Blog 9: Whistleblowers

 

    Whistle blowers are defined as people who leak government corruption out to the public. The term was coined in the 19th century by Ralph Nader who used the word whistle to define drawing attention to something.  The first whistle blower I will address is John Marks who was a foreign service officer who exposed the government project MK Ultra. This was a project took place during the cold war in which the government wanted to test the possibility of mind control, brain washing, and creating human puppets through the use of LSD. One form of study was called acid test which was a series of parties held by Ken Kesey who volunteered to take part in government drug research in which he observed the effects of LSD through movement and sound. This marked the beginning of not just Hippie culture but a multitude of different psychedelic movements. Another series of test was called operation Midnight climax which was directed by a man named George White, a federal narcotics agent. White would use prostitutes to lure his victims into his testing facilities, also known as safe houses, before dosing them with LSD and studying them. Some of the most horrific experiments where conducted in the Allan Memorial Institute which was a psychiatric hospital housing various special needs patients. Under the command of Dr. Ewan Cameron these patients were experimented on with many hardcore drugs. During these experiments a technique was used called depattering in which reduced the patients to an infantile state in order to rebuild their mind in any way they see fit. Along with this Page Russell electroshock therapy, hypnosis, psychic driving, and many more methods were used with the intent to clear memories and reprogram people. John Marks exposed MK Ultra through his 1962 release of The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. This book forced the CIA to admit to MK Ultra during congressional hearings thus terminating the program in 1973. Once this received more public attention more people began to speak out about the evils of the government. One whistle blower named Cathy O'Brien claimed she was a victim of MK Ultra for 30 years. She was placed in the program as a child were she endured extreme torture and sexual abuse. After being saved in 1988 by Mark Philips, a U.S Intelligence insider, Cathy O'Brien decided to inform the public of what she went through while being experimented on eventually revealing the pedophilia and satanic rituals behind MK Ultra. Along with Cathy emerged another whistle blower named Whitey Bugler who was a former crime boss. He wrote about his experiences as an inmate in the Atlanta penitentiary where he was subjected to a variety of MK Ultra related test through LSD. These test resulted in intense hallucinations; Bugler described some instances of seeing blood emerging from the walls and the camera changing into the head of a dog.      

    Another corrupt operation by the CIA is Operation Phoenix. This operation took place during the Vietnam war and was seen as a collection of war crimes with the goal of "pacifying" the Viet Cong. In order to accomplish this different military torture methods were implemented alongside the authorization of killing citizens in non-combat situations. Some examples include various forms of rape, mauling by police dogs, electric shock, rubber hose beatings, starvation, etc. To provide a more in-depth view for just how vile these practices were; innocent civilians were captured and commonly subjected to gang rape or rape by eels. Furthermore, when it comes to electric shock one torture method used by the military was called "the Bell Telephone Hour", this was a practice that included attaching electrical wires to the genitals or other vulnerable areas like the tongue. Militants would often come back to their camps holding Vietnamese ears like trophies. If you were exposed as an informant, you were humiliated by having a commo wire wrapped around your neck like a leash and being walked around the village with a sandbag on your head. Operation Phoenix ended up neutralizing over 60,000 and killing over 21,500 individuals in total. A man named Anthony J. Russo attempted to expose operation Phoenix. He was a whistle blower who worked with another whistle blower named Daniel Ellsberg who played a major role in uncovering the Pentagon papers. Russo would often befriend Viet Cong prisoners to get a better understanding of what they have been through by witnessing the aftereffects of the serve torture they endured. Moreover, he carefully observed the brutalization as well as the 'pump and dump' procedures named for pumping the prisoners for information and dumping their bodies when the interrogation is finished. It was suspected that Russo wrote a torture report in 1968 where he detailed the CIA's torture methods however this report is currently missing. He actively spoke his views on the evils of the operation eventually publishing an interview he in the Ramparts magazine and telling the jury about the story of Cu Chi in the Pentagon Papers trial. Even though Russo was not well known he helped influence other whistleblowers with his efforts. These whistleblowers later pressured militants to speak of their experiences and the crimes they committed during their time in Vietnam in war crime hearings which drew more eyes on the events of Phoenix.