Category: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records

Well, hello! Lately, I’ve been doing some behind-the-scenes work on the Ron Tammen case, and haven’t had much time to think up, let alone write, a blog post. That’s probably a good thing since I’m not really at liberty to talk about most of what’s going on anyway. There will come a day when I’m able to go public with what it is I’ve been doing, but alas, today’s not that day.

Still, I’ve recently made a few discoveries that I am able to divulge, two of which I’ll be divulging now. They have to do with the years 1956 and 1957, when St. Clair Switzer took time off from his professorship at Miami University to go on a sabbatical. I’m intensely interested in this period because I’m trying to figure out what he was doing during that sabbatical and who he was doing it with. 

The two discoveries are as follows:

1) We were right! The ARTICHOKE researcher whose personality was so off-putting to Air Force brass that he was required to work through a hand-picked liaison to the Surgeon General was Louis Jolyon West!

Back in September 2023, I posted about how it appeared that a young Louis Jolyon West had a personality that didn’t exactly mesh with buttoned-down military types, even though he himself was a major in the U.S. Air Force’s Medical Corps. In a memo dated July 24, 1953, Morse Allen, who was chief of the Technical Branch in the CIA’s Office of Security, was describing how a promising ARTICHOKE researcher whose name was redacted had elicited several red flags during a recent full-field investigation. Allen reported to his boss that, sure, the guy was “‘talkative,’ somewhat ‘unconventional’ and a ‘champion of the underdog’ but, according to all informants, he does not discuss classified information and can be trusted with Top Secret matters.” (I have a question though: what were those aforementioned informants doing chit-chatting about classified intel with this young researcher before he had clearance? Sounds to me as if they’re the ones who couldn’t be trusted with Top Secret information, ya’ know?)

Later in that post, I shared a CIA memorandum written months earlier, on September 23, 1952. In that memo, whose author’s name is redacted, two individuals were being discussed, one of whom had a “propensity to talk.” The other was described as having “nothing to contribute in the line of research,” however it appears that he had redeeming qualities too. When addressing how to ameliorate their talker problem, the author stated that “I could assure Col. REDACTED that any project involving REDACTED would be coordinated with him. In accordance with the new procedures for handling ARTICHOKE, OTS [Office of Technical Service] will be obligated to check with OS [Office of Security] and OS would automatically check with REDACTED in view of the fact that REDACTED is a consultant of, and of primary interest to the Surgeon General.” 

The memo went on to say that a colonel who’d spoken with a representative of the Office of the Surgeon General had called to say that the new protocol successfully allayed their concerns. What’s more, the representative “had advised him that he thinks very highly of REDACTED and that it will be essential to keep him cut into the picture.”

In that post, I hypothesized that the talker was Jolly West and the Surgeon General’s proposed liaison who was to be “cut into the picture” was St. Clair Switzer. I pointed to the words “air research” that had been written above the liaison’s name as supporting evidence, since Switzer had worked in the Air Research and Development Command in Baltimore in the summer of 1951.

In another post, I zoomed in on the scratched out name of the proposed liaison, which clearly started with the letter S and had roughly the same number of letters as Switzer. Here, I’ll show you again:

The Surgeon General at that time was Harry G. Armstrong, who had close ties to Wright Patterson AFB, which is how I think he’d come to know and trust Lt. Col. Switzer. But again, this was all just a hypothesis.

Two years have gone by since I made those bold assertions, and so far, they’ve been sitting quietly on my blogsite with barely a mention from anyone. (It’s fine. I’m fine.) Today, I’m presenting supporting evidence that Jolly West indeed had to work through a liaison with the Surgeon General’s Office, even though the new evidence is a document from 1956, three and a half years after the September 1952 memo, when Harry G. Armstrong was no longer the Surgeon General.

