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MindNet Journal - Vol. 1, No. 29a * [Part 1 of 2 parts]
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V E R I C O M M / MindNet "Quid veritas est?"
================================================================
Notes:
The following is reproduced here with the express permission of
the author.
Permission is given to reproduce and redistribute, for
non-commercial purposes only, provided this information and the
copy remain intact and unedited.
The views and opinions expressed below are not necessarily the
views and opinions of VERICOMM, MindNet, or the editors unless
otherwise noted.
Editor: Mike Coyle
Associate Editors: Walter Bowart
Alex Constantine
Martin Cannon
Assistant Editor: Rick Lawler
Research: Darrell Bross
================================================================
Excerpted from:
Chapter Five Psychic Dictatorship in the U.S.A.
By Alex Constantine
Portland, OR : Feral House, 1995
Pages 97-111
"What is that Odor?"
Mystery Fumes, the Poisoning of the Los
Angeles County Commission for Women's Ritual Abuse Task Force &
the Los Angeles Times
Introduction: Cults, Chemo-Terrorism and the CIA
After the deadly March 1995 subway gassing in Japan, 1,200 police
and military troops raided the "sixth santium" of Aum Shinri Kyo,
one of the country's 17,000 religious cults, in the shadow of
Mount Fuji. Sporting chemical gear, they cut their way into the
Kamikuishiki warehouse with circular saws and oxyacetylene
torches. On the first floor, police stumbled upon a "Perfect
Salvation Initiation," a yogic ritual that employed electrical
skull caps to deliver four- to ten-volt shocks to the novitiate
in an attempt to open his chakras, the body's centers of
spiritual energy. Among the healing rites practiced by the sect
was the imbibing and vomiting of whole gallons of water,
electrical jolts and the "Christ Initiation," an arduous regimen
of enemas and scalding hot baths.
Former members of the sect, according to a Los Angeles
Times report, "paint a chilling picture of psychological
indoctrination ... sleep deprivation, mind control techniques and
enforced isolation from the outside world. Access to family and
friends - even newspapers and TV - is prohibited"1 The cultists
exhibited an alarming degree of mind control. Police freed a
screaming woman from a stainless steel pod, and fifty cult
members were found sprawled unconscious in a chapel on the second
floor, six others in a drug-induced coma.2
Police announced that the stockpile of noxious chemicals
discovered at the compound was the source of the nerve gas
released in a Tokyo subway, killing ten people and injuring
5,000, with 70 in critical condition. Sadly enough, the
neurotoxic effect of the gas is likely to be severe. Medical
research has shown that acute exposure to toxic levels of sarin
(a poison developed at chemical laboratories in Nazi Germany as a
war gas) produces prolonged changes in brain function.3 It was
the first use of a chemical warfare agent on a large group of
people by a non-military group4 (though the apocalyptic sect is
believed to have had a hand in an unexplained sarin "leak" in the
Japanese Alps in 1994 that left eight dead and sickened 212.5
"Birds dropped from the sky," one abashed correspondent wrote
from Tokyo. "Dead dogs and cats lay in the gutters, and dead carp
and yabbies floated to the surface of an ornamental pond"6).
It was not the first time that a cult has been accused of
waging chemical warfare on unsuspecting civilians. In Los
Angeles, for example, a series of mysterious attacks on members
of the local County Commission for Women's Ritual Abuse Task
Force in 1992 led to complaints of nausea, blurred vision,
dizziness, headaches and elevated blood pressure. Eight of these
cases had been independently confirmed by blood tests - yet,
incredibly, Los Angeles Times coverage made light of the victims,
blaming the outbreak of symptoms on the fertile imaginations of
professional paranoiacs.7 After all, allegations of abuse at
McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach had been debunked. The
expert opinions of reputable academics had shown that organized
cult activity in southern California was non-existent, the
zaniest of "urban legends."
Hadn't they?
Surely the task force was laboring under another bout of
cult "hysteria." The Times reassured the community that, once
again, a few fevered brains had made monsters where none existed.
