Iraq Revelations Analyzed by a CIA MKULTRA Survivor - Part II

Kathleen A. Sullivan - Copyright 2004

5/19/04

In Part II,  I will share insights that are based on what I experienced as a victim of sadism, torture, and more. Because my mental and physical trauma-based conditioning began when I was a baby, and because I didn’t begin to receive outside interventions until I was 30, I spent approximately 3 decades being forcibly exposed to the worst human evil in our society. Unfortunately, over a period of more than a decade, I was also gradually and forcibly conditioned to mentally shatter until I became a willing human puppet for intelligence handlers. 

In this series of articles, I do not intend to imply that that the majority of military and intelligence personnel and civilian contractors would choose to participate in such activities. The sociopathic criminals I will be writing about, based on my personal history as a survivor of decades of U. S. intelligence and military abuses, experimentation and torture, are fairly small in number. Unfortunately, the long-term damage that they and their criminally minded associates have created in the minds and bodies of a minimum of thousands of innocents continues to be extreme.

If you find your level of discomfort to be too great while reading any of this series of articles, please do not continue. Having issued that warning, however, I want to remind each of you that we must be willing – if we’re able - to learn about the horrors that our governments continue to allow in secret, while denying or minimizing the existence of these crimes to the public. Whenever we close our eyes, ears and minds to such ugly truths, we inevitably enable the hands-on perpetrators, and those giving them the orders, to continue harming and terrorizing more innocents. There is no end to these crimes until we end them.

I will always grieve the horrors that I, under professional handlers’ control, inflicted on many others. Since then, I have undergone extensive rehabilitation that included numerous hospitalizations and intensive therapy for 15 years. It took all of that and more to transition from a shattered puddle of humanity to the reasonably caring, moral, law-abiding person that I now have the privilege to be. Because of the sad state of our current mental health and social security disability systems, other survivors from my covert background will not receive the same crucial level of care that I did. This awareness troubles me deeply. It is why I decided to study to become a licensed therapist. I cannot save the whole world, or the entire survivor community, but perhaps I can use what I learn, and what I’ve developed in personal recovery, to support at least some of them in finding their own way to freedom and new life.

One of the difficulties that many of us are having right now, as we read each new, disturbing revelation of the atrocities that have been perpetrated against war prisoners - including Iraqi children – in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, is that we need someone to be angry at, perhaps even to hate. We want to punish someone for doing such horrible things to the people whose care was entrusted to us as a people and as a nation. Based on our U.S. culture, we prefer to believe that we are the good guys, the heroes in white hats. It is very difficult for us to face that our humanity is no different than any other. We just don’t want to go there, especially in war time. We have to make someone else "less than" us, so that we will feel good about ourselves.

This is a tendency that we may never be able to completely shed. And yet, by learning the truth and then taking a good, hard look at who and what we really are, all the way through – we may be able to grow enough to be able to feel some level of compassion and empathy towards those who have shamed us before the world. We may find a way to connect with them, and to acknowledge that perhaps – just maybe – we might have done same of the same things, had we grown up inside their skin and been in their shoes.

I’ve been in their shoes. I will always feel the inner filth and shame of having done awful things to other human beings. And I guarantee you that some of the military police who are now in the process of being court-martialed, are feeling quite filthy and ashamed. They are fighting right now for their reputations and careers, which means that they can’t let down their guards enough to feel the shame. Because they probably feel like they are hated by the whole world right now, they are fighting back and doing their best to justify their actions in Abu Ghraib prison. But later on, maybe months or years from now, some of them might discover that what they did wasn’t really normal. They may begin to admit that their behaviors towards the Iraqi prisoners don’t fit their normal actions, here in the land of the free, where Christian mores comprise the core standard of conduct in daily life. They may begin to realize that they aren’t the monsters others make them out to be. And they may want to know: "Why did I give in? Why did I do things there that I would never do at home? How did I go from Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll? How could I have enjoyed doing those things to them? What happened to me?"

On the other side of the coin, some of the men (and possibly women) who were equally, or more, responsible will never be scapegoated. Instead, their crimes and identities will be hidden or greatly minimized. Their complicity either will be reported in small smatterings here and there (due to media censorship) or they will cease to be mentioned at all. Why? My personal belief is that the majority of them are already being protected by our government because it expects to use them again – and again, and again – on more victims. I do not believe it is any coincidence that although military leaders have announced changes in interrogation policy towards prisoners in Iraq, they stated that similar policies will not be changed in Guantanamo Bay.

