Jose Delgado stood sweating in the center of a bull ring
in Madrid. He was steaming from the heat of the sun reflected
on the sand. He felt a twinge of natural fear as the
door at one end of the walled ring swung open, and a huge
black bull lunged forth from the darkness into the plaza de
toros.
This was a very good bull, one the best matador would
have desired. It charged as if on rails, straight at Delgado.
In front of a ton of black beef two sharp horns aimed to
gore the vital parts of bis body.
Delgado stood face to face with the charging Andalusian
toro. But Delgado was no matador. He stood in the ring
alone in his shirtsleeves. He wore no "suit of lights" and he
carried no cape. Instead of a sword, he held only a little
black box.
He wanted to wait until the last possible moment, but he
could not contain his fear. When the bull was thirty feet
away he pressed the button on the box. The bull immediately
quit his attack and skidded to a halt. Toro looked
right, then left, then, as if bewildered, he turned his broad
side toward Delgado and trotted away.
From the stands it was difficult to see the metal box between
the horns which held that small radio receiver which
picked up Delgado's signal and transmitted it as an electric
impulse through a probe inserted into the center of the
bull's brain. Delgado was not living out the boyhood fantasy
of being a matador, nor was he demonstrating his bravery. He was demonstrating his faith, as a scientist, in
the power of electronic brain stimulation.
Jose Delgado was a neurophysiologist at the Yale University
School of Medicine. By 1964, when he made his
dramatic demonstration with the bull, he had already been
experimenting with electronic stimulation of the brain
(ESB) for nearly two decades. His work, supported by the
Office of Naval Research, had been inspired by the Spanish
histologist Santiago Ramon y Cajal, who said that knowledge
of the physiochemical basis of memory, feelings, and
reason would make man the true master of creation. Cajal
suggested that man's most transcendental accomplishment
would be the conquest of his own brain, and upon this
premise Jose Delgado began his relentless quest to make
his mentor's dream come true.
"From ancient times," Dr. Delgado said, "man has tried
to control the destiny of other human beings by depriving
them of liberty and submitting them to obedience. Slaves
have been forced to work and to serve the caprices of their
masters; prisoners have been chained to row in the galleys;
men were and still are inducted into the armed forces and
sent thousands of miles away to create havoc, take lives,
and lose their own.
"Biological assault has also existed throughout recorded
history. In ancient China, the feet of female children were
bound to reduce their size. In many countries thieves have
been punished by having their hands cut off; males have
been castrated to inhibit sexual desire and then placed as
eunuchs in charge of harems; and in some African tribes it
was customary to ablate the clitoris of married females to
block their possible interest in other men and insure their
fidelity."1
The Spanish-born Delgado believed that, thanks to electronic
brain stimulation, science was at last on the verge of
"a process of mental liberation and self-domination which
is a continuation of our evolution." He believed that
through the direct manipulation of the brain, society could
produce "more intelligent education, starting from the moment
of birth and continuing throughout life, with the preconceived
plan of escaping from the blind forces of
chance."
Delgado believed that by direct influence of the cerebral mechanisms and mental structure it would someday be possible
to "create a future man . . . a member of a psychocivilized
society, happier, less destructive, and better balanced
than the present man."
In 1969 Dr. Delgado pleaded that the U.S. government
increase research into ESB in order to produce the fundamental
information which would give birth to a "psychocivilized
society." He said that the needed research could
not be "generated by scientists themselves, but must be
promoted and organized by governmental action declaring
'conquering of the human mind' a national goal at parity
with conquering of poverty or landing a man on the
moon."2
Delgado insisted that brain research was much less expensive
than going to outer space and would produce benefits
to society equal to, if not greater than, those produced
by space technology.
By the time Delgado's remarks were published, the cryptocracy
had already come a long way in developing the
techniques to create the "psycho-civilized society" Delgado
dreamed of. Delgado himself had been funded by grants
from the cryptocracy but, like other researchers, was kept
isolated and compartmented. He had no way of knowing
about the other government-directed brain control research
that was going on simultaneously with his own. A number
of government agencies were actually at work on projects
similar to Delgado's, and through these projects the cryptocracy
had gained the technology for direct access to the
control of the brain and through it, the mind.