The newspaper adhered to its position even when Dr. Catherine
Gould, chairwoman of the ritual abuse task force, fired off a
letter of rebuttal, pointing out that the allegations were backed
up by blood-test reports verifying that members of the group had,
contrary to the Times report, been exposed to organophosphate
poisons.8
The Times did not print the letter. Dr. Gould, a licensed
clinical child therapist, countered that she had found it
shocking a major metropolitan newspaper would "deliberately
bypass the available data in favor of a series of emotional
charges which essentially amount to a chorus of 'it couldn't be
true.'" She also bemoaned the newspaper's "pattern of biased and
inaccurate reporting" on ritual child abuse, a tendency to side
with perpetrators of SRA and promote the small minority of
psychologists - only one out of ten, in fact - who deride
recovered memory therapy and have largely succeeded at
discrediting therapists who work with children abused by mind
control cults.9
This small but unremittingly "skeptical" school
constitutes the pool of academic psychologists available to
defense attorneys. They have received much play in the press,
champions of the false memory theory of ritual abuse - though
most are not licensed to practice child therapy. Ubiquitous in
the media, this clutch of academic psychologists includes
Drs. Richard Ofshe, Margaret Singer and Elizabeth Loftus of the
False Memory Syndrome Foundation, all of whom have made lucrative
careers testifying on behalf of accused pedophiles. The
therapists who actually treat the young victims are not sought
out by reporters. This inequity, biased in favor of the false
memory brigade, amounts to blanket censorship of all qualified
professionals on the subject of ritual abuse. The press has thus
become the sole domain of a small minority of defense
psychologists.
Lopsided media coverage of ritual abuse amounts to a
virulent form of disinformation. The perpetrators and their hired
guns in academia have a monopoly on the molding of public
opinion. They are not representative, but they are quoted time
and again by the press.
Their bona fides are often in CIA mind control
experimentation. These include UCLA's Louis Jolyon West (LSD
experiments) and Berkeley's Margaret Singer (brainwashing
studies), both "experts" on cults. Dr. Ofshe, who turns up
constantly in the newspapers to call recovered memory therapy a
"quack" science, writes monographs on mind control strongly
influenced by Dr. West's academic writing. Dr. Martin Orne, an
original board member of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation,
studied hypnotic persuasion at the University of Pennsylvania for
CIA and Naval Intelligence paymasters.
What the Los Angeles Times neglected to tell its
readership is that CIA behavior control scientists and the cults
have formed an alliance.
The Agency uses the cults to further the techniques and
technology of mind control.10 In exchange, the CIA provides
behind-the-scenes legal assistance and public relations. A
perpetrator of ritual abuse, when nabbed, is often treated to
friendly press coverage. In contrast, ritually abused children
and their therapists have been targeted for harassment because
they threaten perps, cults and the Agency alike with exposure.
Competent psychologists are, in the public print, made to appear
greedy, incompetent opportunists practicing a medieval science
based on quack theories of memory. Stories critical of those in
the field of ritual abuse often bear an uncanny resemblance to a
CIA disinformation campaign - and that, if the truth be known, is
no accident.
Despite public pronouncements to the contrary, the CIA is
still very actively engaged in mind control research. Communities
around the world have been converted into laboratories. Cults in
their midst are led by operatives trained in the techniques and
technology of behavior control. And media disinformation conceals
the work of this mind control fraternity. In January of 1992, Dr.
Gould recalled in her letter to the Times, "I became aware of a
strange pattern of illnesses [affecting] both Los Angeles
therapists treating ritual abuse patients, and individuals
engaged in support and advocacy work on behalf of ritually abused
children and adults." The afflicted complained not only of a
general malaise that might be expected to accompany a demanding
career, but also such unusual symptoms as numbness in the face
and extremities, blurred vision, muscle tremors and weakness,
memory loss and even "incontinence."
