This must serve as an introduction to a larger project of mine, for which I have been gathering data for some time. Primary sources and citations will appear in diaries to follow over the next several months. Several topics are of interest to me related to today’s introduction. One diary will take a brief look at CIA black box funding. Another will focus on several “new age” alumni of Stanford Research Institute. Still another will look at Willis Harman’s corporate LSD experiments. A final installment will cut the dangling thread that has annoyed me for so long; my mother, now deceased, worked with Mr. Harman at Stanford, knew the source of their funding, and knew and introduced me to many of these Stanford alumni. She participated in many of the experiments. Her associations with these personalities helped to fracture many of the relationships in our family. The introduction follows below the fold.
It is very ironic that one of the nicknames for the Central Intelligence Agency is “The Company.” What originally grew out of the OSS as an intelligence gathering and analyzing adjunct to the government would morph into an entity some called a “shadow government”, and much later would be seen by some as an adjunct to the corporate power structure rather than a government agency.
During the 1950’s in the midst of the Korean War, the Company became concerned about the North Korean programs of brainwashing captured U.S. troops, and subsequently spent a great deal of time playing catch up. The litany of code names for various programs are sprinkled throughout various congressional committee reports and FOIA requests; projects named Bluebird, Artichoke, Stargate, Monarch and MKUltra. Then in the late 1960’s, when the Company’s LSD experiments were still ongoing, a “futurist / corporate researcher” named Willis Harmon, whose connection with the Company at this time would seem to be just that of a client seeking funding, performed some mind expanding experiments on corporate CEO’s at the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, and then wrote a lengthy paper entitled “Changing Images of Man”. Printed copies of this command a premium, but last I checked it can be found on the web for free in pdf format.
Wikipedia describes Harman as a social scientist who headed the future studies project at SRI; “in this capacity he worked on long-term strategic planning and policy analysis for an assortment of corporations, government agencies, and international organizations.”
The Stanford Research Institute is in itself a fascinating subject for a separate diary, which others are much more capable of doing, but there is plenty of material available online. The “Changing Images” monograph, however, attracted a lot of attention at the Company. The benign view of this sudden interest might coincide with the Company’s primary task of preparing for the future by studying and analyzing trends in government and society that might aid or impede national security. It might also be noted, on the other hand, that the traditional use of front companies and the Company’s extensive knowledge of underground finance meant a willingness to prepare for a power structure more amenable to the financing of the R & D side of things.
I actually know more than I care to know about many of these characters, and I’ve known and met quite a few of the SRI alumni, and have often wondered who is using who. Is it a case of “the men who stare at goats” getting The Company to toss funding their way, or rather the Company using SRI to advance it’s own agenda. It is not as simple as it might seem on the surface. It’s a bit hard to see the advantage accrued by the Company funding the “stare at goats” group.
The vision of Willis Harman seems to presage the replacement of participatory government with the corporatocracy we now see taking shape. It’s a classic case of mystery solving by following the leads to who benefits the most. For example, what information could be gleaned, and how useful would it be, to follow the LSD subjects into their often fringe areas of research? Is it in the nature of a grand social experiment,
or the more prosaic black funding of Company projects? The money appears to flow both ways. I am not interested in vast mind control conspiracy theories showing how the population is bent to the will of a new world order. I am very curious, however, as to how so many “new age” gurus got their start at SRI, their funding through the Company, and most of all under their guidance from a corporate futurist named Willis Harman.
Next month: Part I: Follow the Money