Truth or Consequences

Space exploration has made a robust return into the national consciousness in recent weeks. It all started with the death of Neil Armstrong, the famed astronaut who was officially the first person to walk on the moon, just a little over a month ago. Armstrong's death kicked off an inevitable wave of nostalgia for America's past glories, especially among aging Baby Boomers who grew up in the midst of the Space Race, and understandably so.

America's current space program is as symbolic of America's overall decline as any institution around, maybe even more so. What had once stood as a testament to American greatness has essentially been reduced to a parody as we struggle to place another manned space craft on the moon nearly 40 years after Apollo 17 last accomplished this feat. Despite obscene amounts of money being lavished on NASA during the preceding four decades we have little to show for it other than the sweeping militarization and privatization of space.

The later initiative was supposed to open up space to the general public. In theory luxuries cruises would plow through the heavens and deposit bored tourist on a new wave of Holiday Inn Expresses situated on government funded space stations, or something along those lines. So far the privatized space industry is a long way from delivering this vision and shows few signs of progress despite grandiose schemes. MSNBC reports:

"New Mexico Tourism Secretary Monique Jacobson says it will be New Mexico's Sydney Opera House. Virgin Galactic Chairman Richard Branson has hinted it will host the first of his new brand of lifestyle hotels. And the eclectic hot springs town of Truth or Consequences has been anxiously awaiting all the economic development the nearly quarter-billion-dollar project is supposed to bring to this largely rural part of southern New Mexico.

"But as phase one of Spaceport America, the world's first commercial port built specifically for sending tourists and payloads into space, is nearing completion, the only new hotel project that has been finalized is a Holiday Inn Express here in Truth or Consequences, about 25 (40 kilometers) miles away. And three key companies with millions of dollars in payroll have passed on developing operations in the state."

Veteran twilight language readers will be immediately struck by the location of America's first commercial space port: 25 miles away from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

The whole of New Mexico, but especially locations along the 33rd parallel north (for reasons that shall be explained in a moment), has become the stuff of legends in conspiracy culture. Part of this is due to the alleged UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, a little over 200 miles from Truth or Consequences, in June or July of 1947. Roswell is hardly the only thing New Mexico has contributed to UFO lore, however. It is in New Mexico that state patrol officer Gabe Valdez conducted one of the first serious investigations into the whole cattle mutilation phenomenon.

"By the late 1970s New Mexico was in the grip of its own mutilation wave; ranchers and local sheriffs had begun taking pot shots at aircrafts flying over their property and a major incident was only a gunshot away...

"Back in the 1970s, Valdez's investigation had focused on the ranch of Manuel Gomez, whose cattle had suffered particularly badly; alongside dead and mutilated animals he'd found caterpillar tracks, bits of paper, measuring tools, syringes, needles and a gas mask. One site was covered with radar-reflecting chaff, some of it stuffed into the dead cow's mouth. Some of the animals had broken bones and what appeared to be rope marks on their limbs, suggesting that they had been hoisted up then dropped back on to the ground. Whoever was doing this to the cattle, they were organized, and human.

"As in Montana, the mutilations coincided with a rash of UFO sightings, and Valdez and his fellow officers had several close shaves with strange flying machines. On one occasion Valdez's team cornered an orange light in a field; as they approached, the light went out. Then, although they could see nothing, they heard a muffled sound like a lawnmower engine pass over their heads. Another time Valdez and two colleagues ducked beneath an object that he described as disc-shaped, rotor-less, and dazzlingly bright..."
(Mirage Men, Mark Pilkington, pgs. 150-151)

New Mexico was also the primary location of the notorious Bennewitz affair. I've already written much more on the saga on Paul Bennewitz here and here so I shall not delve to deeply into it here. In brief: Bennewitz was a one-time PhD candidate in physics and successful business man who became convinced in the existence of a conspiracy within the United States government to collaborate with extraterrestrial life to nefarious ends. He went so far as to claim that Dulce was the site of an underground base housing these aliens. In recent years it has been revealed that Bennewitz was in fact the victim of an elaborate US Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) disinformation campaign that nearly drove him mad (some would argue that it succeed). The Air Force allegedly engaged in these actions out of fear that Bennewitz's research into unidentified objects originating from Kirtland Air Force Base could blow the lid on top secret military air crafts being tested there.

Bennewitz

Needless to say, New Mexico holds a rather significant place in modern UFO lore. It has also been a hotbed of black ops, as the Bennewitz affair demonstrates. New Mexico also figures prominently in a different strand of conspiracy lore, one that revolves around the theories of James Shelby Downard and the highly controversial revisionist historian Michael A. Hoffman. Downard and Hoffman are most famous for their claim that the Kennedy assassination was an alchemical ritual based upon Frazer's concept of the killing of the divine king, a notion explored in their legendary "King Kill 33" essay. In this theory the Kennedy assassination was the second of three alchemical rituals designed to transform humanity.

"Fabled alchemy had at least three goals to accomplish before the total decay of matter, the total breakdown we are witnessing all around us today, was fulfilled. These are:

The Creation and Destruction of Primordial Matter

The Killing of the Divine King

The Bringing of Prima Materia to Prima Terra

"...The Creation and Destruction of Primordial Matter was accomplished at the White Head ('Ancient of Days'), at White Sands, New Mexico, at the Trinity Site. The Trinity Site itself is located at the beginning of an ancient western road known in old Mexico as the Jornada del muerto (the Journey of Death)..."
(Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, Michael A. Hoffman, pg. 80)

Shortly thereafter Hoffman goes on to link Truth or Consequences, New Mexico with the Creation and Destruction of Primordial Matter as well as the Killing of the Dive King (the Kennedy assassination).

"Other occult rituals for the Creation and Destruction of Primordial Matter were played out in the general area of the 33rd degree of north parallel in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, near the Trinity Site.

"There are 33 segments in the human spinal column which according to occult lore is the vehicle of the fiery ascent of the Kundalini serpent force which resides in the human body. 33 is the highest degree of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Near the Trinity Site a derelict shack was symbolically dubbed 'McDonald House.' The Creation and Destruction of Primordial Matter occurred exactly on the Trinity Site, the 'Place of Fire,' with the explosion of the first atomic bomb, culminating untold thousands of years of alchemical speculation and practice.