The first to complain of symptoms saw a physician, who
diagnosed her as suffering from diazinon poisoning. (Diazinon,
like the sarin unleashed in Japan, is an organophosphate.11)
Independently, another member of the task force had a blood test
performed at Kaiser Hospital in Los Angeles and was handed the
same diagnosis. A third member of the group, an SRA survivor, was
examined at the Glendale Adventist Medical Center and told that
she had "organophosphate poisoning." Yet another member, a
therapist suffering a constellation of toxic symptoms, bought a
pesticide detection kit. She tested samples of food from the
kitchen one evening when she discovered that her home had been
broken and entered. A half dozen of the food samples proved
positive for pesticide poisoning.
The therapist (requesting anonymity) claimed in a letter
to the task force, "our home has been broken into several times,
even during the day when witnesses were on the property.
Neighbors inform us of continual nighttime surveillance. We have
been followed several times by a variety of vehicles. On at least
three occasions the interior of our home has been splattered with
blood, and two birds have mysteriously died."12
Concerns were raised at the panel's March 1992 meeting
that some people engaged in helping ritual abuse survivors escape
cult influence might be victims of pesticide poisoning. By that
time, a number of therapists suffering from symptoms of
organophosphate poisoning had contacted their physicians.
Satanic cult survivors on the task force also exhibited
symptoms of toxification, including a young woman and incest
survivor - referred to here as M - who received the following
recorded message from her sister shortly after taking a blood
test:
I talked to mom this morning - she's very upset! She said
she had a phone call yesterday about a meeting and that she
wanted to tell you that any files, any medical reports that you
go or that anyone else goes looking for will not be found. We
know what you're up to and you're not going to get away with it.
I repeat, anything you look for - medical files, reports - will
not be found. Don't do this.... I'm telling you this to beware -
you're treading on thin ice - mom told me to tell you'd better be
careful.
You'd better watch who you talk to. Watch what you say,
because you're marked and you know that. We know what school
[your child] goes to. You'd better be there for him. You'd better
watch out for him. Anything can happen.
Have a nice day!
Medical reports from clinics across the county vouch for
members of the task force who reporting toxic effects. Still, the
L.A. Times took the position that they were suffering paranoid
aberrations.
The adamant editors of the Times turned up their noses
not only to the medical reports, but also to a number of letters
from other therapists of ritually abused children in Los Angeles
- they, too, exhibited symptoms of organophosphate poisoning.
One mother of two, after leaving a local cult, contacted
Gould's task force in November, 1992 about the L.A.Times story:
"I was alarmed, since I had all the symptoms last year, as had my
children." Another mother wrote to say that in February, 1985 she
discovered that her youngest daughter had been sexually abused in
a daycare center in the San Fernando Valley. Her daughter's
intense emotional trauma persisted, though she frequented a
therapist for over a year. Then the toxic siege began ...
In 1988 I started to experience physical problems. I was
severely tired much of the time. It felt as if I had been
drugged. Soon after that I started to have occurrences of
tachycardia (rapid heart beat), headaches, shortness of breath,
loss of memory, blurry vision, sweats, and at times I noticed a
strange odor in my clothing, not to mention the female problems I
was having. Doctors tested me every which way and yet every test
was negative.
They told me I was suffering from stress. I argued that I
felt drugged, that I had some kind of chemical imbalance. They
insisted it was stress, and I was referred to various stress
programs, given tapes to listen to and forced to leave a very
lucrative job.
In July 1989, I was put on disability. Today I am
considered permanently disabled.
Early in 1992 it was suggested to me that I might be a
victim of pesticide poisoning. Truth is I didn't believe it. I
was afraid my doctor would think I was crazy. I eventually did go
to him and asked his opinion. I was surprised at what he told me
in a phone conversation the next day. He had consulted with two
other doctors, and it was their opinion that I was suffering from
chronic pesticide poisoning.13
Having amassed a bulky file of medical documentation to
establish that members of the task force had been poisoned, Dr.
Gould was still reluctant to contact the local press until she'd
gathered enough evidence to convince even the most obstinate
skeptic. In Los Angeles, the legal victory of Ray Buckey on
molestation charges, after a five-year travail of public debate,
had prompted a heated backlash against child therapists.
The task force was still collecting medical evidence and
discussing possible courses of action when Stephanie Sheppard, a
cult survivor, broke ranks and phoned the L.A. Times and a local
television station to "blow the lid" off the group's "psychotic"
belief they'd been poisoned.
