W. H. Bowart, Self-published,
Tucson, Arizona, 1994.
Operation Mind Control was originally published in 1978 by Dell Paperbacks. It came out around the same time as John Marks’ The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, a rather anodyne book which, after dealing with CIA and military LSD experiments which caused at least one unwitting victim to jump out a window, decided that ‘mind control’ of the Manchurian Candidate variety did not exist. Bowart’s book took the opposite view. Drawing from mostly anecdotal evidence – such as the Candy Jones story and the weird tale of a ‘programmed Filipino assassin’, Luis Angel Castillo – Operation Mind Control concluded that ‘mind control’ projects had already succeeded in the US, Europe and behind the Iron Curtain.
I remember being disappointed by Marks’ book. It seemed to me that, like Bamford with The Puzzle Palace, the author had been allowed through the Big Door by the Proper Authorities, and written a bland book which offended no one. Bowart, on the other hand, went out of his way to assert that Something Big was going on.
Seventeen years later comes a much-revised, and much larger, Operation Mind Control, self-published by the author in a photocopied edition.(1) (He hopes it will be revised and reprinted as a trade paperback in due course.) Some of the best stuff from the first edition – Jones, Castillio, Sirhan Sirhan – is retained. Bowart goes into greater detail on electro-magnetic spectrum bombardment, on Jonestown and Waco as government-sponsored ‘cults’, on supposedly corporeally-implanted mind control ‘transmitters’, and – at great length – on the notion that large numbers of Americans and others have been converted into mind-controlled sex slaves and drug runners via systematic ‘satantic abuse’ during childhood.
The new book is 686 pages and I have not fully digested it. The E-M, ELF, VLF, microwave etc. stuff is technical and difficult to comprehend (and there is little by way of footnotes or annotations). Nevertheless, the assertion that electrical fields and microwaves can disorient people and make them sick does not seem to be in dispute: consider the work-related ailments of computer operators, or the vile vibes of any photocopy shop! The Jonestown section is very thorough, and Bowart makes a strong – if perhaps exaggerated – case for some sort of intelligence connection. Likewise for the horrific events in Waco, Texas.
The mind control transmitter section, though, is disappointing. I too have read the articles suggesting we plant ‘location identifying beacons’ in our children and pets. But an implanted chip which tells a satellite where you are is a far cry from one which tells you what to do: if such items are as ubiquitous as we are led to believe, how come one hasn’t been dug out and dissected?(2) Bowart says a couple of times that the French police use powerful beam devices to control crowds and make rioters lose control of their bowels, too. But where is the footnote with citation to back this up?
A couple of documents are cited at length as evidence of US government mind control campaigns. One, the COM 12 document, is unusual in that it is well spelt and grammatically correct; but this does not automatically make it authentic. The other document is the Report from Iron Mountain. I read this back in 1977, when I was a student at UCLA. I was told at the time it was a satire on the increasingly authoritarian and parapolitical nature of the US government. It still seems that way to me. Bowart rightly points out that many of its predictions have proved accurate (particularly the growth of cult religions and the cherished belief of many Americans that an Invasion from Space is imminent) – but the point of satire is that it only works if it is essentially true. The fact that Report From Iron Mountain is accurate and correct does not make it a government document: to me, it suggests the opposite.
Now we come to the largest and most extraordinary section of the new Operation Mind Control: the chapters which assert that a Secret Government operates in the US, and perhaps the world, blackmailing judges, politicians and media figures via mind-controlled, satanically-programmed courtesans and bagmen. Bowart does not suggest that the Devil is behind this: only that the trappings of Satanism are used to terrify and indoctrinate the mind controlees during childhood. In one fascinating chapter, he interviews an anonymous woman who claims to have been mind-controlled into becoming the sex slave of Bob Hope! Reagan, Bush and other politicos are mentioned in the same context. I am willing to believe the worst about anybody, especially Bob Hope, but…. why bother? Very wealthy entertainers and politicians have wives, keep mistresses and frequent hookers. Why do they need mindless sex slaves? Tabloid readers may recall the case of Vicky Morgan in Los Angeles. Morgan was a prostitute who sued the estate of the millionaire Bloomingdale, claiming so-called palimony for the years she’d put in as Bloomingdale’s ‘sexual therapist’. Morgan also alleged that Reagan and his Attorney General Ed Meese had participated in video-taped bondage parties.