"The Killing of the King rite was accomplished at another Trinity site located approximately ten miles south of the 33rd degree of north parallel latitude between the Trinity River and the Triple Underpass at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Dealey Plaza was the site of the first masonic temple in Dallas. In this spot, which had been known as 'Bloody Elm Street,' the world leader who had become known as the 'King of Camelot,' President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was shot to death."
(ibid, pg. 83)

Of the Masonic ritual Hoffman claims to have occurred in Truth or Consequence, he earlier wrote:

"There are occult links between the masonic ceremonies held at the town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico and the masonic ritual which attended the explosion of the first atomic bomb and the assassination of President Kennedy.

"...The gauntlet the cryptocracy threw down at our feet in the specially orchestrated chain of ritual criminal events and locations intimately connected Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, was an 'open air' ceremony in full public view for those who had eyes and the intuition to see it. Much of the Process was carried out in public. This was the 'truth.' The supreme high-stakes gamblers of the masonic cryptocracy risked 'the consequences.' "

(ibid, pgs. 55-56)

I had previously been highly skeptical of Hoffman's claims surrounding Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. I have found no concrete information that such a ceremony as Hoffman describes ever took place in Truth or Consequences. Hoffman seems to imply that the Truth or Consequences Masonic ceremony occurred either before or roughly at the same time as the explosion of the first atomic bomb yet Truth or Consequences did not receive its present moniker till at least 1950 when it was named after a popular game show hosted by Ralph Edwards. Edwards hosted an episode of his show in Truth or Consequences and would continue to return every year for the town's annual fiesta up until the time of his death but I've found no indication that Edwards was a Mason or that there is anything Masonic about T & C's annual festival.

According to the website of T & C's Masonic lodge there has been a Masonic presence there since the early 20th century. A lodge was finally opened on November 14, 1939. A hail storm badly damaged the lodge in 1947, forcing the Masons to move their meetings elsewhere. After briefly using an Odd Fellows lodge a new Masonic lodge was dedicated on May 12, 1949. The website of T & C's Masonic lodge notes that an open air ceremony was held to dedicate a lodge but it refers to this one as the Grand Lodge of New Mexico, which is located in Albuquerque, though it seems to imply there was a link between the dedication of the Grand Lodge and the T & C lodge. Regardless, there's nothing definitive there about T & C being the site of a large open air Masonic ceremony.

And yet, here is Truth or Consequences reappearing in the news in relation to America's first commercial space sport. The Space Race is also important to Downard and Hoffman's theories surrounding the three goals of fabled alchemy. The third goal, the bringing of Prima Materia to Prima Terra, was supposedly conducted during NASA's ventures to the moon.

"The third objective of alchemy, the bringing of Prima Materia to Prima Terra was accomplished in the 1969 Apollo moon flights and the returning to earth of the moon rocks. Some of these rocks have been 'stolen' for use in occult rituals of no mean significance...

"Freemasonic astronaut and Apollo Mission Chief Lt. Col. Edwin A. 'Buzz' Aldrin carried with him to the moon the two-headed eagle of the medieval Satanic society, the Knights Templar (lately on display at the masonic grand lodge in Washington D.C.)

"Aldrin also wore two heavy gold rings to he moon which he refused to explain to reporters and admits having served himself a form of 'communion' there, though he is not an ordained priest or minister of any known religion save Freemasonry. Aldrin's boss, the national director of NASA at the time of the Moon Flights, was C. Fred Kleinknecht, Secretary General of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry."
(ibid, pg. 90)

Buzz Aldrin (right) displaying the Scottish Rite flag he took to the moon

Aldrin's co-pilot for the legendary Apollo 11 moon landing was of course the recently deceased Neil Armstrong. Hoffman's concept of the Apollo 11 landing as a Masonic ritual was given a boost from an unlikely source: Richard C. Hoagland. Hoagland was a scientific advisor to CBS News during the Apollo program and a consultant to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for nearly a decade, among other things. During the 1980s he began advocating the notion that an alien civilization had been discovered on the Moon and Mars and that NASA and the United States government were working in tandem to deceive the American public about this discovery.

Hoagland

I am not a big fan of Hoagland but I find it interesting that he confirms much of Downard and Hoffman's concepts of NASA as a Masonic/occult institution. Such an examination of NASA would go well beyond the scope of this article but I would like to briefly consider the connection the number 33 has to the Apollo 11 moon landing. For those of your wishing to read more on NASA's occult roots, I urge you to check out Curve of Bell's excellent post on such things. But anyway, on to Apollo 11 and Aldrin's mysterious 'communion' ceremony.

"The first thing he [Hoagland --Recluse] had to do was pin point the time of the mysterious communion ceremony. Using transcripts from the Apollo 11 mission logs, he and Johnston painstakingly reconstructed the post-landing lockdown procedures that Aldrin and Armstrong had gone through on that historic day. In doing so, they determined that the ceremony took place precisely thirty-three minutes after touchdown on the lunar surface.
(Dark Mission, Richard C. Hoagland & Mike Bara, pg. 212)

Keep in mind the number 33 plays heavily into Downard and Hoffman's notions surrounding the three goals of fabled alchemy. The first atomic bomb explosion at the Trinity site occurred exactly along the 33rd parallel north while the Kennedy assassination occurred within miles of it (it actually occurred at the 32nd parallel north despite what many conspiracy websites would have you believe). Truth or Consequences as well as Roswell, New Mexico, are both located along the 33rd parallel north as well. 33 is also the highest degree in Scottish Rite Freemasonry, as noted above.

Hoagland proposes a rather novel theory as to why the number 33 would be so important to both Freemasons and NASA.

"There is yet another mathematical form, called a 'pentatope,' which fits into this same numeric system. The Schlafli Symbol for this object is 3,3,3; or 333, obviously. The pentatope is the simplest regular figure in four dimensions, representing the four-dimensional analog of the solid tetrahedron. As such, it would hold the 'key' to accessing spatial dimensions higher than our traditional three, and is essentially a 3D tetrahedron as it would be seen in four dimensions. The 2D form of this 4D shape is a pentagon --with the vertices's connected by lines, which just happens to bear a striking resemblance to the D & M pyramid: Torun's 'Rosetta Stone' at Cydonia."
(ibid, pgs. 250-251)

Cydonia is a region of Mars where Hoagland believes there are ruins, including pyramids, of an alien civilization. Certainly this must be high in the rankings for most outrageous theory concerning the significance of the number 33. Regardless, Hoagland manages to compellingly document the presence of many high ranking Scottish Rite Masons in the upper levels of NASA's hierarchy as well as odd occurrences of the number 33 throughout the early space program.