Ms. Sheppard's admission was made to therapist David
Neswald prior to a meeting of the panel. Dr. Neswald recalls that
Sheppard "apparently mistook me for Dr. Papanek and called me out
to the hallway to speak privately."14 The agonizing irony in the
confusion of identity is that Dr. Paul Papanek has long been a
medical champion for the spraying of technical-grade malathion
(an organophosphate and known neurotoxin) in densely-populated
Southern California neighborhoods, a practice he commends as
safe and effective to rid the region of periodic medfly
infestation, despite growing evidence that the insecticide has
adverse, often severe effects on human health.
A mother of two, referred to here as N.R., once sought
advice from the task force when she suspected her two daughters
had been abused. She struggled with an undiagnosed illness for a
year before it occurred to her that the cause might be a poison.
She phoned the task force office and was referred to Stephanie
Sheppard, then acting "contact person" on questions concerning
toxins. Sheppard, the woman complained, "proceeded to question me
at length," and gave several "lectures about how all of these
symptoms I was having could be from other causes, including
'getting old' (I am forty)." N.R. became "very suspicious of her
intentions and did not wish to talk to her again."15
After a routine blood test, Ms. R.'s physician received
not one, but three phone calls from Stephanie Sheppard. She asked
how the tests had come out, and informed him that she seriously
doubted anyone on the task force had been poisoned. When
Stephanie rang N.R., "I told her that I had found out that she
had called my doctor and that I was very angry. Her voice took on
a tone that was obviously aimed at shaming me for questioning
her. I told her in a strong voice not to call again and I hung
up." Alarmed, she called the clinic, only to discover that
Stephanie had called there repeatedly for a copy of the blood
test results. (As it happens, the test proved negative. This
means little, though, because Mrs. R. learned later that it was a
test capable of detecting only high levels of toxicity from
recent exposure.)
Ms. R. complained to the task force that her doctor had
"no experience with ritual abuse. Now she certainly has a
first-hand experience of cult attempts to sabotage all exposure
of their violent harassment techniques. I am totally outraged."
She characterized Stephanie Sheppard's intrusions as "a total red
alert" to "infiltration."
But the quickest cuts, the harshest treacheries, were yet
to come - from the Los Angeles Times.
British journalist Piers Brendon, in The Life and Death
of the Press Barons, found in the course of researching the book
in 1983 that "as an integral part of the country's power
structure, the Times tends to overlook its public
responsibilities."16 But then, dodging responsibility is
something of a tradition in the press, Brendon observed: "The
First Amendment was drafted on the understanding that newspapers
would be voices crying in the wilderness. It did not matter how
raucous or even how deceitful they were."
The very paragon of this principle is the L.A. Times.
Catherine Gould is cautious of the press. She and other
therapists working with ritual abuse victims have been repeatedly
besmirched for shattering the spell of public denial woven by the
media around any mention of ritual child abuse or cult mind
control.
[Continued to part 2]
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MindNet Journal - Vol. 1, No. 29b * [Part 2 of 2 parts]
================================================================
V E R I C O M M / MindNet "Quid veritas est?"
================================================================
Notes:
The following is reproduced here with the express permission of
the author.
Permission is given to reproduce and redistribute, for
non-commercial purposes only, provided this information and the
copy remain intact and unedited.
The views and opinions expressed below are not necessarily the
views and opinions of VERICOMM, MindNet, or the editors unless
otherwise noted.
Editor: Mike Coyle
Associate Editors: Walter Bowart
Alex Constantine
Martin Cannon
Assistant Editor: Rick Lawler
Research: Darrell Bross
================================================================
[Continued from part 1]
"We considered it too early to make any kind of definitive
determination about the nature or extent of the poisonings," Dr.
Gould says, "and had in no way thought to publicize our concerns
at this time." She was still collecting medical reports when the
Times came a-calling.
A cursory treatment of the story was written up by staff
reporter Aaron Curtiss and appeared on December 1, 1992. It was
founded solely on allegations, not hard evidence. Curtiss
promised the group a follow-up story based on the medical data
they'd collected. Gould agreed to turn over the blood test
results.
