OldSpeak
A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed: An Interview with Carol Rutz
By John W. Whitehead
May 18, 2005
 |
In 1953, terrified by rumors of Communist “brainwashing” of prisoners of war during the Korean War, then CIA Director Allen Dulles authorized MKULTRA—a program that quickly became notorious for unusual and inhumane testing that the CIA and U.S. military poured millions of dollars into. In fact, while reviewing the “tests” five years later in 1958, one CIA auditor wrote: “Precautions must be taken not only to protect operations from exposure to enemy forces, but also to conceal these activities from the American public. The knowledge the Agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles.” Most of the documents detailing day-to-day operations within MKULTRA were destroyed by the CIA in 1972. These included limitless LSD experiments on unknowing victims, as well as experiments with sensory deprivation, electro-shock, brain implants, hypnosis and various forms of torture.
Among those involved in MKULTRA workings were former Nazi scientists. Project Paperclip was the codename for the U.S. Intelligence Services and military project that brought hundreds of Nazi scientists specializing in chemical weapons, science, rocketry and medicine from Germany to the U.S. directly after the collapse of the Nazi government during the end of WWII. Without State Department approval, more than 800 ardent Nazi supporters and their families were brought to the United States. I detailed this in a commentary entitled “Project Paperclip: Nazis in America.” These Nazi scientists worked in the fields of medicine, science, mind control and advanced weaponry. However, not one of them actually qualified for work visas since they had all recently served to further Hitler’s Third Reich. Their work on guided and ballistic missile technology later resulted in the founding of NASA.
Despite then-President Harry S. Truman’s orders not to allow scientists who were thought to have “unusually strong” leanings toward Nazi propaganda, many of the incoming German scientists’ files were rewritten and “cleaned-up.” This was mainly to prevent their expert skills from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union. As the men were being siphoned out by government officials—those who would come to the U.S. and those who would not—selected scientists’ (whose files were then creatively edited) paperwork was earmarked with a large paperclip. Hence, the beginning of the notorious “Project Paperclip.” Most of the information still surrounding Project Paperclip remains classified to this day. This includes the whereabouts of Dr. Josef Mengele, the most disturbing of all Nazi medical doctors known for his compulsive attraction to human experimentation.
Directly following the expatriation of Nazi scientists into the U.S.—under the guise of the newly created project MKULTRA, officially defined as “A CIA Program of Research in Behavioral Modification”—Project BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE were formed in the early 1950s. These served as the primary codenames for a massive mind-control campaign—a field many Nazi scientists were specialists in long before the onslaught of WWII.
All the subprograms of MKULTRA, including Bluebird and Artichoke, coupled with the expatriation of hundreds of Nazi scientists specializing in mind control experiments, were justified by the CIA as a necessary means to an end—that is, to create dissociative symptoms and disorders, including full multiple personality disorder, for the creation of “Manchurian candidates,” or super-spies to be used on enemies during the Cold War.
In 2001, Carol Rutz published a brief narrative of her life that would shock all those who read it. A Nation Betrayed: The Chilling True Story of Secret Cold War Experiments on Our Children and Other Innocent People is an alarming account of U.S. government experiments performed on innocent children under the guise of preparing the country for a Cold War that would never happen—with many government officials heralding the project as “the end that would justify the means.”
Using electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, trauma and sensory deprivation, thousands of American children such as Carol Rutz allegedly endured unthinkable mental and physical pain at the hands of the CIA conducting mind experiments in order to create a Manchurian Candidate. But as our country began to lift the veil of Cold War paranoia, these same children, according to Rutz, were now growing into adults, and suddenly they began silently suffering flashes of torturous memories that neither they nor those around them understood. Indeed, for these Americans, including Rutz, the damage stemming from the government’s misuse of power during this time period had already been done.