And now, we return to Spaceport America. Like the Kennedy assassination, it is not actually located along the 33rd parallel north, but at the 32nd. Still, it remains closely associated with Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, as well as the White Sands Missile Range (home of the Trinity Site) and the Jornada del Muerto basin, all of which have been culturally linked to Downard and Hoffman's fabled alchemy theories along with America's space program. What are we to make of all of this? As tempting as it is to chalk up Spaceport America's location to mere coincidence it is a bit baffling as to why such a remote and desolate location would be chosen for America's first commercial spaceport. Did the developers think the super rich have a hidden desire to vacation near a former atomic test site?

Or are Downard and Hoffman more perceptive than their critics often give them credit for being? Possibly, but we have to also consider the long history of black ops in New Mexico, as I noted above in relation to much of the modern UFO lore that the state has spawned. When one considers the lengths the Air Force was willing to go to deceive Paul Bennewitz a host of unpleasant prospects emerge. By now the theories of Downard and Hoffman have gained a certain degree of mainstream exposure --Marilyn Manson recorded a song called "King Kill 33" based upon the above mentioned essay, after all. Did this factor into the decision to locate the spaceport near Truth or Consequences, White Sands, and the Jornada del Muerto?

If so, then what is being planned at this facility?

The LSD Chronicles: The Occult Connection Part II

Welcome to the second part of this LSD Chronicles entry examining the occult dabblings of the CIA and how they relate to the Company's experiments with LSD. In the first part of this series I noted the origins of the CIA's concept of 'psychochemical warfare' in the Ahnenerbe, the research of arm of Nazi Germany's notorious SS. Eerily, the CIA's ventures into mind control was initiated on April 20, 1950. April 20th was Hitler's birthday and a holiday in Nazi Germany. There are some rather unnerving implications in the name of the CIA's first mind control project, as shall now be examined. That project was called BLUEBIRD.

the logo of the Ahnenerbe

It is generally asserted that the names of CIA projects have no significance. For the most part this is true --most project names have been determined by computer-generated searches among a classified dictionary for years. However, in the early days of the CIA, this was not the case. Project ARTICHOKE (which was most likely not the same operation as BLUEBIRD and MK-ULTRA, as is commonly claimed), for instance, was allegedly so named because Allen Dulles was found of the vegetable. Project BLUEBIRD reportedly received its name from a human known as Sheffield Edwards, a former Army colonel who headed the CIA's Office of Security at the time and who would go on to personally handle joint CIA-mafia operations a decade later.

Historian Peter Levenda presents a rather compelling explanation for the name BLUEBIRD in the first book of his great Sinister Forces trilogy. Levenda argues that the BLUEBIRD moniker was inspired by a play called The Blue Bird by Belgian playwright and poet Maurice Maeterlinck. Maeterlinck, who won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, was quite popular in the first half of the twentieth century and his play inspired the phrase "the blue bird of happiness" then in use. Levenda believes that the name of Project BLUEBIRD, and possibly much more, was inspired by this play.

"In this play, first performed in the Russian language in Moscow on September 30, 1908 and later in English in London and New York, two children set off on a search for the Blue Bird of Happiness. This search leads them on many adventures --a kind of initiate quest for the Grail --and the author was startled to realize that many of the motifs of Maeterlinck's play are repeated in the CIA's search for a Manchurian Candidate, a search that began with Project BLUEBIRD. It is this strange set of correspondences that leads the author to the opinion that Sheffield Edwards's agenda itself was more profound than simply a search for a truth serum or a psychological defense against it, or that at least Edwards understood the implications of what he had set out to do in BLUEBIRD... 

"The story, which begins on Christmas Eve, involves two children --Tyltyl and his younger sister Mytyl --who set out on a quest to find the Blue Bird of Happiness. Impoverished children of a woodcutter, who live across from a great house with very rich children, they understand that they are too poor to receive Christmas presents that year. They go to sleep with the lamp out. Then, in the middle of the night, a light shines through their house from outside, the lamp lights itself, and the children awake... There is a knock at the door, and an old woman --who later introduces herself as the Fairy Berylune --asks them if they have 'the grass that sings, or the bird that is blue.' It appears that Berylune has a sick daughter who will not get well unless the Blue Bird of Happiness is found. The children, eager to help, then set off on a quest for the mysterious Bird... and to visit their dead grandparents, with the Fairy's help. in order to visit the dead, however, they have to pass through the Land of Memory which is on the way to the Blue Bird. 

"Tyltyl is given a magic hat. On this hat is a diamond, set squarely in the center. If he passes it, he will see 'the Soul of Things'; if he turns it to the right, he sees the past; to the left, the future; and as long as he wears the hat, it is invisible.  

"Those who read Eastern mysticism will no doubt grasp at once that the diamond is the 'adamanite substance' and its position on the hat is a reference to the Third Eye, which, when opened, gives the devotee access to secret information and occult powers. The search for the Blue Bird will give Tyltyl these powers as he walks through the Land of Memory, the Place of Night, a Graveyard, and an enchanted Forest, meeting his dead grandparents on the way. Eventually, of course, the children arrive back at their home on Christmas morning where they discover that the Blue Bird of Happiness has been there all along; Maeterlinck's homely moral, which was embraced by many at the time. Few sought to delve any deeper into the tale to discover the esoteric elements of necromancy and treasure-quest. That the children --virgins --are the idea seers according to occult texts of the Middle Ages... goes unnoticed."
(Sinister Forces Book I, Peter Levenda, pgs. 188-189)

There's a lot to take in here. Tyltyl's hat, with its reference to the Third Eye, eerily predates the psychedelic counterculture of the latter half of the twentieth century that believed such substances opened said eye, for instance. The Third Eye of the hat could be seen as symbolic of a substance or technique that opens it. Certainly drugs are not the only option --the CIA found that both hypnosis and remote viewing could be used as well, but more on that later. The drug angle is, however, further reinforced by the appearance of the Fairy Berylune. Fairies have a very long association with mushrooms, some of which produce hallucinations akin to LSD, as chronicled before here. Some may think I'm stretching, but remember Maeterlinck had a known interest in the occult and at times worked this into his plays and poems. If Levenda is correct, and the play The Blue Bird inspired the name of Project BLUEBIRD, and an occult interpretation was behind this inspiration, then this is a rather unsettling foundation for the CIA's ventures into the human mind.