But the Times pulled a switch. Curtiss phoned Gould to
say he'd been pulled off the story. It was instead assigned to
John Johnson, the author of an earlier biased pooh-poohing of
ritual abuse that appeared in the Times on April 23, 1992.17 Dr.
Gould was still aching with resentment at the paper for printing
Johnson's condescending denial of underground cult activity in
Los Angeles. Gould told Curtiss that she saw no purpose in
working with Johnson. Curtiss passed on Gould's concerns to his
editor.
The next day Curtiss called to say that his editor had
agreed that Gould could give the medical reports to the Times and
expect fair treatment. He assured her that the information would
be accurately reflected in the story written by Johnson. Thus
assuaged, she turned over the medical reports.
Quite suddenly, without explanation, Curtiss went
incommunicado. Gould phoned the Times repeatedly over the next
ten days - Curtiss refused to either take or return her calls.
Gould had a cold sensation in the pit of her stomach that the
paper would debunk the poisonings.
"I was appalled," Gould later wrote to editors of the
Times, "when the article appeared on the front page of the
'Metro' section with none of the available data in it. The
article represents a breach of ethics on the part of John Johnson
and the Los Angeles Times, and a breach of promise made by a
staff member."
The Times story that appeared on December 13, 1992
glossed over the medical evidence entirely, depicting the task
force as a collection of paranoiacs who "claimed they are slowly
being poisoned by those who want to silence them." The paper
noted that there were "43 reported victims of the alleged
poisoning," but "so far, there is no proof that anyone was
poisoned and skeptics abound." Johnson cited as example Dr. Paul
J. Papanek, chief of the county's toxins epidemiological program
and the most reviled public official in L.A. County - the very
"authority" who has repeatedly sanctioned malathion spraying in
Southern California despite overwhelming medical data, a
multitude of case histories and strident city hall testimony
indicating that the pesticide is harmful to humans.
Dr. Papanek "attended a recent task force meeting and
branded as 'outrageous' the poisoning claims." He sharply faulted
the commission for not attending to "common sense rules of
evidence." On the heels of this "controversy," nameless
authorities had "begun an investigation into the activities of
therapists and an acupuncturist linked to the poisoning claims by
task force members."
Other "skeptics" were "turning up the heat for answers.,"
Johnson reported, among them Tom O'Connor, executive director of
the Board of Psychology. "Are they diagnosing diazinon
poisoning?" O'Connor asked. "That's beyond the scope of their
license. This sounds like some sort of mass hysteria."
Another categorical denial came from Stephanie Sheppard,
who "said she checked out the claims of pesticide poisoning and
found no facts to back up the allegations."
The Times had only to cite the medical reports supplied
by Catherine Gould to silence these critics of the task force.
The spurning of the blood tests reduced the story to a
transparent smear, probably to discredit Gould and other
therapists treating victims of ritual abuse. The deliberate
distortions of most news reports on cult conditioning of children
blurs public perception of the issue, and contributes to the
continued vulnerability of children to a most heinous form of
abuse.
If anything is more ludicrous than the atrocities
described by victims, it is the confabulistic tales advanced by
false memory advocates in the press.
The abysmal ethics of the Times in its handling of the task
force poisonings extended to the paper's reports on a related
story, the logic-defying "Mystery Fumes" case in Riverside,
California. The half-dozen accounts of the case published by
the newspaper were the exclusive domain of staff writer Tom
Gorman.
In February, 1994 six emergency room attendants at
Riverside Hospital fainted after inhaling an "ammonia-like" odor
discharged by the blood of Gloria Ramirez after drawing a sample
with a syringe. "In the ensuing confusion," Gorman reported, "two
people unaffected by the fumes tended to her as she went into
full cardiac arrest. Within minutes, the 31-year-old woman -
suffering from cervical cancer and weakened by nausea - died."
