In the Grey (4 page)

“
Captain Leatherby is
correct,” Ben said. “There is no way for us to understand the depth
of despair that led to this . . .
horrible . . .”

Ben glanced at Alex. She
used Jesse’s gesture to encourage Ben to get on with it.

“
Yes, get on with it,” Ben
said. “In the early 1950s, the US government began psychological
and medical testing on individuals. What happened to an
individual’s psyche under torture? What did mind altering drugs do
to the will of a person? Was it possible to program an average
citizen to do your bidding?”

“
The biggest threat to
democracy is a population that is unable to think freely,” a man
from her father’s team said.

“
Yes,” Ben said. “That was
the ‘why.’ We know of one hundred and fifty distinct projects. We
estimate there were thousands. Mind control projects were
officially sanctioned by the US government in 1953, and
theoretically eliminated in 1973. For twenty years, adults,
sometimes without their permission, and more than a few children,
were tested with the singular goal of researching the limits of
mind control. There was a less well-known project which involved
programming individuals, including children, to carry out agency
priority tasks.

“
To give you an idea of
the results . . .”

A man at the back of the
room cleared his throat, and Ben stopped talking. Ben and the man
glared at each other.

“
You may as well say it,”
said the man who had so many names they elected to call him “the
Mister” from the conference call line. “There’s no documentation,
so we’ll never know for certain.”

“
Don’t let that old
buzzard unnerve you, honey,” Mammy said. “He’s been on my list for
a long, long time.”

The man raised an eyebrow
and looked away from Ben. There was nothing good about being on any
list Mammy kept.

“
The Mister is correct,”
Ben said. “There is no documentation, so what I’m about to tell you
comes from personal interviews which are prone
to . . . inaccuracies.”

A heavy silence fell over
the room.

“
Ken Kesey, the author
of
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s
Nest
, participated in the program at
Stanford,” Ben said. “Sirhan Sirhan claimed to have been a
participant of an agency program. Consistent with the results of
the program, he has no memory of the day in question and no memory
of killing Robert Kennedy. Moreover, he currently has no memory of
confessing nor the contents of his confession.”

“
Kaczynski participated
from 1959 to 1962 when he was a student at Harvard,” said another
member of her father’s team. “Lee Harvey Oswald was in the Marines
at the time the program was in full swing.”

“
Crime boss, James Whitey
Bulger,” Trece said.

“
There’s evidence that
Jonestown was a CIA mind control test site,” MJ said.

“
Mark Chapman, who killed
John Lennon, has said he was a part of the program,” White Boy
said.

“
Manson,” Royce
said.

“
Jeffrey R. MacDonald was
in the 6
^th
SF at Fort Bragg,” Troy said.

“
James Earl Ray was at
Leavenworth when they were doing testing there,” a member of her
father’s team said.

“
Before we get too far
afield,” Ben said. “It’s possible to line up every known problem
personality, serial murderer, psychopath, or assassin, and point to
this program. To my mind, that only indicates the breadth and scope
of the program. It seems like everyone was connected to this
program at one point or another. The actual records from 1953 to
1973 were destroyed on the orders of my mentor, Richard
Helm.”

“
The team has wondered why
he destroyed the records,” Alex said.

“
He said that he was
concerned for the privacy of the participants,” Ben said. “The
records were destroyed right after the Watergate break-in became
public knowledge. I personally believe the records were destroyed
at the request of the president. At the time, the director ran the
operations of the agency, but the president was the top executive
of the CIA. I will tell you that Mr. Helm never, in all my years of
knowing him, changed his reason for destroying the records. Did he
ever contradict himself to anyone else?”

“
Not to me,” the Mister
said. Heads shook around the back of the room.

“
It’s important to note
that the majority of the people involved in this program
volunteered,” Ben said.

“
I volunteered,” Joseph
said.

“
So did Wyatt,” Alex
said.

“
If everyone volunteered
of their own free will, who was he protecting?” Ben shrugged. “The
feeling now is that Mr. Helm was covering up the side project, what
you’re calling ‘the girls.’”

“
Any secret project that
goes on for more than twenty years is bound to have a tick on its
underbelly,” Alex’s father, and retired Senator, General Patrick
Hargreaves, said from the doorway.

The men in the back of the
room popped to their feet. Patrick raised an eyebrow and moved
toward the front of the room.

“
Certainly, torturing
children so that they could become operatives to do your
intelligence work, and using their sexual abuse to blackmail world
leaders, would suck the life out of any decent human
being,”

Patrick nodded his team at
ease and one of the men followed her father to the front of the
room.

“
Thank you for coming,”
Patrick said to his team.

“
Sir,” Ben said. “Would
you . . . ?”

Patrick gave the man from
the back a warm greeting and Alex realized he was his father’s
administrative sergeant when they lived at Fort Bragg. As if he
could hear Alex’s thoughts, the man nodded at her.

“
Did you mention Sirhan
Sirhan?” Patrick asked.

“
Yes, sir,” Ben
said.

“
We just don’t know,”
Patrick said. “MK-Ultra; MK-Search; Monarch mind
control . . . There is no way for us to know the
scope of the programs and what was really done.”

“
I thought they found a
box with twenty thousand records in it?” MJ asked. “Those were the
names – MK-Ultra from 1953 to1964 and MK-Search from 1964 to 1973.
It’s all over YouTube.”

“
You didn’t tell them?”
Ben asked Alex.

“
He and Colin had to get
recertified. He was on medical leave with Honey after that; then he
got married and . . . ,” Alex said.

“
What did I miss?” MJ
asked.

“
The first part of 1976
was not great time for me,” Patrick said.

