Sleeper Agent Development

Sleeper Agent Development

Sleeper agent; From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In fiction, particularly science fiction, sleeper agents fall into two categories. The first is an extension of the real world sleeper agent where an enemy agent is substituted for a person already in a trusted position. The second and more common category involve people who have been subjected to mind control techiques, such as drugs, torture, psychological conditioning, implanted devices, and even telepathic manipulation who then are either released, or allowed to escape back to friendly territory. These sleeper agents are then used by enemy forces to spy, conduct sabotage, assassinate certain targets, or for other operations the enemy has in mind for them. The substitution sleeper agent was often surgically altered to appear as someone else but more recent versions tend toward androids or clones. Activation of the second kind of sleeper is, at least in novels and stories, done by approaching the agent and uttering a long ago memorized password or pass phrase, or by mailing a postcard with a significant picture to the sleeper. Once a sleeper becomes active, counter intelligence agencies can, at least in principle, become aware of the sleeper as intelligence is collected and transmitted, as instructions are passed, and so on. Examples
There are a number of examples of sleeper agents found in science fiction and other forms of entertainment. Examples of sleeper agents include:

• In Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) it is revealed that the Voice of Terror is really a German officer who was used because of his strong resemblance to a captured British officer. The substitution occurred during WWI.

• In Black Dragons (1942) a doctor is hired to use plastic surgery to alter Japanese officers into the images of key American Industrialists. Once Japan attacks Pearl Harbor they go about slowing down production and having accidents happen at their plants.

• One of the earlier uses of the second type of sleeper agents in fiction is in Richard Condon's 1959 novel, The Manchurian Candidate, which has twice been adapted to film. Both the original and the remake is about a group of people 'programmed' to be sleeper agents. One of the sleeper agents is part of a Presidential election campaign, which if won will produce a Vice President controlled by sinister forces. One of his fellows would then be ordered to assassinate the President, allowing these forces to control the Executive Branch of Government.

• In the Outer Limits episode "Hundred Days of the Dragon" a chemical that allows flesh to be molded like clay for a short time is used to allow a Chinese officer replace a candidate that eventually becomes President.

• In the Six Million Dollar Man/The Bionic Woman/Bionic Woman crossover "Kill Oscar" it is revealed that Oscar Goldman has standing orders to be killed rather than rescued for fear the enemy would turn him into a double agent. In disobeying that order Steve Austin unknowingly brings back an android sleeper agent.

• The plot of Walter Wager's novel Telefon and its subsequent film adaptation revolved around long-term, deep-cover sleeper agents planted by the Soviet Union all over the United States in the 1950s; spies so thoroughly brainwashed that even they didn't know they were agents; they could only be activated by a special code phrase (a line from Robert Frost's poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"). Their mission was to sabotage crucial parts of the civil and military infrastructure in the event of nuclear war.

• In the season 3 finale of the 2004 sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica, it is revealed that Samuel T. Anders, Tory Foster, Saul Tigh and Galen Tyrol are Cylon sleeper agents.

• In the video game BioShock, it is discovered that the player's embryo was genetically modified with mind control, which was later used by Atlas to his advantage in order to kill Andrew Ryan.

• In BBC sci-fi drama "Torchwood", where humanoid androids are used to gather intel and eliminate the city of Cardiff and eventually the world.

• Renowned NJ salesman Jack C. Phillips Jr is also a notorious sleeper and flip-flop wearer.

History of Soviet and Russian espionage in the United States; From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Since the late 1920s, the Soviet Union, through its OGPU and NKVD intelligence services, used Russians and foreign-born nationals as well as Communist and left-leaning Americans to perform espionage activities in the United States. These various espionage networks eventually succeeded in penetrating various U.S. government agencies, transmitting classified or confidential information to Moscow, while influencing U.S. government officials to support policies favorable to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's greatest espionage achievement was in obtaining plans and specifications for the U.S. atomic bomb.

