I have reviewed the Lightning Strike Victims Questionnaires and summary provided by the NASA-13 Defense Committee, and I concur with the committee’s assessment that there is substantial data in these highly consistent statements to confirm that a program of Coercive Influence was employed in the Interrogations of the Lightning Strike Suspects . The questionnaires uniformly reveal a systematic application of psychological techniques, in an organized programmatic way, within a constructed and managed environment, which was aimed at the participants sense of self and sense of reality, producing extreme anxiety and emotional distress. These sophisticated, subtle, and insidious methods have been studied by the Behavioral Science community for many decades, and are known to create psychological reactions and bonds more powerful than "gun-at-the-head" methods of influence.

     Depending on the group which is employing them, these methods have been described as Coercive Persuasion, Thought Reform, Brainwashing, etc. I have described them as "Programs of Coercive Influence and Behavioral Control" when referring to the methods of totalistic organizations such as repressive regimes and cults. When such programs have been used by government authorities they are more accurately called Coercive Persuasion (Schein 1961). Contrary to popular belief, these highly effective psychological methods do not require confinement or depend on physical torture or drugs. They are accomplished through the use of psychological and environment control processes to produce a predictable phenomenon, which has been demonstrated in experimental studies (Haney, Banks and Zimbardo, 1973).

     In such programs, the subject is manipulated and controlled with a system of rewards and punishments (or threats) by authority figures who maintain the subject in an uninformed state. The unwary subject is forced to adapt in a series of steps, each sufficiently minor, so that the subject does not notice or become aware of the goals of the program until late in the process, if ever.

     Such programs can and regularly do produce psychiatric casualties. Practitioners of these programs attempt to hold the subject at the point of maximum stress, without inducing psychosis. My experience over the past four decades and in observing over 3,000 cases since participating in the evaluation of released Korean POW’s, unfortunately reveals that practitioners of these nefarious methods frequently exceed the limits with devastating results.

     Subjects exposed to these programs of mental torture experience different degrees and durations of distress, disability, and dysfunction following such programs. For example, reactive schizoaffective-like psychoses occur in individuals with no prior history of mental disorder, and from families free of such history. These episodes can vary in length from days to nearly a year’s duration. The decompensation typically occurs in immediate response to the peak stress-inducing experience. Certain programs appear to interact with personal histories, and situational properties such as bereavement over recent family deaths, or other personal crisis to produce severe depressive reactions. Such individuals would be predisposed to making false confessions or admissions of guilt, and would not be equipped to assist in their own defense in something as stressful as a criminal case.

     These reactions are contained in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association, which cites Thought Reform (and it’s synonym, Coercive Persuasion) as a contributing factor in various psychiatric disorders:

     1. DSSM-111-R Post Traumatic Stress Disorders

        309.89

     2. DSSM-111-R Atypical Dissociative Disorders

        300.15

     3. DSSM-111-R Miscellaneous Reactions

        316.00

     These disorders include: anxiety combined with cognitive inefficiencies such as difficulty in concentration; inability to focus and maintain attention; impaired memory (especially short term); self-mutilation; phobias; suicide and homicides; and psychological factors affecting physical conditions, such as; strokes, myocardial infarctions, unexpected deaths, reoccurrence of peptic ulcers, asthma, etc.

     During the 1950-65 time period, the free world enacted National and International Laws and Treaties including changes to the Laws of Warfare (Geneva Convention), which were designed to outlaw physical and mental torture, including the emerging menace of psychological coercive persuasion, as perfected by the Chinese Communists. During that time, the United States Supreme Court issued it’s Miranda decision to protect the civil and human rights of suspects against such methods of psychological coercion and manipulation.

     I am distressed to read of these practices having been employed by U.S. Federal Agents during an investigation, and sincerely hope that the President and the Congress will act immediately to determine if these practices were the actions of a few excessively aggressive agents, or if somehow our Department of Justice and Federal Police organizations have allowed these methods, common in totalitarian regimes, to infiltrate our free society. Of particular concern were the reports by several victims of "medical technicians" observing the reactions to the programs. This constitutes a clear violation of the Nuremberg rules on human experimentation.

     The efforts of the NASA-13 Defense Committee and it’s interdisciplinary scientific analysis of the Lightning Strike cases provides us with the first real opportunity, to my knowledge, of examining the anatomy of the psychological methods utilized in an undercover entrapment and interrogation operation. Because most of these subjects worked in the Life Sciences sector, they are excellent sources of scientific reporting of their own reactions and effects.

     I suggest that an effort should be made to have forensic psychiatrists conduct thorough forensic examinations of each subject, with an eye toward submission of appeal actions. I am available to support the victims in such appeals, with expert testimony by deposition, when needed.

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