State health officials and toxic specialists had no idea what
prompted the incident, and Gorman reported that the Riverside
Fire Department's hazardous materials squad found nothing
peculiar in air samples taken from the emergency room.18 (Five
months later, however, Gorman reversed himself and reported that
a chemical compound derived from ammonia had been found in the
air samples.19)
Dr. Huberto Ochoa, director of the emergency room staff,
noticed white crystal spikes in the syringe used to draw blood
from the dying Gloria Ramirez. "I'd never seen anything like it,"
he said. OSHA technicians detected an unidentified derivative of
ammonia in Ramirez's body bag.20 Nevertheless, one state
hygienist blamed "stress" or "anxiety." This explanation,
however, failed to account for the profound memory loss of
Maureen Welch, a respiratory therapist. The strain of overwork
seemed a lame explanation for the gangrenous knees of nurse Julie
Gorchynski after her blood had been contaminated, killing the
supply of oxygen to her bones. She also suffered from breathing
difficulties, muscle spasms and other symptoms reported two years
earlier by members of the task force. In fact, the New York Times
noted, medical professionals held that 'the toxic substance that
felled the emergency room workers may have been an
organophosphate, a chemical used in pesticides and military nerve
gas."21 (On the West Coast, the heirs of General Otis Chandler
never once raised the possibility that Gloria Ramirez may have
been exposed to organophosphates, quite possibly to avoid linking
Dr. Gould's task force with the mystery fumes case in the minds
of readers.)
"I had chemical burns in my throat and nose," Gorchynski
told reporters, "lungs working at half capacity, biopsies showing
dead knees, a drop of enzyme levels and crystals in my blood as
well. It's all medically documented."22 But the Los Angeles Times
- which had ignored medical data in its reporting on the
poisonings of ritual abuse task force members - also neglected to
discuss Julie Gorchynski's medical examinations. The hospital's
own blood tests detected organophosphates, but the local press
refused to report this critical fact for many months.
The Times wasn't the only local news outlet to spin a
cloud of disinformation around the mystery fumes case. Dean
Adell, a local talk show doctor for KFI, an AM radio station in
Los Angeles, dismissed the incident as "mass hysteria."23
This diagnosis outraged Dr. Ross Kussman, Gorchynski's
physician, who called the radio station to explain that the
hospital personnel displayed symptoms of toxicity.
"It doesn't fit the grounds for mass hysteria," Kussman
said. "Julie became very ill from the toxin, developed
pancreatitis and hepatitis, which are known to kill bone tissue."
Dr. Adell scoffed, as though this diagnosis was the most
preposterous abuse of medical science he'd ever heard. What
poison could possibly account for Gorchynski's litany of
symptoms? he asked.
"Organophosphates are well known to cause pancreatitis,"
Dr. Kussman offered. He explained that pancreatitis, in turn, is
a known precursor of bone necrosis, the condition afflicting Dr.
Gorchynski's knees. Adell asked why health authorities hadn't
arrived at the same conclusion.
"Because," Kussman returned, "the County was
uncooperative in helping us find out where it came from."
(Gorchynski also claimed that county authorities were
"stonewalling" her.)
"Trust me," Dr. Adell, an optometrist, snorted with
psychic confidence, "there ain't no fumes!"
This appeared to be the official position of the Times as
well. Gorman parroted the statements of state health officials
when, two weeks later, they too attributed the swooning at
Riverside Hospital to "mass hysteria" (failing to point out that
this is formally considered to be a "diagnosis-by-exclusion" -
meaning that if no other cause is detectable, mass hysterics
could account for a spread of physical symptoms.24)
At any rate, this explanation didn't wash well in the
public print. But before the sighs died down, another diagnosis
was offered by Riverside County Coroner Scotty Hill. The coroner
released a report from Lawrence Livermore labs - a few days
before ballots were cast in Hill's run for re-election -
concluding that the noxious fumes discharged by Gloria Ramirez
were created internally from the bodily absorption of the pain
remedy DMSO chemically transformed by her unique biochemistry
into dimethyl sulfate, a lethal chemical warfare agent.25
But the DMSO theory had as many gaping holes in it as
"mass hysteria."
"DMSO is commonly used," Dr. Kussman says, "and they're
saying now that everyone who uses it emits a nerve gas?"
