Ancillary Mercy полностью

In this context, it is useful to recall that the son of American activist Paul Robeson claimed the FBI slipped his father hallucinogenic drugs during the 1950s in order to neutralize him. Many people dismissed these claims as paranoid, but it is true that for three decades the bureau harassed Robeson and spread false rumors about him. The case of Frank Olsen makes the claims of Robeson’s son a bit more plausible, whether the actual culprit was the bureau or the agency.³⁸

The most serious work was done in great secrecy. On February 19, 1954, the CIA’s Morris Allen conducted the ultimate hypnosis experiment: the creation of a “Manchurian Candidate,” or programmed assassin. Allen first hypnotized a secretary to remain sleeping until he—and only he—commanded her to awaken. Next, he hypnotized another secretary to try to awaken the first, and if she could not, to become so enraged as to kill her. He left an unloaded gun nearby. Not only did the second woman “shoot” the sleeping woman, but she could not recall the incident and denied shooting anyone. As significant as this milestone was, researcher John Marks pointed out that most of the CIA’s work on hypnosis is unavailable, but that terminal experiments involving hypnosis and torture could easily have been conducted on behalf of the CIA by friendly police in countries such as Taiwan or Paraguay. Marks tried, but failed, to obtain more information about this.³⁹

A BRIEF OUTBREAK OF TRUTH

In 1953, an issue of American Magazine featured a one-page article on Coral Lorenzen, bringing worldwide publicity for APRO and enabling its membership to climb. (She soon met with Hynek, who appeared “not deeply engrossed” and “certainly skeptical” of the reality of UFOs.) Stories about Coral Lorenzen were small potatoes, however. By the end of 1953, news services had virtually ceased to carry UFO reports. The few that did were strictly local affairs. Even the Soviet Union provided some help in American censorship efforts. On December 7, 1953, Radio Moscow stated that “flying saucers are figments of the imaginations of western war mongers designed to make taxpayers swallow heavier military budgets.”⁴⁰

On December 8, the CIA reported that UFO sightings had fallen dramatically from the previous year—no doubt, it argued, due to its policies. The report acknowledged that there were still UFO cases “of possible scientific intelligence value,” but emphasized pursuing these carefully. Otherwise, “a fanatical saucer believer” might notice an interest and accuse the government of a cover-up.⁴¹

There remained a few voices in the United States fighting UFO censorship. Keyhoe’s was probably the most significant, but close behind was that of his friend, Mutual Radio broadcaster Frank Edwards. Before Art Bell, there was Frank Edwards, who was one of the key disseminators of UFO information during the early 1950s. In a 1953 nationwide poll of radio-TV editors by the trade paper Radio Daily, Edwards was named among the top three news broadcasters in the nation, along with Edward R. Murrow and Lowell Thomas. His audience was estimated at 13 million people every night. On January 13, 1954, Edwards alleged on his show that the wreckage of a flying saucer was being stored at a “west coast military field.” Journalist Richard Reilly of the Washington Times-Herald was another “fanatical saucer believer.” In three articles that began on December 26, 1953, Reilly questioned the air force’s professed openness about UFOs, as it had become nearly impossible, he wrote, to obtain UFO reports.⁴²

Shortly after Reilly’s article came the scoop (1/4/54) that U.S. Marines at Quantico had seen UFOs for several consecutive nights. The Washington Daily News even reported that it “ran into what seems a deliberate attempt to cover up certain facets of the investigation.” At this time, the Cleveland Press, a Scripps-Howard paper, was asking authorities at ATIC for permission to see the Tremonton, Utah, film. The Pentagon dragged its feet but finally agreed to let a journalist see it at Dayton. By the time the reporter was ready to make the trip, ATIC told him that their only copy had just burned up. No worry, said ATIC, as there was a master copy at the Pentagon. When the reporter spoke with an air force spokesman at the Pentagon, he was told, “we have no copy here, but we believe there is one at Dayton.” The reporter gave up. The Press ran a January 6 headline, “Brass Curtain Hides Flying Saucers.”⁴³

Isolated segments of the media continued to work this theme. On February 11, 1954, several Scripps-Howard papers charged that the air force knew what flying saucers were and was hiding the truth for fear of panic. Papers also reported that Eisenhower’s executive order abolishing the “Restricted” classification was deceptive, as