Martin Luther King Assassination is Linked to Hypnosis and Mind Control Experiments

Martin Luther King was assassinated on the evening of April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. He stood on a balcony outside room 306 of the Lorraine Motel when a rifle bullet entered his jaw and traveled down his neck. King's assassination occurred just four and half years after President Kennedy's death and fourteen months before Robert Kennedy's tragic death in Los Angeles following his triumphant California primary win. All three assassinations have disturbing associations with the issue of mind control.

King's alleged assassin, James Earl Ray, was captured at Heathrow Airport, London England in June of 1968 and charged with the murder. On March 10, 1969 Ray confessed to the crime and then recanted his confession three days later. From the day he recanted his confession he claimed that he was not the triggerman in the crime but may have been "partially responsible without knowing it," a mysterious comment that was never fully explained but hinted that Ray was involved in a conspiracy, or under some kind of outside powers that may have influence his actions. Conspiracy theories abound surrounding King's death with one of the theories having Ray as part of the plot who was supposed to conduct a robbery at the same time of the assassination to throw off investigators.[i]

Other theories include the bizarre concept that Ray was hypnotized during the assassination of King. Of the three most notorious alleged assassins of the sixties (Oswald, Ray, and Sirhan), all three have been linked to the possibility of mind control.

Hypnosis and the Assassin of the Sixties

The 1962 John Frankenheimer film, The Manchurian Candidate, introduced many people to the bizarre concept of mind control used for political purposes. The movie focuses on a "sleeper" assassin trained by communists during the Korean War. The U.S. government did extensive studies in mind control as documented with the MK Ultra program.

Martin Luther King's accused assassin, James Earl Ray, was also interested and involved in hypnosis. When he was arrested in London his bags contained three books on self-improvement, one being Self-Hypnotism: The Technique and Its Use in Daily Living. Ray may have been introduced to the powers of hypnosis within the Missouri prison he spent time in before the King assassination. He spoke of hypnosis and drugs being used in the prison to control inmates.[ii] While Ray lived in Los Angeles it is reported he studied self hypnosis.[iii] There is a belief that he was hypnotized by a Beverly Hills psychologist in 1967 and that he had been hypnotized numerous times previously. Four months before the shooting of King, Ray met with Reverend Xavier von Koss, the head of the International Society of Hypnosis in Los Angeles. However, Ray may not have been an ideal hypnotic candidate. Koss tested Ray for susceptibility to hypnosis but claimed Ray "quickly encountered very strong subconscious resistance." [iv]

The 1967 book Were We Controlled? investigated the possibility that JFK accused assassin Lee H. Oswald had been implanted with electronic devices designed to aid in mind control. Oswald did have an operation in Minsk at the end of March of 1961.[v] J. Edgar Hoover's testified to the Warren Commission that "information came to me indicating that there is an espionage training school outside Minsk -- I don't know whether it is true -- and that Oswald was trained at that school to come back to this country to become what they call a 'sleeper,' . . . a man who will remain dormant for three or four years and in case of international hostilities rise up and be used." ^_[vi]

On December 2, 1963 Gene Barnes, an NBC cameraman, made the following statement to the FBI: "Barnes said Bob Mulholland, NBC News, Chicago, talked in Dallas to one Fairy, [sic - probably meant David Ferrie] a narcotics addict now out on bail on a sodomy charge in Dallas. Fairy said that Oswald had been under hypnosis from a man doing a mind-reading act at Ruby's 'Carousel.' Fairy was said to be a private investigator and the owner of an airplane who took young boys on flights 'just for kicks.'" ^[vii] Mulholland later said that he had been quoted incorrectly and that he had heard FBI agents mention David Ferrie's name as a possible link to Oswald. ^[viii] Ferrie was a mysterious, brilliant character who was involved in CIA operations against Castro's Cuba, dabbled in hypnosis, worked for mafia kingpin and Kennedy hater Carlo Marcello, was heard to say in public conversations that Kennedy was a traitor, and supervised Lee H. Oswald in a New Orleans Civil Air Patrol group.[ix] Along with Mullholland's story there is Jack Martin's and Richard Nagell's^[x] accusation that Ferrie hypnotized Oswald.

Robert Kennedy's assassin Sirhan Sirhan told authorities he never remembered shooting Robert Kennedy. A psychiatrist hired by Sirhan's defense attorney, Dr. Bernard Diamond, was convinced that Sirhan had prior experience with hypnosis. Sirhan told biographer Robert Blair Kaiser that he had visited the Philosophical Research Center of Manley Palmer Hill, a hypnosis research center in southern California. Sirhan wrote in his diary a repeating phrase, "RFK must die" followed by "practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, Mind Control, Mind Control, Mind Control." British author Peter Evans took ten years to research a book (Nemesis) concerning Sirhan and mind control. Evans reports that Sirhan was hypnotized into being a patsy for the murder. Evans named Dr. William Joseph Bryan, Jr. as a hypnotist that was involved with the MK Ultra program and subsequently hypnotized Sirhan. Dr. Bryan was found dead in a Las Vegas hotel room in 1978; the reason for his death has remained a mystery [xi]