Venona project; From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Venona project was a long-running and highly secret collaboration between intelligence agencies of the United States and United Kingdom that involved the cryptanalysis of messages sent by several intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, mostly during World War II. There were known to be at least 13 code words for this effort used by the U.S. and UK. "Venona" was the last one used. It has no known meaning. (In the decrypted documents issued from the National Security Agency, 'VENONA' is written in full capitals; authors writing on the subject generally capitalize only the first letter.) In the early years of the Cold War, Venona would be an important source of information on Soviet intelligence activity for the Western powers. Although unknown to the public, and even to presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, the closely guarded program was of critical importance behind many famous events of the early Cold War, such as the Rosenberg spying case and the defections of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. Most of the messages which would later prove to be decipherable were intercepted between 1942 and 1945, and they were decrypted beginning in 1946 and continuing until 1980, when Venona was cancelled. A young Meredith Gardner (of what would become the National Security Agency) then used this material to break in to what turned out to be NKVD (and later GRU) traffic, by reconstructing the code used to convert text to numbers. Samuel Chew and Cecil Phillips also made valuable contributions. On 20 December 1946, Gardner made the first break into the code, revealing the existence of Soviet espionage in the Manhattan Project. Venona messages also indicated that Soviet spies worked in Washington in the State Department, Treasury, Office of Strategic Services, and even the White House. Very slowly, using assorted techniques ranging from traffic analysis to defector information, more of the messages were decrypted. The Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA, housed at one time or another between fifteen and twenty Soviet spies. Duncan Lee, Donald Wheeler, Jane Foster Zlatowski, and Maurice Halperin passed information to Moscow. The War Production Board, the Board of Economic Warfare, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the Office of War Information, included at least half a dozen Soviet sources each among their employees. In the opinion of some, almost every American military and diplomatic agency of any importance was compromised to some extent by Soviet espionage.

McCarthyism; From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
McCarthyism is a term describing the intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States in a period that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s. This period is also referred to as the Second Red Scare, and coincided with increased fears about communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents. During this time many thousands of Americans were accused of being Communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. There are many factors that can be counted as contributing to McCarthyism, some of them extending back to the years of the First Red Scare (1917-1920), and indeed to the inception of Communism as a recognized political force. Thanks in part to its success in organizing labor unions and its early opposition to fascism, the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) increased its membership through the 1930s, reaching a peak of 50,000 members in 1942. Events in 1949 and 1950 sharply increased the sense of threat from Communism in the United States. The Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb in 1949, earlier than many analysts had expected. That same year, Mao Zedong's Communist army gained control of mainland China despite heavy financial support of the opposing Kuomintang by the U.S. In 1950, the Korean War began, pitting U.S., U.N. and South Korean forces against Communists from North Korea and China. Although the Igor Gouzenko and Elizabeth Bentley affairs had raised the issue of Soviet espionage as far back as 1945, 1950 saw several significant developments regarding Soviet Cold War espionage activities. In January, Alger Hiss, a high-level State Department official, was convicted of perjury. Hiss was in effect found guilty of espionage; the statute of limitations had run out for that crime, but he was convicted of having perjured himself when he denied that charge in earlier testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In Great Britain, Klaus Fuchs confessed to committing espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union while working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory during the War. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested on charges of stealing atomic bomb secrets for the Soviets on July 17 and later executed. In the federal government, President Harry Truman's Executive Order 9835 initiated a program of loyalty reviews for federal employees in 1947. Truman's mandate called for dismissal if there were "reasonable grounds... for belief that the person involved is disloyal to the Government of the United States." Truman, a Democrat, was probably reacting in part to the Republican sweep in the 1946 Congressional election, and felt a need to counter the growing criticism from conservatives and anti-communists. When President Dwight Eisenhower took office in 1953, he strengthened and extended Truman's loyalty review program, while decreasing the avenues of appeal available to dismissed employees. Hiram Bingham, Chairman of the Civil Service Commission Loyalty Review Board, referred to the new rules he was obliged to enforce as "just not the American way of doing things." Hoover designed President Truman's loyalty-security program, and its background investigations of employees were carried out by FBI agents. This was a major assignment that led to the number of agents in the Bureau being increased from 3,559 in 1946 to 7,029 in 1952. One focus of popular McCarthyism concerned the provision of public health services, particularly vaccination, mental health care services and fluoridation, all of which were deemed by some to be communist plots to poison or brainwash the American people. This viewpoint led to major collisions between McCarthyite radicals and supporters of public health programs, most notably in the case of the Alaska Mental Health Bill controversy of 1956.
Compiler Note: Government Paranoia starts due to Soviet Espionage successes with sleeper agents.