In 1949, Dr. Irving Janis of the Rand Corporation had
recommended that the air force undertake a study of the
"effects of electricity on the brain." His report said that, in
research based on the literature of the 1940s, there were at
least some indications that electric shocks to the brain
might be conducive to mind control.
Janis wrote: "Many studies have shown that there is a
temporary intellectual impairment, diffuse amnesia, and
general 'weakening of the ego' produced during the period
when a series of electroshock convulsions is being administered."
Dr. Janis was not talking about electronic brain stimulation;
he was referring to electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), a crude treatment for schizophrenia originated in Hungary
in the 1930s, which consisted of passing a strong electrical
current through the entire brain at once.
Unlike ESB, ECT was not aimed at the microscopic
neural centers of the brain. It was just one large jolt of
electricity, which produced, rather than a specific neural
event, a massive convulsion. Electrical current administered
in such a way temporarily affected the electrical
properties of all the neurons in the brain. It produced sharp
biochemical changes in the levels of glucose, oxygen consumption,
protein synthesis, and other functions. It also
produced amnesia, sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent.
As biochemist Steven Rosen said, "The [ECT] treatment
is analogous to attempting to mend a faulty radio by
kicking it, or a broken computer by cutting out a few of its
circuits."3 Often the extreme convulsions induced by ECT
produced such strong muscular contractions that the bones
of the subject's body snapped like breadsticks.
But Dr. Janis did not seem to think it too severe a treatment
for use in mind control. "From my own and others'
investigations of the psychological effects of such treatments,"
he wrote, "I would suspect that they might tend to
reduce resistance to hypnotic suggestions. It is conceivable,
therefore, that electroshock treatment might be used to
weaken difficult cases in order to produce a hypnotic
trance of great depth."4
Meanwhile, astonishing discoveries were being made
which indicated that the use of electronic stimulation of the
pleasure center of the brain as a reward for performance
could be used to enhance learning. Experiments conducted
at the end of World War II showed that rats learned to
run around mazes and perform in Skinner boxes better
after they had received properly applied electronic stimulation
of their brains. Repeated experiments showed that
when animals were rewarded with electricity applied to the
pleasure center of the brain, they learned much more rapidly
than did animals who were conditioned by rewards of
food. One Department of Defense project graphically illustrated
the use of such pleasure stimulation conditioning.
The Sandia Corporation in New Mexico was asked by
the Department of Defense to set up a demonstration of
ESB and film the results. Sandia produced a striking film which showed electrodes being implanted into the brain of
an army mule. After the mule recovered from surgery, a
brain stimulator was placed in a pack on its back, along
with a prism and mirror which were arranged so that they
operated a photocell when the animal was facing directly
toward the sun. When sunlight struck the photocell, it
turned on a brief burst of electricity which was sent along
wires into the pleasure center of the mule's brain. When the
mule turned away from the sun, the stimulation stopped.
But when the mule faced the sun again, the pleasurable
stimulation resumed.
So wired, the mule marched over hill and dale across the
barren land of New Mexico, always facing the sun. Finally
it came to the boundary of the property, where a scientist
was waiting. The mirror was reversed and then the mule
retraced its steps by keeping its back to the sun. Mules are
not noted for being cooperative beasts, but this electrically
stimulated mule traced and retraced its path without deviation,
just as long as the stimulation continued.
Sandia's mule film created a great deal of enthusiasm at
the Pentagon. Quickly, the officers saw the military significance
of the experiment: mules could be made to clear
minefields! They could be used to deliver explosives to assigned
targets, much as the Russians had used trained dogs
to carry explosives against German tanks during World
War II! And what mules could accomplish on land, porpoises,
with much greater intelligence, could accomplish in
the sea!
It soon became clear to the cryptocracy that electronic
brain stimulation held the greatest promise for specific, selective
mind control. The usefulness of drugs in manipulating
human behavior had been limited by the inability of
researchers to control either the desired or the undesired
effects of the drugs with any precision. ESB, however, used
in conjunction with psycho-surgery and behavior modification,
offered unlimited possibilities. After experiments on
laboratory animals met with success, human experimentation
was enthusiastically undertaken in quest of the most
reliable and absolute method of remote control of the mind.