“
Sir, there’s no reason to
take responsibility. It was . . . ,” his
administrative sergeant said.

“
This is Sergeant Dick
Mead,” Patrick introduced the man to the group. “He was my Sergeant
Dusty when I was stationed at Fort Bragg.”

Patrick gave Sergeant Mead
a fond look.

“
My fault or no, in the
middle of a difficult time in my life, a few boxes appeared in a
storage room in a financial building outside of Bethesda,” Patrick
said. “I simply did not have time to look at them. Dick didn’t have
the clearance to even open the boxes. We didn’t know Ben at that
time. I was the only one who could look at them and I didn’t have
time. So they sat . . .”

“
Sir, you did nothing
wrong,” Sergeant Mead said.

“
At the very least, it
should have occurred to me that an old spy like Richard Helm would
never lose a box,” Patrick said. “But I had a full plate and every
day some twit at the agency asked if I would release the boxes.
They kept just enough pressure on me to make sure the boxes were on
my mind while being damned certain I had no time to look at them.
Finally, I just released them in a ‘
kiss
my ass
’ kind of way.”

“
I believe you actually
said that,” Sergeant Mead smiled.

“
I’m sure I did,” Patrick
nodded. “I should have looked inside.”

“
Sir, are you’re saying
that twenty thousand documents were falsified?” Joseph asked.
“We’ve used them to . . .”

“
Not everything,” Patrick
said. “There was just enough factual information to make the lies
look real. Carefully played misinformation. The agency created a
few boxes of files with the information they thought people wanted
to know. They added in the specific details they’d programmed into
subjects. They ran it through my office at Fort Bragg. With my
stamp of approval, the boxes look all the more
legitimate.”

“
But why would they
bother?” Leena’s voice reflected her disbelief.

Ben gave Leena an
unblinking stare. She blushed.

“
I’m sorry, sir,” Leena
said. “I meant no disrespect. I forgot myself.”

“
At ease, Petty Officer,”
Patrick said. “You’re asking the million-dollar question. Why go to
the trouble? Why not just leave it at ‘The program documents were
destroyed on Helm’s order’?”

“
She’s asking what you
think,” Alex said.

Colin’s phone buzzed. He
gestured to it, and Alex nodded that he could pick it up. He got up
and left the room.

“
Why do I think they
created the files?” Patrick asked. “A lot of people remembered the
program. The best way to hide a sick secret is to tell a big sordid
story with lots of factual details. By telling the MK-Ultra and
MK-Search story, they effectively hid the darker, more embarrassing
projects, as well as their ongoing work.”

“
It’s great intelligence,”
Ben said.

“
With a horrible human
cost,” Alex said.

“
What are we looking at?”
Patrick asked.

“
At the most basic level,
it looks like Eniac has activated the mind control subjects,” Alex
said. “I assume he’s planning to release that to the
press.”

“
And you?” Patrick
asked.

“
I received a phone call
this morning with an assignment,” Alex said.

“
Patrick Hargreaves,”
Mammy said. “You let your own child get
involved . . .”

“
I put her name on the
list when she was recruited out of SF training,” Ben said. “I
thought it would let us know if they were called up.”

“
Wyatt Klaussen
participated in experiments while at West Point, and then again
when he was in graduate school,” Alex said. “He was assigned to
kill the General.”

“
And you?” Patrick
asked.

“
I was assigned to kill
him when he killed you,” Alex said.

“
And Major Walters?”
Patrick asked.

“
He was activated, but
told to hold,” Alex said.

“
The Irish?” Patrick
asked.

“
One of the things we
learned from this research is that the mind control can be passed
from one generation to the next,” Alex said for the benefit of her
father’s team.

“
I thought the ESP studies
focused on generations,” Zack said. “Grandmothers, mothers,
daughters. Didn’t they use electric shock as a way of increasing
psychic phenomena?”

“
Sure,” Alex said.
“Certainly torturing a grandmother, her daughter, and her
granddaughter is a way to pass the trauma through families. But
what we’ve discovered lately is that trauma can be passed
epigenetically between generations. We know that Ronan Kelly and
other Irish Republicans received LSD, electric shock, water
torture, and other treatments in Maze. Because they are available,
we’re monitoring Ronan Kelly’s children to see if they are
affected. If they are, we’ll need to find and follow up with the
others.”

“
How is that possible?”
one of her father’s team asked.

“
We’re not sure,” Alex
said. “Current theory is that trauma sets up a biochemical
environment which modifies DNA without changing the sequence. The
modified DNA is passed from father to son, mother to her children.
The VA is currently studying Vietnam Veterans’
children.”

“
Iraq War vets too,” Vince
said.

“
What’s it called?” MI-5
agent Sean Hudson’s voice came from the phone.

“
Ancestor syndrome,
epigenetics, among other things,” Alex said. “Lucky for us, Eniac
doesn’t keep up with current research at the VA. He didn’t call
Ronan Kelly’s children, so we can assume he didn’t call the
others.”

“
Or he hasn’t called so
far,” Ben said. “But will.”

“
We should take our wins
where we can and assume this is good news,” Patrick said. “Is there
anything else anyone wants or needs to know?”

No one said
anything.

“
You are released to
continue to track the individuals you haven’t yet contacted,”
Patrick said.

“
Sir?” Margaret raised her
hand.

“
Yes Sergeant,” Patrick
said.

“
I
wonder . . . if they told this MK-Ultra or whatever
story to cover over what they were actually doing, what if they’re
doing that right now?” Margaret asked. “We’re going to spend the
next week or more tracking down everyone involved. Even with the
help of your team and our support staff, we’re not going to see our
families this week.”