The Office of Security Meet The Nine Part I: Strange Things
Regular readers of this blog are no doubt familiar with my series examining the CIA's mysterious and highly controversial Office of Security (OS). Therein the reader will discover the links between the OS and many of the CIA's biggest scandals, including the Watergate break-in (noted here, here and here); the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK (noted here); the mysterious "suicide" of Frank Olson, Mafia-sponsored plots to assassinate Castro, the OS's extensive role in Operation CHAOS (all of which was noted here); and the role it played in several of the CIA's behavior modification programs such as BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE and QKHILLTOP (noted here, here and here).
The Office of Security is often dismissed as a marginal component of the CIA by researchers who have chosen to focus on the far more glamorous Directorate of Operations (which included James Jesus Angelton's Counterintelligence Staff, the assassination and paramilitary-centric Special Activities Division (SAD) and Sidney Gottlieb's Technical Service Staff (TSS) until the early 1960s), much to determinate of truth seekers. The OS was far from marginal and in fact there appears to have been a decades-spanning conspiracy to cover-up the extent of the OS's dirty deeds. This is no more evident than in conventional accounts of Project ARTICHOKE, where is alleged to have been rolled into Sidney Gottlieb's MKULTRA some time between 1953 and 1955.
Sidney Gottlieb
As was noted before here, that is totally bogus. ARTICHOKE did not end in the mid-1950s, but in fact continued until 1963, at which point it appears to have been broken down into successor programs that may not have ended until 1973. Nor did Sidney Gottlieb and the TSS ever oversee ARTICHOKE. While Gottlieb and the TSS had a role in the so-called "Artichoke Committee," the project was under the control of the Office of Security from its inception until 1963, aside from a brief period from late 1951 until September 1952 when it was directed by the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI). The OSI was the OS's primary partner in ARTICHOKE and even retained control of "foreign scientific aspects" after overall control was reverted back to the Office of Security.
ARTICHOKE was, in other words, a totally separate project from the far more well-known MKULTRA, and was likely far more brutal and stranger than Gottlieb's dabblings (and dabblings they were in comparison to Morse Allen's penchant for the extreme). My initial series on the OS already covered the brutality aspects of this project, noting that the current practice of "enhanced interrogation methods" and "extraordinary rendition" is very much a legacy of ARTICHOKE.
This is hardly surprising as the principal purpose of ARTICHOKE was to develop what were initially referred to as "special interrogation" practices. Soon, however, ARTICHOKE ventured into even more exotic and bizarre pursuits. I'm sure many of you are aware that one of these pursuits was "mind control" and on the whole the OS's track record in this regard was a mixed bag (as noted before here).
Another was parapsychology. The OS subsidized the research of J.B. Rhine and his famed Duke University experiments as well as those of Martin Ebon. But even more compelling and mysterious was its support of the research of Dr. Andrija Puharich, whom the great Philip Coppens referred to as "the Father of the American New Age Movement." This may be a bit of a stretch, but there can be little doubt Puharich had a large yet little acknowledged role up until the 1980s.
Puharich
Continues at: http://visupview.blogspot.com/2016/08/t ... art-i.html