In an effort to expose the truth about these government experiments, Rutz’s A Nation Betrayed—now being adapted into a motion picture screenplay—is footnoted documentation of her personal involvement in mind control experiments beginning when she was four years old. Sold to the government for use by her father and grandfather, Rutz’s account includes her 12-year frightening journey of government testing and training for use in various ways, including everything from sexual acts to assassinations by mentally creating “alters” in her—or multiple personalities. Under American government programs such as Bluebird/Artichoke and MKULTRA, CIA personnel worked alongside former Nazi scientists and doctors who had already proven proficient in breaking the mind and rebuilding it.
In an exclusive interview with oldSpeak, Mrs. Rutz discussed A Nation Betrayed, a substantial framework to some of the well-concealed “secret operative” evils that pervaded our government during America’s Cold War.
JW: On the cover of your book, A Nation Betrayed, there is a picture of a little girl. Is that you?
Carol Rutz: That is me as a young child of 4 years old. That is the year that I was first taken by the CIA.
JW: In the prologue, you mention a summer day in 1991 when you and your sister visited your uncle, who was dying of cancer. You write, “Something in me stirred that warm afternoon; the secrets that I had been holding all my whole life couldn’t be contained, and then it came out.” Is that what you call an abreaction?
CR: Actually, I had done abreacting in effect with my father prior to that time at home with my husband. I had yet to come out publicly to my family. This was a big step for me that day—to actually tell my sister what had been going on in our life.
JW: When did you start recovering memories prior to that?
CR: 1991 was the year I originally started recovering memories. I attribute that to being in a safe environment for the first time in my life.
JW: What memories started surfacing? What did you start remembering?
CR: I started abreacting as my husband was kissing my neck—I would abreact on the incest that had taken place. This came out over time. So it was basically in the beginning that I started remembering the incest. And then, as time went on, I remembered other things to do with government experiments and ritual abuse—although I didn’t understand the nature of what I was remembering.
JW: When you use the term abreaction, what do you mean?
CR: Abreaction is similar, for example, to what a Gulf War veteran would experience once he is home. These are soldiers who had been in the line of duty. They may be sitting in their living room and hear a bomb go off on the TV. Or they smell something and it triggers them back into the time they were in battle. It is similar to taking a tape recorder or a phonograph and putting the needle on the phonograph and replaying that entire event. You feel as if you are there.
JW: That afternoon, you started remembering incidents with family members such as your father. You indicate that life as a child was a living hell. Give me a sense of what you remember about what happened in your family—specifically the abuse.
CR: My abuse started at a very young age in the form of incest with my father and my grandfather. There was generational ritual abuse involved that started at the age of two and a half. These things are what made me become dissociative. As time went on, I saw my cousin drowned. I saw such horrible events that I could not retain my sanity. That is why I became dissociative and lost my memory of these events.
JW: You say that you became the government’s “little experiment.” This is connected to your parents as well. Was your father somehow connected to the government? The CIA? How did you wind up being the government’s “little experiment”?
CR: I honestly believe that someone in the CIA knew about the pornographic material my grandfather was producing. I believe they used that as a weapon to blackmail him and to gain my services. My grandfather was into child porn and probably sold it to members of the Mafia.
JW: What time period was this?
CR: The early 1950s.
JW: What type of child pornography was involved? Movies? Magazines?
CR: It was stills.
JW: You write that your grandfather took photos of you in lewd positions. Somehow the government through whatever source found out about this. Then what happened?
CR: When my mother gave birth to my younger sister, who is five years younger than I am, my grandfather and those in the government whom he was working with felt this would be an opportune time to exploit me and not have to explain my absence to my mother. I was taken aboard an aircraft to what I believe was New York City. The first mind control experiment that I was under happened at that point and time. And that was July 1952.
JW: Why do you believe it was New York City?
CR: I have journals throughout all of my memories, and from what I wrote I believe it to be New York. I can’t give you any better than my alters have given, and they have always written the truth. I have never found a time when I haven’t been able to document the truth. So I believe New York City is probably where it happened.
