Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh

by Wendy S. Painting

Throughout the book, Siegel makes reference to tricking or deceiving the individuals whose paranoia he was documenting and studying, including at times misrepresenting himself and his interest in them, at least until he can get their cooperation. This is necessasary to get inside their head.

The roots of the legend begin in 1948, when Jolly West began his psychiatric residency at Cornell Medical Center in New York City, after which he took a position as psychiatric assistant at Cornell Medical College from 1952 until 1954, before moving on to Oklahoma City. Also at Cornell Medical College at this time were several doctors of note, including Lawrence Hinkle and Harold Wolff, both of whom were instrumental in mind control projects predating MKUltra and who established and administered the Human Ecology Fund, one of the major cut-outs through which CIA channeled money to MKUltra research. Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory (at the time known as CAL and later Calspan) was a satellite facility of Cornell University until the 1970’s.

number of other MK funded doctors were associated with Cornell and experiments on unwitting subjects occurred there during the years CAL was under its auspices. In addition, Calspan’s clients were, for the most part, the very government agencies funding MK type research.

While not a direct link (between West and Calspan), the interconnection provides the basic infrastructure for the Experimental Wolf narrative and a potential link in funding, agend...

It was instrumental in developing “non-lethal” electronic weapons, microwave technologies, biotechnologies including electronic telemetric devices (i.e., implantable microchips) and other human tracking and monitoring technologies, and systems to allow for the interface between man and machine.

From the outset, CAL was in the electronic warfare business. They employed only the cream of the mental crop including scientists involved in the Manhattan Project and one physicist who, during World War II, discovered the ability to “talk over” or “speech modulate” infrared light, thereby transmitting and directing verbal communications to precise locations.

In 1958, they transmitted microwave signals “at more than triple the power thought possible” at that time, thereby increasing the effectiveness and range of radar, which led to their creation of Doppler.

Beginning, for our purposes, in 1950, the ONR, Air Force and NASA (another major CAL patron), collaborated closely with the CIA and were steeped in unethical chemical and behavioral modification research. A covert behavioral modification research contract funded a 1958 symposium on sensory deprivation at Harvard Medical School. Attending the symposium were, among others, Norbert Wiener, considered the father of cybernetics. In the coming decades, all three agencies contributed significant funding to CAL’s work.243

In 1967, the FBI awarded CAL a contract to develop the first automated “electro-optical” fingerprint reader, which culminated in the “FINDER” system, first presented at the Electronic Crime Countermeasures conference on April 19, 1972 (the year CAL become Calspan).

In 1976, Calspan attempted to sell their fingerprint search and identification computer (now called Fingermatch) to a South African mining company, to help them control black mine workers.

CAL was part of NASA’s broader “Aerospace Medicine and Biology” research initiative that, during the 1960’s and 1970’s explored, among other things: hypnotic conditioning to reduce fatigue, the effects of hypothermic stress, the effects and uses of ultra-high and ultra-low radiofrequency; x-rays, and microwave radiation on humans, brain wave monitoring, and “implantable telemetry systems for use in animal monitoring.”246

In 1973, on behalf of the National Institute of Health, Calspan conducted research into “implant device development.”

In 1977, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health, Calspan scientists investigated “materials compatible with human blood” in an effort to develop better prosthetic devices.247 The lead scientist on that project, Dr. Robert Baier (who worked on the 1973 project), happened to hold many positions related to military, industry and university biotechnologies research, won many awards for his innovations in that area, and is widely published on the topics of dental and medic...

Meanwhile, as early as the 1950’s, government funded scientists became aware that sound could be induced in both hearing and deaf persons from a distance of up to thousands of feet using extremely low and high frequency electromagnetic energy (ELF, EHF) radio frequency (RF) amplifiers. These same methods could be used to induce unpleasant bodily sensations.

Frey’s work, as proposed in his 1967 paper “Sensation Of Hearing n Electromagnetic Fields.” In 1974, DOD researcher J.F. Shapitz wrote about the ability of “the spoken word of the hypnotist [to] be conveyed by modulated electro-magnetic energy directly into the subconscious parts of the human brain - i.e., without employing any technical devices for receiving or transcoding the messages and without the person exposed to such influence having a chance to control the information input consciously.” His belief was based on his ongoing experimentation and he purposed further experiments, the results of which remain classified.