Because human behavior is influenced by many more
variables, experimentation on humans proved to be more
complex than with animals. Experimenters were constantly
reaching false conclusions. Often the observed effects of stimulating certain areas of the brain turned out to be only
indirectly related to the stimulation.
For example, a fifty-year-old female mental patient was
stimulated in what was thought to be her pleasure center.
She had been an extremely withdrawn and melancholy person
whose expression always seemed impassive and dour.
When electronic stimulation was applied at irregular intervals
and different times of day, she would laugh or smile.
The scientists concluded that they were stimulating a
strong pleasure region in her brain and grew confident that
they had found a way to cure the woman of her melancholia.
They began to discuss their findings openly in her presence,
until one day she became angry and told them she
did not enjoy the experiments at all. She explained to the
scientists that the stimulus was not giving her pleasure, it
was creating a rhythmic contraction of certain pelvic muscles.
She had smiled and laughed from being tickled!
After many years of experimentation, it is still unknown
just exactly which effects of electronic brain stimulation are
psychological, which are physical, and which are psychophysical.
For every experiment suggesting that a particular
behavior change is due to the direct effect of electricity applied
to a center of the brain, there are others which suggest
that the effect is a result of some psychological response
to the initial stimulus.
From the Brain Research Institute at the University of
California came a report by Dr. Mary Brazier that one patient
continued to "self-stimulate even after electricity was
turned off and there was no more current in the electrode."
Others gave similar reports, saying that some subjects continued
to press a lever which had rewarded them with pleasurable
stimulation long after the current was cut off. These
subjects pushed the lever hundreds of times when they
were receiving no stimulation at all, and kept on doing it
until the experiment was terminated.
Several experimenters reported that ESB elicited sexual
feelings and in some cases orgasms. In a report summarizing
seven years of research with ESB, Dr. R. G. Heath told
of one melancholic patient who had attempted suicide a
number of times. When all else failed to elevate his mood,
doctors resorted to ESB. An electrode implanted in his hypothalamus
was activated and the subject smiled. After the
experience he said, "I feel good. I don't know why, I just suddenly felt good." Upon further questioning the patient
admitted that there might have been sexual overtones in his
experience. He said, "It's like I had something lined up for
Saturday night . . . a girl."
Heath reported that in several instances ESB led to orgasm.
While orgasms may have been caused by genital sensations
created when certain areas of the brain were stimulated,
Heath said that he did not believe that genital
sensations had to be present for orgasm to occur. He observed
that self-stimulation usually stopped after orgasm
was reached. He concluded that stimulation of the orgasm
center of the brain, if that was what had produced the orgasms,
appeared to be no more compelling than masturbation.
From the Soviet Union came a report typical of many of
the surprising results of ESB. A thirty-seven-year-old
woman suffering from Parkinson's disease was given ESB
treatments to alleviate the effects of palsy. The stimulation
evoked sexual sensations which eventually led to orgasm.
The woman then began to hang around the laboratory. She
would initiate conversation with aides and assistants whenever
she could. She even waited for them in the hospital
corridors and the garden trying to find out when the next
session was scheduled. She was especially affectionate toward
the doctor who was throwing the switch to activate
the probes in her brain. When she was finally told that
there would be no more stimulation, she displayed extreme
dissatisfaction.
Strangely, the stimulation did not give the woman any
sexual pleasure until her menstrual cycle, which had been
absent for eight years, resumed as a result of the stimulation.
Soviet investigators expressed their belief, based on
studies such as this, that the motivational consequences of
ESB are subject to conscious control. This conclusion is
supported by the results of many experiments in the West
as well.
In 1964 Richard Helms reported to the Warren Commission
(see Appendix A) that the trend in the Soviet Union
was to build "the New Communist/Man" through
cybernetics (the use of machines as control/mechanisms).