My new evidence is Jolly West’s proposal for a second year of funding for his now infamous MKULTRA Subproject 43, Psychophysiological Studies of Hypnosis and Suggestibility. His cover letter was addressed to SG—Sidney Gottlieb—who, as head of the Chemical Division of the Office of Technical Service, had been put in charge of MKULTRA. Near the end of the letter, West mentions work he’d been doing for the Air Force and says that he may be traveling to Washington, D.C., very soon. “REDACTED will know about it before I will; if you want to see me, get in touch with him and find out whether the Surgeon General is going to be calling me up there next week.”

Interesting, isn’t it? By that time, Louis Jolyon West was chair of the Department of Psychiatry, Neurology and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine; he’d just completed his first year overseeing his major MKULTRA subproject (which was considered admirable back then); and he was in charge of a project requested by USAF Headquarters to develop recommendations on “training for survival and resistance to interrogation” (also impressive). Still, apparently, there were channels he was expected to go through, and he needed to wait for someone else to tell him if the Surgeon General wanted to see him or not.

And so, there we have it. In February 1956, a few months before Switzer’s sabbatical began, the system that had been worked out in 1952 was ostensibly still in place. West would communicate with Gottlieb’s Office of Technical Service. Gottlieb would consult with someone presumably from the CIA’s Office of Security, who would touch base with a contact sanctioned by the Surgeon General’s Office as to whether the Surgeon General would be summoning Jolly West for a sit-down. Granted, this is just one-half of my hypothesis. We still don’t know if St. Clair Switzer was the other half, though, if he was in 1952, I’m thinking he wasn’t in 1956. (I’ll tell you why in a second.) But any amount of corroboration is good corroboration and I think worth mentioning.

2) I have more proof that St. Clair Switzer was an employee of the CIA!

Back in 2022, I brazenly hypothesized that St. Clair Switzer was an employee of the CIA, not just a consultant. My logic was this: In December 1956 and February 1957, which was in the middle of Switzer’s sabbatical, someone who sounded a lot like Switzer had written two letters to Switzer’s former colleague and fellow Clark Hull protege Griffith W. Williams about a classified project that was exploring ways to hypnotize people through a variety of means ostensibly without their knowledge. We know for a fact that the recipient was Griffith Williams because the first letter refers to the recipient’s post at Rutgers, where Williams was a psychology professor, and the second letter refers to his recent bout with arthritis, which was a health condition that Williams had endured for years.

What was perplexing to me was the letter “A” next to the writer’s redacted name. In the 2022 post, I’d attempted to crack the CIA’s code of letters and numbers written on MKULTRA documents and concluded that A stood for Agency, since people who were known CIA employees consistently had an A by their name, whether their name happened to be redacted or not. The letter C, which is next to Williams’ redacted name, stood for consultant, I’d deduced.

If you’d like to see what I mean, here are a couple examples of memos in which known CIA officials Morse Allen and R.L. Bannerman have As by their names as opposed to the Cs, which are next to blackened names of people with whom they were consulting:

Sample 1

Sample 2

And so…because I was 99.9 percent positive (and still am) that the two letters were written by Doc Switzer and because the letter writer had an A next to his name, then logic would dictate that Switzer was an Agency insider. 

And there that blog post sat for three years with nary a peep from anyone. (Again, it’s fine. I’ve come to terms with the fact that people have interests outside of Ron Tammen. I don’t understand it, but I’ve come to terms with it.) Incidentally, this is also why I don’t think Switzer was the Surgeon General’s liaison in 1956. In Jolly West’s cover letter for his MKULTRA proposal, the person who is supposedly the Surgeon General’s liaison has a C next to his name. Note that Jolly West also has a C next to his name.

Aaannnnnyyyway…remember the hypnosis expert I recently wrote about who liked to use the word “injunction” when he described giving a hypnotic subject a basic command like “relax” or “go to sleep”? Until I came across that person’s missives, I’d only seen the word injunction used to describe an order that was handed down in a court of law by a judge or magistrate. To date, I’ve found no other hypnosis experts during that time period or any time period who have ever used the word injunction when describing that part of the hypnotic process. And trust me, I’ve looked. In fact, I’ve never come across anyone who has used that word in that way at all. 

