BRAIN WARFARE - RUSSIA'S SECRET WEAPON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70-00058R000100010023-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 17, 1998
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: May 8, 1953
• Content Type: NSPR

U. S. News & WorAW$k*d - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP70-00058RAY00141 3-4
BRAIN WARFARE-
RUSSIA'S SECRET WEAPON
CPYRGHT
It Explains the 'Confessions' of Captured Americans
by ALLEN W. DULLES
Director, Central Intelligence Agency
n to past cw years we wive De-
mme accustomed to hearing much
about the battle for men's minds-
the war of ideologies-and indeed
our Government has been driven by
tlic nternational tension we call the
"cold war" to take positive steps to
recognize psychological warfare and
to play an active role in it. I wou-
der, however, whether we clearly
perceive the fall magnitude of the
problem, whether we realize how
Sinister the battle for men's minds
bas become in Soviet hands. We
might call it, in its new form, "brain
warfare."
The target of this warfare is the
minds of men both on a collective
and on all individual basis. Its aim
i> to condition the mind so that it no
f~~nier reacts on a free-will or ra-
linnal basis but respouds ttimpulses
i.1il)lanted from outside. If we are to
,(,enter this kind of warfare we must
widcrstaud the techniques the So-
wt is adopting to control men's
,rinds.
There is an old adage that "every-
,mc is crazy but me and dice and
unoctin es 1 suspect thee." There is
.now truth than we realize in this
u~ ing. The human mind is the most
'Iclicate of all instruments. It is so finely adjusted, so suscep-
l ihlc to the impact of outside influences that it is proving it
nlulleable tool in the hands of sinister men. The Soviets are
nrnv using brain-perversion techniques as one of their main
vn apous ill prosecuting the cold war. Some of these tech-
Mjnes are so subtle and so abhorrent to our way of life that
have recoiled from facing up to them.
We take for granted a society where human beings are free
Iliink as they please. We read and see and hear such it
cty of things that the mind adopts no single pattern. Our
icty produces all kinds of people thinking and believing all
urnicr of thoughts. Fortunately, in our drive for standardiza-
ni ill other fields we have not consciously tried to standardize
mind. in the Soviet world, however. this is being done.
the freedom that we enjoy-and freedom of thought is
i1,1v the most precious freedom that we do enjoy-it is
for its to realize. that in the great area behind the Iron
in a vast experiment is under way to change men's
working on them continuously from youth to old age.
h an experiment has never before been undertaken on
so vast and so welt-organized a sea le.
In Hitler's Germany and in Fascist
Italy some effort was made to make
men into it single pattern. In Ger-
many it was called ,gleicltschaltung
-the leveling process. This effort cov-
ered only a few years and may have
had little permanent effect on the
German mind, though it slid have its
effect on history in conditioning the,
Germans in vast numbers to follow
Hitler's mad expcrimcmts. Japan had
its thought control which, while high-
ly efficient in combating sedition and
welding tile japartese people into ap-
parent unity behind au intense na-
tionalism, seems also to have had
little permanent effect.
The Soviet experiment is very dif-
ferent. It takes two forms: First, the
attempt at mass indoctrination of
hundreds of millions of people so
that they respond docilely to the
orders of their master. This permits
the creation of a monolithic solidar-
ity in the Soviet state which out-
wardly gives it the appearance of
great unity.
Second, the perversion of the
minds of selected individuals who
are subjected to such treatment that
they are deprived of the ability to
state their own thoughts. Parrotlike the individuals so condi-
tioned can merely repeat thoughts which have been im-
planted in their minds by suggestion from outside. In effect,
the brain under these circumstances becomes a phonogitpll
playing it disc put on its spindle by an outside genius over
which it has no control.
The Chinese, who are seldom at it loss for it word, have
given its the term which has come generally to be applied to
this treatment of individual winds: "brain washing." Actual-
ly, the Chinese subjected to Communist "thought reform"
techniques experienced two treatments: it "brain washing"
which "cleansed the mind of the old and evil thoughts
spawned by imperialists of the \Vest," and it "bruin changing"
which implanted the "new and glorious thoughts of the Com-
munist Revolution." In our conception of the perversion of
individual minds the term "brain washing" seems aptly to
describe this phase of brain warfare.
