960:

• 3 subprojects.

13. Single subprojects in such areas as effects of electro-shock, harassment techniques for offensive use, analysis of extrasensory perception, gas propelled sprays and aerosols, and four subprojects involving crop and material sabotage.

14. One or two subprojects on each of the following: “Blood Grouping” research, controlling the activity of animals, energy storage and transfer in organic systems; and stimulus and response in biological systems.

15. Three subprojects canceled before any work was done on them having to do with laboratory drug screening, research on brain concussion, and research on biologically active materials to be tested through the skin on human volunteers.

In January 2007, a class action suit was filed against the Canadian government, which also took part in MK-ULTRA research, by former psychiatric patients who claim they were used as guinea pigs. Experiments included forced isolation, drug-induced comas and electro-shock therapy. One of the plaintiffs, a great-grandmother named Janine Huard, said, “They demolished me … they gave me terrible drugs, electroshocks, and made me stay in a bed with a mask over my face listening to recordings for hours a day. I was afraid.” (Discover, 2011)

On August 3rd, 1977 the 95th U.S. Congress opened hearings into the reported abuses concerning the CIA’s mind control research program code named MK-Ultra.

On October 3, 1995 President Clinton issued a formal apology for the action of the MKULTRA Project

“Thousands of government-sponsored experiments did take place at hospitals, universities, and military bases around our nation. Some were unethical, not only by today’s standards, but by the standards of the time in which they were conducted. They failed both the test of our national values, and the test of humanity. The United States of America offers a sincere apology to those of our citizens who were subjected to these experiments, to their families, and to their communities. When the government does wrong, we have a moral responsibility to admit it.” – President William J Clinton concerning Executive Order 12975 – Protection of Human Research Subjects and Creation of National Bioethics Advisory Commission

While the facts of the experiment are harrowing and disturbing, the conspiracies merely add fuel to the fire. Lawrence Teeter, the defense attorney for convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan, believed Sirhan was under the influence of hypnosis when he fired his weapon at Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

Jonestown, the Guyana location of the Jim Jones cult and Peoples Temple mass suicide, was thought to be a test site for MKULTRA medical and mind control experiments after the official end of the program. This thought line was exacerbated when Congressman Leo Ryan, a known critic of the CIA, was murdered by Peoples Temple members after he personally visited Jonestown to investigate various reported irregularities.

A considerable amount of credible albeit circumstantial evidence suggests that Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, participated in CIA-sponsored MKULTRA experiments conducted at Harvard University from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962.

It has been asserted that Project MKULTRA was based on Nazi Germany’s Project Monarch.

In the end, the report issued in 1977 has probably the best statement on Project MKULTRA.

Resources:

CIA (Unknown) Proposal Declassified MKULTRA Documentation (attached with paper)

CIA (2007) An Interview with Richard Helms US Government Publication Central Intelligence Agency, Unclassified Vol 44 No 4 May 8, 2007

Delgado, J.M.R. (1955) Evaluation of permanent implantation of electrodes within the brain. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 7, 637-644, 1955.

Delgado, J.M.R. (1971) Physical Control of the Mind. New York: Harper & Row, 1971
Discovery (2011) MKULTRA – The Science Channel Discovery.com in cooperation with The Science Channel Retrieved from the World Wide Web May 1, 2011 http://science.discovery.com/stories/mkultra.html

Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (2001) Ken Kesey, Author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” who defined the psychedelic era, dies New York Times November 11, 2001

Tyner, Arlene. Mind-Control Part 1: Canadian and US Survivors Seek Justice, PROBE Magazine, March-April 2000.

Marks, John (1979). The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. New York: Times Books. pp. 106–7.
United States v. Stanley (1987) United States v. Stanley 483 U.S. 669 No. 86-393 Argued April 21, 1987 Decided June 25, 1987

Zetter, Kim (2010) CIA OK’s Mind Control Tests Wired.com April 13, 2010

It’s pretty easy really. Almost ten.

