MK-Ultra & a Magic Trick

The Mind Control Deck effect jogged the memory of an MK Ultra victim

When I was a young 15 year old boy, I borrowed a copy of a book from the Burbank Public Library entitled, John Mulholland’s Book of Magic. I learned a poem from the book that had a special meaning. That meaning was a clue in remembering the order of a sequence of playing cards.

“Jack ass ate live tree, king intends to fix seven for a benign queen.”

My mother thought I was learning some odd form of poetry, but hardly the case. I was hooked on deception.

John Mulholland (1898 - 1970), born in Chicago, but moved to New York City when young with his mother started performing as a teenager and went on to become an authority on magic. Recruited by Sidney Gottleib for the top secret CIA project "MK-ULTRA", his assignments included working with billionaires and inventors, cracking codes and delving into the world of ESP research, LSD use and writing a manual on deception. He wrote classified manuscripts for the CIA. Two that are known are "Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception" and "Recognition Signals" in 1954. He continued to work for the CIA at least until 1958. (Source: Magicpedia and Genii Magazine)

Mulholland was a professional magician for two decades, working in small companies and large stage shows. He ran one of the first magic workshops and was from 1930 the editor of the magical trade magazine, The Sphinx. He published many books on magic and its history. During the Second World War he wrote a spell-book for soldiers. His impressive collection is now owned by David Copperfield. He left The Sphinx in 1953, officially due to health problems but actually to work for the CIA.

I found an interesting article about this fascinating man in the New York Times.

THE CIA HIRED A PROFESSIONAL MAGICIAN, Joseph B. Treaster, 1977 New York Times

The Central Intelligence Agency hired a professional New York magician as a consultant to its project in the manipulation of human behavior, calling on him, from time to time, "to see if he could explain things people had a hard time trying to explain!”

According to documents obtained from the C.I.A. today and amplifying interviews, the magician, John Mulholland, who lived on the Upper West Side until his death in 1970, was paid $3,000 in 1953 to write a "manual" on sleight of hand or, as the agency referred to it, "prestidigitation." The manual was meant to be an aid to agents in surreptitiously administering drugs.

On another assignment, Mr. Mulholland was asked to analyze the work of a "mystic" who said he had devised a system for sending and receiving telepathic messages anywhere in the world.

One former agency official said he had consulted with Mr. Mulholland "about a dozen times" over a period of "a couple of years."

"Very frequently," the former agency official said, somebody would want an explanation for something they had seen and what would happen was that it would turn out to be something from the art of magic."

Radio City Performer Mr. Mulholland, a tall, slender man with a prominent nose and a thatch of gray hair, performed several times at Radio City Music Hall and wrote a number of books on magic, according to his widow, Pauline Mulholland.

Dr. George N. Gordon, the chairman of the communication arts department at Hofstra University, said that Mr. Mulholland had told him about his mental telepathy assignment for the C.I.A. when the two were working together on a book in the mid 1960's. “He read me a report he had done for the C.I.A. and we were more or less laughing over it," Dr. Gordon said. The agency had been approached by a man who said he was a "genuine mystic," Dr. Gordon said, and had talked the agency into considering "using his system for the delivery of clandestine messages."

"Somehow or other, you'd be in, say, Poland, and he'd be in England and he would receive your message without any kind of electronic or mechanical device," Dr. Gordon said.

Under the terms of his agreement with the agency, Mr. Mulholland was supposed to provide information on techniques by which "solid, liquid or gaseous" substances could be secretly delivered to individuals.

Mr. Mulholland's initials, address and phone number were among the contents of the wallet of Dr. Robert V. Lashbrook, a C.I.A. employee who was escorting Dr. Frank Olson on the night Dr. Olson plunged to his death from a Manhattan hotel room a few days after the agency gave him a dose of LSD without his knowledge.”

In late 2012 my company was routinely audited for insurance purposes. The company and the auditor/CPA will remain anonymous for privacy reasons which will become obvious as the story unfolds. A small conference room that was situated in the center of my corporate offices was designated for his working area. The auditor had complete access to our financial and administrative records. I was working on a new magic trick that was titled the Mind Control Deck. As I came into the room to meet the auditor, with intentions of just exchanging pleasantries, I was holding the magic effect in my hands and was going to my office to proof the book of instructions that came with the special deck that was used in the trick. I saw him staring at the item and I could tell that something had affected him. His glaze and heavy staring was evident. I could see a change in the countenance of his body and mind. I had absolutely no idea that he was connecting a past unhappy experience with the simple magic trick I was holding in my hand. I had no idea of his past, yet something was wrong.

I tried to bring levity into the situation by saying, “Are you familiar with ‘Mind Control’?” He nodded yes. I took it a step further and jokingly said, “Do you know about MKULTRA Mind Control?” He continued staring in silence, then said, “Yes.” I was just throwing out the question as a chance question, never thinking he would know what I was referring to. He was almost white and he broke to a tearful eye. I had hit some sort of cord in his brain. Maybe I had said a code word that triggered the process. I was in awe. After a few moments, we discussed the subject.

Mr. X said, “I have found that discussing the events of my life threatens others, for reasons you can easily discern. It also threatens me as people seem to want to punish the messenger rather than the message. Just being involuntarily associated with this nonsense has been extremely detrimental to my past. I want to keep it in my past, as I know you will, based on your assurances of anonymity.

My recollections include memories of serious crimes. The criminals who committed these crimes, names of whom I do not remember, may not be dead or in jail so I would be extremely cautious in disclosing anything that might threaten them. Some of the recollections may impact events on the national stage—or they may not. As an adult I have distanced myself from any and all activity relating to the perpetrators, as I recommend you do also. I have long ago given up on any illusion that Justice or Revenge is an alternative. When I approached “the authorities” about my memories, I was rebuked, as apparently others were as well. There were apparently many other victims.

