Manchurian Candidate - John Marks October 26, 1978

Author's Note

This book has grown out of the 16,000 pages of
documents that the CIA released to me under the Freedom
of Information Act. Without these documents, the best
investigative reporting in the world could not have
produced a book, and the secrets of CIA mind-control work
would have remained buried forever, as the men who knew
them had always intended. From the documentary base, I
was able to expand my knowledge through interviews and
readings in the behavioral sciences. Nevertheless, the
final result is not the whole story of the CIA's attack
on the mind. Only a few insiders could have written that,
and they choose to remain silent. I have done the best I
can to make the book as accurate as possible, but I have
been hampered by the refusal of most of the principal
characters to be interviewed and by the CIA's destruction
in 1973 of many of the key documents.
I want to extend special thanks to the congressional
sponsors of the Freedom of Information Act. I would like
to think that they had my kind of research in mind when
they passed into law the idea that information about the
government belongs to the people, not to the bureaucrats.
I am also grateful to the CIA officials who made what
must have been a rather unpleasant decision to release
the documents and to those in the Agency who worked on
the actual mechanics of release. From my point of view,
the system has worked extremely well.
I must acknowledge that the system worked almost not
at all during the first six months of my three-year
Freedom of Information struggle. Then in late 1975,
Joseph Petrillo and Timothy Sullivan, two skilled and
energetic lawyers with the firm of Fried, Frank, Shriver,
Harris and Kampelman, entered the case. I had the
distinct impression that the government attorneys took me
much more seriously when my requests for documents
started arriving on stationery with all those prominent
partners at the top. An author should not need lawyers to
write a book, but I would have had great difficulty
without mine. I greatly appreciate their assistance.
What an author does need is editors, a publisher,
researchers, consultants, and friends, and I have been
particularly blessed with good ones. My very dear friend Taylor Branch edited the book, and I continue to be
impressed with his great skill in making my ideas and
language coherent. Taylor has also served as my agent,
and in this capacity, too, he has done me great service.
I had a wonderful research team, without which I
never could have sifted through the masses of material
and run down leads in so many places. I thank them all,
and I want to acknowledge their contributions. Diane St.
Clair was the mainstay of the group. She put together a
system for filing and cross-indexing that worked beyond
all expectations. (Special thanks to Newsday's Bob
Greene, whose suggestions for organizing a large
investigation came to us through the auspices of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc.) Not until a
week before the book was finally finished did I fail to
find a document which I needed; naturally, it was
something I had misfiled myself. Diane also contributed
greatly to the Cold War chapter. Richard Sokolow made
similar contributions to the Mushroom and Safehouse
chapters. His work was solid, and his energy boundless.
Jay Peterzell delved deeply into Dr. Cameron's
"depatterning" work in Montreal and stayed with it when
others might have quit. Jay also did first-rate studies
of brainwashing and sensory deprivation. Jim Mintz and
Ken Cummins provided excellent assistance in the early
research stage.
The Center for National Security Studies, under my
good friend Robert Borosage, provided physical support
and research aid, and I would like to express my
appreciation. My thanks also to Morton Halperin who
continued the support when he became director of the
Center. I also appreciated the help of Penny Bevis,
Hannah Delaney, Florence Oliver, Aldora Whitman, Nick
Fiore, and Monica Andres.
My sister, Dr. Patricia Greenfield, did excellent
work on the CIA's interface with academia and on the
Personality Assessment System. I want to acknowledge her
contribution to the book and express my thanks and love.
There has been a whole galaxy of people who have
provided specialized help, and I would like to thank them
all: Jeff Kohan, Eddie Becker, Sam Zuckerman, Matthew
Messelson, Julian Robinson, Milton Kline, Marty Lee, M.
J. Conklin, Alan Scheflin, Bonnie Goldstein, Paul Avery,
Bill Mills, John Lilly, Humphrey Osmond, Julie Haggerty,
Patrick Oster, Norman Kempster, Bill Richards, Paul
Magnusson, Andy Sommer, Mark Cheshire, Sidney Cohen, Paul
Altmeyer, Fred and Elsa Kleiner, Dr. John Cavanagh, and
Senator James Abourezk and his staff.
I sent drafts of the first ten chapters to many of
the people I interviewed (and several who refused to be
interviewed). My aim was to have them correct any
inaccuracies or point out material taken out of context.
The comments of those who responded aided me considerably
in preparing the final book. My thanks for their
assistance to Albert Hofmann, Telford Taylor, Leo
Alexander, Walter Langer, John Stockwell, William Hood,
Samuel Thompson, Sidney Cohen, Milton Greenblatt, Gordon
Wasson, James Moore, Laurence Hinkle, Charles Osgood,
John Gittinger (for Chapter 10 only), and all the others
who asked not to be identified.
Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to
my publisher, Times Books, and especially to my editor
John J. Simon. John, Tom Lipscomb, Roger Jellinek,
Gyorgyi Voros, and John Gallagher all believed in this
book from the beginning and provided outstanding support.
Thanks also go to Judith H. McQuown, who copyedited the manuscript, and Rosalyn T. Badalamenti, Times Books'
Production Editor, who oversaw the whole production
process.