The next year, in 1975, the Director of a VA neuropsychology research laboratory in Kansas City was able to beam words into heads using “voice regulated microwaves” (or so he claimed in a report).250

“The New Mental Battlefield: ‘Beam Me Up, Spock’,” described newly developed and already operational lethal psychotronic weapons. The more conventional of these used electromagnetic energy and biofeedback to manipulate human psychology and behavior. Electromagnetics, said the article, held the key to the creation of a “Manchurian Candidate,” and the military was harnessing, mimicking and weaponizing a range of parapsychological phenomenon including telepathy and “telepathic hypnosis.”

The author, U.S. Army Special Forces Vietnam veteran and Director of the Non-Lethal Weapons Laboratory at Los Alamos National Laboratory, John Alexander, told of their use in “the not too distant future.”251 For whatever its worth, Alexander was implicated in the government sponsored alien disinformation campaign discussed earlier and was very encouraging of Colbern and Leir’s alien implant detection and removal endeavors.

In the post-Cold War world, electromagnetic pulse generators, lasers, and microwave devices could remotely destroy car engines, telephones, radars, computers and all other modern technology the world had come to depend on. Deemed non-lethal, these still classified weapons could explode eyeballs and cook internal organs. If they had been widely available during the Gulf War, ...

In 1993, the Wall Street Journal depicted the battlefield of the future as one filled with induced sounds, and nonlethal weapons that could “dazzle [enemies] with lasers, putting them to sleep with calmative chemicals and even confusing them with holographic projections in the clouds above them – perhaps images of Muslim martyrs telling them to go home.” These kinder, gentler methods could help subdue the U.S. domestic civilian and prison population as well. If it came to that.

In 1994, Canadian neuroscientist and head of Laurentian University’s neuroscience behavioral lab, Dr. Michael Persinger, attracted attention for his creation (and display) of the ‘God Helmet.’ Persinger’s helmet used magnetic wire coils to send electromagnetic waves into the brain’s field, thereby inducing feelings of anger, fear, mystical experiences, and even alien abduction experiences. Best yet, Persinger told reporters that “autobiographical pseudo memories” (false memories) of unusual events (alien visitation, etc.,) could be created in nearly 50% of “readily hypnotizable subjects.”

In 1995, the DOD through the Air Force awarded a grant for phase II of research into “communicating via the microwave auditory effect.”

Some argue that while inducing sounds is well established, inducing understandable words or sentences is not, but that certainly didn’t stop researchers from trying. From the late 1970’s until currently, several patents to this effect have been filed and a growing number of academic and technical papers have outlined these ‘voice to skull’ technologies. Perhaps not surprisingly, the 1980’s and 1990’s witnessed a growing number of individuals who claimed voices or subliminal thoughts were being beamed directly into their heads or that they were being subjected to other forms of electromagnetic and RF harassment, claims considered patently delusional.

in 1998, the smart system was transmitting the “exact location” of at least 500 vehicles in the Buffalo area to a “government satellite” via a black box installed in the cars and Calspan planned to install 3,000 more.

A Washington Times article named Dr. Carl Sanders as the inventor of the “Intelligent Manned Interface Biochip” (the name of Peter’s updated chip in BUG). According to Sanders, satellites had the ability to track people implanted with the chip, and that this very technology was done “with military personnel in the Iraq war.”

A March 1995 article in Defense News entitled “Naval Research Lab Attempts to Meld Neurons and Chips: Studies May Produce Army of ‘Zombies” announced that the battles of the future would be waged using “genetically engineered organisms, such as rodents, whose minds are controlled by computer chips engineered with living brain cells.… The research, called Hippocampal Neuron Patterning, grows live neurons on computer chips.”

That probably wouldn’t be necessary eventually, as researchers at the University of Buffalo were feverishly working on nanotechnologies research and had already demonstrated the ability to remotely manipulate cells, neurons “and even animal behavior” through exposing nanoparticles in cell membranes to magnetic fields directed via radiofrequencies.