JW: You mentioned that you were dissociative. You also mention the concept of alters. Could you explain alters and the dissociative identity disorder?
CR: Dissociative identity disorder used to be called MPD—multiple personality disorder. What happens is that when a child is abused—usually under the age of 6—so horrifically that their mind cannot contain what has happened to them, they dissociate that event. It becomes locked away in a memory, and a child is able to go on and only remember part of their life. They remember the part that takes them through the day to day living. But they are totally dependent on their abuser.
JW: The human mind creates categories?
CR: Pretty much. When one is creating an alter, generally that alter comes back for the same type of situation. For instance, I had a child alter who participated in the pornographic photographs.
JW: Was that the alter you refer to as “little girl” in your book?
CR: No. “Little girl” was first created from the incest with my father. That is the alter the CIA chose and used for me.
JW: How are alters brought into realization—that is, if they (the CIA or whoever) want you to be “little girl,” do they say the phrase “little girl” to you?
CR: Yes. All they had to do was to mention the word “little girl” and I would immediately dissociate into that compliant alter who had been abused.
JW: When you became the alter, you became that person? You wouldn’t remember who else you were? You just remembered the alternate personality?
CR: That’s right. If I was 10 years old and “little girl” was called out, I would become 4 years old again. I would become “little girl” and act as if I was a totally different person.
JW: At the time, that alter would perform the particular task for which that alter was created?
CR: Right. When the government first started creating alters, they used electroshock on me plus some drugs and hypnotic techniques. These were used to bring back those alters that they created for their own personal use.
JW: You were shocked, drugged and hypnotized?
CR: This happens to every young child who is used in these programs. The first time for me was in July of 1952. That was when electroshock was used on me.
JW: How was the electroshock administered?
CR: I don’t really remember. I know that I was sitting in a chair. I know that I had electrodes on my head.
JW: What other means do the handlers, the abusers, use to create alters?
CR: They use a systematic form of torture of some sort. It can be sensory deprivation. Some children are placed in a box with snakes. It can be electroshock. Some type of traumatic incident will then shock the dissociative person into another state of mind so that the handlers can work with a new alter. Trauma-based programming is what I call it. It is used to produce altered states of mind.
JW: You specifically mention being involved with the top-secret project MKULTRA and doctors who worked with MKULTRA in your book.
CR: Yes, I was 4 years old. MKULTRA was established in 1953 to counter the Soviet and Chinese advances in brainwashing interrogation techniques.
JW: Thus, MKULTRA was established for a noble purpose?
CR: I suppose the United States government thought it was a very noble way to go about accomplishing their goals. But it turned out not being noble at all.
JW: What is MKULTRA?
CR: It consisted of 149 different sub-projects that were contracted out to at least 80 institutions. They were trying to find hypotnic couriers. These are what are called “Manchurian candidates”—after the movie of the same title. The government had been using hypnosis prior to that time under a project called Artichoke. They were finding some success with hypnotic couriers. This appears to be the case from the declassified documents I’ve read. Therefore, they wanted to take it a step further. They also were going to be testing LSD and, unfortunately, they used this awful drug on many of our American soldiers. There were various drugs used to see if they could find a brainwashing technique.
JW: And they used young children as well?
CR: A lot of people were used. Young children were some that they kept the most secret.
JW: These government handlers were obviously programming people for various things. One, as you write about in your book, was sexual pleasure. Then there was the Manchurian candidate and so on.
CR: Right. They had so many different ways to use a child. They used children in more ways than one. I was used at one point in time, when I was probably around 10, to tempt men. I would be behind a two-way mirror with a man that they were setting up. Then they would take pictures and use them to blackmail whatever person they had into doing what they wanted.
JW: When you say “they,” are you talking about the FBI? The CIA?
CR: It was a group of people who were what I call the shadow government. Some of them were involved in the CIA. But I don’t believe that everyone in the CIA knew what was going on. It is documented that part of this was kept to the knowledge of two or three people in the CIA.