Helms quoted an unidentified Soviet author saying: "Cybernetics
can be used in 'molding of a child's character, the
inculcation of knowledge and techniques, the amassing of experience, the establishment of social behavior patterns
. . . all functions which can be summarized as control of the
growth process of the individual.' " The Helms memo indicated
that the Soviets did not possess any knowledge which
the West did not have, and in some areas even lagged far
behind U.S. research. The tone of his memo seemed to suggest
that the U.S. cryptocracy was also interested in creating
a "new man"—a cyborg.
The term "cyborg" was coined in the mid-sixties by C.
Maxwell Cade. It was first used to describe a human body
or other organism whose functions are taken over in part
by various electronic or electromechanical devices. But true
man-machine interface will not exist until the machine becomes
an extension not of a man's hands but of his brain.
When the machine responds directly to thought, just as an
arm or hand does, then the cyborg will be among us. Electronic
brain stimulation is the first real step toward the creation
of a true cyborg.
ESB has, meanwhile, been strikingly successful in other
areas. It has been used to modify mental mechanisms, to
produce changes in mood and feelings, to reinforce behavior
both positively and negatively. It has been used to activate
sensory and motor regions of the brain in order to
produce elementary or complex experiences or movements,
to summon memories, and to induce hallucinations. It also
has been used to suppress or inhibit behavior and experience
and memory—outside of the conscious control of the
owner of the brain.
ESB has inhibited the intake of food. It has inhibited
aggressiveness and even the maternal instinct. It has been
widely used in medical research to help stroke victims recover
from paralysis and to block epileptic convulsions. It
has proved to be an aid to paraplegics in controlling their
bladders and it has helped certain kinds of paralysis victims
to walk again. It has been found to be effective in blocking
even the most severe pain.
ESB has been used by psychiatrists to improve mood,
increase alertness, and produce orgasm. It has been used as
a conditioning tool to "cure" undesirable social behavior
such as homosexuality. And, in 1974, the first victim of
Parkinson's disease treated by ESB walked gracefully out of
a San Francisco hospital under his own power, thanks to
portable ESB. He had a "stimoceiver" implanted in his brain which he could activate from a battery-powered device
in his belt. The "stimoceiver," which weighed only a
few grams and was small enough to implant under his
scalp, permitted both remote stimulation of his brain and
the instantaneous telemetric recording of his brain waves.
Ten years before, Dr. Delgado had foreseen the day when
a psycho-civilized society would resort to the use of such
stimoceivers for control of the masses. He had said, "A
two-way radio communication system could be established
between the brain of a subject and a computer. Certain
types of neuronal activity related to behavioral disturbances
such as anxiety, depression, or rage could be recognized in
order to trigger stimulation of specific inhibitory structures
. . .'5 What he was describing was a society kept
under emotional control by electronic brain manipulation.
Rather than have man control a machine with his brain,
Delgado wanted the control of man by machine.
The present state of Western technology enables man to
open garage doors, fly model airplanes, and change television
channels by remote control. The government communicates
via telemetry with satellites far out in the solar system.
Medical scientists monitor heartbeats and vital
functions of patients in hospitals and astronauts on the
moon. And by the late 1960s, the "remote control" of the
human brain—accomplished without the implantation of
electrodes—was well on its way to being realized.
A research and development team at the Space and Biology
Laboratory of the University of California at the Los
Angeles Brain Research Institute found a way to stimulate
the brain by creating an electrical field completely outside
the head. Dr. W. Ross Adey stimulated the brain with electric
pulse levels which were far below those thought to be
effectual in the old implanting technique.
In one experiment, Dr. Adey analyzed the brain waves
of chimpanzees who were performing tasks that involved
learning. He established that there were two very distinct
brain-wave patterns which accompanied correct and incorrect
decisions. Building on this, Dr. Adey attempted to control
the rate at which the chimps learned by applying force
fields to the outside of the head to alter behavior, moods,
and attention. Dr. Adey's research indicated that his subjects
were able to remember new information faster and
better with stimulation. In the vanguard of brain technology, Dr. Adey worried
about misuse of ESB when applied to humans. "My personal
concern," he said, "is that we do it well. That if we
decide that this manipulation is feasible, that we do it in
ways that are socially acceptable."6
In 1975 a primitive "mind-reading machine" was tested
at the Stanford Research Institute. The machine is a computer
which can recognize a limited amount of words by
monitoring a person's silent thoughts. This technique relies
upon the discovery that brain wave tracings taken with an
electroencephalograph (EEG) show distinctive patterns
that correlate with individual words—whether the words
are spoken aloud or merely subvocalized (thought of).