Ten years since I spent time at Ground Zero. Ten years since I was reactivated. Nine years since the dust settled.

The Witch is Dead says the news.

Color me pessimistic. But Hopeful.

After much discussion, folks input, and E-mails as well as commentary, the decision has been made to keep the doors open here at Registered Evil, and see how it goes.

If we attract no H&I fire, we’ll keep it operation.

If we start taking rounds, I pull the plug.
Sorry folks but family welfare takes priority over much beloved hobbies.

I, personally, will be cutting back not only on when I blog, but what I blog. Sports, Military and History will probably become my forte. Look for more stories like this, to give you an example.

V00d3w will be picking up the slack on political commentary, as well as anyone else who wants to sign up.

We have only a few rules: no pr0n, no Boonie Rat speak*, always consider OPSEC** and keep it civil***. That’s it. Any subject is a go, and nothing else is taboo.

So you want to be a blogger? Want to be a MilBlogger?
Consider this your recruiting call.

Drop us a line here, on Twitter or on Facebook.

* below the jump

*Boonie Rat speak. In the Army we sometimes called how we spoke as Boonie rat, where every other word in a single sentence would be a vulgarity, most prominently, the F word.

***Civil. Another blog I haunt has a strict rule of “you can attack the message, but not the messenger.” That rule applie shere as well. No Ad hominem attacks, no personal insults, etc.

400 feet up...and still going...

During the course of my career I received the minor reputation as a bit of a madman.

Long hours were my hallmark. The ability to sleep under ones desk and work at a computer station for over 48 hours can not be under rated when talking about project support. The ability to subside purely on coffee, nicotine, and finger nails is a survival ability needed in very few occupations, but practically second nature when on a IT Roll out spanning the entire country.

Back in the states from Venezuela...also known as How I spent my 10 yr High School Reunion

I have worked almost every position that can be had on a roll out. Field Tech, Help Desk, Help Desk manager, Project coordinator, Project Manager, Logistics, SME, QA Inspector even Safety and Field trainer. I have worked in 38 states. 4 countries. Thats not even including the places I went in the service. Over 1,000 projects, and who knows what the monetary value of all the projects I have worked on would be if I even tried to add them up. I wouldn’t mind having 1% of that, heh.

The Cingular expansion team in St. Louis

Now I have been given one step below my dream job: Roll out Specialist. However it’s not just the job, but with who. The number one company on the Fortune 500 list. No other company has more roll outs, and does it on less money than they do. No one. period. You can’t find a bigger, or better, challenge than that.

It’s a corner stone for me, a turning point, and as pilots refer to it: Bingo.

I’ve blogged since 1995.

Whiskey Dick Mtn, near the Washington State, Oregon border.

Calimus started Techography around then, and I was one of the first folks he invited to share his space with. It was like a fish to water. I wrote about everything. The weather. jobs. Girlfriends. Computers. School. Music. He had inadvertently given the keys that went to a high-performance car to a semi-intoxicated wanna be stock car racer wearing steel toed boots.

I have kept it up. I enjoy it. I have taken hiatus’s occasionally, and stepped away. i tried to quit once. I came back and with Calimu’s help, started this site.

Black Hills, South Dakota

It’s like a second skin. A place that gives me hope that in some day, years from now, an electronic archeologist may find at least one persons words on what amounts to silicon stone. Even if what I say is not agreed upon by many, it’s down, as my thoughts, and my take. A release valve even when all else goes south.

My new employer however, likes privacy. As much as doing deranged things like climbing a 300 ft tower in a storm due to a loose antennae is my hall mark, privacy is theirs. It is their unwritten motto, a mantra.

This blog, violates that.

So, Bingo.

Do I stay, or do I go?

In theory as long as I avoid anything that reflects upon them I should be fine. Which means effectively I would need to halt all political blogging immediately. However politics are something I enjoy, but it is the price of success. Sacrifice is something we go through as we advance in careers and in age. We learn there are things we simply can not do anymore, as we once did.