Veteran conspiracy researchers have probably already noted the similarities Maeterlinck's play has to an alleged CIA project known as Monarch. An obscene amount of blogs out there claiming to expose this operation have already written extensively on this project so I shall be brief. It is alleged that Project Monarch uses an elaborate combination of drugs and ritualistic abuse against children that eventually leads to multiple personalities. These alternative personalities are then trained to become spies, drug mules, prostitutes and assassins for the powers that be.

It seems rather obvious at this point that Project Monarch is one of the great hoaxes played on the alternative media by the US Intelligence community. I have read rather extensively on the CIA's ventures into mind control and I have yet to see a single credible source give any credence to Project Monarch. Don't misunderstand me --the CIA most certainly did invest a great deal of time and money into exploring the possibilities of a programmed assassin or 'Manchurian Candidate' in various projects, but nothing solid has yet to emerge concerning Monarch.

But even though Project Monarch is almost surely an elaborate piece of disinformation does not mean that there are not a few grains of truth hidden in the conspiracy theories. A common theme many Monarch proponents proclaim is that the physical abuse the children in this project are subjected is administered along the lines of occult rituals. Satanic ritual abuse has long been linked to Monarch narratives. If Levenda is correct and Project BLUEBIRD was partly inspired by an esoteric interpretation of The Blue Bird then does this also mean that the occult played heavily into then CIA's future mind control programs? What's more, was some type of ritualistic sex also employed in conjunction with drugs?

Based on my research, this is almost certainly the case --the CIA was as riddled with occult dabblings at the height of the Cold War as the Ahnenerbe was in the midst of the second World War. But before examining the more overt occult projects of the CIA and other US Intelligence agencies, let us first consider the major mind control projects themselves.

Many with even a passing knowledge of the CIA's mind control ventures are aware of the big three --Project BLUEBIRD, Project ARTICHOKE, and MK-ULTRA. It is generally assumed that all three projects were the same thing and that the CIA kept changing the names in order to cover their tracks. This is not, however, the case. All three projects were separate and at times in conflict with one and other. Sidney Gottlieb, the TSS man who oversaw MK-ULTRA would insistent in 1977 during a Congressional hearing that ARTICHOKE and BLUEBIRD were under other authorities.

"Project names like ARTICHOKE and Bluebird have been mentioned in the press, associated with my name. My remembrance is that project ARTICHOKE was managed by the Office of Security and that I had no direct or indirect responsibility for it, although I became aware of its existence and general nature over the years. Project Bluebird, as I remember it, was also an Office of Security concept, possibly never actually realized, which later evolved into a TSS-sponsored activity looking into brainwashing, and ultimately included the Society of the Investigation of Human Ecology."
(A Terrible Mistake, H.P. Albarelli, pg. 569)

Obviously there was a great amount of overlap between these projects, which has further added to the confusion. Many researchers, including Albarelli and John Marks lean towards BLUEBIRD 'evolving' into ARTICHOKE, but this is not certain. What is certain is that ARTICHOKE and MK-ULTRA were separate projects that operated at the same time of each other, contrary to the common perception that ARTICHOKE became MK-ULTRA. There were other projects involved in mind control research as well.

"In 1964, MKULTRA became MKSEARCH, with all active sub-projects carried over. The next year, the Human Ecology Fund was dissolved. According to the CIA, no files from MKSEARCH are available because most, if not all, were destroyed in 1973 along with most MKULTRA records. MKNAOMI, the joint CIA-SOD Camp Detrick project, operated until 1970. Former SOD researchers say that some MKNAOMI files were maintained, but nobody, including anyone at the CIA or Army, will disclose where they are."
(ibid, pg. 307)

There was also the mysterious Project MK-DELTA as well.

"Prior to approving MKULTRA, the Agency, under the codename MKDELTA, had already embarked on some research in the development and use of biological and chemical weapons. The name MKDELTA, however, was not retired and it continued to be used to track the operational use of MKULTRA techniques and weapons. Nearly all MKDELTA files, along with those of MKULTRA, were destroyed in 1973."
(ibid, pg. 282)

Given how much of the documentation of these projects has been destroyed it is likely we will never know the true relationship between all of them. From what has survived we can determine that there was a thoroughly occult aspect to many of these projects that went well beyond the use of psychochemical drugs. The early CIA had quite an obsession with the occult as Albarelli makes clear.

"Several heavily redacted CIA documents reveal a keen interest in the Ark of the Covenant, Solomon's Temple, and the 'peculiar apparatus reportedly witnessed by Ezekiel. 'Ezekiel's Vision' is a biblical passage extremely important to Jewish mystics. It has also long been a source of fascination and mystery to any in the UFO community. Biblical passages about the 'rock at Horeb' led the CIA to investigate the science of dousing to locate 'concealed springs and water' and 'other hidden sources of valuable natural resources... 

"Another document speaks of 'the need to be ever vigilant in our pursuits' and the 'need to verify whether these claims are real or are embellishments that have taken on a life of their own over the decades.' One fragment outlined the possible use of cats as couriers because they 'are highly magnetized animals' and could be utilized for the covert delivery of unidentified items. 

"For some time, TSS researchers were especially interested in the work of psychic Edgar Cayce. According to one document, in the early 1960s, consultants acting covertly were employed to spend time at the Association for Research and Enlightenment, housed in Cayce's Virginia Beach, Virginia headquarters. Related to these esoteric and occult explorations is another CIA-requested task... : 'an examination and explanation of certain of the Masonic designs and architectural incorporation into the Federal City.' Among those listed for examination were 'the Capitol complex, the zodiacs of the Library of Congress, Meridian Hill Park, and the recently [1952] installed Mellon Fountain.'  