The New Scientist pointed out that the UB researchers were among other biologists hoping to “take charge of living cells using little more than radio waves,” which if tailored to specific “genetic machinery” (DNA) in humans, could kill cancerous cells and induce antibodies and immune responses.268

In addition, were “noninvasive” directed electrical energies that can not only remotely control individuals but also can detect and read neural activity at a distance, i.e, read minds. He suggests that “just as telephones and Internet technologies have gone wireless” neural implants allow for “direct connections to the Internet” and “brain to brain interfacing.”

The protagonist of Intelligence, a CBS action-drama that aired for one season in 2014, works for an elite U.S. government cybersecurity agency, and has been implanted with a microchip in his brain through which he connects directly to the “global information grid” (Internet) and has access to unlimited encrypted, classified data. His enemies include brain-implanted super spies controlled by other governments. Meghan Ory, a co-star of the show, told reporters, “The thing that’s really cool about the show is that it’s not science that’s 100 years in the future – we’re maybe 10 or 20 years away from this being possible.… We’re all going to have chips in our brains.”

Aiding in the effort, are publicly funded private defense contractors, publicly lauded for helping to develop medical technologies while developing the weapons applications of these same technologies behind closed doors.

Leaving aside Calspan’s housing of Operation Northstar, an initiative spun off of Operation Alliance and closely related to PATCON and its relation to McVeigh’s real or imagined secret mission, Calspan intersects with McVeigh’s fears of societies’ imperceptibly binding chains and legends about Dr. Jolly West and mind control in general, in a number of important and interrelated ways. The Buffalo Calspan facility McVeigh guarded was itself brain deep in the same militaristic cybernetic “total information” (total control) Brave New waters as Drs. West, Sweet, Delgado, and friends. Stories about Calspan, like West, allow for the formation of linkages between various episodes in American history.

Fictional and nonfictional cultural texts are always already political in that they “reflect as well as produce ideology: They ‘reflect, embody, reveal, mirror, symbolize’ through ‘reproducing (consciously or unconsciously) the myths, ideas, concepts, beliefs, images of an historical period.” Purportedly nonfictional conspiracy narratives, the claims of self-proclaimed victims of government funded mind control, medical abuse, surveillance and psychotropic harassment, and fictional works like BUG, that depict the aforementioned subjects, all indicate, in the words of Jodi Dean, a shared and well-founded fear that “the U.S. government values technology more than it values the body of their citizens.”276

According to McVeigh the CIA and other US agencies involved in covert missions had developed drugs to create the illusion of death in the human body and disguise signs of life. Tim would be administered these drugs by his executioners, and once his body was released to his legal representative, a squad of medical personnel would revive him. He would then undergo reconstructive surgery, and be rewarded for his efforts and loyalty to those he served.289

Fugues can last hours, days, or months. In cases of prolonged fugues, the person relocates and lives under a different name under the belief they are that person until, suddenly, they remember who they really are, but lose all memory of the dissociated pseudo-life they’ve just led.296

Ludlum’s creation of Jason Bourne in 1980 followed a deluge of revelations in the mid-to-late 1970’s about the U.S. government’s Cold War covert actions, including sanctioned assassinations and the effort to create amnesiac assassins to carry them out.

highlight the futility and compromise of Congressional oversight investigations and committees, which tend to learn just enough to assure the public that the threat has been uncovered, unsavory goings-on have been documented, and the problems corrected. In this way and through this process, narrative gaps about the covert workings of the state infiltrate, and remain dissociated from, American history.

Similar to McVeigh’s “Orwellian reversal,” viewers engage in a fantasy in which the very technologies the heroes must confront, offer the ways and means of resistance.

In 2007, Doerhoff, a Missouri physician, gave testimony at a closed trial concerning the illegality of an impending execution that violated the Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. The trial revealed that, Doerhoff, who testified under the name “John Doe 1,” had been the subject of over twenty malpractice suits, his right to practice medicine had been revoked at two hospitals, and he had been reprimanded by a state board for concealing this information … all prior to his execution of Timothy McVeigh.

Thus we are presented with yet another story; one in which, on June 11, 2001, America’s least competent executioner killed America’s most notorious terrorist.

