Survivors of Extreme Abuse

The Awful Rowing Toward Social Emancipation

For survivors of extreme abuse, the disclosure of the crimes they experienced and the
public identification of the perpetrators of those crimes can be monumentally daunting
tasks. Among the impediments they may face in their pursuit of personal and social
justice are their own psychological challenges, due to the complex, and sometimes
debilitating effects of having experienced severe trauma, the dangers inherent in exposing
criminals or criminal networks, and social denial of their plight on almost every level.

"A woman's first scream is for help. Her second scream is for justice."
- Coral Anika Theill, BONSHEA

IMAGINE

Survivors have an invaluable gift to share with society: intimate knowledge of crimes
perpetrated in their midst, and the criminals who committed them. Their knowledge and
insight could theoretically lift the great rock of our cultural denial and officially
sanctioned version of reality, and expose the dark and dangerous world of child, drug and
arms traffickers, rapists, child pornographers, serial killers, cults, secret societies and
government corruption. And that exposure would surely mark the beginning of the end of
the widespread abuses that plague our society now.

But that doesn't happen.

SPEAK NO EVIL

Survivors need to tell their stories; it's a vital component of their healing process. And
they need to be heard; it's a vital component of society's healing process. But for many
survivors, establishing the requisite trust in a personal or therapeutic relationship for this
to happen can be a big challenge in and of itself. To speak that truth publicly can be an
overwhelmingly complex and terrifying undertaking. They risk being stigmatized,
disbelieved, harassed, sued or physically harmed.

When a survivor reports criminal abuses to law enforcement agencies, she or he can
expect to be met with breathtaking ignorance on the subjects of the prevalence of rape
and incest, the sheer numbers of children who live under the social radar,i (either
completely undocumented, as in the case of children of cult members and the like, or
under the control of abusers who keep them isolated) and a limited understanding of post
traumatic stress syndromes, if any. The requisite legal infrastructure for dealing with
extreme abuse is next to non-existent.

For example, with the notable exception of Michigan,ii US victims of non-state actor
torture are not specifically protected by law. This is because the crime has not been
officially named and recognized legislatively. In 2008, Jeanne Sarson, MEd, BN, RN,
and Linda MacDonald, MEd, BN, RN, two renowned survivor advocates in Nova Scotia,
wrote a report called Torture of Canadian Women by Non-State Actors In the Private
Sphereiii in their effort to make all of Canada a “torture-free zone.” In this report they
explain why officially recognizing non-state actor torture is so crucial:

“…Canada’s failure to name and criminalize non-state actor torture means, for example,
that the women are not believed when they seek police protection, thus their safety is
compromised. They cannot lay criminal charges identifying that they have endured torture in
the private sphere because no specific law criminalizing non-state actor torture exists in
Canada. And when there is no specific law there is no such recognized crime. The women
frequently experience discreditation, are considered ‘crazy’, or are labeled mentally ill when
seeking professional help.”

Some victims risk more than being shunned and stigmatized when they disclose abuses to
authorities. In cases of cult, cult/government and other organized crimes, the survivor
runs the risk of reporting the crime to a person who is part of the crime network, whether
it be a police officer, attorney, judge, federal agent or politician.iv Compounding these
conundrums is the fact that many survivors tend to isolate, and often distrust
organizations and institutions in general. All of this, of course, works in favor of the
perpetrators.

In addition to the obvious risks involved in publicly naming names, survivors often have
to cope with memories of having been specifically threatened with violence in the past if
they dared to expose their perpetrators.

Complicating this task even further, some survivors of extreme abuse have been
programmed to "switch" to alters who will behave in such a way as to destroy their own
credibility, or even to commit suicide if they start talking about their abuse. Results from
the first ever international survey of survivors of extreme abusev include statistics
regarding the prevalence of this and other silencing techniques: 57% of 997 respondents
said they had self-destruct programming installed should they begin to remember their
programming, and 77% of 1159 respondents were threatened with death if they so much
as talked about the abuse.

Another common practice among handlers and programmers is to install alters who have
been programmed to report any potentially damaging disclosure of their abuse to the
perpetrators of that abuse. In other words, internally covert tattletales.

Survivors are also at a great disadvantage in more subtle and insidious ways. When it
comes to exposing perpetrators and their crimes, many survivors experience deeply
conflicted needs and drives, obstacles such as learned helplessness, self-blame and other
disempowering beliefs and attitudes.