This campaign for the control of men's minds, with its two
particular manifestations. liar such far-reaching implications
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that it is high time for us to realize what it means and the
problems it presents in thwarting our own program for spread-
ing the gospel of freedom.
To create conditions which permit the mass indoctrination
of millions of people, certain prerequisites are necessary. In
particular it is necessary to close off with an impenetrable
barrier the area within which the operation is to take place.
This is what Winston Churchill described so graphically in
1946 as the Iron Curtain. It is the physical and spiritual bar-
rier by which the Soviet Union has isolated itself and its
satellites from the outside world.
Today this screen, whether of iron or bamboo, stretches
some 21,000 miles around the Soviet-dominated Eurasian
land mass and effectively cuts off normal intercourse be-
tween East and West. The land frontiers in Europe are
normally divided into three zones: A forward zone which is
the actual border area about a mile deep; an intermediate
zone of about 10 miles; and a rear area which may be as
much as 150 miles deep. This rear area is cleared of political-
ly unreliable elements of the population and those who come
into it must have special passes issued by the Frontier Troop
Administration. The intermediate belt of 10 miles is being
completely depopulated. The forward area is a no man's
land cleared of underbrush and other cover and equipped
with physical obstacles such as barbed wire and mines. Many
sectors are plowed and kept raked to reveal telltale footprints.
These physical barriers are supplemented by patrols of
frontier troops equipped with the latest weapons and tech-
nical aids including aircraft and radio, and such time-honored
auxiliaries as specially trained dogs. Interestingly enough,
these border troops are subordinated not to the armed forces
but to the internal police. The intensity of border controls
naturally varies with the nature of the frontier, the character
of the population, and the terrain.
Along the sea frontiers in the Baltic and the Far East,
fishing crews are selected from among the most reliable ele-
ments of the population, and as a double insurance against
defection, members of the various boat crews are rotated
so that no one group serves together for any length of
time. As a result of some defections to Sweden from the
Baltic areas, the fishing fleets in most instances are not al-
lowed out farther than about 60 miles. They are often
accompanied by a guard vessel, and are also closely watched
by aircraft.
The modern way to get ideas across national frontiers is
through radio broadcasting. Even here the Communists are
trying to draw the curtain. Powerful jamming equipment
has been installed at strategic points in order to produce
electronic interference and eliminate the reception of for-
eign radio messages. These measures, so far, are only par-
tially successful. To reinforce them, the sale of radios capable
of picking up foreign broadcasts is being curbed. In their
place, public loud-speakers controlled from Moscow are be-
ing installed in the public squares of towns and villages in
the Soviet Union. In this way mass indoctrination can take
the place of individual choice in radio reception.
All of these facts are well known to us-it is only when we
put them together and see their cumulative effect that we
can appreciate their full meaning. We have, none of us,
ever been subjected to conditions where year by year we
have been told one thing, read one thing and allowed to
think one thing. It is otherwise in the Soviet Union. There
thought is prescribed. No alternative is offered.
In our own daily lives, by contrast, we are given choices.
c can make up our minds as between possible alternatives.
i is hard for us to conceive how our own minds would
p -rate if, say, for the last 20 years, we had been given
iuly one choice and heard only one message. I can only
assure you of my firm belief that few of us would have with-
stood such treatment and kept an open mind.
During the past few years, in particular, the people of
the Soviet Union and of the satellites have been given one
theme song about the Western democracies and especially
the United States, namely, that we are the enemy of the
Soviet people, that we are plotting their downfall and at-
tempting their encirclement. We are portrayed as the pro-
tagonists of atomic and bacteriological warfare, and our
Government is said to be dominated by the magnates of
vicious campaign of hatred that any country has ever at-
tempted against another. It is a campaign intended to con-
dition the minds of the Russian people so that their leaders
could embark on any type of aggressive action against the
free world. Unfortunately, it is a campaign that is making
steady progress under conditions where no dissenting voice
is allowed to interrupt the hate tirade, even though the
crescendo may be toned down during "peace offensives."