The Ramirez family fervently denied that the patient had
ever used DMSO. Besides, said Ron Schwartz, an attorney in the
case, "the coroner's office is still saying that she died of
cervical cancer, but now they're saying she created a chemical
warfare agent that didn't hurt her. That doesn't make sense to
me."
The Los Angeles Times neglected to report a second
outbreak of mystery fumes that further decimated the DMSO
hypothesis. After initial treatment at Riverside Hospital, two of
the poisoned hospital employees were transferred to Parkview
Hospital, according to a local television news report.26 "What
few people know," an excited reporter announced from Parkview,
"is that four of the workers who treated them here were ill
themselves. A poison expert examined the four new patients - he
said the same symptoms at two different hospitals argues against
a DMSO reaction, and points to an entirely different poison."
Lawrence Livermore chemists may have also overlooked an
outbreak of mystery fumes in Bakersfield a week after the
Riverside poisonings. The emergency room at Mercy Hospital was
evacuated after doctors inserted a breathing tube in the trachea
of a 44-year-old woman struggling with shortness of breath. As at
Riverside, emergency room personnel noticed a gaseous cloud
rising from the patient. They complained that a potent chemical
odor originating with the patient's blood left them with burning
eyes, nausea and headaches.27
The growing list of tenuous explanations contributed to
suspicions of a cover-up. These were augmented by the
announcement that the syringe used to draw blood from Gloria
Ramirez had been thrown away.28 And in the course of lawsuits
filed by the Ramirez family, Dr. Gorchynski, nurse Sally Balderas
and attorneys for Riverside County filed a court motion to
destroy all of the evidence gathered from the contaminated
emergency room.
As it was, entire barrels of evidence had been kept
secret from the Ramirez family. They and others filing suit had
no chance to have the contents of the barrels examined by
toxicologists.
An attorney for Sally Balderas complained that he had not
been notified that the county wanted to destroy the evidence, or
even that a hearing had been scheduled. Judge Richard Van Frank
refused to give the county its way, ruling that interested
parties work out a plan for the evidence before the hearing
continue.29
Coverage of the mystery fumes case by the Los Angeles
Times did not extend to the evidentiary hearing. The residents of
L.A. were not told that the very "stonewalling" officials charged
with investigating a case of mass poisoning wanted to burn every
scrap of evidence to minimize "storage costs."
By suppressing significant details (medical evidence
documenting a toxic assault on the ritual abuse task force, or
symptoms of organophosphate poisoning in the mystery fumes case)
the Times plays an insidious game. The newspaper has clearly
distorted the chemo-terrorism of cults in the southern California
with a disinformation gambit that shields the culprits and
defames victims (Gloria Ramirez?) for breaking out, talking to
reporters, striking back or otherwise interfering with domestic
intelligence cult operations.
- Alex Constantine
Notes:
1 Teresa Watanabe and Carol J. Williams, "Japan Sect Uses
Pain to Impel Faith," Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1995, p.
A-1-D.
2 Jonathan Annells, "Temple of Doom," London Times, March
26, 1995, p. 1.
3 B. Boskovitch and R. Kusic, abstract to "Long-Term
Effect of Acute Exposure to Nerve Gases Upon Human Health," in
Mass Mind Control of the American People, compiled and edited by
Elizabeth Russell-Manning, published by Russell-Manning, San
Francisco, 1992, p. 90.
4 There have been scores of military gassing incidents.
In 1969, for instance, the accidental release of nerve gas in
Okinawa hospitalized 25 Americans (see Sterling Seagrave. Yellow
Rain, M. Evans, New York, 1981, p. 260-61). Non-military
accidents are not all that uncommon either: In 1976, the
explosion of a factory owned by a subsidiary of Hoffman-LaRoche
discharged a cloud of fumes that sickened and disfigured children
of Seveso, Italy for life (see John G. Fuller, The Poison that
Fell from the Sky, Random House, New York, 1977).
5 Annells.
6 Ben Hills, "Police, Scientists Still Baffled by Japan
Nerve Gas Deaths," The Age (Australia), August 20, 1994.