Nevertheless, I found this very rare usage of the word injunction in three Project ARTICHOKE documents. It first appears in a write-up dated March 28, 1952, three days after St. Clair Switzer’s name (I’m 100% positive) was proposed by Morse Allen as a possible consultant for ARTICHOKE. Griffith Williams was another suggested name (I’m quite sure).

Then, in October 1955 and February 1956, several months before Switzer’s sabbatical, the word popped up several times in two reports discussing the covert, or disguised, induction of hypnosis. Based on my inability to find any other hypnosis expert occupying the planet at the time who used that word in that way, I hypothesized that all three documents had been written by the same person.

But here’s what’s intriguing about that hypothesis: the author of the March 1952 write-up was clueless about Project ARTICHOKE. He’d ostensibly been given a few broadbrush details about what they were looking to do in the area of hypnosis and the collection of information from an enemy and he did a little brainstorming. He then hand-delivered a write-up of his ideas to someone whose office was within driving distance who obviously did know about the program, even though they ostensibly weren’t with the CIA. According to their cover letter dated October 1, 1952 (Happy Anniversary, by the way!) to the official now in charge of ARTICHOKE, injunction guy was still very much in the dark. For these reasons, I think we can state with 100 percent certainty that the March 1952 writer was not an Agency insider.

Do you know who was an Agency insider? The person who wrote the February 1956 report. He had an A next to his name.

I still think that the three documents were written by the same person. However, my theory has evolved and branched out. I now think that, sometime between 1952 and 1956, injunction guy was hired by the CIA—not unlike the person who wrote the two letters to Griffith Williams during the 1956-57 academic year, whom I also believe was CIA. 

This could be evidence that we’re talking about one person and one person only, St. Clair Switzer.

Wouldn’t it be so great if, despite everything that the CIA has done to try to withhold the identities of its long-dead ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA actors, what with its over-the-top use of redactions and the deceptive games it likes to play with the American people, pretending to comply with FOIA and all…wouldn’t it be great if the singular feature that would help us identify one of its own would be someone’s inflated ego? I can just picture him then, seated at his typewriter, marveling at his importance, striving to impress. How could he, someone who viewed himself a writer, have known that his instinct to use a fancy word that no one ever uses in that context instead of a more typical word that would enable him to blend in would ultimately lead to his unmasking? I’d call that poetic justice. 

Coming later this month, another interesting discovery about Switzer’s sabbatical 

This past July, I was interviewed again by Miami Student journalists Taylor Powers and Sarah Kennel for their podcast Bizarre Butler County. In that discussion, the three of us talked more about the Tammen mystery, and I provided a little breaking news that I hadn’t shared with anyone. I still haven’t shared it with anyone.

I’ll give you a hint: It has to do with Doc Switzer’s sabbatical and a small clue regarding who he may have been working with. Because I like to honor the breaking news that I provide to fellow journalists, I won’t be breaking it here. You’ll need to wait until that podcast episode, which I’ve been told is going to air later this month. I’ll let you know the date as soon as I know. I’ll also write up a blog post with supporting documentation to accompany that episode after it drops.

Today we’re going to talk about the word injunction. Whenever I stumble upon the word, I think of a legal order, handed down by a court of law, telling someone that they need to do something or to stop doing something. In fact, it’s often used alongside the word court, as in a court injunction.  Wikipedia has a very nice write-up on the word injunction, which you are welcome to read at your leisure.

But our friend Merriam Webster has provided a second meaning for the word injunction, as if we needed one. And that meaning is: an order or admonition. 

P.S. Of any kind.

P.P.S. No court of law required. Just, you know…someone gives you an injunction to do something (or to not do something) and you do it (or not). The thing is: No one uses it this way.

No, seriously, I’ve been living on earth for a while now, and I’ve even been in the presence of some very smart people with very large vocabularies, and not a soul has ever used the word injunction in this way when I was with them. 