"... the work of Dr. J.B. Rhine at Duke University's Parapsychology Laboratory in North Carolina was of special interest to the CIA's Security Research staff. One former CIA official has reported that the writings of Martin Ebon on parapsychology and the paranormal were likewise of special interest to the Agency, and that many of Ebon's books originated in studies conducted by the CIA's SRS and TSS branches. Ebon wrote over twenty-five books on subjects such as life after death, communication with the dead, ghosts, and exotic ESP. Born in 1917 in Hamburg, Germany, he emigrated to the United States in 1938 and worked as managing editor of the Foreign Language Division of the Overseas News Agency. During World War II, Ebon joined the staff of the U.S. Office of War Information where he became an expert on the Soviet Union. After the war, he became closely aligned with the Parapsychology Foundation of New York, and was executive editor of the International Journal on Parapsychology. 

"An examination of Ebon's extensive writings reveals that he was nearly always at the forefront of paranormal studies, an that often his writings paralleled the secret research of the CIA. Ebon has written authoritatively about Faraday cages, ESP, telepathy, bio-energy, hypnosis, remote viewing (well before it became all the rage), electromagnetic waves, and out-of-body experiences. In one of his books he revealed details of a three-year CIA program designed to make 'a serious effort' to advance ESP research 'in the direction of reliable applications to the practical problems of intelligence.'"
(ibid, pgs. 264-265)

I've already tackled a few of these subjects: More information on the CIA's ventures into hypnosis can be found here and here; for CIA and military pursuits into remote viewing, check here and here. These are just to two of CIA's more arcane endeavors --As noted above, there were a rather wide range of occult and paranormal topics CIA invested a considerable amount of time and money into. As such, there are most certainly strong shades of the SS and its research arm, the Ahnenerbe. I've often wondered if elements of the Ahnenerbe were conscripted into the academic pursuits of CIA. If the CIA had use for thousands, possibly tens of thousands of former SS men in various clandestine operations then is it out of the range of possibilities they also made use of the 'expertise' of the Ahnenerbe?

Regardless, even the CIA's early ventures into mind controlling drugs were framed within the context of the occult. As noted above, the very concept of 'psychochemical' warfare has its roots in the psychedelic research conducted by the Ahnenerbe on behalf of the Nazi regime. There's even a possibility that LSD itself was commissioned by the Nazis, as I speculated before here.

This connection with the occult and mind controlling drugs would continue throughout the early years of the CIA (some would argue it never really ended). The CIA's assassination manual features an introduction describing one of the myths surrounding Hassan-i-Sabbah, the legendary founder of the Medieval Islamic sect known as the Hashshashins. They seemingly believed that he had used drugs to create an army of programmed killers.

"A 1952 draft version of the manual describes a man named Hasan-Dan-Sabah who used the drug hashish to 'induce motivation in his followers, who were assigned to carry out political and other murders, usually at the cost of their lives.' Hasan-Dan-Sabah's credo with his closet initiates and skilled assassins was: 'Nothing is true, everything is permitted.' States the CIA's manual, 'Assassination is a term thought to be derived from 'Hashish,' a drug similar to marijuana.' it is certainly intriguing, for a number of reasons, that the Agency included this reference in its assassination manual. First and foremost is the nexus among Hasan-Dan-Sabah (also known as The Old Man of the Mountain_, Hassan-I-Sabbah, an Iranian born in 1056 near modern-day Tehran, and the Kinghts Templar, a legendary group that nearly all of the CIA's founders and earliest employees openly admired and sought to emulate."
(ibid, pgs. 263-264)

Hassan-i-Sabbah

Indeed. When the CIA began testing psychedelics in the field, such as at George Hunter White's notorious 'safe houses,' occult aspects of the drugs were also examined. Continuing with Albarelli:

"On the esoteric side again, one MKULTRA project, funded in 1957 through the Human Ecology Fund... The MKULTRA program funded drug experiments conducted by Alesiter Crowley, a controversial and some would say depraved, practitioner of the 'black arts,' and considered a 'high priest' of occultism. The World War II 'truth drug' research conducted by Stanley Lovell's OSS department had briefly examined Crowley's experiments with drugs, but had discarded them because OSS scientists found Crowley 'simply to difficult to fathom.' 

"Nonetheless the CIA took a second look. Here it is worth noting that Crowley, according to writer Richard B. Spence, was a lifelong intelligence operative for the British government... what seemed to attract the CIA's scientific attention was Crowley's use of drugs such as datura, called the 'juice of the Vedic Soma,' and a hallucinogen sometimes called Raziel's Sapphire' that was used by Native Americans in Florida. Crowley variously combined these drugs with sexual practices and wrote of his experiences in lurid detail. 

"Apparently, this tied into safe house experiments that George White, Dr. James Hamilton, and John Gittinger were conducting, first in New York and then in San Francisco. Gittinger would say years later: 

" 'Yes, we were interested in the combination of certain drugs with sex acts... we looked at the various pleasure positions used by prostitutes and others... this well before anything like the Kama Sutra had become widely popular. Some of the women, the professionals, we used were very adept at these practices...' 

"...This would have fit neatly with Crowley's practice of 'sexual magick' and drugs. Grant writes that Crowley 'used them [drugs] all in his research for the mysterious elixir potent to unseal the gates of the invisible world. He also wished to compare the states of consciousness induced by their use with those resulting from madness. obsession and mystical exaltation...' 

"Another fascinating SIHE (Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology) project, funded through MKULTRA, involved 'analysis and assessment' of Dr. Carl Jung's 'phylogenetic unconscious,' later called the 'collective unconscious.' The CIA appeared especially interested in the 'autochthonous revival of ancient myths and signs' in the minds of individuals unaware of and uneducated about such ideas and theories. Again, it appeared that the drugs LSD and mescaline were somehow linked to the project, but how, specifically, is not revealed in the scant materials documenting the project..."
(ibid, pgs. 288-290)

Crowley (top) and Jung (bottom), two influences on the CIA?

Albarelli strongly implies that LSD and other psychedelics were used in the CIA's Crowleyian sex magick experiments as they were in the Company's examination of Jung's theory of the collective unconscious. As the reader will surely agree, the CIA was immersed in occult research both before and throughout the Dulles era (and possibly well beyond). Indeed, it seems as though the CIA was as influenced by myths of ancient mind controlling substances and the research of the occult oriented Ahnenerbe as they were by communist techniques of brainwashing when they set out to create their very own 'Manchurian Candidate.' And what are we to make of the strange overlaps between The Blue Bird, Project BLUEBIRD and the Project Monarch hoax? Did the CIA's sexual experiments stick to prostitutes and their johns, or we other subjects sought out?