7 John Johnson, "County Panel Scrutinized for Satanic
Claims," Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1992, p. B-1.
8 Catherine Gould, letter with medical verification to
the Los Angeles Times, December 17, 1992. Copies are available
from the L.A. County Commission for Women's Ritual Abuse Task
Force office.
9 Randy Noblitt, "Multiple Choice: Which of the Following
is Most False: (A) The Memory, (B) The Syndrome, (C) The
Foundation?" Newsletter of the Society for the Investiga-tion,
Treatment and Prevention of Ritual and Cult Abuse, vol. 1, no. 3,
Fall/Winter 1993-94, pp. 3-5. The percentage of psychologists who
believe recovered memory therapy to be effective is about 88%.
The proportion is the same in Great Britain, according to one
survey released last year. On January 1, 1995, the Sunday London
Times reported that "the first expert investigation into
'recovered memory syndrome' in Britain reveals that nine out of
ten psychologists believe the technique of searching for buried
sexual trauma can produce accurate memories."
10 Jonathan Vankin, in Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes
(1992), cites a lecture by Joe Holsinger, an aide to late
Congressman Leo Ryan, at a psychology conference in Berkeley,
noting: "the possibility is that Jonestown was a mass mind
control experiment by the CIA." Holsinger offered as evidence
"The Penal Colony," an essay written by a U.C. Berkeley
psychologist. "The Berkeley author of the article ... believes
that rather than terminating MKULTRA (the Agency's mind control
program), the CIA shifted its programs from public institutions
to private cult groups, including the Peoples' Temple" (p. 176).
11 Shirley Briggs, Chemical Classes of Pesticides,
Hemisphere Publishing Co., 1972, Washington, D.C., p. 213.
Immediate effects of organophosphate poisoning include behavioral
disturbances, muscle twitching, headaches, nausea, dizziness,
anxiety, memory loss, weakness, tremor, abdominal cramps, blurred
vision, slowed heartbeat and incontinence.
12 Anonymous attachment, Dr. Gould's letter to the L.A.
Times.
13 Letter to Myra Riddel of the L.A. County Commission
for Women's Ritual Abuse Task Force, December 15, 1992. On file
in the task force archives.
14 Dr. David W. Neswald, letter to Dr. Myra Riddell, task
force chairwoman, December 10, 1992. Neswald found Ms. Sheppard's
behavior "rather suspect."
15 N.R. in a letter to the task force, November 30, 1992.
16 Piers Brendon, The Life and Death of the Press Barons,
Atheneum, New York, 1983, p. 232.
17 John Johnson, "Satanism: Skeptics Abound," Los Angeles
Times, April 23, 1992, P. A-1.
18 Tom Gorman, "Family Claims Woman was Victim, Not
Cause, of Fumes," Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1994, p. A-3.
19 Tom Gorman, "6-Month Probe Fails to Solve Mystery of
Hospital Fumes," Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1994, p. A-21.
20 Tom Gorman, "Victims of Fumes Still Ill, and Still
Seeking Answers," Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1994, p. A-1.
21 B. Drummond Ayres Jr., "Elaborate Precautions Taken
for Autopsy in Mystery Fumes Case," New York Times, February 25,
1994, p. A-17.
22 Tom Gorman, "'Mystery Fumes' Doctor to File $6-Million
Claim," Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1994, p. A-1.
23 Dean Adell program, KFI-AM (Los Angeles), August 8,
1994.
24 Kussman.
25 Tom Gorman, "Lab Suggests Mystery Fumes Answer," Los
Angeles Times, November 4, 1994, p. A-1.
26 Mystery fumes update, late evening news broadcast,
KNBC-TV, Los Angeles, November 26, 1994.
27 "Fumes Again Sicken People," Los Angeles Times,
February 28, 1994, p. A-3.
28 Tom Gorman, "Syringe Used in Fumes Case Lost," Los
Angeles Times, April 22, 1994, p. A-3.
29 Pat Murkland, "Bid to Destroy Fumes Evidence Lost,"
Corona (Calif.) Press-Enterprise, January 12, 1995, p. B-1.
[END]
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