How the events of my past are related to the present, is purely speculative. I do want to point out though, just as Kennedy did a few weeks before he was killed, that there is an organization, or network of organizations that I perceive has anchored themselves into the financial and political environment, much as a tapeworm anchors itself into a host. The parts of the organization I saw and was recruited to be a part of many years ago, is the part of the tapeworm that is closest to the anus, the part that will be sacrificed to maintain the whole. Who or what that organization is that is further up in the gut, is speculative, Kennedy knew, an X on the pavement of Dealey Plaza indicates the end of his knowledge. However, the organizations’ purpose, like all parasites is obvious—control the host and live off it. Unfortunately for the rest of us, like most parasites, the parasite does not know when to stop consuming the host and ends up killing it instead…at which time everyone loses.”

The statement was impacting to me. We chatted a few more minutes and I implored Mr. X to please tell me more. A few weeks later I received this letter:

“Be happy to speak with you. What part of my experience is of interest to you? I can speak specifically about much of what happened to me, much I don’t recall; however, the most interesting part which includes who and where, if disclosed might threaten some of the perpetrators. A threatened perpetrator is a dangerous one. “Who” at least specifically, is obviously off the table, “Where” is quite interesting considering that it was at churches which are tourist attractions now. Disclosing where specifically might entail liable/slander issues.

Keep in mind the major part of what happened was when I was very young, and accordingly, my memories are the perceptions of a child. There were follow-up contacts between the perpetrators and me, ones that I recall (there may have been others) which occurred while I was in college, which were surreptitious. By “surreptitious, I mean that the contacts were essentially erased from my memory (at least temporarily) by the wave of a hand. As an adult, I was recruited quite overtly, when I refused to participate, the recruiters who had disclosed their intentions were quite threatened as apparently secrecy is of paramount importance to them. Only by leaving my home state was I able to alleviate my apparent threat to them. Why going out of state takes off the heat is a bit puzzling. It’s apparently somewhat regionalized.

The “why” of what happened is speculative. People around me who were aware of what was going on have filled in some blanks, but hardly all.

There are others, particularly psychological professionals, who have been told stories such as mine many times. Through a contact with a trauma specialist at a therapy center in New Mexico, I was made aware there was literally a “convention” of sorts at the Landmark “Driskill” Hotel in Austin, Texas about the very issue of “the effect of organized crime and brain-washing on children and its effects and threat to the community.” I was unable to obtain information about this convention, but my source was quite credible. To obtain minutes or an outline of this convention would be enlightening. This was prior to the Internet, so info is not readily available. I was told the convention contained law enforcement, legislators, and psychological professionals.

Amazing that this was not public info, but this was all happening at the time where the media was explaining away these events as “false memories.”

What might surprise many is how apparently widespread subjecting children to brain-washing techniques was in areas of the country. I ran into many people who when I broached the topic, had some awareness of it, but when I was identified as a participant (even though as a forced participant), I was immediately ostracized. To openly admit I was subjected to these horrendous acts is social suicide. I contacted an attorney in San Antonio who I was familiar with and asked to talk to him about what I was remembering.

He asked me to meet at a local mall food court rather than either of our offices. He explained to stop talking, he most bizarrely even said “that his father might have been at one of the camps with a cattle prod.” This is a man of about my age who by pure chance I associated with that had also been subjected to some of what I had been. Only when a local therapist that I perchance went to for help recognized my story because he had also been subjected to it in an orphanage, did my recovery from post traumatic stress begin.

Apparently the brain-washing entailed manipulating the “Post Traumatic Fear” reaction of the unconscious [s/b “subconscious”?) (e.g, disassociation.) Force so much pain on the child that his mind literally splits off, then manipulate and create the split off part to the whim of the brainwasher. Very imprecise, but very damaging to the child.

It was apparent my parents, in-laws, even my now ex-wife were familiar with what happened to me in broad strokes, but even more amazing, were on board with it. Seems that to the people involved that I was almost somewhat of a celebrity. No one would help me or explain what happened. They would rather allow me to suffer in silence without admitting their own potential culpability. The lack of sympathy for my plight was astounding. Seems that helping someone like me was equivalent to betraying the perpetrators. The perpetrators were successfully running a huge, but successful bluff.

Speculatively, based on memories I don’t absolutely trust, the people who were brain-washing children at hidden camps were recruiting their subjects through the church (particularly a women’s group who recruited me through my mother), were sponsored by the church, and were also responsible for major events of the early 60s, including an assassination. The brain washers were, at least in my area, apparent leftovers from Nazi concentration camp experimenters during WWII (e.g., a statement that a machine that was used on me was from a leftover Messerschmitt airplane gauges found in Germany. They seemed to include “White Russians,” which at the time I had puzzled about as one of them had Red Hair. To me as a small child how could a white Russian (as opposed to a Red Russian) have red hair? I now know a red Russian was a Communist. Supposedly the Red Russians were a threat.

I was told by people who seemed to have a handle on the entire situation, that what I went through was a summer camp, which was, at least partially if inaccurately, caricatured in the movies “The Boys from Brazil” and the “Manchurian Candidate.” Put the two movies together, take out the genetic component, and replace it with brain-washing and you are there. I recall numerous, maybe twenty to fifty boys at the camp at one time.

A likely candidate, based on my perceptions, for having been successfully indoctrinated, was George W. Bush.

Lots of food for thought.”

That was the last time I heard from Mr. X, however his recollection of his experience has left a permanent memory in my mind I will never forget, especially when he mentioned the Kennedy assassination. For information on MK-Ultra: MKUltra - Wikipedia

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