These are all very chillings questions to consider. It says much about the early CIA and its eerie overlaps with the SS and Ahnenerbe that these questions must even be asked in the first place. But perhaps the most unsettling question not yet raised is when, or if, these types of projects ended? It is of course impossible to know as many of the CIA's post 1970s records were pretty thoroughly destroyed. We have some inclination of what went on in the early days, but not so much after the late 1960s.

And with these questions, I shall end this piece.

22, the Autumn Equinox and Germ Warfare

This afternoon I was greeted by a rather curious and disturbing development. According to Raw Story a human being known as Klein Michael Thaxton entered Pittsburgh's Gateway Center carrying two mysterious bags. He then preceded to take a hostage, hole up on the 16th floor, and proclaim that he has a bomb. Presently Pittsburgh police and engaged in a stand off with Mr. Thaxton. Hopefully this situation will be resolved peacefully by the time many of my readers skim over this piece. 

I was immediately struck by several occurrences of twilight language this incident has already yielded. The most obvious are the connections to the Aurora shootings, which occurred exactly two months and one day ago from this current event. The alleged perpetrator of that tragedy, James Eagan Holmes, had just reappeared in the news yesterday when Colorado prosecutors abruptly dropped their bid to gain access to a notebook Holmes had mailed to University of Colorado psychiatrist Lynne Fenton shortly before the killings. While it's been widely suspected that something damning resides within the pages of that notebook this development was largely overshadowed by Holmes new appearance. His trademark reddish-orange died hair had been replaced by a new haircut. Strangely, Holmes seemed to project the same kind of vacant gaze that Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner has displayed from time to time in his court appearances. Loren Coleman has written more on this here.

Besides Holmes reappearing in the news yesterday there is a more direct link between the current standoff in Pittsburgh and the Aurora shootings: the film The Dark Knight Rises. This was of course the film that was being shown in the Aurora theater that Holmes allegedly open fired in. The Dark Knight Rises was largely filmed in Pittsburgh, according to the Timesonline. What's more, several members of the NFL team the Pittsburgh Steelers appear in the film in a sequence that was shot at the Steelers' stadium, Heinz Field.

Some other curious grains of twilight language are also present. The Pittsburgh perpetrator, Klein Michael Thaxton, is said to be 22 years old. The number 22 has much esoteric significance. There are 22 major trumps in Tarot, 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet and 22 paths of the Tree of Life, among other things.

"This number, perhaps, symbolizes the manifestation of being in all its diversity and during its allotted span, that is, in both space and time. In fact, it is the sum total of the twenty-two letters which, according to the Kabbalah, give expression to the universe. There are the three fundamental letters, the equivalents of alpha, omega and the letter M, which are archetypal figures; the seven double letters which correspond to the intermediate world of the understanding; twelve simple letters corresponding to the world of the senses. Of course this teaching relates to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, but has its analogies in the Ancient Egyptian hieratic alphabet as well as in Phoenician, Ethiopic and other languages... 

"However the interpretation of twenty-two as the 'symbol of all natural forms and of created history as a whole'... may well go back to the ancient Zoroastrians. Their Avesta was written in books each of twenty-two chapters and their collection of prayers contains twenty-two chapters, too, while there are twenty-two major arcana in the Tarot."
(Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pg. 1046)

The number 22's association with time is compelling considering how much play the end of the Mayan calender on December 21, 2012 has gotten of late. Of course the fact that the current hostage situation in Pittsburgh is occurring exactly three months before the Mayan calender ends is rather curious as well.

Another strange association with twenty-two that occurs to me is that this year's Autumn equinox will happen tomorrow, September 22, 2012. According to the thirty-third degree Freemason Manly P. Hall  the Autumn equinox was traditionally celebrated on September 21. Of it, Hall writes:

"The autumnal equinox is analogous to the mythological fall of man, at which time the human spirit descended into the realms of Hades by being immersed in the illusion of terrestrial existence."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, pg. 244)

This is rather ominous when taken in conjunction with the 2012 doomsday hype and the spiraling cycle of violence at play in both America and the world abroad at the moment. I've already covered a bit of the fallout from the protests in Libya and Egypt before here so I won't dwell on them now. Suffice to say, things are getting crazy out there and the current hostage situation in Pittsburgh is just the latest manifestation of this.

Finally, there's one last point of twilight language I wish to consider: the location of today's standoff. Pittsburgh originally began as the location of the notorious Fort Pitt. It was here that one of those most barbaric incidents of the massively barbaric American Indian Wars occurred. In 1763 Captain Simeon Ecuyer gave representatives of the Delaware tribe blankets infected with small pox during a parlay. This represents one of the first known uses of germ warfare.

Happily, the standoff in Pittsburgh seems to have ended without bloodshed. Still, I am most unnerved by the hidden implication of this incident --the Autumn equinox, the Mayan calender, 22, and germ warfare make for unsettling bedfellows, to say the least. It says a lot about the state of affairs in the world today that such an event as today's hostage standoff in Pittsburgh will quickly be forgotten. After all, with all the bloodshed abound, this is not a major event.

Still, the symbols underlining this event point towards further dark days and nights ahead.

The LSD Chronicles: The Occult Connection Part I

Welcome to the latest installment in my ongoing LSD Chronicles series, a project examining the history of LSD in the US Intelligence community. In the first series of posts, which can be found here and here, I considered the life and times of biological warfare specialist Frank Olson, the first individual whose death was linked to CIA LSD experiments. In the second series of post, which can be read here, here and here, I examined the origins of LSD in the CIA's various mind control experiments. In this series of posts we will examine some of the major CIA mind control projects involved in LSD research, as well as the origins many of these projects (as well as the CIA itself) had in the occult.

As was revealed in my Origins series of posts the notion of psychedelics as tools of mind control was largely devised (at least among American officials) by an individual known as Dr. L. Wilson Greene. Greene would become obsessed with what he dubbed 'psychochemical warfare,' a kind of bloodless war in which an advisory was made mentally incapable of fighting. This concept would have a major influence on individuals such as Sidney Gottlieb, the notorious director of the MK-ULTRA project that shall be examined in just a bit.