Most, although not all, of these interrogators are hard-core sociopaths.  Those who are, can do the job well because they’re the best. They’re the best because, as sociopaths, they have zero empathy for any other living creature, and therefore have no difficulty doing whatever they believe they need to do to get the information their superiors are wanting. These sociopaths gravitate towards these extreme positions of immediate authority because they crave the sensation of total power over others. They experience genuine pleasure – emotional and oftentimes sexual – when they terrorize, humiliate, control, and even torture their victims. If you were able to research these sadists’ backgrounds, you would probably discover that the majority of them have consistent histories of mental, physical and even physical cruelty towards others – especially towards partners, children, and even animals.

Sociopathic sadists are, by general consensus in the mental health community, unrecoverable. Those who are professional interrogators have chosen, perhaps long ago, to go into the dark side of their souls and stay there. Staying and operating in the evil side of humanity is, for them, preferable to feeling the dark pain and horror of what they’ve done to others. They tend to medicate their pain, to keep it suppressed, by fixating on their victims, literally dumping their pain on the victims to keep from feeling it. For this reason, they may become emotionally addicted to victimizing others. Like fabled vampires that cannot survive without a steady diet of victims’ blood, some of these sadists are desperate for more and more victims.

When they do not have access to victims, most sadistic sociopaths seek other ways to self-medicate. They might stay in the intellectual sides of their brains to avoid their emotions. They might exercise excessively, abuse alcohol or drugs, have sex with others almost indiscriminately, seek adrenaline rushes, become excessively religious (a convenient way to also convince themselves and others that they aren’t bad people). They might even sexually prey on children.

Although they aren’t able to emotionally connect with other sadistic sociopaths, they prefer their company, because they – by being and working together – can then convince each other that what they are doing to victims is normal. They usually have difficulty socializing with others who are not like themselves, although some of them are very good at faking being comfortable in the company of people unlike themselves. Like wolves, they often operate and travel in packs, seeking their next prey. To keep their pain and self-loathing at bay, they find it necessary to feast again and again, satiating the sick desires of their souls.

For a sadistic sociopath, being hired as a government-approved-and-sanitized employee or contractor is like being handed the Hope diamond on a silver platter. This is one of the very few venues in which these individuals can act out their sickness without fear of going to prison, if exposed. Some other preferred outlets for sadistic sociopaths are: S&M, working in the intelligence community or law enforcement, joining Special Forces (some of these are later recruited as interrogators), becoming a mercenary after being discharged from the military, becoming a prison guard, entering a professional sport in which one can legally assault and harm others (e.g., boxing and football), attaining a position of religious authority (sadistic mental control and pedophilia are rife in some religious communities, plus such positions make it difficult for others to believe the perpetrators’ victims), joining a racist organization or hate group or secretive cult (especially when it practices criminal Satanism), or even working directly with children. (Sadly, there have been numerous verified reports over the last several decades of sadistic and ritualized abuse being perpetrated against children by personnel working in military and civilian-run day care facilities). Some sadists deliberately seek out psychologically vulnerable partners who have limited resources, knowing that they will not be as quick to fight back or try to leave. Even having children or becoming a step-parent is preferable for many of these individuals. After all, children are often easily controlled as victims, and just as easy to frighten into silence.

These are just a few of the outlets that sadistic sociopaths may choose; in reality, the possibilities are nearly endless. The bottom line is that they appear to be most successful if they can find outlets that involve ready access to victims with little to no interference, paired with some kind of positional authority or power. Such criminals are experts at covering their tracks. An even better environment to work in, is one that is already controlled by other sadistic sociopaths (this way, they can cover-up for each other’s offenses and deny, deny, deny).

That thought takes us back to interrogators who work within groups. They may report or testify that they only went so far with their victims; but if they are covering-up for one another, in reality they can sometimes take the abuse and torture as far as they want – even murder, and still get away with it. If they’re true professionals, they’ve been thoroughly trained in how to mentally and physically torture victims in ways that leave no noticeable scars (stun guns and tasers make handy-dandy tools of torture). This means that if they choose not to kill their victim, and then the victim dares to complain, it will be the victim’s word against the word of a group of government-approved professionals. This awareness, when added to the perpetrators’ lack of fear (sociopaths have very little) and the knowledge that their superiors will cover up for them, influences many professional interrogators to become extremely dangerous and evil beings who lurk in human skin. If unchecked, they can become the worst of the worst of humanity.

Another reason why they are dangerous when hired as interrogators, is that criminally minded sociopaths get an adrenaline rush out of breaking the law and become even more excited when they are not punished. Unlike non-sociopathic individuals, who usually will feel some fear or guilt if they break the law, criminally minded sociopaths feel emboldened by their success, and often become convinced that they can get away with more, and more.