But this has been my goal. To get in to Project Management with the worlds largest IT group, doing the worlds largest roll outs. I have spent the last 4 years grooming myself for this job. Going to school, signing up for every half baked project for anyone he had one that came down the pike.

Outside Mobile, Alabama

I debated long and hard yesterday: do I shut the doors to RegisteredEvil, as we are just getting started? Just as traffic is getting good?

Facebook is the “way” of the future. We have next to zero of a commenter base. While we have readers, no one makes remarks, or comments. I empty over 100 spam comments a day. China loves us it seems.

On the same token we know our readership is out there. Folks have shopped at our store, stayed for hours on our site. We’ve even been cited by Wikipedia.

v00d3w’s career is also taking it’s toll. Even with two of us we are hard pressed to stay ahead, and provide content on a daily basis.

Where do we go from here? Our Bingo point. To move forward, or go back.

Kansas City, MO

My initial thoughts are to provide more quality content, and less quantity. To concentrate on the things that seem to have made us at least semi popular: Military, History, and Sports. Things that are non obtrusive and not likely to get me hammered by new and hopefully last, benefactor.

I say last because I fully intend, hope and desire, to not have to make another change. While the look on my accountants face when I bring him 13 W-2′s each year is some what amusing because I did 13 contracts with 13 companies in a single year, it’s a pain in the ass to keep up with frankly.

A honest-to-god Blue Northern rolls in to Montana

Stability is necessary. I’ve been a traveler for literally years. A IT Nomad almost. Everything from cell towers, central office facilities, retail stores, DSLAMS, fiber optic installation to migrations. Name a company: Verizon? AT&T? T-Mobile? Sprint? Crickett? Hughes? Northrop-Grumman? General Dynamics? Wal-Mart? Best Buy? I’ve been there. Never as a employee. Always the best man, never the groom.

Until now.

So lurkers. Your feed back is requested. Begged practically.

Do you want us to continue trying to supply you with content?

Or do you want us to lock the doors?

Click to Embiggen!

The U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment, "The Old Guard," changes the guard as the body of former Army Cpl. Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last surviving American veteran of World War I, lies in honor in the Memorial Amphitheater Chapel at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., on Tuesday, March 15, 2011.

Former Army Cpl. Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last surviving American veteran of World War I, passed away and was honoured this week.

He was laid down yesterday in Arlington National cemetery, the last of a generation who did what I think the current generation would be aghast to do, to sacrifice, to rise to meet.

He stands at parade rest, with his brothers and sisters who went before. The last man standing in a noble line.

A fellow Missourian, during the war Buckles served in England and France, driving ambulances and motorcycles for the Army’s 1st Fort Riley Casual Detachment.After the Armistice in 1918, Buckles escorted prisoners of war back to Germany. Following his discharge in 1920, he attended the dedication of the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, in honor of the Americans who died in World War I.

He died on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011, at his West Virginia home at age 110. Mr. Buckles enlisted in the Army on Aug. 14, 1917, at the age of 16; he was discharged in 1920

Honor Guard carrying formaer Corporal Frank W. Buckles, United States Army, Last American Veteran of World War I to rest.

It’s so easy to forget them for it was so long ago,
That the old Bills of our Country went to battle, but we know
It was not the politicians, with their compromise and ploys,
Who won for us the freedom that our Country now enjoys.

Should you find yourself in danger, with your enemies at hand,
Would you want a politician with his ever-shifting stand?
Or would you prefer a soldier, who has sworn to defend
His home, his kin and Country and would fight until the end?

He was just a common soldier and his ranks are growing thin,
But his presence should remind us we may need his like again.
For when countries are in conflict, then we find the soldier’s part
Is to clean up all the troubles that the politicians start.

If we cannot do him honor while he’s here to hear the praise,
Then at least let’s give him homage at the ending of his days.
Perhaps just a simple headline in a paper that would say,
Our Country is in mourning, for a soldier died today.

Excerpt from A Soldier Died Today by A. Lawrence Vaincourt

More at Castle Argghhh!