T HE second phase of the brain-conditioning program of
the Soviet is directed against the individual. case by case.
Here they take selected human beings whom they wish to
destroy and turn them into humble confessors of crimes they
never committed, or make them the mouthpiece for Soviet
propaganda. Here new techniques wash the brain clean of
the thoughts and mental processes of the past and, possibly
through the use of some "lie serum," create new brain proc-
esses and new thoughts which the victim, parrotlike, repeats.
The development of these new techniques has been under
wav in the Soviet Union for a long time. We first had some
inkling of what they were doing during the notorious purge
trials of the late 1930s. Then we saw hardened Old Bolshe-
children in the hands of the Soviet prosecutor, Vishinsky.
With alacrity and seeming enthusiasm they confessed to all
manner of extraordinary crimes against the Soviet state and
hastened to invite the death sentence. How far these con-
fessions were truth and how far they were fiction remains
today a mystery; but certainly the men who made these con-
they appeared before the state prosecutor.
served well the bosses of the Kremlin and demonstrated be-
yond any doubt that anyone whom the Kremlin rulers decided
to destroy and had put through the necessary period of indoc-
trination would state just about what these Kremlin rulers
wanted him to say. And a tougher, more case-hardened group
of men probably never appeared before the bar of "justice."
After the war, Soviet science and ingenuity made rapid
strides in the study of mental reactions and in the nefarious
art of breaking down the human mind. Possibly the case that
most startled the West was that involving the confession of
Cardinal Mindszenty, in Hungary. Here a man of proven
publicly confessing actions which those who knew this out-
standing character could not possibly have attributed to him.
Slansky, Clementis and their associates who had fallen into
disfavor with Moscow. Here, again, we had hardened prod-
ucts of the Communist system. The only trouble with Slansky
jobs so they up and confessed to those crimes and misde-
meanors against the Communist state which would assure
their removal from the scene.
There is one interesting feature about this type of trial:
it is the length of time between arrest and confession. It is
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justice" cannot move with rapidity when it wants to. In tact,
few things can be more rapid. But, in cases where detailed
confessions in open court are desired, there must be a con-
siderable period-probably a minimum of around three months
-to properly indoctrinate the intended victims. Mere written
confessions could be much more quickly extracted by torture.
What does this indoctrination consist of?
We, in the West, are somewhat handicapped in getting
all the details. There are few survivors, and we have no
human guinea pigs, ourselves, on which to try out these ex-
traordinary techniques. The Soviets have their political pris-
oners, their slave-camp inmates and finally, and most tragic
of all, our own countrymen whom they hold as prisoners.
We now have, however, some evidence on which to base
a judgment. A few have escaped from the ordeal of brain
washing to tell their story. One of the first was Michael
Shipkov, a young Bulgarian officer educated at Robert Col-
lege in Istanbul. He served for a time with the American
Mission in Bulgaria following the end of the war. In 1949, he
was arrested by the Bulgarian Communists, subjected to the
brain-washing technique, miraculously managed to escape,
reported on his experiences to the American authorities and
then, in attempting to escape from Bulgaria, was tragically
caught and liquidated.
The techniques employed in the case of Shipkov were
somewhat crude but give the pattern of the later, more-re-
fined methods. One element stands out in all the known
cases. It is endless interrogation by teams of brutal inter-
rogators while the victim is being deprived of sleep. In the
earlier days, as in the Shipkov case, some minor tortures
were employed. Shipkov was forced to stand in an awkward
position without being allowed to move during the interro-
gation. Only a short time was required to "break" him, as all
that was required of him by the Communists was a signed
confession. As he looked back upon his experience, here is
what Shipkov wrote:
"Out of the jumbled memories, some impressions stand
out vivid. One: they are not overinterested in what you
tell them. It would appear that the ultimate purpose of
this treatment is to break you down completely, and
deprive you of any will power or private thought or
self-esteem, which they achieve remarkably quickly. And
they seem to pursue a classic confession, well rounded
off in the phraseology, explaining why you were induced
by environment and education to enter the service of the
enemies of Communism, how you placed your capacities
in their service, what ultimate goal did you pursue-the
overthrow of the people's government through foreign in-
tervention. And they appear to place importance on the
parallel appearance of repentance and self-condemnation
that come up with the breaking down of their prisoner."