JW: Such as Allen Dulles, head of the CIA at the time?
CR: That is correct. Then, of course, we have the complicity of the doctors who were involved in this program.
JW: Were universities involved working with the government on MKULTRA mind control?
CR: Yes, there were a good number of universities involved.
JW: Your mentioned the phrase “Manchurian Candidate,” which is, of course, a great film about people who are programmed to kill. Were you programmed to be a Manchurian candidate?
CR: What they programmed me for, and what I actually accomplished, are two different things. What they were trying to accomplish with me was to create someone who could kill by the power of using their mind. In other words, a psychic killer. I do not say that I ever did that. I am saying that is what they were trying to achieve.
JW: Do you know of any survivors that, once they have been programmed as a Manchurian candidate, have been called back into service to actually do that? To kill someone? Psychically or otherwise?
CR: Yes. Since 2001 when my book was published, I have heard from hundreds of different survivors. Some of them say they were programmed to be assassins. I was not programmed as an assassin to use arms and weapons.
JW: How many survivors of mind control do you think are out there?
CR: There have to be thousands. I have heard from hundreds. So if I have heard from hundreds, there have to be thousands.
JW: The renowned psychologist, Dr. Corydon Hammond, gave a speech in 1992 in which he claimed that this is a common pattern across the United States. He said that there were literally thousands of people out there who had been abused like this and turned into people having alters and who were dissociative. Do you believe this validates what you are saying?
CR: It validated people who read my book and said, “Oh, my God. I am not crazy. What I remembered is really true. This is exactly what I remember happening to me.”
JW: In your book A Nation Betrayed, you discuss a man you refer to as Dr. Black. You claim that Dr. Black was actually the Nazi Joseph Mengele, the Angel of Death of Auschwitz. If that is true, it seems to say that the United States government brought in one of the most evil—maybe even the essence of evil—into this country to do experiments on little children.
CR: I believe that Allen Dulles knew. I know there were a number of doctors that worked with Dr. Black who knew that he was Joseph Mengele. Mengele was brought to the United States covertly. He also worked in Canada because there are many Canadian survivors who also remember him. Some of these survivors were in orphanages.
JW: Gerald Posner’s book, Mengele: The Complete Story, suggests that Mengele actually landed in America, I believe it was New York City, on his way to someplace else. There is no hard evidence that he actually conducted any experiments in the United States. Why do you believe it was the Joseph Mengele that was doing these bizarre experiments on you and others?
CR: Because when I saw Joseph Mengele’s face in a photograph, I recognized him as Dr. Black. Moreover, as time went on and I spoke with more and more survivors, other people remembered the same face as that of Joseph Mengele when they saw a picture of him. He had an accent. He wore shiny black shoes. But more than once I was told not to look at his face. However, there came a point in time where he actually identified himself to me. I probably was around 16 years old when that happened. He referred to me as one of the “Mengele kids.” That was the time I heard his name mentioned or he himself spoke his name. Other than that, it was always Dr. Black in front of me.
JW: In your book, you indicate that Mengele actually harvested eggs from you after an abortion.
CR: I believe that to be the case. That is what I was told.
JW: Who told you that?
CR: Joseph Mengele. He showed me two children who had grossly enlarged heads. He told me that they were the product of eggs he had harvested from me when I was 12 years old. This was during an abortion performed on me.
JW: After performing an abortion? So you remember being pregnant?
CR: I do now.
JW: In your book, you indicate that some of the experiments on you occurred in Canada. How did you get to Canada? Where were you living at the time?
CR: Toledo, Ohio. I was taken to Canada on more than one occasion. Once by my father by car. Once I remember going in an aircraft. I am not sure who was in the aircraft. But I know that there was a red carpet put out when we arrived. I was drugged, put in a box and carried out so that no one would know that they had a child with them.