"...Dr. L. Wilson Greene, Chemical Corps Scientific Director, the man largely responsible, along with Stanley Lovell, for the creation of Camp Detrick's Special Operations Division. Dr. Greene, a civilian, was a strong advocate of the use of mind-altering drugs, including mescaline and LSD, covertly and in battlefield situations. Sidney Gottlieb found Greene's thoughts most impressive and worthy of pursuit. Much later, Gottlieb would admit: 

I was fascinated by the ideas Greene was advancing. He was convinced that it was possible to actually win a battle or larger engagement without killing anyone or destroying any property. While I found this to be a novel approach to war, I was somewhat skeptical about it, but I was intrigued by the potential applications of psychochemicals to much smaller conflicts and situations. There I saw tremendous promise."

 (A Terrible Mistake, H.P. Albarelli, pg. 61)

Greene himself found the inspiration for his concepts from a most curious source: Nazi Germany. According to Albarelli, Greene first conceived of his concepts of psychochemical warfare after examining the captured files of the Ahnenerbe, easily one of the strangest aspects of the Nazi regime. The Ahnenerbe was founded by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the monstrous Schutzstaffel (SS). Superficially the Ahnenerbe was billed as a kind of anthropological society geared toward studying the origins of the Aryan race.

"Himmler gave the Ahnenerbe official status within the Reich in 1935 (thus protecting it and its members from the spate of new laws that were designed to ban occult-related activity); in 1940 it became a formal division of the SS. With over fifty separate sections devoted to a wide range of scientific and pseudoscientific research, the Ahnenerbe became a boondoggle for Nazi scholars of every description. There was a Celtic Studies group within the Ahnenerbe; a group to study the Teutonic cult center Externsteine (near Wewelsberg), which as we have seen was believed to be the site of the famous World-Tree, Ydragsil or Yggdrasil; a group devoted to Icelandic research (as the Eddas were sacred to the Teuton myth, and since Iceland was considered to be the location of Thule itself); a group that was formed around Ernst Schafer and his Tibet expedition; a runic studies group; a 'World Ice Theory' division; an archaeological research group that scoured the earth for evidence of Aryan presence in lands as remote from Germany as the Far East and South America (an idea possibly inspired by the writings of Blavatsky and by contemporary research 'proving' that the Aryan Norsemen had discovered America hundreds of years before Columbus); the list goes on and on."
(Unholy Alliance, Peter Levenda, pg. 182)

the Ahnenerbe logo

But the dynamic of the Ahnenerbe gradually changed, especially with outbreak of the second World War, by which time it was directing some of the vilest crimes of the entire war. Probably the most notorious of these were committed by a division of the Ahnenerbe known as 'Institute for Military Scientific Research,' which carried out several shocking experiments at the concentration camp of Dachau.

"At Dachau, Nazis took the search for scientific knowledge of military value to its awful extreme. There, in a closely guarded, fenced-off part of the camp, S.S. doctors studied such questions as the amount of time a downed airman could survive in the North Atlantic in February. Information of this sort was considered important to German security, since skilled pilots were in relatively short supply. So, at Heinrich Himmler's personal order, the doctors at Dachau simply sat by huge tubs of ice water with stopwatches and timed how long it took immersed prisoners to die. In other experiments, under the cover of 'aviation medicine,' inmates were crushed to death in high-altitude pressure chambers (to learn how high pilots could safely fly), and prisoners were shot, so that special blood coagulants could be tested on their wounds. 

"The mescaline tests at Dachau run by Dr. Kurt Plotner were not nearly so lethal as the others in the 'aviation' series, but the drug could still cause grave damage, particularly to anyone who already had some degree of mental instability. The danger was increased by the fact that the mescaline was administered covertly by S.S. men who spiked the prisoners' drinks... Many must have feared they had gone stark mad all on their own. Always, the subjects of these experiments were Jews, gypsies, Russians, and other groups on whose lives the Nazis placed little or no value..."
(The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate, John Marks, pg. 5)

one of the infamous Dachau experiments

The mescaline experiments seemingly had a vast influence on the US Intelligence community's post-war ventures into mind control. Of course, it is impossible to know the full extent to which these experiments influenced the US as they remain classified to this very day, nearly 70 years after the war came to an end.

"After the liberation of Dachau, US investigating teams read through the Ahnenerbe and Luftwaffe files on the concentration camp experiments, looking for anything that might be useful in a military application. Marks goes on to note that 'None of the German mind-control research was ever made public.' Other than the hints of it we can discover in Sievers's diary and similar memoranda, that pretty much remains the situation today."
(Unholy Alliance, Peter Levenda, pg. 235)

Perhaps the search for mind controlling drugs is not the only overlap between the Nazis and the US intelligence community. Apparently the SS, which controlled the Ahnenerbe and eventually included it as a branch of the organization, saw itself as a kind of modern day Knights Templar defending the Nazi faith, according to H.P. Albarelli. Under Himmler it became a thoroughly occult order to its very core.

"...the SS functioned as a kind of elite corps of pure-blooded Aryan supermen. Himmler joined the SS when it was still a bodyguard unit with no more than about three hundred members and he marched with Hitler's men during the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, carrying a flag. After he became the head of the SS in 1929, however, he began to reform it along lines that can only be described as cultic, while its membership rose from three hundred to fifty-two thousand by 1933. The very selection of the twin Sig rune as its emblem had its roots in the doctrines of List and Liebenfels... Even the graves of dead SS men were adorned --not with crosses or other more traditional tombstones --but with a German rune symbol (the'mensch' rune) made out of wood. This same rune was used on the cover of the articles of the Lebensborn society, the 'human stud farm' operation of the SS, thus making a curious statement about the life and death cycle as perceived by the official pagans of the Reich."
(ibid, pgs. 168-169)

Himmler

Interestingly, several of the major figures in the early days of the CIA, such as Frank Wisner, also viewed their organization as akin to the Templars and thus adopted a cultic structure for the fledgling intelligence agency.

"Respected writer and former Newsweek editor, Evan Thomas, writes in his masterful book, The Very Best Men, that William Colby, an OSS officer who later became DCI, 'credited [Frank] Wisner [the former OSS officer who founded the CIA] with creating an atmosphere of an order of Kinghts Templar, to save Western freedom from Communist darkness.' Other prominent early CIA officals strove to perform 'work worthy of the Knights Templar' and to belong to a 'cultish crusade.'
(A Terrible Mistake, H.P. Albarelli, pg. 264) 

Frank Wisner

Is it a stretch to link the SS and CIA because both organizations viewed themselves as modern day Templars? Perhaps, but Frank Wisner, the chief architect of the Templar-like atmosphere of the CIA, had rather dubious ties to the Nazis himself. Wisner, at one time the head of the Office of Policy Coordination (one of the major psychological operations arms of the CIA), is a largely forgotten figure nowadays. When he is remembered, it is usually for his breakdown shortly after the Soviets put down the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Wisner was eventually institutionalized and under went electroshock therapy before returning to the CIA in 1958. He was never the same, however, and retired in 1962. Three years later he committed suicide via a shotgun blast to the head.