HEAR NO EVIL

2
Socially the constraints on disclosure are also confounding, if not prohibitive. One
deterrent is the simple fact that well-qualified health care professionals are usually very
expensive. This alone represents a major obstacle for many survivors. Finding a qualified
therapist is also a big challenge. It’s still a rare therapist who has a clear understanding of
cult psychodynamics, or who’s been trained to treat the full range of what can be very
complex post-traumatic experience.

Part of the problem is that this field of study as a psychiatric science is relatively new.
The diagnosis of PTSDvi (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) only made the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, in 1980. There are mental health
professionals who still believe that survivors who disclose histories of extreme abuse are
acting out of a need to feel special, or are merely seeking attention. DID (Disocciative
Identity Disorder) is still highly controversial, not only in that mental health professionals
squabble over subtle differences in qualifying symptoms, how it develops, or should best
be treated, but, especially in the case of deliberate dissociation, whether or not it even
exists.

The social ramifications of this conflict permeate not only the health care industry, but
affect who gets insurance, what gets taught in universities, and what juries and judges
believe or dismiss when confronted with PTSD or DID afflicted survivors. How can
survivors get heard and healed while physicians, academicians and attorneys do battle in
the Dark Ages?

Another reason for the current dearth of specialists is that they’re at risk for taking on
patients whose families may retaliate against them for their client's reactions to the
healing process. They face the same credibility challenges academically, professionally
and legally that their clients do socially because of the all-pervasive climate of denial.
And this is no accident.

For the last 17 years, abusers have had a powerful ally. In 1992, the False Memory
Syndrome Foundation, or FMSF, launched a movement to discredit survivors, and to
vilify therapists who treat them.

FMSF was founded by Pamela and Peter Freyd after Peter had been accused of
molestation by his daughter, Dr. Jennifer Freyd, Professor of Psychology at the
University of Oregon. Two of the first board members, therapists Hollida Wakefield and
Ralph Underwager, had to resign after publicly defending pedophilia. Many other board
members, past and present, have CIA or military intelligence connections (Tavistock
Institute trained Dr. Louis West, known for his CIA funded work on mind control
techniques, among them).

FMSF tactics include suing therapists for malpractice and filing amicus briefs
(documents filed by someone not a party to the case) in court cases relating to child
abuse. But the real success story here is their ability to manipulate public perception.
Mike Stanton, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, summarized this
phenomenon: "The foundation is an aggressive, well-financed p.r. (sic) machine adept at

3
manipulating the press, harassing its critics, and mobilizing a diverse army of
psychiatrists, outspoken academics, expert defense witnesses, litigious lawyers, Freud
bashers, critics of psychotherapy, and devastated parents."

He goes on to note: "A study published (in 1996) by a University of Michigan

sociologist, Katherine Beckett, found a sharp shift in how four leading magazines --
Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and People -- treated sexual abuse. In
1991, more than 80% of the coverage was weighted toward stories of survivors, with
recovered memory taken for granted and questionable therapy virtually ignored. By 1994,
more than 80% of the coverage focused on false accusations, often involving supposedly
false memory."

There is now an FMSF chapter in every state.

Of the brave souls who choose to defy the status quo and specialize in the field of trauma,
it will be the minority who fully comprehend and acknowledge the extremities to which
perpetrators are capable of going to achieve their ends, and especially how well they may
be organized and interconnected.

As a result, a client often has to contend with an ever-present layer of resistance to the
credibility of her or his memories, and/or her or his apparently baffling constellation of
symptoms, which impinges on any therapeutic value the telling of their stories might
otherwise have.

Elie Wiesel, novelist and Holocaust survivor, wrote: “When human beings tell victims,
who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions, they
are committing the greatest indignity humans can inflict on another."

There are other challenges for a survivor in a therapeutic relationship even if that
therapist is well qualified to treat post-traumatic symptoms, and honors their integrity and
courage. The intrinsic trust issues a survivor brings to the table can be debilitating, and
the power differential inherent in the traditional client-therapist dynamic can serve to
undermine trust and create an atmosphere that impedes the healing process on many
levels. In cases where survivors were tortured, programmed or experimented upon by
psychologists, psychiatrists or other medically trained personnel, trusting any kind of
therapist or doctor can require an enormous leap of faith.