Shaykh Omar Abdul Rahman, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing, was quoted as telling one of his confederates to "slowdown" in his eagerness to plan several bombings in New York in 1993. "The one who killed Kennedy [Sirhan?] was trained for three years," he told follower Emad Salem.[xiii]

Though Oswald's motive to assassinate Kennedy may remain forever a mystery, the question of possible motivation or incentive might be traced to film and fiction that he may have seen or read. Like Kennedy, Oswald was interested in the fiction of Ian Fleming. The film version of From Russia with Love was released after the assassination but Oswald checked the book from a Dallas library in the summer of 1963. The plot features a psychotic British killer who defected to Russia and became a state-sponsored assassin.[xiv]

Like the mystery of Oswald's complete role in JFK's assassination, Ray's role is clouded as well.

Throw Away Assassins?

Was the government trying to create the perfect assassin with its work in MK Ultra? Writer S.R. Shearer believes in the throw away assassin. "Throw away assassins - assassins that can't be traced back to anyone or connected to any ideology; assassins that can be made to appear as 'crazed lone gunmen'; assassins that can't even remember why (and sometimes even if) they committed the crime - that's what the CIA was aiming at with MK-Ultra - that's what the 'search for the Manchurian Candidate' was all about; and that's precisely what Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, and Sirhan-Sirhan appear to have been."[xv]

Whether Oswald, Ray, and Sirhan were truly controlled like hypnotized puppets or not will probably never be known but questions will remain.

[i]http://www.patshannan.bizland.com/mlkgreen.html

[ii]Ibid.

[iii]http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/parnell/killing.htm

[iv]http://members.tripod.com/tomhillea/id18.htm

[v] On March 30, 1961, Oswald was admitted to the Third Clinical Hospital's Ear, Nose, and Throat Division in Minsk for an adenoid operation. Author Lincoln Lawrence (a pseudonym) advances the fantastic theory in Were We Controlled that Oswald was implanted with a miniaturized radio receiver " . . . which would produce a muscular reaction in his cerebral region." Two devices were implanted, according to Lawrence, a RHIC (Radio-Hypnotic Intracerebral Control) designed to trigger a post-hypnotic suggestion by radio transmission, and the EDOM (Electronic Dissolution of Memory, which "enables man to juggle with other men's sense of time . . . it in effect blocks memory of the moment." Russell, Dick. The Man Who Knew Too Much, Carroll and Graf, 1992, p. 675. Lawrence, Lincoln. Were We Controlled, University Books, New Hyde Park, New York, 1967.

^[vi]. WC v. 5, p. 105.

^[vii]. CE 2038.

^[viii]. Noyes, Peter. Legacy of Doubt, Pinnacle Books, New York, 1973, pp. 117-118.

[ix] http://www.peculiarliaisons.com

^[x]. Russell, Dick. The Man Who Knew Too Much, Carroll and Graf, 1992, p. 671.

[xi] Russell, Dick. The Man Who Knew Too Much, Carroll and Graf, 1992, pp. 678-9. Was Robert Kennedy killed by a real "Manchurian candidate"-style assassin? 2005-01-18, The Independent.http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article15539.ece

[xii]Was Robert Kennedy killed by a real "Manchurian candidate"-style assassin?
2005-01-18, The Independent.http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article15539.ece

[xiii] Mylroie, Laurie. Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War Against America, AEI Press, Washington, D.C., 2001, p. 189 cited in Government's Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Defendant's PreTrial Motions (Phase 1), p. 30, U.S. v. Omar Abdul Rahman, et al.

Omar's comment was allegedly made to one of Omar's follower's in 1993 when the follower was too hasty in his eagerness to bomb the U.N., a U.S. Federal building, and the World Trade Center.

[xiv]The films The Manchurian Candidate, We Were Strangers, and Suddenly have been considered possible influences on Oswald with a complete study on the films, their connections, and their curious plots done by author John Luken.[xiv] Luken introduces the strong possibility that Oswald saw The Manchurian Candidate and We Were Strangers with a more remote possibility of seeing Suddenly. The Manchurian Candidate and Suddenly, both starring Frank Sinatra, have political assassins as the primary characters; We Were Strangers (1949) depicts a heroic American assassin trying to aid the Cuban people. Luken makes a powerful argument that these films could have been an influence in Oswald's actions. Luken also makes a strong case that Oswald saw We Were Strangers twice and identified with the leftist martyr hero. He may also have identified with Lawrence Harvey's character in The Manchurian Candidate, (1962) who was an army veteran returned to the U.S. from behind enemy lines in the Korean War. The brainwashed veteran is controlled by his mother to kill a liberal politician. When these films were shown in theaters and on television, Oswald had only recently returned from the Soviet Union where he had become disenchanted with the Russian life.

[xv] http://www.antipasministries.com/html/file0000179.htm