Mind Control; From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,
Mind control (or "brainwashing") techniques are supposedly able to subvert an individual's control of their own thinking, behavior, emotions, or decisions. Whether anyone has ever successfully used these techniques remains an open question. There are a number of controversial theories about mind control:

• Lifton thought reform model
• Margaret Singer's conditions for mind control
• Steven Hassan's BITE model
• Mind Control and the Battered Person Syndrome
• Social psychology tactics
• Social psychological conditioning by Stahelski
• Subliminal advertising
• Biderman's Chart of Coercion (http://www.nwrain.net/~refocus/coerchrt.html)

Omertà, Conspiracy of silence, Stop Snitchin'; From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Omertà is a popular attitude, common in areas of southern Italy, such as Sicily, Calabria, and Campania, where criminal organizations like the Mafia, 'Ndrangheta, and Camorra are strong. A common definition is the "code of silence".
Omertà implies “the categorical prohibition of cooperation with state authorities or reliance on its services, even when one has been victim of a crime.” Even if somebody is convicted for a crime he has not committed, he is supposed to serve the sentence without giving the police any information about the real criminal. Within Mafia culture, breaking the oath of omertà is punishable by death. Omertà is based partly on fear and partly on idealism – it is an extreme form of loyalty and solidarity in the face of authority.

The following are examples which at various times have been the subject of a culture (or conspiracy) of silence:

• Child abuse in the Church or in social services accommodation.
• Acknowledgement of war crimes, breaches of human rights, such as vanishing persons and torture
• Social conditions - gang crime, drugs or other unlawful or disparaged activity. Omerta, the Cosa Nostra (Mafia) cultural code of Sicily, is a significant example of an entire culture built upon silence. Stop Snitchin' is a recent example.
• Personal problems - for example Affairs, sexual abuse, domestic violence, alcoholism etc.
• Conditions considered shameful by the culture at large - for example; erectile dysfunction and yeast infections
• Avoidance of recognition of some problem - for example gulf war syndrome or the like - in order to officially bury (hide) a possible problem and thus avoid accusations, investigations or liability.

A number of controversial matters are considered by some to be buried under a refusal to discuss, or not treated with appropriate seriousness, similar to a conspiracy of silence. Examples include UFOs, assassinations, military incidents, and more generally, various events where it is felt by a significant minority that the truth has been covered up. A proven example is the Watergate cover-up of the early 1970s, exposed by the Washington Post and the New York Times.

A conspiracy of silence in some field, has effects at many levels:

• Those who are directly suffering, or causing others to suffer, perpetuate their cycle of harm and suffering
• Those who have suffered have their suffering extended by being having their condition ignored or minimized, and are not considered seriously or redressed appropriately
• Lessons that might be learned for future are not learned

The Snitching Project, led by Dr. Rick Frei at Community College of Philadelphia, is an ongoing student-driven interdisciplinary research initiative aimed at developing a better understanding of the snitching phenomenon and facilitating community discussion through education. The project uses focus groups, surveys, and interviews to collect data regarding attitudes towards snitching, as well as dispositional and situational variables that might influence a person's propensity to cooperate with police.
The Project also sponsors an interactive wiki, which includes results from the data collection effort, as well as an extensive history of snitching, links to relevant web sites and articles, an on-line version of the survey, and a forum for discussing snitching.

Brainwashing; From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brainwashing (also known as thought reform or as re-education) consists of any effort aimed at instilling certain attitudes and beliefs in a person — sometimes unwelcome beliefs in conflict with the person's prior beliefs and knowledge. Earlier forms of coercive persuasion occurred during the Inquisition and in the course of show trials against "enemies of the state" in the Soviet Union, etc.; but no specific term emerged until the methodologies of these earlier movements became systematized during the early decades of the People's Republic of China for use in struggles against internal class enemies and foreign invaders. Until that time, presentations of the phenomenon described only concrete specific techniques. The term xǐ năo (洗腦, the Chinese term literally translated as "to wash the brain") originally referred to methodologies of coercive persuasion used in the "reconstruction" (改造 gǎi zào) of the so-called feudal (封建 fēng jiàn) thought-patterns of Chinese citizens raised under pre-revolutionary régimes; the term punned on the Taoist custom of "cleansing/washing the heart" (洗心 xǐ xīn) prior to conducting certain ceremonies or entering certain holy places, and in Chinese, the word "心" xīn also refers to the soul or the mind, contrasting with the brain. The term first came into use in the United States in the 1950s during the Korean War (1950-1953) to describe those same methods as applied by the Chinese communists to attempt deep and permanent behavioral changes in foreign prisoners, and especially during the Korean War to disrupt the ability of captured United Nations troops to effectively organize and resist their imprisonment. The word brainwashing consequently came into use in the United States of America to explain why, unlike in earlier wars, a relatively high percentage of American GIs defected to the enemy side after becoming prisoners of war in Korea. Later analysis determined that some of the primary methodologies employed on them during their imprisonment included sleep-deprivation and other intense psychological manipulations designed to break down the autonomy of individuals. American alarm at the new phenomenon of substantial numbers of U.S. troops switching their allegiance to support foreign Communists lessened after the repatriation of prisoners, when it emerged that few of them retained allegiance to the Marxist and "anti-American" doctrines inculcated during their incarcerations. When rigid control of information ceased and the former prisoners' "natural" cultural methods of reality-testing could resume functioning, the superimposed values and judgments rapidly decreased.