Survivors who have been institutionalized may endure fates much worse than being
discredited and dismissed socially. The many ways in which survivors have been re-
traumatized while in institutional care have been well documented. They often suffer
from psychological abuse such as being controlled, isolated, stigmatized, misdiagnosed,
etc. They may also be physically abused: physically or chemically restrained, made to
strip, overmedicated or given dangerous psychotropic medication, among other
deplorable violations. And again, survivors of medical experiments or medical treatments
designed to induce memory loss and compliance are especially vulnerable to institutional
re-traumatization.

4
Further undermining faith in these traditional modes of healing for mind-control victims
is the fact that numerous doctors, universities and hospitals, from the earliest days of
psychiatric studies, were involved in sadistic experimentation. For example, Ewen
Cameron, arguably the most well known mind-control doctor for the CIA, was also the
President of the American Psychiatric Association from 1952 to1953.

“…if you faced the death of bombs and bullets

you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone...”
-Anne Sexton, excerpt from Courage, from The Awful Rowing Toward God

The Awful Rowing Toward God was the last book poet Anne Sexton wrote before taking
her own life. Her long time therapist was Dr. Martin T. Orne. Dr. Orne was a founding
member of FMSF, a senior CIA researcher, and is known for performing CIA funded
mind control experiments.

SEE NO EVIL

“The major goal of the Cold War mind control programs was to create dissociative
symptoms and disorders, including full multiple personality disorder”
- Colin Ross, Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by
Psychiatrists

“‘Monarch’ refers to young people in America who were victims of mind control
experiments run either by U.S. government agencies such as the Central Intelligence
Agency, or military intelligence agencies. The story told by Monarch victims… Is that
they were tortured for the purpose of creating “multiple personalities” within them.
These multiple personalities could then be programmed as desired – as spies, “drug
mules,” prostitutes, or assassins.”
- Senator John W. DeCamp, excerpt from The Franklin Cover-Up, Child
Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraskavii

5
“…Perhaps most disturbing of all was the fact that the extent of experimentation on
human subjects was unknown. The records of all these activities were destroyed in
January 1973, at the instruction of then CIA Director Richard Helms.”
-Senator Edward Kennedy, from his opening remarks at the 1977 Church
Committee hearings concerning project MKUltra

The average US citizen, understandably, has almost no cultural frame of reference for
processing personal histories involving extreme abuse, especially cult, secret society and
government atrocities like ritual abuse and institutionalized mind control.
Groundbreaking academic lecturesviii go unacknowledged, mainstream publishers won’t
touch manuscripts written by survivors, and their shocking testimoniesix are suppressed.
Carol Rutz, author of A Nation Betrayed, and one of the four researchers behind the
Extreme Abuse Survey, describes the on-line resistance to the EAS going forward in her
2007 presentation of the survey results at SMART’sx 10th Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive
Organizations and Mind Control Conference:

“I would like to give you an idea of how fearful some people were that this survey would
be successfully carried out. The whole system we had in place online resisted a series of
port scanning attacks which raised peak in the first week. We were close to denial of
service because we lost bandwidth due to ongoing attacks which were about 9,000 per
hour. Mid March we had an elaborate brute force attack to the Windows server. Not
being a techie, that is as much as I can explain. Thank goodness we had a series of
servers in place that protected all data.”xi

Likewise, official government documents showing direct evidence of sponsorship of

mind control experimentationxii is given no press whatsoever. The silence in the media on
these topics is deafening.

Why don’t these kinds of atrocities committed against children and other disempowered
citizens make CNN? As many adult survivors of organized crime syndicates know all too
well, leaders in these organizations typically also own corporations, or hold powerful
positions in the corporate world, and/or positions of high authority in civilian or military
government. Children and adults who have been programmed as sexual slaves, couriers,
spies or assassins are very valuable assets to the entities that developed them. The sexual
exploitation of children is a highly lucrative industry, and deliberately dissociated
government and military operativesxiii serve as politically and militarily invaluable means
of maintaining power and control. Clandestine government and corporate operations that
rely on this invisible slave force are not about to let the proverbial cat out of the bag. The
FMSF PR machine is in good company.

It has been widely reported that by the end of 2008 there were only six companies
dominating US media. This concentration of corporate media ownership means that there
are only a few organizations dictating what makes the news for the majority of
Americans. Among other deeply unfortunate social ramifications of this state of affairs is
the fact that mainstream media are rendered far more vulnerable to manipulation by the
corrupt powers that be.xiv

6
One major impediment to letting the truth about extreme abuse see the light of day in
mainstream media is the outright ownership of telecommunications corporations by
organized criminals. The general demise of the free press can be partly attributed to a
systematic corrosion of regulations and safeguards, executed by the same entities that
benefit most from the ensuing malleability of the reality projected by the mass media:
huge corporations, political ideologues and the military-industrial complex.

