Sidebar from NameBase NewsLine, No. 12, January-March 1996:

The Internet is a prodigious source of information, but using it has been compared to "trying to sip from a firehose." Access to this flood of data comes at a price: Net researchers spend much of their time sifting the valuable from the dubious from the insane. Never has this been more true than in dealing with Net resources on the topic of mind control.

To begin with, there is the problem of definition. "Mind control" has been taken to mean many different things, and all these definitions have their advocates on the Net. Some of the discussion on the Internet involves the purported harassment of individuals for the purpose of disorienting them, or decreasing their ability to discuss issues of importance. This includes the use of less-than-lethal technologies such as microwave or ELF irradiation, sonics, and other techniques. Ed Light and Julianne McKinney argue that such harassment is real.

Other research and commentary on the Net concerns individual mind control by means of what I call "structured abuse," and what L. Ron Hubbard once identified as "drug/pain/hypnosis" conditioning. Discussions on this topic can be found on many pages related to satanic ritual abuse, alien abductions, and the "false memory syndrome" debate. This area is where my research efforts are concentrated.

Exploring mind control on the Net is complicated by the fact that many of the most active participants claim they are also victims. Their intensity is understandable; if I had been subjected to the abuses claimed by these authors, I would certainly want to publicize them. Ed Light hosts the Freedom of Thought Foundation home page and tells his story there. Alan Yu has contributed extensively to the alt.mindcontrol Usenet newsgroup on this subject. Another self-identified victim who has posted extensively is Glen Nichols.[1]

Many of the claims that such people make may seem incredible. Still, we know that in the past intelligence agencies have committed crimes they called "research." The Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee in the 1970s exposed some of the horrors of the CIA's MKULTRA programs, and it remains extremely likely that much more remains hidden.

Having spoken to several purported survivors of trauma-based mind control who had significant although not conclusive corroborating evidence, I am inclined to give these people the benefit of the doubt. Many survivors of conventional abuse endure additional suffering because of their difficulty in revealing what happened to them, and in persuading others of the reality of their abuse. I try to achieve a balance between acceptance of and skepticism toward survivors' stories, and then try to seek independent corroboration.

The Net is a particularly fertile field for anyone investigating possible links between satanic ritual abuse and mind control. There's a Net site that supports every imaginable position, from False Memory Syndrome Foundation's iron-clad skepticism to fundamentalist pages proclaiming tens of thousands of abuse victims per year.[2] My own opinion is that the application of "structured abuse" to young children, combined with classical conditioning techniques, could create alternate personalities that could be easily controlled and manipulated. This would not require complex technology, only secrecy and ruthlessness.

Any group capable of such techniques would see "benefits" in the existence of such slaves. Some claim that purported "satanic ritual abuse" can be a cover for experiments by intelligence agencies. My own opinion is that this claim ought not to be rejected out of hand. The CIA has a record of distancing itself from morally-indefensible operations by using fronts and cutouts. A similar case has been made for "alien abductions." Perhaps the best-known discussion of possible links between mind control and alien abductions is Martin Cannon's monograph "The Controllers," available in several forms from many sites.[3] Cannon claims that some alien abductions are cover for mind-control efforts, and represent an attempt to deal with victims' memories of such procedures. Variations of Cannon's view can be found in Usenet discussions of "alien abductions" as cover for the implantation of microchips to track and/or control individuals. Again, even these claims seem to me to deserve airing. The CIA has a history of attempting to manipulate the existence of cults and other mass-psychological phenomena to advance its objectives.

And the same could be true of the Internet. On the Net, information flows rapidly, and is often impossible to verify. Anonymous rumors can easily be inserted into the data-stream. Paranoia about poisoned sources can easily overtake a researcher. As a topic for serious discussion on the Net, "UFOlogy" already seems to have self-destructed, and "mind control" may be next. The welcome freewheeling quality of Net discourse is offset by the possibility that important subjects can be trivialized, and then disappear.

What is a researcher on this topic to do? Valuable though the Net and its e-mail community are, the Net's greatest value remains that of a pointer to other sources: potential interviews; journals; and, yes, even books.

1. Ed Light runs the Freedom of Thought Foundation home page at:
http://members.gnn.com/fivestring
Glen Nichols' and Alan Yu's stories can be found there as well.

2. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation is at:
http://iquest.com/~fitz/fmsf/
Hopeful Hands, a religiously-oriented satanic ritual abuse page is at:
http://www.mother.com/~clburger/hopeful/homepage.htm

3. The Controllers is available at:
http://www.lablinks.com/sumeria/cosmo/control.html

Thomas Porter, from Winston-Salem NC, is a software engineer by necessity and a researcher by desire. He is the author of a Web site titled "Government Research into ESP and Mind Control" at:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/T_Porter