The use of coercive persuasion techniques in China: Following the armistice that interrupted hostilities in the Korean War, a large group of intelligence-officers, psychiatrists, and psychologists received assignments to debrief United Nations soldiers in the process of repatriation. The government of the United States wanted to understand the unprecedented level of collaboration, the breakdown of trust among prisoners, and other such indications that the Chinese were doing something new and effective in their handling of prisoners of war. Formal studies in academic journals began to appear in the mid-1950s, as well as some first-person reports from former prisoners. In 1961, two specialists in the field published books which synthesized these studies for the non-specialists concerned with issues of national security and social policy. Edgar H. Schein wrote on Coercive Persuasion, and Robert J. Lifton wrote on Thought Control and the Psychology of Totalism. Both books focussed primarily on the techniques called "xǐ nǎo" or, more formally "sī xiǎng gǎi zào" (reconstructing or remodeling thought).

Although American attention came to bear on thought reconstruction or brainwashing as one result of the Korean War (1950 - 1953), the techniques had operated on ordinary Chinese citizens after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in October 1949. The PRC had refined and extended techniques earlier used in the Soviet Union to prepare prisoners for show-trials, and they in turn had learned much from the Inquisition. In the Chinese context, these techniques had multiple goals that went far beyond the simple control of subjects in the prison camps of North Korea. They aimed to produce confessions, to convince the accused that they had indeed perpetrated anti-social acts, to make them feel guilty of these crimes against the state, to make them desirous of a fundamental change in outlook toward the institutions of the new communist society, and, finally, to actually accomplish these desired changes in the recipients of the brainwashing/thought-reform. To that end, brainwashers desired techniques that would break down the psychic integrity of the individual with regard to information processing, with regard to information retained in the mind, and with regard to values. Chosen techniques included: dehumanizing of individuals by keeping them in filth, sleep deprivation, partial sensory deprivation, psychological harassment, inculcation of guilt, group social pressure, etc. The ultimate goal that drove these extreme efforts consisted of the transformation of an individual with a "feudal" or capitalist mindset into a "right-thinking" member of the new social system, or, in other words, to transform what the state regarded as a criminal mind into what the state could regard as a non-criminal mind.

The methods of thought-control proved extremely useful when deployed for gaining the compliance of prisoners-of-war. Key elements in their success included tight control of the information available to the individual and tight control over the behavior of the individual. When, after repatriation, close control of information ceased and reality-testing could resume, former prisoners fairly quickly regained a close approximation of their original picture of the world and of the societies from which they had come. Furthermore, prisoners subject to thought-control often had simply behaved in ways that pleased their captors, without changing their fundamental beliefs. So the fear of brainwashed sleeper agents, such as that dramatized in the novel and the films The Manchurian Candidate, never materialized.

Robert W. Ford a british radio operator who worked in Tibet in the 50' was arrested by the invading Chinese army. He spent nearly 5 years in jail, in constant fear of being executed, and was subjected to interrogation and thought reform. He published a book "Captured in Tibet" about his experience in Tibet, describing and analyzing thought reform to which he was arshly subjected.

According to research and forensic psychologist Dick Anthony, the CIA invented the concept of "brainwashing" as a propaganda strategy to undercut communist claims that American POWs in Korean communist camps had voluntarily expressed sympathy for communism. Anthony stated that definitive research demonstrated that fear and duress, not brainwashing, caused western POWs to collaborate. He argued that the books of Edward Hunter (a secret CIA "psychological warfare specialist" passing as a journalist) pushed the CIA brainwashing-theory onto the general public. He further asserted that for twenty years, starting in the early 1950s, the CIA and the Defense Department conducted secret research (notably including Project MKULTRA) in an attempt to develop practical brainwashing techniques (possibly to counteract the brainwashing efforts of the Chinese), and that their attempt failed.

One of the first published uses of the term thought reform occurred in the title of the book by Robert Jay Lifton: Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of 'Brainwashing' in China (1961). (Lifton also testified on behavioral-change methodologies at the 1976 trial of Patty Hearst.) In his book Lifton used the term "thought reform" as a synonym for "brainwashing", though he preferred the first term.