“Somebody, sometime has got to take a stand and say democracy cannot survive, much
less thrive with the level of big corporate and big government interference and
intimidation in news.”
-Dan Rather on “Larry King Live,” 9-20-07

The current musical chairs approach to political office further degrades the distinction
between corporate and government objectives. Former high profile politicians serve on
boards of powerful corporations, forming intricate networks linking corporate media to
military, congressional and executive branches of the US government. Some then re-enter
the political arena, completing the “revolving door” cycle. Conversely, many corporate
executives become politicians, and around and around it goes.xv

Each of the six remaining corporate media behemoths has direct ties, through
interlocking directorates and common shareholders, with other giant corporations,xvi
many of which are government contractors. And some corporations that are government
contractors flat out own media corporations, like GE owning NBC.

There are currently more government contractors out there than ever before. Tim
Shorrock, reporting for Salon.com, wrote the following in an article published in 2007:
"On May 14, at an industry conference in Colorado sponsored by the Defense
Intelligence Agency, the U.S. government revealed for the first time how much of its
classified intelligence budget is spent on private contracts: a whopping 70%."

There are now more private contractors working for the federal government than actual
government employees; the line between corporate and government interests has all but
vanished. And the entities responsible for this phenomenon are the same entities that have
historically exploited the disempowered to further their agenda of political and social
control.

Underworld atrocities involving political, military or commercial exploitation of children

are not going to make the 10:00 news.

But why would this corporatocracy bother to discredit survivors who remember
previously repressed trauma if that trauma were an isolated incident, perpetrated by a
solitary criminal? Or people anywhere on the spectrum of dissociative "disorders"? They
have to squelch the whole notion of repressed memories and dissociative identities, and
especially the fact that a person can be deliberately split for sadistic reasons.

7
If the average citizen understood the basic psychodynamics of extreme trauma, they
would be more likely to give credence to survivors' memories in general. Public pressure
would be brought to bear on the legal justice system to respond accordingly, which would
inevitably lead to public exposure and criminal convictions. This could ultimately lead to
large networks of corruption collapsing.

General social acceptance and understanding of the manifestations of psychological

trauma represent a serious threat to those whose power, wealth and ambitions depend on
survivors remaining invisible and discredited.

"Go, go, go said the bird: human kind

cannot bear very much reality."
- T.S. Eliot, from Burnt Norton

Author David Ray Griffin coined the phrase “nationalist faith” to describe the
phenomenon of categorical denial, in the face of irrefutable, relevant evidence, of
incidents wherein governments have acted against their own citizens. This unconscious,
inner framing of how the world works, of what is and isn’t possible according to
unprocessed beliefs, is a big part of the brick wall survivors face when they try to speak
their truths.
The brutal, hidden world of organized criminal networks that survivors understand
intimately is a completely invisible and, more importantly, impossible reality to the
majority of the population. The same can be said of extreme domestic violence. No father
would prostitute his own daughter, or sell her to a sadistic doctor. There’s no such thing
as a satanic cult, because no human being would worship evil. The U.S. military would
never torture a child until their mind splintered into pieces to build a super spy, or an
assassin. Governments could never traffic innocent children with the same indifference
with which they illegally traffic arms or illegal drugs. But they do.

Another deterrent to widespread acceptance of survivors' post trauma experience is based

on a simple truth about human nature: it's very sad and unpleasant to hear about crimes
perpetrated against children. It's easier to pretend it doesn't happen than to acknowledge it
and feel powerless to stop it.

Judith Herman wrote, in Trauma and Recovery: "It is very tempting to take the side of the
perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do NOTHING…the victim, on
the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action,
engagement and remembering.”

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

If anything, standard therapeutic practice, in its current form, discourages survivors from
collaboration. This is due, in part, to the prevailing myth that survivors’ memories and
accounts are fragile and susceptible to distortion by exposure to other survivors’ histories.
This can be seen as an extension of the misperception that survivors, especially of mind
control, are by nature super-suggestible.