The computer initially used audio equipment to listen to
the words the subject spoke. (At first the vocabulary was
limited to "up," "down," "left," and "right.") At the same
time the computer heard the words, it monitored the EEG
impulses coming from electrodes pasted to the subject's
head and responded by turning a camera in the direction
indicated. After a few repetitions of the procedure, the
computer's hearing was turned off and it responded solely
to the EEG "thoughts." It moved a television camera in the
directions ordered by the subject's thoughts alone!
This "mind-reading machine" was the creation of psychologist
Lawrence Pinneo and computer experts Daniel
Wolf and David Hall. Their stated goal was eventually to
put a highly skilled computer programmer into direct communication
with the computer. Their research indicated
that a nonsymbolic language—brain-wave patterns—did
exist. By teaching computers this language, the timeconsuming
practice of speaking or writing computer instructions
could be abandoned. Faster programming would
result in an information explosion whose effects could
cause a transformation of our civilization unlike anything
that has happened since the Industrial Revolution.
Many beneficial effects of the Stanford "mind-reading
machine" may eventually accrue. Physically handicapped
people may be able to use mini-computers to interpret signals
from their environment and compensate for the loss of
some bodily functions. The deaf may be able to hear; the
blind to see; the paralyzed to walk.
Military applications of a "mind-reading machine" will
someday allow faster computer input and output of information, remote control of war machines, and even the creation
of animal or human robots to do the bidding of the
military.
Norbert Wiener, the "father of cybernetics," once said
that the human brain, while functioning in a manner parallel
to the computer, actually imitates only one run of it.
Rudolph Flesch clarified Wiener's statement, adding that it
was the computer which had the advantage since it had the
ability to store memory away until needed for the consideration
of a new problem. He said that while the machine
starts each new problem from scratch, man carries his past
with him until he dies.
One young scientist at Rockefeller University, Dr. Adam
Reed, is working under a Department of Defense contract
to change all that. At a 1976 symposium of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Adam
Reed said, "Ideally, the computer of the future should be
an electronic extension of the natural brain functioning in
parallel with some of the existing brain structures and using
the same program and data languages."
According to Dr. Reed, within two decades it will be
possible to encode and transmit brain waves from a small
device implanted inside the skull. It will be linked by radio
control to a large computer with a huge memory bank
which, he said "will have stored in it everything you might
want to know about foreign languages, mathematics, music,
history—and any other subject you would want to add.
You'll enjoy instant recall. The information stored in your
own memory cells and in your computer will be readily
accessible. You won't be able to forget things . . . You'll
also be able to calculate even the most complicated problems
with split-second speed."
But Dr. Reed admitted that there were very real dangers
to mental freedom posed by the brain technology now
being developed. "It is essential that people be able to use
them [the computers] for their own purposes rather than
for purposes imposed on them by the political structure."
While Dr. Reed conceded that it was "conceivable that
thoughts could be injected" into a person's mind by the
government, he indicated that he did not believe it had already
been done. "If the political system changes and massive
abuses appear likely," he said, "that would be the time
to disappear from the society." Dr. Lawrence Pinneo at the Stanford Research Institute
also discouraged the idea of a conspiracy to create a
"psycho-civilized," mind-controlled society. When asked if
there weren't a real and present danger of government
control of the thoughts of citizens posed by brain-computer
technology, Pinneo told a San Francisco reporter, "Anything
is possible. But government could lock us all up today,
so this sort of thing doesn't really change that possibility.
It is really up to us to be vigilant against misuse."7
Typically, the scientists have not been vigilant enough,
for the cryptocracy already has developed remote-controlled
men who can be used for political assassination
and other dangerous work, as is the cyborg in the "Six Million
Dollar Man"—but for less noble purposes. Cyborgs—
altered and controlled humans—are far less expensive
than fully mechanical robots. Due to the high cost of technology
men are cheaper than machines, and much more
expendable.

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