JW: Your father knew this was going on? He was involved?
CR: Once my grandfather got me involved, I believe my father was stuck. My father was involved in child pornography and ritual abuse. He could have been taken out of the process at any point in time. But by having him involved, I believe it accomplished more than one thing. It kept me dissociative. It kept me … that is such a hard question to answer
During the Canadian experiments on me, there was a famed neurosurgeon involved. I met a nurse just two years ago at a conference who worked with this neurosurgeon when she was a young nurse. After hearing what I said about the brain surgery that was done on me, she relayed to me that the neurosurgeon was experimenting on epileptic children. Parents would agree to have their children worked on by him to help the epilepsy. However, at the same time he was mapping their brains. This was very validating to me, knowing that this is in fact what he had done to me when I was taken to him. He was basically mapping my brain.
JW: This was Mengele that was mapping your brain?
CR: Yes.
JW: What does it mean to map a brain?
CR: Mapping is done to find out different centers. In my case, I had different personas—that is, different alters—and different parts of my brain. This neurosurgeon was trying to identify what parts of my brain had different alters.
JW: In your book, you said you were taken to a large airplane hangar and there were children in cages hanging from the ceiling.
CR: Yes, that’s right. These children were being used as experiments.
JW: Who was with you at the time? Was your father with you?
CR: No. The only people I remember were CIA-connected and Joseph Mengele. What you have to keep in mind is if you take a child who is, for example, 8 years old and place that child naked in a cage, hang the cage from the ceiling, give them no food or water and do not allow them to sleep, they very quickly become compliant. And you program them to do whatever you wish.
JW: In your book, you describe a scene that captures some of what we are discussing. It had to do with Dr. Black, whom you say is Dr. Mengele. It is a scene where Dr. Black makes a child crawl toward him like a dog. The child had shackles on her ankles.
CR: I was told that. It is a story by another survivor who remembered it. So I cannot vouch for its veracity.
JW: Did anything similar to that happen to you? How were you used by Dr. Black in terms of programming? Was he just doing experiments, or was he trying to actually program you as well?
CR: I don’t believe he was programming me at all. He was utilizing me for various experiments he was doing. God only knows what he got out of all this. I believe it had to do with some type of scientific genetic eugenics experiment.
JW: Dr. Black was simply one of many Nazi doctors, scientists and war criminals brought into the United States by way of Project Paperclip. How does that tie into what you think happened to you?
CR: I believe that the person who originally delivered me to Allen Dulles to be experimented on was involved with Project Paperclip. The United States government became involved with Nazi scientists in Europe. Nazis were brought here for their expertise. This was so the Communists wouldn’t get them. These Nazis were used by our government for their own purposes.
JW: Of course, the government says they did this for a noble concept. They brought the Nazi scientists into the United States so the Communists would not get them. One was Wernher von Braun, who developed our missile program. Von Braun was a former SS officer. However, as you make clear in your book, they not only brought in the scientists who wanted to build rockets, they also brought in people like Dr. Black as well. These were mind control scientists who wanted to continue to conduct grotesque experiments, as they had done in Nazi Germany in places such as the concentration camp at Auschwitz.
CR: That is correct. Recently, Elizabeth Holtzman, a former Congresswoman from New York, has been trying to get these records further declassified. We have hundreds of thousands of pages that actually have now been declassified. Holtzman actually said that the CIA was defying the law. And in so doing, the CIA is trivializing the Holocaust by thumbing its nose at the survivors and at the Americans who gave their lives in an effort to defeat the Nazis in World War II. Therefore, whatever noble purpose you have, you cannot just do as you please.
JW: Are you saying that our government is still doing those things?
CR: Yes, in a way. Recently, 60 Minutes had a program on how our government is shuttling people to different countries for interrogation and torture. When the man from the CIA was asked if he believed it was appropriate to torture people, he said, “Yes. It’s okay to do this as long as I can prevent Americans from being injured.” Thus, the same type of mindset now exists as when I was a child.