Now, let’s add more people to the mix. In the rest of this article, I’ll refer to them as "normals." Most people abide by societal and moral restraints and have fairly strong consciences. Some of those who do not develop strong consciences will still do what is expected of them, including following the rules, obeying the laws, and so on. Why do they do this? Because they want to get along with the rest of the world. Joseph Darby, the MP who initially leaked the pictures of prisoner abuse, appeared to have a healthy, strong conscience. In a 5/12/04 article in USA Today, his mother reported that before Darby covertly gave the pictures to an officer, he called her and, without being specific about what he was witnessing at the prison, asked her what he should do. She replied, "I would remain true to myself, because the truth sets you free. And truth triumphs over evil." This powerful moral influence, coming from a primary caregiver at a crucial crossroads in Darby’s life, may have been kept him from mentally breaking and cooperating fully with the alleged perpetrators that included fellow MPs; a contractor from CACI (pronounced "khaki"), a corporation with extremely close, long-term ties to numerous U.S. military and intelligence agencies; and a group of military intelligence personnel who had basically taken over the interrogation process, telling the MPs, "It’s our show now".

Although Lynndie England and her infamous MP boyfriend – who also seems to be a sadist - have appeared repeatedly in the most often-shown photos of prisoner abuse at that prison, US News and World Report recently published an additional picture in which as many as eight individuals in military garb were standing in an open corridor or room, three of them closely observing – in an oddly detached way – four naked Iraqi prisoners, lying together on the floor, who appear to have been forced to simulate oral sex with one another. All of the military personnel (and possibly the contractor) who stood in plain view were male and were dressed alike, although the man standing closest to the prisoners wore long, black (rubber?) gloves. The boots and/or legs of three other personnel could be seen.

I’ve been in similar positions in the past. I’m not referring to being naked on a floor in a room, although that was also done to me in the past. I am referring to my having been in hundreds of inescapable, purposefully isolated environments in the past – rooms, suites, vehicles, offices, and more – with sociopathic individuals who at least claimed to be employed by the CIA or members of military intelligence. When such individuals worked together, away from anyone having a modicum of morality, all rules flew out the window. There were no limits to what they might do to me or other victims in the environment. I’d been around enough of them for enough years to know that they were very dangerous people.

Being forced to enter isolated environments strictly controlled by criminally-minded men who were clearly in positions of power (at least, over me) continued to be my worst nightmare. Each time I entered their presence again, I was absolutely terrified – at first. If I could have stayed in the victim role at those times, if I had fought their orders and control, or if I had resisted or tried to break away, I would feel better about myself now. But I didn’t. I caved in, time and time again, and became just like them.

I didn’t understand that I’d developed a conditioned response in each of those situations – denying my sense of self and becoming just like the perpetrators – to preserve my life and sanity. I always knew, though, that being with those men (and occasional women) was a nightmare come true each time. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the kind of nightmare in which I could pinch myself and wake up – the worst horror was that I was awake.

Because I know how bad that such circumstances can get, I am not willing to pass moral judgment on the MPs who are now being forced – by the Bush administration - to take the fall for the primary perpetrators.

Because my brutal conditioning started at the age of three, I was fully convinced by the time I was an older child that to resist would ensure my being tortured, group raped, or worse. I didn’t know that they had no intention of killing me. I had no clue as to how much value my life was to them. I did know that they were capable of killing me because I’d seen some of them murder others. Naturally, I wanted to live; and I really, really hated torture and intense pain – especially from electricity. Because the perpetrators were always very careful to make it impossible for me to escape whatever environment we were in at the given moment, I chose to please and placate them, and to do and be whatever I believed they wanted.

These perpetrators don’t have to threaten to kill or torture a "normal." All they have to do is model torture or murder of another victim in front of the "normal." This is enough to convince the "normal" that he or she would be safest if staying fully cooperative.

To feel the constant fear of pain, rape or death would have paralyzed me. We often hear that there are two responses to a serious imminent threat: flight or fight. On the contrary, I usually responded in a third way. I froze. I was like Bambi in the headlights.  I shut everything down inside my mind. To be able to function again, I had to slam the door on who I was, and totally suppress my fear of dying or being tortured. Unfortunately, when I shut the door on my sense of self, I had no choice but to develop a brand-new persona (like Patricia Hearst’s "Tania" alter-state). I developed a new self who would fully cooperate, pleasing the perpetrators by modeling myself after their perceived personalities and behaviors and motivations.

