A Clockwork Orange Career
Source: Freedom Magazine The maestro of "mind-control" continues to haunt America
Articles in this edition describe some of the
life-destroying effects of psychiatry's primary therapies - drugs and
electric shock. The following presents one of their chief advocates -
Louis Jolyon West, director of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute
until his resignation following exposure of possible violations of
federal law regarding use of government funds.
In a lawsuit currently before the Los Angeles Superior
Court, it has come to light that the University of California at Los
Angeles and UCLA Medical Center have, since the early 1980s, attempted
to remove psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West from the roster of the
university's faculty.
One psychiatric colleague who asked to go unnamed
described West as "supremely arrogant" and charged that he "misused
his positions for his own ends," at the expense of the university.
Many will not find such statements surprising,
considering West himself, whose history includes controversial LSD
experiments for the Central Intelligence Agency and even more
controversial plans to construct secret installations for the "study"
and modification - by electric shock, chemical castration and other
means - of the behavior of citizens,
particularly minorities.
Indeed, any discussion of CIA "mind-control" endeavors,
such as the infamous MK-Ultra, would be incomplete without West, who
has, according to information provided to Freedom, enjoyed a long and
lucrative career in this field. Although he has sometimes posed as a
civil libertarian, he has not sought to expose dangers of intelligence
agency "mind-control" techniques, but rather to secretly perfect its
use on others.
In a document released under the Freedom of Information
Act, for example, it was revealed that more than four decades ago, the
CIA sought to set West up in a clandestine laboratory to perform
"mind-control" experiments with hypnosis and LSD. A portion of the
experiments with LSD and other drugs in which West was enmeshed at the
CIA's behest were exposed in
the mid-1970s by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,
chaired by Senator Frank Church.
West contributed to the early work which resulted in,
among other things, the death of tennis pro Harold Blauer in an
experiment with a mescaline derivative in New York City in 1953. The
Senate Select Committee's investigation revealed drugging of
unsuspecting targets, electric shocking to obliterate memory and
"programming" individuals to kill - acting under psychiatric control.
West's career highlights included injecting a
7,000-pound bull elephant, Tusko, with an overwhelming dose of LSD -
roughly 1,435 times the quantity, in West's own words, one would have
given to a human "to produce for several hours a marked mental
disturbance." Not surprisingly, the elephant collapsed in agony
minutes later and died.
West had ingested the mind-altering substance himself
shortly before killing Tusko, the prize of the Oklahoma City Zoo, and
was evidently still under its influence at the time he sloshed through
the beast's entrails, performing an "autopsy" which he recorded on
film. He later issued a report
to advance his "discovery" that elephants could be killed with LSD and
to promote use of the drug to cull elephant herds in Africa.
Prisons as Laboratories
"Jolly" West moved on, changing his base of operations
from Oklahoma to Los Angeles. In keeping with intelligence proposals
to utilize prisons as experimental laboratories, he drafted a plan to
use electric shock and drugs
on state inmates in what was called "aversion therapy."
In the 1960s, West could also be found in the
Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco, conducting more LSD
experiments, this time within the hippie community.
A pet project of West's in the late 1960s and early
1970s was the Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence. He
proposed to establish a "securely fenced" center at a remote,
abandoned Nike missile base in the Santa Monica Mountains, in keeping
with earlier plans by the CIA to set up
"mind-control" stations off the beaten path, where experimentation
could be carried out free from such concerns as human rights.
Ironically, West embarked on a PR campaign to promote himself as a
champion of "human rights" - an effort that would be comical if not
for the bottom line in terms of human suffering.
West's plans for such centers were the subject of
hearings by the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1974,
chaired by Senator Sam Ervin, whose members were alarmed at reports
that West planned to test radical forms of behavior modification -
mind-bending drugs, electric shock, implantation of electrodes in the
brain and forcible castration with the drug cyproterone acetate.
Critics charged that his violence centers would target blacks and
Mexican-Americans in its studies.
Other sites selected for West's violence centers in
California were Vacaville, Camarillo and Atascadero state hospitals.
It has been documented that CIA drug and radiation experiments did
take place at Vacaville.
Yet another study that West called for was clearly aimed
at intelligence agency application: remote monitoring and behavioral
control. His plan was to use electric shock and other means to
remotely control human behavior by computer.
Tight-Lipped
Many millions more poured into the controversial UCLA
Neuropsychiatric Institute that West headed, including over $14
million in federal funds in one fiscal year before he stepped down.
West remains tight-lipped about these and other
experiments and activities which are under examination by Freedom.
Walter Bowart, author of Operation Mind Control, described West as
"perhaps the chief advocate of mind control in America today. From his
participation in the development of
brainwashing techniques for the U.S. Air Force to his involvement in
the CIA 's famous MK-Ultra projects, West has figured so prominently
in the research and development of the invisible war1 that his public
career appears like a carefully constructed espionage 'cover.'"
Between 1974 and 1989, West received at least $5,110,099
in grants from the federal government, channeled through the National
Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a major funding conduit for CIA
programs. Many millions more poured into the UCLA Neuropsychiatric
Institute that West headed, including
over $14 million in federal funds in one fiscal year before he stepped
down.
West has continued to advocate psychiatric drugs to
treat virtually everything, holding that "clinging to the drug-free
state of mind" is an "antiquated position for anyone." Indeed, the
unspoken thrust behind his career has been the control of individuals
and whole populations through covert means.
Cattle Prod Therapy
Between 1974 and 1989, West received at least $5,110,099
in grants from the federal government, channeled through the National
Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) a major funding conduit for CIA
programs.
Before stepping down as director of the Neuropsychiatric
Institute, West reportedly allowed psychiatric "treatments" that were
more suited to brainwashing, "mind control" or a torture chamber than
for resolving mental troubles. It was reported in 1976, for example,
that Neuropsychiatric Institute psychiatrist Ivar Lovass had used
electric cattle prods for "aversion therapy" on children.
As one newspaper stated at the time, "Farrell
Instruments Company, the same firm which supplies other shocking
equipment for UCLA's 'Clockwork Orange' experiments on 3- to
12-year-old boys ... recognizes that aversion therapy techniques are
often cruel. An example, the company says, 'is the use of cattle prods
which have high voltage that produces skin destruction.' Dr. Lovass
and his partner in psychiatry, Dr. George Reker, however, favor the
use of - and have used - cattle prods on children who are not mentally
ill or criminal or who have not violated any law or rule - young boys
merely thought to be 'effeminate.'"
Lovass - hired by West - also allegedly shocked
5-year-old twins to "modify" behavior, with jolts administered through
a grid system in the floor that enabled the psychiatrists to blast the
children wherever they moved in the room.
Despite the violence that marked the work of West and
his cohorts, or perhaps because of it, he enjoyed influence in the
psychiatric community, serving for example on the National Advisory
Council to the NIMH. From his positions, he could have charted a far
more humane and helpful course for
mental health, rather than brain-damaging drugs and electric shock.
As part of his legacy, the NIMH continues to squander
billions in taxpayer dollars to fund research on brain-damaging
substances, rather than genuine cures. The true cost - impossible to
measure in money - lies in the Americans now dead from psychiatric
drugs and electric shock or, still living, existing as little more
than vegetables.
The secrecy and false information that for decades
cloaked West's activities continue to shroud the effects of the
treatments he promoted and which are still in use. And today, the
living hell that Melissa Holliday experienced still exists for
nameless others you probably won't read about in the press.
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