JW: Many people argue that programs such as Project Paperclip and even some of these experiments we’ve been discussing are justified to a certain extent if it kept this country free. How do you respond to that?
CR: It is hard for me to understand how people can believe that any means justifies an end because we will eventually turn into what we hate.
JW: Have we turned into what we hate? Because we still see instances of torturing people. For example, there is a detention center in Brooklyn, New York where American personnel are torturing alleged terror suspects. Then, of course, there are the torture allegations by Americans at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. When, for example, you see the images of torture that occurred at Abu Ghraib, does this bring back memories?
CR: Absolutely. It was very reminiscent of what happened to me. It was very difficult to watch. But this is not new. The government has done this before, as I detail in my book. Also, this is not the first time they have used children for their own purposes. Just last December, there was a documentary about children in New York being used to test experimental AIDS drugs on. So it’s not that it didn’t happen. It does happen. It’s just hidden.
JW: There is a history which you point out in your book of experiments on children.
CR: Back in the ‘40s and the ‘50s, Fernald School in Massachusetts fed radioactive cereal to children to see how it was digested. And, of course, these were all done in secret at that time. Willowbrook State School in New York, which Geraldo Rivera has memorialized, conducted hepatitis tests on severely mentally retarded children. They were intentionally given hepatitis to see what the course of the disease was. Then there were naval irradiation experiments done on children.
JW: 582 third graders.
CR: Yes, and 829 pregnant women were given a cocktail laced with radioactive iron and told to drink it because it would be good for their fetuses.
JW: This was Vanderbilt University Hospital.
CR: That’s correct. That was back in 1945 through 1949. And retarded children at D.C. Children’s Center in Laurel, Maryland were used as guinea pigs for diet drugs. These are just a few examples of instances that our government used children.
JW: You mentioned in your book that under Project Paperclip many of the sought-after child victims were in some way gifted children. What does that mean exactly? How were you gifted? Is it scholastically? Is it possessing psychic powers?
CR: Well, I have a higher IQ than the average person. But a high IQ does not necessarily make you a good or a smart person. I am gifted in the sense that I find I have very good instincts about people. I don’t believe there is anything special about me at all. The basic thing you have to realize is that we were children who were available. The people that were used were available. Their parents were willing to sell them to the government, or their parents worked for the government. And they believed that it was a noble cause they were being used for. It is not that we were special. It’s that we were there.
JW: Let’s digress for a moment and return to an important point. You indicated that a certain select people knew about these programs, such as Allen Dulles and others. They did these horrible horrible things. However, supposedly Congress was unaware. And supposedly the President of the United States was unaware of these things. Can it really be true that the key people who run the American government are clueless about such atrocities?
CR: No, I don’t believe so. I don’t believe that Congress was aware at all. Back in the late 1970s, these were investigated to some extent. MKULTRA and the like were the subject of a congressional committee investigation. At the time, Senator Edward Kennedy basically said, “The intelligence community of this nation, which requires a shroud of secrecy in order to operate, has a very sacred trust from the American people. The CIA’s program of human experimentation of the ‘50s and ‘60s violated that trust. It was violated again on the day the bulk of the agency’s records were destroyed in 1973. It is violated each time a responsible official refuses to recollect the details of the program. The best safeguard against abuses and abusers is a complete public accounting of the abuses of the past.”
I am working with several other survivors in bringing up this issue again before Congress. We have sent approximately 50 of my books in an advocacy packet with information to Congress. We are waiting to see if we will get some type of response into further declassification of records on the experiments and programs like MKULTRA.
JW: There are some things so horrible that when people are told they are happening, the first thing they are going to say is, “No, it is not even possible.” This is basic human nature. It is the impulse to hide from reality—that is, what has happened to you and other survivors.