The lineage of fictional amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne can be traced to Raymond Shaw, protagonist of The Manchurian Candidate. Like Shaw, Bourne “is both the agent and the victim of a government program designed to turn him into a lethal human weapon.” Unlike the 1959 version of Shaw, who is the victim of an outside enemy, Bourne’s dilemma is a result of the U.S.’s own actions, policies, and agencies. He is a tool and weapon of the U.S. security state itself and the intrusive memories that plague him, but always remain just out of reach, are allegories for the details of an already always unknowable secret national history and the very “spectacle of amnesia” required to maintain national security secrets.

Underneath the surface of McVeigh’s life story, as told by himself and others, is a mystifying, enigmatic, and at the same time all-too-familiar tale of dysfunction, patriotism, medical abuse, torture, interrogation, militarism, the frightening reach of technology, perceived betrayal, secrecy, misdirection, violent spectacles, and remorseless murder.

In this way, The McVeigh Tapes is an artifact that exemplifies “Mass Mediated Spectacles of Terrorism”; terms that refer to the porousness and fluidity of boundaries between fact, fiction, news and entertainment.4 The show not only rendered McVeigh the first terrorist to come back from the dead and scare American television viewers, but perfectly illustrates the ongoing and aggressive nature of a large body of Lone Wolf texts to present “self-evident truths” about both McVeigh and the bombing, through a self-authorizing framework and in a manner that resists alternate information and interpretations.

While Bourne Scenario enthusiasts claim the Lonely Wolf lived on, those who tote the official line make an even stranger claim, or when not explicated, an even stranger subtextual implication. In their minds, Lone Wolf McVeigh died but then somehow managed to return from the dead and possess untold numbers of potential terrorists who must be exorcized of his “unconquerable soul” by whatever means necessary. It seems to me, they don’t want McVeigh to die, that his absence would rob them of a convenient spectral demon who reliably offers a means of reducing the complexities of actual threats to buzz words, pop psychology, and politically expedient narratives.

As he waited for this to happen, Browning observed a group of FBI agents place a ladder up against the Murrah that they then used to retrieve a surveillance camera on the front of the building, the bracketing, and much of the wiring – essentially anything to indicate that the camera had ever been there. The FBI denied this and called Jesse’s witness a liar. Jesse, however, happened to have two photographs that had appeared in news articles shortly after the bombing. One showed a camera on the building and the other, a ladder against the building but no camera.

Matthews explained that the majority of undercover PATCON informants faced criminal charges and became involved in exchange for reduction or dropping of those charges. Matthews however, said he chose to go undercover out of concern over the danger posed by extremist right-wing groups. He believed that he could serve his country by informing on them and thus went undercover for PATCON in 1992. Eventually though, after successfully infiltrating twenty-three groups, Matthews realized that although he was initially told, “the objective was to infiltrate and monitor,” he came to understand that, actually, “the objective was to infiltrate and incite.” Matthews outlined a number of instances in which PATCON operatives had provided the ideas, detailed instructions, and even live C4 explosives and automatic weapons to targeted individuals as a way of entrapping them into terrorist plots, so the FBI could capitalize on foiled and actualized plots.

It wasn’t the last time Jesse Trentadue encountered the looming and invisible specter of National Security. It happened again when he stumbled upon the existence of the FBI’s “Sensitive Informant Program,” a program that judges with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals equated to FBI misconduct. The snitches in this program were not your run-of-the mill informants; these were carefully selected and placed within management and executive levels of influential major media outlets such as ABC and CBS News.

The FBI’s creation and subsequent thwarting of its own terrorism plots has become a common occurrence, involving not just a few instances, but “nearly all high-profile terrorism cases” since 9/11 (if not, I might add, many before that). The “fake terror plots” are so prevalent at this point, that the tactic and phenomenon is becoming its own field of academic study.59

If we are to accept, as more than one federal judge seems to have, that the Oklahoma City bombing occurred in the context of and had connections to a larger sting operation, and that somehow this sting operation went awry, we must ask why and how. Personally, I wonder how, given everything we now know, it is so difficult for some to believe that a federal “counter-terrorism” sting operation could get that far out of control. A more heated and less frequently posed questions is: at what point does a plot to entrap become a sanctioned plot to kill, directly or through an intentional looking away? At what point does a so-called terror plot become an FBI plot? Or the plot of another national security-minded agency? Where does the boundary lie?