Benjamin Zablocki, professor of sociology and one of the reviewers of the rejected DIMPAC report, wrote in 1997:

"Many people have been misled about the true position of the APA and the ASA with regard to brainwashing. Like so many other theories in the behavioral sciences, the jury is still out on this one. The APA and the ASA acknowledge that some scholars believe that brainwashing exists but others believe that it does not exist. The ASA and the APA acknowledge that nobody is currently in a position to make a Solomonic decision as to which group is right and which group is wrong. Instead they urge scholars to do further research to throw more light on this matter. I think this is a reasonable position to take."

In 2002, APA's then president, Philip Zimbardo wrote in Psychology Monitor:

"A body of social science evidence shows that when systematically practiced by state-sanctioned police, military or destructive cults, mind control can induce false confessions, create converts who willingly torture or kill "invented enemies," engage indoctrinated members to work tirelessly, give up their money—and even their lives—for "the cause." (Zimbardo, 2002)

Social scientists who study new religious movements, such as Jeffrey K. Hadden (see References), understand the general proposition that religious groups can have considerable influence over their members, and that that influence may have come about through deception and indoctrination. Indeed, many sociologists observe that "influence" occurs ubiquitously in human cultures, and some argue that the influence exerted in "cults" or new religious movements does not differ greatly from the influence present in practically every domain of human action and of human endeavor.

F.A.C.T.net states that "Forced deprogramming was sometimes successful and sometimes unsuccessful, but is not considered an acceptable, legal, or ethical method of rescuing a person from a cult."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a statement in 1977 related to brainwashing and mind control. In this statement the ACLU opposed certain methods "depriving people of the free exercise of religion".

Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University, writes: "Whatever any member of a cult has done, you and I could be recruited or seduced into doing — under the right or wrong conditions. The majority of 'normal, average, intelligent' individuals can be led to engage in immoral, illegal, irrational, aggressive and self destructive actions that are contrary to their values or personality — when manipulated situational conditions exert their power over individual dispositions."(Zimbardo, 1997)

Project MKULTRA; From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a CIA mind-control research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence, that began in the early 1950s and continued at least through the late 1960s.(1,2,3). There is much published evidence that the project involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other methodology, to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function.
(1). http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB54/
(2). Chapter 3, part 4: Supreme Court Dissents Invoke the Nuremberg Code: CIA and DOD Human Subjects Research Scandals. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments Final Report. Retrieved on August 24, 2005. "The CIA program, known principally by the codename MKULTRA, began in 1950"
(3). U.S. Congress: The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Foreign and Military Intelligence (Church Committee report), report no. 94-755, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1976); p. 392 "According to the CIA, the project [MKULTRA] was decreased significantly each budget year until its complete termination in the late 1960s."

The Manchurian Candidate;
Is a 1959 thriller novel written by Richard Condon, later adapted into films in 1962 and 2004. The central concept of the book and the subsequent 1962 film is that the son of a prominent political family has been brainwashed into becoming an unwilling assassin for the Communist Party; in the 2004 version, the villain was instead a giant corporation called "Manchurian Global". Plot summary: Major Bennett Marko, Sergeant Raymond Shaw and the rest of their platoon are captured during the Korean War in 1952. They are all brainwashed into believing Shaw saved their lives in combat, for which he receives the Medal of Honor when they return to the US. After the war is over, Marko begins to have a recurring nightmare in which Shaw kills two of his comrades. When he learns that another platoon member has been having the same dream, he sets out to uncover the mystery. The Communists intend to use Shaw as a sleeper agent and, using the queen of diamonds in a deck of playing cards as a subconscious trigger, compel him to follow their orders, which he doesn't remember afterwards. Shaw is controlled by none other than his own domineering mother, who is working with the Communists in a plot to overthrow the government.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7295300.stm
Taylor 'made rebels eat enemies'
BBC News, 13 March 2008
Ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor ordered militias to eat the flesh of their enemies, a former death squad leader has told his war crimes trial. Joseph "Zigzag" Marzah said Mr Taylor had instructed fighters loyal to him to even eat UN peacekeepers to "set an example for the people to be afraid". Mr Taylor is on trial at The Hague for backing rebels in Sierra Leone in an 11-year war in which thousands died. Mr Taylor is accused of funding Sierra Leone's former rebels, the Revolutionary United Front, by selling diamonds on their behalf and buying weapons for them. The RUF became notorious for hacking off the hands and legs of civilians during their armed rebellion in Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002.