Before his down fall Wisner was a close associate of legendary CIA director Allen Dulles. On Dulles's behalf, Wisner oversaw the importation of numerous WWII war criminals, many of them ex-Nazis and collaborators, into the United States.

"The CIA, and Frank Wisner's clandestine action shop (the OPC) in particular, were never content with the immigration to the United States of a handful of especially valuable assets. The 100 Persons Act was simply too restrictive, Wisner believed. The agency was running international programs involving thousands of foreign agents, with tens of thousands of subagents. Many of these men and women were risking their lives for modest paychecks they got from the Americans, as he saw it. The promise of free immigration to the United States was crucial in recruiting new overseas help for the CIA and in retaining the loyalty of many persons already on the U.S. payroll. 

"According to State Department records, Wisner wanted to grant U.S. citizenship as a reward to not just '100 persons' per year, but to thousands, even tens of thousands of informants, covert operators, guerrillas and agents of influence. Whatever else might be said of Wisner, he was never one to let sticky legal technicalities stand in the way of what he believed to be the best interests of the country. He set out to create a wide variety of both legal and illegal dodges to bring men and women favored by his organization into the country.  

"This immigration campaign became an integral part of CIA clandestine strategy of the period. The agency manipulated U.S. immigration laws and procedures on behalf of thousands of favored emigres  selecting some for entry to this country and rejecting others. While only a fraction of this influx appears to have been Nazis or Nazi collaborators (the true number is impossible to know until the agency opens its files), it is clear that a number of identifiable war criminals were brough to the United States with CIA assistance during this period. Equally important, the security agencies of the government gave tacit support to private refugee relief committees the stated goal of which included assisting thousands of Waffen SS veterans in immigrating to the United States."
(Blowback, Christopher Simpson, pgs. 201-202)

Allen Dulles, Wisner's boss and long time friend, also had rather unsavory ties to the Nazis.

"Other Nazis, including an entire division of Ukrainian Waffen SS, are assisted out of Europe and into safe havens in North America, South America, Australasia, and the Middle East by the US State Department, British Intelligence, French Intelligence and the Vatican. This operation will be aided, abetted and covered up by the CIA in the post-war years, and especially beginning in 1953, when Allen Dulles becomes CIA Director. Dulles' Chief of Counter intelligence, James Jesus Angleton, (later the CIA's Vatican liaison), and Frank Wisner are particularly involved, along with thousands of former Nazi 'freedom fighters.' What is variously known as Die Spinne, Die Kamaradenwerke, and ODESSA, is born... 

"In 1945, Dulles --along with his OSS agent Hans Bernd Gisevius, a former Gestapo officer --was accused by the US Treasury Department of laundering Nazi funds from Hungry to Switzerland (where Dulles was based). The investigation was dropped when the US State Department claimed jurisdiction. Gisevius himself was working for the massive intelligence operation being run by a White Russian, General Turkul, and known as the Black Orchestra, a Vatican-linked Nazi intelligence network that was in reality a miracle of Soviet penetration into the Western intelligence services, something that Dulles would not have known at the time. Gisevius, from his position with the Reichsbank, also had excellent connections in the Nazi intelligence services and had been used by Dulles to communicate with Admiral Canaris of the Abwehr during the war."
(Sinister Forces Book II, Peter Levenda, pg. 61)

Allen Dulles

Angleton, Wisner, Dulles... These men are among the chief movers and shakers in the early CIA. Their influence on the Agency would still be felt decades after they left the organization. Dulles in particular has been accused of erecting a kind of good ole boy network within the CIA consisting of OSS veterans that would continue to dominate the Agency long after Dulles was gone. The fact that several of the Agency's most noted directors, such as Richard Helms, William Colby and William Casey, were all close friends of Dulles only lends credence to this claim.

Few would dispute that Allen Dulles had an enormous hand in shaping the CIA into what it is today. What then are we to make of his ties to the Nazis and his continual dependence on them as the Cold War raged on? Did the SS veterans that Dulles inevitably employed have an influence in the shaping of the CIA? If so, did the occult nature of the SS also seep into the CIA?

Given the whole range of esoteric studies the CIA would embark upon over the years, many of which had precedence in the work of the Ahnenerbe, it is hard to deny this link. This connection is especially troubling when one considers that Allen Dulles was one of the chief proponents of mind control and poured vast, unknown sums of money toward this objective.

Dulles was not, however, the individual that initiated the CIA's venture into mind control (though he was undoubtedly a major proponent of such a direction). Still, there were certainly elements of Nazism and high strangeness surrounding the CIA's entry into the mystical realms of mind control. The individual in question who authorized this endeavor was Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the very first director of the CIA and all around strange character.

"Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter was the first Director of the CIA; he was also later to become a member of NICAP, that organization of professional scientists, military men, engineers and civilians created to uncover the truth about UFOs. Hillenkoetter remained convinced about the reality of the phenomenon all his life. But on April 20, 1950 --ironically enough, Hitler's bithday --he approved the creation of a special project to discover a means to combat the Russian mind weapons, whatever they were. This project was called BLUEBIRD."
(Sinister Forces Book I, Peter Levenda, pg. 187)

Roscoe Hillenkoetter

According to Christopher Simpson in his classic examination of America's recruitment of Nazi war criminals, Blowback, Hillenkoetter was also one of the early proponents for a more offensive role for the CIA, including clandestine operations, as well. This combined with his ties to mind control and UFOs make Hillenkoetter a rather compelling figure, but unfortunately I've yet to encounter a really in depth examination of his life, if one even exists. Hillenkoetter seems to have a very subtle but definite influence on the history of the twentieth century even if it is largely ignored by mainstream historians. The legacy of Project BLUEBIRD is a different story, in an esoteric kind of way. To understand the curious legacy of this project we must first examine the name which is where I will pick up in the second part of this series.