CR: But this happened at the same time that 6,720 soldiers were being experimented on with LSD. This is public knowledge. And the child experimentation is only a small portion of the MKULTRA program. This was a widespread secret project. I have a pathetic email from an armed services veteran.
This gentleman says, “I am one of the 6,720 enlisted soldiers used at Edgewood from 1955 to 1975. I was there in 1974 when they just got their brand new lab. I am glad Congress investigated it in ‘75 and the Army shut the program down. At least they won’t do it openly anymore. I was dumb and stupid when I volunteered. I was 18. I am now 49 and totally disabled. I have the body of a 70-year-old, and the VA says the Army didn’t do anything to me. I don’t believe them. One third of the men that went through Edgewood are already dead. Of the remaining 4,022 people, they report very poor or disabling health. Yet the government continues to say that nothing at Edgewood contributed to or caused this statistical anomaly. Social Security says 3 out of 10 of us will be disabled by age 65—not dead. We were prescreened mentally and physically. We were the healthiest men the Army had, and now they turn their backs on us”.
JW: You mention the use of military bases in your book for these experiments. You intimate that a lot of what happened to you and other survivors somehow was conducted at military bases.
CR: There are many survivors who remember being at different government facilities. I remember being at an underground facility where there was a missile. I am assuming it had to be at a U.S. government facility. I don’t remember the details or the specifics of that place. Most survivors who have been traumatized the way that we have only remember parts of our experimentation. The rest obviously sometimes is gone because of electroshock—or other times because of drugs.
JW: How widespread was the use of the Nazi mind control doctors by the United States government? In other words, were there a lot of Nazi doctors working at different facilities in the United States and administered by the United States government?
CR: I don’t think there was a lot. I don’t think you could hide a lot. This would reduce the number to hundreds. But I do believe there were many other American doctors who were already in institutions in the United States who were willing to comply and work with the Nazis.
JW: These are American doctors you are talking about?
CR: Yes. And Canadians.
JW: There is an organization called the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, which attempts to discredit the kinds of memories you recall.
CR: Some of the false memory syndrome doctors who started that organization have proven to be bogus. There are certainly buried memories that are true and did happen. However, some of those very same doctors who support groups like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation also participated in the MKULTRA experiments.
JW: Some who speak out publicly like you seem to fear being killed. Dr. Corydon Hammond, for example, raised the possibility in a 1992 lecture that he could be killed for speaking about such experimentation and abuses. Do you feel that your life is in danger for speaking out?
CR: In the beginning, I felt that my life could very much be in danger. My doctor encouraged me to write everything down that I remembered. He didn’t say he believed or disbelieved. But he encouraged me to write down everything I remembered and to put it away in a safety deposit box. He also told me to tell as many people as I could. We felt that by being open and honest I would be safer than by keeping my mouth shut.
JW: How is your life now? Have you gotten your life together after all you have been through? Is there any hope?
CR: There is definitely hope. Absolutely. I function at a very high level now. And I functioned at a very high level when I was dissociative. I managed a corporation that did over 6 million dollars in business. I have gotten myself together because I now can enjoy life freely. I don’t need to dissociate and worry about lost time. I have a wonderful family and grandchildren. I have hobbies. I fish.
JW: So you are what our society would call a normal human being?
CR: I am very normal. You must believe that I wouldn’t choose to be public. However, very early on as these memories began to return, I prayed that God would provide a way for me to make some of this worthwhile, to bring this out into the public and let people know that it happened so that it doesn’t happen again.
JW: At the beginning of the interview, you mentioned that you love this country and you are happy living here. How do you reconcile your feelings about the country with what you say happened to you?
CR: Because I have the freedom of speech to actually come out and say what happened to me without fear of repercussion. I believe we here in the United States have more freedoms than anyone in the world. Because of those freedoms, I can speak out and prevent possibly another part of history repeating itself. So I do love my country. I wouldn’t want to live any other place.
DISCLAIMER: THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN OLDSPEAK ARE NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE.