During and after the late war the Soviets made extensive
efforts to reindoctrinate German and Japanese prisoners of
war. Many of these have not even yet been repatriated.
Those that have been released have been sent back to their
homeland as missionaries for the Communist faith. Recent-
ly, there has been a new development in Soviet procedures
which takes on, for us, an even more alarming significance.
The Communists are now applying the brain-washing tech-
niques to American prisoners in Korea and it is not beyond
the range of possibility that considerable numbers of our
own boys there might be so indoctrinated as to be induced,
temporarily at least, to renounce country and family.
The Communists have recently been showing a film por-
raying young American aviators who publicly make spurious
confessions" of participation in the use of germ warfare
,gainst North Korea. We have a copy of this film and I saw
a showing the other day. Here American boys-their iden-
t l y is beyond doubt-stand up before the members of an
international investigatory group o Communists from West-
ern Europe and the satellites and make open confessions,
fake from beginning to end, giving the details of the alleged
dropping of bombs with bacteriological ingredients on North
Korean targets. They describe their indoctrination in bac-
teriological warfare, give all the details of their missions,
their flight schedules, where they claim to have dropped
the germ bombs, and other details. As far as one can judge
from the film, these pseudo confessions are voluntary. There
is little prompting from the Communist interrogators.
More recently, the Chinese Communist radio broadcast
what they claimed were the recorded voices of a colonel and
major of the United States Marine Corps, captured last July,
giving, in the greatest detail, fictitious information regard-
ing preparations for bacteriological warfare in Korea. Since
then these alleged confessions have been introduced by the
Communists into the proceedings at the United Nations.
These statements bear the usual hallmarks of Soviet-im-
posed fabrications-for example, the humiliation and re-
pentance of the individual at having engaged in such activi-
ties. Again, as in the case of the Soviet trials, there is a period
of some six months between the date of capture and the alleged
confession: adequate time to allow for the elaborate planning
by the Communists of what the confession should contain, the
drafting of the "scenario" as it were, and the-roughly-two
or three months needed for the indoctrination of the patient.
T HE only factor that prevents the Communists from em-
ploying these procedures on a mass scale is the problem of
man power for the task and the shortage of trained inter-
rogators. Presumably there are schools in which interrogators
are trained in the techniques of brain washing. However, to
deal with a hundred victims at a time would require the
services of four or five times as many trained interrogators
over a protracted period. Each man has a team assigned to
him and each case is individually prepared.
I have talked with one man who has gone through the
brain washing process, an eminent American missionary in
China. He had the unique experience of going through the
treatment and then of being released and given his freedom.
This is very unusual under Soviet practice.
This man described how he had been subjected for 75
days to the monotony of interrogation, mostly during the
night hours, by relays of brutal questioners, deprived of
sleep and subjected to the effect of bright lighting during the
period of his questioning. As far as he knew, no drugs were
used, but of course they might have been used without his
knowing it. In this case, no direct physical torture was applied.
After many days of this interrogation his mind was broken
down, and he went into court and gave what he now recog-
nizes to be completely false testimony against one of his fel-
low missionaries, asserting with confidence that this other
missionary had a concealed radio with which he was commu-
nicating with "the enemy." He gave this testimony with vigor
and with what, at the time, was apparent complete confi-
dence in its truth.
* *
The information on which I have based these remarks is
none of it secret; it is all available to any student who wishes
to study this form of warfare which is now being practice
against us. It seemed to me useful to gather some of the
facts together so that we can be alerted to the danger an
are not misled or troubled by these fictitious confessions
whether from Communists victimized by other Communist
or by our own people who fall into Communist hands.
(Excerpts from an address by Allen W. Dulles at the na
tional alumni meeting of Princeton University on April 10
1953, at Hot Springs, Va.)