True? Maybe, maybe not. Unfortunately, Morgan was bludgeoned to death before her case came to trial, and Reagan and Meese continued their illustrious careers unruffled. My point is: powerful types like Hope, Reagan, Bloomingdale and Meese don’t need CIA-programmed courtesans, since they have a compliant media and, if necessary, professional hit-men, to preserve the status quo. Though to be fair to Bowart, he points out that as Governor of California, Reagan proposed setting up a secret camp for ‘comparative studies… of experimental or model programs for the alteration of undesirable behaviour.’ When asked how the subjects would be obtained for the experiments, Reagan’s good buddy Meese replied, ‘We’ll kidnap them!’ (All of which suggests to me that Reagan, Meese and their mad scientist pals were profoundly stupid. But who knows?)
Bowart goes toe-to-toe with the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, claiming their board of directors contains spooks and paedophiles. His assertions, again unfootnoted, deserve investigation. He also draws attention to the very odd case of US Army Colonel Michael Aquino, a self-confessed ‘Satanist’ currently in the employ of the US government! Bowart draws together ‘satanic abuse’ and ‘alien abduction’ scenarios as evidence of psychological programming – ‘cover stories’ to mask a sinister parapolitical purpose. But he also states that ’20 million Americans’ believe they have been kidnapped by flying saucers: does that mean they are all victims of government mind control? If not, have they really been kidnapped by aliens? If not, does that not support the notion of false memory syndrome?
I’m not trying to be flippant here. Bowart has done a lot of research – even if he has laid it out haphazardly – and many people clearly do believe they were victims of organized satanism and/or government mind control. But, even if a large number of people believe they were abused by Satanists, does that make it true? An even larger number of fundamentalist Christians believe in the actual existence of the Devil. By Operation Mind Control’s logic, that makes the Devil real, as well.
The book ends with an interview with four psychiatrists who – anonymously – agree with Bowart’s findings: since they are anonymous, the chapter is without value. Then, oddly, Bowart declares that, given conventional media indifference, the solution to satanic abuse and mind control is to be found via the INTERNET. But isn’t the INTERNET already a contact medium for paedophiles, and hence a tool of the Satanist Cryptocracy as well?
Towards the end, the locomotive seems to me to go completely off the rails. Bowart refers to ‘one third of the National Budget which funds the black operations of the Cryptocracy’. Black projects receive a lot of money, but one third of the National Budget? I don’t think so, especially when the ‘regular’ military already receive almost half. And when the author refers to the coming takeover of the United States by United Nations troops, and writes ‘the concentration camps have already been built to house those who resist the orders of mind-controlled troops…..’
Walter, come off it. This is nutzoid stuff, believed by white separatists, the ‘States’ Rights’ and neo-nazi crowd. They cannot build prisons fast enough to jail all the pot-growers and crackheads, never mind everyone else as well.
The problem is, there is some interesting stuff here. I certainly believe that a form of mind control exists: unfortunately it seems to be entirely voluntary. Every time we plonk ourselves down in front of the TV or log on to the INTERNET we demonstrate our willingness to turn from sentient beings into inert blobs.
In Orwell’s 1984 there’s a telly in every room. It watches you.
In 1995, there’s a telly in every room. You watch it.
What’s the difference?
Alex Cox
Notes
- The book is available, in an edition signed and numbered by author, from Flatland, POB 2420, Ft. Bragg, CA 95437, USA. Price to Europe, sea mail $71; airmail $100.
- This question has been answered by Budd ‘Missing Time’ Hopkins. He is quoted in Kevin McClure’s Promises and Disappointments, issue 2, as saying: ‘If they ever do show up on an X-ray or CAT-scan, within a day or so – before there is any ability to try and recover them – they disappear. The aliens seem to have a little alarm bell that goes off in the sky, and they come and remove the object.’So now you know.