Are there Sound weapons? ASK former CIA Director S. Turner (1970s)

CIA Director Stansfield Turner's Testimony






Senator SCHWEIKER. Do you have any indication that some experiment in the facility used terminally ill cancer patients as subjects? You do acknowledge in your statement and it is clear from other documents that these kinds of experiments were at some point being done somewhere. My question is, is there any indication that cancer patients or terminally ill patients were experimented with in this wing?

Admiral TURNER. Yes, it does appear there is a connection here, sir.

Senator SCHWEIKER. The other question I had relates to the development of something which has been called the perfect concussion. A series of experiments toward that end were described in the CIA documents. I wonder if you would just tell us what your understanding of perfect concussion is.

Admiral TURNER. Is that in my testimony, sir, or in some other document?

Senator SCHWEIKER. Subproject 54, MKULTRA, which involved examination of techniques to cause brain concussions and amnesia by using weapons or sound waves to strike individuals without giving and without leaving any clear physical marks. Someone dubbed it "perfect concussion" -- maybe that was poetic license on the part of our staff rather than your poets over there. I wonder if you could just tell us what brain concussion experiments were about?

Admiral TURNER. This project, No. 54, was canceled, and never carried out.

Senator SCHWEIKER. Well, I do believe the first year of the project in 1955 was carried out by the Office of Naval Research, according to the information that you supplied us. The CIA seems to have been participating in some way at that point, because the records go on to say that the experimenter at ONR found out about CIA's role, discovered that it was a cover, and then the project was transferred to MKULTRA in 1956. Again, this is all from the backup material you have given us. So, it was canceled at some time. I am not disagreeing