Like have you ever heard a kid say: “My dad gave me an injunction last night to do my homework or else.”

Or has your boss ever said: “I need you to have the report on my desk by the end of the week. That’s an injunction.”

Or, after visiting the dentist, have you ever told someone, “The appointment went fine, except she kept giving me injunctions to open my mouth wider.”

Exactly. No one talks that way. That would be weird. 

Except, there once was a person who did use the word injunction in this way…sometimes repeatedly.

This person was a hypnosis expert in the 1950s, when the federal government was on the prowl for as many hypnosis experts as it could find. Even though I’ve found no other hypnosis experts of that time period (or ever) who used the word injunction to describe a hypnotic instruction, command, or suggestion, it was this person’s go-to. For example:

“…a man might be given hypnotically (with injunction to ‘forget’ the incident) a strong compulsion to keep a secret diary.”

Or

“Injunctions to forget the hypnotic indoctrination might be tried.”

OR

“Injunction to accept subsequent non-hypnotic instructions from an ‘agent’ might be tried out.”

Those three injunctions were found on page one of a two-page write-up dated March 28, 1952, on how hypnosis might be used to gather intelligence from an enemy. While most hypnosis experts were never tempted to use the word even once in that way throughout their careers, he or she (Who am I kidding? It’s the CIA in the early ‘50s—I’m pretty sure it’s a he) found reason to use it three times in one two-pager. 

We’ll talk more about this write-up shortly, because I find its timing to be noteworthy in addition to the route it took to reach the people in charge of Project Artichoke.

But right now, let’s jump to 1955…October 25, 1955, to be exact. On this date, an expert in hypnosis is writing a summary on the various ways in which the CIA could induce a hypnotic trance within a subject without their knowing it—what he refers to as disguised induction. In the memo, he discusses using such methods as anxiety-reducing drugs as well as medical instruments that serve as an object of fascination for the subject while providing an excuse for an operator to encourage the subject to relax without raising suspicion. Among the medical instruments he mentioned were an electrocardiograph (EKG), which measures electrical activity of the heart, and an electroencephalograph (EEG), which measures electrical activity in the brain.

In paragraph 7, he says this about the EKG and EEG: “These machines offer a situation where the subject is in a resting condition and amenable to direction of his sensory powers at the machine (fascination) which coupled with relaxation injunctions may result in achieving hypnosis.”

Relaxation injunctions? Could this be the same guy as the one on March 28, 1952?

Four months later, on February 28, 1956, someone is writing an interim report titled Hypnosis and Covert Operations. Disguised induction of hypnosis is still the end game. Among other techniques, the report leads with the use of the polygraph as a disguised pretest of someone’s hypnotic susceptibility, as well as a way to measure a person’s physiological changes as they are entering and exiting a hypnotic trance. 

In paragraph 6, which discusses a far riskier technique involving a subject’s carotid arteries, the author says this: “It is possible to combine a stern injunction of ‘sleep!’ with carotid pressure to obtain hypnosis…,” before cautioning the reader about how dangerous the method is, how it requires a lot of practice and perfect timing, and in no way could it be considered a disguised induction of hypnosis. I mean, good grief, he’s got his hands around the subject’s neck!

In the very next paragraph, he’s back to describing medical instruments, and is singing the praises of a BMR machine, which measures basal metabolic rate. In addition to diverting the subject’s attention and helping them to relax, “the BMR has the added advantage of control of inspired air. Breathed through a mask (which is the measuring device), the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide inhaled can be controlled. With the oxygen decreased, the subject is rendered more susceptible to hypnosis. This can be coupled with injunctions to ‘relax,’ ‘go to sleep if you like,’ ‘sleep,’ [sic] so that induction might be accomplished.” 