8
This is a particularly cruel bias in light of the fact that they have sustained abuse so
violent in nature that they were pushed to the limit of integration and had to split from the
experience (a natural, adaptive response). To suggest that they’re somehow innately more
impressionable and gullible than a “normal” person is to sadistically dismiss the courage
and strength it took to survive.

These misconceptions only serve to exacerbate the debilitating sequestering of a

population already condemned to social isolation through denial of both their symptoms
and the underlying causes. Also, these biases obviously have the disturbing effect of
protecting the perpetrators. One survivor who bears witness to being tortured or
trafficked is “delusional,” two survivors pointing at the same perpetrator is a law suit, and
they know it.

“There was a theft.

That much I am told.
I was abandoned.
That much I know.
I was forced backward.
I was forced forward.
I was passed hand to hand
like a bowl of fruit.

Each night I am nailed into place

and forget who I am”
-Anne Sexton, from Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)

The perpetrator of an atrocity steals many things from the victim: innocence, power,
meaning, hope and faith among them. But the giant disconnect the victim experiences is
perhaps the most tragic loss of all. Because no one can heal in isolation.

The disconnects happen on every level. Internally, the sensory and emotional impressions
of the trauma are shattered into oddly isolated states. The victim can suffer from identity
fracturing and disintegration. Attachments to family and friends can be breached, and
victims often feel socially detached in general. The dissociations are profound. That's
why it’s so vital that survivors reach out and communicate with one another; it’s why
survivor solidarity can be such a profoundly healing experience. And what heals
survivors of society’s darkest deeds heals society.

BELL RINGING

“Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.”
-Leonard Cohen, from Anthem

9
Since the media, the legal justice system, the scientific community, and the health
provider industry have all failed spectacularly to comprehend, acknowledge and
communicate the truth about post-trauma experience, deliberate dissociation, and the
atrocities that spawn "survivors," the onus is on survivors themselves to enlighten
society.

As Emma Goldman wrote, "The most violent element of society is ignorance." As long as
the nature of the aftermath of psychological trauma is one of society's best kept secrets,
perpetrators of atrocities will prevail.

General awareness of survivors' challenges and dilemmas has the awesome potential to
lead not only to personal justice on a small scale, but ultimately to social justice on a
global scale. This is the precious gift survivors have to give, through their courage,
integrity and hope: the protection of future generations of innocent children.

"Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won.
There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in
the end, they always fail. Think of it - always.
-Mahatma Gandhi

10
i

Notes

Even the number of reported missing children is staggering: According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children, “Every year in America an estimated 800,000 children are reported missing, more than 2,000 children each day.
Of that number, 200,000 are abducted by family members, and 58,000 are abducted by non-family members. The primary
motive for non-family abductions is sexual. Each year 115 children are the victims of the most serious abductions, taken by
non-family members and either murdered, held for ransom, or taken with the intent to keep.”
http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/NewsEventServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=4046
ii
In 2006, Michigan Governor Jennifer M. Granholm signed two bills into legislation that made torture a criminal act. See:
http://www.michigan.gov/gov/0,1607,7-168-23442_21974-133334--,00.html

iii
TORTURE OF CANADIAN WOMEN BY NON-STATE ACTORS IN THE PRIVATE SPHERE: A SHADOW REPORT
(March, 2008) – Jeanne Sarson, RN, BScN, MEd, Linda MacDonald, RN, BN, MEd
Available at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/docs/ngos/VOWCanada42.pdf
Their incredible website: http://www.ritualabusetorture.org/

iv
Helen McGonigle, a Connecticut attorney and fearless survivor advocate, made the following observation (emphasis
hers):

“...the worldwide proliferation of the multi-billion dollar pornography industry, internet child porn rings, sex trafficking,
all combined with the millions of unregistered births, provides an ample supply of potential victims. As a Senior State
Department adviser on trafficking in persons was quoted: "we're not finding victims in the United States because we're
not looking for them".
- From The Girls Next Door, New York Times Magazine January 25, 2004.
v
1,471 adult survivors of extreme abuse from more than 30 countries participated in this groundbreaking on-line survey
developed by Carol Rutz, Wanda Karriker, Thorsten Becker and Bettina Overkamp: http://extreme-abuse-survey.net/
See also: Wanda Karriker’s 2007 United Nations presentation: http://extreme-abuse-survey.net/survey.php?en=d and her
2008 presentation of highlights from the EAS trilogy: http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/conf08/highlights-extreme-
abuse-survey/