This instinctual response is often known as identification with the aggressor. It is one of several steps of a psychological self-preservation process commonly known as Stockholm Syndrome. I temporarily ceded my sense of self by focusing in a trance-like way on the perpetrators, mirroring my new persona after them. That wouldn’t be so bad if I were able to pull my new persona out of empty air, but it doesn’t work that way. In order to feel what they felt and think like they thought (I figured, unconsciously, they couldn’t kill themselves in me), I had to open up and tap into the blocked-off, closeted part of my personality – the part that is normally morally constrained – to "become" the perpetrators. By tapping into that normally suppressed part of my personality to carry out this new role, I opened the door to my hidden human demons, activating dangerously sociopathic thoughts and feelings that I’d suppressed while navigating within normal society. I simply could not be both people at one time. I still don’t know whether to be sad or glad that my need for survival and avoidance of extreme pain were more important than clinging to my conditioned morality and my ability to care about others.

Being in an isolated environment under the power of authority figures who were criminally minded sadists; knowing that if I didn’t please them, I might be their next victim; believing that they’d been given the authority to do what they did by people with even higher authority (which automatically made me feel safe from prosecution if I obeyed them implicitly); and having tapped into and released my most evil thoughts, feelings and desires; I was in very big trouble.

I went on to commit atrocities under the control of those perpetrators, never knowing that they were fully trained in psychology and the fine art of mind control (previously known as brainwashing). I didn’t know that they already knew all about identification with the aggressor and freezing/trancing and Stockholm Syndrome.  I never knew that I was being mentally and emotionally manipulated. Because I fully identified with them, I couldn’t comprehend that I was now their controlled victim.

Because I saw myself as one of them, and none of them exhibited any sign of guilt, each of those situations felt completely guilt-free: deliciously and wonderfully blameless. We could do the worst possible things to others and feel zero guilt. The only other situation I can compare it to, is like having way too much alcohol or drugs in my body. I am careful with alcohol now, because I know that it can too easily strip my moral brakes away and take me back to that place in my mind and soul where anything goes, any action is acceptable.

Newly victimized normals don’t realize that the interrogators and intelligence personnel are experts in mind control (their motto: "if you can control the mind, you control the body"). And the normals can’t bear to know that they are victims. If they do, they’ll switch back to their "normal" personas – something they don’t want to do, because then they’ll have to feel terror again. It’s much easier and feels much safer to stay in the new, altered state of consciousness - the newly formed persona.

The newly victimized normals are incapable of comprehending that by doing horrible things to other victims to please the controllers, the normals are now the controllers’ proxies, and are in danger of being prosecuted in the future – should word ever get out. They don’t understand that because it is their hands and bodies and voices that the prisoners see first, they are the individuals who the prisoners will most likely identify and testify against as torturers and more. The prisoners don’t understand and cannot comprehend that the normals are also victims.

I think that the interrogators and military personnel knew that the MPs at the Abu Ghraib prison would be easy pickings, because they had to be fully aware that the MPs were experiencing numerous stressors and other factors that would have made it easy for them to cede mental control. They were in constant fear of more prison riots. They were extremely overworked and understaffed. They were often exhausted, suffered from sleep deprivation (due to almost-nightly insurgent attacks on the prison that included mortar rounds and rockets.  In a 5/12/04 USA Today article, Lynndie England’s mother stated that "Lynndie, who dreamed of becoming a ‘storm chaser,’ recently ducked for cover at the sound of lightning, fearing it was mortar fire."). The heat and dust were incessant. They had low morale for numerous reasons, including lack of access to basic luxuries that were being provided to military personnel in other facilities. They were also acutely aware that they weren’t sufficiently trained to work in such an environment, bulging at the seams with enemy prisoners.

Am I trying to justify the behaviors of the MPs who obeyed and tried to please the interrogators and military intelligence personnel?  No.  They will each have to come to grips, and hopefully find peace, with what they’ve done.  However, I believe that we must be careful not to scapegoat them so readily. We must be careful not to brag to ourselves and others that we would never have done what they did to the prisoners. Until we are in that situation, we really have no way of knowing what our response – over time – would be.

Please keep in mind that this was only one group of people who perpetrated such acts, in one part of one prison in the country of Iraq.  Additional reports are coming out about uncannily similar abuses that have been perpetrated by other groups of military personnel in other facilities against other prisoners. What was done to the prisoners in the early winter of 2003 in Abu Ghraib prison was not an aberration; instead, it was a normal part of the human condition that can take over via identification with the aggressor and Stockholm Syndrome in extreme, threatening circumstances.

If you still have difficulty accepting that this can happen to decent people, you might want to go to two sets of websites that give accounts of psychological experiments in which – again - normal, decent people seemed to become evil when they voluntarily entered isolated environments in which, once again, societal constraints were easily discarded, while they adopted new roles under the verbal direction of authority figures.

In Part III I will focus on reported coercive techniques and other tactics that have been used during the interrogation of some Iraqi prisoners. I will use the effects of every-day experiences to help us understand what those prisoners endured. Finally, I will explain why such interrogation techniques aren’t necessarily as effective in obtaining legitimate information as some would hope.

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