I don’t know about you, but I generally don’t permit just anyone to control my oxygen intake, especially if someone with the CIA happens to be in the room. But hey, we’ve found one more “relax” injunction and three “sleep” injunctions, so that’s good news. Also, is it me, or is this guy beginning to sound as if he’s trying to make the word “injunction” catch on? Despite his efforts, I haven’t seen any evidence that it did.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: sure, it’s weird that the word keeps popping up from time to time, and it does appear that the writer in October 1955 and February 1956 is the same person, since he’s writing about the same topic. But how can we be sure that it’s the same person as the writer of the two-pager of March 1952? And if it is the same person, how can we figure out who the person is?

Two great questions. I suggest we address them backwards. First, I’m going to tell you who I think it is, and then I’m going to tell you why.

I think it’s St. Clair Switzer. (But I think you already knew that.)

My reason has to do with three clues:

Clue #1: The number/letter combo in the top right of the October 1955 and February 1956 memos

As we’ve discussed in the past, many, but not all, of the CIA’s MKULTRA documents that were released to the public have a combination of numbers and letters in the top right corner. Here’s an example:

Here’s another one:

The series starts with an A/B, which, according to Colin Ross, M.D., stands for Artichoke/Bluebird. Then, there’s a single number, often written as a Roman numeral, which I believe represents a major grouping. The range for these numbers is I (1) through VII (7). Then there are two numbers separated by either a comma or a slash. The first of the two numbers is a smaller category within the large grouping, while the second represents a document’s number in a series within that category.

The October 1955 memo has the following number/letter combo: III, 6/15

The February 1956 memo has the following number/letter combo: III, 6/19

Picture it like this: Think of a file cabinet with seven drawers. The III group occupies the third file drawer, and within the III drawer are (from my count) seven file folders. Each file folder within the III drawer contains a stack of documents, which vary in number. The thickest stack is in folder #2. It contains at least 135 documents. Within the #6 folder is a much smaller stack, numbered from 1 to 19, though several documents are missing. The October 1955 memo and the February 1956 memo both occupy the III file drawer in the #6 folder.

Do you know what other record occupies the III file drawer in the #6 folder? The March 25, 1952, memo in which Morse Allen tells Cmdr. Robert J. Williams that he’s spoken with legendary hypnosis expert Clark Hull, and Hull suggested that they contact his two prized former assistants, namely St. Clair Switzer and Griffith W. Williams. (The names are redacted, but I’m positive of this.)

The number at the top of the March 25, 1952, memo is III, 6/9. In other words, whoever did the numbering decided that the three memos have something in common and should be categorized accordingly. Note that I don’t think all of the memos in the #6 folder involved St. Clair Switzer, but I believe these three memos do. 

Clue #2: The date of the March 28, 1952, two-pager

Three days after St. Clair Switzer and Griffith Williams were identified as individuals to be contacted for Project Artichoke, someone typed up the two-pager about possible ways to use hypnosis to obtain information from the enemy. What’s intriguing about this write-up, other than its over-the-top usage of the word injunction, is that it’s forwarded to someone at the CIA by way of a memo written by a third party. The cover memo is dated roughly six months later. We’ll get to that memo in a second. 

Because Morse Allen wasn’t the type to sit around and wait, I think that he or perhaps another official reached out to both Switzer and Williams on or around March 25 (a Tuesday). By March 28 (a Friday), someone—it seems logical to infer that it would’ve been one of those two men—had typed up the document after giving the matter some serious thought. Based on what I know about Doc Switzer, my money is on him. He would have treated a phone call from Morse Allen or another official as an assignment to be handled with utmost urgency. (An injunction, if you will!) I’ve seen his response time in other situations—he could turn around a lengthy request from a person in a high place within a day. What the two-pager’s author did next offers up another important clue to his identity.

Clue #3:  The date of the cover memo introducing the March 28, 1952, two-pager

Whoever wrote the two-pager had hand delivered it to someone who was in-the-know about Project Artichoke. Strangely, the cover memo is dated 1 October 1952, which seems like a long time for that entity to be sitting on something that the CIA and military were clearly interested in.