vi
It’s now commonly referred to as PTSS, or post-traumatic stress syndrome, as the term “disorder” is a misnomer in the
sense that it implies that there’s something inherently wrong with the survivor. In fact, it’s a sane, adaptive response to an
overwhelmingly crazy event. The same can be said for DID, but sadly, as of yet, isn’t.
vii
Conspiracy of Silence, the hour long documentary about this scandal involving the typical constellation of survivor
horrors: satanic ritual abuse, mind control, child trafficking, senators, major media corporations and, of course, the CIA,
was scheduled to air May 3, 1994, on the Discovery Channel, but was cancelled unexpectedly. A new book about the
scandal and the ensuing cover-up was published by investigative journalist Nick Bryant this year (2009).

viii
“The Greenbaum Speech” by Dr. Corydon Hammond is a prime example:
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_mindcon03.htm
ix
From http://web.archive.org/web/20070405174814/www.aches-mc.org/mind_control.html:

“In March of 1995, Valerie Wolf, M.S.W., and two of her clients who had been subjected to mind control experimentation
since early childhood appeared before the President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. After
consulting with forty other therapists across the country (the majority of whom remained anonymous for reasons of
personal safety), Ms. Wolf documented in writing the names of the research projects and the names of the people involved.

The two survivors, Claudia Mullen and Chris DeNicola Ebner, testified that as victims they experienced electric shock,
hallucinogens, dislocation of limbs, sadistic acts of pedophilia, hypnosis and sensory deprivation. Often they were locked in
cages for long periods of time. At the conclusion of the Presidential Hearing, the Committee recommended further
exploration of the mind control experimentation on unwitting human subjects. It has been over a year and a half since this
recommendation was made, but nothing further has been done by the President's Advisory Committee. You will not be
surprised to learn that there has been no coverage or investigation by the mainstream media despite the testimony provided
by Wolf, Mullen and Ebner.”
x
SMART: http://ritualabuse.us/
xi
Carol Rutz’s presentation: http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/conf07/the-world-will-know-results-of-the-2007-
international-survey-for-adult-survivors-of-extreme-abuse/
xii
Government documentation of mind control experiments:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060613070613/parascope.com/ds/mkultradocs.htm
xiii
See Ron Patton’s overview of Monarch training: http://web.archive.org/web/20070405152034/www.aches-
mc.org/monarch.html

xiv
A prime example of an organization that has a lot to gain and everything to lose by influencing popular media is the
quintessentially metastatic Tavistock Institute. This London-based institution, with its long history of colluding with the
MI6 and CIA on mind control techniques, is known both as the “mother of all propaganda ministries” (to quote Dr. John
Coleman, author of The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations) and the world center for foundation ideology. It has been
reported that the institute currently operates a multibillion dollar a year network of foundations in the US, which in turn are
enmeshed with a multitude of giant corporations.

xv
One particularly egregious example is the Washington D.C. based private equity firm, the Carlyle Group. Run by leading
members of Bush Senior's presidential administration, Carlyle is the largest private equity firm in the world, and the nation's
11th largest defense contractor. In 2008, Booz Allen Hamilton, one of CIA’s major contractors, sold a majority stake in the
US government business to The Carlyle Group for $2.54 billion.

Portfolio telecommunication companies include Dex Media, the former directories business of Qwest Communications, and
Insight Communications, the ninth largest cable company in the U.S.

Former FCC Chairman William E. Kennard is now managing director of Carlyle Group's telecommunication and media
practice. He's also on the New York Times Company board of directors. Editor-in-chief of Time magazine from 1995 -
2005, Norman Pearlstine is Carlyle’s telecommunications and media group senior advisor.

Carlyle company director is Daniel Akerson, a former board member of AOL Time Warner (CNN is owned by Time
Warner.) Frank Carlucci, Carlyle Chairman and Chairman Emeritus from 1987 to 2005, was a former Deputy Director of
the CIA, and former US Secretary of Defense under Reagan.

The elder President Bush, (also former CIA Director) was a senior advisor until he retired in 2003 amid conflict-of-interest
allegations. He's currently on retainer. President George W. Bush served on the Board of Directors of Caterair, one of
Carlyle's first acquisitions. Former secretary of state James Baker was senior Carlyle Senior Counsel until 2005.
xvi
See Project Censored’s 2009 Media Map of Major Media Ownership and Governance:
http://www.projectcensored.org/censorship/media-map/