Here’s a copy of the cover memo:

It’s short, so I’m going to write it up here as well.

Memorandum for: [REDACTED]

Subject: Matter Possibly Related to Project ARTICHOKE

1. Attached hereto is a memorandum delivered to this office by [REDACTED]. This was one of a number of operational suggestions that Mr. [REDACTED] brought to this office which he understood was interested in new ideas. He has no knowledge of Project ARTICHOKE and has been informed that his suggestion has been forwarded to the interested office.

2. The memorandum is being forwarded to you since it is understood that your office has assumed overall direction of Project ARTICHOKE and the matter appears to be related to some aspects of Project ARTICHOKE. 

Who I think wrote the cover memo

Unfortunately, the writer and their workplace are both redacted, but I still think I know its origin. I believe the cover memo writer was someone on a military base. Think about it: the only insiders regarding Project Artichoke were a select group of people within the CIA and the military, and no one would dare pull a pop-in at the CIA.

As for which military base, I think I know that too. We discussed above that the two most likely authors were either St. Clair Switzer or Griffith W. Williams. And of those two men, the only one who had an association with a military base was St. Clair Switzer.

Therefore, I think the origin of the cover letter was someone at Wright-Patterson AFB—most likely the Wright Air Development Center’s (WADC’s) Aero Medical Laboratory, where Switzer was well known. The person who called him on or around March 25 likely gave a broad description of the kinds of questions that they were seeking answers to, but they wouldn’t have given him the full details of the program—not yet. They certainly hadn’t disclosed the name Artichoke. They were probably assessing his interest and availability regarding a classified project having to do with hypnosis, and he wanted to show them just how interested and available he was.

Why I think it was so late

So why would someone at Wright Patt wait until October 1 to forward Switzer’s memo to the officials overseeing Project Artichoke?

I can think of two reasons. First, on September 30, 1952—the day before the cover memo was written—Project Artichoke was officially transferred from the Office of Scientific Intelligence to the Inspection and Security Office (I&SO), where Morse Allen was employed, with research support from the Office of Technical Services and Medical Sciences staff. (They’d been discussing this transfer for months, but this appears to be the final word.) The changeover involved a major reorganization in which duties were transferred from one person to another and copious files were handed over as well. To forward a memo on the first day of Artichoke’s new management structure doesn’t seem late at all. In fact, it seems really on the ball. 

Second, a memo that was probably fresh in their brains, dated September 23, 1952, may have also played a role. In the last paragraph, it was mentioned that the Surgeon General of the Air Force—a man named General Harry G. Armstrong—had requested that someone be “cut into the picture” for Project Artichoke. Of course, that person’s name was redacted, but in my September 19, 2023 post, I go deep into why I think Switzer was the person named in that memo. Namely, Armstrong  had strong ties to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, so they shared that connection. What’s more, Switzer had been stationed for a portion of the previous summer at the Air Research and Development Command (ARDC) in Baltimore, which oversaw the Wright Air Development Center. I think that carried a lot of weight, since someone had handwritten “air research” above the person’s redacted name. 

My theory is: the people at Wright-Patterson AFB probably hadn’t waited six months to send the two-pager to the CIA. They’d likely forwarded it in March 1952 to someone at OSI. However, when Project Artichoke was switched over to I&SO’s purview, someone at Wright Patt probably thought it wouldn’t hurt to forward the two-pager to them as well, especially now that they knew that the Office of the Surgeon General would approve.

If I’m correct that St. Clair Switzer had written the injunction memos of 1952, 1955, and 1956, you can be sure that this will open up new areas of study. It also confirms one guess I’d made a long time ago concerning two other documents that I believe Switzer wrote. But we’ll save that discussion for another day. 

Any thoughts? Have you ever used the word injunction in this way before? If not, try it out on your friends, coworkers, and anyone else you know and tell us about it!

Many thanks to The Black Vault for making these documents accessible.